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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adventures of a curious character
I’m still going on The eye: a natural history, but right now I’m going to talk about Richard Feynman’s autobiography, Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman! (I must confess that I’m one of those people who keeps several books on the go at once – The eye is on the bedside table, but Feynman’s book is what I read […]
Continue readinglazy sunday
I feel lazy today. I could review a paper for you… Or – I could share something completely off-topic!
Continue readingthe natural history of the eye
Well, here I am back in the office again. The conference was great – but it was on assessment in the tertiary education system: not something you want to hear about here 🙂 But during a break in the proceedings I slipped out & investigated the Lambton Quay bookshops… (Dangerous things, bookshops; I could easily […]
Continue readingwhy play?
And the answer isn’t necessarily, ‘for fun’ 🙂
Continue readinglife in the cambrian
I first read Stephen Jay Gould’s book, Wonderful Life, not long after it was first published in 1989. The book centres on the Burgess Shale, a wonderfully rich source of of different fossils (a Lagerstätte) from the Cambrian, around 530 million years ago. The Burgess Shale is unusual in that it contains an array of soft-bodied […]
Continue readingso many books, so little time in the day
In the last couple of days I seem to have accumulated a pile of lovely enticing books to read. (& I didn’t even buy them – our wonderful science librarian sends new books through from time to time). I’m spoilt for choice, in fact. And I still haven’t finished Microcosm!
Continue readinganother book: carl zimmer’s “microcosm”
One of the things I love about my job is the endless opportunities to learn new things. I have to try to keep up-to-date in the areas of biology that I teach about, & this means a lot of reading & talking with people. But the opportunities are much wider than that – when I […]
Continue reading‘the demon-haunted world’
Another in the occasional series of ‘what I’m reading’ (actually, there are 3 books on the go at the moment but I’ve only just started the second & I’m still trying to decide whether or not I like the third). This one is The demon-haunted world by the late, great Carl Sagan.
Continue readingthe beauty & wonder of science
I remember reading one of Richard Dawkins’ books in which he made the comment that a rainbow does not become any less beautiful just because we understand how it’s formed. Now I’ve come across a similar statement in another book (The Single Helix) by one of my favourite science writers, Steve Jones.
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