white robe

For all who have heard "Do they know it's Xmas" a million times too often (it's on the radio right now!), here is a special present, a new video from t.A.T.u..

The title translates to white robe, but I'll need a dictionary and a lot of time to work out what the lyrics mean. The video is intriguing and stylish, as most of theirs are. They remind me of European cinema (Kieslowski etc.) more than of US/UK music videos. See, for instance: 30 minutes, all about us, not gonna get us -- all available on t.A.T.u.'s MySpace.

enjoy!


PS -- those were the days:

no trains at xmas

One of the questions that have also bugged me since comming to live in Britain has finally been answered: Why can't we have trains at Christmas?

Apparently, the last time a passenger train ran on Christmas day in this country was in 1964. Why? People seem to be forgetting that not all of us believe in Santa Claus. There are lots of muslims, jews, and atheists living in this country who might want to go somewhere on Tue Dec. 25th. If they started trains again, I'd use them just for the heck of it. (A few years ago I had to see a dentist on xmas day, and was really happy with the experience -- happy to see that at least one person was doing something useful, while the rest of the country was stuffing themselves.)

But as things are going rather the other way, we can look forward to a future where there are no trains on Sundays either.

meet the family

This has been an amazing year for my little family: there are about 100 new direct ancestors on my records, which now go back to 1448 in one line, and to the early 17th century in many more. That's mostly due to the fact that my father is now retired, geographically close to the relevant places, and getting the hang of it. On top of that, my family history website has also helped to create new contacts with distant relatives who provided valuable information.

So over the holiday season I'll be busy updating the 120-pages tome that is our official family history, and the website which presents some extracts from that. To begin with, I have added some of the new family members to the list of last known ancestors. By and by, I will also edit / add to the other pages. Watch this space.

matters of the heart

Peter Houghton, I learned from his obituary this week, lived 7 1/2 years with an artificial heart, and is thus the longest surviving patient with this device. Love the story of how a thief tried to steal his bag with the battery pack, but got scared off by the alarm (built in to avoid accidental unplugging, not theft!).

They don't mention what he died of, though. Nor which factors limit the survival times.

schengen land expands

"End of passport control as east meets west in EU without borders", according to today's Guardian.

The nine new members of the passport-less travel zone are: Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Slovenia, and Malta.

It's not quite the end of pass port control in Europe, though. We can travel from Talinn to Porto without a passport, but still not from Dover to Calais.

There is still no word on whether the UK will ever join the Schengen land, or indeed the Euro, or any other significant EU activity. I think British governments (and their puppet masters in the tabloid press) are content with their role of operating the brakes on anything European.

trust me on the sunscreen

I'm a huge fan of the "Sunscreen" speech which secured a UK no.1 hit for film director Baz Luhrmann in 1999. If I'd been asked to write a speech addressed to high school or college graduates, it would have probably ended up very similar.

Favourite lines include:

Do one thing every day that scares you.
[although I only do that about once a year!]

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.


I didn't know anything about the history of this recording though. Only this week I found out that the thing has its own Wikipedia entry where the whole back story is explained. Fascinating stuff. I'll put that on my "I wish I'd written list", right next to Cien an~os de soledad and 99 Luftballons :)

counting citations

Once a year, typically around this time, I visit the science citation index to check up on my old research papers. So here is my updated list of citations. I have to say I'm really chuffed to see that people still cite nearly half of the papers, even though I haven't been involved with any of this stuff for almost 8 years. So I'm not travelling around the conferences to blow my own trumpet and all that. Considering they are out there on their own, the papers are managing quite well, I think.

PS I don't include the books in the stats, but they too get cited every once in a while.

king and queen

I've added the track "King and Queen" (Wyclef Jean feat. Shakira) to my MySpace profile. I didn't expect much from it (as Wyclef rather ruined the finale of the OF DVD), but found to my surprise that I quite like it.

capturing carbon

I've written a news feature on carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, which is out today in Current Biology.

Initially, I really liked the idea of running the CO2 in closed cycles, and I was also impressed by the work the Norwegian gas companies do to minimise the CO2 released from their gas production. But the rest of the field left me rather disillusioned, as it turned out to be championed by all those dinosaurs who would like to carry on burning fossil fuels regardless. I mean, anything that the OPEC and the US government agree on can't be right, can it?

sliding shakira

As I've been posting lots of text and very few images recently, here's something to compensate (borrowed, again, from Adri's wonderful slide page):

two headlines

... that made me laugh. The first is from Nature:

1) Fetal load and the evolution of lumbar lordosis in bipedal hominins

clear as mud ? If you haven't figured out what it means, try the Guardian's version:

2) How women keep upright while pregnant

books for kids

If you're still wondering what present to buy for the bright young things in your life, Nature magazine has very helpfully reviewed stacks of children's books in yesterday's issue:

overview by Harriet Coles

101 ways to save the Earth -- and other books reviewed by Tom Standage and Ella (7 1/2)

Hawking for kids

... well, there's lots more, see for yourself. The web pages carry a label saying that you'd have to pay for full text access, but as far as I can see, the pages linked to above do give the full text for free.