How now, brown mouse?

Another Cosmos article.
Smear the mouse, and it will darken. It will also be less likely to become cancerous. Read on, I urge you

Water + Bubbles = Freedom

Hurt + Bandaid = Toxic Shock Syndrome
Love + Guitar = Splinter
Hunger + Flames = Burger

Alternative Lyrics to Someplace Only We Know by Keane

I came upon
a foreign land
I knew the pathway
like my own home land

Is this the place
we used to go?
is this the place
they know as Gulp'n'Blow?

Oh sympathy!
Where have you gone
I'm getting old and I need someone to move on

So tell me when
you gonna let me in
I'm getting tired of
drinking juice from my bin

and IF you have a minute why don't we go
TALK about it someplace with an eagle
THIS could be the end of everything
so why don't we go, baby to montego

An article I wrote for Cosmos magazine

Interested in cryonics? Alpacas? Government approval? Read on.

Poetry

There are sydney uni prizes. Cash prizes. There's a poetry one, named after Henry Lawson. It's called the Pete Babcock poetry prize. I decided I'd enter, and then realised I cannot write poetry.

Attempt #1

For the fourth time
flitting by
a rat with wings
began to smile
We exhale, seal lips.
Deep inside its cooing chest
A baby pidg’ resides in breast.
Its mother dies and so does it.
You know what? I don’t give a sheet.

Sydney Uni public toilets

As a card-carrying male, I am able only to comment on male toilets. My nominations are:

Worst: Chemistry building, outside the lecture theatre on the lower ground floor. Rumour has it that the smell of the toilet once drove an insane person sane.
Honourable mention: Fisher, and any other toilet that has been besquirted by so many, many asses (or arses, if you prefer) for so long, so regularly.

Best: {Like with travel books, the mere mention of a good place can change it, for the worse probably. Still, the truth must be told, and I assume few will read this} Old Teachers Building, ground floor. Big, rarely used, well lit, a real pleasure to … ahem…, or just pass the time.

Killing Time

The End Of Time by Julian Barbour
Published by Phoenix

“Time does not exist.” Try telling that to anybody with a deadline. Yet this is precisely the message of physicist Julian Barbour in his new book, The End of Time. Barbour, who supported his research by translating Russian scientific journals on the side, believes that time is an emergent property - like the colour violet or the temperature of a bowl of pea soup. This is a shocking thesis, yet in a straw poll conducted by the author, twice as many of his colleagues (physicists mind you, not translators) believed that time should not appear in the foundations of any theory of the world as those who thought it should. According to Barbour, there are only instants, snapshots, configurations - and a great deal of them at that. We occupy one of these ‘time capsules’ and infer the past from it.

Barbour takes up the onerous task of convincing the lay reader of time’s passing (it is almost impossible to avoid puns with this topic) with the gravity and finesse befitting such a grand topic. He sets the scene using Turner’s Snow Storm, which depicts the force and fury of a boat caught in a storm. Motion can indeed be created out of a static, timeless picture. We then fall into triangle land, Platonia and a rich discussion of the ideas underpinning his theory, including relativity and quantum theory. I grappled with some of the mathematical and physical concepts, such as the foggy notion of ‘quantum mist’, yet in asking the reader to make the effort Barbour ensures the trip is a more satisfying one. A more philosophical epilogue, ‘Life Without Time’, and extensive notes demonstrate the author has thought about much more than the physics of time. Although at times dense, this is a fascinating introduction to a timeless world.