I gather from the excellent i newspaper that this has not been a good year for [book] publishers, with 128 going out of business compared with 81 the previous year. I assume these are mostly smaller outfits. The article blames the rise in use of ebooks, with failing publishers struggling to make books available in this format. This is both sad and baffling. I have been published by both large and middle-sized publishers and in my experience the smaller companies are much lighter on their feet and able to quickly adapt to new opportunities like ebooks.  Admittedly, the chances are many of the failed companies were one person and a dog publishers, rather than mid-sized operations, but I'm amazed that these days, when ebook publishing is so much easier than it was even 5 years ago that the failed companies weren't on top of the state of today's publishing. I do wonder if it could be that too many of them were rather prissy about ebooks as somehow inferior to the pri...

This is the time of year when many of us are looking for good presents for those difficult-to-buy-for people. I have done my bit for this cause with the science quiz book How Many Moons Does the Earth Have (traditional shameless plug), but even I, through gritted teeth, have to admit that not everyone would greet a science book in their stocking with a cheery smile. And if that's the case, you are recommended to get hold of The Homecraft Book by Ann Hathaway. In case there's a suspicion that the Hollywood actress is following her colleague Ms Paltrow into telling us how to run our lives, this was the pseudonym of an Irish writer of home tips. Written at the end of the Second World War, the book has been edited by the author's grandson, who has the even more unlikely pseudonym of Thaddeus Lovecraft.  The reader knows that there is a fun trip ahead when seeing the 'mostly non-lethal advice' comment on the cover, reinforced by being informed that we won...

I am, as I not infrequently do, feeling rather sorry for the Church of England. This most inoffensive of religious organisations is being lambasted by certain parts of the media and by atheist bloggers for an attempt to place an advert in cinemas alongside the showing of Star Wars this Christmas. Now I confess that my knee-jerk reaction was much the same as those who want the ad not to be shown. It didn't seem quite right as not everyone in the audience would appreciate it. To quote a spokesperson for the company responsible for the advertising, Digital Cinema Media: 'Some advertising - unintentionally or otherwise - could cause offence to those of differing political persuasions, as well as to those of differing faith and indeed no faith at all.' However. When I actually think about this action rationally, I am less happy with the decision. First of all, I am never comfortable with any curtailment of free speech, unless said speech is inciting a crime. Too many pe...

No, I haven't got delusions of grandeur - the master in question isn't me. However, I do quite often get asked for writing hints and tips, and I think there can be no better example to point an enquirer to for fiction guidance than Joss Whedon. If you were expecting Steinbeck or Proust or Shakespeare, you might not know who Whedon is. His first big success was as a writer on Toy Story , and he's now involved in the Avengers series of films, but his personal masterpieces, to my mind, were a set of TV shows, including Firefly, Angel, Dollhouse and, most notably, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  I can almost feel those with literary inclinations fainting with shock. How can real writers who pour their soul into books learn anything from a screenwriter? And you may well also be writhing at the mere title of the show, but anyone familiar with Buffy will tell you that this programme was far more than the name suggests. I am sad for a new generation coming up who may never wat...

 I've heard about a new project from Germany, aiming to make physics more approachable. With a background in natural sciences and industry, Ottmar Koegel works to support foundation issues in teaching science in Germany: Pumping Physics is his baby. His idea was to pick up on the kind of exercise-based learning that is found in musical instrument training, making the educational side more fun with a mix of illustrations and real-world scenarios, providing straightforward multiple choice questions to test and learn. At the moment there is no English version, but for English readers, here's a taster (the translation is not a polished one). More importantly, for any German readers, you can find out more about the book and see some of the actual examples at the Pumping Physics website . I don't think this kind of approach is ideal for a popular science audience - I admit, the English example above was one of the less technical, but some of the questions do expect the...

Many people have changed their Facebook image to incorporate a French flag, in solidarity with the French nation over the atrocities in Paris last week. I certainly don't think we should be critical of people who haven't - I haven't, for one. There are a number of reasons for not doing so, but one objection that I think is suspect is the kind made in  this article by Nathalie Bonney on the Good Housekeeping website. The broad argument is that to show solidarity with the French this way is parochial. There have been thousands of people killed by terrorists this year, and yet no one is putting up flags of other locations. (Actually, not no one - one of my Facebook friends has made his own Lebanese flag cover for his Facebook photo.) I have two problems with this complaint. One is that it seems petty to discourage someone from doing something positive for one group because they aren't doing something positive for another. It's a bit like saying 'I would nev...

An office chair, today Many years ago, when I worked for a large airline with the initials BA, I had a back problem, which due to some problems pinning down exactly where the physical sensations were coming from led to a fairly unpleasant time. (Suffice to say that it was only diagnosed as a back problem after I had been asked to attend an STD clinic.) With some excellent exercises from a physiotherapist, the most embarrassing of which appears in my murder mystery novel A Lonely Height (great Christmas gift - shameless plug), the back pains came under control, and disappeared altogether many years ago. Now the pains are back, if you'll pardon the circular expression. And I think I know why. Ever since I started working for myself I've had a good quality office chair (I think I'm on my third now) with effective lumbar support. Even though I can often spend most of my working day at the computer - with frequent breaks, of course - I never have back problems. Howev...

