among the few books left in the library room where I am sitting right now is the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911). I just love the slightly battered look of it, and the inadvertent poetry of its three-letter signposts on the spine, such as the "ode to pay":



Other examples include Eva's boarding pass: EVA to FRA and the weapons commission: SUB to TOM. Oh, and if your mother gets ill, you'll need Vol. XVIII.: MED to MUM.

I don't know whether anybody outside the UK noticed, but we've had a big debate here over the head of the government's drugs advisory body, David Nutt, who was sacked by the home secretary, Alan Johnson, last Friday (30.10.). Essentially, he was fired because he had insisted that the real danger posed by drugs is completely unrelated to the ABC classification used for law enforcement. (e.g., both cannabis and ecstasy are less dangerous than alcohol and tobacco). By firing him, Johnson unleashed a major science v. politics clash.

It was great fun watching this drama onfold on twitter -- the twitter-using science minister, Paul Drayson (@lorddrayson) was caught out by it on a visit to Japan, tweeted his support to the enraged scientists back home, but as soon as he was back in London and under cabinet control order, he fell silent.

Soon there was a petition on the gov. website to get Prof. Nutt reinstated, and the brilliant twitter-hashtag #NuttSack. The tabloid press went berserk: "Cannabis scandal expert admits: My children have taken drugs", but among the serious newspapers, even the conservative ones (Times, Telegraph) backed the scientists side. The collected stories in the Guardian are here.

I think it was ultimately a positive thing, as the scientific evidence about the real dangers of drugs got acres of media coverage rather than being swept under the rug by the government. Plus, the government will probably have to reorganise the way it commissions expert advice on drugs, and it will have to do so under public scrutiny. Thus in a political sense, this was a major own-goal for the home secretary (and Gordon Brown as well who backed him, rather than the science minister who tried to get the decision reversed).

Editorials summarising the whole affair are now appearing, e.g. by David Colquhoun in the British Medical Journal, and by David Nutt himself in New Scientist. Only trouble is, that the Tories, who are likely to win the next elections, are just as blockheaded about this as the current home secretary. So scientists will have to vote Lib Dem next time ...

As the catastrophic losses of honey bee colonies around the world continue, I've done another piece on this topic, pegged to the recent "Plan Bee" initiative of the UK's "the cooperative" group of companies and the film The vanishing of the bees.

Bee screened
Current Biology, Volume 19, Issue 20, R921, 3 November 2009
doi:10.1016/j.cub.2009.10.009
The Co-operative Group of businesses in the UK has backed a film and a 10-point plan to raise awareness of the continuing losses of vital bee colonies.
abstract and restricted access to pdf file

Have also read the book "A world without bees" now (which I only knew in parts before) and am coming out of this with mixed feelings. Obviously, we do need to fix this problem, if we don't want to reduce our diet to rice and fish, but if you consider how large-scale monocultural farming and industrial bee-keeping have co-evolved in the US, following profit maximation with no regard for nature whatsoever, I can't help feeling that people in that industry get exactly what they deserve.

Biodiversity is not just for pretty postcards, it is essential to keep us alive. Replacing thousands of plant species and as many natural pollinators with just one clone of plant and one clone of pollinator has got to be a bad idea.

Oh, and maybe we should stop buying almonds, come to think of it.

In the current issue of Oxford Today, there is my feature about technology transfer in Oxford, based on an interview with my former head of department, Graham Richards, and on the case study of Oxford Nanopore Technologies, a spin-out company from the chemistry department aiming to develop single molecule electronic genome sequencers.

Read my feature here (open access for all).

Just one piece out in German this month, but one I really enjoyed a lot -- it's about Raman spectroscopy of ancient pieces of art and archaeological finds. I remember thinking when I wrote this that the guy who published the original paper must have the best job in the world. Imagine you can walk round a major museum and pick a microgram out of the most treasured pieces. You say "I want a piece of the Mona Lisa" and you get it ... And it's not just that he got to play with these invaluable materials, he also found out exciting things that really changed various aspects of what we think we know about our cultural history (this is why this paper got into PNAS, while his previous ones were in Journal of Raman Spectroscopy).

Anyhow, my take on all this is in

Spektrum der Wissenschaft Nov. 2009, page 16

summary and restricted access to pdf file

SPEKTROSKOPIE
Madonna mit Schildlauslack
Eine spektroskopische Methode zum Nachweis organischer Farbstoffe in Geweben lässt sich jetzt auch auf mikroskopisch kleine Proben von wertvollen Gemälden und Skulpturen anwenden. Das Verfahren verhalf bereits zu interessanten kulturhistorischen Erkenntnissen.

Architect Santiago Calatrava was among those honoured by the University of Oxford this summer (along with local author Philip Pullman), but I reckon the University's enthusiasm for his work wouldn't extend to commissioning a building from him ?! There would be plenty of space at the Radcliffe Observatory site.

If you look at the world map of Calatrava's works, there is a suspicious white area just north of the English Channel. One might blame it on the heir to the throne who devours modern architects for breakfast, but I also have a nagging suspicion that those people handling big building budgets around here just don't have the courage to ask somebody like him, who would build something really special. Now I dream of a new Oxford spire ...

today I was going to tell you all about my new articles that came out this week, but none of the magazines involved has updated their website so far, so there isn't much point as I can't post links.

In other science news, though, I attended a day of very interesting seminars on genomics organised by Oxford Nanopore Technologies and the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics. The event included a lab tour, which was a bit of a shock to the system -- last time I saw people sequencing genes, they cast their own gels and read out the bases by visual inspection. Reassuring to see that the centrifuges still look exactly the same. And the "lab culture" as revealed by the notes stuck to everything (one read "failure") was still pretty familiar as well.

Anyhow, I'm hoping to get a couple of stories (genome sequencing technology, epigenetics, etc.) out of this (not to mention lots of new contacts on twitter etc.), so watch this space.

Third in my series "things I like the look / design of" is very much not a design but a look, namely the look of a messy stage overcrowded with the collected instruments and electronics of two bands, just before a concert. It's not just the anticipation, I really like to look at this. Which is just as well, as sometimes one stands there for two hours looking at it :)
This one is of the Noisettes, and their support act, Little Camels:

nights are drawing in, so I can continue my series of photographs of Oxford by night:




this one, in case it isn't obvious, is of a builder's scaffolding where someone forgot to switch off the light ...

More pix on my view profile, and a smaller selection appears in larger format on fotocommunity.

just to mention an English language movie for a change, I saw Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank at our local picturehouse cinema last week and loved it. To save me the trouble of raving on about it, here is an excellent review by the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw, and I agree with everything he says.

Haven't figured out where the title comes from. If it's relating to anything in the film, I missed that bit.  oh, it just occurred to me, maybe it's to do with that bare-handed fishing scene ? Will have to watch it again.