There is something inherently confessional in a blog, even in a science blog. There is an urge to reveal—do you feel it?—that is normally kept safely in check. Mine is pretty well locked down. And yet I admire those who, on occasion, have cast off their reins and opened their hearts with great honesty. I think particularly of Richard’s pieces on “depression” and, more recently, faith.

Working at home last Thursday, trying to get some quiet time to focus on a review article, I caught the lunchtime news and heard of the untimely death of the actress Wendy Richard. She was best known as Pauline Fowler from long-running BBC soap Eastenders.

I know, I know. He’s been done to death, but I realised this morning that I have been walking past this poster for some weeks now and it’s always pleased me. I think, somehow, it still seems a little… subversive .

Oh wait, I’ve just checked the poster and we’re 129 years too late. Damn. But if you had been in the Piccadilly area at 8 pm on Monday 16th Feb 1880, you could have attended his talk on ‘The characters by which dogs resemble and differ from other animals’, the first of a series of six lectures on ‘Dogs and their forefathers’. The whole series would have set you back a mere sixpence.

There was an old man from Downe, Kent Who found man arose by descent He said, “This may grate: But my friends we’re primate, Give thanks for life’s great accident!”

Charles Darwin Was a star in Eighteen fifty-nine His theory Caused a fury Among lovers of design “No Adam? Far too random – That’s never a solution!” But Charlie smiled – He was not riled: “Sorry, that’s evolution.”   It’s catching on, this Darwin thing.

Last week I took the train through a snowy landscape to Warwick University to give a seminar at the Department of Chemistry. I arrived a little early to catch up with a couple of virologist friends; in the coffee bar we chewed over funding politics and hot topics in viral replication. I met my hosts for lunch and a pleasant chat about common interests in serum albumin.

Abandoned

X.

This post is completely justified since crystals are a central topic at Reciprocal Space and I awoke this morning to a landscape covered with them: Snow has the wonderful property of making the world look fresh and new. Even the disaster area known locally as ‘our back garden’ manages to look appealing under its cold white blanket.

It’s over. And over a week ago at that. But I only finally caught up with the third and last episode of Prof Jim Al-Khalili’s BBC4 series Science and Islam last night. I flagged it up just before the series started and had been quite excited, having enjoyed Atom, Al-Khalili’s earlier documentary about the hey-day of physics in the early 20th century.