Category archives: Uncategorized

Someone has managed to get a couple of self proclaimed psychics to agree to a scientific test of their alleged powers. Unsurprisingly at the end the two psychics were deemed to have failed the test. The BBC has the story here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-20145664 In keeping with the BBC policy of ‘balance’ they have printed comments made […]

I started blogging earlier this year, and had managed to produce maybe 3 or 4 posts which were reasonably well considered, edited and proof read. By that I don’t mean the result was that they were well thought out, written or devoid of mistakes, but I did spend plenty of time on them. I’d have […]

On Valentine’s Day 2010 I hopped onto the Wii Balance Board we had borrowed from some friends to try out the Wii Fit game. As part of that I weighed myself for the first time in ages, and realised that at just under 12 stone, I was quite significantly overweight. A couple of months ago […]

I’m currently reading Bruce Schneier’s book Liars and Outliers – a fascinating analysis of security, trust, and game theory. The section I’m on at the moment (I’m only a quarter of the way through) concerns his descriptions of the different kinds of societal pressures which aim to reduce incidents of defection. Defections occur when an […]

Following my husband’s gleeful purchase of an Xbox 360, and the fact that he has now started his new job and isn’t hogging it anymore, I’ve been playing some new and exciting computer games. (New and exciting to me. I appreciate the rest of the Western World was over this in 2009.) I really enjoy […]

So the Olympics are now upon us, and the interwibbles are chocka with people having their five pence worth. Here’s mine: Good things about the Olympics Celebrating achievement is a good thing. I know it’s something of a cliché to go on about how the Brits are all snide and self deprecating, but as sweeping […]

A couple of weeks ago my husband wrote to our MP petitioning him to vote in favour of equal marriage. The letter he received back was much as you would expect from a Conservative MP: polite, seemingly open-minded, and leaving a strong impression that they weren’t going to take anything you had said into account. […]

It’s pretty tempting to tell people to shut up when they’re wrong isn’t it? And, if you have the clout to let you do it, it’s even more tempting to make them shut up. On an individual level, stopping someone from espousing their poisonous opinions can be one of the ways of demonstrating to them […]