We are used to some things being marketed by being made to look like something they aren't. Food and drink that looks good for you and isn't. (Anyone remember the original Sunny Delight?) Cars that look sporty but are really just family hatchbacks. As an author, I am ashamed to say it is even done with books (though not, of course, mine). But the latest entrant in this class is an air freshener. It's not that it is made to look like, I don't know, a deodorant. (Best not to get those confused.) It does look like an air freshener. But here's the thing. We all know that aerosols are evil and environmentally unfriendly. Admittedly not as much so since they took out the ozone layer killers, but anyone with an environmental conscience looks at an aerosol with severe doubts. So the good thing is that some products can be bought with a reliable, old fashioned, pump spray. Instead of dubious gasses doing the propelling, your hand does. However, what's interesting a...

I bought this book as holiday reading, expecting a humorous travel book, and though the humour is there, it proved to be more of a straight tale - but was none the worse for that. After suffering a comedy tour staying in bland chain hotels, Dave Gorman decided to try to cross America from coast to coast without giving any money to 'the Man', avoiding chain hotels, chain restaurants and chain filling stations. As is often the case with these kind of books, the car itself (regularly breaking down) is one of the main characters, as is the video cameraperson who is Dave's companion as he attempts this remarkable feat. Despite a total disaster part way through (which reduces the vegetarian author to eating three burger meals, one each from McDonalds, Burger King and Wendy's in protest, with dire consequences) the feeling is mostly upbeat, and inevitably provides a fascinating exploration of small town America: charming and wonderful at its best, unfriendly to strangers a...

When it comes to elements we meet in everyday life, osmium doesn’t come high on the list. Let’s face it, a metal that is best-known for being used in an alloy in fountain pen tips isn’t exactly the substance-de-jour. Yet its compound with oxygen, osmium tetraoxide, is both versatile and surprising. Discover more in my latest Royal Society of Chemistry podcast about osmium tetraoxide. 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 .

Like most people who have worked a lot with computers, I immediately saw the title of Neal Stephenson's book Reamde as a variant on 'Readme' - as indeed it is. I've really enjoyed his science fiction work like Cryptonomicon  and Anathem before, and have even managed to overcome my loathing of extremely long books, as in these works Stephenson is not indulging in drivel, but really fills them with content. However, Reamde has left me with very mixed feelings. I loved the plot segment that the book's title refers to. Reamde is a virus that takes computers hostage, linked to a massive multiplayer online game called T'rain, which was created as a way of using the virtual coinage inside the game for far more than simply buying a new sword. If you are interested in computer gaming, the parts of the story that revolve around the game are brilliant - as is the twist of the virus resulting in an organised crime gang trying to track down its creator. However, thi...

The much improved design We were sitting at breakfast and the others saw someone approaching the door. I was sitting with my back to the window, so didn't realize what was about to happen. The doorbell rang. 'You go,' they said. 'It's Jehovah's Witnesses, isn't it?' I asked. They just smirked. And it was, but interestingly this was a JW visit lite. Rather than attempt to engage me in conversation, the female member of the (inevitable) pair just told me they were distributing these leaflets across the country and gave me one. And went. So I was immediately in a good mood, as the toast was still warm. The good news about the leaflet is that they've finally hauled the typography into the 21st century. The old JW leaflets were so old fashioned looking, and very alien in presentation for a UK audience - they were very obviously American. I'm not talking spelling, but rather the design just wasn't the way a UK leaflet looks. Now, as you...

One of the joys of writing a book like The Quantum Age (still just 99p on Kindle) is discovering new and interesting things - and one I particularly enjoyed was the deployment of quantum technology to deal with sewage. Finding superconductors in powerful electronic devices and scanners may not be too much of a surprise, but a surprising example of an application of superconductivity - a totally quantum phenomenon -  is a million miles away from the delicacy of Josephson junction powered SQUIDs (Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices). It is in sewage treatment. We live in a paradoxical world that is awash with water – it almost defines our planet – and yet at the same time where there is a shortage of clean drinking water. It shouldn’t be that way. The world contains around 200,000,000,000 litres of water for every living person. If you think of that in terms of consumption, assuming a typical 5 litres a day, the water out there should last over 100 million years. And ...

Younger readers may not have come across some of the classics of science fiction, so I'm grateful for Pete Young for assembling around 250 reviews of these great books in issues 3 and 4 of his fanzine Big Sky . (There are a couple of my reviews in issue 3, though that's not why I'm recommending this.) Specifically, these reviews cover the books that were re-issued in the excellent Gollancz SF Masterworks series. To be honest, I've never been a great enthusiast for the whole fan fiction/fanzine scene, because time is limited and I haven't enough to read all the 'real' stuff without getting onto the fan work, however good it is. But I have to say these are good quality productions (best read on a tablet, I suspect) and free too, so well worth a look. You can download Big Sky from  http://efanzines.com/bigsky/index.htm

During the panel session at our Guardian masterclass on science writing , the excellent author M. G. Harris recommended Jon Ronson's The Psychopath Test . I had already read and enjoyed The Men who Stared at Goats (even though Professor Brian Josephson assures me I gave too much attention to the 'staring at goats' issue in my book Extra Sensory ), so had no hesitation on buying this book on M. G.'s recommendation - and it is even better. The book starts with a mystery - a strange, expensively produced book that is being sent to a number of academics. No one knows what it means, or who has written it. Ronson solves this mystery, which leads him to taking the plunge into what he describes as the 'madness industry'. It might seem this is a subject that couldn't produce much humour, but what Ronson does so well is brings out the essential human funny bits, while not holding back on some of the surprising and sometimes horrific realities. Whether he is de...

