I usually defend the USA against hackneyed attacks on its culture of consumption, I know, but if you had two SUVs lined up outside a fast food joint called “FATBURGER”, would you have been able to resist taking this photo? (Yes, I waited for the SUVs to pull up—but not for very long.) Update: Here’s […]
Read MoreHow can you flee in terror from a natural disaster called “Claudette“?
Read MoreDr. Berlinski‘s book is now in Amazon’s top 300! In other news, the annoying woman has out-googled me: 656 entries for “Claire.Berlinski” over 608 entries for “Damian.Counsell“. (Lazy journalists don’t put the dot in the middle of firstname.surname pairs when they are counting hits-per-person, thereby inflating numbers.)
Read MoreDear Uncle Damian Despite being in a stable long-term relationship, I have become stigmatized as a result of my forthright personality and purely platonic extra-curricular associations with men other than my boyfriend. In short, all the girls hate me and they think I’m a slag. I don’t know why I’m writing to you either, since […]
Read MoreI imagine falling asleep in 1984 and waking up 19 years later in 2003. After a quick stroll round the block, my first question would have to be: "Where is my flying car?" Well, where is it? The explanation is the usual one, of course: TV lied to us.
Read MoreYesterday evening, as I drove through the rolled Cambridgeshire countryside, my local radio presenting duo promised me that they would be “talking with the legendary Dido”. Omigod, they have actually got an interview with the Queen of Carthage! Who next? Cleopatra? (Surely they couldn’t have meant the Queen of Bone-achingly Banal Bridget Jones Ballads, the […]
Read MoreMaoi drew my attention to an article in tomorrow's Nature about an international call for patent-free, "open source" drug development, signed by various stars, including a couple of Nobelists. I would love to link you to the actual story, but there's no access for non-subscribers.
Read MoreMeanwhile, in Africa (remember Africa?), those evil colonial oppressors are at it again.
Read MoreCuriously, since I linked to it earlier today, that BBC story has changed from one leading with the enthusiastic welcome the Liberians gave American military advisors, to one focusing on the arrival of West African peacekeepers. Hmm. You can try this one from the Boston Globe instead.
Read MoreIf you believe in capital punishment, you have no right to plead squeamishness in the face of the details of executions; if you believe that abortion should be legal, you can’t object when your opponents use pictures of foetuses. There are some kinds of killing that some humans are prepared to accept, but those people […]
Read MoreHow should someone from this side of the Atlantic communicate with basketball-playing brothers from New York? Mike and I received a tutorial in this fine art from hoop-crazy Leasy earlier today. Are these the kind of people she had in mind?
Read MoreAmber, our Boston correspondent (in the other Cambridge), witnessed the Fourth of July fireworks over the Charles River from an amazing vantage point at MIT. She recommends this Yahoo! slideshow featuring that event, and others around the States. It’s an epic collection of images, with over 100 frames; she didn’t bother after number 60.
Read MoreSome of my holiday snaps are back from the lab. I’ll spare you the party and baby photos, but you might want to smile wryly at the Americana. I saw this blunt window sticker on the freeway to the Norton Simon Museum at Pasadena. General admiration of Britain even extended to the bumper (I mean […]
Read MoreThe Genome Campus has been swarming with non-scientist visitors over the past couple of days. They are here to find out what we get up in our secluded, multi-million-pound, international research centre by viewing a range of exhibits and taking tours of the non-restricted parts of the premises. This is in celebration of the anniversary […]
Read MoreGot a few nice B&W pics back from the lab today. So Chris’s page has been updated with a new one of him and here’s a cute portrait of Lynn and Chris I took when they visited Cambridge at the end of May.
Read MoreToday, I googled for an exact phrase from one of my definitions of bioinformatics—as used in my Bioinformatics FAQ. In that form, Google had crawled my definition in over 40 different locations, usually attributed. Among other places, it shows up in a patent application, lecture notes, presentations, advertisements and homepages. I’ve defined a scientific field! […]
Read MoreAnother Website on this server was attacked this week. I have not been able to post over the past couple of days because the attack triggered a security block. This affected my access both from work and home. I had the spooky experience of knowing that people were visiting my site and even received email […]
Read MoreI picked up two cheap CDs at Sainsbury’s this evening. I bought Evanescence‘s Fallen on the strength of the single, currently being given away as an MP3 at MP3.com. Giving it away has not prevented it from lodging at number one in the UK charts for four weeks. All publishers of all content take note. […]
Read MoreVail Reese is a dermatologist in the San Francisco Bay Area. Despite being horribly designed, Skinema, his online collection of celebrity skin problems, has been a huge Web attraction for years. It was only recently (in the wake of the “vampire twins” controversy) that I stumbled upon Dermatrix, his special feature about the dermatological conditions […]
Read MoreNot only was my beautiful niece (and now Goddaughter) christened today in the brilliant summer sunshine (thank you, Clare and Steve for a lovely day), but this has happened too. I have been pretty skeptical about the “Roadmap”, but I predicted this development in the peace process at a dinner party at Jude‘s before the […]
Read MoreTraining Day and About Schmidt are excellent films. Rent them. Surprisingly, in Training Day, Denzel Washington doesn’t play Denzel Washington and, in About Schmidt, Jack Nicholson doesn’t play Jack Nicholson. The Academy was impressed by both performances—and Denzel and Jack didn’t even have to act from wheelchairs.
Read MoreHere’s my favourite quote of the day, fresh from the Quote Monster: As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life—so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls. M. Cartmill It’s also like becoming […]
Read MoreNext week I am going to stand up in front of a church full of witnesses, renounce the Devil and promise to bring up my niece as a God-fearing Catholic girl. And I like to think that I am a bright. As Dickie Dawkins writes it sounds better than "grouchy skeptical bastard".
Read MoreI grew up in a miserable, violent, bigoted dump called Tamworth. Knowhere was originally an online community for skateboarders with information about places for boarders to hang out across the country. Now anyone can use the site to comment on any aspect of local life across the UK. Appropriately The pages about Tamworth are full […]
Read MoreIt’s hotter than southern California, but the grotty toilets are enough to reassure me that I really am back in Britain. A curiosity of two-leg flights is that you keep your seat while the identity of your neighbour changes. From LA to New York it was a woman who organizes promotional events for HBO; from […]
Read MoreIt’s the Sunday afternoon “Support Our Troops” demonstration on the corner, near the Warner shopping park in Canoga Park, Californ-I-A. As usual I have my camera and I am hoping for some pics of the demonstrators. On the opposite side of the junction (five lanes away, of course) there are two anti-war protestors, a man […]
Read MoreMicrosoft Windows XP Pro Upgrade: 247.00 EUR Microsoft Office: 449.00 EUR SuSE Linux Pro including OpenOffice: 74.95 EUR It’s a no-brainer.
Read MoreAppropriate that I should be sitting in a Californian Internet café with Rammstein banging out of the sound system (“Ich will die Ruhe stören!“), as I point you at the “Pavement Terror Web page. Some years ago, an evil photographer drove around a British town scaring the bejesus out of random passers-by and capturing the […]
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