Important Announcement

Tim is currently winning in the 'who is my favourite friend?' competition. Bad luck all you other not-as-great-as-Tim-friends! Now you know it is a competition, maybe you will try harder. Or assasinate the competition? ANYWAY Tim sent me a book and a CD and a postcard, so he rocks.

Things I will write about soon: Vast Austrian student protests, Radiohead.

Things I will write about right now: we visited a proper Austrian restaurant/ brewery yesterday, makes all its own beer. I drank the first good beer I've had since leaving England. Beer culture is mysteriously elusive in Wien, or at least you really need to pick your establishment. If it is a bar, it will not serve interesting beer. Yesterday I had both a dark lager in the style of those from Prague (ein prager Dunkler), which was definitely my favourite, and a smoked beer ('Rauchbier'). The list of potential places to drag Ed when he visits is getting perilously long...

And now I will just throw some more pictures out there:
BLURRY DARWIN + TORTOISE


What I see on my way to the computer room (Votivkirche)


Today went for a walk through the Prater at night, we reached the Lusthaus (above with cool moon ) at the S end, so walked in total nearly 9km, 4.5 each way!


A terrifying ghost for halloween fans out there. Thanks to Grace for teaching me how to do this!

Man I love this park. It is infinite. ('unendlich' auf Deutsch)

Ciao for now!

Darwin on a Tortoise

Before I explain the detail of my Darwin sighting, I will address other recent events. On Saturday I felt I should do something other than just lie on the bed all day, and so I set out for the Naschmarkt, Vienna's largest and most famous market. My original aim was to locate some high quality baklava, as I am missing it slightly, and also because there are some people who have never eaten it who must be converted.

The food part of the Naschmarkt is a long but thin strip of semi permanent stalls, shops, bars and restaurants. As I wormed deeper in I was surrounded on all sides by piles of delicious produce from Austria and its neighbours. There were many many hummus and baklava stalls, usually also equipped with bewildering arrays of stuffed peppers, garlic, aubergines, and diverse soft cheeses. There were traditional Austrian butchers, cheese shops, cake shops, several chinese shops similar to those in chinatown in london, and also indian food shops with heaps of spice packets. Unlike London these shops are far from ubiquitous, and I think it is definitely easiest and best to go to the Naschmarkt for any curry sauce or wasabi peanut and soy sauce requirements. There were also people selling mead and honey, real (ie fermented, not put in vinegar) sauerkraut and pickles, and pressed apple juice. I liken it to borough market with all the pretension and high prices removed. I think normal people go to the Naschmarkt just to shop, which makes it a much better place.

I tried a sort of turkish pancake with sheep cheese in it, because I needed something hot and greasy in the cold, and also a delicious hungarian bread tube (my words, not theirs). These consist of thin hollow cylindrical bread wrapped around rotating wooden rods for cooking, then rolled in flavouring (cinammon, chocolate, sugar, coconut) and given to you, piping hot. It appears Hungarian food is a force to be reckoned with, at least in the realm of street food.

After my joyful pass through the food market, I discovered the equally exciting antique market beyond, with piles of books old and new, old clothes, beuatiful watches, boxes of rusting clockwork, and possibly counterfeit or stolen roman artefacts. And the usual assortment of crockery, random meat mincers, paintings etc. Very very cool, and I had to drag myself away from a gem and mineral stall where there was a (to my eyes) genuine meteorite on sale. It was not labelled as such, so I entertained the possibility they might not realise what it was and sell it for cheap, but even if you didn't know it was from space, it was still made of gems and pure iron, so it wasn't going to be cheap...

The surroundings of the market add to the experience, for some reason the generic pretty viennese apartment blocks and offices are here decorated with flowing patterns and pictures. At the end of the day as I walked back through the market towards the cathedral, I was unable to prevent myself purchasing a teapot and a couple of excellent loose teas. Clearly I have become accustomed to living with Edward and his freely available tea, and am now in withdrawal.

I stuck my head in to the cathedral before going home, because I could, and watched about the first half hour of a service to dedicate a new organ. No actual organ playing before I had to leave, unfortunately. The atmosphere inside is amazing, it is more of a working cathedral than many I have seen (this country is supposedly 70% Catholic after all). When the choir started singing and I stood next to the banks of twinkling tea lights at the foot of an unfeasibly large column covered in saints and gothic embellishments, I definitely understood that it is possible to appreciate the atmosphere of peace in a holy place, even if you are an atheist.

