Desert skies...Ethiopia

He calls himself the Vagabond - he does, he does, he does

This two legged original of the sands - you see, you see, you see

His foot-prints heavy on the grains - they walk, they walk, they walk

Zephyrs erase like bedouin feints - the prints, the prints, the prints

They say he has no home to go - they do, they do, they do

They say he tramps the world for love - ti's true, ti's true, ti's true

_______

Coming soon...The odd journals of a Naturalist on earth

Currently watching...

Currently wearing...

Clothes were invented to keep the elements at bay. To keep our insides protected from the outsides. Function over Form. Nowadays things are in reverse order. Clothes advertise. They are a billboard sign that says: 'This Is Who I Am'. Sometimes clothes scream. But it is better if they whisper. Style is important. Through the medium of fashion you advertise who you are - what you're about, what's going in that head of yours (if anything is going in that head of yours), the sort of women you go for (or men), what you're like in bed (an insatiable tiger Grrrrrhhh! or a pussy cat Meeeoooow!). Clothes can also reveal what you do for a living - are you a rockstar, artiste, musician, professuer, evolutionary biologist, or (god forbid) an accountant. Clothes also speak how much money you make, the sort of friends you hang out with, if you have a girlfriend, whether you're a member of the 'Electricity Pylon of the Month Fan Club'. The cut of your jacket and the shoes you wear say more about you then your CV.

The most important thing when it comes to clothes is the 'fit'. If the clothes you wear look as if they were tailored to your particular and unique body proportions, if they look as if they will fit you and only you in the whole wide world, then you will be in sartorial heaven. For example there is nothing like a blazer that fits perfectly. It's length, when arms are dangling on the side, should not go beyond the middle knuckle of your thumb. It should give you a shape and not make you look like a homogeneous cylinder. It can be combined with a white shirt and trousers for a smart look, or with jeans and a printed t-shirt, as casual attire. There is fun to be had in fashion. It's a kind of pretend and play. A play with who you are. A play with who you wanna be.

Thereare365daysperyear.com

Youcanbewhoyouwanttobe.com

Whoshallibetoday.com

(above items from 'AllSaints' clothing)

_____

Lecture to go to / brain cells to exercise / Jurassic park to roam

(Shhh!)...A secret: some of the best stuff to do in London...is totally free! Oh yes. It cost nothing. Not a squid. Not a penny. Not a cheese cracker. Not even a potatoe. Nothingo. Zilch. ££Nil. Consider the above seminar at Imperial College for example: Free! And it's on Dinosaurs. Everybody loves Dinosaurs. And there's plenty more like it where it came from...Lectures on 'cloaking devices', the latest on Brazillian 'deforestation', 'bacterial sex dynamics' and how early earth meteorite bombardment may have contributed to making earth habitable to life. And there's tea and biscuits too. 'Refreshments' they call it. To refresh your mind after a hard hours concentration. You can take notes and ask pertinent questions and pretend you're back at university as an undergraduate - dreaming of changing the world - again.

Look if you really want to impress that lovely girlfriend of yours, you know show her how much you care and what a totally radical dude you are, what better way then to take her, for example, to the 'Royal College of Mines Annual Keynote Lecture on Explosive Hydrogen Sulphide Gaseous Pond Emissions' - It'll be a blast. She'll love you to the ends of the earth (literally). If she has a tantrum and starts throwing a mighty stink, you can blame the Hydrogen Sulphide...

What I watched today...at my local 'Rio' cinema in Hackney

Almost every film Werner Herzog makes is savage and incisive. Encounters at the End of the World is no different. Far-out and unforgettable, it is set at McMurdo Station, a settlement in Antarctica populated by professional dreamers masquerading as scientists, one of whom is a woman whose party trick is to have herself zipped up in a luggage bag...

Like much of Herzog's previous work, this film is about crazies, freak-shows and restless pioneers in search of new horizons who are tempted to try and tame wild incorrigible nature. There is much to like here: like the scene where he asks a shy but brilliant penguin expert whether, in his twenty year career of studying them, he has ever encountered insanity amongst penguins! There is a brief moment when the expert pauses to think : then follows a shot of a lone penguin separating and wandering off from the flock and heading, on its own, towards the mountains. Why? Who knows? But one thing is certain: it will die. It is these wanderers, be they penguin or human, that Herzog is attracted to.

He prefers to see Antarctica as an endless void, an inhuman space. He offers image after image whose beauty is so strange as to seem extra-terrestrial. Composer Henry Kaiser creates a sound design whose eeriness is merely amplified by the sound of underwater seals and Herzog's own idiosyncratic direction. Fabulously weird and wonderful! Essential viewing.

