When I read about them in my youth, there seemed something magical in the description of the acetylene or carbide lamps that were used on early motor vehicles. The idea that adding water to the lamp started a process that could generate a flame seemed wonderfully counter-intuitive. But acetylene, the unusually triple bonded inflammable organic compound that was generated by a reaction between water and calcium carbide is more than just a flash in the lamp. Find out more about this zippy little molecule, in my latest Royal Society of Chemistry podcast.   Take a listen by clicking to pop over to its page on the RSC site.

There is much wailing, moaning and gnashing of teeth* on the ineffectual nature of politics and politicians in the current general election, with the newer thrusting parties like the SNP, the Greens and UKIP (there's an unholy alliance) blaming the old guard and the Westminster elite. Actually, I'd suggest that most of the problems with politics are caused by tribalism, and nowhere is tribalism stronger than amongst the likes of the SNP, the Greens and UKIP. They aren't the solution, they are even more dramatically more of the same. I suggest it's time to redesign parliamentary democracy for the 21st century. After all, we don't do medicine the way they did back when Parliament was establish - why should the democratic processes stay the same in an internet interconnected world? Here's a few suggestions: MPs become solely local representatives. Their full time role is helping their constituents. As well as a local MP, we vote for policies, which have ...

It seems that 2015 is the International Year of Light . And to be honest, I'm all in favour of it. Not just because one of my favourite books, Light Years is out in a new edition this year*, but also because I can't think of a better topic to show how science can be essential, fun and fascinating. Let's face it, we wouldn't have much of a life without light. In fact we wouldn't exist. Nor would anything else. It's not just a matter of not being able to see. Light also provides us with the energy to live. Apart from nuclear power, tidal power from the Moon and geothermal energy, light is responsible for all the energetic input to our lives. It's light from the Sun that keeps the Earth at temperatures that support life, and light from the Sun that powers the weather system. More fundamentally at a quantum level, photons of light are the carriers of the electromagnetic force. No light, no electromagnetism. And that doesn't just mean no electricity an...

The Guardian's rather wavy HQ and home of the Masterclass On Saturday I had a great time up at Grauniad Towers, curating a Science Communication Masterclass. (Sorry, I hate that 'curating' word in this context, but it's what the G people call it.) Marcus Chown, Angela Saini, Jenny Rohn and I covered science for magazines and newspapers, TV and radio, books and blogs with a really responsive and interesting audience of 50+ people. It was a full day event, so it would be over the top even to give a summary, but a few snippety takeaways: From Marcus: an article (for newspapers particularly) should be like a fractal. You should be able to take, for example, the first part of it and it should still give you look a bit like the whole.  From Angela: getting into broadcast media is a bit like getting into Fort Knox. Have a showreel. Oh, and don't put a lot of effort into smartening up the sound quality of a recording: the BBC can do it much better and quicker tha...

The RLF I am off this evening to sunny Bristol, where I'll be on a panel for the Royal Literary Fund , discussing the topic  Social Media for Writers: Brave New World or Circle of Hell? If you are in the Bristol area and of a literary bent, please do come along and join us. It's free and starts at 7.30pm - the location is Waterside 2, The Watershed , 1 Canons Road, Harbourside, Bristol BS1 5TX. If you aren't able to join us, just a few passing thoughts. A platform For quite a while now publishers have been very excited about writers (particularly book authors) having a 'platform'. This does not mean that you should rush out and buy a train set (though feel free to do so, should you wish), but rather that you should have a mechanism for making yourself visible to as many potential readers as possible. You might think that a publisher's website does this. After all, every book should be listed there, and they usually have some kind of author profil...

Digi-Comp I (photo from Wikipedia ) It's of the nature of coincidences (that's another post) that your attention is drawn to something when it comes up several times in a short time span, and recently for me this has happened with the matter of mechanical computers, which have come up four times in the past couple of weeks. The first example was when I was proof reading my next title for St Martin's Press (not due out until significantly later in the year), called Ten Billion Tomorrows . The book about the relationship between science and science fiction, and I point out that when I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey in the cinema, the only computer I had ever seen before I encountered the remarkable Hal was my Digi-Comp I. This was a mechanical device with three plastic sliders, which could be programmed by adding extensions on the side of the sliders which flipped metal wires, and as a result could provide the action of different gates and reflect the outcome on 3 mechani...

