It’s not every day that you get to sit in the same room as someone who collaborates with Nobel Prize Winners — although lately it seems to be happening to me quite frequently — so last Wednesday’s talk at the London Judgment and Decision Making group seminar was definitely one of the two high points [...]

Apart from The Snowman and The Bear, nothing sets up Christmas like the miracle that is the York Waits. One of the things that I’ve liked most about Advent over the past decade or so is getting out our sole Waits CD, Old Christmas Return’d. The kids love it, and it has also encouraged us [...]

In full culture-vulture mode, the Knackered Family went to two live musical concerts this weekend. Both events featured largely acoustic instrumentalists, accompanied by a narrator. And both served to remind us that live performance offers an extra, magical dimension that recorded music can’t. But one event also provided perfect grist for the Knackered mill — [...]

There’s been a bit of a to-do recently following a comment by Richard Dawkins here.* Chris Dillow, who blogs here, said this:- Here’s a curious statement from Richard Dawkins (via Norm): “When you think about how fantastically successful the Jewish lobby has been, though, in fact, they are less numerous I am told – religious [...]

I specifically asked for a cherry-red Gibson ES335 semi-acoustic guitar with a Vox AC-30 Amplifier for my 40th birthday. I can’t really play electric guitar, and had no real intention of taking it up. But the same genes that pushed me into marathon-running were finding expression; it was a pure materialism/mid-life crisis mashup. March 2005 [...]