links for 2007-11-29

HT: The heavy personal cost of internal life (extract from Teodor Parnicki)
the kind of story one never thinks to enunciate, full of various truths that worm under one’s skin and resonate furtively, meanly
(tags: awesome writing books)

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pulvis et umbra sumus

[Edit] Obituary: Peter Lipton (9 October 1954 – 25 November 2007)
the time between my first starting to think about historical causation and my being asked to teach a class on it is almost entirely nourished by my interaction with Professor Peter Lipton — who died, abruptly, last night. this whole day I have felt my [...]

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moving house

I’m moving to a new flat, and have been ruthlessly waging war against the colossal amounts of Stuff, Nonsense and Useless Worldly Belongings in my possession. (have not seen my floor for four days — must become a monk after my PhD). things will be quietly manic for a few days.
NB: how, how have I [...]

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tail-end activism: back to history soon

for the record, I would love to be the historian who runs across something like this interview in the archives.
what I learned today: I’m so enormously grateful that my primary source of PhD funding is not from the Malaysian government. I found out today just how skittish (and indeed hostile) many Malaysian students in Cambridge [...]

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apologetic

sorry for the extended silence. amongst other things, I’ve been watching history happen, with a mixture of a historian’s curiosity and a citizen’s anguish (a pernicious combination, I can tell you).

the outcome of the rally seems to have been wildly successful, though. Apart from the astounding turnout, its aim was to get a letter of [...]

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links for 2007-11-02

Elephant on acid, dog head grafts and a seesaw to revive the dead | Science | The Guardian
bizarre science experiments demonstrate humanity will one day no doubt accidentally pull the plug on the universe, in the name of progress
(tags: weird science history)

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