The writing life from popular science author Brian Clegg.
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My two favourite social media platforms are X and Bluesky - I love the contrast between their typical posts and the way I get a totally different view of the world from each. In some ways, Bluesky is a bit like Twitter in the early days. People are still posting pictures of their meals (please stop). And there are more memes than I now see on X. I've never liked the concept of memes as originated…
Listening to recent episode of Ed Balls and George Osborne's usually excellent podcast, Political Currency, I felt that the pair failed to give a decent answer to a question about celebrity books where ghost writers are engaged. They both effectively said that it was fine for a memoir to be ghost-written, as it made the writing better: it was still the stories told by the celeb. I'm sure this is…
I am a big fan of electric vehicles, and though my current car is a plug-in hybrid for practical reasons, I've no doubt I'll go all-electric fairly soon and already have an interest in charging stations to top up on longer journeys. But we really haven't thought through the different requirements of charging stations when compared with petrol stations. Imagine you went to fill up with petrol or…
I've always been a bit of a sucker for (real life) ghost stories and UFO sightings. When I was a youngster, my dad got books on the Borley Rectory hauntings out of the library and they fascinated me. As a result I was tempted to take a look at a podcast covering ghost sightings and other weird occurrences that's been running on the BBC for some time: Uncanny . As yet I'm not totally convinced by…
The first thing that comes to mind when you mention the Cotswolds? Mellow stone houses. Pretty villages. Lots of tourists. Probably not 1950s rock and roll. But last night at the Barn Theatre in Cirencester the performance of Million Dollar Quartet was phenomenal. This is described as a jukebox musical, set on the evening of 4th December 1956, when Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and the…
I enjoy a good logic puzzle, often those involving the more mind-boggling aspects of probability, such as Monty Hall and the Tuesday's child puzzles. But I've recently come across a more pure logic one that it took me a while to get my head around. It's apparently an old one, much debated on social media, so apologies if you've already come across it. I came across it while reading to review…
I've used social media quite a while. As Twitter/X helpfully tells me when I joined, I've been on that for 18 years, and similar times on Facebook and LinkedIn - Bluesky is a recent addition. But I don't think I'm exactly normal as a user. In part I'm there because my literary agent at the time was an enthusiast and recommended using social media as a way of engaging with readers, which is my…
At the moment, the University of Cambridge is getting much (deserved) criticism, not just for awarding a professorship to the fantasist and fabulist Jason Arday, but for continuing to deny all allegations even when it became obvious they had made a serious mistake. But it would be unfair to single out Cambridge*. Sadly, the reality is that many universities have such an uncritical attitude to far…
I first came across Roger Zelazny's Amber books back in the 1970s, rushing to buy the next instalment as each became available. For me, they remain some of the most original fantasy novels, as they combine a small element of urban fantasy with swords and sorcery, without having any feeling of being Tolkien clones. At the heart of the series is a place called Amber, which is the original city from…
If you regularly read my blog, you'll already have come across the AI personal assistant Littlebird . I've now been using it for six months, and continue to find it hugely useful, both as a PA and a research assistant - I know some science writers raise an eyebrow at that second use - but I'll come back to why I think they're wrong. Of the two, the PA aspect is probably the more important one for…
REVISIT SERIES An updated post from July 2016 When I was a teenager and ill I used to revert to childhood reading - Famous Five and the like. Recently confined to bed with norovirus, I found that all my brain could cope with was guff such as the output of Dan Brown, so I gritted my teeth and read Angels and Demons . As always with Brown, most of the 'fact' content of the book was pure fiction.…
