St Andrews overlayed on McCormick Place Convention Center at the same scale. Maps have been rotated to better illustrate size. Images copyright of Google.

The convention centre – and I’m not sure how much of it is used exclusively by SFN – runs from approximately Dean’s Court to Uni Hall. There are more than 29,000 people coming, which is more than three times the University’s faculty and student body, or about twice the size of the town including local residents. The workshop I attended today held about 300 people – that’s bigger than Melville, Dean’s Court, Sallies’, Uni Hall, John Burnett…

Stay tuned and get excited for future articles where I try to sum up some of the more interesting research here for the non-neuroscientists among you, including a series of multiple posts looking at depression. Also, since many of you will probably be new ’round these parts, check my updated About page.

That being said, I love snow. In fact, it’s probably because of the rarity of snow – and the inevitability of snow days given that whole grind-to-a-halt thing – that makes it so appealing. Imagine my disappointment, then, when I woke up to see green grass, grey skies and rain this morning. And wind. Oh, the wind we’ve seen these past few days…

Someone upstairs (and I don’t mean the lab) obviously hates me, because just as I had accepted that I wasn’t going to get to see a white-coloured town, I got to the front door it was not only snowing, it was snowing sideways. That lovely south-southeast gale that I woke up to was now battering ice flakes right horizontally outside, just in time for me to go to work. Fantastic, thought I, as I put my hood up and stepped out into this burgeoning blizzard. The best was yet to come, though: the gale decided it would be quite a giggle to shift to due west – in other words directly on my back. Even this wouldn’t be so bad as due east, but given the strength of the gusts, I was not in a ‘could-be-worse’ kind of mood. At one point as I had to literally lean back a few degrees so as not to be blown over, I actually turned around to see if someone was pushing me for a laugh.

I did see one of the more amazing sights of my life, though. The short cliff face that runs from beach to Cathedral was channelling the wind in such a way that the snow was – without exaggeration – falling up before flying laterally down Kirkhill. I knew this wouldn’t make for cheery walking given that I was still leaning back to keep from getting knocked down, so I ran – yes, ran: I wasn’t strong enough to walk into the wind at this point – into the Cathedral grounds and the wind-breaking their walls provided.

Once I was out of the sea wind, walking was a whole lot easier. My trouser cuffs were soaked, I was cold, and I was definitely redefining ‘wind-swept’. But, I was no longer cursing the weather; I was resuming hope for it to stick around and blanket the town after all. Got my morning coffee, left the shop, and wouldn’t you know it?

The bastard snow stopped falling. Blue skies; just in time for me to go inside.

That’s what I had for dinner tonight. Steak and Dark Island Ale pie with crust from scratch and all. Sure, my braids around the edge need a little work. And it took so long that I didn’t end up even tasting it until 21:30. But, given that no one was here to share it with me, I dare say it was good enough to win me a Michelin Star.

More than 1,300 Gazans died in the three-week military action, which Israel launched after Gaza’s Hamas government failed to stop militants firing rockets into southern Israel. The rocket attacks have killed 20 people in the past eight years. More than half of the Palestinian dead were said to be civilians and up to 5,000 people were injured. On the Israeli side 13 people died, including four soldiers hit by friendly fire and three civilians killed by rocket fire, and 50 were hurt.

Source: Times Online

This whole situation has nothing to do with religion, the legitimacy of the Hamas government, or Israel’s right to exist. It has to do with those four little treaties signed in Geneva that people have been all too willing to ignore over the past 8 years. It has to do with remembering that there is nothing in this world that can grant the authority to commit war crimes.

And yet, all we seem to be able to talk about is whether this appeal was too biased to be shown on the BBC.