Knowledge Transfer
When You Know Better than the Expert
John Bradshaw, a scientist at Bristol, wrote two fabulous books: Dog Sense and Cat Sense. They are some of the best popular science books I’ve ever read, and helped me to decide that the Animal Personality book could be a good pop science book. I cite Bradshaw a lot in Read more…
Knowledge Transfer
Ethical Eating – The Climate
We’ve come to the last of my three considerations for ethical eating, eating with a climate conscious. Much as we have been discovering throughout this set of themed posts, there is no ‘easy’ answer to this. The climate is a complex system that is definitely heating up, but the best Read more…
Tea Break
Cecil the Lion and Trophy Hunting
This week’s horrible animal welfare story comes courtesy of a certain American dentist, yes we’re talking about the trophy killing of Cecil the lion. I won’t name the gentleman (the Guardian has no such qualms), but according to the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, he . . . Paid $50,000 for Read more…
Knowledge Transfer
Cow Safety
When the manic teaching and marking periods hit my posting schedule falls apart, and even when it goes quiet, because I haven’t built up a backlog of posts, there’s less on the blog. I’m sorry about that, and I hope to have a proper sciencey post up soon before taking Read more…
Knowledge Transfer
Why Science Probably Hates You
There was a great article on Gawker recently about the Food Babe blog, calling out her bad science. Now I’ve never come across the Food Babe blog, as a scientist working in agriculture I don’t think our circles mix. The article is really interesting though. I do follow It’s Okay Read more…
Tea Break
Kai: The Case of Paddington Ayr
Scotland’s been abuzz with the story of Kai, the Shar-Pei cross abandoned at Ayr railway station with a suitcase of his belongings. Buzzfeed has more information here. The SSPCA has taken him in and the attention his story received has meant he has literally hundreds of homes offered to him. Read more…
Tea Break
The Fashionable Scientist
Science, being the awesome beast it is, recently landed a ten year old probe on a comet. My laptop is three years old and it’s already beginning to groan and whine. But you’ve probably heard and seen the commotion over one of the scientist’s shirt, which was a gaudy, loud, Read more…
Fluffy Friday
Fluffy Friday – Frankenstein MD
Did you know that the first science fiction story was written by a woman? I wrote my advanced higher English thesis on ‘monsters’ and The Modern Prometheus was one of the texts I chose. So imagine my excitement when the team behind the excellent Lizzie Bennett diaries (a YouTube adaptation of Read more…
Tea Break
FoodInc – The Documentary Problem
I have mentioned a few times that I am a big fan of film, but that doesn’t always extend to documentaries. Why is this? Well I have an instinctive distrust of documentaries – I would not consider them a good source of information. In fact this was why I made Read more…