On Monday was the national day of celebration, when Austria celebrates being Austria and everyone gets the day off. Apparently they are also supposed to be celebrating their constitutional neutrality, something I find hard to square with the display of helicopters, tanks, jets and other army equipment in the Heldenplatz. Several museums were cheaper, so I checked out the globe museum (the only one in the world!) for free. As I said to my companion at the time, I am glad I visited it but also glad I didn't pay. There is excitement to be had examining the mistakes and political changes of globes from the past, but most globes are not incredibly beautiful and the general shapes on them are pretty invariant, for obvious reasons. Still, it was nice to imagine the romantic dreams that seeing blank areas of map would conjure in previous centuries, and to mourn the loss of 'here be dragons' and the like.

I then visited the Natural History Museum again. The new Darwin exhibit was OK, and I admired the good job it did of explaining common misconceptions about evolution and genetics as well as telling Darwin's story. However I feel I might enjoy the story more in book form, when I didn't have to wander around in a hot room, and I did know a lot of the basics already. By far the coolest and most ridiculous thing was definitely the life sized darwin model in the entrance hall, where he is depicted riding a giant tortoise. More excitingly, the plaque nearby says that he ACTUALLY DID ride tortoises at the age of 26 when visiting the Galapagos. I'm sure we could lure a few more kids to the side of evolution with that information...

Blog-Os, the tasty, topical, DIGITAL cereal!

...Filled with just the right balance of nutrients and copyright indignation, for all you budding Doctorows out there! mmm. Tasty.

Now, to business!

One consequence of my more settled routine, and perhaps also a huge deluge of cultural delights in the past few weeks, is that I have once again not been very active in the tourism area. I have done many things, but none of them are really write home worthy.

The party on saturday night was fun, it had a high proportion of danish people. This didn't influence my enjoyment of the party positively or negatively really, but I did meet this great danish guy who cultivated a proper posh british accent and a love for all things british. He is the first non-UK person I have met to know Fawlty Towers. We resolved to create a more highbrow version of Borat where he unleashed his powers of absurdity and witticism on the unsuspecting (and naturally highly dane-prejudiced) public of our fair island. He also works for Carlsberg, thus his professional life is spent surrounded by free beer. A good man to know. After we had consumed a lot of beer, we went out. We ended up at some underground place which I would definitely not have paid for while sober, and we danced enthusiastically to lots of music I would not have ejoyed while sober. However, I was not sober, and the whole thing was very very fun.

On sunday, my major achievements were a) making a delicious sausage casserole/stew thing and b) being introduced to the fantastic (and surprisingly as old as me) Studio Ghibli film 'My Neighbour Totoro'. It is completely delightful, the kids are cute but not annoying, the parents are cool and sensible, the totoro are funny and strange and adorable. And I'm sorry Ms Kitefish, but I think the cat bus is pretty cool too. There, I said it.

Monday was also uneventful, though I did go for a long rambling walk around central Vienna, basically because I could. Damned cold. The perfect setting to get to know music in though. A friend has gifted me pretty much every note of music that Andrew Bird has ever played, and I am slowly working thorough it. At the moment, it is all good, but each album has one song that blows everything else out of the water. I am especially enjoying the little known first album from 1996, which is basically a folk record, rough violin reels with just the right level of wail to be sad and uncomfortable and lovely, without sounding twee or annoying or discordant.

Tuesday: lectures. Wednesday: less lectures, and I finally scanned in and started working on my mapping project. Luckily, Uni Wien has really wide screen, super fast, Adobe Illustrator 4 equipped PCs. The only downside is that unintelligible computer babble menu items are no more intelligible and considerably less easy to guess the function of when in German. Good news from today: Ed is coming to visit very soon! Finally I have a real life person to shamelesly show this place off to. I am looking forward to it. He'd better like art :-) and opera...

Thursday's lectures/practicals were BRILLIANT. I think maybe I have finally reached a level of geology where every single thing is new and exciting and complicated. The German thing helps too. I feel like I am learning more things as I am re learning old words in a new language. Isotope chemistry is getting very complicated, more fool past me... My favourite lectures are still Petrology though. I have a tiny hope that I might thus be able to pick one strand of rock-studies over another, but I'll probably be just as interested in the stuff I study next term. In the evening found (actually, I was taken to) a great 'oriental' (as in the orient express, not China) restaurant. Huge plate of the tastiest foods that area has to offer, tres lecker. My finnish language skills continue to improve at breakneck speed (ha) I can now say one, two and three, and occasionally pronounce written things slightly right.

