Brisbane’s wonders
Here is a podcast of an interview I did for Richard Fidler’s “The Conversation Hour” on ABC Brisbane. I had fun – Richard and his gang over there sure know how to make a guy feel at home. Unfortunately they also have a policy of photographing their interviewees, which accounts for the grinning atrocity on the left-hand side. Perhaps now they’ll rethink their policy. Not that it’s a particularly unflattering photo – I always look like this after waking up at 5AM, flying to Queensland and then talking...
read moresweet medication.
This interesting find comes exactly at the right time for me to wish you all “Shana Tova” (“Happy new year” – the jewish new year is upon us, and one of traditional foods is honey, usually used for dipping apple slices into. I have no idea who came up with this puzzling combination, but there you have it.)
read moreAt least he doesn’t sing.
Small Wonders – The Theme Tune. Every book should have one. I composed the tune throughout just about the entire period I was writing my book. Acoustic guitar: me. Bird noises: bird (serendipitiously warbling outside the window.) faint baby noises at the end: Daniel. The pictures are just so your eyes don’t feel neglected. Taken in Tasmania and New Zealand.
read moreSlime City Radio
OŚ Friday, 19th Sep., “Perspective” on ABC National broadcast “Slime City”, a five-minute excerpt from SW read by yours truly. The audio is available for listening here: Slime City
read moreH.pylori and Obesity?
This article from “The Economist” provides another twist in the tale of Helicobacter pylori, that gut-residing, acid-resistant, ulcer-causing bacterium discovered by Marshall and Warren. If this is right (and there’s still a long way to go before the findings are validated properly) then we have: a) another example of the intricacies of human-microbe relations in the human body; b) a...
read moreLaunch Date:
Next Wednesday it’s the official launch of SW. If you’re around Melbourne University, come say hi. đ
read moreBugs On the Air
Sorry about not posting for a bit now; I was suddenly thrown into a flurry of activity when a surprising offer to give a spot of academic lecturing and tutoring at Macquarie University came at short notice. I’ve never done any academic lecturing (the occasional lab seminar notwithstanding) and there was a lot of preparation involved, as well as going back and forth to Sydney and – to tell the truth – much nervousness. It turned out okay, I guess (at least I think so. Uni undergraduates as a rule are not big on giving...
read moreOut!
Tomorrow morning is when SW is due on the shelves of good bookstores* in Australia and NZ and available for order from online stores (such as this one, for example). It also appears to be available, at least potentially, in Amazon France, Amazon Japan, (??) and for loan in Palmerston North library , New Zealand. I have no idea why these places specifically and not others; the entire business of book distribution is more intricate than one would initially expect. By the way, yes, all these links were found by the reprehensible act of...
read moreCow-ordinates
When I first came up with the general notion of writing a book about microbes, I had about six “cases” that I thought were really interesting and should be written about. Life being what it is, about half of these originals failed to make it into the finished product. One of these discarded originals was a bit about magnetic bacteria. It’s a good story – how they were discovered, what the point of them is, a new controversy popping up in 2006… great stuff, with the best bit just the fact of their existence;...
read moreWho needs a neocortex anyway?
When I first arrived in Melbourne it was made very clear to me that in order to be considered socially acceptable I need to get myself a footy team to support, and fast. The question of how to choose among the clubs seemed to baffle everyone; apparently you’re born with a preference, genetically imprinted into the core of your being, and that’s that. So I decided to let the fates decide and asked the first person to engage me in conversation about it what club he supported. Which is how I became a Collingwood supporter. Perhaps I...
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