For me, the only TV news worth watching in the UK is Channel 4 News, with its real depth of analysis, general lack of dumbing down and occasional playfulness. However, if they have one fault it is that they still think that Britain runs an Empire and, as a result, responsible for all the world's ills. This struck me on their recent exposé of the way that migrant agricultural workers in Spain were struggling in terrible conditions, poorly paid, with dangerous exposure to pesticide. It was an important piece of reporting for me, but what seemed crazy was the way that the vast majority of the emphasis was on the responsibility of the British supermarkets who were among the (many) EU buyers of the salads from this region. Spain is part of the EU and subject to all the European legislation on working conditions. The obvious culprits here were the Spanish companies producing the salads and the Spanish politicians who don't crack down on this. But, no, over and over again the bl...

The Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society , a lovely organization which you need to sign up to if you are a UK-based writer, as they collect money from copying etc. for you, has published more detail from a study they did last year on authors' earnings. (If you feel like you're having deja vu, they published preliminary results last year.) They surveyed 2,454 writers, a mix of 'professionals' and spare timers. When I tell people I'm an author, some assume that this can be equated with being rich, as the only authors they ever see are the bestsellers. What they ought to think is that it's a bit like someone saying 'I'm in a band' - the chances are that they play down the pub every fourth Friday, rather than packing out the O2. The survey really brings home how far authors are from being rich. The median* income for a professional authors (someone who spends more than 50 per cent of their working time on freelance writing) is around £11,000...

Poll of polls from BBC website One of the reasons I wrote Dice World is that I love probability and statistics, so it was fun to see a stats row in the news. Ukip has been kicking up a fuss over the makeup of the audience in the opposition leaders' debate last week. They say that the BBC (or, to be precise, ICM, who assembled the audience for the BBC) were biassed in favour of left-wing parties, producing the clearly overwhelming anti-Farage sentiment in the audience. Here is what I've seen reported as the makeup ICM used: about 58 Conservative/ Ukip, 102 for Labour, the Lib Dems, SNP or Plaid Cymru, all arguably parties of the left. And 40 undecided. (This was from a fairly dodgy source, so if anyone can confirm, or has better numbers, please let me know.) So if we ignore the undecided, that's 36 per cent who have said they will vote in a way that might make them relatively positive to Farage. So the question is, how can you be representative? There are two si...

Probably the worst aspect of science journalism is the way that editors feel the need to have world-shattering headlines. New Scientist is one of the worst for the this. Time after time you see something really exciting on the cover like 'Black holes don't exist!', then when you read the actual article it delivers nothing of the kind, telling you that someone has a disputed theory that in some circumstance black holes may not form. In a way it's the grown-up version of what I was moaning about the Daily Excess doing yesterday. So I was a bit wary when I saw the Observer headine  Scientists hope Venus will give up the secret of how life evolved on Earth . And rightly so. What we got was an interesting article about Venus and how we might discover why Venus, a similar size to Earth and also 'well within the Goldilock zone' is so different from Earth (and so inhospitable to life). In the end, the analysis came down to 'Venus may have had a water/carbon d...

You might be surprised to learn that I follow the Daily Express on Facebook, but this is because the inaccuracy of their posts is often the funniest thing of the day. This week they have excelled themselves. Let's see if you can spot the subtle difference between the headline and what appears after the first few paragraphs in the body text. Here's the headline: That sounds pretty definite, doesn't it. 'On collision course' in my book means 'is going to hit unless we take evasive action', which is pretty difficult to do when 'we' is the Earth. But get through the first effusive paragraphs (by which time, apparently over half readers have stopped reading) and we get these two quotes: Detlef Koschny, head of the near-earth object segment at the European Space Agency, said: "There is a one in a million chance that it could hit us. and NASA's Asteroid Watch said there is no chance the asteroid will hit Earth Ri-i-i-ght. Tha...

