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... And we're back.  I'm counting down the best (and worst) bits from 2013. So without further ado, here's July to December. July I spent most of July working at the BBC Science Radio Unit (work placement for Science Communication course). I would like to say I enjoyed every minute - but I was bloody terrified for the first week. However, after discovering how friendly and helpful everybody who works there are, I settled in and started to really enjoy my time there. I researched a story about an invading fish for Science in Action , a story about the use of Facebook in spotting disease for Click and I researched and helped plan a documentary about de-extinction . (I also recorded and produced some vox pops  for a Click  special about internet trolls)… Oh! And I pretended to be from Kenya to read out a listener's email... The highlight of my work experience was getting a feature article about de-extinction published on the BBC News website . August M...

With everybody doing end of year lists, I wanted to write a summary of 2013 myself. It's been quite a year, difficult and enjoyable. So here's my (mostly not narcissistic) summary of January to June. January A couple of months into a Science Communication degree, I made a little podcast for I, Science  magazine. I got to meet the amazing Suze Kundu (or @FunSizeSuze ), who chatted about communicating science to kids, splitting water molecules and the science of cocktails. You can listen to the podcast here .  The rest of the month was pretty uneventful, although I did see a steam train go through Earl's Court Tube Station !  February February was a pretty busy month! I started by pondering death at the Wellcome Collection - recording and producing a podcast about their Death: A Self Portrait  exhibition . I learnt two things recording this podcast: 1. Death is a fascinating and sometimes beautiful inevitability 2. Never ask exhibition goers for v...

Letting go and growing old. Into a box, your memory, I pack and I fold. We forgot what it feels to be "young and in love", And instead sat, headphones on, in our own single worlds. In a bed we lay, not touching most nights,  Sober and quiet and far from the lights, Minds drifting to our jobs, our work and our studies,  Ignoring the feeling of the pressing of our bodies. Our project became still and stagnated, And like background radiation, we droned and no longer communicated. I think back to your thoughts after that holiday we had. We'd enjoyed ourselves: we were young, we'd had fun.  We drank wine by night, and in the day we sipped sun. But when we got back home, to the clouds and the cold, There was something on your mind that I had to be told. You felt pressured and unsure of our path. We were a star on its way to collapse. "And beyond that it's black," you said. "And I'm afraid of the dark!" But I ...

When I was younger, trains were dragons. They'd spit heat and noise and excitement. And explode into view before they were gone. Black beasts screaming their arrival, Snaking through stations and scaring kids Who stand on the platform: palms sweaty, eye's full. Now I know there's no serpent pinned between tracks. Just an engine. Some wheels. And some seats. And where's the fun in that? Where's the adventure? Point A to point B, and "a selection of hot and cold beverages in between". I wish saw a monster instead of a machine.

If you haven't seen the Paxman–Brand interview yet, go see it . I thought I would add my two pennies (whatever that's worth!). Russell Brand makes a lot of very interesting points. He draws on the large disparity between the super-rich, '1%' and the rest of us. He is also disgusted at the way we are abusing our environment (and seemingly doing nothing about it). His point about the decoration of the House of Commons is excellent. " The Houses of Parliament, [are] decorated exactly the same as Eton, [they're] decorated exactly the same as Oxford. So a certain type of people go in there and they think, 'Eurgh! This makes me nervous!'. And another type of people go in there and they go, 'This is how it should be!' And that's got to change" While, in theory , anybody can be voted in to 'govern' our country, the reality is that a certain 'class' (can we still use that word?) of people are more comfortable in the ...

A galaxy was discovered today. It sent its message and drifted further away. Shifting from blue to red, Lonely photons travelled across the cosmos to be read. Electronic eyes scoured the blackness and we deciphered the story, Of an object so distant in time, we had a birthing memory. A hazy image of things for which there were no words, But which we now know as suns, moons and worlds. * http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v502/n7472/full/nature12657.html

The Ideal Candidate must be, Trained in Chemistry And have received a degree. No, wait! Make that a PhD! Furthermore, they must, Edit, change, adjust, Pieces of writing, audio clips, or just, Occasionally, the odd blog post. Does this sound like you? "Yes", I think. "That's me, it's true!" But there's something that makes me feel blue. And that's that The Ideal Candidate thought so too!

