We enjoyed an unsual musical act at the Old Fire Station on Friday. Thomas Truax plays songs with an understated, whimsical, often dark humour, with the occasional help of an mechanical drummer (named Mother Superior — you can see her at bottom-right in my doodle.) Also starring were the Hornicator and the Stringaling, and an impressive selection of effects pedals and looping tools. Thanks Thomas!
Thanks to Oxgrow for organising a session of drawing and painting in their beautiful community garden.
There she is again. This time the sun came out, and provided you stayed in the sunshine it was warm.
So Karen has earned herself a regular gig, singing solo at North Parade Market. The market is small, friendly and food-centred, with top-quality live music … what’s not to like?
Another fascinating talk on post-truth, this time by Tim Harford of Radio 4’s “More or Less” fame. The take home message seems to be that people need to care more about the world, and that facts alone aren’t enough to change opinions.
Another interesting talk at the Oxford Skeptics in the Pub meeting — Mark Lynas is an eco-activist who came to the conclusion that GMO is not necessarily bad, and that Organic isn’t necessarily good, using the power of critical thinking. One interesting point he made is that the degree of scientific consensus supporting GMO safety is roughly the same as that supporting climate change. So if you think critically you have to accept both (or possibly neither?)
The very energetic and interesting Dr. Helen Czerski presented “We need to Talk about Physics” at today’s meeting of Oxford Skeptics in the Pub. We learnt why blueberry jam isn’t blue; why the Hubble telescope is like a raw egg; and why there is a lot of physics still to do to understand everyday phenomena (such as how bubbles move in a turbulent fluid.)
I’m afraid the likeness is worse than usual. Dr. Czerski doesn’t do standing still.
Yesterday both Karen and I had music gigs at the East Oxford Farmers’ Market. However, she didn’t draw a cartoon of my early music band performing. The character on the small table is Pink Fluffy Monster (friends call him PFM.)
The Albion Beatnik Bookstore (the world’s finest bookshop) yesterday launched two new publications under its own imprint: issue 2 of its occasional magazine The Sandspout; and Baret Magarian’s novella Mirror and Silhouette.
In addition to a lot of top-quality writing, The Sandspout is especially notable for the quality of three illustrations, on pages 51, 54 and 103 by invisibules.org (alone worth the cover price of £3.00.) Take note, because the editor didn’t include them in the index.
He did, however, add a scandalous bio on p51: “Andrew Kay is a mathematician and research engineer: he is actually paid to think about welding Kit Kats to motherboards. His drawing took flight when his vanity on-line comic strip (he studied with Adam Murphy) featuring invisible characters was running out of I-can’t-see-you type gags. He leads bodybuilding workshops, likes hairdressing, plays early music with his recorder – though he himself is always late (his Skeleton Crew early music consort kindly call it syncopation); he once broke his recorder on-stage at the Isle of Wight.”
I’m afraid this is what came out of my brain today, whilst on the train back to Oxford after a day in London. I went for a meeting which finished an hour before the National Gallery closed. At the gallery I was inspired by a striking image of St. Michael slaughtering a devil, painted in 1468 by Bartolomé Bermejo:
I mean — Jeepers Creepers, where’d you get those eyes?