Todays plan: nonexistent! Except, MUST WORK ON MAP.

My wish is my command, apparently.

So last time I wrote, I was all 'phew, I should do less stuff'. Clearly the world heard my plea, as this week I got ill for a few days and was unable/ more correctly unwilling, to do much more than lie around watching films. I managed to go to all my essential (ie 3rd year) lectures though, so I didn't suffer in that respect.

So, brief summary: Monday, did nothing except go in for a lecture that didn't exist (d'oh), and registered for the library (hurrah!). Tuesday, went in for a lecture starting at 8.30 to find it started at 8.45, causing brief paranoia that lectures were moving rooms to avoid me when I found the door was locked... After sitting through my 2 lectures, went home as felt rather weak. Thereafter lay around, remembered that my good friend William had left his hard drive of movies in my room, then watched the Matrix parts 2 + 3. As he later commented, of all his movies it was an odd choice but I didn't want anything too emotional and complicated (or at least with complications I cared about paying attention to). I found them more enjoyable than the torrent of scorn that has been poured on them in they years since their release would imply, but perhaps only because the bright sheen of hopeful expectation has long since blown away in the force of the inevitable light breeze of mild disillusionment (or some other I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue inspired phrase).

Wednesday watched the entire first series of 'Flight of the Conchords'. BRILLIANT. I dislike musical comedy, but these guys have the perfect touch, they are taking the piss out of whole genres of music while at the same time really respecting them, and they have created a pair of likeable but ridiculous characters. I especially like the episodes where typical sitcom/soap stereotypes get turned around, such as when protagonist Brett is used for sex by a deceiving american woman who claims she will be posted to Iraq the next day, or when both are subject to extreme anti New Zealand racism by their indian fruit seller.

Thursday is Lecture Day(TM). It appears my assumptions about the course I thought was just a rerun of something I did in 2nd year were somewhat wrong, about which I am excited and grateful. However I am definitely going to need to get some textbook reading going ASAP. Hydrogeology was fun, but not too difficult. Petrology was really complicated but super fantastic. This will not mean anything to non geologists, but my first lecture exlained exactly how we get those phase diagrams that we've been seeing since first year. The explanation was so simple in appearance yet it leads to very complicated things and I am glad other people do the maths for me at this stage, but still. So cool! Later did some late night film watching and music listening with a friend, Lola Rennt is still a genius film, and Tim, if you're out there, I listened to a Tom Waits song and it wasn't so bad! I played them the Fiery Furnaces and they didn't hate that, which is pretty much a first.

Friday did absolutely nothing, apart from watching vintage Terry Gilliam film '12 Monkeys'. Kind of cool, and not what you'd expect from a film featuring Brad Pitt and Bruce Willis as leads. Those guys have serious act power.

Today's plan: work then party. So simple to write, so hard to do...

Der Tom

Not the wittiest of blog titles

Oh dear, a lot to catch up on and it has only been 4 days. I need to do less or write more. I will now recount the past four days in this newfangled 'chronological order' thing I've heard so much about.

Thursday I had 6 hours of lectures. Hmmm. Starting at 9am as well. I was left rather exhausted, partly as I need to get back in the swing of lectures, and partly because 6 hours of geowissenchaftliches Deutsch as opposed to English definitely tires the brain a little more.

But what are my courses like? Applied Environmental Geology seems pretty cool, all stuff I haven't really learnt before, definitely not too easy, and I can understand the lecturer easily. This was actually the hardest lecture + practical as I was learning new words rather than figuring out the German meaning of old ones. Isotope Geology actually seems annoyingly similar to a course I took in 2nd year at UCL, but I figure I deserve a little bit of slack what with everything with being in German and all, plus this course will take a bit more of a detailed numerical approach which will be very welcome. Petrology seems the best of the three so far, engaging lecturers and the potential to learn lots of new complicated interesting things. Plus I even answered a question in it.

What's the best way to rest after 6 hours of lectures?? If you answered a) 'go to the house of your Polish friends and drink polish vodka/wodka with them', you would be right. Not much to say apart from POLISH PEOPLE DRINK VERY FAST. Luckily while I got very drunk, I was (as always, haha) reserved enough that I did not get into any difficulties. Once we had drunk lots of wodka and learnt a polish drinking song/toast called 'Sto lat' we retired to a nearby halls to a party. A very good evening was had by all.

