Yesterday, I had the opportunity to visit the offices of Christopher Ward, a british watch-making company offering a range of high-end watches at distinctively affordable prices. Their reputation is built on word-of-mouth, with multiple glowing reviews on the international watch forums. I'm in the process of putting together a series of short articles, written primarily by others, for their magazine and company blog on the Psychology of Time (I confess to not being amongst those that work on this topic, but I have friends who do). What I saw, and heard, was hugely exciting to a watch nerd.
The best thing about watches is that unlike smart phones, they don't come into quite the same degree of contact with those hazardous bacteria the likes of which can only be cleansed away with disinfectant wipes. And yes, I am the proud possessor of yet another watch. And it looks even better in person —on my person in fact— than it does in print.
On an unrelated note, my misgivings about the UK's obsession with the forthcoming "Research Excellence Framework" are growing to new highs as I hear various accounts of universities' strategies to inflate their ratings. The REF is an exercise in which university departments are rated each 7 years or so according to their research productivity and "impact". If it were not for the long queue of submissions at Cognition that require my attention, I would undoubtedly be ranting on the subject right now. I shall store it all up for next time.
