Arts and Spacecraft

Todays' title comes from a game of Trivial Pursuit that was played in my house yesterday. For those who don't play, the makers are very fond of puns (if that isn't too strong a word). I don't remember the exact words, but here's the gist of her question- it was Yellow (History).

I: "What craft did Hamish McAstronaut and Michael O'Strawberryjam take into orbit in 1978?"

She: (Thinks: Ah, it's a cunning pun, if that isn't too strong a word. You can practically hear the inverted commas falling into place around ""into orbit"". The answer will be like wood-carving,only to do with space.)
"Oh, spaceship building, or something."
I: (Thinks: What, does she mean the Cape Canaveral building? With rockets on each corner? Surely not, I mean isn't that quite big?)
"Er... Space Shuttle Columbia...."
She: "Oh, CRAFT" (laughs uncontrollably for some time).

In her defence, "into orbit" is exactly the kind of dated Famous-Five-esque hyperbole that Trivial Pursuit uses. Our games of Trivial pursuit probably bear more relation to verbal Blind-Mans-Bluff than the rarefied duel of laser-sharp intellects. Another recent question deserves being quoted.

They: "Who signed (sic) the King of Spains' beard?" (Look of total bafflement)
I: "Uh... Francis Drake?"
They: (crawl under table)

I'm facing a crisis of confidence. I want to talk about something radically different from that. Do I start a new post? So far I've been going for one post and only one post per sitting, but perhaps I should just stick that up and start on my next topic. I admit, I think of this mostly because I flatter myself that someone will someday want to find something I said. But then, why should I preclude that future for the questionable aesthetic pleasure of seeing a blog post about half a mile long? It's an agony of indecision, I can tell you. Well, readers, as of today I'm adding a mail-me link to the right, so drop me a line if you have thoughts.

I am a fan of REM. Indeed, I've gone to eBay and bought singles of songs purely for the B-sides. For a long time I was under the vauge impression that they'd recorded an album of Leonard Cohen covers- an artist I know very little of- under the title "I'm Your Fan". As it transpires, there's only one REM track there, and it's "First We Take Manhattan"- which I already own as a B-Side on the collectors edition of "Drive". (Oh, I'm a geek). That CD also has "Winged Mammal Theme", which REM wrote as a contender for the theme to a recent Batman film. I think it's an undiscovered jewel. I believe U2 got the contract in the end with "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me". I think it's a shame- though admittedly the producers went through the list looking for "Rock" bands, and REM gave them a reflective take on a theme tune from thr 70s, but even so.

Continuing the music theme, I recently aqquired the Eels album "Electro-shock Blues". Based on iTunes previews, I really wanted to get "Beautiful Freak" but the key difference that changed my mind was £6 in price. I'll let you know what I think of it once I've absorbed it (which takes at least three listenings) if I remember (no promises).

In Science news, I have lots and lots of work I really should be doing. Term starts next week, so I'm revising for collections (Oxford-speak for "assesments") and vacation work that really should have been done some time ago. The most interesting official work in my diary at the moment is Communications Skills. I know this reeks of Key Skills and primary school, but it is in fact a chance to get all Humanities about a subject that interests me as a person, so I've been disproportionatly dilligent about this. Here's the abstract as it stands:

"The Public understanding of Science"

"Since 1995 Oxford University has had a Professor for the Public Understanding of Science. In this talk I will look at some aspects of how the public understand (or fail to understand) science, both in a contemporary and historical context. I will also ask what the aims of a Public Understanding effort should be, and how we can go about furthering those aims."

This is a field that really interests me. To get that Professorship is one of my two pie-in-the-sky ambitions at the moment (the other being to work for Oxfam at a high level). I'll probably reproduce my talk ,once it's been given, here.

On a similar topic, I have my idea for the Science Writing competition I told you about before. In fact, I am going to wirite it up in draft at this very computer tonight. That, too, will probably be reproduced here as soon as it's done. For now I'll just leave you with the working title: "Meet the Family".

Song in my head: "Animal" by REM