by Len Fisher | 14 Feb 2017 | Planning for Life's Crises: Media and Writing
Op-ed submitted to Boston Globe after Patriots’ Superbowl LI win. Pity they didn’t take it, but here it is anyway. The message that it contains is rather important; like footballers, politicians need to adapt quickly to circumstances! When wide receiver...
by Len Fisher | 13 Feb 2017 | IgNobel Prize, Mini Stories from Science
The following wonderful letter appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine forty years ago. If the IgNobel Prizes had existed then, it would surely have been a leading candidate for the medicine prize. Who says that scientists don’t have a sense of humor?!...
by Len Fisher | 3 Feb 2017 | Mini Stories from Science
(Feb 3, 2017) I temporarily removed this early post because it seemed to be attracting spambots. Now re-posting. Enjoy! I am often asked the question “Is there a scientific method?” If the question means “Is there just one method that all scientists accept and use by...
by Len Fisher | 1 Feb 2017 | Game Theory & You: Media and Writing, Mini Stories from Science, Planning for Life's Crises: Media and Writing
The world is rapidly going down the road of competition rather than cooperation. In doing so, as I have shown in previous posts and in my book Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life, its citizens face the deadly dilemmas exposed by game theory – in...
by Len Fisher | 31 Jan 2017 | Game Theory & You: Media and Writing, Mini Stories from Science, Planning for Life's Crises: Media and Writing
I avoid political commentary on this website , but in the current climate (31st January, 2017) I believe that it is very important for as many of us as possible to look dispassionately at what is happening and try to understand what is going on below the surface...
by Len Fisher | 30 Jan 2017 | Food & Gastronomy: Media and Writing, Mini Stories from Science
The Chinese New Year, which began this year on January 28th, is a big deal in Sydney, which has a large and vibrant Chinese community, some of whose families go back to the gold rush days of the 1850s. As part of the celebrations, the Art Gallery of New South Wales...
by Len Fisher | 20 Jan 2017 | IgNobel Prize, Stray Thoughts
I am stimulated to write this post by the news that the “celebrated American poet Joseph Charles McKenzie” has composed a poem to celebrate Donald Trump’s inauguration. The poem contains the immortal lines “With purpose and strength he came down from his tower To...
by Len Fisher | 13 Jan 2017 | Stray Thoughts
If ever I had combined my interest in science with that in mediaeval history, this wonderful-sounding conference, taking place in Helsinki this April, would have provided the ideal vehicle. Its topic is “awkward objects” associated with the body; “including, but not...
by Len Fisher | 11 Jan 2017 | Game Theory & You: Media and Writing, Mini Stories from Science, News
Submitted to Washington Post just before Christmas 2016. Nearly made it, but eventually missed out, The message for science is sadly stark. The U.S. should learn from Russian history “Are you now, or have you ever been, a climate scientist?” Donald Trump’s recent...
by Len Fisher | 11 Nov 2016 | News, Stray Thoughts
Leonard Cohen has died. Perhaps he should have received a Nobel Prize, or shared one with Bob Dylan, because he certainly produced some of the most memorable descriptions of the human condition to be found anywhere. The one that sticks in my mind is this: Everybody...
by Len Fisher | 10 Nov 2016 | Food & Gastronomy: Media and Writing, News
Do you have a passion for food and cooking? Do you want access and guidance on the best in culinary literature? Former molecular biologist Matt Cockerill has an answer, in the form of a new web-based project called 1000 Cookbooks (www.1000cookbooks.com). As a start,...
by Len Fisher | 2 Nov 2016 | News, Stray Thoughts, Think Like a Scientist: Media and Writing
Dateline: November 2nd, 2016. Staying on Bali, and idly glancing at the right-hand NASA topographic map of Bali from space, the similarity to the left-hand image of comet P67 taken from the Rosetta spacecraft suddenly struck me. Yes, I know that I have reflected...
by Len Fisher | 27 Oct 2016 | IgNobel Prize, Mini Stories from Science
What’s that smell? A school playground joke from my childhood concerns a new deodorant called “vanish”. It makes you invisible, so that no one can see where the smell is coming from. But how can we seriously get rid of bad smells? One way, which makes the...
by Len Fisher | 25 Oct 2016 | Mini Stories from Science
In an earlier post (https://lenfisherscience.com/98-necessary-mysteries/) I wrote about necessary mysteries – concepts and ideas that are beyond our direct experience, but which scientists have been forced to accept in order to make sense of that experience. Note that...
by Len Fisher | 23 Oct 2016 | Mini Stories from Science
I must have been just nine or ten years old when I discovered the American magazine “Popular Mechanics” in our local library. It was the stuff of dreams. My real world, where my parents could not afford to buy me a bicycle, let alone own a car themselves, was replaced...
by Len Fisher | 23 Sep 2016 | IgNobel Prize, News, Stray Thoughts
It may sound ridiculous to argue that a spoof IgNobel Prize could ever have more value than an actual Nobel. Of course, when it comes to real science, the Nobels are still the pinnacle. But perhaps, as I pointed out in this interview on the BBC World Service recorded...
by Len Fisher | 6 Sep 2016 | Mini Stories from Science, News
A great deal of nonsense is currently being spouted by people who believe that the days of unfettered “fundamental,” “pure,” “blue-sky” research are over – or, at least, that they ought to be, and that scientists should come out into the “real world,” whatever that...
by Len Fisher | 16 Aug 2016 | Stray Thoughts
In the days when I was an enthusiast for competition bridge, I read a book by the British writer Victor Mollo which featured a character called The Hideous Hog. One sentence from that book, describing the Hog’s excuse for making a mistake, has always stuck in my mind...
by Len Fisher | 11 Aug 2016 | Stray Thoughts
Rabelais’s rumbustious romp with the brief title The Heroic Deeds of Gargantua and Pantagruel was written in the sixteenth century, with the first part being written in 1532. I am lucky enough to own a limited edition illustrated by the Australia artist Francis...
by Len Fisher | 30 Jul 2016 | Mini Stories from Science, News, Planning for Life's Crises: Media and Writing
If you think that science, and scientific thinking, have little to do with the rough-and-tumble of the real world, think again – and take a look at this wonderful paper by a group of psychologists and mathematicians from the Cornell-Princeton-Yale triangle...
