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  • For everything else…

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    1–2 minutes

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    1 comment on For everything else…

    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…

  • Ecclesiastes

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    1–2 minutes

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    No comments on Ecclesiastes

    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…

  • Facts and things

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    3–5 minutes

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    3 comments on Facts and things

    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,…

  • Perfect Circle

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    3–4 minutes

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    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…

  • Eve of Destruction

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    1–2 minutes

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    1 comment on Eve of Destruction

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

  • Vignettes of an active lifestyle

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    4–6 minutes

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    4 comments on Vignettes of an active lifestyle

    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

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    8–12 minutes

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    2 comments on Lyra’s Oxford

    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.

  • Senses

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    1–2 minutes

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    No comments on Senses

    Senses (Flash) – a nice little interactive quiz from the BBC that deals with psychological phenomena and illusions (and some other not quite as interesting stuff), via Bhisma.

  • Killer Chairs

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    2–3 minutes

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    My karma was restored to its correct level this evening when I went to a signing by Neil Gaiman at Borders. I turned up half an hour early, just in time to bag one of the last chairs available (handily situated near some Philip Pullman novels); by the time Neil came out to talk there…

  • Delivery

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    1–2 minutes

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    1 comment on Delivery

    I spent the weekend visiting friends in Cambridge and fully expected to come home to Oxford to pick up my new laptop, which I ordered a while ago. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t at my college. When I checked the TNT website to track the package, it said that it didn’t have a correct delivery address for…