A colleague of mine gave what was meant to be an informal talk on this work this afternoon. I'm fond of our series of "colloquialisms" (as they're called) since it's a good chance to find out what my peers are actually working on. So often I can only remember that it's "something to do with the recent history of medicine" or the like. Ted's working on aspects of the Human Genome project in Canada. I say it was meant to be an informal talk. Technically, it was, but Ted was inspired by the commitment to give us this talk into accomplishing a great deal indeed in the past week on his work, including a reasonably good powerpoint presentation to go with it.

Despite my recent resolution to avoid talks and accomplish more, I'm going to four of the things in the next week. They all fit nicely into my schedule without need for me to kill time waiting around for them to start, and they're all either especially interesting topic-wise, or else relevant to me. Anthony Grafton, for example, is speaking on “Magic and the Disciplines of Learning in Renaissance Europe.”

Just think... only 5 percent of LJ users pay for their accounts, but only that same 5 percent were able to post this afternoon. (I've no idea if the site problem's been fixed yet, so for all I know, they still are the only ones.) (Idle interest in the whole subject of free vs. paying services online is why I idly follow the End of Free journal.)