Mssv

There’s something undeniably romantic about a crescent moon in the clear evening sky, hovering over the rooftops in a scene straight from the cover of a ’50s ‘Amazing Stories’ magazine. Usually they have more than one moon, and the sky is pink, and the rooftops are either a barren wasteland or soaring, spiralling towers, [...]

The great thing about not regularly drinking caffeinated beverages is that when you do, you get a real kick out of it. I basically never drink anything that contains any caffeine – no tea, no Coke and definitely no coffee. Every so often though, when I drink just a single cup of tea, I’ll feel [...]

Lately, I’ve been thinking about why I go to sleep in lectures so often. It isn’t because I’m tired, or because I’m bored; there are plenty of times when I am both tired and bored and fail to fall asleep with the kind of dependability that I do in lectures. Nor is it because I’m [...]

iBook G4 800mhz: £750
Airport Extreme card: £70
Bluetooth module: £30
Watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom with friends on a two hour coach journey along the M25 in the rain: Priceless
There are some things computers can’t do. For everything else, there’s Apple.
(Oh yeah, and I heard you can do work on these things as well…)

I’ve seen this hauntingly beautiful phrase from Ecclesiastes twice in the past week, in the context of Orwell’s essay on the English language:
I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of [...]

Facts from around the world!
In South Africa, they use the same word for ‘demonstration’ and ‘riot’, according to a friend from Cape Town who was alarmed to read about the mass ‘riots’ taking place in London for Bush’s visit.
In Australia, when the public transport workers go on strike, they don’t go home. Instead, they go [...]

One of the more annoying aspects of my PhD course at Oxford is that I have to go to these ‘Personal Development Course’ events every so often, which are about as bad as they sound. In fact, all new biology graduates have to go to them, perhaps fifty in total. The first one, held some [...]

Some photos of my trip to London to belatedly toast the destruction of the Culture Listserver, courtesy of Steve.

After I got back from Australia in August, I started doing an awful lot of exercise so that I might develop some good habits that would last in Oxford. I hadn’t been to the gym for about a year or so, and so when I went there and did my usual workout, I basically felt [...]

Lyra’s Oxford is more than just a short story and a collection of colourful extras. Pullman has set us a mystery, and judging by his past works, it’s going to be interesting.