I’m in Kunming, Yunnan province, in the southwest of China just above Viet Nam. And the place is chock full of surprises.

I fired up the GPS, just for fun, and got a reading. As it happened, Luigi had just texted me. so I texted back the coordinates. Less than 30 seconds later he texted back the h...

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Cate Blachett surely has to be in the running for an Oscar, but as Actor or Actress? Her Jude Quinn (without a parka!) in I'm not there is astonishing, Bob Dylan somehow brought to life. She doesn’t impersonate Dylan, but she somehow recreates him, which is fitting as this wonderful, kaleidoscopic...

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Start: 95.4 Last week: 89.3 This week: 88.5

Tuesday 11 September: Slowly getting back to where I was, and that despite one of the most delicious steaks I have eaten in a long time. Against the odds, this was cooked in a domestic kitchen, at his home, by a friend. Too often the best home-cooked st...

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I’ve been away on hols, and I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t give this blog a second's thought. But I also resolved that there could be no half measures, and so, hard as it was, I managed to stick to a no-blogging rule. That said, some things cried out to be shared.

Like a delightful moment du...

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There’s a delightful piece in the latest Science (Daniel S. Greenberg (2007) On the Road to Academic Greatness--A Parable, Science 317: 1328-9) charting the recent history of the University of Avarice and the remarkable role played by U Av’s President, Grant Swinger, in its meteoric rise. Reader...

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