What follows is a piece I wrote (quite a while ago now) for students planning on sitting Scholarship Biology. It was intended to start them thinking 🙂 I’ve just been asked to contribute to a panel discussion on RNZ around this subject, so thought it might be timely to re-post this article (I think time […]
Continue readingYear: 2013
a cheer for saccharomyces cerevisiae
Here’s another of those catchy science-based ditties – & definitely one I’ll be adding to my collection for showing in class 🙂 (I would have embedded it, but MT is not doing what it should today…later edit: thank goodness for IT wizards!) And a happy St Patrick’s day!
Continue readingthe amazing hCG ‘diet’, redux
A while back, I wrote about the so-called hCG ‘diet’ drops: homeopathic drops that might just possibly (depending on dilution) contain a molecule of human chorionic gonadotropin (or maybe not), and which supposedly help one to lose weight. Ooops, nearly forgot to mention that you need to accompany your daily dose of magic water with […]
Continue readingfear & loathing in the water
The ‘fluoride in drinking water’ debate is heating up again in Hamilton. A letter in one of our local free newspapers begins Sodium fluoride is the main ingredient in rat poison and then informs us that the Nazis used it to keep their prisoners docile. And what I want to know is this: why, if […]
Continue readingcyclists = road vermin? quit the hyperbole, mr ware
It appears that Wellington businessman David Ware has a thing about cyclists: he has described them as "road vermin", "roadkill", and "weasels in lycra". He is entitled to his opinion, but this is completely over the top. In fact, I have news for you, Mr Ware. Yes, there are cyclists who demonstrate poor judgement & […]
Continue readingartistry
We are in full enrolment mode at the moment – for some reason a lot of students have left re-enrolling &/or seeking advice until the Very Last Moment – so I have little time for serious blogging. (It’s always the same at this time of year, only this year more of the same.) But I […]
Continue readingwhat might a ‘science for citizens’ curriculum look like?
That’s the question blog-buddy Michael Edmonds asked some of us last night, & it got me thinking. Sir Peter Gluckman raised the idea of a ‘science for citizens’ curriculum back in early 2011, in his report Looking ahead: science education for the 21st century. Included in that report was a brief list of some skills, […]
Continue readingmore quirky science songs
Lately I’ve been amazed and entertained by some of the quirky science music videos out there (some are parodies, some not). Here are two of the latest to catch my eye. This one – this one we’re sooo going to show in the first-year cellular & molecular paper 🙂 And this works for me too […]
Continue readingwhere’s pooh?
I stumbled across this image of Helicocranchia pfefferri a little while ago – easy to see why this little cephalopod is called the ‘piglet squid’! Image (c) Cabrillo Marine Aquarium. The Cabrillo Marine Aquarium’s news release tells us that these little animals ("about the size of a small avocado") are a deep-water species with a […]
Continue readingsocial media & pseudoscience
I quite enjoy Facebook – it’s an enjoyable way to catch up with what friends & family are up to, & I follow a number of good science pages (which provide some nice topics for blogging, from time to time). But FB can also cause considerable aggravation, through its habit of running ‘targeted’ advertising on […]
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