On Tuesday I went to two seminars. The first was on microsimulation of traffic flows, in the e-Research centre. This was interesting, but pretty superficial - it felt more like a sales pitch than any kind of academic presentation.
The second was on "Resilience: a Social Science Perspective", in the Smith School for Economics and the Environment. This was pretty dismal. The speaker just rambled, (and spent a lot of time apologising for not knowing things) and I ended up leaving half way through, following the woman next to me.
I was tempted to stay around town for a lecture on astronomy and poetry in the Museum of the History of Science, but. it was getting cold and dark.
On Wednesday I missed a Science Society lecture by Nick Lane on "Energetics And The Evolution Of Complex Life", because it clashed with my gamelan rehearsal. Camilla went along to this and thought it was good - much better than his book Oxygen.
On Thursday I went along to a lecture on the "Systems genetics of complex traits and transcription", which was a bit of a grab-bag. That unfortunately clashed with talks "What's the Point of an Islamic Christology?" and "Knotted Feathers: Birds in South- Persian Rugs".