Sun 2009-03-15 
A willow catkin, probably a male one. In willows the flowers are known as catkins and appear early in the spring, even before the leaves. I am not sure which species this is but the genus name is Salix.
Photo taken beside the middle lake, Reading University grounds, Reading, UK, on 2009-03-15.
Sat 2009-03-14 Heather Mac Donald, a leading US conservative intellectual and atheist, nicely pinpoints the problem with mixing religion into politics:
Moreover, the task of persuading the prayer-inspired president that he is wrong about the wisdom of federal intervention in the auto industry, say, seems unduly daunting to me. If a president made the decision purely on worldly grounds, those grounds can in theory be countered with other evidence. Obviously, not everyone is open to contrary evidence. The ideal of rational decision-making is only imperfectly realized in practice. But I at least know the type of arguments I would make. I don’t know how you counter revelation, however. God is a political conversation-stopper, a trump card that constricts political discourse rather than widen it out.
Taken from here.
Fri 2009-03-13 From an article by Peter Norvig:
As computer security expert Ben Laurie has stated, Sudoku is "a denial of service attack on human intellect".
Thu 2009-03-05 I spent most of this evening watching two BBC television programs about Darwin. The first, Jimmy Doherty in Darwin's Garden was excellent. To quote from the program's web page:
When Charles Darwin set about proving his theory of evolution, he had none of the advantages of modern genetics or DNA analysis so he came up with some ingenious experiments of his own. In this series, Jimmy Doherty recreates many of these investigations.
Jimmy takes a hands-on approach as he digs up a patch of turf in Darwin's own garden in Kent to illustrate the struggle for existence; he ropes down a chalk cliff to explore the age of the Earth; and he lets seeds soak in salt water for a month. The smelly results from this experiment prove that plants have the potential to cross oceans.
These and other investigations gave Darwin the evidence he needed to publish his theory in 1859. By replicating them Jimmy uncovers a dynamic Darwin, and through them reveals the secrets of evolution.
This program will be available to watch here for the next 21 days. You can also find there a link to the web page for the next episode in the series which is to be broadcast next week.
The second program that I watched this evening was Andrew Marr's Darwin's Dangerous Idea which I thought was rather pompous and over-blown. For all the far-reaching consequences of his ideas, Darwin was very down-to-earth and his ideas were backed up with masses of detailed observations and simple experiments. Doherty got this across much better than Marr did.
Fri 2009-02-27 I had my teacher training interview yesterday. The actual interview was in the afternoon following a morning of administrative checks, presentations and discussions. Even though the interviewer had warned us beforehand that he was going to play the devil's advocate, I found the interview rough going and felt rather depressed afterwards (although lack of sleep the night before might have contributed to this). One good thing was that he said that my mathematical background was sufficient for the course, which I had suspected but it was nice to hear it confirmed. His main doubt was what I would be like in front a class (instead of in the middle, as I am as a teaching assistant), and he said he would like to see me actually teaching 10 minutes of a lesson before he made his mind up. This sounds to me like an excellent de-risking move (I should probably have thought of it myself, but it didn't occur to me). He said he would contact the school to arrange a visit and, on Monday, I will enquire in the maths department about getting some practice. At the end of the interview he said that he couldn't tell whether I was going to be a disaster or an "eccentric success" (I think I heard that right).
