Arthur's Seat

Academic Earth

H/T Ian Douglas at the Telegraph: Academic Earth is a website offering lectures from US universities. Just beginning to dig into it - but it is a beautiful thing. Can the Russell Group come up with something similar?

An array of fresh talent

Yesterday we registered with BritBlog's new "Top of the British Blogs" site: this morning (due to our registration late yesterday p.m.) we are in the bottom 10 sites. However, the top ten are an eclectic bunch and definitely worth a look. Among them are:
A Welsh View (humour from the valleys)
UK Polling Report (a good grounding for the campaign)
Gordon McLean (a view from the west coast)

New kids on the block

Back to the UK as the election draws closer. Whether it is the approach of political battle, or simply the first buds of spring, but there is more activity in the domestic blogosphere. Freedom and Whisky links to a number of new sites, all close to home. One, the diary of an American intern in the Scottish Parliament, shows uncanny prescience in her reading of the prospects for the First Minister as today's Scotland on Sunday reveals. 

More intriguing is Mike Russell's call for the SNP to embrace more fully their tentative steps towards a low tax, pro-enterprise economy. The problem that the SNP has, though, is that with Russell and Andrew Wilson out of the Parliament, there is nobody in their parliamentary party - bar Jim Mather and Fergus Ewing - who really buy into Scotland being a small government, low tax, free enterprise economy. Perhaps Stuart Dickson can let us know if Mike Russell is whistling in the wind, or not.

Cinema Taxi

"Keep driving, I want to see the end of the film."

At the moment the ones I've been in with screens just show ads on a loop - at least there is a button to switch them off, and I can talk to the driver about more important things.

Google Scholar

Another small wonder from Google - a search engine for academic papers and other gems. (Hat tip to Knowledge Problem). Marvellous.