It's that time again when it becomes respectable to dig out your Christmas CDs as tomorrow the great chocolate countdown begins. (Hands up who can remember advent calendars without chocolate? Boring, weren't they?) Yes, despite my repeated cries of 'Bah, Humbug', I have to give and get a quick coating of tinsel. A number of years ago, on my old blog on Nature Network, a miniature masterpiece evolved. It was an 'anyone can contribute a line' poem, based on 'Twas the Night Before Christmas' but set in a lab. Yes, folks, this is both lab lit and evolutionary poetry. I feel it deserves to be preserved (indeed pickled), so I like to dig it out on a regular basis. For those who like their pomes read out (here with sound effects by the excellent Graham Steel), here it is . And for those who are members of the campaign for real written words, here it is in all its glory: Twas the night before Christmas and all through the lab Not a Gilson was stirring, no...

Which one's the average house? I was struck by an item on the local news this morning saying that the average house price in the UK was £163,910 according to the Nationwide Building Society. This seemed a dubious statistic. Why? Because the average (or mean) is not a good measure of a distribution that isn't symmetrical. It's highly misleading. That's because the vast majority of houses in the UK are worth less than the average house price - and that is downright confusing. Let's look at a simpler example to see what's going on. Imagine we have a room full of people and take their average earnings. Then we throw Bill Gates into the room. Bill's vast income would really bump up the average - so probably everyone else in the room would earn less than the average. The new average would not be representative of the room as a whole. The reason a relatively small number of cases (in our room, Bill) can have a big impact is because the distribution - the sp...

There is a Turing statue in Manchester, but frankly it's unrecognisable. You can do better, guys. There is nothing editors like more than anniversaries. Recently I suggested a feature to a magazine. 'It could work,' they said, 'as long as you can find an anniversary to tie it to. We need a hook.' Frankly, this is a load of rubbish. The reading public really doesn't care why a magazine or newspaper is coming up with a particular story as long as it's interesting. But editors feel they have to devise a justification. They need a reason that a particular story should be used, so they arbitrarily use the factor of a significant date. It keeps them happy, bless them. This being the case, we can expect a flood of books on Alan Turing as it was the 100th anniversary (wey-hey!) of his birth in June. Leaving aside the fact Turing would certainly have preferred a binary anniversary (2018 will be the 1000000th anniversary of his death), I'm currently reading...

With some regularity I get sent emails about scams, viruses and strange things that Facebook is going to do. Almost always these are accompanied by a request to pass them on the world and its aunty. And there's the thing. Because almost always these dire warnings (some of them very dire) are themselves a form of virus. What they describe is totally fictional, a hoax that by panicking people into spreading the word, reproduces and travels the world. It is this 'chain letter' effect that is, in fact, the awful payload. Whenever I get these warning emails and Facebook messages my first step is to pop over to Snopes (thanks to Andy Grüneberg for introducing this to me many years ago). Snopes is primarily a way of checking out urban myths, but most of the time these spoof warnings also get a write-up. So, for instance, I recently got an email from someone, asking me to pass on to everyone I know a warning about cards being left by Parcel Delivery Service. Anyone who rang up...

My latest podcast for the Royal Society of Chemistry is not about some complex biological molecule, or even the sort of serious compound that is treated with respect in the lab. We're talking about an acid that's so weak we're happy to shake it onto our food, whether it's an essential condiment for chips or to give a salad dressing a bite. To be fair, this is because vinegar is only very dilute acetic acid. But in some ways the most interesting chemicals are the ones we hardly notice, they are such an everyday part of life. So pop along to the RSC compounds site - or if you've five minutes to spare, click to to have a listen to my podcast on vinegar .

Generally speaking, the Church of England is an underrated organization. As religious organizations go it is moderate and caring. CofE vicars do a remarkably good job on the whole in difficult circumstances. The local church still plays a role in its community, particularly when it comes to big events like weddings and funerals. But the recent women bishops debacle was terrible. What I find bizarre is what has happened is due to an abysmal organizational structure, not in any sense a reflection of the will of the majority. If you look at the Synod, the 'parliament', only one of the 3 houses, the laity (i.e. the ordinary folk) didn't pass the motion for women bishops. But the church also has local synods, based on the diocese structure. Of these, 42 out of 44 supported women bishops. So how was the vote lost? Where's the representation in this? The anti-vote comes from a strange (some might say un-holy) alliance of the two extreme wings of the church - it's as if...

Scientists are fond of moaning about science writers, saying we simplify the science too much. This is sometimes true, though to be fair, some science needs simplification, and it’s better to say something in a simple way that’s not the whole story than to say it in a way that is totally incomprehensible. But historians of science have a different complaint. They reckon we are too fond of stories. So science books, for example, will tell you about Newton’s amazing breakthroughs (quite possibly inspired by an apple falling), or Einstein turning physics on its head. But the historians will grumble and groan saying, ‘No, it was more complicated than that. It wasn’t a straightforward story of one hero making the breakthrough, it was a whole lot of tiny steps, some of them backwards, by a whole range of people, that come together to make the big picture.’ There is an element of truth in this, but it is an argument that’s only any use if you have an audience of computers. People need ...

