Philip Ball @philipcball Twitter profile

Last Seen Profiles

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@fearlessamanda_

@Will_Caldwell10

Philip Ball

@philipcball

7 years

I just discovered in a lovely PhD thesis by Markus Rissanen that Austrialian honeybees T. carbonaria make spiral nests. I'm awestruck.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

3 years

I'm feeling increasingly like I'm in a little bubble of science writers, scientists and public health professionals who are almost alone in recognising we are still in the midst of a pandemic...

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

2 years

The great thing about these images of how the brain works is that they show us this is not the way to understand how the brain works. (See also: the cell.)

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

7 months

I can't see how Eat Out To Help Out can't now become a major scandal. Here was a scheme imposed by Sunak with zero scientific consultation, and which in Vallance's words utterly reversed the public-health messaging: from "Keep distant from those outside your family" to... (1/n)

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

3 years

Oh lord, this is wonderful and positively bursting with physics.

Arieh Kovler

@ariehkovler

3 years

Drone photographer Lior Patel followed a herd of sheep for several months, as the herd was shepherded to its summer pasture. Entrancing and relaxing.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

1 year

Just a reminder that this does not mean the BBC is shit; it means that the many excellent BBC staff have been terribly let down by their bosses.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

3 years

Just reminded of this. And it's barely a month old. Please remember never to get your pandemic information from the Telegraph.

England is over the worst of Covid. Now we must start planning for future pandemics

Is it realistic to imagine that in future pandemics vaccines will come as quickly as they did for this coronavirus?

www.telegraph.co.uk

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

1 year

If it wasn't from the reliable FT, I'd be sceptical of a graph like this that so neatly fits my preconceptions. As it is, I think this is basically Labour's campaign poster for the next election.

Michael Merrifield

@AstroMikeMerri

1 year

If only there were some way to figure out what had gone wrong with the NHS…

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

1 year

I am just doing final proof corrections for this rather lovely thing, which will appear in the early autumn I believe. Not ready for pre-ordering yet, but details to come in due course.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

8 months

Here it is. This is my attempt to explain why modern biology has, over the past decade or two, created a narrative about life that is far richer and more marvellous than we'd guessed.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

13 days

I'm struck by how accounts of early 20th C quantum physics tell of the particpants frequently getting ill from nervous exhaustion due to sheer mental exertion: Schrödinger, Bohr, Heisenberg... Was this really a thing?

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

11 months

We're still here? After several decades, we're still at this level of basic ignorance? God help us.

Hugh Osmond

@hughosmond

11 months

Matt goes to the heart of it. With current measurement technology and state-of-the-art computers it is still impossible to predict the weather more than a few days ahead. Yet these same people, with the same technology, think they can model long term climate change. They can't.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

1 year

I can't recommend strongly enough that you read @matthewcobb and @nccomfort 's analysis in @Nature of Rosalind Franklin's real contributions to solving the structure of DNA. It raises many issues...

What Rosalind Franklin truly contributed to the discovery of DNA’s structure

Nature - Franklin was no victim in how the DNA double helix was solved. An overlooked letter and an unpublished news article, both written in 1953, reveal that she was an equal player.

www.nature.com

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

1 month

Has anyone explained what 18-yr-olds are doing wrong that requires this 12-month corrective? I see some waffle about "regaining the national spirit". On what grounds do we measure that, and conclude it is lacking in young people? Why them?

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

6 months

I suppose if I were a chief scientist at Meta, the sum I make from my very modest book sales would not seem significant. But it's a significant part of my income, and moreover keeps me tethered to a world where statements like this could never be made without ridicule.

Yann LeCun

@ylecun

6 months

Only a small number of book authors make significant money from book sales. This seems to suggest that most books should be freely available for download. The lost revenue for authors would be small, and the benefits to society large by comparison.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

3 years

Why the wallpaper matters. @maitlis hits the nail right on the head in the opening of @BBCNewsnight . "It matters because it involves standards, rules, and integrity in public office. Once those values start to erode, can the public ever expect to get them back?" 👏👏👏

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

25 days

Ready for another bit of obscure WTF molecular biology that has an important broader message you’ll see discussed nowhere in the science press? Of course you are! Then here goes. (Warning – long thread! But with a punchline.) It’s about this paper: /1

Genome organization around nuclear speckles drives mRNA splicing efficiency

Nature - Nuclear speckles are shown to have a functional role in mRNA splicing, whereby dynamic three-dimensional organization of DNA around these structures mediates splicing efficiency.

www.nature.com

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

1 year

I don't know about you, but I'm starting to suspect he didn't have an awful lot to do with getting those rockets up and back again.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

2 years

Pedantic I know, but I never understood this one. The plates are evidently not broken, and we know that because we can see into the "box". Fails the analogy at all levels.