Not long ago I reported on a piece in the Metro paper claiming that a 'maths theorem could pave the way for installer travel.' I was delighted to receive an email from one of the paper's young authors, Ivan Zelich, pointing out that the media had distorted his message. The Metro carried a quote from Zelich that read  'The theorem will contribute to our understanding of intergalactic travel because string theory predicts existence shortcuts in space, or so-called "wormholes" to cut through space.' However, I'm told that this 'quote' was never said.  Zelich pointed out ' I actually meant the following, and you will understand how it could be misinterpreted': The main lemma we developed to prove our theorem was highly projective in nature, which indicates to us that it could be generalised to possible more complex structures in high dimensional projective spaces. Since we are talking about applications, I would like t...

Mmmm! Dice World! I've just come across this short video that intercuts an interview I did on the book Dice World with a few remarks from one of my talks on it. The filmmaker seemed to take to heart the idea that Dice World is all about randomness by randomly inserting odd little asides. I can't decide if it's clever or just bonkers...

I have the perfect upbringing to wear a white poppy today. My father was a Manchester Guardian reader who encouraged a healthy distrust of the establishment and had little time for the military. None of my friends or blood relations served in the armed forces - you have to go back to the First World War to find any relatives who did. Yet I always wear a red poppy. I understand where the supporters of the white poppy are coming from, and I absolutely support their right to wear it, but I think they miss the point. You can't re-write history, and it doesn't make sense to throw away the symbolism of the red poppy. If you are aware of its conceptual origins you know that it has nothing to do with triumphant militarism and everything to do with a tragic human sacrifice, even if that sacrifice has sometimes (if certainty not always) been justified. If I am honest, I'd much rather the poppy, as a symbol of remembrance, were separated from the Royal British Legion, an orga...

A lot of physicists like to say that time doesn't exist. This is, to be honest, showing off, and they don't really believe it. (If they insist they do, wait until dinner time and see how they react to not being fed because dinner time doesn't exist.) However they have a number of different arguments to support their claim, one of which is that many physical processes are totally reversible as far as time is concerned, showing no interest in the 'arrow of time.' A classic example of this is a pair of pool balls which head towards each other, collide and bounce off each other. They will point out that if you run a video of the event in reverse, it is indistinguishable from the video shown running forward. The direction of time is irrelevent. However, in making this assertion they are cheating, both subtly and in a very big way. The subtle cheat is one that they will admit, but get around. You can point out that in traversing the pool table and in hitting each ot...

I have always been fascinated by magic, whether in its use in fiction or beliefs about magic. As I read more popular science than anything (and because I was sent a review copy) I had got it into my head that this was a book on the practice of and attitude to magic from a scientific, analytical viewpoint - looking at what was believed and why they believed it. However, the actual book was very different from this, and I suspect it will only appeal to a very narrow readership. What Brian Copenhaver does is to take a series of texts: biblical, medieval and renaissance (but no modern ones) that reference magic in some way and gives us a brief commentary on each (usually just one paragraph) before quoting the document at length. I am sure from a scholastic viewpoint this is useful and may even be important, but I really can't see why it is being published by Penguin in a manner that implies it is for a general readership, because it certainly isn't. So unless you have the pat...

Not long ago I mentioned the evils of science exaggeration . It's all too easy for journalists, often aided and abetted by either university PRs or scientists themselves, to make over-the-top claims. I think I've just come across the most dramatic example of this I've ever seen. ' Teenagers' maths theorem could pave the way for interstellar travel, ' screams the headline . No, it really, really couldn't. There's a lot to be said for that Metro masthead 'news... but not as you know it'. Though to be fair, they were by no means alone in making this claim. The origin of this hysterical unlikelihood was a geometry paper by a pair of 17-year-olds. The fact that Xuming Liang and Ivan Zelich produced the paper , published in the International Journal of Geometry is certainly newsworthy. But the leap from Generalisations of the Properties of the Neuberg Cubic to the Euler Pencil of Isopivotal Cubics to Starfleet is considerable. Here is the phr...

I can't remember when I was last as excited about a new book coming out as I am about How Many Moons Does the Earth Have? , my science quiz book, which is available from today. And to make it even better, it was great fun to write. One driver for this is that I enjoy pub quizzes, but I've always been disappointed with the quality and quantity of the science and technology questions. I think the thing that pushed me over the edge was taking part in a quiz which featured the question 'Who invented the gramophone?' According to the organisers, the answer was Thomas Edison, and despite my protests, they would not accept the correct answer. (It is, of course in the book.) So one thing this book does is provide two complete quizzes, each containing 6 traditional rounds with 8 questions each, plus two special rounds, one partly pictorial and the other with a sort of puzzle element, which can be used as table rounds. This means it can be run as a science quiz, or to provide...

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor...