Stars in their ancient eyes
Celestial bodies dictate the calendar and once stopped a war. John Barrow ponders their effect on the human race The Christmas story follows a star - or at least a triple conjunction of Saturn and...
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Object lesson
For Chinese art scholar Jessica Rawson, now warden of Merton College Oxford, object and text tell different tales. But in order to get the whole story we need both, as she explains to Simon Targett...
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Baroque and roll
What is in the musical canon - and what should be? John Davies asks music academics to nominate their noteworthy top ten. "Is there, or should there be, a canon of great works or great composers that...
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Balancing act is hard to follow
Far from a feel good factor, the expenditure cuts announced in the budget have in higher education provoked universal concern and despondency. Those affected - staff and students - are unlikely to be...
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Blair's flair for top hats
I must say that the hat you picture Tony Blair wearing on your front page, (THES December 8) is rather fetching. I wonder if he could make this his trademark, like Harold Wilson's pipe, or, since he...
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Eastwards gung ho
Wang Gungwu (THES, December 8) confuses two different arguments. One is that Asian countries must develop an intellectual orientation, possibly through changes in the educational system, which...
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Bishop's move in seat of learning
While I could not agree more with T. C. Simmonds that it is wholly inappropriate for a further education college to confer the title of professor on its staff (THES, November 24), it is important...
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New model argument
So is Roger Penrose (THES, December 8) an opponent of computer science, pathetically fighting for the superiority of physics over computing? I wonder what has caused this ludicrous bias? It seems to...
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Canon lore for musicians
In attempts to define the literary canon, the oldest works usually cited are the Iliad and the Odyssey, both of which are about 3,000 years old. This means that people got on fine without them for...
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United by a sense of outrage
Universities are in serious decline. Many senior academics have recently used this, and the latest round of Government higher education spending cuts, to argue the case for top-up fees as a way out...
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Phoenix needs help to rise
* Edinburgh University and Edinburgh District Council have joined in a town and gown initiative to help combat the trauma suffered by children over the past four years, Olga Wojtas writes. Nigel...
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Dynamic duo head south
(Photograph) - Alan Smithers and Pamela Robinson, the leading education and employment researchers, are moving their research centre from Manchester University's faculty of education to Brunel...
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Jet-X hitches Russian ride
An X-ray sensitive satellite developed by astronomers at Leicester University is intending to shed light on the darkest secrets of black holes. There are two types of black hole: small ones on the...
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A model of life on the ocean wave
(Photograph) - A micro-organism that lives in oceans may have a dramatic effect on global warming, Aisling Irwin writes. Scientists at the Southampton Oceanography centre are modelling the micro-...