// Latest Posts

Crumbling buildings: Metaphors we live in

Metaphors are ways to make something abstract concrete…. You know where this is going….. Metaphors make us see something as something else, for example life as a journey or institutions as buildings and failing institutions as crumbling buildings. In September 2023 this latter metaphor spread like wildfire. RAAC (and ruin) Our Department for Education here …

Orange is the new bleak*

I was recently reflecting on the way extreme weather events manifest themselves in different colours. Floods are brown and ugly; there is brown flood water and then there is brown mud everywhere (more on that here). Wildfires are orange and, in a sense, beautiful; there are orange sunsets and sunrises, but what’s left behind is …

Red and blue AI?

This is another post about artificial intelligence or AI, but it’s what one may call a bit ‘experimental’. I happened to think about an analogy and ran with it, but it might be a completely inappropriate one. Let me know! Red and green GM About twenty years ago, at the turn of the millennium, I …

Metaphors in science communication: Hits and misses

At the beginning of August, various scientific announcements whizzed past me on Twitter. First, a new room-temperature super-conductor (LK-99 for short), which I just dismissed in my head as hype*, then a new pill that cured cancer, which sounded a bit more plausible. In news coverage of both announcements, the phrase ‘holy grail’ came up, …

Global boiling

On 27 July Secretary-General António Guterres gave a press conference at United Nations headquarters. He spoke about climate change against the backdrop of widespread floods, terrestrial and marine heatwaves and wildfires unfolding around the world and in the context of new data coming in from the World Meteorological Organization and the European Commission’s Copernicus Climate …

The climate speaks in words and pictures: Is anybody listening?

I can’t open twitter nowadays without being confronted by red-hot images of heatwaves, just like a few weeks ago it was all about wildfires, orange skies and smoke. The climate is speaking to us, indeed sending us smoke signals, from the air, the land and the water which are all alarmingly warm. This is not …

Gravitational waves, music and metaphors

On Thursday, June 29, 2023, the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves or NANOGrav announced evidence for gravitational waves emitted by pairs of supermassive black holes across the universe or, in the words of the astrophysicist Katie Mack: “We’re using RADIATION JETS from DEAD STARS to detect RIPPLES IN SPACE from the COLLISIONS OF …

Synthetic embryos: Science, communication, clarification

Earlier in the month (June, 2023) I saw some headlines saying things like “Scientists say first synthetic human ’embryo’ created” or “First reported synthetic human embryo sparks ethical concerns, creates questions” or “Synthetic human embryos created for first time using no eggs or sperm”. These headlines appeared soon after an exclusive article on the matter …

Artificial intelligence and existential risk: From alarm to alignment

1956 was a momentous year: I and AI were born. Ok, I was born and artificial intelligence was defined as a field of research in computer science. A lot has happened since, especially over the last two decades; and now speculation is rife as to whether AI might lead to the extinction of humanity. By …

Mitochondrial replacement and the pangenome

Recently two events caught my attention, which should at least be noted on this blog: the publication of the first human pangenome on 10 May 2023 and the birth of babies through a new human fertilisation technique variously known as mitochondrial donation, mitochondrial transfer, mitochondrial transplant or mitochondrial replacement on 12 May. I’ll say a …