The Careers Fair was lively all day, but I caught it at a fairly quiet moment I spent an interesting day yesterday at the Civic Centre in Trowbridge at the invitation of Wiltshire Council. The event was a 'Careers Fair and Enterprise Day', with the idea being to give 16+ young people some help with with moving in the direction of their desired careers. It was a great idea, though I think there were a few lessons to be learned in terms of how to do it. The Careers Fair part was buzzing and clearly doing a good job, as was the Apprenticeship Bus parked outside. Then there were the opportunities to undertake practice interviews and tables where various interesting people (including me) sat, able to provide Q&As on what it's like to work in their particular field. These were less successful. The interviewers were quite busy in the morning, but mostly unoccupied in the afternoon. This was a real shame - mock interviews are hugely useful. I've interviewed for real...

I have had my fingers burned in the past by taking part in a small literary festival. The Brympton Festival, near Yeovil, involved a lovely location, but was a disaster because hardly anyone turned up, and the festival organisers were unable to pay the promised expenses. But when they work well, the small literary festival can be a delight - and never more so than last weekend with the Kempsford festival, just a few miles from where I live, which I attended both as a speaker and audience member. Arguably it was thanks to Roy Hattersley, who sadly was unable to speak due to illness - but this left a last minute slot to fill, which saw me giving my time machine talk. The festival ran for three days and featured a fascinating range of speakers from Barry Norman to Douglas Hurd. We had everything from a Countess turned historical novelist to an MP who is an expert on the Tudors. There are several reasons this festival worked so well. The venue was unusual, to say the least - a large ...

Younger readers may find it hard to believe, but when I was young there were still gas lights in our town. When I was very young my Grandma's street in Smallbridge still had gas lights, and Rochdale station had them until 1970. But they were already long doomed. As soon as electric lighting became widely available, gas lighting was inevitably on its way out, and the sooner the better. Yet I am sure it had its fans in its day. #89755805 / gettyimages.com I mention this because I am wondering if there's a similar picture with the milkman. I'm probably of the first generation that has never had a milkman. My parents did as a matter of course - and at one point it made a kind of sense, when most households didn't have fridges, so you really needed fresh milk every day. But things are different now. I had always assumed that people still used the milkman because they were prepared to pay a few pence more for the convenience, but I was shocked the other day to di...

The now defunct clock Over fifteen years ago I bought an alarm clock, which served me well all that time until the button that had to be pressed to set the time broke, so when the clocks went forward, it was a goner. It was a very simple alarm clock. It wasn't a radio. It didn't play music. It didn't make tea. It just did two things - woke you up and told the time. Frankly, I don't need an alarm to wake me up any more. My phone does that just fine. But this alarm had a big (I mean 4 cm high) numbers in a clearly illuminated display, which was wonderful. I wake up a lot in the night, and a quick glimpse at it, without my glasses on, was enough to check the time. It was brilliant, and all I wanted was to replace it with an identical clock. Only as far as I can see, Ross, the manufacturer, doesn't exist as a company any more. In the end I went for about the only decently large display alarm I could find. It's clearly different in that the display is red rat...

I have a problem with the upcoming European elections - I don't know who to vote for, so I'm asking for your help. Not voting is not an option that I am prepared to consider - I value democracy too highly - but I struggle to be happy with any of the options. As a starting point I am a genuine floating voter. I change my allegiance from election to election - I don't understand the tribalism a lot of people exhibit when it comes to political parties, I just want the best option. If everything was even, I would probably vote Liberal Democrat as the broad feel of the party aligns best with my generally liberal orientation, but I have two big problems with their policies. These issues don't include, by the way, the business over tuition fees. Anyone who holds that against the LibDems is incredibly naive - you can't enter into a coalition and carry forward all you policies. To expect that to happen seems very silly. I wish they had been able to do away with tuition f...

Many of us enjoy a good murder mystery, and at some point we're liable to come across a forensic scientist at work on the TV screen - in fact in shows like Waking the Dead and assorted CSIs , they have played a central role in the drama. Many of the tools and techniques used on screen are fictional but my latest Royal Society of Chemistry podcast covers a genuine CSI compound - luminol. To find out more about this glow in the dark blood detector, take a listen by clicking play on the bar at the top of the page - or if that doesn't work for you, pop over to its page on the RSC site .

I agree with Dave (sort of) I will be honest, this does not come easy to me, but I sort of agree with David Cameron about something. Don't get over-excited, I have not gone over to the dark side. George Osborne is still not on my Christmas card list. But I did get rather irritated about the flak Cameron received for daring to suggest that the UK is a Christian nation. The critics point out that most of us aren't practising Christians, and this is true, but entirely misses the point. The enthusiasts for multiculturalism, no doubt the same ones who bemoan Cameron's remarks, are always quick to say that we ought to encourage everyone to cherish their cultural heritage, not to forget it. And to suggest that our cultural heritage in the UK is not Christian is perverse. Of course Cameron got it wrong in the detail. He should have said CofE not Christian as they aren't identical concepts, and that's what is central to our cultural heritage. And of course it isn...

