Latest posts

Who Has Authority Here?

Posted on 7 February 2021 by Athene Donald

Jackie Weaver may have become an internet sensation due to her calm handling of a bunch of unruly local councillors, but the behaviour manifest in the viral video is one that many a chair of an academic committee will recognize. Online calls do offer the opportunity to mute tiresome and aggressive members (not a tactic I’ve been reduced to using, at least yet), or despatching them to the virtual w Continue reading →

Posted in bullying, chairing, committees, Science Culture | Comments Off on Who Has Authority Here?

On occupational hazards

Posted on 5 February 2021 by rpg

(First posted over at the day job.)

On Christmas Day I received an email. It was addressed to my 7-year-old son, and it told him that his coronavirus test was positive.

There were mixed emotions. Continue reading →

Posted in covid, covid19, Friday afternoon, Nonsense, science, Silliness, teachers, vaccination | Comments Off on On occupational hazards

In Praise of Technicians

Posted on 3 February 2021 by Athene Donald

I was a very ham-fisted PhD student. I repeatedly broke a delicate and crucial piece of apparatus during the early months of my research, to the extent that I almost quit the whole endeavour and withdrew from the labs for a couple of weeks while I contemplated my future. I was to a large extent ‘saved’ by the skills of the workshop technician, who would smile as I entered the workshop holding the Continue reading →

Posted in careers, Gatsby Foundation, Science Culture, Skills White Paper, TALENT, UKRI | Comments Off on In Praise of Technicians

Scrabbungulate

Posted on 30 January 2021 by Henry Gee

I’m not sure whether either of you know that I am rather fond of Scrabble. I can be found haunting the Internet Scrabble Club under the name of zedwave, (playing Scrabble online with people you know only as nicknames is, I suppose, an intellectual and therefore risk-free version of cottaging) or idly passing the time with some Scrabble app or another on my phone. A love of this game was inca Continue reading →

Posted in addax, anoa, antelope, bok, cottaging, dibatag, dzho, dzo, eland, gaur, gnu, impala, kob, kudu, nilgai, nyala, okapi, oryx, ox, pudu, quagga, saiga, saola, scrabble, Silliness, topi, ungulate, Writing & Reading, yak, zebu, zo | Comments Off on Scrabbungulate

A Throwback to Years Gone By from the Government

Posted on 28 January 2021 by Athene Donald

Back in 2019 the Committee of Advertising Practice and the Advertising Standards Authority published new guidelines about the problems of gender stereotyping in advertising. The guidelines are clear: ‘These rules state that ads ‘must not include gender stereotypes that are likely to cause harm, or serious or widespread offence’. A wide variety of ads since then have fallen foul of the rules and ha Continue reading →

Posted in covid19, Dominic Cummings, Equality, Fawcett Society | Comments Off on A Throwback to Years Gone By from the Government

Distrokering

Posted on 26 January 2021 by Henry Gee

You’ll both be aware by now that I’ve been usefully spending time learning how to record music at home, time I’d usually have devoted to live music. I’ve an album-length collection under my belt, and have even started playing music on other people’s records. One of these is now commercially available, and that got me thinking about making my own music more widely avai Continue reading →

Posted in Birdland, Heavy Weather, Lockd Down and Blue, Music, These Are Difficult Times, Weather Report | Comments Off on Distrokering

DfE Deluge

Posted on 23 January 2021 by Athene Donald

As has been noted by many this week, there has been a deluge of output from the Department for Education (DfE), covering many matters that have been in the offing for months if not years. That the response to the Pearce Review on the Teaching Excellence Framework has been published with August 2019 on the cover is amusing, but it also says a lot about the way these issues are being tackled: non-ur Continue reading →

Posted in Augar Review, BEIS, education, Equality, Further Education, Level 4/5 | Comments Off on DfE Deluge

Brian G. Gardiner (1934-2021)

Posted on 22 January 2021 by Henry Gee

Just a quick post to announce the death of Professor Brian G. Gardiner (1934-2021), communicated to me just now by his son Nick.

Brian was a specialist in the evolution of fishes. He was the last surviving member of the so-called ‘Gang of Four’ that shook up the staid world of biological taxonomy in the 1980s, with their espousal of Hennig’s then-revolutionary phylogenetic system Continue reading →

Posted in brian gardiner, cladistics, colin patterson, dick jefferies, donn rosen, hennig, natural history museum, peter forey, phylogenetic systematics | Comments Off on Brian G. Gardiner (1934-2021)

It’s January, so it must be time for…

Posted on 22 January 2021 by Richard Wintle

Well, that was a bit of a year, wasn’t it?

With the more or less complete absence of photograph-able events that would usually appear in my annual round-up, I’ve had to get a bit creative. With the Honda Indy Toronto canceled, the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair migrating to an online format, and highly restricted attendance at what horse shows were running… well, the backyard, th Continue reading →

Posted in Hobbies, Photography | Comments Off on It’s January, so it must be time for…

Passeportout

Posted on 22 January 2021 by Henry Gee

Notwithstanding inasmuch as which nobody can go really go anywhere much, even if they wanted to, which I don’t, I found – quel horreur! –  that my passport was about to expire, imminently, if not sooner, and that failure to renew it would probably mean my sudden expiration in a puff of logic.

Straightway I hied forth fifth to this handy government passport renewal website (my, th Continue reading →

Posted in Alfred Molina, Apparitions, Carlos the Jackal, legal tender, Omid Djalili, passports, Science - Has It Gone Too Far?, the Brown Queue, travel | Comments Off on Passeportout