yppahpeek

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...