Cnap Chaochan Aitinn (NJ 145099, 715m) 20 kilometres 700 metres of ascent One of those Gaelic tongue-twisters, I’m afraid. The cnap bit (meaning “lump”) is pronounced “crap”. (No, really.) The whole thing is ˈkraʰp ˈxɯ:xən ˈaʰtʲɪn, “lump of the juniper stream”. (If the phonetics move you no farther forward, you can listen to a Gael … Continue reading Cairngorms: Cnap Chaochan Aitinn
zɛnəˈfəʊbɪə xenophobia: a deep antipathy to foreigners Recent political events in the the USA, Europe and elsewhere have meant that this word keeps popping into my head. It comes from two Greek words: xenos, “stranger”, and phobos “fear”. In Greek myth, Phobos was the god of terror; a son of Mars, the god of war. … Continue reading Xenophobia
Robert Smith: Grampian WaysNeil Ramsay & Nate Pedersen: The Mounth Passes It is clear enough where the Grampians begin; no-one is certain where they end. The limits of the range have been as elastic as the whims of cartographers, so that the word “Grampian” has become an uncertain scrawl on many maps. Robert Smith Grampian … Continue reading Two Books About The Mounth Roads
As I write, it’s only another month until Microsoft’s free upgrade offer on Windows 10 expires (on 29 July 2016). I am so looking forward to that day, in the hope that it’ll mean an end to Microsoft’s intrusive little pop-up messages in the lower right corner of my monitor, and their increasingly devious attempts … Continue reading Running Windows XP Under VirtualBox
The Crow Craigies Climbing Party originated in the late 1970s, back during the Cold War when “CCCP” was an initialism known to all.* This alternative CCCP wasn’t so much of an Evil Empire, more of a small group of Dundonian school friends, just starting to wander around in the hills accessible from Dundee by public … Continue reading CCCP 2016: The Far North
There is nothing in the writings of Shakespeare that does not argue the long and early training of the schoolman, the traveller, and the associate of the great and learned. Yet there is nothing in the known life of Shakespeare that shows he had any one of these qualities. “James Corton Cowell (1805)” James Shapiro … Continue reading James Shapiro: Contested Will
ˈɡræmpɪən If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a solitude … Continue reading Grampian
Cook’s Cairn (NJ 302278, 755m) 17 kilometres740 metres of ascent The guidebooks usually send you in to Cook’s Cairn from the south—from Tomnavoulin up Glen Livet and Glen Suie. But I wanted to walk in from the east, along part of the old drove road called The Steplar. There was enough room to run the … Continue reading Steplar Path: Cook’s Cairn
“The Apollo Moon programme is cancelled,” the man behind the desk was saying. “But the good news is you two good old boys are gonna get the chance to save the world.” This is a slightly odd one. In 1971 Arthur C. Clarke wrote a novella entitled “A Meeting With Medusa”, which won the Nebula … Continue reading Stephen Baxter & Alastair Reynolds: The Medusa Chronicles
Having recently criticized Tristan Gooley’s explanation of the tides, I felt obliged to try to do better myself. It’s a tricky job, and there are many partial and misleading explanations out there. So here goes. Tides happen to anything that is orbiting in a gravitational field. I’m going to hone down on the Earth in … Continue reading Tides