Prep for Kepler talk & good news for Emma

Today's History of Science lecture is on Tycho, who we failed to cover last year in the compressed version of the course. Afterwards I have a very brief talk with John to outline what my plans are for next week's Kepler presentation. He doesn't want to see it beforehand but will leave me to it - interrupting if he thinks it necessary. He has never done this before on this course, but seems confident that I know more about Kepler than he does and so it will all go ok.

At the LSE library I do a slightly random search of some sections and find a book on Pico della Mirandola that I had seriously considered paying £45 for only last week, Kristeller's Eight Renaissance Philosophers, a really interesting book on comets and popular culture, and the Cassirer (ed) volume, The Renaisance Philosophy of Man. Very pleased to have borrowed all of these.

While doing all of the above, I accumulated 11 missed calls, all from Emma. Either good news or bad. One was a voice mail and the news is good. She has been offered a job next year with one of the large American management consultancies - not necessarily he number one choice, but definitely good enough if nothing better comes along. So she can now relax from what has been an increasingly difficult process for her.

I only just managed to get my motivation high enough to go to my Biography class tonight. This continues to develop in very thought-provoking ways. Tonight we were mainly considering three of Peter Ackroyd's biographies, in very different styles. I hated one - the extract we had from Chatterton - I sharn't be writing anything like that at any point in the future!

Afterwards I walked back to Westgate with Katie who is writing a biography of a Tibetan Buddhist leader that she is associated with. With her interest in science fiction and Buddhism, she is probably the participant most like me on this course. Most of the others are more history or literature focused - and perhaps far more serious. Katie works in Birmingham and lives in Banbury, so attending the course is quite a commitment. Not sure I would do that trip after work