Snapshot of my ward, from www.ukpollingreport.co.uk It's that time again. A UK general election in around five weeks. And I genuinely don't have a clue who to vote for. Or, rather, I have reasons for voting for three of the candidates and don't know how to assess those reasons. According to this handy website I have a minimum of five candidates to choose from, who are (in alphabetical order of surname): Janet Ellard (Liberal Democrats) - my default voting preference is Liberal Democrat (someone has to, and cousin Nick expects it). But there is no chance of the Lib Dems taking our seat. I am very disappointed by the total lack of online data about Ms Ellard. The site I used has not yet got anything like a webpage, Twitter, etc. And the only link they (or Google) do have is to a LibDems page that currently isn't working. No literature through the door or visits. Poor show, guys. James Faulkner (UKIP) - not a chance in hell of getting my vote, I'm afraid. We ...

A couple of weeks ago I put up a blog item on Huffington Post , suggesting that it would be a good idea if alternative remedies, like cigarette packets, had to carry a health warning. In some cases this was because there were reports of a high percentage of herbal remedies not containing the requisite herb, and sometimes containing fairly dubious contents that could be harmful. And in others, such as homeopathy, it was more because there was a danger of using a homeopathic remedy, and as a result not taking medication that actually does something. So I suggested a suitable warning for a homeopathic product might be something like: WARNING -- contains no active ingredients. If taken in place of medical treatment could result in harm or death Now it would be disingenuous of me to suggest that I didn't expect a certain amount of negative response. I was sure it would bring the homeopathy supporters out of the woodwork and it has. I'll go into some of the specific kinds of re...

A rose by any other name might smell as sweet (though would you really enthusiastically sniff a 'bumodour' or a 'dogpoo'?) - but websites can have problem if you happen to give a site a name that doesn't really fit with what it sells. Why would anyone do something so stupid? Well, I did. Or, to be more precise, I didn't, but the world has changed around me. I've always loved church music, particular from the Tudor / Elizabethan period. You'll never find me happier than relaxing to a spot of John Sheppard. So many moons ago, when the web was young and fresh I set up a fan site for this kind of music online. I was approached by some nice people who had recorded some CDs of hymn accompaniments to sing along to - hymn karaoke, if you like - and asked if I could give them a mention. This ended up with me being the online marketing arm of an operation that now has around 93 CDs under its belt, all recorded by a top-notch world-class organist, John Keys ....

Okay, here's a word association test. What's the first thing that comes to mind when I say... mathematicians ? Hands up how many of you said 'Fun'? What, no one? If you are a mathematician, or a physicist making heavy use of maths, you may feel there's plenty of fun in your world, but just in case you needed a bit more, I can highly recommend UCL's new e-magazine for mathy people, Chalkdust . (Rather an odd choice of title - a bit like a computing magazine calling itself Abacus . But we are dealing with mathematicians.) What I ought to say straight away is that Chalkdust (my spellchecker insists on converting that to  Chalkiest ) is not a magazine version of an Ian Stewart type, light and fluffy popular maths book. This is a magazine that doesn't shy away from including the equations of general relativity. But having said that, you don't have to be a genuine, heavy duty mathematician to get something out of it. When I was at university, my maths ...

Ever happy to expand the horizons of this blog, today we have a guest post from the Daily Excess: Seventies Student Scroungers Sickie Stats Shock These 1970s students have grown up to be scroungers When we think of the 1970s we remember ridiculous clothes, progressive rock and punk, and the Winter of Discontent. (We would like to say something about Princess Diana, but she didn't do much in the 1970s.) What not many realise is that by allowing long-haired types like these to go to university for FREE we brought up a whole generation of scroungers. Statistics show that workers who were students in the 1970s carefully time their sick leave to extend the weekend - nearly half of all sick days are taken on either side of the weekend by these layabouts. This is no doubt so they can attend "music" festivals, or "drop out" and try to recapture their long-lost hippy youth. A report published by the University of Swindon makes it clear that a whopping 40% of ...

