Oxford Symposium
Brain cutlets, anyone?
In celebration of the “offal” theme at the 2016 Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, here is the wonderful brain cutlet story from Lawrence Durrell’s Prospero’s Cell, a semi-fictional diary of his time on Corfu. The Count is “Count D” (probably an invented character,...
117. Global Governance of Slowly Developing Catastrophic Risks
Early in 2015 I was invited, together with co-authors from the International Risk Governance Council, to write a review on the above topic for a special issue of the journal Ecological Economics. The referees liked the writing, but wanted us to add more economics...
116. Einstein’s sock (continued)
My latest 15 min radio broadcast in the Ockham's Razor series begins with the story of why Einstein decided not to wear socks (see Mini Story #7), but goes on to encompass how we can make the best decisions in our complex world and how Governments and big business are...
115. A New Theory of Vacuum Cleaning
It is said that Pierre Curie could never enter his own laboratory while an experiment was in progress, because his body had become so radioactive that his mere presence discharged the sensitive electrometers. It was while pondering this story that I came up with my...
My submission to the House of Commons inquiry on science communication
PERSONAL BACKGROUND I am a practising scientist, writer and broadcaster who has spent the last two decades working to make science more accessible and more a part of our culture by showing how scientists think about everyday problems, from the trivial to the profound...
Books To Read Before Going To University
Books To Read Before University Thursday, April 14th, 2016 The Times Education Supplement and the Times Higher Education Supplement have combined to produce a feature article on books that students should read before going to university...
114. Mastering complexity – I’m going to give it a try
In story fourteen I argued that science, like sex, thrives on diversity. I quoted from Peter Medawar, and the quote is worth repeating: There is no such thing as a Scientific Mind. Scientists are people of very dissimilar temperaments doing different things in very...
Are you a polymath? What’s your Erdös-Bacon-Sabbath number?
Here is my article for the Times Higher Education Supplement on how I worked out the closeness of my creative links to the mathematician Paul Erdös, the actor Kevin Bacon, and the heavy metal music group Black Sabbath, and found myself to be in the same category as...
113. How and why did Galileo calculate the dimensions of the roof of Hell?
In my latest broadcast for Australian ABC Radio's "Ockham's Razor" programme, I reveal how (and why) Galileo calculated the dimensions of the roof of Dante's Hell, and how this led to his discovery of the laws of mechanics that engineers use to this day (Hint: He...
Food and Desire
Here are the talk notes and accompanying Powerpoint Slides for the keynote talk that I gave on "Food and Desire" at the second Biennial Dublin Gastronomy Symposium (DGS) that (3-4 June 2014, Dublin Institute of Technology). It was a wonderful meeting, full of food and...
112. If you want to survive a lightning strike, be a redhead
A picture has been circulating (http://gizmodo.com/this-bison-was-struck-by-lightning-and-emerged-ugly-but-1751814626) of a bison that survived a lighting strike. The thing that struck me particularly was that the bison had red hair. “So what?” you might ask. The...
111. Let’s dance – nano style
How can we better integrate science and the arts? Drama seems a fairly obvious medium for integration, and Michael Frayn used it effectively with his play “Copenhagen,” which dramatized the 1941 meeting between Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. Dance is a lot less...
110. My granddaughter’s first experiment
We bought my 11 year-old granddaughter a chemistry set for Christmas. It was her idea, not ours, maybe stimulated by the fact that both of her parents are scientists. We chose one where she could do plenty of colour change reactions; in fact, the first experiment in...
The real dangers of Australia
Many of our European friends have expressed apprehension at the idea of visiting Australia on account of the ferocious sharks, poisonous snakes, spiders and jellyfish, etc. But the real problems lie elsewhere: Some birds laugh at you: Others look sideways...
Where did “Rock-Paper-Scissors” originate? Well, Nature started it all.
I recently had an inquiry from a Russian website wanting to know where the game "Rock, Paper, Scissors" originated. Probably they asked me because I had written a best-selling book "Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life," which was in fact not about the...
109. What a coincidence! What, a coincidence?
I was just about to write something on the subject of coincidence when, coincidentally, I came across a post by Steve Strogatz (@Stevenstrogatz) on the subject of coincidence. It’s a very important part of scientific thinking, because distinguishing coincidence from...
108. A note on teleology – you were born to read this.
Johannes Kepler was a great scientist who fathomed the laws of planetary motion. Yet even he was susceptible to the sort of inverse logic that still traps many people today. It is called teleology - explanation by reference to some purpose, end, goal, or function....
107. Terrorism and the refugee crisis
The journal Nature has been taking a strong interest in terrorism and the refugee crisis, even publishing an article of mine on the latter (see https://lenfisherscience.com/avoid-major-disasters-by-welcoming-minor-change/). As a leading scientific journal, Nature has...