One of the fathers of modern obstetrics and midwifery.  In the 1700s he was the first person to describe accurately the passage through the birth canal of a baby during delivery, drawing fabulous pictures of babies in the womb.  The maternity unit at the Law hospital was named after him, but has now been turned…

Have done my first ever bit of carbon offsetting.  Guilt of driving to Wishaw everyday, flying to Spain TWICE in one month.  Went with World Land Trust, who seem pretty legit.  

I admit it, I think they're great.  Nothing beats sitting out on a chilly starlit night with the glow and heat from a fire; or a fire basket; or a patio heater.  But according to the BBC everyone wants to do it now; so there are expected to be over 2 million of the things in…

Catherine Bujold has designed her house to look like Space 1999…  And some rooms look strangely familiar… Housebedroom7

says Richard Holloway, in Sunday Herald article about Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory.  It comes from a failure to imagine ourselves into lives and cultures foreign to our own experience.

According to Jay Zagorsky (Ohio State University), there is no link between IQ and wealth.  Intelligent people do tend to earn more – but there's lots of other factors that contribute to whether or not you can turn your income into material wealth.  I'm not sure what the important ones are; presumably spending on holidays,…

I'm a bit ignorant about this, but I think the butterfly effect is to do with how complex systems, that have positive as well as negative feedback mechanisms, can produce massive effects from minimal changes. A buddhist podcast suggested that this means small acts of kindness have the potential to produce enormous benefit.  Well, possibly… …

Fabulous long weekend in Ronda, Andalucia.  Flew direct to Malaga, not bad although bit of an early start.  Joined the queues at car rental (where are all these people going?) before heading out towards Marbella.  The coast road is relatively quiet (an expensive toll) but soul destroying; slabs of housing stuffed into dry valleys next…

1746, 14 000 men went to battle.  Not really Scottish vs English; at least half of the "English" army were Scots, and the Jacobites were reinforced with French, Irish and English volunteers or deserters.  The Jacobite army was always meant to be an international force, with the bulk being French but the army ships were…

Henry Stanley, who was sent by a New York newspaper to find David Livingstone, has had his reputation rescued by biographer Tim Jeal.  Stanley was born John Rowlands, an illegitimate Welsh workhouse boy who lied all his life about his origins – he took his name from a cotton magnate who was supposed to have…