Hollingworth Lake, not by moonlight The other day I was on a train, and glancing over the lurid magazine of the person sitting next to me, saw the headline 'Do you remember your first kiss.' All of a sudden, just like one of those montagey bits in a Hollywood movie, I was plunging back in time, because indeed I do. Like many geeky teenagers, to be honest I had very little experience of the opposite sex when 14 or 15, but age 11, before the confusions and complexities of secondary school, I did indeed have a girlfriend, Helen Margaret Shadforth. I only really have two memories of her. One is evoked by a little handwritten letter (they were back then) which clearly came when our grand age-11 passion was fading, as Helen says 'I don't suppose you want to go to the cinema, but if you do there is the new Dr Who film on at the Odeon.' Oh, fickle youth. But the outstanding flashbulb memory is the kiss. Helen lived near to Hollingworth Lake, a local beauty spot near...

I was interested to read a news report telling us that the IPCC's focus on cutting carbon emissions was ignoring the development needs of the poor. Apparently Dr Chukwumerije Okereke, from Reading University, said 'The argument has been shifting away from the view that the developed countries, who have been mainly responsible for the problem, should take leadership in solving it, to this centre-ground view that we are all in it together and we all have to do our share.' Dr Okereke thinks this is a bad thing, because those 'who have been mainly responsible' should shoulder their guilt and sort it out, leaving everyone else to do whatever they like. The trouble is, this attitude is all about politics and nothing to do with science and solutions. I have three problems with Dr Okereke's viewpoint. It's a classic attempt to bring blame in - the developed countries, the argument goes, are most to blame for the current situation, and hence they should do mos...

As, for obscure reasons, I am replacing Roy Hattersley at the Kempsford Literary Festival and talking about Build Your Own Time Machine (if you're interested it's in St Mary's Church, Kempsford, 4.30pm on Sunday 27 April, £5 - tickets from kemplitfest@gmail.com or on 01285 810588, or on the door), I thought I'd do a quick time travel related post here. As I describe in the book/talk, there is nothing in the laws of physics that prevents time travel, and relativity makes forwards time travel relativity simple. Backwards is a lot more tricky, but in principle this is possible using general relativity effects. But many physicists believe that it can never actually happen, in part because of the paradoxes that arise if you can travel into the past. The best known time paradox is the so-called grandfather paradox, where you visit the past, kill a grandparent before you are born (I don't know why it's a grandparent, but it's traditional) and you're in ...

Could you sue this man? I mean, look at that smile! Yes, folks, it's Chiropractic Awareness week, that time of year when we are all asked to give a thought to our local chiropractors and their chiropractices. And what better chiropractic activity to give some thought to than the British Chiropractic Association's (BCA) legal attack on Simon Singh. In case you don't remember, back in 2008, around this time of year, Singh, one of the UK's leading popular science writers, contributed a piece to the Guardian entitled Beware the spinal trap. In it he described the odd origins of chiropractic and the assorted ailments that have been claimed to be cured by this spinal manipulation, including 'children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying'. Singh asserted that the BCA 'is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments.' He then described the var...

A friend of mine is doing PhD research on personality and needs some volunteers to fill in two online questionnaires. They do take 15 to 25 minutes each, but you would be contributing to valuable research.  He is researching the extent to which an individual displays seemingly opposite qualities in different contexts e.g. can somebody be both “introverted” and “extraverted” – or can they be “tough” and “compassionate”. His PhD is looking to refute traditional “type theory” that likes to make you exclusively one (and not the other). He is also researching how using opposite qualities may boost an individual’s “emotional intelligence”. After he has analysed the data, he will email out a short personality report based on the 1st questionnaire and a short emotional intelligence report based on the 1st & 2nd questionnaire combined, so you get some feedback about yourself. If anyone could help it would be great. These are the surveys - you do need to do both. This is the f...

Purely by coincidence I have two posts about young adult fiction in a row, though this is quite different, as I am delighted to welcome author S. P. Moss to describe a strange aspect of time in her latest novel: ‘… you see, Grandpop, this has happened once before, or I suppose I mean after...’ One man’s past is another man’s future. This was the conundrum facing me when I came to write the sequel – or is it a prequel? – to the children’s adventure story, The Bother in Burmeon . The Bother in Burmeon is a retro-style tale. Young Billy slips back in time to 1962 to join his RAF pilot granddad in a rip-roaring jungle adventure. But what on earth is going to happen if, a few months later, Billy takes another time trip? – As he does in the new book, Trouble in Teutonia .  He ends up in a country not dissimilar to Germany - in the middle of a Cold War winter, in 1957. It’s “after” for Billy. But it's “before” for Grandpop. This leads to all manner of dilemmas for the twelve-ye...