Travels amongst the desert dwellers

The thermometer showed an altitude of 3,350 feet: under the tree's cool shade, the climate reminded me of Southern Italy. I pinched a buttercup from the soil and rolled it between thumb and forefinger viewing the horizon through its petals. My head was suffering from the rancid breeze that blew in from the gulf of Aden and then there was the matter of the water; brackish with clods of grime - it required delicate sieving in the palms of the hand before drinking. I swilled it about in my mouth brushing its wetness along the top of my palette but still it remained tainted with the odour of the cowhide jugs in which it was stored. The sun sank towards the west carving long beams upon the hills. It'd been a long day. We'd done 12 miles in a straight line from Zaylah. Presently the rice was boiled for us on the fire by the indefatigable women. A baby goat was slaughtered for our dinner and its meat was most tender and delicious: the melt-in-your-mouth morsels nourishing those tired legs and aching muscles. After dinner we sat around the fire and lit the tobacco pipes and watched the silky moon rise to the apex of the firmament. We lay sprawled beneath it with arms under our heads; its soft glow imparting the world in a dreamlike countenance. I watched a streak of nimbus cloud scud across it; its silhouette seemingly catching on something and the whole mass melting away with me into sleep. After a sound night under the moon we arose at 5am and loaded the camels. It was a raw morning and a stiff breeze blew in from the coast and settled between the folds of our clothes. As the sun rose in the sky it lit the surrounding hills like folds of skin, and behind us the line of the blue sea was raised above the ground like a ledge by the phenomenon of optical refraction. The Muslims of the Somal region have over the years erected various mosques for purposes of prayer. These dot the landscape like welcome gas stations along a motorway. At midday, to escape from the oppressive sun reigning heavy blows upon our heads, we sheltered in the lee of one of these 'Palaces of Allah'. Their white-washed stucco walls shimmering like marble in the sun. Their circular niches all face Mecca and on the path ahead we spied many oblong white slabs planted deep in the soil, directing the wary traveller to Mecca.

The peoples who inhabit this land are the 'Essa'. An oxymoronic tribe: childish and docile, cunning yet deficient in judgement, kind and fickle, good humoured yet bad-tempered, generous and vindictive, cruel and treacherous. Robbery constitutes an honourable endeavour for them, and murder? Ha! Murder maketh the hero amongst them. But they have their good points. They will always honour a bargain and will rarely lie: a broken promise being considered a matter of pride. And they are importunate beggars. Many times they would sit outside my tent, watching my every move. One must be careful to take out one's belongings only when not being watched. The Essa are distinguished from the wider population by their blackness and a premature baldness, amongst the men, about the temples. Their hair is dry and frizzled and as greasy as a frying pan. The learned man can be distinguished amongst them by the presence of a topee on the head and beads of Rosary constantly threaded between their fingers. The Hajjis (those who have made the 'Hajj' pilgrimage to Mecca) are most esteemed and officiate in disputes. These men engender respect amongst the tribe on account of their being able to recite 'by rote' verses from the Quran. They seem to have verses tailored for all occasions. I was much impressed by their learning but they are most ignorant in the sciences. The people of this part of Ethiopia, though predominantly Muslim, still retain echoes of a shamanistic idolatrous past. The history of Islam here is one of building on top of older African traditions. As a result the Essa will not drink from a certain stream or eat a certain animal - due to the presence of bad spirits. Thus superstitious talk abounds: for example the sound of a certain bird if heard thrice between the rising and setting of the sun is a bad omen. Travelling by night under a full moon brings bad luck and any old women; who has managed to live beyond the age of sixty (a feat rare in this part of the world) is considered to harbour powers of witchcraft.

Sitting amongst these benighted primitives, ignorant yet kind, benign and yet trecherous, one obtains a flavour of how man has thought and fought for most of his history. Spirits and sprites and goblins are as much a part of their world as the stuff of flesh like goats and camels. Theirs is a simplicity of life and a childish world view - and yet from these roots sprout shoots of unimaginable cruelty and suffering. The desert is forbidding. It is not a kind place. It is a harsh world, and it seeps into the bones and skin of these desert dwellers. You are naked. Naked before the indifference of a cruel Nature. Yet people still live here - have lived here for thousands upon thousands of generations. Generations heaped upon one another like stones in a wall of time whose foundations go back to lost times. Choice doesn't come into it. Each of us is a stone in that wall. We inherit the world we find ourselves in from our forebears. Some people are fortunate enough to be born into less harsher climes where life is not such a struggle every day. Others, like these Somal are not so fortunate. We must make-do or die. Fortunately most people make do.

_______

The times they are a-changin'

Imperial rising...come on Imperial!

Discover the top 100 universities in the world from the THE - QS World University Rankings.

