Thursday, May 26, 2011

Status Update

I'm getting close to sending a full draft of the thesis to my supervisors (and I mean 'close' in terms of time, not coherence), and while I'm not close to finishing just yet, here is my research to date in (approximate) figures:  

Monday, May 16, 2011

Flying the Flag... of Turkey? Azerbaijan in the Eurovision Song Contest

I trust you have packed away your face paint and gnome hats and recovered from the glory that was Eurovision 2011. If you were not too sozzled from the drinking games during the event itself, you may have been moved to ask: Why did the Azerbaijani entrants, this year's winners, wave the Turkish flag?

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

The Elephant and the... Post-War Nation-Building Project?

Do you know the Black Books episode where Bernard and Manny decide to write a children's book? The finished product, The Elephant and the Balloon, is awesome.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Being and Not-Being Smart

At a recent gathering of like-minded postgrad lady folk we got to the topic of being, and not being, smart. Specifically the kind of smart that makes one postgrad or academic stand out from the rest: we can assume some basic level of intelligence in the cohort as a whole, but there are some people who make the rest of us wistfully sigh with an envious "She's really smart (not fake-smart like me or even normal-smart like him)."