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  • All gone

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    2 comments on All gone

    Coming Attractions has just been ruined by Cinescape – they say that ‘nothing will change’, but have a look at their new home and try and extract any kind of news from that page.

  • The Great Library

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    If and when I ever leave the world of academia, I will be very sorry. Not because of the usual reasons, but because I will no longer have free access to thousands of academic journals on the Internet. It’s simply a wonder to be able to go over to Pubmed, type in any keyword, and…

  • N. S.

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    Browsing through my website logs and stats, as I am wont to do when there is nothing else going on, I’ve just discovered that the most searched-for term for my website is “Neal Stephenson”; other such irrelevent terms as “Adrian Hon” come in a distant fifth. Of course, this is because Neal Stephenson is a…

  • Suggestible

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    1 comment on Suggestible

    It’s amazing how suggestible the human mind is. Well, not quite amazing, but still impressive. I’ve just been over at a friend’s who’s a fan of psychological magic tricks, and he managed to successfully predict two different cards chosen by myself and another person. When I say ‘predict’, of course what really happened was that…

  • Freedom Evolves

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    Just finished reading Freedom Evolves by Daniel Dennett. It took me only four days to accomplish this, which is a great improvement from previous philosophy books that took me several weeks to finish (or I never ended up finishing them). This presents several possibilites, which I’ve listed in increasing order of likelihood: 1) My IQ…

  • Geeks With Books

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    Geeks With Books – a nice little article about what it’s like to work in a used SF bookstore. “I never count on having Philip K. Dick books. They tend to stay around for about twenty minutes. When I shelve his books, I worry about losing a finger since they sell so fast.”

  • Webcams for schools

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    Putting webcams in classrooms to catch problem pupils – seems like a great idea to me, you wouldn’t believe the number of parents who think their kids can do no wrong. As for privacy concerns, I think maybe some kind of key escrow agency might be a good idea, wherein (say) at least two out…

  • 24 Episode 3

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    Some brief thoughts: Today’s episode on BBC3 was an improvement over the last two – in short, far less Kim and far more Jack. Much more dramatic tension, although I am a bit puzzled about why they haven’t included more subplots. This stuff about the groom being a terrorist doesn’t count, it doesn’t seem to…

  • Trailers as a cultural indicator

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    While watching my Back to the Future DVD for the umpteenth time, I decided to go and check out the original theatrical trailer. Since the film first opened in 1985, the trailer was suitably cringeworthy, what with all the flashing LEDs, arrays of ‘futuristic’ buttons, shots of the Delorean’s profile and the silly dialogue: V/O:…

  • Front Page

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    I was feeling a little depressed and annoyed today when I was told that my entry for the college Science Essay Prize hadn’t won. So, to cheer myself up, I submitted it to the Kuro5hin community website and to my delight, my essay about synaesthesia has met with their approval and been posted on the…