Ben's Blog
3. GM crops in Scotland
Political action never works by trial-and-error:
only by expediency, strategic gain over the opposition, and kow-towing
to the lowest common denominator in the media. Even clincians now
operate using 'Evidence-Based Medicine' - A term I enjoy, as it
worryingly suggests that there might have been an alternative...and it
fails to acknowledge that science has done this for a while. Anyway,
idiocy and hypocrisy have been elegantly combined in the ScotGov's
proclamation that they intend to make Scotland free from GM crops. I
wrote a letter to a newspaper that wasn't published, so I'm resorting
to vanity publishing here.
2. My least favourite word/phrase I have read in an essay or report, and my favourite
-Nowadays...gives me transient diabetes when I read this. Fittingly, this is the third image on google images when you search for 'Nowadays':
.
Nowadays is closely followed by the phrase 'More work needs to be done'....always as the desperate end of an essay, and should be immediately followed by 'but just not by me right now'.
-Thrice...'cells were washed thrice in PBS to wash off excess secondary antibody'. Compact and almost Shakespearean.
1. Why biology?
My passion for biology was gently nurtured in many ways: collecting fossils, watching Life on Earth, and , of course, by my various biology teachers at school. However, perhaps one of the strongest influences was
exposure to the zoological Adventures written by Willard Price featuring his
keen-eyed protagonists, Hal and Roger. They were like the Hardy Boys of the biological world. To this day, I keep a spraycan
of shaving foam to hand to sooth the pain should I be stung by a
Portuguese Man-o-War.