The small Great War memorials dotted around towns and villages in England are still visited, and though many of the names are unfamiliar, their sacrifice is still remembered: too many bear the scars of the trenches, lists of identical surnames marking how entire families were mown down in Flanders, in the space of minutes. What they tell those who visit and lay poppies is a very simple message: don't start stupid wars.

Compare the MPAA's rating system and process with that of the BBFC in the UK. The latter has well-defined age-limited ratings, instead of the nebulous 'R' that South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut parodied. It provides clear guidelines on what needs to be cut in order to get a lower rating. It places the rationale for its decisions online. For instance, the probably-awful 'Beerfest' lost nine seconds of 'sexualised asphyxiation' to get the '15' rating that its producers desired; left uncut, it would have been handed an '18'. In the US, it's 'R'.

The American system of justice has served pretty well for centuries. It's up to the Democrats not to defend Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, but the process of criminal justice that exists outside of Bush's black ops.

Anyone catch the short promo for '30 Rock' during the re-run of SNL? It managed to capture the absurdity of NBC's greenlighting two behind-the-scenes-of-comedy shows in one season, while allowing Alex Baldwin -- Alex Baldwin! -- to poke at Sorkin's hauteur.

'Studio 60' is slick and smart and shallow as a puddle of pee. Even when Amanda Peet's character is caring, she's not caring, and we don't really care. Why not just turn it into The Matthew Perry Wisecrack Hour and be done with it?

As for the worst of the worst? Well, it didn't surprise me to find out that Warren Bell, writer/co-exec for 'According to Jim', is a regular at National Review's 'The Corner'. Hell, that is one bad sitcom.

I actually cooked from Slater's 'Real Food' tonight: I brought it, with 'Appetite', over to the US with me. His recipes deserve an American audience: improvisational, impressionistic, and engaged with seasonality. Plus he's a superb writer.

The myth of bad British food -- and it is a myth -- extends from the difference between home-cooked and restaurant offerings. Many of the best British meals don't suit the fast turnaround of dining out, but find their home on the family table. Many are unfashionable (or the unfashionable made fashionable again) but they're none the worse for it.

Slater's recipes are 'impressionistic' in the sense that they're generally not fussy about exact quantities or even exact ingredients, especially in 'Appetite', where he's more concerned about bringing together good seasonal combinations than with exactitude in timekeeping or technique. 'The Kitchen Diaries' can be read as a behind-the-scenes view of what would otherwise create a recipe book: it's how season and mood and what's on the shelf gets concocted into a meal. The emphasis is on developing that sensibility and cooking from your gut.

As for the Tesco comment: well, he's contracted to the Sainsbury's in-store magazine...

On the quality of food in the UK and US? Well, you'll generally find better produce in British supermarkets than American grocery stores, although farmers' markets are comparable on both sides of the pond. (It staggers me that some of the finest varieties of North Carolina apple never make it into the locally-owned grocery chains, while California apples shine waxily in neat rows.) I miss local butchers and greengrocers and fishmongers, and it's nigh-on impossible to find good bread in this part of the South. But neither come close to the markets of continental Europe.

It'd be easy to say that '30 Rock' works and 'Studio 60' doesn't because Tina Fey is actually a comedy writer who doesn't just know how to write comedy, but knows *how* comedy writers write comedy.

Actually, no: that's pretty hard to say.

Anyway, comedy writers in teams are vicious bastards with a keen sense of the absurd. When they're working to strict deadlines, they resemble pack animals: artificially stimulated and sleep-deprived and willing to pounce on anything weak and defenceless. I find it hard to believe that Aaron Sorkin has ever been up at 4am trying to come up with something even more outrageous and unbroadcastable than his co-writers.

I was so afraid that after '60' got the full season, '30 Rock' would be abandoned. At least NBC isn't compounding its idiocy.

"Give a dog a bad name, and hang him."

It's one of those proverbs where the non-proverbial meaning . But there are two lazy stories to be written about the Katrina diaspora. One is 'we were scared when a black family moved next door -- but they were so polite! And well-spoken!' The other is 'you can take the person out of the ghetto, but not the ghetto out of the person.' Both are problematic for obvious reasons.

This is the flipside of Babs Bush's "so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (chuckles) is working very well for them." Gosh, you wouldn't suspect that she'd spent four years in the White House, would you? And last time I checked, New Orleans didn't take a vacation from America between 1989 and 2002.

The division of opinion on this is fascinating. As I walked out of the cinema last night, the people getting into the car parked next to us were complaining about how awful that movie was.

I thought it was fantastic. Then again, I'm an expat Brit. The London it portrayed (the Tube 'zones' transformed into layers of segregation) was brutally plausible. The spareness of the narration had me engage with what was being shown. Like 'The Constant Gardener', it's a film with barely an American presence, not just in terms of personnel but also sensibility.

As for the critics? Well, 'Red Dawn' is available on DVD, and a six-pack of Bud Lite is five bucks.