Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Christmas is coming


I’m excited. Really. I have just discovered that my friend Mark Miodownik is going to deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures this year. Mark is a materials scientist at King’s College (where, outrageously, the Materials Science Department is no more). He runs the wonderful Materials Library, where one can see and touch lots of very weird materials. I can think of no one better to fill Michael Faraday’s shoes for the Christmas Lectures, and I plan to be there.

3 comments:

JimmyGiro said...

Ah, I see you've been doing a bit of a house cleaning.

Wouldn't it be funny if all the 'comment bots' turned out to be real Chinamen, and they all turned up to the Christmas lectures, baring little red books and angry scowls...

"There he is... Dr Pip... get him!!!"

And you'll be forced to sign every little book, promising to never delete the comments of the peoples of the glorious republic of China, ever again.

Philip Ball said...

Actually Jim, I have just returned from China (not joking), so I guess if they were going to get me, they'd have nabbed me in Beijing.

Philip Ball said...

In fact, I won't be there after all. The RI now stipulates that all the children at the Christmas Lectures must be over 11. Pah, don't they realise that my four-year-old is obviously a genius who can already count up to 50 in Mandarin? Admittedly, she has to ask me if 15 is bigger or smaller than 16, but that's just being open-minded.