It’s hard to miss Terry Gross if you are a commuter in Silicon Valley. As much as I intend to leave the office in time to hear the endlessly entertaining Kai Ryssdal, by the time I have shut down the computer … Continue reading →

  The first gun I ever fired was a Lee-Enfield, the mainstay of the British Empire for the first half of the 20th century and the weapon of choice of the Sea Cadets. Wikipedia says that our Lee-Enfields were modified to … Continue reading →

Daddy! What did you do in the navy?

[Time warp... I started this post a couple of weeks back and only finished it today - ed] I love the show RadioLab (from W-Y-N …CCCCC!). It’s an hour-long show but I never get to listen to it because I can … Continue reading →

I’ve always thought of automats as lonely, melancholy places. I entered my first automat when I was 14 and visiting the first of many, many navy bases. Naval establishments in those days were almost defined by their automats and automats … Continue reading →

HMS Invincible just sailed off to the scrap yards. Invincible came into service right before I joined up. It was a big deal at the time because Thatcher’s Axe inflicted a series of massive cuts on the armed forces right … Continue reading →

The Name of the Rose is one of those books that I read at an impressionable age and was terribly impressed by it. I read it again a few years later and it was better still. It’s firmly in my … Continue reading →

In one of the universe’s subtle attempts to mess with me, my grandmother died yesterday on the same day that I finished this painting – Girl Seated in a Cemetery by Delacroix. In another week or so, I’ll be standing … Continue reading →

I just started reading James Bach’s Secrets of a Buccaneer Scholar. Buccaneer scholar is Bach’s term for someone who takes responsibility for their own education rather than having it handed to them by the authorities. The book is an odd … Continue reading →