Monthly Archives: September 2011

Syntactic blu-tack and the value of inequalities

Posted on September 30, 2011 by

The syllabus for one of the first-year courses on which I teach begins with a paragraph or so of worthy but uninspiring topics from Standard Grade and Higher: fractions; indices; logs and exponentials; quadratic equations; and so on. Lurking among … Continue reading →

Posted in Teaching | 3 Comments

It is not easy to become sane

Posted on September 22, 2011 by

Two things happened today that — by pure coincidence — seemed to me to have a thematic connection, even though one of them is important to the whole scientific community in the UK and the other is important only to … Continue reading →

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A small chaos: Norman MacCaig’s anthologised poems

Posted on September 6, 2011 by

I have a small chaos in my house – a thing easy to come by. Norman MacCaig, Between two nowheres (1971) Thanks to an enthusiasm for the poetry of Norman MacCaig and an inability to walk past bookshops, I own … Continue reading →

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Publish, and be damned

Posted on September 2, 2011 by

The perennial stushie about academic publishing has got a bit louder than usual in recent weeks, with an ultimatum from the university libraries and various articles in the THE. It’s even been picked up by the mainstream media, though I suspect that … Continue reading →

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