Dirty Old Blog

24 Dec 2002
You'd better watch out . . .

15:41 Santa Claus - friendly old elf or CIA spook? - Calvin

What are we teaching our children about Christmas? More to the point, what is the message that they receive from Christmas? He's knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness' sake. That if you're good, you'll get presents. And of course the subtext of that is, we love you - if you're good. Christmas is really about love after all, isn't it?

But that's completely topsy-turvy. If Christmas has a message at all, then surely it's that Love comes undeserved, unlooked for. If Christmas teaches our children anything, it teaches that we love them, good or bad. When we were still sinners, God sent his son to die for us. We've all been bad children, but we're still loved.

Happy birthday, Jesus.

17 Dec 2002
Hot stuff

15:32 Of course, all the women in my lab look like this.

12 Dec 2002
Fame - and not too early

09:54 Big wave of the Pipetman to Nick Europe-Finner, whose work on initiation of labour seems to be paying off. Looks like GαS falls at the onset of labour. Nick's a good bloke, from my Oxford days.

05 Dec 2002
I am invincible!

11:43 It looks just like the movie. Photographs of Arecibo, amazingly taken with a Clie NX70V. As the photographer put it, To give you a sense of scale, the azimuth arm is over 50m long, the main dish is 300m across, and the Gregorian is over 4 stories tall. By the way, that's 4 Dec, NOT 12 April.

05 Dec 2002
Shiny!

11:23 Christmas has come early.

02 Dec 2002
Start 'em young . . .

10:02 And train them right. Sophie helping daddy at work.

02 Dec 2002
Why they call them missles

10:02 As I write, Saddam Hussein is equipping his elite Republican Guard with 10 foot square white sheets with a red bullseye painted in the middle. These will be deployed on tactical targets in the event of a US-led attack on Iraq. More here.

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