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

Shhh! The biggest idea ever!

Charles Darwin had a big idea, arguably the biggest and best idea ever. And like all the best ideas it is beguilingly simple. In fact, it is so staggeringly elementary, so blindingly obvious, so amazingly ‘dud-duh why didn’t I think of that?’, that although others before him had had inklings of the truth, nobody thought to look for it in the right place. Darwin had 5 years to look for it; and he did so as the official naturalist onboard HMS Beagle - a sailing vessel that spent 5 years travelling the globe from Brazil to Tierra del Fuego - and from the Galapagos to the Malay Archipelago. When he arrived back in England Darwin sat on his idea for 20 years before finally telling the world about it. Why? Because he was scared. He knew it would change everything.

Darwin’s big idea is that of evolution by natural selection published in On the Origin of Species, that gave biology its guiding principle, a governing law that helps the rest make sense. Understanding its cold, beautiful logic is a must. If you want to understand life this is the place to start.

Natural selection's explanatory power is not just about life on this planet: it is the only theory so far suggested that could explain life on any planet. If life exists anywhere else in the universe then some version of evolution by natural selection will almost certainly turn out to underpin its existence. Darwin's theory works equally well no matter how strange and weird and wonderful that extraterrestrial life may be - and my tentative guess is that it will be weird beyond our wildest imaginings.

But what makes natural selection so special? A powerful idea assumes little to explain much. It does lots of explanatory 'heavy lifting', while expending little in the way of assumptions or postulations. It gives you plenty of bangs for your explanatory buck. Its Explanation Ratio - what it explains, divided by what it needs to assume in order to do the explaining - is enormous.

If any reader knows of any idea that has a larger explanation ratio than Darwin's, then I wanna hear it. Darwin's big idea explains all of life and its consequences, and that means everything that possesses more than minimal complexity – that includes you, and me, and the cat next door. It explains flowers and the bees that buzz about them. It explains mushrooms and HIV and athletes-foot-fungus. It even explains accountants. Now that’s what I call explaining! All this explaining is equal to the numerator of the explanation ratio, and it is huge.

Yet the denominator (the number at the bottom of the fraction) in the explanatory equation is spectacularly small and simple. The denominator is: natural selection, the non-random survival of genes in gene pools (to put it in neo-Darwinian terms rather than Darwin's own).

You can winnow Darwin's big idea down to a single sentence (again, this is a modern way of putting it, not quite Darwin's): 'Given sufficient time, the non-random survival of hereditary entities will generate complexity, diversity, beauty, and an illusion of design so persuasive that it is almost impossible to distinguish from deliberate intelligent design'. We don't need to add mutation to our assumptions. Mutational 'bucks' are provided free. 'Given sufficient time' is not a problem either - except for human minds struggling to take on board the terrifying magnitude of geological time. Look around you, the illusion of design is everywhere in the living world. So powerful is this illusion, so soft and comfortable and beguiling is the cotton wool over our eyes, that the spell of the illusion was only recently lifted 150 years ago today. Yes, 2009 is the 150th anniversary of Darwin's big idea - And our eyes are still accustomising to the brilliant new view.

It is mainly its power to simulate the illusion of design that makes Darwin's big idea seem threatening to a certain kind of mind. The same power constitutes the most formidable barrier to understanding it. People are naturally incredulous that anything so simple could explain so much. To a naive observer of the wondrous complexity of life, it just must have been intelligently designed.

But intelligent design is the polar opposite of a powerful theory: its explanation ratio is pathetically titchy. The numerator is the same as Darwin's: everything we know about life and its prodigious complexity. But the denominator, far from Darwin's slim and minimalist simplicity, is at least as big as the numerator itself: an unexplained intelligence, a ‘designer’ big enough to be capable of designing all the complexity we are trying to explain in the first place!

I'll end on a subtler legacy of Darwin's big idea. Darwin raises our consciousness to the sinewy power of science to explain the large and complex in terms of the small and simple. In biology we were fooled for centuries into thinking that extravagant complexity in nature needs an extravagantly complex explanation. Darwin triumphantly dispelled that delusion.

There remain deep questions in physics and cosmology that await their Darwin. Why are the laws of physics the way they are? Why are there laws at all? Why is there a universe at all? Why is there anything? Once again, the lure of 'design' is tempting. But we have the cautionary tale of Darwin before us. We've been through all that before. Darwin emboldens us - difficult as it is - to seek genuine explanations: explanations that explain more than they postulate. Darwin’s big idea is with us for good. There’s nothing quite like it to tear that wool from our eyes!

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Coming soon...Life Trips

What is it like to be a spider threading a web or an eagle in flight? What is it like being a whale in depths or a pollen grain wafting above the earth? What is it like to be in love if you're a 200,000 year old human ancestor? Do you know love? Do you understand what it is? What is it like to be a drop of water recycling for a million years or a pebble burnished mercilessly by the tides? What is it like to be Homo erectus struggling to untangle the mystery of the moon? Is the moon far? If I climb that mountain can I touch it with my hands? What are these stars that dazzle me at night - are they fires from distant worlds? Where did she go, will I ever see her again? What is life? What is this? What is that? What is it all for?

L'art de BookWorming

Panoramic Karakoramic Highway - Pakistan

left-hand-side

right-hand-side

Crystal air views - misty morning dews - sleeping bag wet - slept all night - under starry canopy - meteor streaks venting - impossible things thought. Yawnings release me - tired muscles ache - i sleep & think of you - rustling warily - in my dream. Wake-up to - delicious ice cold - fresh mountain stream - breakfast of sip - of water only. Breakfast of water - and gulp of  morning air - i dream of - ice cold milk - drenched over cornflakes. A place like this - or cornflakes? I choose cornflakes - i hate my stomach - leave it behind - i wish i had. Mutinous sac of acid - spoiler of view - tormenter of me - causer of misery - wanter of cornflakes - which one's? Kelloggs!

Currently listening to... Album: 'Journal for Plague Lovers'

Song no 9 :  Doors closing slowly

The shadow is the cross ok - judgement must be willing today

Silence is not sacrifice - crucifixion is the easy life

[Video: Vagabond Productions (C)2009]

Song no 4 : This joke sport severed

This joke sport severed - I endeavoured

To find a place - where I became untethered

[Video: Vagabond Productions (C)2009]

JOURNAL FOR PLAGUE LOVERS by 'The Manic street preachers' - press Reviews:

Q - 'Simply a phenomenal rock record' *****

Uncut - 'A brave compelling record, stands shoulder to shoulder with The Manics best' ****

Sunday Times Culture - 'Great riff follows great riff.  A triumphant album' CD OF THE WEEK *****

Mojo - 'A band aligning with its purest impulses - A triumph' *****

The Fly - 'The Manic Street Preachers have re established themselves as one of the most important bands of our generation' **** ½

Maxim's Album Of The Month - 'The Welsh legends have well and truly found their voice again - This is essential'

Attitude - 'Stands up on its own as an angry, violent, unique piece of art'

Kerrang! - 'This is a record that HAD to be made, and it's an essential buy' KKKK

Independent On Sunday - 'The album of 2009 hands down no contest'

Clash Magazine - 'The spirits have lifted, the future is clear, welcome back Manic Street Preachers' 10/10

Observer Music Monthly - 'Not just a dignified salute to an absent friend but a cracking album in its own right' *****

The Guardian - 'A passionate rock album that honours the past, yet is very much of the present' *****

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