Keele this time, and applied ethics especially:

I found this sketch folded and tucked inside an old paperback copy of The Moonstone. The signature, ‘JRS’, belongs to my late father, John Seddon, who was quite an accomplished amateur artist when the fancy took him. What I should like to know is, who is depicted? Someone real rather than imaginary, I think. Other portraits …

Anticipatory student graffiti in Durham...apparently looks like this:

People who have wandered here via Image Search, such as the recent Mr. Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; Sky Broadband; FunWebProducts; GTB6.6; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; eSobiSubscriber 2.0.4.16; .NET4.0C; OfficeLiveConnector.1.5; OfficeLivePatch.1.3; AskTB5.6), have doubtless hitherto been disappointed by the overall lack of …

I have chanced upon an advisory called Rael’s Citation Guide for Weird and Difficult Sources. Disappointingly, though predictably, it turns out to deal with things like historical government documents; so here (from someone who once needed a notation for citing nonexistent people) are some tentative suggestions for those with really esoteric or exotic needs:

Sometimes it’s the peculiar sound of a Sermon against clipping (1694) that gives you a sense that either the past is a foreign country or at any rate other people’s doctrinal disputes are. At other times it’s the glut of peroration laced with occasional malice, as though every possible angle of the content of the text …

I seem to keep reading that an increase in tuition fees, whatever its faults, will at any rate create such a force of implacable demand for efficacious teaching that universities will be obliged to push their pedagogical standards strongly upwards. It will be illuminating to see whether this comes to pass.

There’s something peculiarly beguiling, perhaps because also frustrating, about mysteries hidden in plain sight. The fourth Kryptos code might be the most brazen, flaunting its undeciphered self on a sculpture outside the C.I.A. headquarters. Then there are the texts that might be meaningful: someone might verify tomorrow that the Voynich Manuscript can be deciphered to produce …

When you see an artwork ‘in context’, how expansive is that context? How far can a work move before it becomes ‘decontextualized... in a different space’?

A comment on health policy implies a possible principle of political justice:

‘Difficult Decisions Ahead on Mars’ (B.B.C. News)

...is clearly impeccable.

It is unfortunate that this term has already been used to mean something different, but I have not been able to think of a better label.

At long last this new site has reached enough of a functional state to be presented to the world at large. Here’s to a long and happy life for it...