Be your own laboratory

When I wrote The Universe Inside You I wanted to include a series of experiments to try out as I had done in Inflight Science. The difference was that many of these experiments were going to involve using your body as a lab, with quite a few using the brain.

It seemed the best thing to do would be to put together a website with those experiments that aren't so easy to do on the kitchen worktop, as opposed to (say) dropping antacid tablets in vinegar or extracting DNA (both in the book). And while I was at it, I could provide a more detailed 'further reading' section with links to other books, as a good few people had suggested that Inflight Science should have had suggestions for finding out more.

The outcome was www.universeinsideyou.com - I originally intended this purely as an adjunct to the book, but I've showed it to a sample of people who assure me it is quite interesting in its own right, so on their recommendation it's worth taking a look even if you don't have the book, whether you want to see someone walk on custard, experiment with optical and audio illusions, hear a piece of music that has travelled at four times the speed of sound, or interact with a piece of software that pretends to be a human being. Take a look!

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Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp...

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense...

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

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