Friday I had no lectures, which was excellent planning on my part. As far as I can remember I did nothing with my day, then went off to a friends for drinks, then straight to a big Erasmus party inside a massive mansion type place. I guess Vienna has so many lovely buildings they can afford to use some for clubs. A surprisingly fun night in comparison to some of the Erasmus events, the DJs played many UK favourites like Blink 182 and Blur, and then magnificently segued into Ska-P, (Europe's best left wing Spanish ska-punk band) and various other Ska-Punk-Reggae-Balkan gems. Did not get to sleep till veeeeery late. Consequently spent much of Saturday daytime lazing around again. Your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen!

Saturday evening saw a woeful party organised in the basement of our building, which most people quickly realised was a waste of time. It was selling beer for way more than it cost in nearby shops, playing far worse music than we could generate in our own flats, and was also an overheated, smoke-filled, poorly ventilated and unattractive basement. I thus retired upstairs with a group of (well, 2) like minded people, where naturally we talked about god, the meaning of life, the finer points of the New Zealandish, Finnish and English educational systems and the British concept of class until 4am.

I was very tired today (see a theme here?) but managed to be sufficiently awake by 3pm to go and check out the Belvedere, one of the many stately homes and gardens around Vienna. On the way we passed the incredibly large fountain by the soviet army memorial. The fountain kicks up so much spray that when the sun breaks through the clouds a bright rainbow forms in front of your eyes. Very cool, although soaking. Took some great photos, but I think Vienna makes anyone look good at photography tbh.
The Belvedere park was amazing of course, parks just aren't going to seem the same for me now without a vast stately home filled with famous art at one end... There was a great view over Vienna, all the spires of the churches of Vienna, the Stephansdom, the big wheel, the hills behind. Wow. There were also some mysteriously violent classical statues which I will research someday because seriously, why would 2 cherubs be subduing a woman and making her vomit water (ie it was a fountain). Also, why is the man below wrestling a crocodile??
Inside the Belvedere were vast marble filled rooms, painted ceilings, and a very lage amount of world class art, ranging from giant mythical tableaux to small landscape paintings, by way of expressionist Egon Schiele, impressionist Monet, and I'm not really sure-ist Gustav Klimt, including Mr Klimt's rather famous picture 'The Kiss'. This city really is spoiling me I think. When I get back to London I resolve to stay in this tourism habit, I have seen less of the treasures of that grat city than I have of Vienna. Bad Tom.

As we left the Belvedere at closing time the sun had just gone down and wispy clouds were hanging over Vienna. Very nice.

Fun in the sun

What? I had to title this post something. I am refering to the unseasonable (according to actual Austrians) weather we are having which led to 27 degree temperatures and bright sunshine today. I am not complaining.

I realise I left my dedicated readership in a terrible state of suspense the other day, so I must hasten to recount the further adventures of 'me trying to actually get a question answered by a petrologist.'

Let me tell you, it was not easy. Upon my return at 12 the next day, I was forced to wait 40 minutes before my coordinator reappeared. Luckily he was able to answer my question in about 5 minutes. Which of course he could have done yesterday. Ho hum, I am healthier for the walk (45 minutes now I know the way and if I want to work up a sweat). My mistake appears to have been thinking that there were rules. There are no rules! As long as I end up with my required number of credits (by attending and passing exams) nobody gives a damn what lectures I am going to, or even in what department for that matter. I had a paranoid feeling of being questioned about my presence at every turn, this is apparently not what will happen.

This is all very liberating, and though I'm not about to attend icelandic history modules or whatever it will make next semester's choices hugely easier. Plus it means I can follow my clever (and doubtless unoriginal) plan of turning up 2 out of 3 times a week to the equivalent of the 'geology 101' lecture. Now, of course I learnt all of it 2 years ago. But this is a huge advantage as I can refocus any effort that would otherwise be used up in trying to write notes, understand concepts or keep from sleep to make lists of vocabulary, most of which I can figure out from the context. I covered 2 A4 sides in german geo-vocab this morning. Otherwise the lecture would have been as boring as 1st year intro lectures always used to be, despite the novely of being in a room with at least 60 people.

Later on I went climbing with Ruth and 2 of her friends. Pluses: sunny sun, 30m+ climbing wall on the side of a giant concrete flak tower with an aquarium inside. Also, speaking the Deutsch for quite a while. Minuses: It appears if you don't do any serious climbing for like 8 months you get RUBBISH, plus I never had any endurance anyway as all I ever did was boulder. Soon though, climbing wall. Soon. Even if you do close for winter in 2 weeks.

