How can we know reality? As a SETI scientist, Ellie Arroway is in the business of quantifying and measuring things. For Ellie, something can be known if it can be measured. God — whoever or whatever that is — cannot be dealt with in these terms, so Ellie is unwilling […]
This is one of my favourite Calvin and Hobbes cartoons (official page). Bill Watterson is criticising academic writing for its obscurantism (in plain English: the inability to communicate in plain English). The fact that fake, randomly generated academic writing is so realistic would seem to support this! Dick and Jane, […]
This popular cartoon is by Randall Munroe (you can now buy posters of it too). I especially like the submerged land of Usenet* and the tiny principality of Attractive MySpace Pages! Where do you live? * Usenet was/is a huge and ancient kind of e-mail-based discussion system
Are we alone in the universe? This question is the starting point for the film Contact (1997), starring Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey. Ellie Arroway (Foster) is a woman driven by her thirst for answers. As a SETI scientist she scans radio transmissions, seeking intelligent signals from across the galaxy. […]
During our weekend away, Tamie and I watched the film Ray, recounting the life of musician Ray Charles. It’s a biopic similar to another we saw recently, Walk the Line, telling the story of musician Johnny Cash. Both men experience a rags-to-riches rise into stardom, transcending socioeconomic lowliness, the traumatic […]
A logo is typically made up of two things: the motif / mark / symbol the text / type I haven’t studied design theory (I just pretend that I have) but I figure the idea is to come up with a motif that is memorable and hopefully meaningful along with […]
Welcome to the scurrying world of animal fantasy literature! Duncton Wood (1980) is the bestselling first novel in William Horwood’s epic six-book series about moles. The moles of Horwood’s ‘moledom’ are kung-fu fighters, writers, and liturgy-chanters, but are otherwise styled naturalistically, like Richard Adams’ rabbits in Watership Down (1972). Duncton Wood […]
Meet Jesus at uni 