This is the first weekend more or less to ourselves in quite some time. I have been day-dreaming about it since Wednesday: sleeping in, cooking, reading, catching up on television, meditating, doing the monthly forecast. (Have you done yours? Sun sign astrology was the hands-down winner again this month.)

Here are a few things I have been playing around with or reading in the last few days.

Farewell Diana Wynne Jones

“Only thin, weak thinkers despise fairy stories. Each one has a true, strange fact hidden in it, which you can find if you look.” Interested?

How Google changes what we eat

I’m very uncomfortable about this development although I predict it will lead to new recipe delivery methods -both P2P sharing and a renaissance in independent digital publishing of cookbooks for love rather than money. Home cooking is the new rock and roll.

Couple are threatened with a curse for Buddha hedge

I know playfully I chastised Lyn for linking to the Daily Mail but this story is juuuuust amusing enough to briefly visit. Do not read anything else on this hateful, formerly-pro-Nazi piece of trash!

This is why England is so cute

Rude names! Here are the National Trust’s silliest walks. It’s Spring so look get amongst them. These aren’t, by a long shot, the rudest names in the land, of course. This is. I work around the corner from Cock Lane which got its name for the very same reason.

Moving medieval armies (video)

You can probably tell that this really appeals to me. It’s adding math to something that was previously fun and it’s just the kind of terrain that black swans like to live in (the terrain where low probability/high impact events can be game changers).

My big fat Ancient Egyptian Wedding

I’m going to be in Scotland while this is on but if you’re in London go to this and then tell me about it. Looks awesome.

Bali: Dancing For The Gods

Another to see. This one I’ll be able to get to. Expect a review if it’s good. Oh and this one too because so many of us are such great big nerds.

More math! The Anti-Predictor

I think I found this via the amazing Kyle Findlay yesterday. Also possibly the medieval army one. Whatever, he was on twitter fire this week. Follow him. Rocks my world.

Great interview. “Predictability is elusive because randomness holds much more sway than most of us would like to believe.” You already know I’ve wishlisted that baby.

Humans are evolving pointier fingers

Another thing to blame Steve Jobs for, I suppose. This both delights and terrifies me. Unintended benefit: it will be easier for our great-grandchildren to get the last (fucking!) olive out of the jar.

How academia is changing in a financially straightened world

Great essay. I particularly like that it is shot through with realism rather than resorting to “oooh, oooh, we simply must have more funding for my crucial history of daffodil cultivation.” Must we, though? Really?

Funny, thoughtful and ties in with the growing realisation that university will return to its bourgeois roots. Think about it: how information and learning connects with more information and learning has fundamentally changed. Degrees are no longer the best way to prepare humans in the developed world for the majority of jobs in the new labour market. (I said majority. No flaming.)

The idea of a world where great swathes of research is democratised or at least de-academised is rather appealing. Think about that whole Triumph Of The Moon thing a while back.

But then, I’m pro-chaos, aren’t I?

Is sexual preference down to serotonin alone?

Probably not. But it certainly seems like a big part of it. This is included for its relevance to my belief rant: Don’t hang your identity on something so chemically malleable.

Hypothetically building a new religion

See if what they come up with looks at all familiar to you.

Charity as magical target selection

Since leaving the NYT, Freakonomics has been a bit variable in its output. This is great, however. It’s further development of the whole “don’t give to Japan” thing.

An addition to the whiskey/rant material

Because ancient people saw the sea as a highway, not a barrier. In fact, everyone did right up until the Middle Ages. We’re all seafarers at heart.

Rebooting myself

On a personal note, I’m also rebooting my muggle blog now that I have a new job with greater…. ummm…. “brand flexibility”. The aim is to post there half the time and here the other half. Subscribe, share, blah blah blah.