A look back at TIR’s 10th year of operations.
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Catching the zeitgeist
Mark Ronson’s “Night people” memoir is an engaging and engrossing account of his formative years as a DJ in the New York club scene of the 90s. It also illustrates one tantalising facet shared by the arts and sciences: catching the zeitgeist.
Continue readingGreat scientists, great moustaches IX (a Movember posting)
Here’s the latest instalment in TIR’s longest-running posting series, the definitive guide to scientist moustaches! A Movember-themed celebration of some great minds and the great moustaches that went (just) before them. Links to parts I-VIII in the series can be found at the end of the posting.
Continue readingOne of the scapegoats
I’m a white, cisgendered, heterosexual male. I was born in an affluent Western country and lucky enough to get an elite education. I have all the attendant privileges and instinctive reassurance that comes from those accidents of birth and genetics, but in one quite profound respect I’m minoritised: I have spent 19 years – more than two-thirds of my adult life – as an immigrant.
Continue readingAt the ends of the day
One of the hardest things with active parenting is that you’re usually robbed of the hours when you’re at your most alert and creative.
Continue readingCredit where credit’s due (a short guide to authorships in scientific papers)
Did you know that there are actually guidelines for determining authorship on scientific papers?
Continue readingThe unit of selection
Group leaders nowadays bear a huge individual responsibility for raising money. But what if it was departments, and not group leaders, that were the unit of selection?
Continue readingDeprogramming academia
Look after one another
Chainsaw massacre
There’s a reason why the chainsaw is such an apt symbol for the current assault on American science: because you can cut a tree down in minutes, but growing it back takes decades.
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Total Internal Reflection 