In which I contemplate the ranks of the invisible - Mind the Gap Blog | Nature Publishing Group. Less than two weeks remain until my big fellowship application is due – the one I’m banking on to rescue me from the dwindling life of my latest short-term contract. If I get the fellowship, my position should finally be secure. If not, I’ll need to scrabble together another fellowship or short-term contract, or try to find a different position altogether.
All of this is happening in the context of the mind-blowingly large number of pounds I have just set up as a monthly standing order to Joshua’s new nursery starting in February, and the stark fact that after childcare fees, the mortgage and the other household bills, there are only a few pence left to rub together for anything else. An interruption in salary, no matter how short, is simply not an option. No pressure, then. I’ve been thinking a lot, first, about how much work I’ve been able to get done on maternity leave and second, whether in fact that’s actually been a good thing. Grant vs grant Does this make me a bad mother? In which we experience the big thaw - Mind the Gap Blog | Nature Publishing Group. Silvarerum — The forest of things. The Wolf of the Vegetable World. Your broccoli's 1,458th cousin, once-removed. Creative Commons Kulac.
So let’s say you’re a wild leafy vegetable, innocently minding your own business on limestone seacliffs on the coasts of southern and western Europe. Suddenly, some prehistoric human takes it into their head that you are worth installing in their newfangled “garden”. Fast forward several thousand years, and the results of that domestication almost put Westminster to shame. That plant was Brassica olearaca — wild cabbage — and it has become the stuff of vegetable legend. For the progeny of that ancestral plant, when subjected to many thousands of years of natural mutations and careful selection of the result by humans, has evolved into a cohort of vegetables that either strike fear or delight in the hearts of man.
BroccoliCauliflowerKaleCollard GreensChinese BroccoliCabbageKohlrabiBrussels Sproutsand last post’s mystery vegetable, Romanesco. Tagged as: brassicaceae, flowering plants, plants. Knight Science Journalism Tracker.
Earth sciences. Pre-history sciences. The Lay Scientist | Rational Thinking. Animal sciences. Chemical sciences. Life sciences. Neuroscience. Medical science. A Blog Around the Clock. Weird things. 5 Pretentionist Statements. I'm posting this in honor of Stegosaurus Week at Dinosaur Tracking. Here's Day One, here's Day Two. Rob Pierce, my partner in culture-crime, recently sent me an email that touched on a number of creative issues that have been occupying my mind recently. I suggested that he post it on his blog and I respond; he agreed.
And I spent the next few days scratching my head, trying to figure out how to make the unified statement that seemed to be lurking in the underbrush. That statement has yet to emerge, so I'm going to give you a point-by-point response. Note that these are responses. Anyway. 1. Without purpose and function, there can be no strength. 2.
Movies and music both give direct sensory input as their primary expression, and movies subsume music. Prose is my preferred form, because it maximizes evocation and minimizes time binding. That said, it's all good. 3. 4. For me, music is specifically social. But here's where our experiences diverge. 5. Whee! A Scientific Fairy Tale. Bad Science.