Guess the composer (not Parry) Watching the Prince of Wales' recent programme on the composer Parry I was struck by an error in an old catchphrase. It was an interesting programme - I think someone else could have presented it better, but it was good to get a bit more of Parry exposed. (I was a bit disappointed in all the mentioning of Elgar and Vaughan Williams there was no mention of the man who, I think, eclipsed Parry as an Edwardian British composer, Sir Charles Villiers Stanford.) The catchphrase in question was one that was uttered by a friend, now sadly dead, in a choir I used to sing in whenever we did anything by Parry. He would say: 'Ah, Sir C. Hubert Harry Parry!' Which is now firmly locked in my mind as an association with Parry. The funny thing is, it was wrong. Parry's third name seems to have been Hastings, not Harry. This made me think of other shaky catchphrase quotations, like 'Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well.' This misquote was ver...

I was stunned to read that the German government has decided to shut down all its nuclear power plants in the wake of the Fukushima incident. Not surprised, because this kind of knee-jerk reaction is the kind of thing I expect of politicians, but appalled nonetheless. This is, in my opinion, the politics of superstition. Why superstition? Superstition is basically a failure to understand probability, risk and causality. When a group of bad things happen, even it they have no causal link, our gut feel's inability to deal with randomness and probability - in that case the nature of clustering - means we look for someone to blame. Like a witch, or a phone mast. In the case of nuclear power stations we are dealing with something scary - radiation - which most of us don't understand and we go into full superstitious mode. Let us just put this all into perspective. As I've mentioned before , radiation is a natural thing - the sort of thing the Soil Assocation is usually all ...

Over the years I have had many of my old business books translated into foreign languages from Turkish to Portuguese, not to mention Chinese, Japanese and Thai. (Though strangely, never French. They don't seem to like me, the French. Could it be because the name of my business creativity website www.cul.co.uk is rude in French?) The original for comparison It has taken a while, but now, at last a number of my science books are getting translations, notably into German. The first has arrived on the doorstep, so I can proudly present Physik für Eierköpfe , the possibly worryingly literal translation of the Instant Egghead Guide to Physics . There are quite a few more to follow, but translation is a mysterious business. It starts with something of an exciting bang. The publisher lets you know that they have achieved a translation. This is really good news as it involves an advance payment (except in the case of this particular book, which for complicated reasons I won't ge...

Just when you thought it was safe to take out your earplugs, we have another of the Royal Society of Chemistry podcasts. This time it's about a compound that is familiar from many a chemistry set - copper sulphate (or copper sulfate as the PC police require us to call it). This brilliant blue substance (at least in its hydrated form - pure copper sulfate is practically white) finds its way into a wide range of places from agriculture and book binding to the arts, where it has the honour of taking part in one of the few Turner Prize shortlisted artworks that the general public can actually enjoy. So come on - succumb to blue. You know you want to: take a listen .

I was listening to Radio 4's All in the Mind yesterday. It's not a programme I often catch, but I was on a long drive back from talking at Spalding Grammar School , a situation where I tend to give myself up to whatever Radio 4 has to offer. (I even listen to the plays.) Something really strange happened on this programme, which illustrated either the dangers of doing science journalism badly, or the ethical dilemmas facing experimental psychologists. The story was illustrating how feedback influences sporting performance. Dr Tim Rees of Exeter University was putting forward the idea that positive feedback after failure, emphasing what can be changed rather than what can't improves performance. Although this is vaguely self-evident, it's quite interesting - but the BBC presenter decided to illustrate the theory with an 'experiment.' The idea was that she was to throw darts at a dartboard blindfolded. She would then be given feedback and they would see how i...

As an author of popular science books I will defend to my last breath the superb effectiveness of good popular science writing to get across the message of science and the sense of wonder that goes with it. But there are, of course, other good ways of communicating science. We've seen a lot recently about TV, podcasts and video, but here are two other great examples to give science lovers hope, both of which I've recently reviewed for www.popularscience.co.uk . The first is Marcus Chown's beautiful Solar System app for the iPad. Okay, it has a limited audience because of the platform. And, yes, I'm getting a little boring about the iPad, but this app works so well. I'm not a huge fan of big mega-illustrated science books. I think the entertainment value wears off very quickly. But the genius of this app is that it combines the wow factor of the images plus good basic text with some superb interaction. It was interesting that without any instruction to do so, my ...

