Reflecting On Privilege In Education

Yesterday I attended the fantastic researchED 2013 conference at Dulwich College. I've been past there a few times round the South Circular (usually being towed to the Fiat specialists in Catford...), but this was my first time inside. The setting was beautiful, the conference very well organised and smoothly run - no complaints whatsoever on that front. But being inside somewhere open only to the truly privileged made my skin itch a bit.

It started when I pulled into the car park, my battered, bird-shit-covered, bumper-stickered Punto nose to tail with enormous SUVs and Jaguars. I was promptly turned round and sent back round the corner to the conference delegates' parking space, on a building site. My tyres were caked in mud and my shoes still have Dulwich College hardcore embedded in the soles. In the meantime, the car parks inside were entirely empty. There may have been a logical reason for this (gate wardens on duty only until lunchtime, perhaps), but it definitely felt like the riff-raff were being separated out. Paul, even more left-wing than I am, was grumbling under his breath for a good 15 minutes.

Then, the Master of the College referred, in his opening speech, to the sixth-formers helping with registration as "servants". I bristled at this. We often ask students to help us out with events. But we call them "ambassadors" - we place them in a position of respect and responsibility, not servitude. In the hall there were pictures of former headteachers - all men, naturally. Then again, it is a boys' school, and you'd never see a male headteacher's painting on the wall of a girls' independent school. Our walls are covered with pictures of students. It felt as though our two institutions had very different opinions of the worth of their students.

Then I saw a couple of posters in the student café, protesting the abolition of the Educational Maintenance Allowance. I wondered how many students at Dulwich College were even eligible for EMA. When EMA was offered, getting on for one-third of our full-time students were eligible, most of which were entitled to the full amount of £30 per week.I remember very few of my students not being either EMA or ALG (adult learning grant) recipients. For the non-UK readers, EMA was basically paid because otherwise low-income students would have been unable to afford the bus fare to college, and in some cases eat. The government has now abolished it, and instead raised the participation age to "motivate" hungry students to come to college.

Now, I consider myself middle-class. My father was a teacher, and my mother, the daughter of a country GP (so pretty much high society for Shropshire), was a radiographer. Paul's father was a bank manager, and his mother is still a teacher. I attended a comprehensive school until I was 16, then won a scholarship (and the benefit of a government-assisted place) to an independent school for the sixth form. This step undoubtedly gave me a massive boost in getting to Cambridge, and well - they don't come much more privileged than a Cambridge graduate. And as both of us are teachers, that makes our family middle-class, despite the fact we can only afford to rent a one-bedroom flat.

The most frequently-asked question of me by my students is "Why didn't you become a doctor?". The second most frequently-asked question is "Why do you want to teach here if you went to Cambridge?" And I get that one from students and staff alike. For students, I turn it back to them - "Why wouldn't I? I think you deserve to be taught by highly qualified teachers, don't you?" For staff, it's been harder, but I think my response will be a shorter version of this post. I think I have a talent for teaching - the thanks, the little gifts, the continued contact with my students over the years suggests so. I cannot bear the thought of restricting that talent to the most privileged - they do not need my help. They can buy tuition, their children can have more personalised teaching, they can do amazing things (through the school) to pad out their personal statements so they're a shoo-in for the elite universities, and with the pedigree they have, they will walk into highly-paid city jobs when they graduate.

For most of my students, the four and a half hours in a class of 20 with me is the only tuition they can afford. And so I give my time outside of this willingly with no expectation of reimbursement (though a chocolate bar to share during a long session is always appreciated). Students at independent schools have access to a plethora of teachers, many of whom have Oxbridge degrees, not to mention highly literate parents - they have an advantage when writing coursework, personal statements and the like. Many of my students are the only members of their family who can speak English (making parents' evening really interesting!). They can't ask their mum or dad to look over their personal statement, or proof-read an essay. So I do that too.

