Archive for December, 2007
A Sapphic Ode to Pan scientiae
Not a classical Sapphic ode, but I’ve plagiarised the metre and the first five words from Stephen Fry’s Example (a), so it’s close enough. Besides it’s not a proper personal blog without some bad poetry.
Let's hear it for the scientists,
Who seek the universe's cogs,
In rocks or stars or blastocysts,
Then write in blogs.
The 2007 edition of the Open Laboratory should be ready for the 2008 Science Blogging Conference. This means the nominations for The Open Laboratory 2008 edition will open soon and there tends to be an appeal for poems. There’s nothing like a good poem to open an anthology – and that’s nothing like a good poem. Take it as a challenge.
Egypt, Antiquities and Copyright
One of the advantages of being slow in writing is that you can look at what everyone else is saying about something. Often people will have thought about the same problem and already anticipated problems in your own line of thought, so you can avoid making a fool of yourself. Other times it’s a surprise, and this is one of those times. News from the BBC is that Egypt is ‘to copyright antiquities‘.
Egypt’s MPs are expected to pass a law requiring royalties be paid whenever copies are made of museum pieces or ancient monuments such as the pyramids and this law will apply around the world.
To a greater or lesser extent other bloggers think they can’t do this and they can’t enforce it. In contrast I think they can and they can. This isn’t just my very basic understanding of law. It’s also the fact that museums in the West have been doing this, more or less, for years. Below is where I make a fool of myself.
Read the rest of this entry »
Rebuilding Bamiyan
From Al Jazeera, the aftermath of the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan.
Hardtalk
I’m off to bed now with the intention of keeping an eye out for Santa. I’ve just caught the end of Hardtalk. If often do that and then discover I’ve missed and interesting interview, like this one with James Dyson. For Christmas Eve they were re-running Richard Dawkins.
Happy Hogswatch!
Part two is here, but there’s 22 parts in total. Fortunately it is available on DVD.
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