More than water
NASA’s announcement about evidence for flowing water on Mars is indeed very exciting – but I’d like to point out (as NASA has also been careful to do) that although water seems to be a necessary component for life, it does not follow that ‘where there’s water, there’s life’. This might be the case on our own dear planet, but that logic cannot be extended to Mars. The only thing we know is that Life emerged once. We really can’t infer anything beyond that, because we don’t know how life...
read moreBook Launch in Melbourne!
on the 7th of August at Embiggen Books. You are most cordially invited WhyArentWeDeadYet_invite_FINAL
read moreThe Spray-on Future:
Clean yourself by scrubbing the bacteria off? That’s so old-fashioned. Cool guys clean themselves by spraying bacteria on: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/magazine/my-no-soap-no-shampoo-bacteria-rich-hygiene-experiment.html
read moreDarn Tootin’ My Own Horn:
Endorsements are in! I’m very excited. Also humbled to a near-catatonic state. Check them out: This surprisingly ambitious, eminently accessible book brilliantly summarizes the essential features of the immune system for a lay audience. The quirky humour masks an underlying authority and competence. The work is right up to date, even incorporating recent Nobel Prize winning insights into the evolutionarily ancient innate immune system. It is a triumph of popular medical science. Sir Gustav Nossal An accessible account of a complex and...
read moreHere, there, everywhere.
Bacteria in placentas! Bacteria in urine! Is nowhere safe any more?
read moreTake two wheels and ring me in the morning:
In Boston, doctors are prescribing bicycles: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/04/09/prescribe_a_bike_boston_medical_center_has_a_new_prescription_to_fight_obesity.html
read moreDone and Dusted
I just pressed ‘send’ on an email to my editor containing the final draft of Why Aren’t We Dead Yet?. It’s good to be done with this, and yet quite frightening. I wonder what people will make of it?
read moreThe Jitters
You’d think that a person who sets out to write a book on immunology would be an immunologist. A professor, perhaps, or a medical doctor specialising in immune disorders, or anyone else who’d spent some time involved in the field. For many books that does turn out to be the case – but not in mine. I studied some immunology at uni, but my sum total of hands-on experience in immunological research is one year when I worked as a student/ research assistant at a university lab, after which my lab head suggested gently, firmly,...
read moreNews from the future:
Here’s something I didn’t know: library catalogues can include books that don’t exist quite yet. Case in point. For Terry Pratchett fans this, of course, is old news. All possible books – past, future and potential – can be found, for those who have the knowing of it, in L-space. Bring a banana, just in case.
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