Proper Rap

This is what hip hop would have been like in the late-Victorian era. Or you could think of it as the rap equi­val­ent of Abney Park. Whatever you call it, this is unique.

I bring you Pro­fessor Ele­mental.

Do you get email like this in your workplace?

I received this about half an hour ago:

To All Staff

Please note at about 4.30 this after­noon a group of stu­dents will be con­duct­ing an exper­i­ment in the [Redac­ted] Lab. This exper­i­ment will involve the use of a shock tube that will use air to break the sound barrier.

It should sound like a large explo­sion. There is noth­ing to worry about. We will have it under con­trol and as far as I am aware will only hap­pen once.

Cheers
[Redac­ted]

Awe­some.

Note to subscribers

I’m in the pro­cess of updat­ing my blog to Word­Press. This is not a trivial task because of the cus­tom plu­gins that I used to have for Mov­able Type.

It’s going to take a few days, so expect weird­ness in the RSS feed while this happens.

Symbolic integration: Part 1

Well, time to show my true geek­i­ness with a series. We’re going to do sym­bolic integ­ra­tion. You know, anti-derivatives.
Read on

The biggest religious group in the English-speaking world

I came across this opin­ion piece excerp­ted from Richard Dawkins’ latest book, The God Delu­sion. It’s a good piece, how­ever there’s one niggle that I have.

Read on

Is this a funny title for a blog entry?

The blog form­ally known as “Andrew’s Thingy”, which my wife thought­fully put in, is now get­ting a more per­man­ent name, as I start to use it more. It is known as “The BWAIN”. Why? Because this is a Blog Without An Inter­est­ing Name.

The scar­i­est thing about this, though, is that all of the good titles I could think of are meta-jokes of one form or another.

Read on

Reads, links and blogs

Lynne Truss, pos­sibly my favour­ite Grumpy Old Woman, finally has her own site.

For those who haven’t had the pleas­ure, Lynne is on a ven­detta. Well, sev­eral, actu­ally. In Eats, Shoots & Leaves, it’s bad punc­tu­ation. But it’s not because she’s a snob. It goes much deeper than that…
Read on

Hello World

Every blog must have a first post. This is blog is no exception.

The tra­di­tional first post is to talk about what the blog will be about. The list is always of the form: X, Y, Z and whatever takes the author’s fancy. Let’s not kid ourselves: num­ber four is the most likely.

I have no pre­tense that this blog will be widely read, or even read at all except by a few close friends.

I have no pre­tense that this blog will change the world in any mean­ing­ful way.

I have no pre­tense that any­one in the world wants to hear my opin­ion on anything.

But you don’t talk to a teddy bear because you expect the teddy bear to listen. You do it because the act of talk­ing is cathartic.

Wel­come to my blog, teddy bears!