I have a cunning plan

How's this for a way to separate the academic sheep from the goats?

Offer an optional exam paper at the end of the final year. One unseen question from anywhere on the curriculum. The grade you get for it will be the degree you're awarded.

First-class students might do it because they're confident. Other students can take a gamble. If you're failing or barely passing, it could be a lifeline, and you couldn't lose out. I reckon it's a winner.

Anyway, just a thought. The postman's been. I got the new REM album: the vinyl came in an empty box big enough for REM themselves to have been inside. You may be wondering why I've bought another REM album. It's traditional. The tradition is for all the press to claim that it's a 'return to form' and for the actual music to be 'not quite a return to form'. Actually, from the singles I've heard, this one may actually be the fabled return to form. Very annoyingly, even though the vinyl is quite expensive, they don't offer a free download as other bands do, so if I like it, I'll have to buy it again. Perhaps they assume that all vinyl fans are reactionary luddites. In reality, proper luddites stick to wax cylinders. Splitters!

It must be hard to be a band like REM: they created some of the greatest pop music of the last 30 years, so obviously not every song is going to be up there with Murmur or Document, but they don't want to give up because they actually care about music. The other problem is that quality isn't the only variable: critical and public taste changes in unpredictable ways: what was feted ten years ago can be dismissed by the very same critics, often for arbitrary reasons.

What else has turned up? James Herbert's 48 (28 Days Later but written earlier and with British Union of Fascist monsters in the ruins of London). Striggio's Mass in 40 Parts (a newly-discovered gem), a Tim Powers' Cold War fantasy thriller Declare (recently nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke prize.

Back to the70s

As we're facing a decade of deflation and decline, I thought it appropriate to mark the occasion by coming to a 70s band: Big Star.

They're one of those cult bands more fawned over in old mens' music magazines than listened to, I suspect, but they were hugely influential on other bands - if you've heard R.E.M., Teenage Fanclub or BMX Bandits, you've heard paler echoes of Big Star.

However, they're definitely worth seeking out. They merged jangly guitar from The Byrds with power pop to make something rather wonderful. They didn't make it big at the time due to a combination of being shambolic, their record companies being shambolic and internal clashes, but their afterlife saw them seep into the consciousnesses at least of other musicians. Look out for the three 70s studio albums.

Cynical Ben, the friend who keeps on giving

Returning from another dispiriting union meeting (the university doesn't know how much it's being penalised by HEFCE for accidentally or deliberately misreporting student module completion modules so has guessed, and appears not to know how many people are employed here), I'm cheered by more parcels. The remastered edition of REM's Reckoning, Tim Wohlforth's memoir The Prophet's Children: Travels on the American Left, and two CDs which can only be part of Cynical Ben's attempt to widen my musical taste - Snoop Dogg's R & G (Rhythm and Gangsta): The Masterpiece and Justin Timberlake's Futuresex/Lovesounds. I shall of course give them a go in a spirit of enquiry. Does he think I'm lacking in contemporary black culture, or just need more funk.

Meanwhile, Emma has rumbled the cricket ploy.