John Jackson OBE (1934 – 2023)

It is good to read about a life well-lived, I think. Especially if you struggle with your own existential dread. (Following Covid, isn’t that all of us, to a degree?) My mother’s Uncle, John, to us “Uncle John” even though he was actually Great Uncle John, died last month. The funeral will take place next week. It’s a sobering moment for us as a family,...

4w

I am evangelical about this

PhD students should* consider industry roles; academics should not dissuade them. If you have a life sciences undergraduate degree and mathematical or applied statistical postgraduate training, or if you are a maths or statistics postgraduate with due awe and respect for stochasticity of biology; this is your job listing. For other scientists from...

Jan 2023

Computers these days

When I was in primary school, in the early nineties, Tesco ran a scheme called Computers for Schools. Shopping at Tesco earned paper vouchers which were collected by local schools. When a school had collected enough vouchers, they could spend them on computer equipment. The window of time when I was in love with technology began when I was five or...

Jan 2023

Darwin and the divine

On Boxing Day, Jerry Coyne posted his blog post The New York Times touts religious miracles as proof of God. In his post, Coyne deconstructs an essay published in the New York Times. The essay by Molly Worthern uses individual testimony as the source material and contemplates the question How would you prove that God performed a Miracle? Coyle says:...

Jan 2023

Aphorism

Do one day at a time. If you can’t do a day at a time, do an hour at a time. If you can’t do an hour at a time, go minute by minute. If you can’t do minutes, do seconds. If you can’t do seconds, do moments. Do moments, all you have to do is moments. Just keep breathing.

Mar 2020

What is it like to go dating for the first time?

In the video, I explore what it is like to go dating for the first time. With thanks to Kate Smurthwaite (who introduces me here and who taught me stand-up comedy), City Academy (through whom I took this course) and The Comedy Pub (where we performed). Thanks to my friends and family who attended and/or helped me to write the jokes. Most of all,...

Mar 2020

Making it up as I go along

Until recently, I dreaded public speaking. Hated it, even. No-one told me, when I set out to become a scientist, that presenting my work in front of an audience would be expected. Being scheduled to give a talk, to immediate colleagues or to a conference audience, could ruin the day if not the entire conference. I still get anxious now, but I am not...

Feb 2019

The New Awkward

WhatsApp. It’s like Twitter, but better curated. Blogging lends itself to the meta. Over the years, when I have been battered, bruised and even left bleeding from online exchanges, I think back to my abrupt and unintentional induction into science communication; to my first forays into blogging. I finger the battle scars I picked up during the Science...

Jan 2019

Ten papers for ten years

Scientific paper clip-art Blogging Beyond is about ten years old now.  To celebrate, here are ten papers I like, in chronological order by publication date. Each is accompanied by a short justification for its inclusion in this list.  Ridge Regression: Biased estimation for nonorthogonal problems (1970) Technometrics Hoerl and Kennard [pdf] This...

Nov 2018

Making real change happen

For those of my readers who are new to my writing, karibuni. Stay with me. The video is for the sake of nostalgia. I am going through a nostalgic phase at the moment. It has been a while since I blogged a conference report. I remember, for example, live blogging Cromer is so Bracing ‘09. The output of that meeting may not have been Real Change Happening...

Sep 2017