I'm not a great one for using press releases as blog posts (although, come on, it is the silly season), but this one was so interesting, I wanted to share it. It's about silicene, which is the silicon equivalent of graphene, a single atom thick sheet of the substance. Just as graphene has proved an incredibly versatile material, the same is likely to prove true for silicene (which the spellchecker keeps trying to change to silicone - sigh). It's early days, but watch this space. Here's what the IoP had to say: An international team of researchers has taken a significant step towards understanding the fundamental properties of the two-dimensional material silicene by showing that it can remain stable in the presence of oxygen. In a study published today , 12 August, in IOP Publishing’s journal 2D Materials, the researchers have shown that thick, multilayers of silicene can be isolated from its parent material silicon and remain intact when exposed to air for at l...

On Saturday I spent an extremely entertaining day in Sidmouth, not on one of the town's beaches, but instead at an astronomical observatory. I confess that, while I knew about Norman Lockyer, I wasn't aware of the Norman Lockyer Observatory - and it's a wonderful find. Lockyer was a professor at Imperial College (or, rather, its predecessor) and one of his main studies was the Sun. Using spectroscopy - splitting the light from the Sun into a colour spectrum, where dark lines indicate the presence of atoms that are absorbing particular energies of photons - Lockyer discovered a puzzling line in the yellow band, which had not been seen before. He had discovered an element that had not yet been found on the Earth, and named it after the Greek word for the Sun, helios. As well as discovering helium, Lockyer brought another significant presence of modern science into being when he founded a journal called Nature , one of the most prestigious scientific journals today. Wh...

Take that 6-7 year olds! According to the news, the communications watchdog Ofcom has told us that 'the average six-year-old child understands more about digital technology than a 45-year-old adult.' (To be precise, that quote is from this  Guardian report .) Looking at the actual data, the Guardian statement is a little naughty, as I doubt very much that the difference between the scores of 6-7 year olds and 45 year olds is statistically significant (see how close they are in the chart alongside). However there is no doubt there is a point here. Most of us older folk (as you'll see from the line at the top of the chart, me excepted) are pretty poor at coping with technology compared with da yoof. This isn't really news. It's quite a while since those many jokes about how people had to get their children to set the timers for their video recorders for them (remember video tapes, kiddies?) because they couldn't cope with them. But by setting up a measure,...

Like many concerned parents, when my daughter started driving, I took out breakdown cover with the UK's biggest, and usually trusted provider the AA. I did so with my credit card. As renewal comes close, I decided to go with a different supplier (at 1/3 the cost). About a month before the start of the new cover, I got a letter from the AA telling me that 'relax, you don't have to do anything' and 'as you pay by continuous annual payment, all you have to do is check your details.' Now I wasn't happy with this - I didn't set up a continuous payment and had no documentation to say that I had. But what really shocked me is that nowhere on the letter - and I have examined it very closely - does it say how to cancel that payment. I complained to the AA and after over two weeks they finally deigned to explain themselves. They pointed out that the letter says 'If there's any aspect of your Membership you would like to discuss, please call us on xxx...

Halfway through the poppy field - it was rather impressive On Monday I had the pleasure of taking on another stretch of the Ridgeway (just two or three more to reach Ivinghoe Beacon!). As usual the walk was a mix of tracks and paths through farmers' fields, and at one point I felt I had been transported to Afghanistan. Because we were walking through a huge field of poppies. It is striking how much the media influences our thinking, because the only association I could come up with immediately was that these must be opium poppies. Despite being on one of the best-known long-distance footpaths in the country, I nervously joked with my walking companion that any moment we were going to come across the farmer toting a machine gun and shooting anyone who discovered his crop. Even beyond the joke, the first assumption was that these poppies were being grown for opium, though admittedly for a more benign application in the production of morphine for medicine. And perhaps they we...

I love detective fiction, but I'm very parochial about it - I'm only interested if it's English. Even Scottish is too alien. At the moment most of the big names in the field are silent, so it was interesting to discover on Waterstones' BOGOHP table this book by James Runcie. I think it's fair to say I give it a mixed reception. I love that it's set in Cambridge and Grantchester, and unlike Colin Dexter's Morse books with its fake Oxford colleges, Runcie has chosen to use actual settings. It is much more satisfying to have real locations that you know and love. The period setting is reasonably well done - it is placed in the late 50s and early 60s, and there's none of the all too common tendency to give period characters modern views. These are very much people of their time. In fact the main character is almost too reserved for his own good. On the downside, I find the situation a little far-fetched. The main character is the vicar of Grantchester...