Infective vector

Having been tagged by Epsilonica, I guess I should join in as best I can. The meme is as follows:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

So: six random things, trying not to copy Matt too slavishly.

1. I was still up for Portillo, and that election was the first in which I could vote. The line “a new day has dawned, has it not?” has since come to haunt me. We, as a people, may not have got to the promised land, but we have become rather more jaundiced about New(labour)speak.
2. In a former life I worked on (a descendant of) this project, as a temporary employee of the National Extension College. And a fun project it was too, even if it did mean editing batches of HTML files by hand and having to read web accessibility guidelines.
3. I can play a passable, quasi-finger-picked version of Street Spirit on the (acoustic) guitar. On a good (i.e. miserable) day, if no one’s around to mock, I’ll break out the vocal part as well.
4. I started university as a mathematics undergraduate, who didn’t want to continue with mathematics : my original half-baked, wishful idea was to switch into philosophy, having used maths as a Trojan horse to get in. My favourite subject at school was in fact history, in no small part due to some canny teaching. Still, as Rincewind was inspired to say, “Talent just defines what you do. It doesn’t define who you are.”
5. I have never learned to ride a bicycle. This is considered ironic if you live in Cambridge for five years, and pretty dumb in most other places, for that matter.
6. If you ever get me to cook for you, there’s a high chance you’ll get something with onion, garlic, green beans, black pepper, mushrooms, and fatty meat of some sort. Whether or not it turns out a mess depends on how much sleep or coffee I’ve had.

Right, I think that was suitably random, even if it was highly Pooterish. As I know hardly anyone on the blogosphere (having only recently started leaving non-pseudonymous comments), and I can’t really tag Matt again, I’ll have to settle for some of those whose blogs I enjoy, and who hopefully don’t mind a bit of wasteful distraction:

• Walt at Ars Mathematica, for gamely putting up with spats in threads;
• the gang at the Secret Blogging Seminar, for posts and comment threads like this one;
• John Band at Banditry, for general amusement, provocation and unexpected information;
• Richard Elwes, for writing articles at the “popular mathematics” level without recourse to the Mandelbrot set or the Monster;
• Jordan Ellenberg at Quomodocumque, because it’s always nice to see some love for White Teeth;
• and finally, Sabine Hossenfelder at Backreaction (mainly for this post).