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And now for something completely different.
Horizon last night was about decision making, specifically looking at the cognitive processes involved. Whilst it was aimed at quite a popularist audience, there was some interesting science in there somewhere.
Given a situation where there is a random selection of images being shown - some nice, some not - it [...]

The first episode of The Trap was shown on BBC2 on Sunday. Adam Curtis went at a stonking rate through his exploration freedom, arguing that the cold war philosophy of mutually assured destruction has been taken on a political technique to control the masses. I don’t really know where to start with a topic like [...]

I’m a bit behind on this, but last Thursday Channel 4 showed ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’. It laid out an argument that all this climate change talk is a load of nonsense, all caused due to solar activity, and paraded some scientists from reputable organisations that agreed.
Unfortunately I missed the programme, but my housemate [...]

I’m currently reading George Monbiot’s book ‘Heat’, exploring ways we can actually make a 90% reduction in carbon emissions (which is what’s needed by 2030) without destroying our comfortable lives. I’ll reserve comments and opinion until I’ve finished, but I’m a big fan of Monbiot’s work, and seems like a well thought out and supported [...]

I think I might be in need of psychological recouperation after seeing The Mighty Boosh live in Nottingham last night. A thoroughly eclectic crowd packed into the Royal Concert Hall for a two and a half hour trip deep into the warped minds of Julian Barrat and Noel Fielding.
As expected, most of the characters from [...]

Difficult times. It turned out that Comedy Stereotype Challenging Soap Opera wasn’t on today, so we went to drink beer instead. UNIMAS appears to have a zero alcohol rule, so we wandered down the road to a Chinese food court place (as we do most evenings) with a selection of different hawkers.
Tiger would appear to [...]

I’m writing this post offline, sitting in our accomodation at UNIMAS. We’ve stolen a laptop for working on our presentations and teaching materials for Bario.
Today we did a presentation to four vaguely interested students, one totally disinterested student and a couple of PhD types. The presentation was about our work in Bario, the future of [...]

I’m not a fan of adverts, and I can probably count on one hand the number of ads I would happily watch, but the current Golf GTi advert is one of those. It starts with the opening part of Gene Kelly’s Singing in the Rain routine, but breaks down (quite literally) into Gene body popping [...]