Gloria’s damned sexy when she’s angry.
Read More19Feb06 — 0
Academia
02Jan06 — 2
Oh Poo
I found out just before Christmas that I’ve been turned down for that SciArt grant I was applying for. This is not exactly a surprise, but I’m still not happy about it. Thankfully, my family took my hint when I told them and I didn’t have to endure a Christmas of them looking at me […]
Read More12Dec05 — 0
The Stupid Party?
Further to my controversial (and originally wrong) post about Thatcher’s educational history, Chris Brooke notes that the current Conservative Shadow Cabinet has a lot of susstificates—albeit mostly ones in subjects classified as belonging to the humanities.
Read More17Nov05 — 3
This Doesn’t Mean You’re Mozart, Matey Boy
Like Frank Sinatra entering a karaoke contest, my friend and co-conspirator Richard Brincklow recently decided to follow up being paid by people to compose music by going to university part-time to study for a degree in music composition. It turns out this week that the jammy bastard has been awarded a First. I suppose I […]
Read More15Nov05 — 4
If Only The Comprehensive System Had Died Instead
Today’s Guardian devotes three pages to a tribute to the recently deceased educationalist Ted Wragg, who, like most educationalists, wouldn’t have known a controlled experiment if it was being performed on one of his own children with a bonesaw. A lot of the space is taken up with the “best of” his quotable declarations on […]
Read More12Nov05 — 9
“Hello, Am I Through To Customer Services?”
Last night a Master’s student (whom I have never taught) phoned me to vent her justified frustration with one of her lecturers’ chronic incompetence. This keen and bright individual had done everything she could and should about the situation and complained through the correct channels. As usual in these situations she wasn’t the only member […]
Read More22Aug05 — 32
What Damian Did Next
Some weeks ago I promised you, dear PooterGeekers, that I would be telling you what I planned to do with my life now that the Medical Research Council no longer has need of my services. Those of you who come here for the trouser jokes can stop reading now. The rest of you might be […]
Read More17Aug05 — 3
Evangelical Scientist Refutes Gravity, Sequences Human Genome
“Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, ‘God’ if you will, is pushing them down,” said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University. The funny thing about this Onion story, is that the made-up fundamentalist “scientist” quoted […]
Read More05Jul05 — 18
The Chomsky Test
The breadth and depth of Noam Chomsky’s wrongness must be marvelled at. Within and without his professed area of expertise he is so skilled a sponsor of untruth that, in some future world, whole virtual shelves will be devoted to studies of how it happened that so many of his peers were willing to stir […]
Read More19May05 — 0
Anti-Managerialists Make The Case For Managerialism
Regulars will know I have little time for the whining dons who pad out the Times Higher. Hardly a week passes without some lecturer objecting even to the idea of having to divert a moment’s time from valuable work on “cultural changes in the conceptualisation of the authoritative and the factual in social life” (or […]
Read More17May05 — 0
Triangulation
I can only conclude that Anthony Cox is writing up his thesis currently, because his ‘Blog is on a roll. Check out his views about the infamous Lancet study, this piece about the effectiveness of the MMR vaccine, and his principled dismissal of Google Ads.
Read More02May05 — 3
Centre For Competitiveness And Innovation
I’m not sure, but I think that my grandad worked in the original Leyland Truck factory in the town of Leyland, Lancashire. [My dad will correct me soon if I’ve got that wrong.] Today, Tim Worstall links to a study of the long slow decline of the endlessly government-subsidised Rover/British Leyland/BMC vehicle manufacturing group. The […]
Read More22Apr05 — 4
Online Satirical Magazine Fails To Raise Laughter
Sadly, an Onion article entitled “Fifth Grade Paper Doesn’t Stand Up To Peer Review” reminds me of my actual working life: DECATUR, IL—A three-member panel of 10-year-old Michael Nogroski’s fellow classmates at Nathaniel Macon Elementary School unanimously agreed Tuesday that his 327-word essay “Otters” did not meet the requirements for peer approval. Nogroski presented his […]
Read More28Mar05 — 3
The New Bigotry
Cambridge University* has banned all uniforms or national costume (including kilts) from its graduation ceremonies. According to a ranting politician this is of course “elitist“. Actually it’s the opposite: everyone is expected to dress in exactly the same way, regardless of accidents of birth. Besides, Cambridge is an elite university. Get over it. At least […]
Read More17Mar05 — 3
Right. I’m Off.
