Steamboat Ladies
The University of Cambridge has not had a very good week or two in the media. I’m not going to enter that fray given how much has already been written and I’m a long way away from the details of … Continue reading → Continue reading
Occam's Typewriter
The sharpest blogging network in the box
Latest posts
The Dissing of Summer Lawns
Prolonged drought has turned everyone’s lawns to stubble. I wonder how many people have wondered why they bother to have lawns at all, and, what with climate change, whether lawns will be sustainable? Consider: back in the Olden Days, ordinary … Continue reading → Continue reading
What I Read In June and July
I apologise once again for the reduced frequency of my book blog. Frankly, I blame myself. However, I am enjoying a brief respite from my current project (working title: The Only Way Is Ethics) so I can catch up. John … Continue reading → Continue reading
Across The Sea
The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire is now available in paperback in a land run by criminal gangs with no respect for democracy, human rights or the rule of law universally applied, where disease runs unchecked across the … Continue reading → Continue reading
The White Heat of Creation
I wrote somewhere that there is no surer sign of an unwillingness to write than an untended blog. I should perhaps qualify that statement, because blogs might remain untended for all sorts of reasons, chief of these being, in my … Continue reading → Continue reading
In which human scientists are losing the battle
This is the year that AI in science first began to scare me. (Disclaimer: I’m not talking about machine learning, which is a useful and powerful scientific tool. I’m using the term AI here as shorthand for Large Language Models.) … Continue reading → Continue reading
How did we manage before the Internet?
If you’ve read George Eliot’s Middlemarch (the Guardian’s recent choice as the best novel in the English language), you will recognize the problem Mr Casaubon faced in trying to write his magnum opus, relying on multiple books in a range … Continue reading → Continue reading
Team Working and Loneliness
Some years ago, the Science Council created a list of ten different kinds of scientists, to showcase the fact that not every scientist does the same kind of work. Ranging from technician scientist to entrepreneur scientist via the more obvious … Continue reading → Continue reading
Tackling the NEET Crisis
We hear a lot about NEET’s (those not in Education, Employment or Training); they are a major source of concern and form the focus of the recent Milburn Review. His recent, if interim report, has dug down into the characteristics … Continue reading → Continue reading
In which my list becomes achievable
It never seems as if the academic stress will end, until suddenly, sometime in late June, it just does. The students disperse for the academic year like fluffy tree pollen on the wind. The final marks are generated, moderated and … Continue reading → Continue reading