One of the reasons, it’s been said, that the rationalist/skeptic movement haven’t swollen their membership in the same way as say, an organised religion, is that there’s no obvious focal point for them to congregate at.  So in 1999 a group called Skeptics In The Pub was formed to provide a regular chance for people to experience lectures on “a rational approach to extraordinary claims” in a social environment.
On Monday Feb 15th the London Skeptics In The Pub were holding a meeting, so it seemed a good idea to pop along & …

Before we get on to the riveting topic of the post, amid all the talk of Movember I thought it might be prudent to acknowledge the moustachial efforts of a fine band of individuals, being they who grew a mo this year and raised funds for charity.
What an ace collection of mo-work, wouldn’t you agree?
Right, now the prompt for this post was just the Amazon delivery I got this morning – a fairly big box turned up, and I was thinking “Awesome! Pressies!!” somewhat foolishly.  I had ordered something, but …

Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!  Y’know sometimes when you do something which is just straight-out cool, and you know you’re gonna remember for the rest of your life?  Well, that!
I read on the HIGHLY EXCELLENT “Ian Visits” blog that it’s possible to arrange to take a tour of the Clock Tower at the Houses of Parliament, and that sounded to me like a fine and excellent thing to do so – following the instructions – I contacted my local Member for Parliament and made the relevant request (the instructions are here: more info below).  …

I suspect this is going to be one of those posts that begins with “I don’t normally get involved in such things, BUT…”.  Hmm.
OK, it would be safe to say that the recent televisual goings on involving Harry Connick Jr. in Australia have been quite well publicised, and possibly the last thing the world needs is another opinion thrown into the fracas, but the reactions that I’ve read about are so stunning to me that I feel like I should write something if for no other reason than to try …

Does anyone want to read a richly rewarding tale of PC-related joy? Huh? If you’re at all involved in programming or spending long periods working with Windows then it might just make you swear a little bit less than normal once you’ve read it…
Although probably not.

I buy too much Stuff!
Was looking for something in my room the other day and was disturbed by the amount of Stuff that I had to shift out of the way in order to look for whatever it was.  A seriously disturbing amount of Stuff.  The trouble with e-commerce is that you can consign more Stuff to be brought to you without having to invest the time or kinetic energy to go and find the Stuff.
Looking through my email folder for invoices & orders, and tallying up all the Stuff …

So today marked the beginning of Antony Gormley’s “performance piece” on the empty plinth on Trafalgar Square.  The idea is that for the next 100 days anyone can apply for a 1 hour spot to mount the plinth – a focal point in one of the most photographed places on Earth – and do “whatever you like”.
In terms of art, the man’s a genius.
Since arriving home I caught on the live webcast the last 20 minutes of a woman apologetically shifting from side to side dressed as a pigeon, and …

Amid last night’s Michael Jackson news festival, a rumour popped up on Twitter that Jeff Goldblum had also died.  Upon getting home I thought it a good idea to follow this up, and clicked on the link.  Now, because of the 140 character limit in twitter messages URL redirectors have become quite widespread, and perhaps this helped the rumour spread faster than it may have done ordinarily… in the main, the story which people were referencing to support the idea Goldblum was dead was this one:
http://jeff.goldblum.mediafetcher.com/news/top_stories/actor_new_zealand.php

A sickening feeling dawned on …

OK, so one of my favourite particle physicists – Dr Simon Singh, author of “Big Bang” (the best book I’ve ever read on the development of understanding of the origin of the universe) – is in a spot of legal hot water at the moment surrounding a comment piece he wrote for The Guardian (mirrored here, as The Grauniad had to take theirs down), discussing chiropractic.  The article focussed on the founder of chiropractic’s belief that you could treat around 95% of diseases by manipulation of the spine, on the …

Bugger.
Just found out from Dad that our little dog Bojangles passed away this morning back in Adelaide: something to do with diabetic complications, which we didn’t realise he had.
I was really looking forward to seeing him again at Christmas.  Depressingly stupid animal, but a real little character, scamp & scoundrel nonetheless.
We think he was a Maltese Terrier crossed with Shih Tzu (or, a Maltese Shit, as we used to explain), although there’s no real way of telling because my brother bought him off some bloke in the Trading Post out …