I teach in FE because it's the best job in the world. I love the diversity of the students I teach and their ideas and experiences. I teach in FE because they have never asked me to apply for a job via hand-written letter, as one independent school did. I suspected if the quality of my handwriting and the choice of pen and paper used was an important consideration in an applicant, then the headteacher and I would not have got on, and so I decided not to go through with the application. I teach in FE because I far prefer being called "Julia" than "Mrs Anderson" (though a plaintive "Miii-iiiss" seems to haunt female teachers everywhere). I teach in FE because, through a combination of my brain-power and money from the government, paid through taxes, I was able to get a place at a top school and then the best university in the country. What sort of person am I if I was able to enjoy that privilege at little cost to myself, only to not pay society back by helping others to enjoy an excellent education?

I also teach in FE because I don't imagine the likes of Dulwich College would appoint me with blue hair, facial piercing and tattoos up my arms, but that is probably another issue entirely.

Other Natural Substances

An advert that always amuses me is the Rennie "Happy Tummy" one, which has been around for a couple of years (sadly, can't embed it). In it, the wonderful declaration is made that "Rennie turns excess acid into water and other natural substances". What are those "natural substances" exactly?

Rennie contains magnesium carbonate and calcium carbonate. That's fairly standard antacid remedy, because it's pretty good at neutralising stomach acid, which is hydrochloric acid.

MgCO₃ + 2HCl → MgCl₂ + H₂CO₃
CaCO₃ + 2HCl → CaCl₂ + H₂CO₃
Nothing wrong with MgCl₂ or CaCl₂ (all of those ions are vital for the body's metabolic functions anyway). It's the benign little molecule produced in both reactions: H₂CO₃. That's carbonic acid. Now, anyone who has studied environmental geochemistry (and any A2 student daft enough to ask) knows that:

CO₂ + H₂O ⇌ H₂CO₃ ⇌ H⁺ + HCO₃^- ⇌ 2H⁺ + CO₃^2-
This is the carbonate buffer system, which maintains the pH of the oceans. It's also involved in the maintenance of our internal pH (though it seems to be more frequently called the bicarbonate buffer system in physiology). It's an equilibrium, shifting to the right when the pH increases (in other words, the concentration of H⁺ ions decreases). Which means that, when the pH is low (the conditions are acidic), the equilibrium will move to the left.

What's on the left hand side? Well that would be water, H₂O. We knew about that from the Rennie advert. But this other molecule, CO₂, is carbon dioxide. The gas produced when we belch and fart. This is simply the standard chemistry behind the action of antacids, and shouldn't be a surprise to anyone with some high school science in them. It's tickled me that the advert is so coy about it, but I suppose if we were told that indigestion remedies leave us trumping like a one-man oompah band none of us would run out and buy them.

Retail Therapy

After yesterday, I needed some cheering up, and Jabba needed some food, so we went down to Ashford to TC Reptiles, purveyors of the finest locusts in town.

We'd missed out on the Kempton Park Reptile Expo a couple of weeks ago, as it was the hottest day of the year and we remembered it being oppressively hot and overcrowded the last time we visited. So I was on the lookout for some more creepy-crawlies for the lab. I had been advised that several students, teachers and lab technicians would not come near the lab if I bought a tarantula, so that was out.

Anyway, TC had some Pacman frogs, Ceratophrys ornata. And they're aggressive little bastards. The owner had his favourite, which was permanently furious, and could be lifted up by the food it had just bitten. We got the second most aggressive.


It doesn't have a name yet. I'm saving the honour of naming it for my incoming A2 class. Though Paul has been calling it Hypnotoad in the interim.

I plan to draft in "Hypnotoad" for informal detentions:

Me: "You, misbehaving student, come here and put your finger in the tank."
Frog: *chomp*
Me: "Now you stay here until Hypnotoad lets go."
Student: *whimper*

Some Study That I Used To Know

I saw this parody of Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know", and I thought of my students.


However, I shall not be berating my students for forgetting all their A-level biology whilst naked. I'm scary enough with all my clothes on.

Steps Through Geological Time

The great curse of being a geologist is never being able to go anywhere near a landscape without wondering (or being asked) about the geology beneath the surface. The great curse of being a teacher is never being able to go anywhere without thinking about whether it could be a learning opportunity.

So Paul rolled his eyes when I pulled off the main road in Derbyshire to head to the National Stone Centre. It was a popular place for my parents to take me on the way to or from Dovedale (which, as it happens, is where we were off to). Now, it's probably about 20 years since I last went there, so I have no idea whether this is a long-standing feature, but I was rather struck by the Geosteps:


From Precambrian at the bottom to Palaeogene at the top, the stones represent half a billion years of British rocks. And of course I'm going to show you (ages are quoted from the literature at the NSC)...

   
Antrim basalt (58-62Ma) and Portland limestone (146Ma)

   
Sherwood sandstone (230-240Ma) and Magnesian limestone (256Ma)

   
Rough Rock gritstone (316Ma) and Bee Low limestone (330Ma)

   
Much Wenlock limestone (425Ma) and Caradoc granodiorite (463Ma)

   
Borrowdale Volcanics green slates (453Ma) and Strinds sandstone (550-560Ma)
The ultimate destination, however, was a more intimate encounter with the rocks, as we headed to Dovedale to climb Thorpe Cloud.


It's a cracking ascent up a Carboniferous reef knoll for a hot summer afternoon. But it was a straightforward hike, and Paul even pretended to give a damn when I stopped to show him some crinoid fossils in a lump of scree.

Wordless Wednesday: Land Of My Fathers

The Stokenchurch Gap

I've just got back from a visit to my parents' house up north. One of the best bits about the journey up there is the drive up the M40. We go through the Chilterns, and a Site of Special Scientific Interest - the Stokenchurch Gap.


I was in the rare position of being in the passenger seat and having my smartphone to hand for photos. It was also not raining, snowing or foggy.

It's known as the Aston Rowant Cutting on Natural England's citation, and it is protected for the following reasons:

A stratigraphically important site providing the best Coniacian section in central England, part of the Upper Chalk succession. Above the Chalk rock exposed at the base of the cutting there is a late Turonian to basal Coniacian section of coarse grained nodular chalk, extremely rich in fossils and important in defining the boundary between Turonian and Coniacian age rocks.

It's late Cretaceous, containing a number of marine organisms.


It would be lovely to explore, but I imagine the combination of the SSSI and its location next to one of the busier motorways in the UK makes it fairly inaccessible.


However, with views like this, and such impressive chalk geology rising up on both sides, I'm content to drive through it every few months.

Arms Race

In the garden, my nemesis is Bubba the squirrel. Bubba has been the bane of my life with respect to gardening since we moved in. I imagine we're on the second or third iteration of Bubba, but suffice to say, it's been war.

I love feeding the theropod dinosaurs in the garden, and have had feeders up for some time:


Bubba quickly got to grips with the feeders and started chewing away at the plastic to get at the seed. While I have a number of students who are a bit nifty with an air rifle (or perhaps an SA80!), I was reliably informed that at the sort of range I was looking at, I'd end up with a thin layer of pulverised squirrel goo all over the garden. And that would probably attract foxes.

So it was on to chemical warfare. The RSPB advice is that squirrels cannot tolerate the taste of chilli powder, but that birds cannot taste it. So I duly added copious amounts of chilli powder to my mixes. And that worked for about five months.

Until I saw this:


Little fucker. That used to be a feeder full of spicy sunflower hearts. And Bubba had ripped a hole right down the side of the feeder. Perhaps the chilli had blown or been washed away - we've had some rain recently. No - I checked the strength of the chilli powder using the most powerful test known to man: I got some in my eye. It was still pretty damn capsaicin-y.


The chilli alone doesn't seem to be doing it anymore - whatever generation of Bubba we're on may well have a selective advantage in being unaffected by the chilli. Maybe they got lucky with a mutation leaving them with no taste buds at all.

So it was time to break out the big guns. Die-cast aluminium feeders. Let's see the bastard chew through them.


The lid also has a larger overhang than the crappy plastic ones, which might foil Bubba's tactic of dangling from the tree by its hind legs. And of course, MOAR CHILLI POWDER! I wonder what the LD-50 is for chilli in small mammals...

Summer Homework 3: Ecological Fieldwork

Summarise the ecological practical work you carried out on campus. Describe the factors affecting the distribution of the organism studied. Apply what you have learned about competition, niches and abiotic factors to this distribution.