A short post from me today. Science Communication dissertations are all handed in, but I will write later on what the Science Communication course has meant for me. A subject which came up in the Pub t'other night - our ideas for documentaries. My idea begins with a tunnel. There is a tunnel which runs from just outside the Science Museum, all the way underneath Exhibition Road to South Kensington Tube station. Distant voices and foreign tongues mix with buskers' notes as the sound bounces off the tiled walls. On a wet day, the concrete floor is slippery and dark, and the air is damp and cave-like. About half-way down the tunnel, a sign, mechanical and modern, directs visitors (or travelers) to the V&A Museum . The journey could begin here... (Flickr, swh) Unfortunately the V&A is the only South Kensington museum accessible by tunnel (although there is debate, particularly among Imperial College students as to whether there are more tunnels underneath Albert...

It seems hoards of X-Factor-watching, One-Direction-listening, giggling teenagers are wearing 'Geek' T-Shirts, apparently admitting that they are geeks, nerds or dorks. I think it's fairly obvious that this is just a fashion fad, as some articles suggest – geek has never been 'conventionally-cool'. ' Geek chic ' has now entered the Oxford English Dictionary, an action indicative of the increased acceptance that there is such a thing as a 'geek' and that sometimes this geek can be cool. I despise anecdotal evidence, but I am also a hypocrite ( a hungry, hungry hypocrite ) so here we go...  "A lot of my friends are far from what some would consider is 'geekishness' – they are not scientific, do not use maths to solve basic problems, some don't even know who Brian Cox is! (But they can tell me who scored a goal against Chelsea or who is a decent candidate in the X-Factor). However, of an evening, one of my mates blurted out th...

Just swallow the pill  Think of me no longer.  Just let go  And take yourself out Right out before I kill you too These are the first few lines of Atreyu's poweful ' Corsetting ', if you haven't heard it, listen to this on loud! Clearly this song has some adult themes and should probably not be listened to by those younger than their mid-teens (although it's a damn sight better than the dub-step rubbish that teenagers listen to now).  So when listening to this song on Spotify I was surprised to hear that the swear-y words (*snigger - they're naughty*) had been censored out. This is not just annoying but also completely pointless. The band wrote those words for a reason and censoring them destroys some of the creation that went into the song. It also completely ruins the flow and feel of the music - it sounds like a vinyl record slipping and made me think the stream was broken.  What starts as a raw, hard song about a sadistic and obsessive lover t...

Queueing for the Sainsbury's self service machines is an art form. First of all you have to stand in precisely the right position: not too close to the tills that you are blocking the corridor, but not too far that people think they can jump the queue. You must also (in the Putney Sainsbury's at least) position your self at a slight angle, to peer around a pillar and get a view of all the machines at once. After positioning, you must wait. Finally someone moves and you spring in for the attack, knocking children with sweets out of the way first (not really). It is stressful and sometimes things are worse. Sometimes, the person before you leaves something at the till and you must hastily make a decision as you see them disappear out the double doors to the street, never to be seen (by you) again. This happened to me today, as a well dressed man left his receipt and £3.82 change in the till. I didn't really have time to think as he strolled casually into the sun. If I ran ...

Yesterday we (the "SciComm Class of 2013") had our careers talk. I can hardly believe it has nearly been a year since handing my notice in at work. I did this so I could take a step towards becoming a science communicator. I was an Editorial Assistant with experience in proofreading and copy-editing journal papers, congress submissions and educational materials for the pharmaceutical industry. I knew nothing of Narrative Theory , or the PUS vs. PEST debate, or even of building sculptures . Importantly, I knew nothing about editing audio and video, or about writing news stories. But what next? I need to find someone who will hire me – to take that risk on me. How do they know my skills will meet their requirements? Well, the CV will help, as will providing examples of radio podcasts or writing. But Alok Jha and Chris Riley , freelance documentary film maker ( In The Shadow Of The Moon , The Fantastic Mr Feynman ) seem to think something else is more important. "The wi...

Revision is over and I can write this in my light and airy room at home, rather than in that dark, airless box in which I’ve spent a large proportion of the last two weeks. Exam revision is great for linking ideas which initially appear to be separate and discrete. One link which occurred to me was between narrative theory and Thomas Kuhn’s ‘ Structure of Scientific Revolutions ’. Narrative scholars, such as Vladimir Propp and Tzvetan Todorov have tried to determine what the general structure of a narrative is. While Propp’s structure is really weighty, and a bit vague (it seems his ‘ spheres of action ’ can apply to anything), Todorov argued that all narratives fit within a basic, five-step frame – much more sensible. All narratives start with an initial equilibrium. Early on, there is a disruption from this equilibrium, the characters notice this disruption. There is then an attempt to put the disruption right, before a final equilibrium is reached.  It st...

