I’ve been blogging here for a few years, so I thought I’d pull out some of my personal top ten pieces. In no particular order:
- How the refrigerator got its hum – I think technological change is done by people, and can be redone and undone by people too. A classic study in the social studies of technology used to make that point.
- The Myth of Scientific Literacy – every now and again, the term scientific literacy gets wheeled out and I roll my eyes. This post is an attempt to explain why.
- Thatcher, scientist – based on great bit of history of science policy by John Agar (his paper is better than my post, but this is free to read and shorter). Sorry, there isn’t any evidence for that Mr Whippy story…
- A brief history of awesome – thoughts on the history, philosophy and politics of invoking wonder (based on some of my PhD). I also did a follow up post on the technological sublime and the politics of gawping at Milan Central station.
- A tour through my collection of children’s books about poo. Includes link to short video of a book farting. Who wouldn’t want to hear a book farting?
- Unlocking the future of higher education – a post about on being on an anti-fees march. I’ve also done a few photo-heavy pieces of other demos – anti-cuts and electoral reform – as well as walking to Brixton one day after the riots.
- BBC Trust Review - write up of some research I helped work on examining the science coverage for the BBC.
- Taking science journalism ‘upstream’ – write up of a presentation I made at the 2010 Science Online London conference, a call to report science as a process not the (pseudo) event of a paper being published. Great comment thread.
- William Crookes – something bugged me about a charity shop sign on the Caledonian Road, so I reached for a copy of the Dictionary of Scientific Biography. For some more history of science/ London blogging, a piece about Crystal Palace Park.
- Does my brain look big in this? – write up of a really lovely piece of research on women in science media (again, the original paper’s better but this is shorter and paywall free).
If you want to read more by me you can check out my Guardian contributor page, and opinion pieces for the Times Higher Education magazine – on rebooting the seminar and laughing at students mistakes – as well as feature articles – on “geek chic” and freedom of information in science – I’ve co-authored with Adam Corner.
I also have some academic publications, used to write for an educational website and am trying to find time to put a popular science book together. I usually post a link on this blog when I’ve been published elsewhere. If you are finding it hard to get hold of something I’ve written (or want me to write for you) my gmail address is the same as the URL here.
