Well, wasn't getting to work fun. Merete dropped me at the train station as usual only to find hordes of people milling about out the front calling loved ones to pick them up or forming ad hoc taxi pools. The platform was six deep, and as I contemplated my options the annoucement came that trains were 40 minutes apart and the next one wasn't even ( Read more... )

I'm reading the Letters of Pliny the Younger at the moment, and one I read today reached out to me from across the millennia in light of the high informal vote in the recent bunfight, written during the reign of either Nerva or Trajan in the few years on either side of 100AD, and referring to the adoption of secret ballots for Senate elections:
To ( Read more... )

Watching the double bill of The Goodies and Doctor Who in the evenings on ABC is surely one of the great shared experiences of Generation X. I was thus chuffed to see that The Goodies were getting a new airing on ABC2 on Monday evenings. Astrid's bedtime has been extended far enough that she could watch it, and I was curious as to whether she would ( Read more... )

It's the time of year when ducks try to raise a brood in the pond out the front of Winthrop Hall, with the parents tending to be rather assertively protective. The sight of freshers shrieking in terror as they run from irate waterfowl never grows old.

The most litigious whackjob in history.
Some of Riches' defendants are not even people or potentially suable. These include "Adolf Hitler's National Socialist Party" and the "13 tribes of Israel".One lawsuit, which includes George Bush, also includes another 783 defendants that cover 56 pages. They include Plato, Nostradamus, Che Guevara, James ( Read more... )

Molecular gastronomy? Feh! Welcome to the age of digital gastronomy. Here are three concept machines that have definitely just been added to my lotto fantasy list. Designed by MIT, no less.

( Read more... )

I'm off sick from work today - mutter grumble hideous autoimmune drugs bah nausea grr - which means I was home to give a rather mumbling doorway interview to Channels 9 and 10 after they were the first to inform me that someone was shot in the guts in the car park over the road last night. Merete and I had heard a loud bang that sounded different ( Read more... )

So, it turns out that there's a new family movie about a mad scientist supervillain whose heart is won over by three feisty and adorable little girls.

Yeah, I'll be taking my kids to that one. Maybe it will inspire them to help me steal the moon.

Normally at this time of year I post what must surely be quite irritatingly smug gloats about parent/teacher meetings. Not this year ( Read more... )

The last few weeks have been one of the most exciting periods for some considerable time to those interested in space science and technology .
( Long, but full of wow )