A discussion initiated by Katherine Haxton prompted me to check out ResearchBlogging.org and there I discovered the Virology Blog written by Vincent Racaniello. Vincent is a poliovirus researcher at Columbia University; I’d met him a few times while working on the same virus in Boston and it was nice to get back in touch. Racaniello definitely qualifies as a senior blogger, being a Professor of Microbiology and a very eminent virologist.

You choose, but both paths involve outrageous fortune. Me? I can’t figure it out. Until six months ago I had never heard of Richard Hamming, a masterful mathematician and computer scientist from Bell Labs. I’d heard of Bell Labs all right, a celebrated hot zone of physics and computational research and home to no less than six Nobel laureates. But of Hamming? Nothing.

I don’t know what it is about 2009, but I don’t seem to have got going. My posts so far this year have amounted to a note about what’s on telly and a photo of some over-sized dice. And it’s not just in the blogosphere that things seem to be stalled. As ever at work there are many balls to be juggled in the air at once.

Sparked by a remark made by Kristi Vogel on blogging with images, here is one that’s been hovering at the back of my photo collection. Does God play dice? Apparently, despite Einstein’s objections, the deity is a bit of a gambler. What is disturbing is that this picture was taken in Palermo, Sicily last summer so it seems He may have been gambling with the mafia.

This is normally Matt’s brief but I thought people (in the UK at least) might be interested to know that a three-part series on Science and Islam , fronted by Prof Jim Al-Khalili, starts at 9 pm tonight on BBC4.

It’s easy if you try. I’ve never much cared for John Lennon’s song: despite the wistful melody and admirable sentiment, the scientific precisionist in me could never quite get past the poor grammar. “And no religion too, Mr Lennon? And no religion either !” But the song does at least draw attention to a very important human attribute: imagination.

Yesterday morning I awoke in crumpled clothes on a strange sofa, my mouth feeling furry and unwashed. I’d crashed there at about 5.30 am and only snatched a couple of hours of fitful sleep. As I gazed blearily at unfamiliar surroundings, a woman I barely recognised appeared and asked if I’d like a cup of tea. I nodded and mumbled thanks. Partying hard in the run-up to Christmas?

Here is the second of two guest blogs from my tutorial students, completing my inverted blogging challenge. This one is from Louie Barnett, who provides an entertainingly seasonal take on the murky world of G-protein coupled receptors. Take it away, Louie: All I want for Christmas is… a GPCR? Louie Barnett It’s coming to that time of year when people are thinking about what they want for Christmas.

I know, I know—the challenge is supposed to be about getting more senior people into blogging but I turned it on its end and set a mini-challenge of my own to my new batch of Biochemistry undergraduate tutees. I asked them to write no more that 400 words on any topic from the course that had particularly grabbed them.

Gazing at the very first model of a protein structure determined by X-ray crystallography Max Perutz, one of the founding fathers of the technique, was disappointed. It may have gone unspoken at the time but the initial coiled, worm-shaped creation resembled nothing so much as a giant turd. “Could the search for ultimate truth really have revealed so hideous and visceral-looking an object?” lamented Perutz.

Blogging is mainly writing and writing—according to one informed source—is like having a poo. I have just seen the excellent Screenwipe , hosted by Charlie Brooker on BBC Four (that’s the TV, not the radio). It doesn’t appear to be on their iPlayer, I’m afraid*. There’s a re-run on at 00:50 but that’s in less than an hour’s time, so you’ll have to be quick!