In some respects there are just three seasons to our year.

1. Too dark to walk down by the river, morning and evening.
2. Light enough in the morning, too dark in the evening.
3. Light enough at both ends.
   Today we passed from 1 to 2. Without rushing home, it was just about light enough to ensure th...

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To the Popes’ Hot Baths, near Viterbo, on a perfect day for soaking; overcast, drizzly, cold wind. There was a goodly lot of steam rising from the surface, but not enough to obscure the delights of carefully plucked male eyebrows and a fair amount of ink.

While lazing about in the water, moving hi...

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In my previous post I tried to expose what I think is a huge logical inconsistency at the heart of some arguments against genetically engineered plants. I did so, however, using a very abbreviated argument that, I now see, could only be easily followed by those who know the subject. And that was foolish because those who already know the subject are not the people I hoped would read the post.

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A little conundrum. One of the worries of campaigners against genetic engineering of crops is that genes stuck into plants will escape and create, for example, superweeds. You don't need genetic engineering to achieve this, of course, but it helps. Along comes a technology that promises to neutraliz...

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Very odd. Flickr insists that “your blog posting failed”. But here it is anyway. I’m editing this in ecto, just to make life simpler. But the point of this post is to sing the praises of DoubleTake, a beautiful Mac application that does one thing -- stitching panoramas -- really well.¹

I foun...

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