Misc

I grabbed a newspaper when I was travelling home yesterday, because I was in danger of running out of the novel I'd brought with me (Nobody's Son by Sean Stewart, which is shorter than it looks). This meant I happened to see the obituary of R John Rayner. He was a great man, one of the generation who transmitted the intellectual tradition of the former German Reform world to British Progressive Judaism after the war. He also married my parents. Blessed is the Judge of truth.

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I have discovered that I didn't win the New Scientist essay competition I entered a while back. I am mildly disappointed but I didn't have any grand expectations. The good thing about this is that I can now make the essay public, since I'm no longer trying to publish it in the real media. So if anyone wants a basic summary of what I did for my PhD, I refer you to Death of a cellsman. Thanks to everyone who helped me write this, by the way; obviously those who were in the filter I originally used for discussing my competition entry have already read something not very different from this final version.

Shakespeare meme

There's a meme going round where you have to quote Shakespeare. I don't know if it means actually quote from memory; if that's the case I'm rather at a loss, because although I know a fair amount of poetry by heart, very little of it is by Shakespeare. I could probably make a stab at Full fathom five... but I'd likely mess it up quite a lot.

So I'm going to assume you're allowed to go and look up some Shakespeare. And what I'm going to quote is Juliet's solliloquy from the opening of III.ii. Because I don't think I've seen this particular piece quoted anywhere I read, and because I connected to the eroticism of the words when I was too young to understand what actual sex was about. (Yes, I was late in catching on to all that, especially compared to Juliet herself, but hey!)

( Capulet's orchard. Enter Juliet )