The Fifth Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture

February 11, 2007

"Wildlife Management in East Africa – Is There a Future?" by Dr Richard Leakey

Date: Thursday 15 March 2007, 7:30pm
Venue: The Royal Geographic Society, 1 Kensington Gore, London SW7 2AR
Price: £12.00 - You'll find more information and ticket information here.

Richard Leakey is a paleontologist, archaeologist, conservationist an author of several books including the acclaimed wildlife management book Wildlife Wars: My Battle to Save Kenya's Elephants. In this talk Dr Leakey will draw on his own experiences in Kenya as founder and Director of the Kenya Wildlife Service and as the Head of Kenya's Civil Service to reflect on the successes, current problems and future challenges facing wildlife management in East Africa.

Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a Founder Patron of Save the Rhino International, actively involved in conservation and interested in exploration, science, comedy and music. Douglas developed his deep-seated interest in wildlife conservation during a 1985 visit to Madagascar, which eventually resulted in a book (Last Chance to See) about the plight of species facing extinction. Douglas Adams died unexpectedly in 2001 at the age of 49. These Memorial Lectures continue to explore the themes in which Douglas was so interested.

The proceeds of the evening will be split between Save the Rhino International and the Environmental Investigation Agency, two charities supported by Douglas Adams.

The Fourth Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture

February 17, 2006

"Is the Human an Endangered Species?" by Professor Robert Winston

Date: Thursday 23 March 2006, 7:30pm
Venue: The Royal Geographic Society, 1 Kensington Gore, London SW7 2AR
Price: £10.00 - Purchase tickets here.

Save the Rhino International and the Environmental Investigation Agency are co-hosting the Fourth Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture with a talk by Professor Robert Winston, on Thursday 23 March at the Royal Geographic Society in London SW7. In this talk, he will combine some of the apparently threatening aspects of technology and the trust, or lack of it, in science.

Not the Movie Review

April 24, 2005

This was to have been my considered, thoughtful and detailed review of the new movie of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. “Easy”, thought I – I've been a fan of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy since its original 1978 broadcast on steam radio, followed it through its incarnations as an increasingly misnamed trilogy of books, a stage play, the BBC TV series, (with the charming production values of its cardboard and tin foil sets) and, finally, into my own personal involvement as the CTO of Douglas' company, where I spent the latter half of the nineties and the first couple of years of the millennium immersed in the philosophy, humour, science, ideas and company of Douglas Adams and his works.

Easy then to figure that all of that should thoroughly qualify me to write about this, the decades-longed-for movie. How wrong I was. I'm sitting here, several days post-Premiere. I've almost recovered from the subsequent evening of Pan-Galactic Gargleblasters and am at something of a loss about what to write. In fact, I've now come to the conclusion that prior experience thoroughly disqualifies me from actually reviewing it. So here it isn't.