Should probably be working...

Caught up in the emotion of seeing a perfectly good toothbrush blown out of an open window to an untimely end, I may have allowed myself to exaggerate some details of this incident in my last post.
One assertion on which I would like to put the record straight is my claim that I was "pondering over many quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore". I was doing no such thing. I was in fact reading Moondust, allegedly written by housemate my Andrew Smith, although I'm suspicious of this claim. I think it was just a marketing technique to make Andrew buy it.
Questions of authorship aside, whoever wrote it certainly penned an engaging read. Although the occasionally conversational tone and fluid references to popular culture sometimes tricked me into thinking that I was reading a 350 page magazine article which would have been well at home in G2, it was nonetheless insightful. The book's central thesis is that of the twelve men who have walked on the moon, nine of whom are still alive, soon there will be no living person who has had the experience of standing on the moon, looking back a quarter of a million miles to Earth.
With the aim of meeting and interviewing those surviving nine men, Smith explores the effect the lunar landings had on them (namely, how can you top walking on the moon with most of the world watching?) and, most interestingly, offers fascinating insights about what exactly drove humans to the moon. Ultimately for Smith, the lunar landings are as much about what they told us about the moon, as what they told us about ourselves.

In other news, there has been alot of hilarity this week with UKIP, after Cameron described them as "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists mostly". They certainly seem bafflingly proud that they have a Hitler quote as part of a random selection which greets visitors to their website (alongside the obligatory Churchill quotes, a perplexing quote from TV personality and well known political commentator Carol Vordeman and a whole bunch of quotes by that inspirational speaker, Jeffrey Titford MEP). Meanwhile Tory MP Bob Spink made an inexplicable contribution to the debate when he suggested that "UKIP supporters are no more racist than Tories were in the last election". Sorry, what? Well if there was any doubt about the fruitcake and loony charge it must have been crushed by the weight of Nigel Farage's amoured personnel carrier as he pulled up outside the Tory party conference, punning about parking UKIP's tanks on Cameron's lawn and delivering an 'impromptu' speech to about 30 UKIP supporters wearing Union Jack hats. How Churchillian of him.

Inside the conference hall, Cameron continued his new strategy of down playing his party's electoral chances, insisting that they have 'a mountain to climb'. Am I the only one thinking that in fact what he's saying is "oh, go on, vote for us, it'll be OK, because we won't win"?

I should get back to work now: I have a lot to do before the apparently secular Imperial College closes for Easter.