Monthly Archives: August 2007

Brief Lit Crit

Posted on August 29, 2007 by acb

I’m seventy pages into Oliver Morton’s _Eating the Sun_ but that’s all right because I only started last night and I am writing at the breakfast table. It’s very good indeed. Go out and buy it if you have any … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Literature | Comments Off on Brief Lit Crit

It’s a miracle, not a pension

Posted on August 28, 2007 by acb

The _Times of India_ had the excellent idea of “finding out what happened”:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Mothers_miracle_woman_in_poverty/articleshow/2316373.cms to the woman who was meant to have been miraculously cured by a miracle blessed by Mother Teresa. There are, or course, disputes about the cure. Medical … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in God | 5 Comments

Bundle of stuff

Posted on August 28, 2007 by acb

* “Connotea”:http://www.connotea.org/faq#why — a sort of deli.cio.us for scientists, which picks up bibliographic information from sites like pubmed when it stores bookmarks therefrom. * If you are doing something else while running a registry optimiser, you, too, can set all … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Blather, nördig | 8 Comments

Reading Jared Diamond makes me hopeless

Posted on August 19, 2007 by acb

I’ve been wanting to read _Collapse_ for ages. It’s perhaps a quarter too long, where he tries to be encyclopaedic; but it has some really first-class, thought-provoking parts, at the end of which I am even more pessimistic than before. … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Blather | Comments Off on Reading Jared Diamond makes me hopeless

Low Score in TCR defender

Posted on August 18, 2007 by acb

The rules of _Tottenham Court Road Defender_ are simple: you start somewhere near Leicester Square,and walk up Charing Cross Road, then Tottenham Court Road, between the book shops, the camera shops, the musical instrument shops, and the emporia of electronic … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Travel notes | Comments Off on Low Score in TCR defender

The RA Summer Exhibition

Posted on August 18, 2007 by acb

Went into town yesterday to see the RA summer exhibition: there is an entire wall of David Hockney, quite shockingly bad. Other bad things include a set of three small sculptures showing Jesus crucified on a wooden aeroplane instead of … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Blather | 1 Comment

I hate software (rollup post)

Posted on August 18, 2007 by acb

# I was trying to install the Flickr plugin for MT and got a message about being out of disk space. It turns out that in two months, *220 MB* of spam had silted up in the inbox where I … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Software | Comments Off on I hate software (rollup post)

A bunch of stuff

Posted on August 18, 2007 by acb

I have fiddled a little with the front page, after Tim Bray complained that he could not find a feed on it. I think this should work; there are also some photos down the right hand side to brighten things … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Housekeeping | Comments Off on A bunch of stuff

Gloriously batty

Posted on August 14, 2007 by acb

piece by Freeman Dyson, which I found when catching up with the NYRB: he foresees personal biotech kits, analogous to personal computers. bq. The first step in this direction was already taken recently, when genetically modified tropical fish with new … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Science without worms | 3 Comments

Hello Monday!

Posted on August 13, 2007 by acb

Should I put a flickr widget here instead of the archives? It seems to make sense to me. Continue reading →

Posted in Pictures | 4 Comments