Did he have hands? Did he have a face? Yes? Then it wasn't us.

You know how I saw some posters on the Parkland Walk suggesting nefarious council plans to turn it into a uniform, paved cyclepath? Hysteria, apparently. It seems to be in fairly safe hands and really they're just talking about improving drainage, a little cutback on some of the most overgrown stretches and some modifications at the entrances. So I don't think we need to mobilise the resistance for this meeting on Thursday after all. Many thanks to angelv for bringing this to my attention.

At least since my second year at Pembroke (when there was 1% difference in the marks receieved by a painstakingly researched, written and revised dissertation containing some moderately original work, and the essay portfolio thrown together from scraps over one deranged allnighter) I've been keen to spread awareness of one of the fundamental laws of everything: there is no necessary correlation between effort and results. I later discovered that William Goldman had beaten me to it, at least in the entertainment film, with his key advice about Hollywood: nobody knows anything. But finally, someone is taking the wider applicability of this idea into the mainstream of ideas - Nassim Nicholas Taleb, whose The Black Swan apparently argues that on the whole we have no idea what works and what doesn't, or what's going to happen, and that the best we can do is admit this and stop making ridiculous attempts to pretend the world makes any kind of sense.

Anyway, it's May Eve, isn't it? I think once the light has failed a little more, I may go a-wandering towards the bluebell wood...