We’ve ‘got’ ants at our place at the moment – the other day we came home to a thick black column that stretched from a chink in the woodwork around the french doors, all the way across the dining room & into the pantry. Determined little beggars! I suppose we should count ourselves lucky, as […]
Continue readingMonth: March 2009
green sea slugs & endosymbiosis
A couple of years ago I sat in on a colleague’s botany lectures & was enchanted to hear about a green sea slug – green, because it eats algae & sequesters the algal chloroplasts within its own cells. A solar-powered sea slug!
Continue readingmeditating on enrolment
As you’ll have gathered (if you read this blog regularly), last week was an incredibly busy one for me, because I was heavily involved in the process of enrolling students for their 2009 studies. This was a new thing for me & it gave me the opportunity to think about ways to ease the enrolment […]
Continue readingcalling all chemistry teachers…
… & other devotees of things that go ‘bang!’ Years ago now, I stood in for the HoD Science at a Manawatu high school. He was a chemist, & loved doing demonstrations. So before he went on leave, he walked me through some of his party tricks so that I’d get them right. I still remember […]
Continue readingben goldacre on ‘facebook causes cancer’
I remember seeing a headline about Facebook being Bad For You because it causes cancer, a few days back. Unfortunately I was so busy with enrolment (& I might comment a bit on that in a separate post) that I didn’t have time (or energy!) to chase it up. As I recall, the story had […]
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