Maria Miller, the Culture secretary, said yesterday   that if arts funding councils wanted to avoid funding cuts they should make the case for the economic impact of investing in art. This, in my view, is a terrible way for framing the argument for investing in the arts. A few months ago I wrote a post about science funding . In this I argued that by limiting science funding to projects with a clear commercial benefit over those which seem a bit more ‘blue-sky’, there is a risk that development follows too linear a path and we remain blind to ‘unknown unknowns’. The same idea, I think, applies to the arts – possibly more so. Maria’s comments provide a good case study to talk about framing . In order to help an audience engage with an argument, the message is framed in a way that resonates with the beliefs and prejudices of the audience. Essentially, if a communicator can frame an argument correctly, they are able to effectively communicate with any audience. However, framin...

My opinion of science communication has changed over the 6 months that I’ve been studying it. Before starting, I was one of those who insisted that the public understanding of science could be improved via mass splurging of scientific facts. I was also critical of the media’s representation of science. At best, I viewed it as inaccurate and at worst I viewed it as deliberately misleading in order to drive a journalist’s own personal prejudices. There have been many studies into the proportion of science news stories within newspapers. One conducted in 1995 sampled 6000 articles from popular newspapers between 1945 and 1990 (a preliminary report can be found here ). The authors reported an increase in the proportion of science stories since 1945 (however, there was a peak in the sixties and there has been a decline since). “It’s all well and good to have a large number of science stories,” you might say. “But what about the accuracy of these stories?” A really good accuracy s...

My last couple of posts have been a little bit negative but this post   is positive. And also a bit weird. Ask people in the ex-colonial world what they know about Britain and most of them will say BBC World Service. Until recently, the headquarters could be found in Bush House – appropriately named for a service set up to communicate to colonial Brits living in "the Bush". For 70 years, radio has been recorded, edited and broadcast by men and women who walked the resonant staircases, who chatted in the lift and who could be heard striding down the corridors. Sadly, the BBC World Service said "Goodbye" to Bush House in 2012 and moved to their new home in the just as beautiful Broadcasting House.  No doubt this was an emotional time for the people who worked here and some tried to preserve aspects of the building for future generations. There's a brilliant radio show from BBC Radio 3 in which people who worked in Bush House walk through the now...

In Brave New World , Huxley presents a possible utopian/dystopian future in which humans are cloned into different classes of people. These various classes are not only genetically conditioned to fulfil their role within society – they are also psychologically conditioned to feel that their position in society makes them happy. In short, the people living in Brave New World are kept constantly happy while consuming products. I was filled with dread while reading this book. It trickled in off the page, through my eyes. It collected in pools in my brain before flowing down to my gut. This book represents my gut feeling about society as it is at the moment. Just after I started reading the book, I put the following post on my facebook page: My friends seem to like the society in Brave New World ! And actually, what’s not to like? Everyone, and I mean everyone in this society is happy. There is very little civil unrest, people do not celebrate the death of a politici...

It has been a busy week here in Science Communication. While the Sci Comm’ers have completed and presented our Group Projects, the Science Media Production team have completed their Documentaries and Radio Packages. All of the projects had to communicate an aspect of the courses covered last term (‘Philosophy of Science’ and ‘The Media Representation of Science’) and could do so either through a film or audio product, or through a more artistic product. And they were all brilliant. I was a bit worried when we started these projects, especially since some of the previous years’ projects were shown to us were so cleverly executed (see, The Scientist , Maps of Knowledge  and Ros the Rat and the Paratime Shifts ). Many of the groups this year produced art works and I think this made a refreshing change from the animations and videos from last year (perhaps this a cyclical pattern?). It was great to see the different takes on the ideas presented in class. My group decided to...

I read the God Delusion about five years ago. And I remember thinking that the ideas were really inspiring. It felt, to my late-teenage, hormonal self, that there was a great religious conspiracy which threatened to topple reason and science and society as we know it. Dawkins provided people like me, mostly agnostic/atheists with a voice and with the confidence to question religions. We were actively encouraged not to give two-hoots about respecting religious beliefs since they were ‘stupid’ and ‘irrational’. I went around like this for a while, genuinely believing that religion couldn’t answer anything and yet had a lot to answer to. For some reason, perhaps because it is the best description we have for describing how we arrived in this existence, evolution got pulled into the religion versus no religion debate. Horror, this was now a religion versus science debate. Both sides of the argument ran to opposite ends of the debating chamber, ready to charge at each other. There wer...