“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Dublin Airport,” says the pilot. “Please remember to turn your watches back thirty years.” So goes the time-worn joke but last weekend that’s more or less exactly what I did. I flew to Dublin to hear a band I first saw in concert in the summer of 1977 when I was just thirteen years old. It was a little bit crazy but I’m glad I went — I was not the least bit disappointed.
I’m not proud of myself but I have to confess to a lascivious addiction. I know. It’s disgusting. But I can’t help it. The problem started in 1999. I remember all too clearly my first glimpse of the well-proportioned curves and smooth, smooth skin. After that I was hooked. Oh. God. I couldn’t resist. The Apple G3 PowerBook, my first ever laptop, was gorgeous.
Having delighted in Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man earlier this year, I sat down to watch Carl Sagan’s Cosmos , which several commenters had recommended to me. You can read what I thought of it in my guest post at Grrlscientist’s Punctuated Equilibrium blog over at The Guardian . As you will see, it is wrapped up with the recent apparition of shiny sculptures by Anish Kapoor in Kensington Gardens.
The British cardiologist Dr Peter Wilmshurst was reported in 2007 to have made remarks critical of a clinical trial involving a medical device made by NMT Medical. He is now being sued for libel. The case is complex and I have not mastered the detail.
The firework screamed upwards into the night sky and burst, with an almighty crack, into a vibrant spray of light and colour. Everyone looked up. Some people cheered. And then the murmur of conversation resumed. Is that what happened with the Science is Vital campaign, which bloomed and boomed in the UK this past September and October?
Despite having a physics degree and some notion of the stretchiness of space and time in Einstein’s theory of special relativity, I’ve never felt comfortable with these ideas.
I am presently attending a conference on Caliciviruses in Chile and am enjoying being immersed in both the warm spring sunshine and the latest research on this important group of pathogens. Any of you who has suffered at the hands of the ‘Winter vomiting bug’ is already closely acquainted with caliciviruses.
After the amazing success of the Science is Vital Rally on Saturday (see here for video and Jenny’s report and here for another first-hand account by Prateek Buch), it was off to the House of Commons today. Not quite in my brand new shoes, but they had at least been cleaned following extensive glue coverage in Friday night’s marathon placard-making session.
The Science is Vital Campaign has caught the grim mood of the scientific community and focused the energy of opposition to light a fire of protest.
A quick note here for those interested in the details of the case for support behind the Science is Vital Campaign that is fighting against cuts in the UK’s public spending on R&D. The campaign has posted key points and I have written my own digest of the case on the Naturally Selected blog over at The Scientist .
Please be patient while I experiment with audio to drum up support for the “Science is Vital campaign”:http://scienceisvital.org.uk/. It will only take two minutes and forty-nine seconds. Listen! Listen! Thank you for listening.