It’s that time again! Well, I look forward to it, anyway. I wrote a review of the year for 2014-15 here and for 2013-14 here, and that nearly makes it a tradition, right? It’s a chance for me to identify some trends and patterns in what’s been covered, so here I go again.

Looking back, I am pleased with some little clusters of posts…
* On refrains, and bridges between brain and mind. It started here, continued here and here. Then Florence Hazrat took this up with reference to ‘ear-worms’ here and I finished the flurry here.
* On turn-taking, a favourite topic of mine; I got back into it briefly here, took a look at the rhythms of silences here, and stayed in the general area when writing about gender and voice modulation here.
* On creativity, self-generated thought, and Milton’s poems here and here; some similar questions were still ongoing in my discussion of Charles Fernyhough’s new book here.
* On slow thinking and metastability here and here and here.
* On some interesting critiques of important aspects of cognitive science and cognitive literary theory, here (extended mind) and here (mind-reading / theory of mind).

That’s a lot of links; and it makes it seem like a busy year, which it was, and not just because of the blog. It’s still proving a satisfying medium in itself, and it becomes all the rewarding when I hear directly or indirectly that people have been reading my posts. Many thanks for the time you give to it!
      I had a plan to feature another clip from a baseball film again. (Don’t ask why; there was no good reason.) But I only did it once so it isn’t even nearly a tradition. In lieu, then, of one of the many excellent bits of Moneyball, I’ll include something different. It’s Dexys’ cover of Joni Mitchell’s ‘Both Sides Now’, and I think it’s quite superb, although I don’t know quite how it gets away with making an uplifting version of that particular song. A proper survey of Youtube will uncover several unspeakable acts of tonal butchery as people get the mood all wrong (Sinatra! Crosby! Carly Rae Jepsen! What were you thinking?), so it’s all the more impressive that Dexys make it work. I listen to it every day and so should everyone.