Category Archives: This and that

A generous correspondent (much better at this Googling malarkey than I) writes: “Amethe Smeaton was the daughter of a colonial administrator (later a liberal MP) called Donald Smeaton. She was born in the late 1890s and was at Girton College … Continue reading →

I’ve had Carnap’s The Logical Syntax of Language on my shelves for over forty years. I can’t say it was ever much consulted; but I’ve been reading large chunks of it today, in connection with Gödel. Carnap’s book is often … Continue reading →

With all good wishes for a peaceful Christmas

Piled on my study floor — part of the detritus from clearing my faculty office — are some box files containing old lecture notes and the like. I’m going through, trashing some bundles of pages and scanning others for old … Continue reading →

If you want to insert LaTeX maths into a comment (‘cos the ascii mock-up of some bit of logical notation is just too horrible), then you now can. If ‘$ some-code $’ gives you what you want in standard LaTeX, … Continue reading →

Bother. All pre-bookable tickets for the Leonardo Da Vinci exhibition at the National Gallery are sold out from now to the end of the show in February. It would have been good to go a second time. But at least … Continue reading →

Three lectureships have been advertised, and the details are here. No, this isn’t the wildly overdue expansion of the Cambridge philosophy faculty from an establishment of twelve (as it has been for thirty years). I’ve already retired, Jane Heal retires … Continue reading →

We went today to the Fitzwilliam Museum to see for the first time (but definitely not the last) Vermeer’s Women: Secrets and Silence. A rather wonderful exhibition, astonishingly gathering four Vermeers in the same room, with another twenty-eight pictures from the Dutch ‘Golden … Continue reading →

Tim Gowers has begun what he plans to be a long series of posts on his blog giving advice for beginning Cambridge mathmos. But the posts should of course be of great interest for new undergraduate mathematicians anywhere. So spread … Continue reading →

It has been depressing to see the issue of abortion being politicised again in the UK, when a hard-won, decent and humane settlement has been in place. And it is particularly depressing for a philosopher to see that usual dreadful … Continue reading →