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Heirlooms, and Other Stuff

Posted on 18 November 2020 by Henry Gee

I’ve long been fascinated by Antiques Roadshow, a long-running Televisual Emission in which members of the public bring assorted objets, often of no conceivable use whatsoever except for the accumulation of surplus value, to be assessed and valued by experts. So what we have here (one might say) is a fine example of an early nineteenth-century Shropshire grummet-tinker’s scrode. Now, t Continue reading →

Posted in Apparitions, Cromer, Domesticrox | Comments Off on Heirlooms, and Other Stuff

The Doings Round My Parts

Posted on 18 November 2020 by Henry Gee

What have I been up to these past six years? Well, some of it can be found in the archived posts below. For those disinclined to delve, I shall attempt a succinct summary. But how does one even start to summarise six eventful years? A moment-my-moment summary would be very dull, and with a temporal mapping of 1:1 would take six years to write, after which six more years would have elapsed. Extrem Continue reading →

Posted in Apparitions, Cromer, Domesticrox, Writing & Reading | Comments Off on The Doings Round My Parts

This Is Not A Test. Oh, All Right Then, It Is.

Posted on 17 November 2020 by Henry Gee

Having decided that six years is far too long to spend in the wilderness, I have returned to these shores, and, notwithstanding inasmuch as which, I’m back. Thanks very much to Richard for his warm welcome (with Jenny cheering in the background, from somewhere in the veg patch) and for reanimating the technology so it all works. At my age, you see, one is never sure until one tries.

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Slight return

Posted on 11 November 2020 by Austin
I wrote this somewhere else, and it got sufficiently long that I thought it might as well go here, since the blog is still here. Prompted by Nov 11th, of course, but by other things too.
—————————————————————————————— Continue reading →
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Keeping On Keeping On

Posted on 8 November 2020 by Athene Donald

In the UK, as in many other countries, we have entered another lockdown, mysteriously assigned in some quarters a decimal point, as in lockdown 2.0. It’s a lockdown with a difference, in that the rules are not the same as last time around (and therefore tending to be confusing), and logic in the rules is not always present to my scientist’s eye.  Life in Cambridge is hugely unlike the first lockdo Continue reading →

Posted in Lockdown, nature, Science Culture, Zoom | Comments Off on Keeping On Keeping On

Mentors and Role Models

Posted on 4 November 2020 by Athene Donald

Five years ago I received a package in the post, with a covering letter from someone I’d never met. Dan Davis, Professor of Immunology at the University of Manchester and apparently a fan of this blog, had sent me a copy of his book, The Compatibility Gene, ‘in case it would be of interest’. A former physicist himself, he had written – as I discovered when I read it a while later – a fascinating b Continue reading →

Posted in careers, Dan Davis, gender champion, Julia Higgins, Peter Medawar, Sam Edwards, Women in science | Comments Off on Mentors and Role Models

Bookish Thoughts

Posted on 1 November 2020 by Henry Gee

Here at the Maison Des Girrafes we only ever had one rule for the kids as they were growing up. Except that it wasn’t even a rule. What it was, was this:

No Reasonable Request for Books Will Ever Be Denied

I am happy to report that the Offspring, who have flown the nest, are highly literate individuals currently at college, and are as well-balanced and happy as you’d expect with m Continue reading →

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A not (yet) successful experiment in walking office hours.

Posted on 1 November 2020 by Nicola Spaldin

Faced with the thought of trying to establish interaction with 50 masked students spread to the far-flung corners of an enormous lecture room from behind a perspex screen with my glasses steaming up, I decided from the start of this semester to teach my Solid State Physics and Chemistry of Materials class on zoom.

Not liking, however, the thought of never meeting my students in person, I decided t Continue reading →

Posted in education, Materials Science | Comments Off on A not (yet) successful experiment in walking office hours.

In which we face the rain

Posted on 4 October 2020 by Jennifer Rohn

One of our white wine 2018 vintages

How quickly strangeness becomes familiarity.

As autumn hunkers down, and the COVID infection rates continue to rise (nearly 13,000 cases reported yesterday in the UK), I see things around me that I never could have imagined before 2020. A trip to the mall yesterday revealed a docile crowd with universal face coverage – gone are those defiant mavericks of a few Continue reading →

Posted in Domestic bliss, Gardening, Research, Scientific thinking, The profession of science, work-life balance | Comments Off on In which we face the rain

Getting Behind Diversity Statistics

Posted on 4 October 2020 by Athene Donald

Earlier this year UKRI published ‘harmonised’ diversity data across all its councils. These did not make for comfortable reading, with attention being particularly focussed on two findings:

  • Female and ethnic minority awardees tend to apply for and win smaller awards: median award value for females ca 15% less than for males (£336,000 vs £395,000;
  • Median award value for ethnic minority awardees is Continue reading →
Posted in EPSRC, Equality, grant funding, Science Funding, Unconscious bias, Women in science | Comments Off on Getting Behind Diversity Statistics