Author Archives: Stephen

Numb or Numbered?

Posted on April 14, 2011 by Stephen

It just doesn’t add up: why do so many people, including scientists, get stuck on the maths problem? The subject is on my mind because it was raised at a departmental meeting last week where I tried to argue that … Continue reading →

Posted in Maths, Science | Tagged , , , | 137 Comments

Movement and Music

Posted on April 9, 2011 by Stephen

What the hell is Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey about? I’m sure I don’t know. I’m really, really sure I don’t know. At least, I think I am. I’ve seen the film three times now, and I’ve read Arthur … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema, Music | Tagged | 26 Comments

Winging It

Posted on March 29, 2011 by Stephen

A short film about flying. And about the wing on the plane that I was in. Yes – the wing. I flew this morning and enjoyed a little bit of engineering magic.    

Posted in Fun, Technology | Tagged , , , , | 19 Comments

Moon Boon

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Stephen

It cannot have escaped your attention this past weekend that the Earth was treated to a supermoon. The correct terminology for this felicitous event is a perigee syzygy, but the reasons for the interesting nomenclature need not detain us. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Astronomy, Blogging, History of Science, Science | Tagged , | 15 Comments

Don’t submit. Submit.

Posted on March 18, 2011 by Stephen

We came. We chanted. We lobbied. We petitioned. And in the end, thanks to the Science is Vital Campaign and the persuasive efforts of CaSE and the learned societies and captains of high-tech industry, the UK science budget was protected … Continue reading →

Posted in Science, Science & Politics | Tagged , | 2 Comments

You may not be interested in this but this is interested in you

Posted on March 11, 2011 by Stephen

I was banging on last week about how scientists should use words rather than guns during public engagement. Words are safer — and often more effective. But they are not completely safe. In fact, they can sometimes be rather dangerous, … Continue reading →

Posted in Science & Politics | Tagged , , , | 10 Comments

Here is a Man Who Stood Up

Posted on March 4, 2011 by Stephen

In many ways Travis Bickle, the disturbed taxi driver in Scorsese’s famous film, is a model of public engagement. For one thing, he really thinks about his audience. He rehearses in front of a mirror so that he will be … Continue reading →

Posted in Blogging, Communication, Science | Tagged , , , , | 41 Comments

The Perutz Effect

Posted on February 27, 2011 by Stephen

I have Jim Franks of Newton TV to thank for the opportunity to sit around a table with some of the current scientists at the world-famous MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology to talk about the legacy of its founder, Max … Continue reading →

Posted in History of Science, Protein Crystallography, Science, Science & Media | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Prize Your Imagination

Posted on February 25, 2011 by Stephen

On Wednesday last I was fortunate to find myself an outlier among the great and the good at the Wellcome Trust Image Awards for 2011, where hefty glass slabs were being handed out by Adam Rutherford as prizes to imaginative … Continue reading →

Posted in Protein Crystallography, Science | Tagged , | 8 Comments

An Inconsistent Truth?

Posted on February 13, 2011 by Stephen

The Science Museum in London is a national shrine to human ingenuity. Its existence is a testament to the value that our society places on inquiry and innovation, its worth paradoxically underscored by the fact that, even in these impecuious … Continue reading →

Posted in AltMed, History of Science, Science | Tagged , | 45 Comments

Small and Very Far Away

Posted on February 9, 2011 by Stephen

As Father Ted might have explained it to Dougal, this one is very small: Atom but that one is far away. Mars (NASA) And yet it is the distant planet and not the nearby atom that seems to excite the … Continue reading →

Posted in Astronomy, Protein Crystallography, Science | Tagged , , , | 54 Comments

Interesting Times

Posted on February 1, 2011 by Stephen

“May you live in interesting times”, goes the Chinese curse. Chinese scientists are certainly living in interesting times (as reported today in Nature) but they are unlikely to see it as a curse. The budget of the Chinese Academy of … Continue reading →

Posted in Science, Science & Politics | Tagged , | 26 Comments