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Hi! Has the driving test happened yet? If so how did it go. *wonders whether to mention how many tests it took me to pass* *thinks better of it* Well 26 feels pretty old. Round here at any rate - I'm double the age of some of the regular contributers here! I actually bought Abba albums the first time round, but I'm surrounded by people who don't even remember the revival that happened about 8 years ago (Abbaesque,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], and the whole Bjorn Again thing.) But I know what you mean about 26 vs 28 - at 26 I can still reasonably claim to be in my mid twenties, and I suppose that might even hold as far as 27 (although I'm not counting on it.) but 28 is definitely into the late twenties. Still, I'm sure there are some advantages. Um. You've made me want to go out to the shops and buy some bacon now! The hugely embarrassing mistake? Well I was just thinking about suggesting that you hit the 'Preview Message' button before posting the message, as that would give you a chance to notice mistakes that Word has made on your behalf and edit them out. But then I remembered that it's precisely this kind of hubris that would make me look *particularly* stupid if I then made some blunder of my own. A blunder would have been inevitable had I said that, but I wisely chose not to, so I think I averted catastrophe. As for Kings College, when you say "stand in the market, walk in that direction", which direction would "that" be? If you mean "in the direction of Kings College", then well, yes, I suppose so. Kings is vast. If you stand in the market and face in the direction of the church, and then walk out of the market in that direction to the left of the church, you will be facing the Senate House. To the right of this is my college. To the left of this is Kings College. The most conspicuous feature of Kings is the chapel, a huge great thing that tends to appear on all of the post cards. It can also be seen easily from the other side of the river. (You have to carry on walking for about 6 minutes before you hit the river. There is a variety of colleges through which you can cross the river. Clare is one, Kings has the next bridge along, upstream of Clare.) I think from your description that you're talking about Garrett Hostel Bridge - it's the next bridge downstream from Clare, and is not part of any college's grounds (although I expect it's probably owned by one of them). You'll have Trinity on your right and Clare on your left at this point. (The playing fields are just some of Trinity's spare land.) If you turn left and walk along the muddy path,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], the first thing you pass will be the back entrace to Clare on your left. The next thing on your left will indeed be Kings. You are now looking at the classic postcard picture of Cambridge. And some cows. So in brief, I think the answer is 'yes'. When you said 'the shop opposite Sidney Sussex' my immediate thought was 'Sainsburys? I would never have described that as cool.' so I'm glad you clarified it! We used to have a Bens Cookies, but it made the mistake of opening in the Doomed Shop. There's this shop (just opposite Kings) which has had a wide variety of occupants, none of which seem to last longer than about a year and a half. It must be cursed. The Science Park is less fun than it might sound. It's just the home to a lot of high-tech companies. In fact all the genome mapping stuff is done somewhere else AFAIK, in a village about 20 minutes from here. What do I think about it? Well I've been in partial news blackout this week so apologies for any inaccuracies. But I'm glad it was published before the private enterprise version managed to lock the whole thing up. Is it scary? Well I suppose, but I think it's less of a fundamentally alarming development than cutting up corpses would have seemed when the study of anatomy was first beginning, and I think that has turned out to be a pretty worthwhile bit of research. So I'm generally in favour of medicine having a greater understanding of how our bodies work, and looking at our genome seems positively mild in comparison. I think the GM food issue has been thoroughly mismanaged now, but it's evidently too late to do anything about it, as it transpires that these things have been out in the environment for ages now, so I don't propose to worry unduly about it. But as for human genetics, well I guess that the next couple of hundred years will be full of interesting experiments, horrible disasters, public debate about the increasing divide of inequal opportunities due to financial circumstances while rich people go and spend their money on the latest treatments anyway. So much like most of history. OK, that's a massively cynical view. I'm being a little disingenuous though. I basically think that like most interesting developments in the history of the human race,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], it's exciting and potentially dangerous. Will we create monsters? Well possibly, but I find it hard to believe that they'll be any worse than what we're capable of wreaking without the aid of genetic