Nerds Many of you will already have seen this because I have been promoting it shamelessly on twitter. But this is the video of the talk I mentioned in a post back in March that my daughter Eleanor gave on a topic she feels passionately about: corduroy. I thought it might amuse some of you.

Wunderkind of audiovisual media that I am, I confess to being rather late in getting around to this one. Even I hesitated at the narcissistic self-absorption of it. But as a blogger, I must learn to overcome such hesitations. Here, to demonstrate my proper credentials and my total commitment to the vocation, is a photograph–taken just now–of the computer on which I have begun to compose this post.

When I die and am laid in my grave and my soul ascends to the Pearly Gates and the Supreme Being peers at me over half-moon glasses and declares, “Well Stephen, it’s Judgement Day”, I will look him in the eye and reply: “Dear God, not again!” Because, as a scientist, my life seems to be a never-ending succession of judgement days. Lately it’s being getting ridiculous.

On Friday evening the structural biologists of Imperial College and the friends of the structural biologists of Imperial College gathered together for a screening of the film, Naturally Obsessed. Filmed over three years, this hour-long documentary tracks the lives of graduate students Rob, Kil and Gabe, as they battle the recondite mysteries of protein crystallography in their quest to become scientists.

I once read in a physics textbook that if an atom were to be magnified to the size of London’s Wembley Stadium, the nucleus at the centre would be about as big as a hazelnut. Well screw that, because I can think of much better uses for Wembley Stadium. Besides the obvious — football — it is of course an ideal venue for rock concerts and last Friday night U2 showed exactly how it should be done.

Let’s face it: scientists aren’t in it for the money (except perhaps those with a more entrepreneurial bent). More often we are preening our egos and chasing a kind of immortality—the chance to create a legacy that will outlive us. Of course, this is an entirely irrational goal, coming oddly from a profession that often spouts its single-minded adherence to rationality!