Simon Ings's Blog, page 42

Stalin in Stratford

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The Stratford-upon-Avon Literary Festival have invited me to talk about Stalin and the Scientists on Saturday 29 April at 3.15pm at the Stratford Artshouse.

Tickets are £10.

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Stalin in Bristol

The Bristol Festival of Ideas have invited me along to Waterstones, The Galleries, Bristol, to talk about Stalin’s scientists on 24 April at 7pm. “The Soviet Union’s sciences were the largest and best funded in history,” it says in this here programme, “and were at once the glory and laughing stock of the intellectual world” — a description that might well apply to me. Anyway, I’m going to be speaking. Come listen. Tickets are £6.

Stalin in Oxford

On 28 March at 4pm I’ll be investigating the strange world of Stalin and his scientists and showing that, while often portrayed as mad, many deserve admiration and respect. Huge thanks to the Oxford Literary Festival, who are are hosting this one at the Oxford Martin School. Tickets  are £12.50.

 

D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, the man who shaped biology and art

Darren McFarlane, Scarus, Pomacanthus, 2012, oil on canvas. (University of Dundee Museum Services © the artist)

Even as geneticists like Ernst Mayr and Theodosius Dobzhansky were revealing the genetic mechanisms that constrain how living things evolve, Thompson was revealing the constraints and opportunities afforded to living things by physics and chemistry. Crudely put, genetics explains why dogs, say, look like other dogs. Thompson did something different: he glimpsed why dogs look the way they do.

For New Scientist, 1 February 2017

Words by the Water

is a festival of words and ideas that takes place from 3 to 12 March 2017 at Theatre by the Lake in Keswick, Cumbria. I’ll be talking about Stalin and his scientists on Sunday 12 March at 5.45pm. Tickets are £8 from https://www.theatrebythelake.com/words-by-the-water-festival

Flying machines and chickens

Cars fuelled by water, flying machines and dead/alive chickens are all part of a witty Liverpool show designed to get non-scientists thinking scientifically

for New Scientist, 21 November 2016

Shakespeare and the machines

Here’s a review of the RSC’s production of The Tempest with Simon Russell Beale as Prospero. Through a combination of editorial tightening and big claims (I’m saying Shakespeare’s last play was a masque, not a drama) I make it appear here as though two fully grown polar bears once starred in its production. Please no one correct me: with a following wind this nonsense could become canonical.

for New Scientist, 21 November 2016 

Interview: Introducing BBC History Extra to Stalin’s scientists

Click the picture to listen.

Interview: The fraught relationship between science and the state

http://simonings.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/lnl_20161117_2205.mp3

Talking about Stalin and his scientists with Phillip Adams on ABC’s Late Night Live

 

Stanisław Lem: The man with the future inside him

From the 1950s, science fiction writer Stanisław Lem began firing out prescient explorations of our present and far beyond. His vision is proving unparalleled.

for New Scientist, 16 November 2016