From (a rather battered) New Scientist I was delighted to discover that a letter written to New Scientist described how a reader responded to the NS review of Inflight Science by doing an experiment with tea making. In the letter, Joan Mascaró points out that the review had said 'that airline tea tastes so appalling because water boils at too low a temperature to make a decent brew.' The writer then goes on to test tea at different temperatures and concludes that too low a temperature is a real problem, but 92 °C doesn't seem to make much difference. While I could dispute minor details - cabin pressure varies, and can drop boiling point as low as 90 °C - it's unfortunate in a way that the whole thing was based on the review rather than what I said in the book. My actual words were: Tea enthusiasts like their tea made with boiling water – which means getting the water up to 100 degrees Celsius. That is never going to happen on a plane. Not because the cabin cr...

I have just finished reading a book I received as a birthday present that's rather outside my usual span of reading. Okay, there were a couple of brief mentions of science, but the topic here was wine, and specifically the selling of very old wine. Like many people, I enjoy a glass of wine with a meal, though I usually go for the house plonk. (To be honest I often prefer a good pint of beer , but it's rare that you can get one of these in restaurants.) However I have bought nicer wine for home consumption and special occasions. We've occasionally partaken of the likes of Chateau Beychevelle or Chateau Talbot, or the second wines of some the top names like Margaux and Latour. And there is no doubt they taste a bit different from the ordinary stuff - more complex for sure. However this book concerns wine collectors and their quest for bottles dating back as far as the 18th century. When I first heard of wine collectors, I assumed they were like stamp collectors. I don...

As I have mentioned earlier I have recently started using an iPad as my 'away' computer - and does everything I need much better than any compact laptop/netbook. One particular app on the iPad has got me thinking seriously about the way software for 'real' computers is priced, and whether this pricing can hold. What you have to remember with software is that the pricing (like for ebooks) is almost entirely arbitrary. Although there is a big development cost, the unit production cost is minimal - pricing is a marketing decision. Obviously if the price is lower you have to sell more units to pay off your development costs - but then you may well succeed because they are cheaper. Up to now having two platforms, PC and Mac has done little to drive down the cost of programs, because most people have one or the other, so there is little competitive effect. However, if someone has, say, a PC and an iPad, then there is more opportunity for comparison and resultant impact o...

We Brits are famous for our obsession with class. In fact it's true in most countries (put an American socialite in the wrong part of America if you doubt this), but we have always been open about it. However, it is getting more and more difficult to distinguish between working class and middle class. I am not talking about sheer ignorance. At some point leading up to the recent royal wedding I heard some chinless wonder comment with great condescension that Kate Middleton had done so well for a working class person. (After all, she only attended Marlborough, my dear.) I mean that there's real confusion for many people. Of course there are still obvious stereotypes. No one sane would describe Nick Clegg or David Cameron as working class, for example. But many, many people occupy what is, after all, a very broad borderline. Some would really like to be working class because it feels more authentic. Others enjoy the comfort of middle class values. Whatever our hopes and desires...

Those responsible for brands have an unenviable task. Their aim is to make the brand part of everyday speech without it becoming part of everyday language. If that sounds convoluted, let me explain. Big brands like Coca Cola or Apple want it to be natural for your to know, recognize and talk about their brand. When you ask for a cola drink, Coca Cola want you to ask for 'a Coke' and expect to get Coca Cola. But there is a lurking danger to becoming well known. It's genericization. (Is that a word? Don't care.) In the UK, at least, the term 'Coke' for a cola has taken on a degree of the generic. Most people wanting a cola will ask for 'a Coke'. Very few will ask for a Pepsi. However, even if they have a preference (which I do), most will happily accept a Pepsi when asking for 'a Coke.' But they wouldn't expect to be given a Panda Cola. 'A coke' has become generic for a big name (probably US owned) cola, but doesn't cover the wh...

The on-train office. Screen reflection was in photo, but not in use of iPad. There was a time when I was very wary of Apple. I was a DOS man. I knew my way around that operating system like the back of my hand. I could do things with a command line prompt that would make your hair curl. I sneered at the limp wristed Apple users who hadn't a clue what was going on in their machines. If anything went wrong (and it seemed to quite a lot in the early days of Mac - remember the 'bomb' icon?) they were stuffed, where I could reach under the covers and sort it out. Now, of course, with Windows 7 or Vista I'm just as stuffed as they were. But I couldn't possibly think of changing operating system, could I? Then, under the influence of alcohol and Dr G. of Cromer I got an iPhone. Up to that point I was of the 'all I need is calls and text' persuasion. I was still using my 10-year-old Nokia, persuading myself it was cool because they had them in the Matrix . B...

