I don’t normally like Flash-only websites, but I have to make an exception for www.songsfortheyoungatheart.co.uk because it’s rather splendid. A project by two members of my favourite band, Tindersticks, it’s a collection of children’s songs and poems performed by a selection of talented indie miserablists, you know, for kids, ostensibly at least. You’d have to be a pretty sophisticated five year old to appreciate the Stuart Staples version of Hushabye Mountain, for example, but personally I really like what I’ve heard so far.
Click on the dragon’s tail to see a video of Jarvis Cocker reciting The Lion and Albert, and click on the train to hear all the songs; Will Oldham’s Puff The Magic Dragon is fantastic.
2 comments 2007-04-26 09:19 Categories: Books, Music
Primo Levi died twenty years ago on the 11th of this month. As I’ve mentioned previously Levi is one of my favourite writers, so I wanted to mark the anniversary. Here are a couple of pieces of his writing that have only just been released in English:
Death of Marinese.
A Tranquil Star.
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0 comments 2007-04-22 21:04 Categories: Books
Ben Goldacre makes an interesting point in his latest Bad Science column, on the reasons for bias in privately funded pharmaceutical trials:
So science relies on independent replication; but drug trials are so expensive, and state funding of research so miserly, that pharmaceutical research is rarely independently funded. By which, of course, we mean it’s rarely state funded.
I’m totally up for the stuff about the dolphins being good, and big pharma bad. But if only 10% of pharmaceutical research is funded outside the pharmaceutical industry, I’m not convinced that’s entirely the industry’s fault.
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0 comments 2007-04-17 10:12 Categories: Day Job, Science & Maths
I gave up smoking because of Nick Lane’s first book Oxygen: The Molecule That Made The World, so I approached his latest, Power, Sex and Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life with apprehension, fearing that he might induce me to renounce alcohol or chocolate with his command of arcane data and his unrelenting logic. My worries were unfounded; fermentation does indeed get a mention, but only as an alternative to aerobic respiration at a cellular level.
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3 comments 2007-04-11 22:04 Categories: Books, Geek Stuff, Reviews, Science & Maths
Let’s consider the following situation: someone has dropped their beloved iBook G4, and has failed to mention this fact to their designated household geek, preferring instead to continue working on said laptop. This they are able to do for a surprisingly long time, until the machine tries to swap some of its memory out to disk, and encounters an area of the drive’s platters which was scratched in the impact, at which point it crashes horribly and thereafter refuses to boot despite numerous threats and coaxings. What happens next?
The household geek gets to take apart an Apple laptop! Hooray!
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2 comments 2007-04-03 21:10 Categories: Computers, Geek Stuff
This is why I’ve been very quiet of late. This and numerous other DIY jobs I’ve finally been forced into completing, because we’re planning to sell our house. I am, frankly, sick of grouting, hammering, screwing, sawing, sanding, smoothing and suchlike.
Here is an out of focus picture of a Great Spotted Woodpecker I saw in the garden a few weeks ago. I was a bit worried about him because I’d not seen him for months, but I suppose he was keeping warm in a tree over winter, sensible chap. I was less worried about this fellow; he’s been thieving from the bird feeder since October, so he’s very well fed indeed.
3 comments 2007-04-01 16:24 Categories: Miscellaneous
