One

Or 21 months if we count his time on the inside.

I wish, I wish.....I wish I had a proper cake and not just a candle stuck in a grape!

My baby isn't a baby anymore : (
He's a giggling, pointing, stair-climbing, truck-pushing, wire-chewing, lion-roaring, general-mischief-making toddler. Who doesn't quite toddle yet.

The ethics of having (more) children

Laurie Paul wrote an excellent paper, a few months back, addressing the epistemology of choosing to become a parent. The ethical question, of whether or not to choose to burden the planet with one's progeny, is one that has received plenty of attention since contraception became widely available in some countries in the 1960s. But a related topic, or perhaps sub-topic, that I don't believed has been addressed in an academic setting, is the ethics of choosing to get pregnant when one already has one or more children. In particular, I'm wondering about the moral issues connected with subjecting one's child to siblings.

Post-leave planning

So I said I was going to spend two weeks planning, before plunging back into the same torrent of reading, writing, seminars and refereeing as before I went on leave. And what have I been doing?

'Working' as an academic is unlike most jobs. Not because there isn't any real work involved, whatever my friends and family think;

Dinoshow

Over the easter weekend, my family and I were treated to a fantastic dinoshow.

Penises are very weird

Evolution has produced a leg-crossing array of different reproductive kit. Here are some of my favourites (see more here).

Most mammal penises come with the delightful sounding 'penis-barbs'.

Bacteria, zombies and individuality

Are bacteria observable? Or are they theoretical constructs, like electrons. Who ever actually saw a bacterium?

Philosophy in Darwin's shadow, Multiple Realizability in Edinburgh

Last week I had my longest ever separation from Orson, not once but twice. On monday I dropped him at nursery at lunchtime and set off for Cambridge, on my own, with no nappies in my handbag, no finger foods packed.  Just me, a laptop and an overnight bag. The only evidence of my encumbered life was the bags under my eyes and the breastpump stashed in my case. It felt...very very weird. Like I was committing a crime even. I had to keep consciously reminding myself that I had not abandoned Orson on the doorstep of a church or into a Chinese baby hatch.

I'm back!

And man, was it with a bang. Two talks, two cities, two overnight stays. One of the talks was a plenary, in front of the most important people in my field, locally. So it really needed to be something new, and I ended up finishing my slides right up to the wire.....

Quick thoughts on bacterial individuality

Are bacteria individuals? Does it matter? I'm planning to pose (and answer) these questions for my upcoming talk at PBUK2014 in Cambridge.

A biofilm is a structured, surface attached colony of millions of bacterial cells. Recent biology conferences have been full of people detailing the ways in which biofilms are analagous to multicellular organisms. They demonstrate complex systems of intercellular signalling, describe intricate and variable colony architectures and propose various adaptive hypotheses at the whole biofilm level. It is clear that the analogy has captured the biological imagination (one paper is titled 'Biofilm: City of microbes') and fuelled much research.

But what turns on it? I have found three decent arguments presented in the literature.

Ten months: second week

Not that I'm counting the weeks any more but I signed up to these annoying baby-centric apps that send out weekly updates about 'what your baby is up to this week' so I know I'm in month ten, second week. I'll tell you what my baby is up to this week: smearing his dinner in his hair, chewing on power cables and smashing his face into all available surfaces. Oh and not sleeping. Did I mention the not-sleeping?

I've just given my last lecture of the term