Loathing, as I do, the desire to have a monoculture of grass, I'm quite happy to see other plants in my lawn. In particular, I love how soft the moss feels when I walk barefoot on it. The moss concerned is Rhytidiadelphus squarrosus, the springy turf-moss, and it is the most common moss found in lawns in the UK. It's pretty ubiquitous, and adapted to a wide range of soil types, though all mosses depend on moist conditions.


Fig. 1: The garden, looking south to the widest part of the garden.
The garden is trapezium-shaped, and this section of turf is 18m long and 6m wide at the narrowest point. There are four trees in the garden. The three between 13m and 15m from the left hand side have, in the past, left the soil underneath very dry, killing some of the grass.


Fig. 2: Cartoon map of area of garden used in study.
I set three belt transects, 18m by 0.5m, using a 0.25m² quadrat and a tape measure. The transects were 1m apart. I systematically sampled every 1m along the transect, estimating the percentage cover of moss, and measuring the pH and moisture content of the soil at 5cm depth.


Fig. 3: Average percentage cover of moss against distance from wall
There is a clear decline at 12m, coinciding with the proximity to the three large trees in the garden. However, there is no clear change in either pH or moisture in this area. I would add that we are currently having the wettest summer I can remember, and that a more accurate idea of soil moisture or precipitation would require long-term monitoring rather than shoving a cheap meter in the soil at regular intervals.

There is also no correlation between the percentage cover of moss and either pH or moisture.

   
Fig. 4: No correlation between pH or moisture and percentage cover of moss.
Spearman's rank correlation coefficients for these pairs of data are -0.1238 and -0.0483 respectively, which supports my assertion of no correlation. It is possible that biotic factors such as competition for resources from the other plants, namely the three large trees (two maples, Acer pseudoplatanus, and a half-dead, woodworm-infested excuse for an ash), are responsible. Whether it is an undetected competition for water, or perhaps minerals, I cannot tell. The grass, clover and other plants seem to be the opportunists, just finding space to grow where the moss cannot, rather than the other way round.

In the end, though, I suspect that soil moisture is responsible. I did not look at the water levels at shallower depths, which may have reflected the availability of water for the moss more accurately. Nor did I consider the long-term trends in the garden in terms of soil moisture. The investigation could be enhanced with the longer-term monitoring of water levels, perhaps considering the sunlight (though the areas with highest moss distribution are the sunniest, by my observations!), and maybe investigating the macro- and micro-nutrient content of the soil. I'd be very happy to remove all the grass from the area too, to see if the grass was outcompeting the moss, contrary to my suggestion.

486 words

(Note, students: I don't expect anything more than this. I don't even really expect much in the way of statistics, just that you have considered the ecology of the area you have studied.)

For Want Of A Nail

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Ecosystems are very finely tuned. Species depend on each other trophically and symbiotically. Sometimes the smallest change can have huge implications, as the proverb quoted above demonstrates.


We have a cooking apple tree in the back garden. It's sandwiched between a "tree of heaven" (Ailanthus altissima) and some privet (Ligustrum vulgare), but has always done pretty well. In 2006, when we moved in, we had a bumper harvest. Same in 2008 and 2010. The odd-number years were usually half as good - I remember reading that apple trees often alternated years. So, being 2012, I was expecting lots of apples.

We have one. And not a particularly impressive-looking one at that. We had a bad apple harvest predicted at the start of the year, due to the mild winter. So the buds started forming early, only to be destroyed by colder, wetter weather during the spring. So hardly any blossoms. The lack of blossoms meant fewer bees were attracted to the garden anyway. Some were able to pollinate the blossoms, but only one fruit developed. Normally by July we have windfalls all over the garden - there has been nothing.

One consequence of windfalls is an increase in the number of wasps. On one hand, it has been nice to sit out in the garden with Paul without wondering whether he's going to knock down plant pots in his bid to escape the next time a wasp appears. On the other hand, wasps are jolly useful for getting rid of pests. They eat aphids. A lack of windfalls means few wasps, which means loads of aphids. Aphids appear to attract the ants, who are busy harvesting them off my Tetrapanax.

