The following argument feels true, which is always a bad sign, but I've never seen it written down.

Young men who heavily modify small hatchbacks do so because they still live with their mothers and lack built space they feel they own. They still live with their mothers because of the cost of housing and universal adult female contraception meaning that they haven't had to get married in a hurry. I say mothers. They would live with their parents if men, poor things, had a longer life expectancy and if women, poor things, didn't get left with the children when marriages break down.

Which brings me to Isabelle Huppert. Cinq Fois Deux and L'Emploi de Temps both feature married men passing their time sitting in quite large unmodified cars. "If I were French", I asked, "would I get to sit in my car all day?" In I [heartsign] Huckabees, Huppert's nihilist's car didn't represent alienation and despair, like a proper European car does, which was one of the many lets-down.

posted at: 21:56 | path: /simulations | permanent link to this entry

Most social changes in Europe and North America between the 1950s and now can be explained, at least in part, by the Pill. Your challenge for next Friday is to explain, structuring your argument around universal adult female contraception, the demise of the retroussée nose. This used to be a key requirement for the standard attractive woman, see Hans Memling's paintings of Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins, and can now only be seen on Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson, who isn't even a woman.

posted at: 21:56 | path: /simulations | permanent link to this entry

I came down the stairs a moment ago to hear light saxophone music coming from Radio Four (Query: What was Radio Four doing on in the house after 0900? I have now retuned.), so I assumed there'd been a coup and meanwhile here was some music.

It took the presenter, identifying the saxophonist as Jan Gabbawreck, the shaven-headed Dutch techno casualty, to remind me that this was Desert Island Discs. I didn't realize they still made it. It's like one innumerate interviewing another for forty minutes, interspersed with the second innumerate's favourite differential equations. "Anything by Sturm and Liouville, Sue."

posted at: 09:31 | path: /N | permanent link to this entry

Useful, comprehensive, often presented by John Tusa, day of programming on Radio Three today, this time about Janáček, who sometimes sounds like Steve Reich. In five years' time, this may be all I remember. Five years ago, there was an entire weekend about Goethe, which I heard most of.

In the Black Bear, next to the Elephant and just round from the Rathaus, I was asked why Weimar, this tiny place in the middle of hills, attracted so many major figures like Schiller, Herder, the red man with the enormous hat from the GDR pedestrian crossings, and so on. With my recall of the Goethe Weekend, I stated confidently that I had no idea. All I remember from the Goethe Weekend is that Buchenwald is just outside Weimar.

There was a Frenchman on the radio this morning who turned out to be Milan Kundera.

posted at: 15:39 | path: /maunderings | permanent link to this entry

I'm learning about networking tomorrow, and I have absolutely no intention of telling you how it goes.

The poster session is the greatest set of networking challenges a doctoral student is likely to face, and the trickiest of these is disentangling yourself from an enthusiastic yet incomprehensible poster-giver. Do not pretend to be paying close attention while surreptitiously moving backwards till out of earshot. Do not grab a passing project student or junior colleague, introduce them to the enthusiast and run away when they say something dangerous like "So, take me through it."

What I really want to learn is how to eat from a plate while holding a glass of wine at the same time.

posted at: 22:50 | path: /maunderings | permanent link to this entry