This page represents only my own views, and not those of any university or other body.
Posted Friday 25th February 2011 at 8.41pm
Science
There are some great images in the Wellcome image awards. And there's a nice slideshow of them at the BBC - I listened with the sound off so that I could concentrate on the pictures, so I don't know what the commentary's like.
This one is my favourite. (Actually this is a close-up of a part of one of the winners - I can only get a very low-res version of the whole thing.)
Staying with the science theme, a friend pointed out this blog post to me - which links to this article. They both highlight some of the downsides, or potential downsides, of doing a PhD and working in academia. The first one is pretty raw and the second focusses a lot on specific problems with the system in the US; not all of the points are valid or even relevant, especially in the blog post. But both hit on some points that I guess most young people in academia would say feel slightly worryingly close to home!
However, it's easy to look at all these bad things - no job security, relatively low pay, long hours, blah blah blah, and forget that other people's jobs have bad points too. There are young people, I guess, who get a reasonable level of satisfaction from their (secure, well-paid) job, and then can forget about it when they leave the office at 5pm and go home to their loving family in their nice comfortable house. And ok, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit here to make a point - what I mean to say is that I know there really are people that have a more relaxing and comfortable life than me, who perhaps aren't as clever or hard-working or disarmingly handsome as I am... well maybe not that last one. But I chose to give it a go in academia, to see how good I am, and really I love it. I don't get to see my family or friends as much as I would like; I have no idea where I'm going to be from one year to the next; my job security is virtually nil; I meet people for a few months or even weeks, become friends, and then don't see them for years; I often work late, or think about my work when I might otherwise be relaxing; I live like a nomadic student, with a total of 30 kilos of possessions and no home; I get spam emails in Franglais (if you thought Nigerian spam-writers' English was bad, you should see their French).
But I've lived in some great cities; I've met some incredibly clever people; I have friends all over the world; I get up when I want, even on Wednesdays; I can work on sort of whatever I like; I don't have to wear a tie or iron my socks; if I'm bored with what I'm working on then I can draw pictures instead (never managed anything quite as good as the one above, but maybe one day!); I get to go to conferences in beautiful and far-flung places; sometimes I just love maths. I play sport, I listen to music, I cook, I go out with friends, I have fun. Maybe some people have more fun more often than me. I wish I had a house with a piano, and a secure job, and a fantastic intelligent beautiful girlfriend. I wish I could play cricket regularly and buy salt and vinegar crisps and baked beans. But I also wish I had a unicorn and a rainbow*. Maybe one day I'll get those things, or maybe one day I'll look back and think that I should have made different choices. But for now, I'm happy, I try to enjoy my life, despite the severe lack of pianos, girlfriends, unicorns and rainbows... there are a hell of a lot of people who would love to be in my position, and I'm grateful for what I've got.
And that's not meant to be a criticism of the bloke who wrote the blog post. As I've said, and as he says, there are some quite dramatic downsides to this life, and you have to be a certain kind of person to enjoy it. I just wanted to point out that there are some upsides too.
I haven't experienced many of those upsides though!
*Not to suggest that fantastic intelligent beautiful girls (or salt and vinegar crisps) don't exist. I know they do :)
Posted Sunday 20th February 2011 at 12.59pm
Mangum's opus
The only girl I've ever loved
Was born with roses in her eyes
And then they buried her alive
One evening, nineteen forty-five
With just her sister at her side
And only weeks before the guns
All came and rained on everyone
Neutral Milk Hotel - Holland, 1945 (Youtube)
I think Jeff Mangum might hate me. After years of nothing, he finally plays some shows in Canada and the US - about 2 weeks before I get there. Then he curates and plays ATP in the UK - a couple of months after I leave.
A few seconds of gentle strumming, and he counts us in. 2 and 1, 2, 3, 4. And then. There are guitars, and there are drums, and there are horns, and there's Jeff's voice, and there's Anne Frank, and there's Jeff, and there's Adolf Hitler, and there's Anne's family and there are all the other Jews and there's death and victory and defeat.
Posted Saturday 12th February 2011 at 9.45pm
Education, education...
Two articles: one about the lack of UK-born students going abroad to study, and one about superheads. It seems to me the arguments made against superheads can also be applied to a certain extent about some investment bankers. In fact, probably they're more extreme - just that the state doesn't directly pay bankers.
Posted Thursday 10th February 2011 at 10.21pm
Downtime, cricket, and song of the week
My website disappeared for a while. Sorry about that, Bath computing services deleted my account with no warning. I have a reprieve but will have to move to cyberpastures new as soon as possible to avoid a repeat.
This is an interesting story about a cricket team in LA. I wondered whether it was April fools' day for a while.
And finally, the news you've all been waiting for... it's this week's song of the week!
Supergrass - Sitting up straight (Youtube)
Hey hey... hey hey! It's Supergrass!
There was a review that I liked - written by Brent DiCrescenzo - of Supergrass' third album. I can't find it online anywhere now. I didn't really agree with the score - which was somewhere around the 9/10 mark I think - as the album it's talking about isn't actually that great, nowhere near as good as their first two. But I liked the way it pointed out how ruddy miraculous recorded sound is. I often reflect on how amazing the internet is, probably because it didn't exist when I was young. But I rarely think the same about ipods or laptops or even clunky old tape players. It's an invisible orchestra in a little box that you can switch on and off as much as you like! Witchcraft!
SIT UP STRAIGHT!
Posted Wednesday 9th February 2011 at 11.59am
The dirty war
There's an interesting article here. Apparently QI had Tsutomu Yamaguchi - survivor of both nuclear bombs - as a guest, and someone made a joke about his glass of water being radioactive. I don't agree that that was out of order - it wasn't belittling either Yamaguchi or the act of dropping a nuclear bomb. Are we expecting 4 comedians to go 45 minutes in a room with Yamaguchi without making any jokes that make any reference to the bombs?