So, though the full picture is much more complicated, our dodgy winter and spring has been responsible for loads of aphids around here.

Summer Homework: Doing It Myself

A few weeks ago, I set summer homework for my little darlings. Some of the posts have been brilliant, and all have been enjoyable to read.

However, there are a lot of students who haven't yet made their blogs, let alone started posting. One of my girls has said I'll find all the posts appearing on 15th August, the day before the deadline. This is possible, but it's more likely that I won't see any work at all from any of the students.

There will be a number of complaints, such as it being too difficult, or them not having enough time, and so on. So I'm going to show them (though unless the AS students have found my blog already they won't see it until after the deadline) that the work can easily be done.

Not only that, I'm going to write all six posts, including a practical writeup of a quadrat-chucking exercise. I'm going to borrow a quadrat from the College and analyse the biodiversity of my back garden. This will hopefully take account of the advantage I have of being a more experienced writer.

I'll be posting these regularly over the next month, and when I do, I'll try to remember to update this post to include links to all of the individual articles. I'll even shove in a word count so they can see I'm doing about 400-600 words just like them.

Summer Homework #1: My Life In Science
Summer Homework #2: Science Communication
Summer Homework #3: Ecological Fieldwork
Summer Homework #4: Saving The World
Summer Homework #5: An Exciting Discovery
Summer Homework #6: A Question For Slartibartfast

Close Encounter Of The Bird Kind

I was going to go to the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show today. In the end I was still in bed at midday and decided it would be a waste of money to go. We had a late lunch, and at about 3:30 I was settling down for an afternoon nap when Paul shouted through from the bedroom that there was a baby bird on the ground outside. He'd just noticed it and thought it might have fallen from its nest.

I grabbed my gardening gloves and went out onto the front drive to investigate. I'm very good at leaving fledglings alone (the exception being the dumbass robin that flew into our bedroom three years ago), but it was clear this baby was much too young to be a fledgling. At this point Paul was doing a much better job of flapping around than the baby - it was lying on its back in clear distress.

So I picked it up and examined it. It was a wood pigeon, and only a few days old. On its left flank it had a large angry-looking contusion, and there was a smaller one on its left wing. I saw a single blood droplet but it didn't appear to be bleeding from anywhere. It did a good job of trying to peck my fingers, so there was hope.


We got it into a box lined with paper shreddings, and closed over the lid a little. Then I phoned the RSPCA. I feel for the people who operate the helpline, who must get a lot of calls from do-gooders picking up fledglings all over the place, but this was demonstrably a nestling. I think the operator and I had different ideas on what constituted feathers, and perhaps referring to down and pin feathers wasn't a great move on my part. Fortunately, the fact that it was injured and breathing heavily trumped any semantics on its stage of development, so a field officer was called.

So I spent an hour this afternoon sitting in the bathroom with a heater on, watching a little spiky ball of fury breathing. The officer arrived and promptly referred to it at as fledgling (!), but he agreed that it was injured, and he took the bird away to the welfare centre. I don't know if the bird will be treated or humanely put down, but either will be better than leaving it to bleed out internally on the drive or at the mercy of the neighbourhood cats...

Vicious Detritivore

I'm still recovering from the final week of term. Suffice to say, I do not want to see kiwi fruit, flapjacks or 5:00am for a very very long time. Yesterday I took four of my very best AS students to Cambridge for an open day at Caius College, which was a great success (though it pissed it down for much of the day). I'm hoping to have at least one of them apply in September, maybe more - they're all exceptional.

Earlier in the week I was briefly able to sit in the garden for a short while, and I spotted a very large beetle on the gravel. So I picked it up and put it on the table to poke examine it further.


It's a stag beetle, no doubt about it. The only question is whether it's a greater or lesser stag beetle. Well, the yellow "trim" and the brown colour to the carapace is a giveaway - it's the female of the greater stag beetle, Lucanus cervus.


She was clearly furious with me, rearing up on her hind legs a few times. Apparently the females can give a nasty bite, so I did well to avoid her jaws there. I did put her back on the ground to continue her evening's activity, which was presumably trying to find a male stag beetle or a place to lay her eggs.