Or more accurately, the title of this review should be 'something nasty in the woods', but I couldn't resist the quote from the incomparable Cold Comfort Farm . I thought I might be a good target for Richard Sutton's On Parson's Creek (no relation to the American soap opera, Dawson's Creek ) , as I love a touch of the strange, and some of my favourite books are those by, for instance Ray Bradbury, which portray a kind of magical look back at boyhood, although in this case it's more teenhood, with all the uncomfortable difficulties that particular time of life throws up. And I was right. Sutton does an excellent job of portraying the brooding atmosphere of the dark woods in which the protagonist finds himself, recently moved in with his family and coping with the difficulties of a new school; making new friends at the same time as exploring this uncanny backwoods location. In parts the storytelling oozes atmosphere, particularly in the scenes with the ...

Last Friday I spent a fascinating day at the Royal Society of Chemistry's swish headquarters in Piccadilly (to be precise, in Burlington House, to the right of the Royal Academy). The event was the final of  Chemistry World 's science communication competition . I really didn't know what to expect, but after a rather drawn-out arrival tea and coffee (because the judges couldn't make their minds up in the time available), the day began with short pitches from the 10 finalists who had written an article and now had presented a 'poster session' to the judges on their personal take on the theme of 'art and science.' RSC building to right of sculptury thing Now, to be honest, when I heard the topic, my bullsh*t detector went into overdrive. I find the money poured in to projects where artists hang around a science facility than produce some generally forgettable result that is somehow inspired by/linked to/giving extra depth to the work a little nau...

My old school, the Manchester Grammar School is celebrating its 500th anniversary this year with various goings on, including a ' history in 50 objects ' series. I was struck by a recent entry, on the 'Handbook for Parents' illustrated here, published in 1922. Inevitably, part of the attraction is the period feel of the instructions that the powers-that-be felt should be passed on to the boys. At the time, the school was located in the centre of the city, and it was sternly observed that Boys are forbidden to smoke, or to enter public billiard rooms, smoking cafes or smoking carriages on the railway. No boy is allowed, without special permission, to enter Victoria or Exchange Stations in the dinner interval. There is also something of a spirit that has perhaps been retained more in our public schools, but thankfully was largely absent from MGS by the time I attended, when parents are informed that A boy should be trained to get up sufficiently early to allow t...

Prompted by a query from Sabine Hossenfelder , I've just changed the comment system on my blog. When it looked like Google+ (which is Google's mostly failed attempt to take on Facebook) was going to take off, it seemed quite sensible to take Google's offer of switching the comment system over to Google+ The good news was that it meant any comments on a blog on Google+, but I hadn't realised until I just looked into it that it also meant that you could only comment if you had a Google+ account. As a result I've switched the commenting back to Blogger's own. But the downside of this is that some existing comments will disappear. Many apologies if this happens to one of yours. I promise not to change it again!

I write a lot of science book reviews, both for magazines and for  www.popularscience.co.uk , and I do also put them on Goodreads and Amazon. The other day I got a couple of contacts from Goodreads users, pointing out that someone had copied one of my reviews and published it as their own on their blog. (Thanks to Russa04 and Brendan Schrodinger.) I couldn't go the blog in question, which had been switched to private, presumably because of complaints, but my informants pointed out that it was still available using the Google cache and low and behold when I went to  http://webcache.googleusercontent.com...  I found the page shown here: Which certainly does bear a striking resemblance to my own review (written 6 months earlier): Which I guess demonstrates that the internet is a dangerous place to resort to plagiarism. But I'm still puzzled. Why bother? Simply to pack out a fairly random website that mostly has music reviews? It seems unnecessarily hard work. ...

The Science is Vital campaign is coming into full swing again, ready for the UK general election. And with good reason. Take a look at that graph. In the UK we spend a lower percentage of GDP on science than any other G8 country. Our spending has fallen by 15% in real terms since 2010. Germany, the USA and France are all spending around twice as high a percentage of GDP. We simply can't afford to keep ignoring our failing investment in science and it ought to be higher on the political agenda this election. Why is this important? The reasons come in at all sorts of levels. There's a grounding of 'this is how our universe works - how can it not be important?' There's the enrichment of people's lives in knowing about it - and keeping the interest of children at school, who get turned off it and lose our country important resources. But also there's a combination of business and survival. It has been estimated that around 35% of GDP is based on quantum...

Authors are often told that we should engage in social media. I do, using Twitter and Facebook (as well as this blog), and it certainly does get me some exposure, but I discovered this weekend what it is to have a tweet really take off. The thing that got me pondering how authors should use social media is my tweet shown on the right. With around 1,200 retweets it is in a totally different league to anything I've put on social media before. I shared the same image with the same words on my Facebook page - it has been liked 26 times and shared once. I admit this is a very small sample to draw conclusions from, but it does suggest to me that Twitter is the more valuable mechanism for gaining a wider reach out into the world. Of course you have to be lucky with your content - most of my tweets are retweeted between zero and four times - but Facebook users seem far less likely to pass things on and spread the word. Of course, this hasn't done a lot to get people excited ...