But the article still raises a good point about attitudes to the war in the UK and elsewhere. We like to think of ourselves - the Allies - as the "good guys", just because we weren't as bad as the Nazis. But that doesn't make us good. Of course it's extremely difficult for anyone to take an objective view of the war, and perhaps the Japanese perspective is distorted too. But we should at least recognise that, as the article says, this was not the "good war".
Posted Tuesday 1st February 2011 at 5.57pm
Song of the week: Buy Nothing Day
The new Go Team album is out, and I love it. Here's one of their best:
Go Team - Buy Nothing Day (Youtube)
(Here's a lower quality unofficial version for if you're not in the UK.)
Reviews of the new album have been lukewarm. The main criticism (as with the last one) has been that it's not sufficiently different from their previous efforts. But I don't buy that. Take Iron and Wine, for example - they've got very good reviews right through their 9-year, six record career. Yet they're still churning out softly-spoken vocals and delicately plucked guitars in every song. Don't get me wrong, I like Iron and Wine - I think they write good songs, and reviews of their records have picked up on that, as well as the fact that they've slowly introduced better production values and a few new instrumental flourishes here and there. That's enough evolution to keep the critics happy. Well you can't really expect the Go Team to put more instrumental flourishes in - they've already got about 93 instruments in every song. What they have done is go from no singing to lots of singing, and no live instruments (just samples) to lots of live instruments. And they keep churning out massively fun songs. Oh dear, this third album is still massively fun, just like their first one! Let's give them 6/10!
Posted Saturday 29th January 2011 at 3.02pm
Song of the week: The City
I was going to write about another classic song, but then someone pointed out this new song from Patrick Wolf. It's nice. It seems Patrick's in a good mood again.
Patrick Wolf -The City (Youtube)
Here's a story... it's from a while back so some of the details may be wrong. When I was an undergrad in Cambridge, my friend Matthew Rudy Jacobs invited Patrick Wolf to play at our college. He came with his band and his mum, and they stayed in Rudy's house. Late at night - long after the gig - Patrick wanted some cheese, but there wasn't any in the house, so they went out. They somehow found some cheese despite it being about 3am. Patrick ate it, and then threw up. Good story, no?
Regardless, Wind in the Wires and The Magic Position are very good - and very different - albums. Hopefully his new one will be too!
In other news, the Moose is on fire.
Posted Thursday 20th January 2011 at 10.22pm
Song of the week: I am trying to break your heart
I am an American aquarium drinker
I assassin down the avenue
Wilco - I am trying to break your heart (Youtube)
I went to see a jazz gig yesterday - a band called Cyminology. Their pianist is a former diploma student of some people I know from the TU, so we went to watch them, and they were brilliant. I'm not a jazz expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I saw a fair bit when I was in Cambridge (my college had fortnightly jazz evenings) and these guys were, I reckon, the second best jazz band I've seen - the best being Acoustic Ladyland, and you might not count their jazz-punk stuff as real jazz anyway - an impromtu and extremely sweaty dance floor started up about halfway through their set, and I'm not sure that's allowed at real jazz gigs. Anyway. Back to the point: Cyminology were tight. And their drummer / percussionist was fantastic. Not that the rest of them weren't, but I love drummers, and he reminded me of something Jeff Tweedy said once, about how the drummer is the most important part of a band. At the time Wilco (Tweedy's band) had just made Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which I think is one of the most incredible albums ever. (It's been downhill from there.) But I think he got it wrong - it's the drumming that's the important bit, not the drummer. A technically brilliant drummer - and Wilco have, by all accounts, a much more technically brilliant drummer now than they did circa YHF - is nothing without great parts to play.
"I am trying to break your heart", the first track from YHF, has a great drum - well, percussion - part. Seeing it performed live at Glastonbury, several years ago now, was amazing (and apart from that Wilco's set was distinctly underwhelming). I'm going to try to post a song a week on here and sometimes say a bit about it. Generally I don't talk about music very much because I'm kind of happy with the fairly small obscure selection I listen to and don't know many other people who share my views. But the beauty of a blog without a comments thingy is that I don't have to hear about other people's views. Ha.
Youtube can't really do justice to this one - but maybe it might whet your appetite. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, people - get out there and buy it. It's very very good.
Loves you -
I am the man who loves you.
Posted Thursday 6th January 2011 at 10.40pm
The Scream, and spicy sweet potato soup
The Ashes. Wow. Michael Clarke's scream after he got out summed it up for me... it said "you're better than me and I don't like it!" It's amazing how everything has clicked for England. Long may it continue!
Chris Tremlett is a fricking MONSTER. When he smiles it's like Everest melting. I might start a campaign to get him to roar at Osborne. I can see those jowls fluttering now. He'd never be the same again.
Here's another recipe before I forget it... fry half a leek in some olive oil, chop a big sweet potato into small cubes (<1cm), and add to the leeks with half a litre of vegetable stock, a pinch of chilli flakes and another of marjoram, and boil with the lid on for 20 minutes or so, stirring occasionally and crushing some of the sweet potato chunks against the side of the pan once they have softened.
Posted Tuesday 4th January 2011 at 11.35pm
Berlin
I'm now in Berlin! Busy too... I know no German so having to try to learn some as well as do maths and all the odd jobs you have to do on moving to a new country. The Germans are great at speaking English, but still you need some basic level of language to get by in a country without total embarassment. I need to know what's on the menu at lunchtime for example.
Oh and... I'm sick of snow. Berlin is -6C and there's still masses of the white stuff everywhere. Nightmare!
Day mare.
| Older posts | Newer posts |