Prof. Feynman

@ProfFeynman

2 years

Schrödinger's Plates: They are both broken and not broken until you open the door.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

2 months

Everyone said that The Three-Body Problem is full of mind-bending ideas, but no one told me that it is also extremely badly written. I mean, just awful. (And it's not a translation thing. I have read stacks of books in translation from Chinese writers.)

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

2 months

Oh lord, Dan Dennett has died. That's a huge loss to the intellectosphere. He ruffled lots of feathers and often divided opinion, but he was a phenomenal thinker and always worth listening to. And a fabulous writer.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

1 year

My next book has one of the loveliest covers I've ever had. Worth buying for this alone, surely!

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

1 year

These are low-res preliminary pages, but here's a glimpse of the first of two books I have coming out later this year, to give you a sense of how lovely it will look.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

8 years

Juncker: "I would like the UK to clarify its position." Happy to oblige: no one is in charge, there is no plan, we haven't a fucking clue.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

2 years

Here I argue that, while the mistakes and mishandling that have led to 175K Covid deaths in the UK are ultimately the government's responsibility, the scientific community as a whole has been too quiet about it.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

4 years

Getting the hang of lockdown. Youngest daughter, photographed by eldest daughter. My turn next... #GettyMuseumChallenge

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

5 months

I'm currently reading a scientific paper and am struck by how specialization in pretty much any field rapidly insulates you from the kind of questions that people outside that field are likely to ask about your topic. It's a massive problem, though surely not an inevitable one.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

6 years

They really don't get it. Rewarding barefaced lying with public appearances has contributed substantially to the corruption of our political culture. There comes a point when it must disqualify you from public platforms, not make you modishly "controversial".

BBC News Press Team

@BBCNewsPR

6 years

Some people have asked why Isabel is on #bbcqt - like all of our guests, she will be questioned & challenged by our audience & other panel members. The panel is made up of politicians, public figures, & political commentators to ensure a range of views.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

4 years

Are there awards for conspiracy theories? Because I think we have a winner.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

2 years

4 years ago I conducted this interview for @QuantaMagazine with the brilliant philosopher of science Michela Massimi ( @p_realism ) after she was awarded the Royal Society's Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Medal. To my delight, I've just been awarded the medal too.

Questioning Truth, Reality and the Role of Science | Quanta Magazine

In an era when untestable ideas such as the multiverse hold sway, Michela Massimi defends science from those who think it hopelessly unmoored from physical reality.

www.quantamagazine.org

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

4 years

First draft: finished. I'm pretty sure, based on previous experience with Quarto, that this will look spectacular.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

2 years

My TL right now is largely of random people saying the fusion news has just taken us into a revolutionary new era of energy technology, and all the physicists and science writers saying it really hasn't.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

3 years

Cases are very high. Lots are still dying. 1 in 20 secondary-school pupils with Covid, FFS. But at a school parents' evening last night, with rooms full of people, we were nearly alone in wearing a mask.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

7 years

@scienmag @WanderingGaia That's quite enough salad porn for one night.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

3 years

One of the most troubling aspects of the UK pandemic has been the profound lack of curiosity among the scientific establishment about how, with such a phenomenal science base, we did so catastrophically badly. This is barely acknowledged, let alone considered.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

2 years

This is the hardest thing I've ever written. But the first draft is done, so should be on course for a 2023 publication. Now I'm having a drink.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

8 months

I was going to be very British and diffident about the cancer surgery I'm having imminently, but decided in the end to write this for @NautilusMag in the hope that it might be helpful for others in similar positions.

How Life Really Works

Just as I uncovered a new way to understand life, I got news about my own.

nautil.us

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

2 years

Today, my new book The Book of Minds is published in the UK by @picadorbooks and in the US by @UChicagoPress . Here's a thread on what it's about.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

2 years

He just can't stop digging. The implication is that BJ had the sense to realise the rules were too hard ('cos he really wanted to party), whereas those who didn't attend funerals lacked that common sense. It's obscene that we're having to witness this in the Commons.

