… Darwin Day 🙂 HAPPY DARWIN DAY, everybody! (Thought I should get that out of my system. I hope to get a more substantial post up later today – too many meetings getting in the way of my writing fix!)
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no science for you today
… & no bread recipes either. I’ve just got back from Wellington, where I helped to celebrate the life, & mourn the death, of someone who’d been a good & valued friend for 30 years (& who introduced me to the joys of playing the recorder properly, & the books of Ursula le Guin). For […]
Continue readingunderstanding science
I’ve just come across a post by Phil Plait on Skepticblog, on understanding the nature of science. (Phil also writes the Bad Astronomy blog.) It’s clear & concise, & the comments thread is also excellent as it expands on some of Phil’s points. Included in his post is an introduction to the new website Understanding […]
Continue readingthinking about darwin
Now that we’re into the year of Darwin200, I’d like to share some thoughts on how this is celebrated/commemorated. Yes, we should recognise the enormous significance of Darwin’s work to our current understanding of evolution – but we should also acknowledge, as National Geographic has, that there were things he didn’t know. (How could he, […]
Continue readingchoose carefully…
… as the ancient knight said to Indiana Jones **. Okay, I’m talking about choice of subjects, so the outcomes won’t be as life-threatening as the choice Indy faced, but these decisions can still have a big impact on your future study courses. (& I’m aware that if you’re considering Scholarship this year, you’ve most likely […]
Continue readingthe ‘origins’ blog
This year there’ll be a wide variety of events & publications marking the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth. One of these is Origins: a history of beginnings, a blog on the website of the journal Science. It kicks off with a post by science writer Carl Zimmer (I’ve talked about some of his other work here & […]
Continue readingthe six-million dollar cockroach
Happy New Year, everyone 🙂 I was idly looking around for something to write about (definitely in holiday mood at the moment!) & came across a couple of websites that you might enjoy. And they’re even educational…
Continue readingtalking about science
Why is it important for people (scientists, journalists, science communicators, every woman & her dog) to talk about science? Does it really matter if NZ primary school students think science isn’t fun, if secondary students seem to be showing less interest in the sciences, or if fewer & fewer students major in physics at university? As […]
Continue readinga biologist on holiday
Well, it wasn’t all lying around by the infinity pool while we were away in Vanuatu – although I must say, doing that was very pleasant… (& contrary to appearances, we had very little rain.) But one of the attractions of going somewhere different is that there is so much new stuff to see and do. […]
Continue readingbadscience – the book
I’m back. Yes, it was a great holiday – & no – it wasn’t long enough 🙂 And yes, I did spend a lot of time lying around under an umbrella by the water, reading books & generally applying myself to relaxing. Anyway, one of those books was Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science, which follows on from his blog of […]
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