Sprechening of ze Deutsch, I am actually encouraged to find that I might be improving. Or at least returning to a good level. People always compliment me on my language, but it is hard to tell if they are just doing that cos I am english and speaking a foreign language (seriously! we may stereotype the germans but our stereotype is that we are lazy buggers who can't ever speak anything but english. I am glad to be knocking it a bit).

I can now hold a shaky one to one conversation about uninteresting everyday stuff with a German (or Austrian taking pity on me and speaking nicely). In groups of people I can basically get what everyone is saying and if I have had enough alcohol, maybe make 1 witty comment per conversation. If the people in question are Austrian however, and especially my buddy and her friends, I cannot get much. Ruth comes from somewhere called Vorarlberg, the really mountainous bit right on the border with switzerland. So their dialect is by their own admission completely unintelligible. Damn hill folk :-)

Tomorrow, real lectures! And polish vodka. NOT at the same time.

"It's ups and downs you know, ups and downs" (but mostly ups)

I walked past a thermometer on the side of a building today. It said 20 degrees.

Heute I was supposed to meet with my coordinator and sort out actually maybe studying some courses at some point. To this end I set out to walk to the geology department of the university, located in a different and less central part of Vienna, but not much farther removed from my house than the main campus. My route took me back through the Augarten, where I paused to photograph my favourite flak tower once again in the beautiful late afternoon sunlight.

Still cool. I cannot help but imagine that had the war gone differently, the scene in the Augarten 60+ years later would not probably have been so different from today, save that the concrete behemoth would be a sparkly monument to victory rather than a graffiti covered, too expensive to demolish ruin.

Buoyed up by the weather, I entered the geology department via a torturous route through a door in an underground car park as all the maps of the campus (shared with the Wirtschaftsuniversitaet) were confusing and half erased. I was immediately struck by the sheer awesome size of the building, 5 stories and very long, connected by one giant open space with light streaming in from the glass roof onto rocks and dinosaur skeletons. And the view from the 5th floor over all of Vienna was an extra treat, especially as there were nice little groups of desks to work at while gazing over it. It made me weirdly happy to see even from a distance people who were definitely geologists, I think I miss the 'geologist' mindset more than the 'english person' mindset at present.

Had I not just discovered that my geology department was located in some form of modernist geology palace, finally reaching the office of my Koordinator and finding that he was just leaving to (I think) administer an exam, despite having specifically told me his meeting hours on the phone last week, would have made me a little angry. Luckily though, I was in a good frame of mind, so I was merely polite and organised a meeting for tomorrow at 12.
LOOK AT THE GEOLOGY PALACE! Complete with pterosaur. Didn't take photos of it all (there is way more) as I felt a bit self conscious wandering around with my camera like weirdo tourist in my own department.

The Wirtschaftsuniversitaet is conveniently located next to an incineration plant (Muellverbrennungsanlage or rubbish-burning-place) which would normally suck. Luckily this is Vienna, city of really cool stuff, so it is a super amazing architectural wonder by the legendary architect somebody Hundertwasser. Below is a lovely view of the main chimney shining proudly in the sun, with hills behind.
Then I walked back home, pausing only to take lots more photos of the Augarten...

Museum Crawl!

Last night was the 'lange Nacht der Museen'/ long night of the museums. Basically, almost every museum in the whole country (Austria, if you weren't paying attention) opens its doors from 6pm to 1am, and you can buy a ticket to as many museums as you want to visit for a measly €11... This is a BRILLIANT IDEA. There was a real festival atmosphere as parents and children wandered around from museum to museum, and combined with the natural beauty of the city and the bright full moon it was really a special feeling evening.

First museum was the clock museum of Vienna, and there isn't much I can really say other than it contained a vast number of incredible clocks, varying in size from beautiful pocket watches with tiny miniature paintings (the best I think) to huge astronomical clocks recording more things than I even knew could be measured. Other clocks were just stupidly ornate or included weird extra details like the clock that played a different tune (waltz, polka etc) for every single hour.

We then aimed for the Mozarthaus (my companion being a musician) but were distracted while lost and found the Schottenstift Museum. This appears to be a museum connected with a nearby monastery, originally founded in the 12th century. I had no idea what to expect in this place, and really, despite an overlying religious theme, there didn't really seem to be any definite rules on hat was included. Highlights were endless incredible 16th century paintings, a big set of panels of the life of christ from the middle ages, and the amazing wooden flooring of the museum itself, including one room floored with a 3 tone diamond pattern that made it look like a wall of cubes. Also cool were decrees on parchment or vellum written in 1200-odd, very odd to see something in handwriting from that time, and then to imagine it being handed over and read.

