Making Science Public 2020: End of year round-up of blog posts
December 18, 2020
The year began quite innocently, with me blogging, for example, about gene drives. What are gene drives? Who cares about them? And so on. This has now turned into: Who cares? 2020 has been steamrolled by one big event: the Covid-19 pandemic. This meant that many of my posts were devoted to it, that is …
Who killed granny?
September 9, 2020
A trend seems to be emerging, albeit not a failsafe one, in the management of the coronavirus pandemic. There are countries/nations/regions like New Zealand, Germany and New Mexico (and these are just the ones I sort of listen in to) that have done something right when it comes to dealing with the spread of Covid-19. …
VE Day – a poem by Maureen Sutton
May 8, 2020
I didn’t want to write a post today, as I had already posted one earlier in the week. But then, by chance Maureen Sutton sent me a poem that made me think and which she has allowed me to publish here. I have come to know about Maureen’s poetry through my earlier post on pandemic …
Bushfires and climate change communication: Between amplification and attenuation
January 10, 2020
For about a decade I have been thinking and writing about extreme weather events and their links to human-induced climate change, and this included quite a few references to Australia, especially droughts, heatwaves and bushfires. I thought the Las Conchas Fire in New Mexico, lived through by some of my family, was bad. I thought …
Making Science Public 2019: An overview
December 17, 2019
Every year I think: This will be the last year I write something for this blog… and each year I write a bit more. And so it was this year. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, I really don’t know. But it distracts me from life’s increasing troubles and keeps me sane. …
Grace de Laguna: A forgotten pioneer in the history of the language sciences
August 30, 2019
Recently I was asked to write something about Grace de Laguna. Grace de what… I wondered… until I googled myself and found that I had written a few pages about her work in my 1996 book on the history of pragmatics. That was a blast from the past! But this also made me think. I …
Cells and coincidences: Some holiday musings
July 18, 2018
We are on holiday and I was reading the delightful book by Tim Birkhead, The Wonderful Mr Willughby: The first True Ornithologist. I had bought it because Francis Willughby had connections to Wollaton Hall, a Hall I see almost everyday when I walk to work at the University of Nottingham, where Willughby’s papers are kept. …