A long bumpy trip into the Cerrado charted ‘wilderness’ was had last Sunday, which played havoc with the suspension of my friends’ small car (if not its occupants’ vertebrae). We […]

I’m in the Cerrado region of Brazil, somewhere between Brasília’s Lago Sul and one of its satellite cities, São Sebastião. The urban vicinity of this vast tropical grassland (savanna) ecosystem […]

According to no less than Albert Einstein, “If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?” A (questionable) aphorism suggesting I might […]

Funny, isn’t it, how forgiving we can be, in this fine tolerant land of ours? How, despite the fact that we disagree, however strongly, with extreme religious conservative viewpoints, we […]

During his speech at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) conference at the start of this week, the Blue Spectre said: “Successful, high-growth economies are like ecosystems -they are organic, […]

In the fortnight following the cessation of my time in laboratory research, I’ve been seeking re-organisation-displacing distraction, getting out and about, visiting and receiving friends, choosing company I like, catching […]

Naturally, I ought to have been chronicling the demise of my research science… (the next word delivered in the style of the cop in The Big Lebowski in reaction to […]

A few months ago someone here appended a notice on the cupboard door above the sink in the tea/coffee-making area of the common room, requesting (ordering) to the effect that […]