Thanks to Athene Donald* at Occam’s Typewriter for nominating me for a Versatile Blogger Award:
I like to think I am a versatile blogger: I post on books, science, politics, photography, gadgets, and science policy. This is one of those slightly pyramid schemes, in which I’m willing to partake since I fancied listing a few of my favourite blogs. The rules of the scheme are as follows:
- Nominate 15 fellow bloggers (gosh, that’s a lot)
- Inform the Bloggers of their nomination (I could do this in the style of a twitter spammer!)
- Share 7 random things about yourself (see below, tick)
- Thank the blogger who nominated you (see above, tick)
- Post the award badge. (see above, tick)
My blogging nominations:
- The Inelegant Gardener by @happymouffetard. This is my wife’s blog as you can see she has been making me cake, normally she blogs about plants and gardening.
- Shakespeare’s England by @daintyballerina. A blog about early modern England, quoting extensively from contemporary sources.
- Georgian London by @lucyinglis. It does exactly what it says on the tin: a blog about Georgian London from a social history perspective. A bit quiet these days as Lucy is writing a book of the same title.
- The Quack Doctor by @quackwriter. Vignettes of quackery, mainly through the medium of old adverts. Quackwriter aka Caroline Rance is also author of Kill-grief – a story of gin and Chester, both close to my heart.
- Billynojob by @billygottajob. We met him first when he was unemployed, now he’s gotta job! Thoughtful commentary on current affairs.
- The Renaissance Mathematicus by @rmathematicus. Angry ranting about the history of science.
- Reciprocal Space by @Stephen_Curry. Mainly about science policy and processes but also some science.
- Purple Persuasion by @Bipolarblogger, who has bipolar disorder. She blogs about things relating to her illness including handy hints for bystanders, which I value greatly.
- Andromeda Babe’s Blog by @andromedababe. An occasional blog, mostly about entertaining small children which I read anyway but feel will be essential in the near future.
- Stages of Succession by @morphosaurus. Blogs about teaching and a gecko, we “met” because she knew that tunicates “ate their own brains” at the end of their larval stage.
- RealClimate, “Climate Science by climate scientists”. This is what I look for in a science blog, up to date, sufficient detail to satisfy a scientist from outside the field.
- In Pursuit of History by @GentlemanSykes. A history blog, somewhat quiet since he has been freelancing his writing.
- Scott Hanselman’s Computer Zen by @shanselman. Computer things from a Microsoft perspective but also the last point on this.
- A Life in the day of a BASICS doctor. Reports from a British Association for Immediate Care doctor, harrowing and deeply moving.
- Zygoma by @PaoloViscardi. Mainly mystery objects from the Horniman Museum (on a Friday).
Perhaps a little surprisingly I don’t follow many science blogs, I get my science fixes from New Scientist, Nature, Physics World, and Communications of the ACM, three of them I even get on paper!
Seven random things about me:
- At the age of 41, I am to become a father for the first time!
- I grew up in Wool
- I carry the ΔF508 variant of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator gene
- In 1986 I was at the top of the score table for Spindizzy in Computer & Video Games magazine
- I have no middle name
- For a few years I was a fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge.
- I think Jerusalem Artichokes should be classified as “poisonous”.
And so I pass on to the next members of the chain, who should feel under absolutely no obligation to do anything about this at all!
*More properly Professor Dame Athene Donald, FRS who led the group I worked in at the Cavendish Laboratory.