Amazon has recently moved into book publishing. It's not entirely surprising - they've already bought a print on demand service, and a very successful at 'publishing' Kindle ebooks. Yet some have reacted with horror. 'Would anyone buy a book published by Amazon?' they ask. Frankly, I think this is a response seen through the misleading eyes of the publishing business. I want to take you back to the old days at the massive Foyles bookshop in London. They used to (for all I know, the still do) have their books arranged by publisher. So you would have a bookshelf of Penguin books, another bookshelf of Random House books and so on. It was a nightmare. No one goes into a shop saying 'I want a Random House book.' They either want the latest book by author X or a book in category Y. No other way of organizing a bookshop than authors within categories makes any sense. The only situation where you might want to group a publisher's work together is where the...

Even those who knock the BBC (take note, Dr G. of Cromer) would acknowledge that the World Service is a good thing . In fact, I gather quite a few people in the UK are surprised to discover that they are, indeed, part of the world and can listen to it. I'm delighted to say that the World Service's flagship science programme, Discovery has dedicated a show to Inflight Science . During this week (commencing 9 May) you can hear it live most days, or play it using the Listen Again facility - but don't worry if you come to this later, as it is also available as a podcast either by clicking that link or through iTunes. Here's their bumf: Physicist and science writer Brian Clegg guides Jon Stewart on a journey though the science of aeroplane flight. The whole experience of flying is filled with scientific discoveries – starting with how huge, heavy jumbo jets manage to get off the ground, how they navigate and why, unlike in Hollywood movies, it’s practically impossi...

Where does it go? Smartphones at the ready... You may have been puzzled by the rather strange looking blobs, like the one on the right, that are regularly appearing wherever you look these days. I've spotted them on products, on advertising on the tube, in on-screen graphics on the TV - all over the place. These are often called QR codes - and are nothing more or less than two dimensional barcodes. Typically they point you to a website, so that you can find out more information about a product or advertisement. If you have a smartphone, just download a free QR/2D barcode reader and you can pick up the code with the phone's camera and pop straight to a website without bothering to type in that fiddly URL. The idea, which seems reasonable, is that you are more likely to follow up links that aren't clickable this way. This is all very well and fine (and if you have a smartphone, you are welcome to have a go at my 2D barcode here - it is a genuine one). However there ...

Sorry if you hate multimedia - it is just turning out to be one of those weeks. According to the Bookseller , there has been a report published that says that just because people buy iPads they don't necessarily read ebooks. Apparently 40% of owners have not read a book on the device and 45% say that instead they read ebooks on PCs or Macs. Apart from the rather confusing combination of numbers, I think the first statistic isn't entirely surprising. To start with, a lot of people, even iPad users, still buy paper books. I think it's interesting to put the hype about ebooks into perspective that last year sales of consumer ebooks in the UK amounted to £16 million out of a total book market of £3.1 billion. Now admittedly that's growing fast - it was just £4 million the year before - but it's a still a very small piece of the market. So I suspect some iPad owners simply prefer to read from paper in many circumstances. Others simply won't be book readers at all...

Let's mosey on down to the Royal Society of Chemistry oil well and take a listen to a podcast on gasoline. Yep, the latest compound (well, collection of compounds) to be featured in this entertaining series is the ubiquitous petrol. You may not like the prices at the pump, but for five minutes why not find out a bit more about these power-packing hydrocarbons that we can't live with... and can't live without. Take a listen!

Yes. That would be a short blog post - but things are a little more complicated. There is no doubt that some multimedia presentations of science work. A great example is Marcus Chown's Solar System app for the iPad . I confess I haven't played with it yet (as soon as iPads come back in stock, I will be reviewing it), but by all accounts it is superb, really making use of the multimedia environment. But elsewhere I have more mixed feelings. Some new technology gurus insist that we all should be moving to video. 'Why aren't all authors doing videos to promote their material?' they cry, or 'Why do you still bother with print at all?' I don't know if it's just me, but I have a very low tolerance of videos. I can watch a video online for maybe two minutes - beyond that, I can't be bothered. I don't understand why exactly. I'm quite happy to sit through a one hour documentary or a two hour movie on the TV, but stick me in front of an online...

Public Relations is a dark art, and the practioners of PR have many tricks up their sleeves. Unfortunately they do have a tendency to use the same tricks over and over, to the extent that some of them have become close to a cliché - and probably the most obvious of these is news-based PR. It works like this. You keep an eye on the news for attention-grabbing stories, then put out a press release that uses that story as a 'hook'. So, for instance, last week, those of us who are priveleged to received our fair share of press releases were inundated with royal wedding releases, mostly totally unrelated to the event. You know the kind of thing - 'Wills and Kate have the ultimate drive home in classic car!' followed by a release by a classic car hire company. But it wasn't the royal wedding that sparked this post. It was darker news - the killing of Osama Bin Laden. I received a press release from a company called Imperva that has an 'Application Defence Centre...