Category Archives: Blather

WHO ARE YOU? The web suggests you provide such details. It does not say whether you are Religious or Irreligious, Conservative, Liberal or Socialist, A Darwinite, Creationist or other. It does not tell us what you majored in. Alan W. … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Somewhere on this blog is a scan from a Biggles book, where the hero is surrounded by “a circle of ejaculating natives” — but actually we have lost rather a useful word. What is now the proper term for sudden … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Rachel has tagged (spattered?) me with one of those nasty meme things. If I do it now, that’s my lot for the year. So, here goes: five things you had no reason to know about me, and which I don’t … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I think the New Scientist has just published its most haunting headline: Moths drink the tears of sleeping birds The Mail’s hatchet job on Tom Butler this morning deserves proper analysis. I particularly like the way that they make it … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Is that the way the girls are in Texas? According the Houston Press, via Wonkette, a Republican woman running for Tom deLay’s old seat had to do so through a write-in campaign. Unfortunate, since her name was the less than … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Anyone who knows me will be astonished that I managed to score 83.6% on this test — it’s worth ten minutes of your time if you are interested in musical perception. Not safe for work, unless you have headphones or … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Despite going to schools where there were very good art teachers, I had, and have, no talent at all. Or so I thought until I saw This video. Now I understand that my problem, all along, was that I had … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Is the Sunday Papers, or something like that: an assortment of short and mostly silly thoughts. Blondes have more fun, according to a couple of ["American researchers, who hypothesise":http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=639045] that (1) Shy people get more drunk than less shy people, … Continue reading → Continue reading →

David Chalmers asks if anyone knows the words to the philosophers’ drinking song “Should Old Aquinas be forgot?”. This is the kind of thing at which Ecco excels. Within seconds I have extracted from its bowels eight lines: Should old … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Round where I live,the cure, or at least the treatment, for Obstructive Sleep Apnoea is a mask that pumps air into the sufferer at night. At least some American surgeons are more ambitious Continue reading →