We have a friend who has her funeral organized to the last detail - and has had for years. She has written down exactly what she wants to happen and exactly what bits of music she wants to be sung/played when. For all I know, she has probably written out the menu for the post-funeral meal. Perhaps less extreme, at the moment there is a Co Op Funeral Service ad on the TV (am I the only one who thinks this isn't an ideal subject for TV advertising? - if you think differently, you can enjoy some of their funeral ads here ) where someone tells us 'My song? It's got to be "I Did It My Way"', referring, of course, to what he wants played at his funeral. I listen to this kind of thing with an eyebrow dramatically raised. Frankly I don't get it. At my funeral, if those present want to, they can sing Happy Days Are Here Again while hopping round on their left legs playing the ukelele banjo. Or sit in complete silence. Whatever works for them. Surely this is t...

When I was a teenager I very much enjoyed E. E. 'Doc' Smith's Lensman series. These six novels were, frankly, pretty poorly written - but the sweep of the story arc - the sheer scale of a storyline that spanned over 2 billion years - was astounding. And in some ways, the Sigil trilogy by Henry Gee, which I've just finished reading, has a similar impact (though the writing is considerably better). And yet it's not really 'space opera', because most of the action takes place on Earth. Some of the ideas in these books are astonishing, with the sun threatened by a herd of star-eating phenomena (not exactly living, but sort of) that were created soon after the big bang, an Earth civilization going back millions of years and the discovery of a whole range of hominids other than Homo sapiens still living on Earth, plus an archeological dig uncovering a vast underground city older than any known human civilisation and a massive space battle millions of years ago....

What do a South American butterfly and motorhead TV presenter Richard Hammond have in common? Both have a need to avoid close contact with water. In his 2012 BBC programme Richard Hammond’s Miracles of Nature , Hammond demonstrates an all too common problem: dropping a phone down the toilet. Apparently 19 per cent of us admit to having had this accident occur at some point. It’s all too easy, particularly if you have a phone in a breast pocket and bend over – or simply slip while holding your handset in the smallest room. We won’t resort to Hammond’s dodgy statistics: he combines the 40 per cent who admit to taking their phones into the loo in the first place (what do the other 60 per cent do with their phones, leave them by the door?) with that 19 per cent to suggest half of those who take their phones drop them down the pan. However, there is no doubt that the toilet and all the other water hazards we face from puddles to simply using our phones in the rain put those most essentia...

Finding my way around Swindon with Apple Maps Wow, you have a Peacocks and two Greggs?! Respect. People like to knock the big guy, and why not? We enjoy giving Starbucks a good kicking for not paying any tax in the UK, for instance. Traditionally Microsoft was always hated by many as the big corporate IT behemoth, but of late Apple has taken over this role. What used to be the cool rebel alternative has become mainstream, large and ... a target. So it was delight for many when Apple kicked themselves firmly in the iOS with their Maps app. If you haven't come across the many Apple Maps jokes and the reason behind them, here's the thing. Google used to provide the mapping application used on iPhones and iPads. It was a very good mapping application - Google have been in this business a good time. But Apple decided they'd go it alone and do their own app. Which wasn't always perfect. To say the least. So much booing and hissing for Apple and kudos for Google (itsel...

There's something special and just a little bizarre about receiving translations of books - here is something you are being paid for, that should contain your thoughts,  and yet you have not got a clue what is actually in it. Don't get me wrong - I'm sure the translator has done a superb job, I just don't have any idea what this book says. It could be the (very large) instruction manual for some hi-tech equipment for all I know. But what book is it? Could you guess from the cover? I'll come back to this later. As you can see from the photo (and the title of the post is a bit of a give away), this is a Japanese translation, and rather a handsome hardback. If you aren't sure if a book is Japanese or Chinese, in my experience the Japanese translations usually come with those distinctive paper strip covers (the yellow bit at the bottom) that only stretch to half or less of the book's size. When I get translations like this I usually give them away when I d...

Listening to one of the RSA's excellent 15 minute ' Four Thought ' talks on Radio 4 the other day I was struck how naive I was about how money was created. And I think I'm not alone. When I say how money is created, I don't mean companies earning it, I mean extra money added to the supply. My naive reaction would have been 'The Bank of England does it - quantitative easing, that sort of thing.' But actually the BoE is a small player in this. The reason I missed the point is that I hadn't really thought about what ordinary high street banks do with money. Don't get me wrong. I wasn't like a young friend of ours many years ago who thought that the bank had a series of shoe boxes (or equivalent), and when she paid money in, they put it in her shoe box in the safe. I knew the money you pay in just enters the system and can go anywhere. But I hadn't thought about another aspect of dealing with banks. Let's imagine you go to your bank and...