I have been a huge fan of British fantasy writer Alan Garner since I was 11. I went to the same school as Garner, and all the locations of his earlier books were extremely familiar to me - which made the books extra special because a sense of place is central to Garner's superb fantasies. I stayed with him until what was, for me, his best book The Owl Service , after which we parted company as Garner's writing headed into a more confused place. Since reading Garner I have come to enjoy other fantasy writers - notably Gene Wolfe and Neil Gaiman - whose real world fantasies are far better than pure sword and sorcery because their locations, myth and legend, whether existent or conjured up for the book, intertwine with the lives of ordinary people in a world we know and understand, making the stories much more powerful. What Sara Crowe has done with Bone Jack is remarkable - she has brought back the intensity of reading Garner. While entirely its own book, and not a pastich...

I've always been fascinated by user interface design - the design of the way a person interacts with a product. It tends to be thought of as a computer software thing, but it applies to anything a person interacts with: a car, a fridge... even a door. And as soon as you design a user interface, you are open to designer error. When people try to use your product and get it wrong, the natural inclination is to think that they are idiots. But, in fact, I think of this as Designer Error #1, which is simply defined: If someone uses your product incorrectly, it is your mistake, not theirs. I suffered from Designer Error #1 myself on one of my websites recently. But before getting to that, one or two of you may have a nagging doubt. Surely Designer Error #1 can't apply to a door? Does it make sense to talk about user interface design of a door? It certainly does. For quite a while, designers loved producing minimalist glass doors with no obvious hinge or handle. Often these were ...

I was delighted, if rather torn, by the opportunity to review about Beyond Flying , a book about the appropriate green response to air travel. There were two reasons for being torn. One is that I think it is important to be green, and that climate change is a huge challenge facing us all - but on the other hand, most green organisations and their stances make me squirm. I am all too conscious that if it wasn't for the opposition of green pressure groups we would, by now, be generating most of our electricity from clean, green nuclear energy, which would have done far more to reduce our carbon emissions than fiddling about with flying habits. The other way I'm a little divided is I worked for British Airways for 17 years, and keep a residual affection for the company and the airline business (not to mention having written Inflight Science ) - but at the same time I have only flown once in the last 20 years, which frankly puts most of the green polemicists in the book to sh...

I'm a great enthusiast for Netflix - partly in terms of the range of interesting TV available (we're currently working through the original Swedish/Danish version of The Bridge , and Last Tango in Halifax for light relief) and just because of the impressive way it just works to do something that is quite amazing, when you think about it. Recently, though, I've dipped a toe into what used to be Lovefilm Instant, which I now get free through Amazon Prime. One of the advantages of watching Netflix is I can do so on a proper TV, using an Apple TV box, but that doesn't support Amazon's offering - luckily, though, our Blu-ray player does (ah, the wonders of modern technology). To be honest there's not a lot in the free stuff on Amazon I wanted to watch, but I was delighted to see one thing. When I first got Netflix, I'd noticed the classic David Lynch TV show, Twin Peaks was on there and duly put it on my 'to watch' list. To my horror, by the time I go...

A couple of days ago, I mentioned James Lovelock's antipathy to peer review in his new book. The review of the book is now live on www.popularscience.co.uk and because I think it is a book worthy of wide exposure, I am reproducing that review here. James Lovelock is unique, both as a scientist and as a writer. He may be most famous for his Gaia hypothesis that the Earth acts as if it were a self-regulating living entity, but has done so much more in a 94 year life to date. Rough Ride (not to be confused with Jon Turney’s Rough Guide to the Future ) is an important book, but it is also flawed, and I wanted to get those flaws out of the way, as I’ve awarded it four stars for the significance of its content, rather than its well-written nature. It is, frankly, distinctly irritating to read – meandering, highly repetitive and rather too full of admiration for Lovelock’s achievements. But I am not giving the book a top rating as a ‘well done for being so old’ award – far from it....

After George Osborne's recent enthusiasm for full employment there has been a lot around in the media about getting people into jobs, helping people find an employer and the ways that employers can be encouraged to get more people on their payroll. I do think there's an element here of the way the gas companies reacted to the electric light by trying to invent a better gas mantle. My problem with all this is that you hardly ever hear anything about providing support to people to become self-employed. And yet, as dinosaur industries bite the dust, we can expect that more and more of us are likely to be self-employed. And I think that's a good thing. Having spent about half my working life with a large company and half self-employed there is no comparison. Being your own boss is wonderful, with the upside far outweighing the negatives. So it's fine to have all this stuff, but why don't newly self-employed people get a national insurance holiday, like the one bein...

I am currently reading for review the latest book by James Lovelock, and a strange and sometimes wonderful thing it is too. I was fascinated to read fairly early on an impassioned attack on something most of us take for granted as part of the mechanism of modern science - peer review. The idea of peer review is that before a paper is published or an experiment etc. is funded a group of other scientists (the peers in question) with appropriate knowledge assess the value of the paper/experiment and act as gatekeepers, only allowing through work they feel is worthwhile. But Lovelock points out that this process tends to support the status quo, rather than radical new thinking, and is heavily biassed in the way it is operated towards the 'throw large teams at it' approach that emerged largely in the Second World War and is strongly weighted against individual scientists working on their own, which, he suggests, is a problem. Lovelock points out, correctly, that only individua...