modifications - human ingenuity for atrocity has rarely been significantly obstructed by insufficient technology. The whole imbalance wherebye the rich will have early access troubles me, but this is how so many medical treatments have become widely available: they start off as the preserve of the rich few, and then as the techniques are developed,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], they become standard practice available to all. Unfair though it may be to start with, if it's a fast and effective way do make the treatment available to all within a generation, then that's better than withholding from everyone for longer. And besides if a rich person wants both to fund the development of a new technique *and* be the guinnea pig, taking the risks then who am I to stop them? That's their personal choice, and the end result is better medical treatment for all. Cows. Right. I'll look out for them. You have a mobile *and* a laptop too? Hmph! I may have got this wrong, but I was under the impression that you were about 17 or 18? I know that mobile phones are ubiquitous now, but I thought laptops remained one of the few perks of being old. (Although when I went and did a little research at Harvard recently, I was amazed at how many of the students had laptops. But you have to be rich to go to Harvard, so I was less surprised.) How come you've got one of them then? Blacks? In Cambridge we have Heffers (book company only found in Cambridge I think) who are pretty big, two fairly large Waterstones (one of them used to be a Dillons; I think one of the Waterstones is closing - evidently they only took over Dillons to get their building!), and I believe Borders are planning to open a large store here too. Not heard of Blacks. I bought the book you recommended in Blackwells (the London branch on Tottenham Court Road), which I presume you're familiar with, living in Oxford. Orange cars in the 1950s? When exactly was the Ford Model T introduced? I thought it was a good deal earlier, and that is famously only available in black! But I've never been particularly into vintage cars,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], so I don't know much about anything that far back. Your Scam of the Century (hosted by Nicolas Parsons?) sounds intruiging. I shall await further details with interest! No, my curry didn't have bacon in it. In fact I don't think I've ever had a curry with bacon in it! Not sure if that would work too well. I'm not advocating speed as the be all and end all, otherwise I'd be saying the TVR was better. One of the reasons I like the Elise is that it's just right for the road - you can have enourmous fun in it without having to break speed limits all the time. A TVR on the other hand is only just getting going a 60mph. This is fine on a race track (where admittedly a standard Elise starts to feel a little underpowered - once you get over 100mph, your speed creeps up awfully slowly) but unless you are just driving on the track,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], it's a bit of a waste to have much more grunt. Building a car which is at its best between 60mph and 130mph seems like deliberately torturing the driver! I mentioned the 0-30 speed just to illustrate that the Elise starts giving its best right off the line. Whilst we're on the subject of age I protest at being called 17, I'm a very responsible adult.*evaluates dubious claims and wonders if she can get away with it*. well maybe not the slowest,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], the slowest would be the woman at the bank near us who counts out all your withdrawals in two pences and then forgets where she's got to and starts again, now she would be the slowest Cambridge has a doomed shop? It has a fun market in the little fenced bit next to the church that always has the music sale in it (that sells really cool lightbulbs - no really they're great) but I didn't know there was doomed shop. Like no-one seems to know about the rats that were fed the modified potatoes and died or the 300 (I think) people in the US who were left with permanantly damaging diseases after eating a particular GM drug. Also I can't help but feel that no-one's evaluated the long term effects of this stuff, they've done short term studies and five year studies which are alleged to show long term effects but they don't. I think in the next 50 years things will happen that people will be able to attribute to GM foods and by then it'll be too late to do anything, IMHO. As for medical treatment I read something really disturbing about that but I can't remember where so it's not much use. It was fairly obvious all about the fact that if the rich have early access to treatment it may become a repeat of the workhouse phenomenon where those less well off become less valued and get left to die whilst those who are rich are left to prosper and leave the poor in the gutter. Ummm, I don't live in Oxford? Where did you get that from, I'm leaving to Oxford in September but I don't live in Oxford at the minute, maybe that was it? See, the Ford Model T in black, that's cos black dried quickly and so could be used but the other colours took about three days and so were less good. Whilst we're on the subject of age I protest at being called 17, I'm a very responsible adult.