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For some time the dubious solutions to failure in the private sector have been imported into the ‘uncompetitive’ public sector. The assumption behind the strategy is that by introducing competition, then standards rise. Thus, cleaning firms win the right to increase MRSA in hospitals by offering minimum wages, rock bottom tenders and dirty floor cloths.… Know More
Some research says baldness can be equated with extra virility in men but that cuts no ice in today’s desire for a beautiful, undifferentiated ‘norm’. Scientists have found a way to extract hair-producing cells from my scalp and propagate them in the laboratory before injecting them in my bald area and waiting for them, like… Know More
Being an academic by profession enabled me to be in at the beginning of the computer revolution. At home I ensured we had everything from ZX Spectrums and Amstrads on. My MA dissertation was typed on a golf ball and my PhD thesis was word processed. In the former, when I inadvertently put down the… Know More
We have all some knowledge of our biological clocks – not the ones that tell us our libidos are under threat – the others, the ones that tell us to go to sleep. When we are jetlagged it is because we have contravened a basic regulatory mechanism in our cells. Our eyes don’t like light… Know More
The Embryology Bill is to be placed before the House of Commons this week. It is full of the most intractable issues but the one I’d like to ponder on here is the use of animal and human mixed gene experimentation. Being somewhat older in the tooth (but feeling every day younger in the brain),… Know More
Of course those of us of a certain age have grown up with the Stones. We decided (or didn’t) that they represented our sexual drive in a way that the more melodic and less edgy Beatles never could. Their lyrics were more dangerous. They lived as our alter egos. Jagger’s fey athleticism appealed to boys… Know More
When I received my PhD all those years ago, all the new doctorates in the country were revealed in some academic journal, I can’t remember which. Anyway, it was engrossing to discover what parallel brains had been working on during the four years I had slaved (with, I admit, mixed results). I have long felt… Know More
There was an article this week in the Sunday Times about the latest research being done by Professor Susan Greenfield, a front-edge thinker on the degeneration of the brain, as a result of ageing, disease, trauma and so on. She has produced a book on the subject: ID: the Quest for Identity in the 21st… Know More
We don’t know the truth of the hypothesis, but Carl Jung’s notion of synchronicity is a gripping one. Jung suggests that extraordinary coincidences and inexplicable events may be the result of connection and communication which exist below the surface of consciousness. Telepathy, empathy, intuition, foreknowledge and so on are forms of mental transmission made possible… Know More
Probably April has never been the best month to visit Paris. It is not too warm, and the wind blows, and there is a sense of a city coming out of hibernation. A few years on from my first visit, I approached the Museum of Erotica in the Pigalle, slaloming around the street girls in… Know More