In the Dark

While I’m in lazy reblogging mode I thought you might like this enjoyable rant against the Cult of TED..

It’s New Year’s Eve and therefore time for me to reflect on all  the great things I achieved in 2014.

Um…

Well, better luck next year I suppose.

The above map of England and its regions is accurate apart from one detail. The first person to point out the deliberate mistake wins a year’s membership of the Ipswich Town FC Supporter’s Club, valid for the rest of the year 2014.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 450,000 times in 2014. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 19 days for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Well, I made it up to Newcastle on schedule thanks to Easyjet. I probably won’t be blogging much over the next few days as I plan to give myself over to sloth and gluttony.

Anyway I couldn’t resist sharing this lovely Christmas present I got from the inestimable Dorothy Lamb featuringy suitably  dotty headlines from the Brighton Evening Argus…

Here’s to a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and your loved ones wherever you may be!

Since today is the occasion of Yuletide  prandial celebrations for both the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Physics & Astronomy, I wonder if I might crave the momentary indulgence of all staff within the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, of which said Departments are constituents, in order to discharge a by no means disagreeable obligation which has, over the years, become more or less established practice in the University as we approach the terminal period of the year — calendar, of course, not financial, nor indeed academic — in fact, not to put too fine a point on it, the interregnum between the First Teaching Block and the First Assessment Period — and submit to you, with all appropriate deference, for your consideration at a convenient juncture, a sincere and sanguine expectation — indeed confidence — indeed one might go so far as to say hope — that the aforementioned period may be, at the end of the day, when all relevant factors have been taken into consideration, susceptible to being deemed to be such as to merit a final verdict of having been by no means unsatisfactory in its overall outcome and, in the final analysis, to give grounds for being judged, on mature reflection, to have been conducive to generating a degree of gratification which will be seen in retrospect to have been significantly higher than the general average.

In other words, Happy Christmas!

P.S.  This message is adapated from the television series Yes, Professor Minister...