When I was purchasing Henry Gee's Sigil trilogy from Reanimus Press (review of Henry's masterpiece to follow - I haven't had a chance to read it yet), I noticed they had reprints of some classic science fiction. I'm a sucker for this - my SF enthusiasm peaked in the 60s and 70s, so anyone who has emerged since isn't really on my radar (seriously - I consider Ben Bova trendy). Something that caught my eye was a book of short stories by Norman Spinrad. To be honest he's not an author I had had much to do with, but it was reasonably priced, and short stories are idea for ebook reading, so I downloaded a copy of The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde - and I am so glad I did. Although these stories are probably 50 years old, they are mostly timeless. Okay, one or two have a slightly dated feel to the female characters, and there are a couple where the technology caught him out, but story after story was brilliant - really exploring the implications of different t...

Long ago, in an airport far, far away My first job was in Operational Research. If this doesn't mean much to you, it was a discipline that originated in the Second World War to provide mathematical problem solving for challenges like what was the best pattern to drop depth charges to be most likely to hit a submarine. After the war it became popular in nationalised industries and when I joined the soon-to-be-privatised British Airways in 1977 it was going strong there. Last Friday was a 60th anniversary reunion of people who had worked in OR at British Airways over the years. I must admit I had mixed feelings about going. My general principle is 'never go back.' I really can't understand people from Oxbridge, for instance, who return to their college to make use of their 'dining rights'. Why go all that way to have a so-so meal in uncomfortably formal surroundings with a bunch of academics you don't know? But this was rather different - a chance to see...

Yes, I'm on Amazon.com There's a lot about ebooks that is still a mystery - never more so than when we're dealing with Amazon's Kindle. As an Amazon Prime customer I was interested to see they've added the ability to 'borrow' Kindle books... but was then rapidly let down to find out that you can only do so on Kindle devices, not my trust iPad or my desktop computer. (Not really the topic here, but I am also still very peeved that US Prime customers get free movie streaming and we don't in the UK.) But the thing that made me write this post was the complications of books and territories. When, as an author, you sell a book to a publisher you sell various rights. You might, for instance, sell world rights, or English language rights, or just UK and Commonwealth rights. And the publisher can then sell the book in those territories. But the internet potentially makes a nonsense of this. I have long been able to buy a book from Amazon.com that only has ...

I have recently added a new website to the family - sciextra.com . The idea is to provide bite sized bits of the most interesting bits of science, the science they didn't teach at school. The stuff that makes you go 'Wow!' It's early days on content, but the idea is to have short videos and articles/blog posts on the bits that make science so interesting. Please do take a look and give me any feedback. Realizing I can't exactly do super-slick videos I decided to go for a very informal (ok, amateurish) approach - I am hoping this will come across as endearing, rather than than incompetent. To give a taster, if you can't be bothered to click through (but please do!) here's the first video produced for the site, explaining why, given time travel is possible, we haven't be inundated with time travellers from the future:

Anomaly in its rather smart cardboard case When I was a kid, you read comics until you were around 11, then you moved on to real books. I know things have been rather different in the US, where comics always had an older audience - and of course the term 'comic' has to be quite broad when it takes in both The Beano and Batman - but the thing that really changed attitudes of (at least some) readers in the UK was the graphic novel. This was the comic form taken to novel length and treated as serious material for grown ups. Personally I have never quite got into graphic novels. In part it is a slight embarrassment - I wouldn't read one in public because it gives the impression, like it or not, that you struggle with reading. The other problem I have is that I'm more a word person than a visual person - so when I do read one I have to force myself to slow down and look at the pictures, or I just hurtle through the relatively limited text. However, I'm always in...

I don't know if it's because of the Jimmy Savile case, but I've heard several pieces on the radio recently about sexual harassment at work. (I know what Savile is alleged to have done is far worse than harassment, but it seems to have triggered the discussion.) I think it's important we recognize that sexual harassment exists and needs dealing with, and also that it exists in both directions. I had to deal with three cases that could be classed as sexual harassment when I was a manager. One was by a male - a very simple one. This was in the early days of being able to display a photo on a Windows background and an employee had chosen a picture of a topless woman. It was inappropriate, caused offence and he was asked to remove it. The other two incidents were by females. One was a classic case - standing too close, inappropriate touching and suggestions - and was dealt with firmly. The other was more subtle. The offender was either very knowing or naive. Early on I had...

It's strange when you come to think of it that despite human beings being living creatures of flesh and blood, the aspects that define our outward appearance - hair, skin, nails - are all dead. They have something else in common. They are all based on the wonderfully versatile compound, keratin. And that's the subject of my latest Royal Society of Chemistry compounds podcast . So if you've 5 minutes to spare take a listen and discover the wonder of keratin .