One last post for raising-awareness-of-the-science-behind-vaccination week 🙂 On one of Grant’s threads, an antivaccination commenter has posted links to very old images of smallpox victims from a German publication. The commenter implies that these patients acquired the infection as a result of a smallpox vaccination (as I don’t speak or read German I can’t comment […]
Continue readingThis is a re-post of something I’ve written for the ‘other blog’ over at Talking Teaching. I’m hoping those of my readers who are biology teachers might find something useful in it, & that we might get a discussion going on this key topic of teaching evolution, given its prominence in the new Science curriculum. […]
Continue readingX-rays were discovered in 1895 by Wilhelm Roentgen, a discovery that was to bring him the first Nobel Prize for physics. (No, I’m not really going to trespass on Marcus’s territory! Well, not for long.) Like many other scientists of the time, Roentgen was experimenting with electtrifying the thin gases in vacuum tubes. One night […]
Continue readingThis is a re-post of something I originally wrote for the ‘other’ blog that I share with Marcus & Fabiana. A couple of days ago I took part in a discussion around reflective writing. It was organised by the University’s Student Learning Support team, with the intention of helping students working towards their PhDs to […]
Continue readingHad a not-the-best ending to a platelets donation today (syncope = fainting; very strange for platelets since you get all the red stuff back…) & I’m still feeling somewhat under the weather & don’t feel like writing a ‘serious’ post. So… what follows is something I’ve had tucked away for a while, wondering when to […]
Continue readingThe issue of who’s going to coordinate our 2nd-year evolutionary biology paper came up the other day. (I haven’t done it for the last couple of years as my ‘other’ job – in the Dean’s office – takes up a fair proportion of my time. But at some point I’d like to get back into it. We’ve had that paper, Evolution and Diversity of […]
Continue readingWhile searching for some background on another post, I happened across this headline on the Herald site: University denies author’s PhD claim. I went on to read the story, as it’s always a bit of a concern to see people claiming credentials and the supposed awarding institution denying that this is the case. And a statement from the […]
Continue readingWe saw this lovely tree on the shoreline at Cape Tribulation. The flowers last just a day before their petals fall. I took this particular photo because I liked the way the fallen petals exposed the colourful reproductive structures – I’m always on the lookout for images to use in my lectures. This reminds me […]
Continue readingJust a quick post as I’m away on a panel meeting & my brain is tired – but here’s something else from my file of ‘things I didn’t know’: Florence Nightingale was a statistician. Now, I heard all about Florence Nightingale when I was a kid. She made a major contribution to the development of […]
Continue readingApologies in advance – this is way off my usual beaten track but it’s been a hard week & I am in need of diversion 🙂 Over the last few days there’ve been a couple of letters to the editor of the Waikato Times, talking about our electricity supply. The first suggested that Nikola Tesla had […]
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