I'd forgotten what a terrible craving I get for the Red Dead Redemption world after playing in it for a while. Apparently this craving is not much reduced when that world is full of zombies. IT'S SO PRETTY. (The final treasure map location on Undead Nightmare, in particular, is breathtakingly beautiful. I was becoming quite frustrated, endlessly ( Read more... )

Here's a scientific experiment I'd like to see: give a group of literature students at university a novel to study. Have the tutor tell them it's generally considered a great work of literature and hand out pretentious critical essays on it. Ask the students what they think of its style, its themes, the book as a whole and so on. Tell them only ( Read more... )

Today I gave Sanjeev Bhaskar a hug and officially received my degree! (These were related events; Bhaskar is the chancellor of the University of Sussex and was congratulating graduands. Most people just shook his hand, but a few hugged him or asked him to wave to their families. I asked him, 'May I hug you?'; he said, 'Please.' Hug achieved!) And ( Read more... )

I GOT A FIRST.

But, my goodness, I wish they'd give me a certificate or something right now so I can stop feeling they're about to whisk it out from under my feet, because I was right on the borderline. I was actually 0.017% below the percentage required for a First. THIS IS TERRIFYING ( Read more... )

I've never been a tennis fan, but I found myself strangely fascinated by the match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut over the past couple of days. For those unaware: to win the fifth set, one player needs to be two full games ahead. In the case of Isner and Mahut, this didn't happen. It didn't happen for eleven hours. They played and played and ( Read more... )

Well, that's university over and done with.

...bit anticlimactic, really, isn't it? Hang on:

You defeated UNIVERSITY!Thank you so much for your support, both in the comments to my previous entry and over the past four months of stress. I am so lucky to know all of you. (I suppose it's conceivable that You, The Reader might be someone I do not, in ( Read more... )

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Glancing through my notebook, and apparently I recently dreamt that Charlie Brooker knocked me out and stole my trousers. I don't remember this at all ( Read more... )

Oh, my goodness, writers on child language acquisition, why can't you just agree and write a nice little list of the order in which children learn to produce simple/complex/compound sentences? I feel that I am trying to draw conclusions on a tiny platform perched on top of a wobbly pole in a high wind ( Read more... )

A visual representation of the current state of affairs:


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