The Plashing Vole

In response to my post ' Tory Tory Tory ', some brave soul accused me of being afraid of powerful women, and ended (I hope ironicall...

I was going to rant about Thatcher today, after watching last night's BBC2 dramatisation of her last days in power. All the old boiling,...

A quiet day today - a swim, peer-reviewing a very interesting article on The Welsh Outlook , then teaching Renaissance literature - I think ...

Yet again, Santa brings me more books. If Mandelson's evil plans about the Mail slow down the flow then I'll have is head on a spike...

I bought two jerseys yesterday. So f*cking what, you might ask - a pig wrapped in a sheep. Well, they're medium-sized, MEDIUM, I tell yo...

Just to prove that greens can be (occasionally half-hearted) sexist pigs too, I give you The Environmentals : models posing outside nuclear ...

Over on Bad Science and on Newsnight, Ben Goldacre is ripping Susan Greenfield and another 'researcher' to shreds for the ludicrous...

Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger isn't just a hero for saving 155 people when he ditched his 'plane in the Hudson. He's a ...

A couple of years ago, I was involved in a cybermetrics project which looked at blogging and news. The conclusion was that bloggers didn...

I have a hotline to government - state government that is. Of Nebraska… Welcome, Nebraskan reader. I hope you've got Dick Cheney safely ...

Jack Straw has vetoed the Information Commissioner's order to release the minutes of the Cabinet meetings which authorised the Iraq War...

Two wonderful things over on Pharyngula: the fish with a transparent head and barrel shaped eyes that located completely inside said craniu...

In return for spending two whole days translating some Pierre Klossowski (bonkers French philosopher, novelist and artist), William has gi...

I went to the dentist today, slightly grumpily because Chris Layne is a great, charming and kind man who is leaving the NHS system - the 5th...

Desperate Demon points out that e-mail is a useful way to interact with staff without embarrassment. I can see the point - people seem to vi...

Here we are on the PGCE and we're on to reflective learning. Only 4 of us here and it's all rather jolly - lots more exchange of ide...

I'm doing tutorials for my second-level students today - two have come from 24 so far, and they're very clear on what to do and how ...

This time, it's Fflur Dafydd's Twenty Thousand Saints  - partly a translation, partly a rewriting of her Welsh-language novel Atynia...

The U.S. has a strong, and largely admirable, system of elected officials at all levels of governance, including judges. We moan about our p...

My chums the Nightingales have been beatified by Stewart Lee, no less, in the Sunday Times! Available in a few good record shops, Amazon and...