Having returned from a few days of holiday, I am feeling frivolous. So here is a sketch representing the
Start of the Academic Year at the Department of Paintballing
The main characters in this sketch are described in a previous post in which the Department of Paintballing was introduced, with further information about its place in the University g Continue reading
The job of a newspaper columnist is to agitate and George Monbiot did exactly that last week with a furious rant in The Guardian about academic publishers. It may have been an odd choice for most of his readers but Monbiot seemed to be actually shaking with rage as he laid into the companies that gather and disseminate the academic literature, flog Continue reading
July through November,
Abstracts and budgets and pain.
I see no reason
Why grant deadline season
Should ever leave you sane.
So, I’ve managed to extend the usual season (which started August 15th, when I submitted one full grant as well as three registrations/letters of intent) to November 14th by emailing all “my” PIs about the N Continue reading
I have been deluged by an email from a Ms S. F. of Oxfordshire alerting me to the fact that the Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron facility, has launched a story-writing competition. Details are here, and the beamline deadline is 30 November. So get scribbling. Continue reading
Michel scanned the canteen. There were too many people, here; too much noise, but sometimes, if he concentrated, he could shut it out and actually think. There was Slater, not so much holding as clinging to his coffee. He was headed this way, but not looking where he was going. Continue reading
One of the enjoyable consequences of carrying out reading tasks for publishers, is that often one can be paid ‘in kind’ with a miscellaneous collection of books up to some market value considerably more than any cheque they might otherwise put in the post. I recently had the pleasure of receiving a motley (but carefully selected) collection of book Continue reading
“You do not know what you say,” Michel said. “We have procedures, we have clean rooms—”
“But she died of chikungunya fever. And you had some in the lab. Continue reading
I can still vividly remember being taught lab safety in 7th or 8th grade chemistry at school. The old way: being given a long list of rules, reading them and being tested on them. No eating, drinking, chewing gum etc. etc. Many of the same rules apply in my lab at the university. Continue reading
As a musician, I’m more of a performer than a recorder. Although I have been in studios many times, I simply don’t have the patience and attention to detail that you need for making a good recording. A lot of the problem has been with the interface – too techie, too user-unfriendly, too time-consuming. But yesterday, as a reward t Continue reading