*evaluates dubious claims and wonders if she can get away with it*. well maybe not the slowest, the slowest would be the woman at the bank near us who counts out all your withdrawals in two pences and then forgets where she's got to and starts again, now she would be the slowest Cambridge has a doomed shop? It has a fun market in the little fenced bit next to the church that always has the music sale in it (that sells really cool lightbulbs - no really they're great) but I didn't know there was doomed shop. Like no-one seems to know about the rats that were fed the modified potatoes and died or the 300 (I think) people in the US who were left with permanantly damaging diseases after eating a particular GM drug. Also I can't help but feel that no-one's evaluated the long term effects of this stuff, they've done short term studies and five year studies which are alleged to show long term effects but they don't. I think in the next 50 years things will happen that people will be able to attribute to GM foods and by then it'll be too late to do anything, IMHO. As for medical treatment I read something really disturbing about that but I can't remember where so it's not much use. It was fairly obvious all about the fact that if the rich have early access to treatment it may become a repeat of the workhouse phenomenon where those less well off become less valued and get left to die whilst those who are rich are left to prosper and leave the poor in the gutter. Ummm, I don't live in Oxford? Where did you get that from, I'm leaving to Oxford in September but I don't live in Oxford at the minute, maybe that was it? See, the Ford Model T in black, that's cos black dried quickly and so could be used but the other colours took about three days and so were less good. Yes they're the same group that make Mars bars, but this is the bit that makes coin validation units - every time you buy a ticket in the London Underground you're using one of Mars' bits of kit. Anyway,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], they gave me the fun job of taking an example of every coin in circulation in the world,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], and a good few that have long been out of circulation (a couple of filing cabinets full of coins basically), and measuring all of them. Weighing, testing resistivity, dimensions,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], design, induction characteristics. A few thousand times over. I developed a temporary hatred for the Baht (the Thai currency) and the Thai royal family: the royals are really popular in Thailand, and every time anything at all happens they issue a coin to celebrate it. There was a coin issued just because some none-too-direct relation of the king's had got into college! I spent a whole week along on their currency! (I quite liked Thailand when I went there though.) 26 is clearly so old as to be one stage away from 'grandparent' to most 8 year olds. I suppose it's things like the fact that shortly after I went to college, I saw a film that ended up making it clear to me that I had a clear knowledge of about a decade of history. (The opening credits were over a song that had first been released when I was beginning to become aware of pop music, and started from Maggie Thatcher's election in 1979 (the earliest bit of UK policitical history that I can actually remember happening) and ran through to the current day (1991 I think) with a series of striking images from across the years - some from popular culture, and some things like the iron wall being destroyed. I remembered every single one of them.) This frightened me as I'd previously got used to the idea that history was basically either stuff that happened before I was born,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], or stuff I was too young to remember. But suddenly I realised I had an entire decade of lucid context. That suddenly made me feel quite old (being,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], what, all of 18 at the time!) And here I am the best part of a decade further on, feeling *really* old! Billie? Pah! Just the other day, surely? OK I was pretty young when Abba were still releasing new material, but I certainly remember it. Bjorn Again are an Abba impersonation group (from Australia - home of the highly-accomplished tribute band, mostly because most western pop musicians can't be arsed to go as far as Austrilia on their tours) who suddenly became very popular in the early 90s and Erasure (heard of them?) cashed on in this by releasing an Abba tribute record of their own called Abbaesque. Bjorn Again then released a record called Erasureish. (Which was actually rather better than Erasure's effort, but I digress.) There has recently been another briefer Abba revival. Surely you must understand how this makes me feel old - not only do I remember the original, but I also remember the revival before the current one! (At least I've not quite got to the point where I've heard *everything* at least twice over. But it can't be long before there are cover groups