I have to come clean straight away. I was already a huge fan of Friedrich when he first appeared online - and I still am in book form. To simply consider the plot of Lucy Pepper's frankly bonkers story of a wronged mouse who takes to Quentin Tarantino levels of violence to extract his revenge (this is not a cartoon for pre-teens) is to find something entertaining, but nothing special. (I ought to say for any biologists that Friedrich has a rat grandmother, hence the tail.) However, Friedrich is so much more.  The reason for this is artist Pepper's bewitching use of a whole range of different styles and techniques that sees characters in the cartoon sometimes drawn in pen, sometimes colour washed, sometimes 3D. Arguably Friedrich is a stunning serial doodle where Pepper uses whatever comes to hand to continue the increasingly gripping story. (At one point this features a plaster cast in a hospital, and at another an unexpected outdoor scene.) The outcome is totally uniqu...

Dom As the various parties' manifestos become clear before the general election, as usual what I really want to do is mix and match from various parties - they almost all have some good stuff on offer. Although it's not a vote-winner, there's one point on which I'm 100% with Labour, and that's over the matter of non-doms. Non-Dom For those who live under a bucket, or not in the UK, this is not people who aren't called Dom (like me), but those who are judged non-domiciled. This was apparently a tax wheeze set up alongside income tax 200 years ago and that is now hopelessly out of date. A non-dom lives in the UK but is officially not a UK resident and can opt to pay tax on their earnings from outside the UK in another country. Clearly some people find this highly lucrative, because they opt to pay up to £90,000 a year for the privilege. What is particularly bizarre is that you can be a non-dom even if you were born and spent all your life...

It's irresistible. You are eating your breakfast, and the most interesting reading in sight is the cereal packet. (It's that or more election news*.) So you start to read, and you notice that your cereal is 'fortified' with niacin. Now hang on there, cereal people. Why are you feeding me this strange chemical that sounds somehow related to nicotine? For that matter, why is my cereal so weedy that it needs fortification? The answer comes with a decision made by government decree, but that strangely is more like to end in over-consumption than under-consumption these days. Find out more about niacin, aka vitamin B3, in my latest Royal Society of Chemistry podcast.  Take a listen by   clicking to pop over to its page on the RSC site . * This is the expected humorous form. In fact, I can't get enough election news.

There has been a certain amount of moaning amongst the chatterati of late that we (I'm not sure if that 'we' is the British press, or the British people in general) are terrible in our parochialism, as there has been no where near as much fuss about the 148 people killed in the Garissa attack compared with the overwhelming response to the much smaller Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris. It's certainly not true that the media have been ignoring Garissa - the last time I watched the TV news on Sunday it was the lead story, for instance, and it led on the BBC News website on at least two days. However it is the case that the level of response has been different. What surprises me here is this negative reaction, which seems to come mostly from a left wing political standpoint (e.g. seen more in the Guardian than elsewhere). One reason is that I find it rather disturbing that these people can try to play point scoring between atrocities. They are both atrocities, committed b...

Credit: Tony French I am old enough to remember CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) marches, and generally speaking was always a bit wary of ban-the-bombists, particularly because there was a tendency to lump nuclear weapons in with nuclear power - I'm all in favour of a power source with very little impact on climate change - but the thought of nuclear weapons terrified my when I was younger and the threat seemed greater, and they still fill me with horror. After watching the leaders' debate on Thursday with interest, it struck me that the Labour party was missing out on a serious trick - something emphasised in today's quick defence of the nuclear deterrent after the Conservative attacks on the subject. After all, senior Labour figures have been ban-the-bombists in the past, and I think Labour should seriously consider adding not renewing Trident and scrapping the current 'nuclear deterrent' ASAP. There are several potential benefits: Huge savings - whi...

