Susan Carruthers, associate professor of history, Rutgers University, New Jersey, US, writes in the Times Higher Educational Supplement [Website down 08:30] about three books on contemporary international affairs. Her contribution to the 30Jan04 edition [not free online] should be given to students as an example of how to smother reason with fashionable polysyllabic flannel. Here […]

I completed the first part of an excellent course in presentation skills today and had the odd experience of seeing myself on film. Either it’s true that the camera puts 10 pounds on you or it’s time I went on a diet. If cameras do put weight on you, God help Calista Flockhart and Courtney […]

I have received a grant from EMBnet to pay for someone to work on one of my mad ideas. If you would like to work with me for a year at the Genome Campus you might want to read this.

Adam added a comment to the recent post about Brights (courtesy of Maoi). If Adam likes Dawkins-bashing, he’ll enjoy the on-going feud between Dawkins and ‘Blogging Labour MP Tom Watson. Watson produced a spoof yoof entry in his ‘Blog intended to parody attempts by middle-aged politicians to get “down with the kids”. Dawkins rather sloppily […]

So, for the first time in two years of “working at Cambridge” I’m in town today, teaching in the Genetics Department and Al-Qa-bloody-e-da (or perhaps two bored students) threaten the town and the University with a couple of bombs for lunchtime. It was one of my students who alerted me to the threat first, but […]

It’s not often I find myself praising Oxford University but fellow graduate Judith has just drawn my attention to the latest public pronouncement of our alma mater and I find myself smiling.

If you are going to lecture today’s students it’s important to have a sense of how they perceive you. Mouse over this guy’s homepage photograph.

The Genome Campus has been swarming with non-scientist visitors over the past couple of days. They are here to find out what we get up in our secluded, multi-million-pound, international research centre by viewing a range of exhibits and taking tours of the non-restricted parts of the premises. This is in celebration of the anniversary […]

Today, I googled for an exact phrase from one of my definitions of bioinformatics—as used in my Bioinformatics FAQ. In that form, Google had crawled my definition in over 40 different locations, usually attributed. Among other places, it shows up in a patent application, lecture notes, presentations, advertisements and homepages. I’ve defined a scientific field! […]

So a third of academics want to quit? I can think of a third of academics who I want to quit. Unfortunately most of that third would have trouble persuading McDonald's to take them on.

This one is for Amber, who, despite her contributing to it from time to time, won't read my Weblog on principle. Before you click on the link, turn off your browser's ability to open new windows with JavaScript or you will be plagued by a thousand pop-ups. You'll need to have Flash installed to appreciate […]