Hi folks, I’m going to retire this blog in two weeks time. I started writing it because I wanted to practice writing regularly and to get over my fear of ‘publishing’ things, things that might not be good, even if I didn’t seriously believe anyone would read them. I had ideas I wanted to convey and if I had to risk embarrassment and writing them out poorly then I would just have to put up with that. It has been nice to have a (very) few people read it and be kind enough to tell me the things they liked.

Continue reading Slam the book shut.

I had a conference in Udine at the beginning of this week and since I hadn’t been to Italy before I thought I ought to fold in some tourism. Udine is quite small (but not unpretty) though, and Venice is a couple of hours away by a cheap train so the choice was obvious.

Continue reading I can't think of a decent Doge joke, it's killing me lads

While I was in Oxford for a logic conference this week I took some time out to go to the Bodleian’s Tolkein exhibition at the Weston library. It’s a nice little display of Tolkein’s manuscripts, original artwork and correspondence, and of some bits and pieces illustrating his life as a student, as an officer in the war and later as professor and author.

Continue reading Reading it continually ever since

I went down to BFI Southbank in that London yesterday with pal Maeve to see Arcadia, the new film from director Paul Wright. We decided to see it on the strength of the trailer—neither of us had heard of Wright before—and we weren’t disappointed.

Continue reading Arcadia

CW: violence towards animals.

What I said yesterday about believing vegetarianism to be a moral good intellectually but not emotionally isn’t quite true. I can’t stand human violence towards animals, it’s one of the few things that makes me really squeamish. But the day-to-day practice of eating meat is too far abstracted from the necessary violence.

Continue reading Eating animals