Flapjacks

I don't think I've ever done a recipe on here, but my students have asked for my flapjack recipe after I inflicted some on them before each A-level exam, so I may as well share the love. This is a mutated form of a recipe I think my mum got from Mrs Beeton's book - I've adapted it for my own needs, and I think it's clear that I'm a biologist rather than a chemist or physicist...

Materials
200g butter/butter spread
200g demerara sugar
500g porridge oats
2 massive tablespoons of golden syrup

Method

1. If you remember, shove the oven on to about 180°C.
   
2. Melt the butter or spread in a saucepan on a hob.
   
3. When liquid, add the sugar and stir until it's all mixed in.
   
4. Add the oats and stir well.
   
5. Add the golden syrup and find someone with half-decent upper body strength to stir it a bit better.
   
6. Grease a baking tray. Actually, sod that, just line it with kitchen foil, because otherwise you'll be chiselling flapjack off the tray.
   
7. Pour the mixture into the tray and spread out with a wooden spoon until it's evenly distributed.
   
8. Put in the oven and watch it intently until the edges look as though they might start to burn in the next minute or so.
   
9. Remove from the oven and cut into pieces before allowing it to cool.

Once you have this basic recipe working, you can experiment. For instance, I did plain flapjacks for the Unit 1 exam, but then put a layer of milk chocolate cake covering over the top of cooled flapjacks for Unit 2. For Unit 4 the request came in for white chocolate and strawberry flapjacks, so I added two packets of dried strawberries to the flapjack mix, then poured white chocolate cake covering over the cooled flapjacks.

I have no idea what to bake for Unit 5.

Wordless Wednesday: Table Of Amino Acids

Setting Summer Homework

I have the onerous task of setting summer work for my AS students, who return to College for two weeks of A2 study on Wednesday. As we have literally no money, the possibility of taking them on fieldwork has been ruled out. So they can't get their coursework written over the summer. Arsebiscuits. So I've been trying to think of something productive that they could do, that would be helpful to them for their A2 studies. I've copied my proposed handout, and would be grateful for feedback. Some of you who are alumni of the Cambridge Earth Sciences Department will recognise the final question as one of Simon Conway Morris' favourites for the Part II essay question. If any of you have some suggested amendments or replacements, please let me know.

This is your summer homework. It is non-negotiable. If you wish to do A2 Biology in September then you must complete the assignment. You are going to set up and maintain a blog over the summer. You will be expected to keep this blog going throughout your A2 year, using it for short assignments, revision notes and requests for help.

Over the next two months, you will choose at least four of the six topics listed, and write a blog post on each. You should be able to write 400-600 words for each topic. Some of these topics you will think are pointless and dull, but several specification points on Topic 5 examine the role of scientists in the communication of science, how scientists arrive at consensus, what consensus means in the context of science, and the nature of science itself. At A2 you are also expected to understand the criteria listed in the How Science Works document. You should be reading scientific articles more frequently, reflecting on your own learning, consolidating your thoughts and getting ideas from your peers. Contrary to this being a pointless exercise, this could be the most important thing you have ever done in science.

Topics

1. Introduce yourself (to the extent that you are willing to be identified). Write about your earliest memories of science. How have these influenced you to study the sciences? Do you wish to continue to study sciences at university? If so, what made you choose this subject? If not, what has captured your mind more than science?
   
2. Research the ways in which scientists can communicate with other scientists and with the general public. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each method? What are the benefits and drawbacks of the existing peer-review method for academic publications? How do you feel peer-review could be improved?
   
3. Summarise the ecological practical work you carried out on campus. Describe the factors affecting the distribution of the organism studied. Apply what you have learned about competition, niches and abiotic factors to this distribution.
   
4. Is there any point trying to save the Earth? Describe arguments for and against environmentalism, and offer your conclusions on the fate of the human race.
   
5. What, for you, has been the most exciting scientific discovery of the past decade? How has it influenced your life or your studies? Why do you consider it to be so exciting?
   
