• Third Wave

    ·

    1–2 minutes

    ·

    No comments on Third Wave

    The Third Wave – in 1968, a schoolteacher conducted an experiment to find out how easily ‘normal American students’ could fall into patterns of behaviour as seen in Nazi Germany. The results were quite astonishing and unexpected, and well worth reading (via Metafilter).

  • Psychology

    ·

    1–2 minutes

    ·

    No comments on Psychology

    One of the advantages of being a university student is that there are ample opportunities to be a psychology experiment test subject. If you’re ever bored and could do with a bit of cash, it’s well worth checking out if there are any psychology researchers looking for test subjects. Usually you’ll end up sitting in…

  • Stirring

    ·

    1–2 minutes

    ·

    No comments on Stirring

    We will not fly our flags in their country – a stirring speech given by a British army commander to his troops on the eve of war.

  • Mozilla Mail woes

    ·

    2–3 minutes

    ·

    No comments on Mozilla Mail woes

    I’ve just spent some time trying to migrate over to Mozilla Mail. I failed miserably. Let me explain why. Firstly, I fired up Mozilla Mail; no problem. Then I told it to import my Outlook Express addressbook. Also, no problem. I was pretty optimistic at this point. Next, I told it to import my Outlook…

  • Speed

    ·

    2–3 minutes

    ·

    No comments on Speed

    Yesterday I had an interesting debate about whether science is suffering from diminishing returns these days; i.e. that it costs more than it used to to get answers. On the face of it, this seems true; we spend billions on particle accelerators, space telescopes and medical research programmes. We never spent that amount of money…

  • Moebius

    ·

    1–2 minutes

    ·

    No comments on Moebius

    One of the problems with keeping a regularly updated weblog is that when you do searches on Google, you often end up being directed back to your own entries: Google Search: cambridge bike repair

  • The future of libraries

    ·

    1–2 minutes

    ·

    No comments on The future of libraries

    Idea Stores – apparently these are the libraries of the future in the UK, doing more than just lending out books. Sounds like an interesting idea although I will withhold judgement for now.

  • Walkout

    ·

    1–2 minutes

    ·

    3 comments on Walkout

    Another BBC News story about schoolkids walking out over war. To my mind, this is just nuts. Obviously university students can do what they like (although interestingly most people in Cambridge haven’t done any walking out), and I can just about see sixth formers being of sound mind to do it. But 11-16 year olds?…

  • Worth trying

    ·

    1–2 minutes

    ·

    No comments on Worth trying

    I spent part of yesterday afternoon engaged in playing games on a friend’s computer; very productive. When I fired up Age of Mythology, the volume on the speakers was off since I’d been having a chat. Just as it was getting into the nice intro sequence, I thought, maybe this would make more sense if…

  • Mozilla 1.3

    ·

    1–2 minutes

    ·

    No comments on Mozilla 1.3

    With the recent release of Mozilla 1.3, I’ve been seriously considering switching to Mozilla Mail from Outlook Express. The only real reason why I want to do this is because Mozilla has Bayesian spam classification, and given that I am getting increasing amounts of spam these days, it would be very useful. My concerns are…