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School
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2–3 minutes·
No comments on SchoolI was feeling a bit bored this evening* and decided to have a look at my old school website. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it had been updated recently, and what’s more, it had some inspectorate reports online. Before the website was created I’m not convinced that it would’ve been easy to get…
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Lagaan
Last night I saw Lagaan with a couple of friends. In short, Lagaan is about a group of Indian villagers who have to beat the local British soldiers at a game of cricket to rid themselves from an extortionate tax. At the same time, it’s a romantic comedy/musical/sports film; a little like a toned-down Moulin…
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What’s on TV?
There’s an interesting discussion taking place at Metafilter (say it ain’t so!) about an article written by a mother who doesn’t allow her daughters to watch television. Most posters are in agreement that it’s absurd to ban a medium of information just because there happens to be some tripe on TV. You might as well…
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Fun New Words
New words and terms I’ve heard at my lab: Fiascotorial, adj.: combinations or permutations of fiasco-like situations. e.g., “And then the squirrel fell into the bowl! Just imagine the fiascotorial possibilites!” Gene-jockey, n.: derogatory term for a geneticist or molecular biology. e.g., “Those gene-jockeys working on the squirrel genome project, they don’t understand that the…
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Christmas on Mars
Today I received an invitation from Space School UK to their ‘Christmas on Mars Reunion Weekend’ (it’s not really Christmas, but mid-December). I went to a Space School UK course several years ago, and it was enormous fun – building rockets, going to lectures, and meeting lots of other teenagers who were interested in space.…
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Small Things
A few days ago, I received a package from Japan that I presumed contained the tape recording of the radio interview I did a couple of weeks back. I wasn’t in any particular hurry to check its contents because I don’t have a cassette player to listen to the tape, and even if I did,…
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Retroactive destruction
There are some novels that are truly magnificent, that remain with you for years and at times influence who you are. Most authors, having written such novels, are wise enough to leave their works alone and move on to something else. A few authors will embark on writing a sequel. A few sequels match or…
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Cereal
Turning books into cereals – who knew it could be so fun? Witness ‘Consider Breakfast’ by Iain Banks, ‘Chomsky’s Universal Grahams’ and Stephen Hawking’s ‘Universes in Nutshells’.
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Reprise
Saw Donnie Darko a second time today, with a friend from Leeds; it survived rewatching quite well. Afterwards, I described my ‘Dance Dance Revolution’ theory of cognitive development to her. It’s a little like Piaget’s controversial theory (although obviously much sillier). Jean Piaget was a psychologist who believed that children when through qualitatively different levels…
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Musical
The soundtrack CD of Spirited Away I ordered from Play.com arrived today, and it’s wonderful. While I wouldn’t go so far as saying that I don’t like Disney songs – there are, after all, some great ones – would it really hurt them that much to make a film without a single song? If they…
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