6. Imagine you could ask Slartibartfast (look him up!) any question about the Earth. What would you ask him, and why?

You should set up your blog in the final lesson of the Introduction to A2 course, and submit the URL to me. Ensure that there is an RSS feed available for the blog. I will collate all the blogs and put a group feed up on Moodle, so all blogs can be subscribed to at once.

You should write four blog posts at least, between now and 16th August. Since all work can be checked throughout the holiday, it will not be necessary to submit any written work in August. A checklist will be provided at Enrolment listing those who have successfully completed the work.

I will comment on each blog post to give you feedback, and I will encourage other teachers and scientists I know to do the same. I highly advise you to comment on a few blog posts too, to give your own feedback to your classmates.

Pseudoscience And The Natural History Museum

I've blogged before about eyebrow-raising items on sale in the NHM shop. I know and appreciate that the retail department is entirely separate from the science departments. However, this is no excuse for what I saw on sale on Friday night:


There, in between decent scientific guides to gemstones, minerals and fossils (note the British Mesozoic Fossils and British Cenozoic Fossils books on the right hand side), is The Crystal Bible. Now, it could just be a term to indicate that it is a detailed reference guide, right?


Wrong. "500 crystals to heal your body, mind and spirit."


Among the amazing things this book claims is that crystals will help "find love" and "reduce workplace bullying". The author also claims to be a "psychic researcher" and "paranormal expert".

To add insult to injury, the book isn't just tucked away in a dark area of the museum shop - it's also displayed prominently on the counter next to the minerals:


By offering this book for sale, particularly alongside genuine science books, the Museum is giving credence to this pseudoscientific bullshit. The public trust the NHM to give them accurate, interesting scientific information, and I don't believe this should stop the moment we enter the bright lights of the retail environment.

Retail and science may not mix at the NHM, but they bloody well ought to, for this very reason. Museums join teachers in having a duty to educate and inform. Crystal "healing" suggests that silicates can cure physical illnesses through some supposed mystical energy. This isn't just harmless rubbish - where pseudoscience claims to cure disease (apparently it will "help to relieve a headache"), there is a real risk that people will use these bogus therapies over genuine medical attention. While in mild cases this may simply be a case of a tax on human stupidity, the potential for harm is evident.

The stocking of this book in the shop of the most prominent museum in the country is up there with my biology lecturer colleagues who think evolution is fictional, the head of physics who says the Earth is only 6,000 years old, and the chemistry lecturer who follows homeopathy. It is incongruous, an abuse of trust, and just a whole big barrel full of wrong.

Pet Photoshoots

Full disclosure: In return for agreeing to review the experience on this blog, I received a free pet photo shoot. The reviews were run by FuelMyBlog.

There comes a time in every proud parent's life (and they don't have to be human babies) when it's time to record one's pride and joy for posterity. When the opportunity for a free pet photo shoot came up on FuelMyBlog I volunteered - it would be nice to have a photo of Jabba done professionally, and I was interested to see how he could be posed in case I wanted to try out a few tricks with my DSLR.

The company is Wish. They are part of a blossoming "experience" industry, and one of the things they offer is a pet photo shoot. At the time of writing its cost has been marked down to £15, usually £50. This includes a 7x5 photograph.

Upon receiving the voucher, I had to phone to activate it and make the booking. However, the main problem with this was that the phone number was only active between 9am and 5pm Monday to Friday. I usually work 8am to 7pm minimum, so it was always going to be nigh on impossible to phone them. In fact it was the Christmas holiday (having received the voucher in early November) before I was actually free to phone. And the most annoying thing was that there was no information they asked for that could not have been given online. I could have done this over the internet and been sent the details of the studio that way.

So it was the new year before the studio got in touch with me to arrange Jabba's close-up. The studio in question was The Click Studios in Richmond. Again, the same problem presented itself that I had to call during normal office hours on a Monday to Friday. But somehow they managed to get hold of me at ASE (!) and then after I had finished teaching one afternoon. Jabba's portrait was duly arranged for 4th February.