I’ve got an article and a grant application to write—and something more important to do—so there’ll be nothing new here for the best part of a week. In the meantime here’s a Zen window in Cambridge: [click to enlarge]
Read More15Mar05 — 0
Dead ‘Blog Watch
By way of shaming His Comatose Stoatness I give you PooterGeek’s very own Dead Socialist Watch.
Read More04Mar05 — 5
TD-ous
The Genome Campus library subscribes to several publications that I have to force myself only to skim read. If I don’t there’s a good chance I’ll throw them across its outer reading room and stamp on them and Joan the Head Librarian will have to report me to Security again. One, obviously, is The Independent, […]
Read More19Feb05 — 9
It’s Academic Now
I also often disagree violently with the politics of the Anonymous Economist (AE) especially when it comes to Iraq. Yesterday, as we are wont to do, we had a vigorous online debate about British higher education. This is not surprising since we both currently have a professional interest in the subject. At the end of […]
Read More30Jan05 — 1
Clap Clap Clap
The “file not found” error message on counsell.com features Maryam, the daughter of my friend Nicholas, whom I last saw when I turned up one week early for his and Hind‘s Christmas dinner party. We shared a frozen pizza in his kitchen. Hind was on a train. This week computational-biologist-turned-epidemiologist Nick became the second one […]
Read More15Jan05 — 1
Where Was Inspector Morse?
Good socialists here, here, and here ‘Blog the demise of Rosa Luxemburg, but it is important that the loss of another Rosa Luxemburg is not overlooked—by Chris especially, and by others of the Left who, unlike Dr Brooke, are now almost certainly working as management consultants, investment bankers, or barristers: “Dons at an Oxford University […]
Read More13Jan05 — 3
Last Minute Deals In Our Closing Down Sale
The Medical Research Council (MRC) currently has links to six press releases on the front page of its Website. One of them is about work by the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) on HIV and another is about work on the pufferfish genome by a group at the Human Genome Mapping Project Resource Centre—now […]
Read More12Jan05 — 1
Aspiring To Greatness
My dad sent me one from The Guardian. It outlines what people on this side of the Pond would consider a radical plan for “saving” Oxford University, a plan that most people familiar with US higher education would just shrug their shoulders at. Here, in cutting-edge Cambridge, a horse has just trotted past my window.
Read More11Jan05 — 2
She’s A Celebrity—Keep Her In There!
My not-very-exciting anecdote about Germaine Greer is completely true. While I was working there, I started and was Secretary of the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) Reading Group. It was embarrassingly successful—not because of me, but because the words “Institute of Cancer Research” have magical powers. Upon hearing them, black cab drivers will not only […]
Read More08Jan05 — 1
Still No Cure For Genius
PooterGeek is number three hit on Google for “cure for stupidity“. Sadly, number one is James D Watson indulging in that favourite activity of previous Nobel prizewinners: talking cack.
Read More04Jan05 — 1
Excluded Again
This is a learned society I’m not going to be joining any time soon.
Read More02Jan05 — 3
Bracing!
Insert Joke Here is quoting Richard Dawkins on the bracing effects of atheism: “There is deep refreshment in standing up full-face into the keen wind of understanding … Safety and happiness would mean being satisfied with easy answers and cheap comforts, living a warm, comfortable lie. The daemonic alternative urged by my matured Devil’s Chaplain […]
Read More24Dec04 — 1
WikiWikiWoo!
I am a Wikipedian and link from PooterGeek to the wonderful Wikipedia frequently. This communal project has shown (yet again) the power of distributed collaborative work via the Net—just like the operating system running my PC and the Web server sending this page to you. Further, Wikipedia has proved conclusively that a philosopher can be […]
Read More23Dec04 — 2
Dumber And Dumberer
Oh woe, a university chemistry department is closing. “What is to become of British biomedical research?” whine the great and the good of the scientific and medical establishment. Michael Rees, the head of the BMA’s medical academics committee, is a laugh a line as he cries: “If this trend of closures continues, it will cut […]
Read More17Dec04 — 9
No
It takes a professional philosopher to choose, of all the arguments for the existence of some kind of god, the most exquisitely wrong: “A philosophy professor who has been a leading proponent of atheism for more than 50 years has decided that God may exist after all. “Antony Flew, 81, now believes scientific evidence supports […]
Read More10Dec04 — 4
Let The Bridge-Burning Begin
I discovered this week that a man for whom I have immense professional admiration possesses a comb-over of apocalyptic awfulness. It is not so much a hairstyle as a standing test of his subordinates’ loyalty; an oxbow lake of glossy, hypnotising vanity skirting the rear of his polished head as if in mocking apposition to […]
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