Autumn is a time for changes, and things are a bit odd in the world of cheap London fun this week. The audience is playing the music, our insides are on the outside, activists are stuck in the wrong century, and people are dancing where they shouldn't. Get your shallow pockets out there and enjoy the season of flux. Friday: Dance Umbrella remains as good as ever at providing something bonkers for your lunch......

Despite the fervent wishes of the world's mothers, tattoos aren't going away. They're growing in popularity, mainstream acceptance, and even physical size, reported tattooist Lal Hardy, practising his art in front of an inquisitive audience at last night's Dana Centre event. His barmy customer for this evening may have only walked away with a tiny ice cream (no flake) on the clavicle, but there's no ignoring the current unprecedented boom of this ancient art......

Hooray for 4 day weeks! And hooray for many seasonal celebrations. If only it would stop raining we'd be radiant with joy. This week we definitely can't afford to see the glorious New York City Ballet at the Coliseum (up to £95 a ticket!) so we made do with the reviews. Neither can we cover the costs of a bank holiday break away from the city but, hell - why would we want to......

It's officially Spring and by Pisces it's lovely out there in the sunshine. Crocuses have been spotted in Highbury Fields so our biggest recommendation for expenditure light trips this week is get to the parks and into the gardens and witness the miracles of the changing seasons. If you're in need of more artificial stimulation, however, and are squirrelling all your spare cash into your ISA before the end of the tax year then......

Doesn't sunshine make everything seem better? Alright, it's been brass monkeys but nothing lifts the winter blues like bright skies, crisp air and early daffodils. It's half term for most kids this week so your commute might even be more pleasant. In which case, perhaps you'll be more inclined to get out after work and try something different that's light on your wallet and heavy on aceness. After all, we really can't afford good......

The Germaniaxx Isn't the weather glorious? Stand in the sunshine and it's definitely spring. This makes us happy! This means that we can walk in the park and get about town and not feel miserably wintry and therefore desperate to waste our hard earned on firelit pubs and woolly accessory buying. Well, not quite so much. We are, however, saving up our cash to spend on Creme Eggs and the rebuild Camden Market fund so......

Happy February, FOBGs. Another healthy serving of book groceries awaits you this week. Stick to a well-rounded book diet, and you’re sure to stave off a winter cold. We have no actual data to support this contention – we’re book geeks, not science nerds – but it certainly sounds promising. So eat your greens, drink your grains, and check back later this week for a bonus edition of the Book Grocer especially dedicated to......

We've not done very well on the virtuous January front and seem to have spent all our money and most of our nights out on the lash with a flagrant disregard for propriety and our bank account. We don't mind though because, as usual, there are some excellent free things to do in town this week. Monday: British Asian gangsta folk ska punk is where it's at with the intriguing sounding Barbar Luck at......

Three weeks into the New Year, probably one week until payday and telly's rubbish (except for new CSI), the weather's grey and the detox is wearing thin. Don't give in to those January blues! Here's what can get you out of the house for not a lot of wonga this week. Monday: This is the most depressing day of the year. We've said it before but we're going to say it again because we......

Are you an unreconstructed, consumerist, couch potato with no social conscience? Excellent. Read on. Because the Rubbish Game wants you. We went to the Rubbish Game this week and, if only we hadn't got distracted drinking wine, we might have won it. Through 3 punishing rounds of stuff distribution we managed to zero our waste, creatively and cunningly disposing of it through righteous means. We dabbled in the recycling fair to win recycling tokens......

What stops you recycling? Are you lazy? Don't know where to start? Does your rubbish overwhelm you? The Rubbish Game wants to know. Then it wants to turn your rubbish around, with the help of the Binman of Love. It could get filthy. The Rubbish Game takes place on Wednesday 16 January at the Dana Centre at the Science Museum. It sounds a bit like Hungamunga crossed with the Krypton Factor and wrapped in......

It turns out that being a genius doesn't mean you're a nice person. That's a lesson that the Science Museum reinforced today as they cancelled a talk by scientist Dr James Watson, winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize for his work in discovering the structure of DNA. Watson was scheudled to give a talk at the museum on Friday, but this was nixed after his controversial remarks in an interview with the Sunday Times.......

If Londonist were really rich we'd be out every night doing LOADS of fun stuff. We'd be going to see all of the cool things at London Design Festival. We'd be drinking beer out of plastic cups and dancing at the Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly gig. But we're not. Instead all our money goes on rubbish stupid bills and... actually not much else. So here's what we're going to do instead. Here's a......

Are you one of those people who in public claims you can't sing a note, but in private blasts out your favourite songs listening to the radio. In fact, are there any of us who don't secretly think we're amazing singers, we just don't quite know how to sing properly? Tonight, Tone-Deaf Tune-In is the event for you. Held at the Dana Centre in South Ken, the evening will explore the science behind tone-deafness......

Event of the Week Battle of Ideas at the Royal College of Art, all weekend The Battle of Ideas is, according to their website, 'an annual festival of social, political, scientific, academic and cultural discussion'. In other, more juvenile words, it's a mass debate. And it's probably going to get quite messy. The panel-led discussions, organised by the Institute of Ideas, are designed to cut through the crap and get down to some genuine......

Event of the week Game On, Science Museum Remember that game on the ZX81 in which you had to manoeuvre a letter X through a minefield of dangerous letter O's? And the equally addictive follow-up, in which the Earth (represented by a series of hyphens) needed saving from a belligerent battlegroup of aliens (menacingly realised as a creeping cluster of hashes)? Ah, happy days. Well, apparently, gaming has developed somewhat since then. And we......