Excuse the blur... I’m getting in a real mental twist over Isaac Newton’s birth and death dates. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Scientists , fuzzily illustrated here, they were 1642-1727, but I think that this is wrong. You can either say they were 1642-1726 or 1643-1727 but not plump for half and half. The trouble is that the change of calendar we have had since Newton's time produced two effects. One is that the date jumps forwards (10 days at his birth, 11 by his death), and the second is that the date that the year changed moves from March 25th (don’t ask) to January 1st. In the dates that would have been used by Newton himself, he was born on Christmas Day 1642 and died on 20 March 1726. (If he had died instead on 25 March, it would have been 1727.) Alternatively, if we decide to impose our present dating system on the past, he was born on 4 January 1643 and died on 31 March 1727. This is upsetting for those who like to make the handing-on-the-baton observation ...

Of all the companies involved in the IT and communications world, Apple arguably has the most style and elegant design. We all know that design is brilliant on a thing you just look at, but when you also have to use it, usability comes in too - and there is frequently a tension between the two. Many years ago, I did quite a lot of work on user interface design, and that's all about the balance, making something that looks good, but is also effortlessly usable. Generally speaking, Apple's UI designers get this, and in part maintain it by keeping more of a grip on the user interface than do rivals. However, on Apple's hardware side, the design/usability balance has sometimes strayed too far towards looks above function. This happens all the time in everyday items. I've mentioned before the toilet doors at the British Airways Waterside HQ, which had pull handles on both sides, even though you had to push them when going in. I used to delight in watching person after ...

If you are of a certain age in the UK, you will have read Ladybird books as a child. The brand, owned now by Penguin/Random House, has been resurgent for some time, and there are plenty of the small format, large print books available. I was inspired to write this post by the science and technology bit I'll come onto in a moment, but I must start with the art part, which combines the best subversive pastiche I've ever seen with some real David and Goliath action. A couple of years ago, artist Miriam Elia produced a spoof Ladybird book called We Go to the Gallery . It has exactly the same format as a Ladybird reading scheme book, and used images from original book(s), but here the format is used to provide a wonderful and subversive take on modern art. Here's an example of the text for the page that has the same image as the cover of the book: There is nothing in the room. Peter is confused. Jane is confused. Mummy is happy. 'There is nothing in the room ...

There's are two distinct shifts of focus when you become an author. First it's all about getting the book (or proposal if it's non-fiction) in a perfect state to send off to agents/publishers. Then it's all about getting someone to publish it. And once it's out there, it's about whether or not, and how much, it sells. Now, you will get a few authors who genuinely say 'I don't care about sales. It's all about the art/achievement/fulfilling a lifelong goal.' But for most of us sales matter - and the more, the merrier. It can come as quite a surprise to a new author that sales are really quite opaque. Mostly publishers will only update you on sales in their twice-a-year (or even annual) royalty statement. Which is sent out typically four months after the end of the previous sales period. That's a long time to wait to find out how your baby is doing. Clearly the publishers have access to much better information, but rarely do they give acc...

An interesting blog post was brought to my attention in something written by Sabine Hossenfelder , a physics professor who has a real passion for the better communication of science.  She picked out a passage in the blog, commenting 'spot on': Sciencey headlines are pre-packaged cultural tokens that can be shared and reshared without any investment in analysis or critical thought — as if they were sports scores or fashion photos or poetry quotes — to reinforce one’s aesthetic self-identification as a “science lover.” One’s actual interest doesn’t have to extend beyond the headline itself. I must admit, I find that paragraph hard to understand, and while it may sound correct in isolation (if it means what I think it means), it doesn't work in the context of the rest of the text. The central thesis of the post is that scientists aren't making the outrageous claims. It's partly the fault of science journalists ('overblown science headlines are still a ma...

