Unexpected color
Although winter has not yet formally begun, this is the time of year when the darkness stretches ahead into infinity. In the face of this, the prospect of brighter days, of snowdrops and crocuses pushing up from the bare earth, seem like an impossible dream. We know that day will come, but it’s not a reality we can yet grasp.
As the second lockdown ends, the news has come t Continue reading
Are you frightened of COVID-19? Being frightened is not good enough. If you are one of those legislators who dismiss lock-downs as over-reaction; or a person anxious about the cancellation of Christmas; or one of the seeming large number of people who seem to think it could never happen to them — you should be a lot more than just frightened.
You should be terrified.
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The details are in the article, but the basic story (written by Holly Else) is that authors wanting to make their work OA can pay an APC of €9,500 or choose a ‘guided’ route, which is about 50% cheaper but splits the price between reviewing and Continue reading Last week I gave my first online tutorials where I needed to scribble on a whiteboard and to show the students their exam scripts from last term, which has been posted to my home by the university. To solve both of these problems, I spent a bit of time figuring out how to share my iPad and iPhone screens within Microsoft Teams running on my Apple MacBook. For anyone wanting to do the same, I thoug Continue reading
This picture, which I have shamelessly stolen liberated stolen liberated from the Twitter account of the Linnean Society of London, is of Charles Darwin’s study at Down House, reminds me of an anecdote that Twitter is too small to contain, so I shall recount it here.
Darwin’s Study. Some Considerable Time Ago.
Many years ago when the world was young, and definitely BC (Before Children) Continue reading
This week I took part in a panel aimed at young adults who see themselves as future leaders. An interesting, if slightly disquieting experience. My fellow panellists were two young men in their twenties, who had both already done amazing things setting up charities and networks to support the disadvantaged. Inevitably I felt very grey and old. I was tremendously impressed by their energy, their se Continue reading
I’ve been writing books since my twenties. In fact, I have been working on one book or another almost constantly since I finished my first — which was my doctorate thesis, resting unread in a dusty vault in Cambridge.
Notwithstanding inasmuch as which the draft of my forthcoming tome A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth is now with my editor, who will get back to me when the time co Continue reading
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
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
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.