Next was the Mozarthaus. Parts of this were rather dissapointing, very little in the exhibition about Mozart and his time was actually directly related to him. The magical thing was finally reaching the floor of Mozart's flat, and looking out the window at exactly the same views he looked at while composing 6 pages of original genius music a day, or giving concerts to his contemporaries etc etc. The manuscripts of things he had composed were interesting as well, the rough, rushed appearance of each individual note really brought home how composers write in music like authors write in sentences.

A brief break for a fast food dinner led to my discovery of an originally Hungarian food called the langos (lAHNgosh according to wikipedia), a deep fried flat bread spread with a garlic sauce. Warm, terribly unhealthy and completely worth it. I am sad it has not taken the world by storm because it is probably one of the tastiest fast foods I have ever eaten.

Next we visited the Schatzkammer, the treasury of Austria through its various incarnations as kingdom, empire, seat of the Holy Roman Emperor, etc. This place was stunning, there was seemingly no end to the gold and jewellery on show. There were crowns (one from the 8th century) worn by every King imaginable, christening and coronation gowns, Knight's robes, dazzling reliquaries, preposterously large jewels (one emerald was over 2500 carats) ancient swords and spears, a cabinet for the storage of the keys to the coffins of the ruling line, chalices galore, and several purported pieces and nails of the true cross. Far from being jaded by the constant stream of unbeatable artisanship, I was just more and more impressed at the sheer power represented by the collection. You could probably spend a good half hour staring at and learning about any one of the things in that plac,and I may be forced to return.

After a brief chocolate grape break we ended the night at the Albertina, one of the many art galleries in Vienna. This one is a modern art gallery mainly I think, and we only had time to see the new Impressionist exhibition. As so often happens in the case of exhibitions, I was left with a much greater impression (haha) of these paintings than could ever be conveyed by a book. Seemingly wrong or impossible colours up close coalesce into perfect depictions of light glancing off skin or walls. Huge brush strokes somehow convey every detail of rippling water. Every important artist of the period was represented. I count myself lucky that I am able (at least nowadays) to visit an art gallery and to truly enjoy myself, exclaiming in happiness when I find a new amazing picture, always wanting to stare for hours at the current painting while running off to look at the next. It seems that these artists like Monet, Manet, Toulouse Lautrec et al are renowned because they made really, REALLY good paintings. Who would have thought it?!

Everywhere should have this as a tradition. One of the best evenings I have ever spent doing anything. Great atmosphere, great art, great history.

Today I went to a traditional Heuriger, tavern like places on the outskirts of Vienna where people gather to drink the new wine of the season. Maybe not mature, but sweet, alcoholic and delicious, and full of great people. I actually managed to speak German quite a bit tonight (with the aide of educational tool number wine), and I have the encouraging feeling that at least where it comes to german german, I may be making some progress.

I feel like I have dumped poor old London for this glamourous new girl Vienna, poor London, we had a good thing going for 2 whole years, and now I'm dallying araound with this new more beautifulcity. It can never last, right? But whatever, Vienna is much better even than I expected. I am very glad to be here.

-Interlude-

Nothing to do with me personally (apart from that it was found on some geology blogs), the link below is to a site where US science teachers in poor schools put up posts detailing exactly what projects they would like to do with their students, and why, and exactly what they will cost. Donors can then get the feeling that they are helping progress to a small but easily defined goal, and nobody is going to run off with their money and spend it on a new coffee machine or something. I think it is an amazing idea.

http://www.donorschoose.org/

However, looking at the site I find myself quite shocked that it should even be necessary to have a program like this. It really brings home just how poorly equipped some kids in america are to learn science, and I can't help but think that this must contribute to the fact that supposedly under half the US population 'believe' in evolution. (I don't want to even start on the question of whether evolution should have to be 'believable; rather than merely 'proven', but yeah.)

Schools in the program that are classified as 'high poverty' have at least 40% of children claiming free school meals. To claim free school meals the family income (for a family of 4) has to be below $23,920. So over 40% of children at these schools come from families where the yearly income is less than £3750 per person.

Of course, I have no idea what the corresponding facts are for the UK. Basically, I just think it is a cool way to run a donation website.