When I was a little boy I remember that my mother would sometimes extract a dull metal implement from the dark recess of a rarely used cupboard and clamp it to the kitchen table. Turning the handle she would feed the device with cubes of beef and it would spew mince onto a cold white plate.<\/p>\n
\tThis is what my brain feels like.<\/p>\n
\tI have read fourteen grant applications in the past few days in preparation for an upcoming funding committee meeting. Each of them was densely written, crammed onto the page, and just as densely argued. My brain has turned to mush. Its shredded cortex has left me few resources with which to fashion a blog post but fortunately I have some material that I prepared earlier.<\/p>\n
\tThese days it is almost de rigeur<\/em> for writers of blogs to plug themselves into that other piece of Web2.0 wizardly, the podcast. There have been several recent examples from among our number: stand up Katherine<\/a>, Brian<\/a>, Henry<\/a> and Eva<\/a>). And it was hearing Jenny Rohn on the Guardian Science Weekly<\/a> podcast that originally got me into all this. So you know who to blame.<\/p>\n \tUntil recently I had never ventured into audiospace but, like buses, two opportunities have just come along. The first is the inaugural Lablit podcast<\/a> where, as guest-chair, I led the discussion on Jenny\u2019s highly engaging first novel, Experimental Heart<\/em><\/a>. The recording, nicely edited by Richard<\/a>, gives a great flavour of the discourse.<\/p>\n \tAnd then, thanks to the good offices of NN denizen Sara Fletcher<\/a>, I was interviewed by Naked Scientist Meera Senthilingam<\/a> for the Diamond Light Source podcast. Diamond is the UK\u2019s sparkly new synchrotron, a giant X-ray generating doughnut<\/a> that nestles in the Oxfordshire countryside. Having made use of the facility last December, I got the chance to talk about our work on the foot-and-mouth disease virus protease. Have a listen<\/a>, if you like\u2014the interview starts at about 12m 30s in and lasts about 7 minutes. If you\u2019ve seen the video<\/a>, you may recognise the story. T-shirts will be available soon.<\/p>\n \tI cannot properly judge what it is like but I was at least reasonably impressed by my lack of ums and aahs!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I was a little boy I remember that my mother would sometimes extract a dull metal implement from the dark recess of a rarely used cupboard and clamp it to the kitchen table. Turning the handle she would feed … Continue reading