Collected Writings
Over the past three years, I have developed a habit of writing. This is an activity that I enjoy very much and feel I'm getting good at. It helps me focus my thoughts and turn inchoate fragments into reasoned opinions. In Grenoble, due to an excess of spare time and lack of attention-grabbing activities around me, I mainly wrote longer pieces. They are compiled in the list below. These days, because of the frenzied pace of life in London, I restrict myself to short but frequent entries in my blog.
- Eat Animals – I don't eat much meat, but I don't live without it either. Here's why.
- Writer's block – So I was sitting at home the other day trying to write something.
- Drumming Tin – The fall of Günter Grass and the latest escalation between Hezballah and Israel. In the New Yorker, Ian Buruma reviews Günter Grass's autobiography, published in August 2006. Günter Grass makes excuses.
- Friends left behind – The worst thing about years spent living in a handful of countries are the friends left behind when one moves on.
- The little knife that could – Sharpening a little knife I almost guillotined my thumb.
- Me against the Mac – I'm battling on a daily basis the incongruities of Apple computing, and I'm not the only one. If anyone feels that I'm doing Apple injustice and the problems I describe are really my fault, please disabuse me.
- La Presidentielle – France is going to elect a new president next Spring.
- Exhibition Road – Curb your enthusiasm – Costing nearly £30 million and taking three years to complete, the redesigned Exhibition Road, allegedly following the principles of shared space, is an unmitigated disaster. You wouldn't know from reading the mainstream media, though.
- Roots and Wings – On the relative merits of roaming the planet and staying put in a community.
- Breaking preconceptions – building insights – For a piece in ScienceCareers, I described the trials and tribulations of my first year as a post-doc in France. The entire ScienceCareers special is worth reading if you are contemplating spending some time in France. They have compiled a impressive amount of useful information.