Saturday, February 28, 2009

Great Plant Hunt freebies - UK's biggest science project

Great Plant Hunt freebies - UK's biggest science project more links to Great Plant Hunt. Interesting when written pieces are recycled as quotes.

American Ballet Theater - Dance - New York Times

American Ballet Theater - Dance - New York Times is a piece I've just rediscovered from a couple of years ago about the dance thing.

This is Your Brain on Dance

Friday, February 27, 2009

BBC World Service - Science in Action

BBC World Service - Science in Action had me on today in the role of 'presenter's friend'. It's a fun gig just riffing off whatever stories they have on. There was a preponderance of brain stuff, but in some ways it's easier to comment on stuff that's further from your expertise. Podcast etc available from link above.

Friday, February 20, 2009

LRB · John Lanchester: Is it Art?

LRB · John Lanchester: Is it Art? is a super piece which considers gaming's position in high and popular culture. Thanks to my sister for recommendation.

Saturday, February 07, 2009

And Darwin stuff

The biggest self-contained project we're currently engaged in. It's all summarised here. There are a bunch of strands. The biggest are experiments for every school in Britain. The primary school ones are delivered by Kew Gardens and entitled the Great Plant Hunt. For secondary we've had to do it ourselves, and the project is called Survival Rivals. We've got an alternate reality game with Channel 4 called Routes which has some material about genetic testing and a mysterious backstory which I'm still finding out about. I was really pleased we commissioned the animated tree of life for David Attenborough's BBC1 special. There's poetry and all sorts to come.

Ongoing at Wellcome

We're doing a lot with broadcast and building up researcher support within the team. We're also working to integrate international public engagement with our activities.

The Photographers' Gallery | Café Scientifique:

The Photographers' Gallery | Café Scientifique: I still co-run the London Cafe Scientifique with Ashish Ranpura. Topics vary, usually riffing off the pictures being exhibited at the time.

An update on the lack of updates

Probably spreading myself a bit thin online. Wellcome projects are generally quite corporate in their delivery style so not so much opportunity for chatting about them informally. I've been Facebooking but I keep that quite personal in a way. And recently more Twitter which I still haven't pinned down in my social head. There's something odd about the asymmetry of following people who don't know you, and I still get confused about when to status update on FB and when to twitter. In any case I'll do a quick set of posts on things I've been proud of recently just to keep things a bit fresh here too.