ITV News Politics

@ITVNewsPolitics

2 years

'These rules were very hard for people to obey' @Jacob_Rees_Mogg suggests the Covid inquiry may find that coronavirus laws were 'too hard on people' after being asked about @BorisJohnson 's behaviour

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

6 years

It still astonishes me that we're seeing, almost casually now, images like this of actual molecules

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

3 years

@AdamRutherford I don't so much care about Toby. There will always be Tobys. I care a lot about the Telegraphs that let the Tobys be Tobys on a public stage with a megaphone.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

2 years

Historians correct me if I'm wrong, but my impression of Darwin is that, having come up with an amazing idea, he then continued to think about exceptions and contradictions rather than trying to make everything fit it. That's rather rare and special in a scientist. #DarwinDay

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

3 years

Maybe it is still too raw for something like Help. But my fear is that we will forget those horrors and outrages in our queues for petrol and food. That we'll look upon the continuing deaths of 1000s as some kind of unavoidable natural catastrophe. We can't afford to do that.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

3 years

I mean, being doubly vaxxed and having had Covid a month ago, I felt about as safe - to me and to others - as I could be, but felt it was vital to show we still need masks, at the very least.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

2 years

Let's hear it for John Bell though. I mean Christ, really. It was thanks to him that quantum foundations became experimental physics and not philosophy. (Nothing against philosophy, but it's good to get answers sometimes.)

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

7 months

...say anything that would undermine the government. But it seems to me that a system that prevents the chief scientists from warning people about the mortal danger of what they are being encouraged to do is one that needs fixing. (4/4)

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

6 months

Well goodness, this looks pretty in the flesh.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

7 months

I can't say I'm surprised by what is coing out from Vallance's testimony to the Covid inquiry, but it is utterly damning of Sunak. 2 July 2020: the Chancellor says "It is all about handling the scientists, not handling the virus."

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

5 years

My letter to the BBC Complaints about the shocking errors and distortions in last week's @bbcquestiontime . Feel free to send your own. The clip is here

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

1 month

Paul Dirac: "I feel that philosophy will never lead to important discoveries. It is just a way of talking about discoveries which have already been made." Discuss.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

3 years

I met a friend today who I hadn't seen since pre-pandemic. Smart, thoughful, left-leaning chap who I like a lot. We chatted. It became clear he thinks Covid is no big deal but is being exaggerated so that we can be controlled...

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

2 years

If a simulation isn't exactly an experiment and isn't exactly a theory, what is it? Does it have its own category in the "scientific method"?

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

2 years

Just got a quote for use of an image from a Nature Publishing Group paper in a forthcoming book. >$4,000 This is obscene. I'm redrawing the fecking thing.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

5 years

Yeah it's cold, but then there's this on my window today. Not seen patterns quite like this before. Someone should write a book about it.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

7 months

Yes, I'm struggling to understand this position. We regularly vaccinate against flu (less lethal than Covid), partly to reduce the severity if we catch it. So why not Covid? Also for context: as a 61-year old cancer patient, I have not been deemed eligible for a Covid booster.

Cat in the Hat 🐈‍⬛ 🎩 🇬🇧

@_CatintheHat

7 months

According to JCVI member Dr Adam Finn, the UK’s strategy going forward is that “most under 65’s will now end up boosting their immunity NOT through vaccination, but through catching Covid *many* times.”

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

3 years

I watched C4's Help last night, in furious tears. (Stephen Graham and Jodie Comer outstanding as ever.) But I saw very little media response to it. This stuff really happened - only last year! But it felt as though people thought: OK, good drama; next!

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

3 years

Now published! And gloriously illustrated in colour throughout.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

3 years

David Hare said to me last week that he thinks people are at a stage of wanting to look away from it all: the arts are in a state of Anything But Covid. I think he's right, and it's understandable. But Covid is very much still here, and will be for some time.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

5 months

I figured it might not be a bad idea to post a little thread on what my book How Life Works does and doesn't do...

How Life Works - A User’s Guide to the New Biology by Philip Ball

Biology is undergoing a quiet but profound transformation. Several aspects of the standard picture of how life works -the idea of the genome as a blueprint...

how-life-works.philipball.co.uk

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

25 days

Gonna post this again, with apologies to those who saw it earlier, as the thread seems to be getting prematurely truncated. So: Ready for another bit of obscure WTF molecular biology that has an important broader message you’ll see discussed nowhere in the science press? /1

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

4 years

In the Middle Ages the plague caused massive death because people lacked sanitation, medicine, social welfare & any understanding of disease. In the 21st century it was because when people were told to keep 2m apart and not meet up with friends, it obviously didn't mean *them*.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

3 years

Twitter sci hist people: which experiments would you consider to be the most elegant, beautiful, or otherwise pleasing? I don't mean important in terms of what they disclosed (necessarily), but aesthetically or intellectually rich and satisfying in their own right.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

13 days

Like Feynman, I'm not keen on wave-particle duality. It is unnecessary and breeds confusion, as I suggest in my latest column for @ChemistryWorld .

