Royal Society
-
Beyond Entropy and Ourselves
Last summer, I helped make a (fake) time machine, an exercise in “creative misinterpretation” (in the words of my architect partner, Shin Egashira). This was part of the Beyond Entropy project organized by the Architecture Association — we showed it then in Venice but now Londoners will get a chance to see the work in…
-
Pride and Science
Central London featured two important events this past weekend. First was the annual Gay Pride Parade, a riotous and joyful procession of rainbow flags, pink clothing, and (mostly) ill-fitting dresses on very large people. Sadly, the only thing that marred the good-natured, family-friendly event were the stupid protesters. But it was wonderful to see that…
-
Science In, On and Around the Media
Neil Tyson of New York’s Museum of Natural History had an excellent appearance on The Daily Show where he reminds us that “Astrophysicists are a simple people“. John Stewart flipped between slack-jawed incomprehension and good jokes. Better science than most of the real news. Speaking of the media and science, I spent Tuesday night boozing…
-
The Rt. Hon. Tony Blair, MP
I somehow scored an invitation to a talk by the Prime Minister sponsored by The Royal Society on “Our Nation’s Future”, specifically, on Science Policy. (Personally, I was pleased to see an extremely large contingent from Imperial present, including Dame Julia Higgins (Principal of our Faculty of Engineering, and Foreign Secretary [!] of the Royal…
-
African Science
This past week I had the honor of meeting members of various African National Science Academies visiting the UK on the invitation of the Britain’s Royal Society. I was invited to talk about my experiences in the Society’s own MP-Scientist Pairing “Scheme” that I participated in last year. These are high-powered scientists, holding posts in…
-
Management, Money, Media
Wednesday was a busy day of politicking and schmoozing (as opposed to research and teaching, which is what I actually get paid to do). I spent the morning at a meeting reviewing the current status of developments for the Planck Surveyor satellite here in the UK (Planck will measure the temperature of the Cosmic Microwave…
-
From Tokyo
·
…where I’m attending the fifteenth Japanese Workshop on General Relativity and Gravitation. At some point, I’ll blog about: All the interesting work being done by the mostly young, mostly Japanese physicists here; The distressing things The Royal Society is saying about open access to scientific information (which has already been covered all over the blogosphere);…
-
Science and Parliament II
The official aims of the MP-Scientist pairing scheme are To help scientists recognise the potential methods and structures through which they can feed their scientific knowledge to parliamentarians. To help practising research scientists understand the pressures under which MPs operate. To give MPs the opportunity to forge direct links with a network of practising research…
-
Science and Parliament (UK)
Sorry I’ve been so quiet this week: I’ve just finished participating in the Royal Society’s MP-Scientist Pairing Scheme. They’ve linked 25 youngish scientists from throughout the UK with a member of Parliament, and let us “shadow” them for much of this week (as well as giving us presentations on the way science and scientists interact…
Search
Recent Posts
Categories
- Academia (64)
- Art (57)
- Blog (1)
- Miscellanea (101)
- Music (71)
- Net (63)
- News (28)
- Politics (110)
- Science (332)
- Uncategorized (4)