Yes, it's birthday time today for old Phil Trans, or more properly Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society , the world's oldest continuously published scientific journal which is 350 years old today . Back on 6 March 1665 (centre image), the first copies of this remarkable document appeared in London. Since then it has carried a whole range of mid boggling papers, including everything from Newton's breakthrough paper on light and colour in 1672 (left image), Benjamin Franklin's account of flying a kite in a storm (not performed personally it now seems) in 1752, Eddington's (rather dodgy) 'proof' of the general theory of relativity from eclipse observations in 1919, published in 1920, through to the present day. What sadly it no longer includes are the more wacky topics that turned up in the past, from an account of a 'very odd monstrous calf' (by Robert Boyle in the first volume) and 'of a way of killing ratle-snakes (sic)' to a...

When I talk to scientists who want to write a popular science book rather than a textbook, there are two connected differences I emphasize - narrative and drama. A textbook can be just a collection of facts, but that's anathema to the popular science audience. Narrative steals some of the tools of fiction, both on the small scale and in giving the book as a whole a narrative arc. And drama gives tension and excitement. Some scientists and historians of science have always complained about the use of drama. 'It wasn't really like that,' they moan. 'It wasn't one person against the world, coming up with a great idea, it was a team effort, building incrementally on other's work.' Well, yes, to a point. But as long as you don't trample on facts, I think an element of drama is essential, and it can usually be found, even if it has to be given slightly more prominence than it really had. When giving a talk about science, these two factors are equally...

One reaction to my writing The Quantum Age is that the number of emails I receive based on a sort of 'quantum mysticism' has doubled. This is where the jargon of quantum theory is applied recklessly, without any of the background science, to imply that something strange and wonderful can happen... because it's 'quantum'.  I recently had this article on the website of the 'Committee for Skeptical Inquiry' with the same name as my current post brought to my attention. It is rather dated, as it was written 17 years ago, but much of it holds up. A lot of blame is laid at the door of Fritjof Capra's popular book, The Tao of Physics ,  which draws parallels with aspects of quantum theory and Eastern mysticism (though to be fair to Capra, he doesn't the extra step, made by many New Agers, of going from parallels to assumed causality). The author of the CSI piece, Victor Stenger, is very blunt in his dismissal of anything mystical, if not mysterious,...

Every now and then I get a semi-spam email (i.e. something I probably accidentally signed up to receive, but never really wanted) offering me the opportunity to buy cut-price 'treats', like a super car experience. I know some people love this kind of thing, but I just don't get it. I've got three problems with the whole 'super car experience' thing. (If your mind is heading back to the early Gerry Anderson series , illustrated here, which I loved as a boy - our Ford Anglia was excellent for playing Supercar, as the heater controls made an excellent substitute for the throttles, and it even had little wings on the tail - I am not referring to Supercar, but rather an 'experience' day where you get to drive something like a Ferrari or an Aston Martin.) My first issue is that I wouldn't actually want one of these cars as they are incredibly impractical (anyone remember the Top Gear where they tried to get 3 out of an underground car park in Paris?)...

There has been a significant amount of noise on Twitter and elsewhere about 'The Dress', the phenomenon of a photograph of a dress which it is claimed that some people see as black and blue, and others as white and gold. My suspicion is that this is a hoax - a very nice piece of PR. The reason I am suspicious is that I've seen pictures on different sites where I see it as each of the colours (and the pictures are different at the RGB level)*. But if it were genuine, it would simply be demonstrating how false the image of the world we think we see through our eyes really is. This was one of the points I wanted to demonstrate when writing The Universe Inside You . In its predecessor, Inflight Science , I included a series of science experiments that the reader could do on a plane. It was a bit harder to do something similar with TUIY, where I wanted to show things from optical illusions, with a reveal of what was happening, to demonstrations of a Crookes radiometer and...

I was reminded at the weekend of the apparent translating boo-boo that resulted in Cinderella's very impractical glass slippers. Allegedly, in the original French, she had slippers that were 'vair' - made very sensibly (if you don't belong to PETA) of fur. However, the translator was clearly having a bad day, and just as I tend to merrily type 'there' instead of 'their' when I'm tired, he or she read this as the similar sounding 'verre' - meaning glass. (Sadly, according to Snopes , this is unlikely to be true - HT to Matthew Surnameunknown for pointing this out. I still suspect there was something in it, though.) So far, so amusing. But then it made me think of my books. My various titles have been translated into a good few languages, and for all I know they could be replete with interesting changes of meaning. Of course they were translated by good, professional translators, but even so slip-ups can occur. As it happens I know this...