I’ve been trying out Sengi — perhaps the closest a Mastodon interface gets to what I’ve been looking for. I didn’t want to say that it’s the closest I’ve found to a Tweetdeck mimic — because I’m trying not to just reproduce how I was consuming social media through Tweetdeck. […]
A couple of weeks ago Oliver Wright of The Independent ran a hatchet job, both horrible and nonsensical, about the head of the RCGP, Clare Gerada — the tireless and currently ubiquitous critic of the NHS privatisation Health and Social Care Bill. You may remember Ben Goldacre wrote about Oliver […]
This is another archival repost, written for the old blog in January 2008. The central dogma of molecular biology, first described by Francis Crick in 1958, describes the flow of information between DNA, RNA, and proteins.[1] The central dogma is interesting, but I believe that its use in teaching is […]
This is another archival repost from the old blog. Wikipedia avoids weasel words. It attributes statements to their sources, rather than to “some people say”. Can you imagine a newspaper surviving five minutes with such a policy? When somebody hoaxes Wikipedia, the article quickly gets investigated and deleted within three […]
This is another archival repost, originally written for the old blog in march 2007. Shockingly, it’s a new article on the blog. Even more shocking: there will be several more following over the next few weeks. “All those people who feel that denial of ID is heresy are missing the […]
This is another archival repost first written for the old blog in 2007. On Monday I mentioned John Maynard Smith’s videos at People’s Archive. They really are marvelous, and you should watch them all. One of the topics he discusses is horizontal gene transfer in bacteria, a subject I discussed […]
In an historic and decisive election, David Cameron has won an astonishing slightly more seats than the other parties, catapulting him to the possibility of forming a government. Despite all of the stumbling blocks standing in his way, including vastly superior funding, the support of major newspapers, an innate sense […]
This is my little vanity site which syndicates and amalgamates my writing and photography from its various homes in blogs, journals and magazines. If you wish to stalk me and know my ill-considered thoughts on a wide variety of topics that I like to claim to understand, do subscribe! Alternatively, […]
This is another archival repost, written for the old blog in June 2009. This week Gordon Brown gave his cabinet a shuffle, after a bunch of his friends walked out on him. He managed to upset scientists twice. First he merged the department of universities and whatsits into the department […]
This is another archival repost from the old blog, originally from january 2009. I’ve heard it said several times. Usually it’s when I scold an acquaintance for being in possession of a copy. They will say something like, “I only bought it because it’s a convenient size,” or, “I just […]
This is another archival repost originally written for the old blog in 2008. I am satisfied with the mystery of life’s eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence – as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason […]
This is an archival repost originally written on the old blog in 2008. Hah! Made you look! No, but seriously… The schizophrenic argument of the creationists goes something like this (my paraphrasing): How can we believe anything these scientists say when they keep changing what they say to accommodate the […]
This is another archival repost, originally written for the old blog in May 2008. Darwin’s 1837 phylogeny, with root and branches. I’ve talked about Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT) on the blog a few times before, particularly in the context of bacteria acquiring genes for things like antibiotic resistance, and in […]
Humphrey Lyttelton, 1921 – 2008 Humph tells me he has to leave us now as he’s been invited to a club night by St Peter, and this is something of a climax for him. He’ll drop everything to be taken to heaven by St Michael. He says he can’t wait […]
This is another archival repost, originally written for the old blog in Dec 2007. Read about member of parliament George Galloway in any British newspaper, no matter what its editorial policy or political situation, and you will read about corrupt, self-serving Stalinist dullard on an ego-trip. But I hardly have […]
This is another archival repost originally written for the old blog in november 2007. “Yes I agree, but this is different. Don’t lump us in with those charlatans!” Criticise quack miracle cures, irrational superstition, loony pseudoscience, and religion, and you will get in return an example of the comment above. […]
This is another archival repost, first published on the old blog in Nov 2007. Accusations of racism have been flying these past few weeks, but in the heat of the moment, the discussions have been more noise than signal. This week’s Friday Creationism looks at an old accusation of racism: […]
This is another archival repost from the old blog, originally written in oct 2007. Evolution, from the point of view of the geneticist, is the change in allele frequencies that occurs in populations over time. New alleles are created by random mutation, and others slowly disappear through natural selection or […]
This is another archival repost, originally from oct 2007. Are you an addict? I bet you are (I saw you gambling addicts coming!). It might be coffee, chocolate, or tobacco, rather than alcohol, heroin, or self-harm, and you might not be wasting away because of it, but you’re probably addicted […]
This is an archive of a piece originally published on the old blog in 2007. A particular interest of mine is cell signalling. This is the field of molecular biology that looks at how biochemical events in the cell go on to cause responses elsewhere in the same cell, and […]
This is another repost originally written for the old blog in 2007. Over the next few years or decades, traditional antibiotics will largely be replaced by bacteriophages. Like everything in biology and medicine, this is ultimately down to evolution. Pathogenic bacteria are alive: they reproduce, with slight imperfections, and are […]
This is another archival repost originally written for the old blog in oct 2007. In an episode of Friends, Ross and Phoebe have a somewhat implausible argument about Evolution. The argument ends with Ross conceding a point about probability and the inability to prove anything outside of mathematics (of course, […]
This is another archival repost of something originally written for the old blog in Oct 2007. I apologise for the half-hearted post. I had hoped to write a lot more, but was foiled by migraine, and ran into the deadline: today is “Blog Action Day“! New words are created every […]
This is another archival repost from the old blog, originally from july 2007. I started writing this over a month ago, but may have got a little distracted. I’m not entirely sure what point it was supposed to be making anymore, but I do remember that, because it was supposed […]
This is another archival repost from the old blog, this one from May 2007. The Hollow Man was on the television the other day, confirming once again my belief that hollywood lacks the imagination to make sci-fi even a fraction as interesting as real science. There was, however, a most […]