2007 Rank	2006 Rank	School Name	Country
Source: QS Quacquarelli Symonds (www.topuniversities.com) Copyright © 2004-2007 QS Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd. Click here for copyright and limitations on use.
1	1	HARVARD University	United States
2=	2	University of CAMBRIDGE	United Kingdom
2=	3	University of OXFORD	United Kingdom
2=	4	YALE University	United States
5	9	IMPERIAL College London	United Kingdom
6	10	PRINCETON University	United States
7=	7	CALIFORNIA Institute of Technology (Calt...	United States
7=	11	University of CHICAGO	United States
9	25	UCL (University College London)	United Kingdom
10	4	MASSACHUSETTS Institute of Technology (M...	United States
11	12	COLUMBIA University	United States
12	21	MCGILL University	Canada
13	13	DUKE University	United States
14	26	University of PENNSYLVANIA	United States
15	23	JOHNS HOPKINS University	United States
16	16	AUSTRALIAN National University	Australia
17	19	University of TOKYO	Japan
18	33	University of HONG KONG	Hong Kong
19	6	STANFORD University	United States
20=	35	CARNEGIE MELLON University	United States
20=	15	CORNELL University	United States
22	8	University of California, BERKELEY	United States
23	33	University of EDINBURGH	United Kingdom
24	46	KING'S College London	United Kingdom
25	29	KYOTO University	Japan
26	18	École Normale Supérieure, PARIS	France
27	22	The University of MELBOURNE	Australia
28	37	ÉCOLE POLYTECHNIQUE	France
29	42	NORTHWESTERN University	United States
30	40	University of MANCHESTER	United Kingdom
31	35	The University of SYDNEY	Australia
32	54	BROWN University	United States
33=	50	University of BRITISH COLUMBIA	Canada
33=	19	National University of SINGAPORE(NUS)	Singapore
33=	45	University of QUEENSLAND	Australia
36	14	PEKING University	China
37	64	University of BRISTOL	United Kingdom
38=	29	University of MICHIGAN	United States
38=	50	The CHINESE University of Hong Kong	Hong Kong
40	28	TSINGHUA University	China
41	31	University of CALIFORNIA, Los Angeles (U...	United States
42	24	ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of T...	Switzerland
43	38	MONASH University	Australia
44	41	University of NEW SOUTH WALES	Australia
45	27	University of TORONTO	Canada
46	70	OSAKA University	Japan
47	66	BOSTON University	United States
48	69	University of AMSTERDAM	Netherlands
49	43	NEW YORK University (NYU)	United States
50	46	The University of AUCKLAND	New Zealand
51=	32	University of TEXAS at Austin	United States
51=	63	SEOUL National University	Korea, South
53=	58	HONG KONG University of Science & Techno...	Hong Kong
53=	78	TRINITY College Dublin	Ireland
55=	79	University of WISCONSIN-Madison	United States
55=	84	University of WASHINGTON	United States
57	73	University of WARWICK	United Kingdom
58	44	University of CALIFORNIA, San Diego	United States
59	17	LONDON School of Economics and Political...	United Kingdom
60	58	HEIDELBERG Universität	Germany
61	96	Katholieke Universiteit LEUVEN	Belgium
62	105	University of ADELAIDE	Australia
63	86	DELFT University of Technology	Netherlands
64	111	The University of WESTERN AUSTRALIA	Australia
65=	90	University of BIRMINGHAM	United Kingdom
65=	98	Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München	Germany
67	82	Technische Universität MÜNCHEN	Germany
68	102	University of SHEFFIELD	United Kingdom
69	61	NANYANG Technological University	Singapore
70	85	University of NOTTINGHAM	United Kingdom
71=	111	UPPSALA University	Sweden
71=	61	DARTMOUTH College	United States
73	77	University of ILLINOIS	United States
74=	56	EMORY University	United States
74=	124	University of YORK	United Kingdom
76	109	University of ST ANDREWS	United Kingdom
77=	127	PURDUE University	United States
77=	88	University of PITTSBURGH	United States
79	111	University of MARYLAND	United States
80=	141	University of SOUTHAMPTON	United Kingdom
80=	121	University of LEEDS	United Kingdom
82	53	VANDERBILT University	United States
83	81	University of GLASGOW	United Kingdom
84	90	LEIDEN University	Netherlands
85=	87	University of VIENNA	Austria
85=	116	FUDAN University	China
85=	60	CASE WESTERN RESERVE University	United States
88	176	QUEEN'S University	Canada
89	95	UTRECHT University	Netherlands
90=	99	PENNSYLVANIA STATE University	United States
90=	118	TOKYO Institute of Technology	Japan
92	102	RICE University	United States
93=	181	Université de Montréal	Canada
93=	54	University of COPENHAGEN	Denmark
95	48	University of ROCHESTER	United States
96	170	University of CALIFORNIA, Davis	United States
97=	145	GEORGIA Institute of Technology	United States
97=	133	University of ALBERTA	Canada
99	141	CARDIFF University	United Kingdom
100	116	University of HELSINKI	Finland