One of the mysteries of using Twitter is how a particular tweet gets spread to the world. I might have got all excited when my tweet about seeing Loki on the underground was re-tweeted over 1,500 times, but a typical tweet of mine probably only merits a handful of retweets. There is a way round this. A site called CoPromote offers a service where you indicate a tweet you want to boost and others retweet it. Why should they? Because this earns them  points that enable them to put up their own tweets for retweeting. (It also works for Facebook pages, but I'm less convinced by the value there.) Assuming that being retweeted is a good thing, this doesn't seem a bad idea (I'll come back to whether or not it is). It's not like paying for fake followers (apart from anything else, a basic account is free), and it should get your tweets wider visibility. At the moment, the system has two problems. One is that the tweets offered to be retweeted are usually heavily self-pr...

Every now and then I take a break from reading science books and unwind with a spot of fiction. This is often something new, but I also like to dip back into old favourites... and was so glad that I did with Roger Zelazny's Doorways in the Sand , which I haven't read for about 20 years, but was a delight to return to because it remains totally brilliant. I was a huge fan of Zelazny's Amber series in my teens (I used to haunt the SF bookshop near Piccadilly Station in Manchester, as it sold US imports, and had the latest addition to the Amber books long before they were published in the UK), and still enjoy them, despite the output getting a bit strained towards the end. Doorways,  though, is SF rather than fantasy, with that same type of wisecracking hero who would have been portrayed by a young Harrison Ford in the movies. For the first few pages this could be a 1920s comedy, with a night climber at university who has a trust fund that pays him until he graduates - so...

The internet has thrown up some interesting and different business models - but I think few are as innovative as Chris Holbrook's idea of giving away money. It sounds a pretty impressive way to get people to your site... and that's what he does at the Free Postcode Lottery site. Before you get too excited, we aren't talking vast sums of money - it's currently around £170 a day, so it's not going to change anyone's life.  But it is free to enter, there's a guarantee that your email won't be sold on, and with Holbrook giving away around £62,000 a year, it is still, at face value, a fast route to bankruptcy. So how is Holbrook managing this feat? Nothing magic - just advertising. It seems that he has managed to get enough revenue that way (which is pretty impressive, going on the few pence I get from Google) to fund the site, which is apparently significantly in profit. In fact, profitable enough that he has quit his job to concentrate on the venture...

There are few compounds with such a range of associations as fluorides. To some, these compounds of the halogen fluorine bring to mind healthy teeth, but for others, terms like fluoride and fluoridation suggest a terrible danger to health (and quite possibly a communist plot). Find out the pros and cons of this controversial compounds in my latest Royal Society of Chemistry podcast on fluorides.  Take a listen by clicking to pop over to its page on the RSC site .

There was a time when large scale institutional practical jokes for April 1 were brilliant because they were so unusual. I'm thinking particularly of the 1957 Panorama mini-documentary on the Swiss peasants going out to reap the spaghetti harvest, and the Guardian's magnificent, very large scale special feature on the floating island of San Serriffe . However, on April 1 this year, as has been the case for a while now, I was bombarded with 'really funny' stories like: The LHC has discovered The Force Jeremy Clarkson is leading a push to get people riding bikes Nature piece on real dragons Mirror coffees in Shoreditch (don't ask) The new Orkney legal requirement for all scything to be done with the shirt off (I'm always amazed how many alleged feminists find this kind of sexist drivel appealing) The call for an extra day in April, so we could have British Pi Day (shame on you, Physics World ) Ed's Easy Diner's claim to be delivering coffee r...

I have recently had brought to my attention the rather impressive way that in a single web page, a product by the name of Bloom teas manages to use three of the great woo-marketing terms. Now, in the interests of fairness, I ought to point out that I don't drink ordinary tea, but I do enjoy the occasional cup of green tea, of which more in a moment. So what's so woo-ified? There are three keywords here that raise the dubiousness alarm. The first is rehydration . While the benefits of this are clear - it's good to keep hydrated - it really doesn't matter what you drink as long as it's mostly water and preferably doesn't contain alcohol. (And you certainly don't need 8 glasses a day - as with all this stuff, see my Science for Life .)So not an out-and-out negative, but something to be a little wary of. Then there the first biggy. Antioxidants . How many times does everyone have to say this? The antioxidants produced by your body are essential. But co...