Despite me giving them my name on a number of occasions, they insisted on calling me Juliet. Eventually I stopped trying to correct them and answered to Juliet each time. When we arrived for the shoot, the studio was crowded - there were at least three full families in there, waiting either for viewing or for their own photo shoot, and so we stood. We at least didn't have to wait very long. Our photographer was absolutely wonderful. She was not a fan of reptiles, but despite her nervousness around him she was professional, talented, and talked to him in a soft soothing voice. The whole shoot took about 10 minutes, and then we were invited in for viewing.

I'm always a little nervous about viewings, having had a bad experience with an unrelated agency a few years ago. I expected to be given the hard sell and sent on a guilt trip. We had none of that - the man showing us the photos accepted that we were just looking for one good photo for the 7x5 image, and he helped us narrow it down to one good one.

Nearly two weeks later I missed a call from them to say the photo was in, we could collect it, but that we should phone them before we come in. I phoned back on the Saturday, but they didn't answer. They also didn't return my voicemail. So last Saturday I phoned in my Teacher Voice. They called back within half an hour and we collected Jabba's picture.

It's a gorgeous photo. The photographer did an excellent job and she is to be commended. However, the experience was less than stellar. Simply the inaccessibility of the companies outside normal office hours (even banks do a Saturday morning) has been enough to deter me from using their services again, coupled with messages from FuelMyBlog pushing me to update them. The cost, were it £50, was a little steep for the 10-minute photo shoot and the photo.

And they have yet to refund my £20 deposit! So I may be writing a complaint letter...

I may use the studio again if I was looking to book a family or couples portrait, but even so, some of the prices look steep. For example, though it was six years ago, I paid £850 for our wedding photographer, including 300 photos and an album. I understand that studios have premises to maintain and so on, but it seems like an awfully big mark-up.


Detail of Jabba's portrait, scanned in badly and used for evaluation purposes.
Picture's amazing though.

Change The Algorithm

I'm in recovery from the brilliant ASE conference in Liverpool, so while I collect my thoughts, consider this, spotted on the Taylors Coffee website.


If you were looking for Hot Lava Java, the coffee that goes up to six, why in the name of Flying Spaghetti Monster would you be remotely interested in decaffeinated coffee??

Time to rethink the advertising, or at least the algorithm used to suggest other products.

Nekkid Lady Backbone Sculpture

This week I've been earning back the car's new exhaust by tutoring on a course. I've walked through Cavendish Square each morning, and noticed an interesting sculpture.


It's a human spine. Cavendish Square is noted for the presence of the Royal College of Nursing, and it is next to Harley Street, the street for private medical practices (though I do occasionally offer a "quack quack" under my breath passing some of the clinics...). So I had a closer look.


There are 24 vertebrae there, corresponding to the seven cervical, twelve thoracic and five lumbar vertebrae. Three curvatures can be seen (perhaps a little kyphotic!), the dorsal surfaces are facing left and the ventral surfaces are facing right. But hang on a minute, those are funny looking vertebrae - I mean, my mum's had as many back operations as I've had margaritas, but even her spine is in better nick! Time to find out what's going on here.


Oh. OH. Right, it's art. Let's make a spine out of decapitated female torsos. Umm. Oh look, there's a plaque to go along with the sculpture.


I suggest that, while you read that, you grab your cheek with your thumb and forefinger and pull it in and out really quickly. That'll give you the appropriate auditory accompaniment. In that it will sound like a load of pretentious wank.

It's apparently been there since May. I'm not someone who goes crazy over art. I stood in the final hall of the Tate Britain Watercolour exhibition earlier this year shrieking indignantly at Paul: "It's a teaspoon. A fucking teaspoon. Covered in paint. For fuck's sake!" And at the Royal Academy summer exhibition I nearly took the Pink Pen of Doom to Tracey Emin's "Me Too - Glad To Hear I'm A Happy Girl" to correct "your" to "you're".

However, if pretentious arses want to produce a load of shite and get paid to do it, then more power to them. I just hope the funding for Westminster's City of Sculpture has not been diverted from other budgets. I really feel that the arts must continue to receive funding (and we happily pay for RA membership to contribute in a small way to this), but what makes me uneasy is that this festival is in aid of the 2012 Olympics, and an awful lot of money has already been siphoned from more needy budgets into this yawning black hole.