Admission. And Finland for Eurosong 2015!

This term I have mostly been getting to grips with a new admin job looking after graduate 'affairs' (as the job title unfortunately has it) in the Faculty.  And I've learned lots of things many of which are beginning to make me depressed about the chances of good students, particularly from the UK, being funded to do Master's and then PhD degrees.  I wonder if in twenty years time we'll be looking round wondering where this generation of UK academics in the humanities has gone.  But I'll keep my peace on that for now, at least until I've seen enough of it to think I have something more to say than a general list of complaints.

I also get to spend much more of my time in meetings than I am used to.  Meetings are only sometimes useful, of course, and often the principal use of the meeting is to demonstrate that more than one person is responsible for a certain decision. I would much rather, of course, be talking to a student about some ancient philosophy or thinking myself about some ancient philosophy but so be it.  We all have to do our turn.

But term will end soon!  Hooray!

Things to look forward to then include a Philosophy 'Masterclass' (Open Day) thing at my college and the chance to think a bit more carefully about a chunk of Plato's Philebus I need to get to grips with before September.

And my mood hasn't really been spoiled by yesterday's news that the BBC has opted for this pile of poo as the UK's Eurosong entry.  Now, we all know that there is no point entering a song that's any good and that no one who actually fancies a career in music would go anywhere near this toxic competition, but come on, really?  I read somewhere that it was written by the same musical genius that gave us the theme tunes to Jim'll Fix It (you don't hear that very often anymore) and Challenge Anneka.  Finger on the pulse...



(If you stick with it up to 1m 53s it gets particularly bad.)

 Anyhow, all is not lost because we need to get behind Finland's entry: Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät.

Here is their song:



And here is a part of a documentary about them in which they get sweary about pedicures: