Today sees the publication of a very important report on libel reform. The report is from the Parliamentary Joint Scrutiny Committee, which has been considering the government’s draft defamation bill in the light of oral and written evidence from interested parties. It outlines proposals for refinement of the draft legislation before it passes through Parliament and, hopefully, into law.
This week I got to visit a part of London that is for me a hallowed place – the offices of The Guardian newspaper. I was participating in a workshop for the people who had been short-listed for the Wellcome Science Writing Prize, which is sponsored by the Guardian , and so made my way to its large glass headquarters behind Kings Cross.
As Jenny mentioned this morning, I have a post on the Science is Vital campaign on science careers on the Times Eureka blog today. For those of you without a subscription, the text is reproduced here: The business of science is essentially one of creative problem solving.
This is shameless, shameless self-promotion but I was interviewed back in May by Carl Carruthers for his Meet a Scientist Monday podcast, which has gone live today. The interview was long enough ago for me — being of advanced years — to have forgotten what I’d said, so I’ve just had a listen.
Last night, having rounded off a busy week with a day of manual labour helping to repair my mother-in-law’s kitchen floor, I retired to bed early with the newspaper. Saturday’s Guardian , if you want to know. It was delightful. I hadn’t taken the time to read the paper for ages and was pleased to rediscover that singular pleasure. Unfortunately, it’s a pleasure that is unlikely to endure.
Today sees the release of my new film: I’m a Scientist . It’s about scientists. Please take a look either here, or on the web-site that I have created specially for it*. The film was a long time coming.
The job of a newspaper columnist is to agitate and George Monbiot did exactly that last week with a furious rant in The Guardian about academic publishers.
Today sees the release of the new trailer of my latest and most ambitious film project. In doing so I am following the sound advice of Richard Hamming and forcing my own hand. With the trailer now on public view, I will definitely have to finish the film. The video started life in the midst of bloody battle — when I was a participant in the online competition I’m a scientist, Get me out of here back in June last year.
Michael Brooks has scratched beneath the glossy surface of science to write a revealing and thoroughly entertaining book about its practitioners. By cutting so close to the scientific bone that it spills blood, his “Free Radicals” departs violently from the textbook image of white-coated professionalism. In eight gritty and gripping chapters Brooks uncovers the anarchy at the heart of many of the most famous advances made by scientists.
Some say April is the cruellest month but I found July to be more punishing. You might think that, for university staff like myself, July would bring respite from the tiresome enslavement of exam and project marking that fills all of June. At the end of that gruelling month the students are granted their grades and degrees and finally quit the campus.