I'm a squirrel when it comes to information. Who knows when you might want stuff, after all? Especially when you're involved in education.

The problem is, like the dear old squirrel, I sometimes struggle to locate these nuggets again when I need them.

If they're directly related to my work, there's not too much of a problem. They're sensibly stored in a logical series of fairly well organized folders.

But what about those other snippets -- not necessarily work-relevant but life-relevant? Well, they end up in strangely named folders in difficult-to-remember places, or in lists of webpage bookmarks, or as links in my diary, or in notes on Evernote, or wherever.

So why don't I try storing them here? After all, there are many kinds of food, and many ways to travel...

By way of experiment, here's the first batch:

The Real Africa, by David Brooks, I found terribly poignant. So it's still being peddled, then, this ridiculously simplistic, disparaging, patronizing picture of Africa... This was precisely the problem Mercy and I wanted to tackle in our book. Which never got written. Because Mercy died. And I bottled out and tried to write something easier. Which wouldn't sell.

I looked up the essay he quoted: How To Write About Africa by Binyavanga Wainaina. Blistering.

I remember my little piece of Africa for its talent, its enterprise, its exuberance, and its dignity. I miss it.



This Narrated Life, by Maria Tumarkin, is a reflection on what story-telling (which is currently very in, it seems, although I didn't know that) can and can't do. We "cannot do all our thinking through stories", she warns. And yet, she notes the view of neuropsychologist Paul Broks that "our self, as something unified and continuous with the past, present and future, has 'a narrative structure'. The thing holding our self together is, in other words, stories." Fascinating, and closely connected with the reason I write a blog in the first place.

The Confidence Gap, by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, is in many ways a depressing read: a key reason for the absence of women in key positions is their "acute lack of confidence". This proposition is backed up in example after example, experiment after experiment.

So it's not just me, then...

Bizarrely, I have found this information encouraging. A couple of times this week I have caught myself thinking, "If the statistics are to be believed, I am probably not doing this as badly as I think I am..." We'll see how this frame of mind survives the coming weeks...

Meanwhile, I can make my female students aware of this debilitating trait, to see if I can similarly encourage them. We meet lots of apparently very confident girls here. So what happens, and when does it happen?



And, finally, Photos of Hamster Rear Ends Are Hit in Japan, by Jun Hongo, is self-explanatory -- if inexplicable.