As part of my exhaustive (exhausting?) all-encompassing marketing of my two novels, “Welcome Home, Sir” and “Matter Over Mind,” I have undertaken a campaign to get my novels purchased and on the shelves of public libraries. Indeed, this is a great potential market for any of you who might be trying to sell a few more books, Continue reading
Occasionally I make the mistake of tuning in to the BBC, an organization for whom the lead news item will always be its own self-importance.
Now then now then now then. There has been much brouhaha, for example, about the alleged crimes, now coming to light, of a popular BBC presenter (now dead) and how much the BBC management knew about them at th Continue reading
Academics get to go to conferences in exotic places, there is no doubt about that. But that is not the same thing as getting to see the exotic places in which the conferences are held. In my experience, too often one gets to see little more than the inside of a conference centre which, particularly in the US, may be a soulless complex of Hilton, Ma Continue reading
Last week the Royal Society held a Wikipedia edit-a-thon to try and help redress the gender imbalance in Wikipedia’s coverage of biographies of scientists.
Twenty volunteers gathered in the library of the Royal Society for a few hours to learn how to create Wikipedia articles and then to research and write brief entries for a number of women Continue reading
Academic researchers are one of the few professionals who have to spend a large amount of time throughout their entire career begging for money just to keep their job.
It’s hard to get grants. It’s a lot of work to apply for them, and many are not awarded. Researchers that don’t get the funding they apply for may have to switch projects, or even cl Continue reading
We (well, mostly Mr E Man) have spent the last couple of weeks booking flights and accommodation for a much-needed vacation in Puerto Rico. We’ve now got everything sorted except the car rental and the last night’s hotel and are getting very excited – I’ve had a grand total of five days off in 2012, and one of them was for a Continue reading
CP Snow must be doing cartwheels in his grave. The BBC has made a beautiful, intelligent film about the second law of thermodynamics. You only have until Tuesday 30th Oct* to catch it on iPlayer and you should.
Presented by Prof. Continue reading
How often have I heard it said that ‘the policies are good but the implementation is shaky’? I could make that comment about many of the issues around women in science, where the best-intentioned policies are defeated by negativity, implicit stereotyping and just plain old habits dying hard and not being challenged in some remote parts of an organ Continue reading
A short time ago, I wasted some time watching excerpts from an interview of the Iranian president by Piers Morgan on CNN. Even the pause in answer due to the translations couldn’t mask the embarrassment that I felt watching the leader of such a large country—and one with such a refined history—deny the existence of the Holocaust. True, it was not a Continue reading