playing Nirvana tracks to people who've never heard of Curt Kobain.) Well I'm pleased I could pass for 24 online. You might change your mind if you actually met me. Hard to tell though - you now know how old I really am. People who've not known my age have *always* overestimed. This used to be a good thing - it means I've never been asked for ID in a pub, even when I was 13! But when people think I'm over 30, that's less good. (Usually. Occasionally it's useful in my work for people to presume that I'm older than I am. But mostly it's just upsetting!) And yes,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], an adult can still buy a Buzz Lightyear toy. I bought one for a friend of mine (who's slightly older than me) last Christmas, so there! One of the reasons I don't have bacon in my house is that whenever I do,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], I tend to eat it. So what's your cookie store of choice in Cambridge? I've not found one to rival the sadly defunct Ben's Cookies so far. (Although I'm on a diet, so maybe you shouldn't tell me.) Strangely I don't have a miniature kite! How would that be useful? The Science Park is in one of those bits of Cambridge you wouldn't know existed without living here! (And most of the students have no idea where it is either, being barely aware that there's anything of Cambridge other than the historic centre. ) It's way out North,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], practically in Milton. Strictly speaking it's in Chesterton, only that's now merged into the rest of Cambridge. If you picture Cambridge on the map, you've got the M11 running more or less N-S to the left of town, and this intersects with the A14 which runs more or less E-W along the Northernmost edge of the town. go more or less due North) then the place where this hits the A14 is a good 200yds North of where the Science Park is. It's about as inconvenient a place as it can be relative to the station. (There is actually a station right by the Science Park, but Dr. Beeching thoughtfully closed it down a few years back.) Alternatively walk along the river heading roughly North and then bear left when you get to The Green Dragon pub. Or better still drop in at The Green Dragon for a swift pint then stay there until closing time. GM foods. Well I think certain companies were pretty reckless. But I also think the issue is misunderstood - I don't believe there is anything intrinsically evil with GM per se. People talk about it like it's something you can test for - like there's some equivalent to litmus paper which you can dunk into an organism and find out whether it's GM or not. This makes no sense - genetic modification is part and parcel of how we reproduce, so artificial attempts at it will not necessarily be measureably distinct from what nature does. The fact that certain experiments have shown certain GM strains to be poisonous shouldn't come as any shock - you can breed poisonous characteristics into vegetables the more traditional way too - breeding is somewhat more laborious, but it's still deliberately meddling with genetics, and it's something we've been doing for millenia. That said, I'm doing my usual trick of trying to see both sides of the debate, and having done one I'll now swap and do the other. We don't understand everything about DNA. We don't know how our attempts might differ in their consequences. There's no reason to suppose that they'll be any different from nature's own dicing with DNA, but the fact remains that we don't know. I think the right thing to do would have been to leave this in the laboratories for a good few years to come, but this isn't what's happened - loads of GM strains of one kind or another are already out there. This shouldn't have happened but it did. If you're having a hard time working out whether I'm for it or against it, this means that I've probably done a good job of explaining my position. I have a fairly complex point of view on the subject, and any attempt to characterise it as 'pro GM' or 'anti GM' would be misrepresentation. There are horror stories you can point to that centre around GM. But what about disasters that can be averted with it - famines we can avoid? If you think food tragedies are unique to GM, ask any patriotic Irish person what's the first thing that comes to mind when you mention trouble with potatoes. (You might want to choose your Irish person carefully if you don't want to be punched though.) The human race has a very long history of trying to exploit its new discoveries long before it understands them. The way we discover the pitfalls of any new technology is through experience rather than experimentation in most cases. I thing it's unfortunate but it seems to be human nature. I think we rushed in with GM foods but it doesn't surprise me. It doesn't worry me unduly. (I find antibiotic resistance plus the way some people take antibiotics like they were smarties considerably more worrying for instance.) As you say in 50 years it will be impossible to tell what is the result of GM foods and what isn't just as it's impossible to tell whether the relatively high rates of c
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