So – when teaching genetics and trying to understand genes, why do the forgotten water fleas of little known late 19thC biologist WFR Weldon matter as much as the more famous Gregor Mendel and his peas? Just heard my colleague Greg Radick talking about this at Ilkley Literature Festival last week – and why it matters to us all that we get the right picture in our heads when it comes to genes – was so impressed that I’m coming back for second helpings when he talks on this subject to Leeds Phil and Lit Society on 25th Oct – available to join on Zoom without having to leave the comfort of your own home! https://www.leedsphilandlit.org.uk/shop/disputed-inheritance-the-battle-over-mendel-and-the-future-of-biology/
Posts
May the Fourth be With You…
Congratulations to the happy couple who celebrated their wedding in truly stellar style recently at St. Michael’s Church, Headingley, Leeds. Just a shame they didn’t tie the knot today, what with it being May the Fourth…oh dear…thankfully I have no plans to give up the day job in favour of a career in stand up comedy. But in my defence, today is apparently ‘Star Wars Day’…
Careers advice from teenage years rolling funny shaped dice…
A letter in this weekend’s edition of ‘The Financial Times’ argues that hours spent as a teenager immersed in an obscure but highly enjoyable hobby can pay big career dividends later in life with invaluable and highly transferable professional skills…
‘The Man in the White Suit…and a Monkeynut Coat’
Long before he was swinging lightsabres and dispensing nuggets of pseudo-Buddhist wisdom as Jedi master Obi-Wan Kenobi, Sir Alec Guiness played the idealistic young textile scientist Sydney Stratton in the 1951 Ealing comedy ‘The Man in the White Suit’ whose discovery of a new type of textile fibre promises to revolutionise the world. But I’ve always wondered whether, thanks to real life textile scientist William Astbury and his ‘monkeynut coat’, this classic film may well have been a case of art mirroring life…