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Into the great unknown -- F1 in 2014
Looking ahead a week to the start of the F1 season, one of the most unpredictable seasons in years, thanks to the wholesale change in regulations. No team has really come away from testing without any worries or reliability issues, even those who have got plenty of running. Even Mercedes has had engine and gearbox issues in the final few days of ( Read more... ) -
Neil Young : Waging Heavy Peace
If you've read Bob Dylan's "Chronicles" auto-biography, then you pretty much know what to expect with Neil Young's "Waging Heavy Peace". It's an autobiography that's as eccentric and unpredictable as Young's music. In the space of 500+ pages, he meanders between music, cars, model railways, family, recorded sound quality, his past, the musicians ( Read more... ) -
Terry Pratchett's Raising Steam
The latest Terry Pratchett is always a treat, even more so nowadays, with the author's much publicised medical condition giving readers a feeling that each book is a bonus from someone with a long illustrious and industrious career. Raising Steam is Pratchett's fortieth book. Think about that for a moment. He's been trundling along mining the ( Read more... ) -
OU Memories
My visit to the OU yesterday has stirred up a lot of memories, mostly with connections with current events, curiously enough. Nelson Mandela's death, for example, had a number of people giving their personal recollections of the man, including one in the Guardian from writer and playwright Gillian Slovo. When I first joined the Science Faculty at ( Read more... ) -
March of progress?
Had a most peculiar day. Went back onto the Open University campus to meet up with some friends, two of whom were retirees just like my wife and I, another a woman still working at the OU. Came away from the place having enjoyed a long chat with our friends, but also being rather depressed at the way the campus is changing, losing its ( Read more... ) -
That was the week that was
Seem to have been in a mad whirl of activity signifying not much this past week. Looking ahead, there doesn't seem much likelihood of things being different, either. The run up to Christmas always gets like this: it's not that we've left everything to the last minute, as we haven't, we don't need to be shopping for Christmas presents at all now ( Read more... ) -
IQ, UQ, We all Q
I've been following with some fascination the toing and froing over Boris Johnson's speech about how some people with a low IQ will be perpetually consigned to the lower echelons of society. According to Boris those with high IQ scores will always rise to the top and should therefore be thanked for their mighty contributions to society, and be ( Read more... ) -
Fifty years of Dr Who (*Small spoiler warning*)
I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed yesterdays 'The Day Of The Doctor', the fiftieth anniversary edition of 'Dr Who'. For the first time in a long time, the programme looks to have a future, thanks largely to some outrageous tinkering with the Whovian canon, which will provide plenty of fodder for fannish discussion in the month to come while we ( Read more... ) -
On entering a cathedral
Watched a programme on BBC4 last night about Wells Cathedral, a building I know and admire a lot. It's one of those superb structures that have a terrific ambience you feel as soon as you walk inside. Not all cathedrals have it: Canterbury almost has a negative ambience, a depressing space that seems to be dragged down by its own bloody history. ( Read more... ) -
Fiftieth Anniversaries
With all the fuss going on about this year being the fiftieth anniversary of JFK's assassination, plus Dr Who's first appearance on BBC TV, it's easy to overlook a much more important anniversary, namely the start of the British Beat Boom, an event surely with more lasting consequences than both of the others ( Read more... )