So Cathy came to visit yesterday.  Pauline dusted the house and baked scones.  Apparently this is normal behaviour before someone comes to judge whether you are good potential parents or not. We had warned Cathy that we had a dog.  Was that a problem, I had asked on the phone? "No.  Most people wanting to…

I overhear a conversation in the office. The man who has just come in is looking for some advice. He is originally from Palestine but was a refugee in Iraq for a time. He claimed asylum in Britain and was refused so he went for voluntary return (whereby people are offered £3,000 to leave the…

I know I'm getting ahead of myself here, but I would want my children to know about: Search strategies Writing for the internet as opposed to print Presentation skills Coping with information overload (?not sure how to do this myself – basically, by being focussed and putting the important information up front cf Hi! emails)…

Research into the 30 million strong Kumbh Mela, a Hindu festival in Allahabad, Northern India on the banks of the Ganges has overturned many old beliefs about crowd behaviour.  Even though people at the festival came from different castes and social backgrounds, there was a strong sense of common identity.  They said this positive outlook…

Podsigns_wo2 I see that in New York they are considering making it illegal to cross the street while wearing earphones.  Not only is it potentially dangerous being deaf and distracted, it also means that I regularly get a fright that someone is looming behind me.I know I shouldn't be in thrall to my iPod, but…

Research into how cars overtake cyclists shows that if you don't wear a helmet, cars give you more room (about 8cm).  If you wear a wig (ie if you look like a woman from behind) they also give you more room.  In the morning cars give you less room.  Presumably to do with how busy…

Women are not just victims of men's sexual aggression.  Motivations for extramarital partnerships in rural Malawi include money for survival, but elsewhere money for attractive consumer goods, passion, and revenge for a husband's infidelity. In Malawi there is also considerable talk about condoms especially among men – but that virtually all the discussion of condoms,…

Smoking accounts for a large part of the health inequality seen among men.  Encouraging smoking cessation, increasing taxes on tobacco, banning tobacco advertising and smoking in public places may be a pragmatic way to address the contribution of smoking to health inequality among men.  It does however shift the locus of responsibility on to the…

No estés lejos de mí un solo día, porque cómo, porque, no sé decirlo, es largo el día, y te estaré esperando como en las estaciones cuando en alguna parte se durmieron los trenes. No te vayas por una hora porque entonces en esa hora se juntan las gotas del desvelo y tal vez todo…

Skiing in Obergurgl for the second year running – temperature on Wednesday was 10degC, cf -10degC on that day last year.  I hear that people in Chamonix last week were skiing on grass and horse manure, not snow. An iceshelf 5x the size of London collapsed recently in Canada -only now discovered during a recent…