Yearly Archives: 2025 | occamstypewriter.org
Yearly Archives: 2025 | occamstypewriter.org
Ironically, in the week when my co-authors and I are publishing a paper proposing framework to tackle the reluctance of researchers to publish negative results, one of the most important null results of recent times – the lack of any credible link … Continue reading →Continue reading →| Occam's Typewriter
While we wait for the Schools White Paper and the report of the Curriculum and Assessment Review, other bodies have been busy, reporting specifically on the state of science education in (predominantly) English schools. Over the last few months, both the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and the Institute of Physics (IOP) have produced significant reports looking at the, not entirely happy, state of the teaching profession. The annual report from the Royal Society of Chemistry, brought togethe...| Athene Donald's Blog
Ken Liu (ed.) Invisible Planets Hungry as I am for more SF from China, and with birthday requests on the table, Mrs Gee ordered me this collection of contemporary Chinese SF, edited and translated by Ken Liu. Thirteen stories, all by authors of whom news had yet to reach mes oreilles. All except, of course, Cixin Liu, author of the extraordinarily successful Three-Body Problem trilogy (reviewed here and here). Liu (sensu Cixin) is an author of two of the stories here, and one of the three ess...| The End Of The Pier Show
Anna Mackmin Devoured Oh, but this struck a chord. This is a bizarre coming-of-age-novel in which the initially unnamed protagonist — a girl on the verge of puberty – recounts her life in a commune living in a ramshackle house somewhere in Norfolk in the the early 1970s. Our girl lives with her (selectively) mute sister Star and her parents who give house room to an eclectic assortment of deluded and self-absorbed poets, new-agers, artists, ne’er do-wells, druggies and dropouts. Eventua...| The End Of The Pier Show
Kaliane Bradley: The Ministry of Time The British government has acquired a device to transport people from past centuries to the present day. The people concerned are recorded as missing or dead, so the course of history should not be changed. At this end, Ministry employees have to give house room for the ‘immigrants’. Our protagonist, a young twenty-first century woman of mixed British-Cambodian parentage, is put in charge of an officer from the doomed Franklin Expedition to the North-...| The End Of The Pier Show
This past week I attended what struck me as an extraordinary event. Held at the Science Museum in London, it brought together multiple ministers and Secretaries of State plus many senior representatives of the Voluntary Sector/Civil Society organisations, plus some … Continue reading →Continue reading →| Occam's Typewriter
Back in the late Nineties, I was interning at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. During the working week, I threw myself into the lab with all the evangelical fervour of a pilgrim who had finally reached her … Continue reading →Continue reading →| Occam's Typewriter
The Government’s recently published Modern Industrial Strategy has a lot to say about skills. For instance, it commits to ‘enhance skills and increase access to talent by reforming the skills and employment support system to create a strong pipeline into … Continue reading →Continue reading →| Occam's Typewriter
Catherine Chidgey: The Book Of Guilt Britain in the 1970s, full of ’70s nostalgia, but in an altered universe in which Hitler was assassinated in 1943, and the Second World War ended in a treaty in which the UK shared … Continue reading →Continue reading →| Occam's Typewriter
I’m not convinced by the idea of AI throwing everyone out of jobs or taking over the world, but I thought I should read up some thoughtful writing on the subject, so I turned to Neil Lawrence’s 2024 book (recently … Continue reading →Continue reading →| Occam's Typewriter
Talking about social media Almost a year ago I joined the u3a – a group for people with time on their hands. Members are mostly, but not exclusively, retired people. I have joined several groups in my local u3a branch, … Continue reading →Continue reading →| Occam's Typewriter
Four months after my open letter calling on the Royal Society to take action over Elon Musk FRS’s breaches of their code of conduct had attracted thousands of signatures from the scientific community, but only a very muted response from that most learned organisation, I was beginning to think I should let the matter go. After all, Musk is no longer part of the Trump administration, his relationship with the president having exploded in spectacularly bitter fashion a couple of weeks ago.| Reciprocal Space
1 Prof. Stephen Royle University of Warwick| Reciprocal Space