A funny collision of things happened yesterday morning. I had just listened to a Broken Record podcast in which Rick Rubin chatted with Dave Cobb, and in the middle of the mutual love-fest, Rick said that the latest musician to have really excited him was James Blake. I’ve never heard of James Bla...

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I started reading Adrian Bell’s Corduroy yesterday, the Country Book Club edition of 1951, a treat that had been in store for a couple of weeks. My best friend, who knows my taste for a countryside I never really knew, sent it, and although I am only two chapters in, so this is not a review, there...

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After eight difficult seasons of hot-water bottles and fingerless gloves, I may be about to embark on a comfortable winter. The room in which I work is large, and the heating very poor, and the cost of changing either is prohibitive. In search of ways to heat my body, rather than the space, I came across two suggestions new to me; electric heated throws and far infra-red heating panels.

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Exercise really is a funny thing. I’ve tried various forms over the years, some of them more fun and longer lasting than others. For a while I was very taken with the Canadian Air Force’s 5BX plan. It seemed to have just the right amount of fiddliness to appeal to my inner nerd. That fell away, and then, just over a year ago I started doing the 7-minute stuff, high-intensity interval training. Slowly, slowly, even at my advanced age, it became easier to get through one cycle. Then two. Then the full workout, three cycles in total.

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The Internet Archive recently sent out an email warning that “between 2000-2019, more than 176 open access journals have literally disappeared,” with many more at risk. My first thought was to hope that many of the vanished were titles from predatory publishers scamming academics, gone bust or moved...

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