SciencePunk
Ideas for development: curated blog posts as ebooks
Posted by Frank Swain on January 12, 2013 So, as I’ve said before, my mind is often occupied with how I might develop writing in new ways. For a while I’ve been working on an anti-blog that specifically contravenes all supposed user-interface rules (no comments, no archives, no title), which should hopefully launch soon. I’ve also started a new subject-specific blog that lives…
Sticky! – an animation about the unextinct, giant insects of Lord Howe island
Posted by Frank Swain on January 6, 2013 
Director Jilli Rose has made a short animated documentary about everyone’s favourite back-from-the-dead, hiding-on-an-impenetrable-Pacific-island-fortress tree lobster. Jilli says: So many conservation stories are grim and worrying, it’s easy to feel hopeless in the face of them. I want to drop a good story into the mix, to uplift and hopefully energise viewers, particularly kids, and to…
Ideas for development: the blog as a filter
Posted by Frank Swain on December 28, 2012 It might seem odd that a book about vaginas inspired a different way to blog, but that’s the honest truth. I spend a lot of time thinking about how you might innovate when it comes to writing. It still irritates me that the overwhelming majority of the web is formatted in exactly the same way…
What’s the point of the Golden Duck award for quackery?
Posted by Frank Swain on December 27, 2012 So you might have seen that Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced doctor who first linked the MMR vaccine to autism, has been given a “Golden Duck” award for “lifetime achievement in quackery”. The tweet that accompanied it in my feed asked simply “what is the purpose of this award?”, and I had to scratch my head…
Controlled spaces: my feature on urban exploration and the privatised city
Posted by Frank Swain on December 18, 2012 I’m thrilled to be included amongst some sterling writers in the new issue of Arc magazine, Forever Alone Drone, discussing how urban exploration can act as a foil to the increasingly restrictive environment of cities. Public spaces are being sold off to private owners at an alarming rate, who can prohibit entirely legal behaviours and…
Martin Luther and Mass Effect: what video games can teach us about free will
Posted by Frank Swain on November 26, 2012 I finally got around to playing the Walking Dead videogame this weekend, and I’m already hooked. “Video game” is a bit of a misnomer really, as it’s more a piece of interactive fiction. You must guide your character, Lee Everett, through the dangers and dilemmas of a rapidly disintegrating society where the dead are returning…
Haynes Manual: Lunar Rover Edition
Posted by Frank Swain on November 21, 2012 I quite like these spurious yet serious Haynes manuals! From the press blurb: British science writer and broadcaster Professor Chris Riley has written a book on the story of the Apollo Lunar Rover to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the vehicle’s final drive on the Moon, in December 1972. Commissioned even before the first…
Technopaternalism and the problem with iPads-for-Africa
Posted by Frank Swain on November 12, 2012 The science and technology blogs were alight with adulation last week with the news that with no assistance, illiterate Ethiopian children had learned to use and even “hack” computers given to them. Speaking at MIT Technology Review’s EmTech conference, the founder of the One Laptop Per Child initiative revealed an experiment in which Motorola Xoom tablets…
Falling Walls: Daniel Libeskind on healing cities
Posted by Frank Swain on November 9, 2012 Dressed in a leather jacket and black roll neck, Daniel Libeskind holds an air of affability that complements his passionate and lucid discussion about the importance of architecture in healing and rebuilding communities. Born into a Jewish family in Poland, he experienced life under the totalitarian Soviets before emigrating to New York, a narrative that…
Falling Walls: in which Tomás Saraceno fries my mind
Posted by Frank Swain on November 9, 2012 From the moment he springs onto the stage, Tomás Saraceno‘s demeanour marks him out as an artist. Dressed in jeans and a hoodie, and wearing a scruffy beard, he stands in contrast to the parade of smartly-dressed academics that have so far made up the Falling Walls conference. Saraceno jokes that…