alexsarll | How had I never heard of Demetrius the Besieger?

People who've yet to see The Wire - are you sick of those who have going on about it? The first episode is legitimately streaming here 'til the end of the week, so you can so easily find out what the fuss is about. Yes, it's about drug dealers, and the first one is free. Anyway, that'll give you some idea of quite why everyone gets so excited about the show, but I've just finished the third season, and dear heavens it gets even better - and, hard as it may be to believe, even more bleak. There are glimmers of light, hope and humanity, for sure - but overall, and especially coming straight from the Potter and Rome conclusions, I feel bloody desolate. If Jacqui Smith really wants new ideas on reducing the harm caused by drugs, she could really not do better than watching these first three series.

Staying with the theme of social collapse, AK47: The Story Of The People's Gun is a deeply frustrating book. Michael Hodges has clearly done his research - meeting General Kalashnikov (and visiting the brothel in the original manufacturing plant), getting shot at in Iraq, interviewing former child soldiers - but fundamentally, he's written articles for Esquire and it shows. He has the glimmerings of a theme - the AK as brand, as revolutionary totem, as a devil which poisons every culture it touches - but he's never quite able to bring them into the light. But just as anyone with an AK is a killing machine (Mikhail Kalashnikov went a lot further than Sam Colt towards making man equal), anyone writing about the AK can terrify you. Reading about the state of Kalashnikov cultures, I found myself looking up and down the Tube thinking, dear heavens, imagine London's nutters and monsters equipped with these. And then the next chapter tells me that in the late nineties there was at least one AK47 in Finsbury Park mosque and it has never been recovered.

Copyright term on sound recordings to remain 50 years because "extending the term could harm Britain's trade balance and provide little practical benefit to artists while hampering creativity and consumers"; ageing musos and industry plutocrats predictably throw toys out of pram.