Event of the Week Confronting the Goldilocks enigma: why is the Universe so uncannily fit for life?, Imperial College tomorrow As topics go, they don't really come much bigger than this: The latest advances in cosmology have allowed scientists to piece together the story of our universe in unprecedented detail. One of the striking features to emerge is how the universe is exquisitely bio-friendly. Even slight changes in the laws of physics or the......

A few days back, we briefly mentioned the Cybersalon Artful Gaming event over at the Dana Centre. Unfortunately, given the sheer number of other sci-tech events last week, we didn't really do it justice. Step forward Lisa Devaney, who really, really makes us wish we'd gone... This week London debuted its first ever games festival with panels, workshops and a few industry schmooze events tossed in for those employed by the gaming world. Some attention......

Event of the Week Structure and the Living Cell, Royal Society tonight The cell, despite its microscopic nature, is a vast, multiscale subject. Over the past 350 years, we've found increasingly tricksy ways of probing into cells at ever-deeper levels. Starting with a basic understanding that God's creatures are made of these little fuzzy circles, we moved on to catalogue all kinds of subcellular bits and blobs that function a bit like organs in......

Event of the Week: London Design Festival highlights Eh? London Design Festival? In a science column? Well, good design is important in everything, including labs and medical wards. The Royal Institution, in association with the Design Festival, bring the point home at 'Imagine: Healthier by Design' at the RCA tomorrow. A panel of designers and medical practitioners will assemble to debate, for example, how the patient's life can be made less stressful through good......

These listings appear every Wednesday. If you want to let us know about any upcoming science or technology events, you can contact us on LondonistSciTech@Gmail.com Event of the Week Art of the Brain, tomorrow at the Dana Centre If we told you that the blurb for this event uses the words ‘brain’ and ‘be prepared to get messy’, you might imagine some kind of bloodbath introduction to the butcher‘s art. No such luck. Instead,......

These listings appear every Wednesday. If you want to let us know about any upcoming science or technology events, you can contact us on LondonistSciTech@Gmail.com Event of the Week Francis Crick’s Place in History at the Royal College of Surgeons, Monday Did you know that the co-discoverer of the DNA helix didn’t become a biologist until he was 31? And he didn’t even have a PhD when he received his Nobel Prize? There’s hope......

We’re back! Did you miss us? After nearly a month without any major sci/tech events, the usual venues are starting to awaken again following a summer break. So the Cogito returns, to appear every Wednesday and point you to the best London has to offer the inquisitive mind. Event of the week Future London: Footprints of a generation, at the Truman Brewery, 8-16 Sept. Had Google been around a couple of decades ago, there’s......

These listings appear every Wednesday. If you want to let us know about any upcoming science or technology events, you can contact us on LondonistSciTech@Gmail.com This is going to be the final Cogito for a few weeks. Most of the main science venues are taking a summer break, so this column will too. Before we go, though, one final week’s worth of sci-tech events. The Dana Centre has two gigs to round off July.......

These listings appear every Wednesday. If you want to let us know about any upcoming science or technology events, you can contact us on LondonistSciTech@Gmail.com Avast! Could this be the shortest Cogito ever? Just three events this week. Probably a good thing as lecture theatres are the last place to be in a heatwave. If you do want some science action this week, the Dana Centre is your only hope. (No, there is another…we’ll......

These listings appear every Wednesday. If you want to let us know about any upcoming science or technology events, you can contact us on LondonistSciTech@Gmail.com Event of the Week Wired Waste: Designing away gadget guilt at the Dana Centre, tonight Pretty much everyone reading these words will own a mobile phone, a digital camera and at least one computer. DVD players, televisions, iPODs - all are now ‘essential luxuries’ of modern life. And for......

These listings appear every Wednesday. If you want to let us know about any upcoming science or technology events, you can contact us on LondonistSciTech@Gmail.com Event of the Week Dino Jaws at the Natural History Museum Nothing packs in the punters like a few animatronic dinosaurs. Well, nothing except animatronic elephants. So the NHM should see its attendances soar like a pterodactyl with the opening of its new Dino Jaws exhibition. It’s Natural History......

These listings appear every Wednesday. If you want to let us know about any upcoming science or technology events, you can contact us on LondonistSciTech@Gmail.com Event of the Week Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition, from Monday Roll up, roll up, for the premier event in London’s popular science calendar. The annual Summer Science Exhibition is when the Royal Society fills up its halls with (a) top British scientists, (b) cool stuff to play with......

These listings appear every Wednesday. If you want to let us know about any upcoming science or technology events, you can contact us on LondonistSciTech@Gmail.com Event of the Week Taking chances at the Royal Statistical Society tonight. We cannot guarantee correct decisions at every turn…but humans seem to find it hard to reach sound conclusions, or even decide what information is relevant, in many situations involving uncertainty. Now why does that blurb for tonight’s......

These listings appear every Wednesday. If you want to let us know about any upcoming science or technology events, you can contact us on LondonistSciTech@Gmail.com Event of the Week Carnal Knowledge at the Dana Centre, tonight We’ve seen innumerable attempts to make science sexy, but this one really does take the sticky biscuit. Does the G-spot exist? If so, where is it? Can vibrators beat the blues? Join the sexperts and test your carnal......