A common misunderstanding about wave-particle duality

Instead of treating quantum particles as shape-shifters, we should think in terms of probability distributions

www.chemistryworld.com

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

3 years

Here's me on this - to be frank - shitshow. Let's be clear that the government's (in)actions are wholly political. We're not talking about lockdowns here, after all.

Yes, we have to live with Covid – but not with such irresponsible ministers | Philip Ball

The government sees no need for precautions. Given the sheer numbers of infected people, that’s irresponsible and encourages complacency, says science writer Philip Ball

www.theguardian.com

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

5 years

I'm deeply honoured by this, not least because of the company it puts me among.

Institute of Physics

@PhysicsNews

5 years

The William Thomson, Lord Kelvin Medal and Prize goes to...Dr Philip Ball. #IOPAwards19

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

3 months

Zoe did the cover artwork for my new book too, and I think we can agree that she is awesome, right?

Nautilus Magazine

@NautilusMag

3 months

"Together scientists and artists can be really powerful storytelling teams." Nautilus cover artist Zoe Keller discusses her creative process, the challenges of illustrating endangered wildlife, and what scientists can learn from artists:

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

29 days

Here’s a paper that will get zero press because it looks totally specialist, not to say obscure. It’s about how an important class of transcription factors regulate genes. But I think it's worth dissecting because it raises a wider question.Bear with me...

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

8 years

A message to science friends in Europe. Time now to find responses to this attack on the Euro scientific project.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

3 years

Manabe and Hasselmann are unexpected but good choices for the Physics Nobel, but Parisi won't surprise physicists. Totally deserved.He's one of those deep thinkers who just doesn't register on the popular-physics radar. (Partly because his work is hard!)

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

2 years

I don’t delude myself that many folks will know why I have been granted this great honour, so please indulge me when I try to explain some of the ways in which I’ve sought to “share the social, cultural, and historical context of science”. (1/n)

The Royal Society

@royalsociety

2 years

Dr Philip Ball is awarded the Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Medal and Lecture for his outstanding commitments to sharing the social, cultural, and historical context of science through award-winning science communication as a writer, speaker and commentator.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

2 years

Nobel alert: those guys did not show that "spooky action at a distance is real". Please (he said with little hope of being heard) do not say that.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

7 months

..."We'll pay you to spend hours in an enclosed space with people you don't know". Vallance says that it will undoubtedly have led to infections and thus to deaths. And Sunak misled the inquiry about it. But it's not just that... (2/n)

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

3 years

Not sure if this yet exists as a physical object, but it certainly looks ravishing in this mock-up. Coming soon from @mitpress

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

2 years

A reminder (it won't be the last) of what's coming in June.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

11 months

In retrospect I guess it was a fairly obvious prediction that the worse the climate crisis gets, the more the denialist responses are going to go from merely slippery and evasive to just unabashedly fucking stupid.

Fraser Nelson

@FraserNelson

11 months

Texas is seeing temperatures at all-time highs - yet it’s drawing in holidaymakers and other Americans as never before. Why? Because there’s aircon everywhere: tech allows mankind to overcome the weather My column on the case for optimism:-

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

7 years

Tumbling dice: how the right kind of shaking creates order. Images & videos alone are rather nice.

Experimental Study of Ordering of Hard Cubes by Shearing

A jumble of thousands of cubic dice, agitated by an oscillating rotation, can rapidly become completely ordered, a result that is hard to produce with more conventional shaking.

journals.aps.org

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

5 years

Is a quantum jump really a jump, or more of a gradual change? Now we know the answer. My latest story for @QuantaMagazine

Quantum Leaps, Long Assumed to Be Instantaneous, Take Time | Quanta Magazine

An experiment caught a quantum system in the middle of a jump — something the originators of quantum mechanics assumed was impossible.

www.quantamagazine.org

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

1 year

Interesting article on path integrals and their use in quantum field theory and general relativity. Worth perhaps remembering Feynman's own injunction not to confuse the mathematics for the physics.

How Our Reality May Be a Sum of All Possible Realities

Richard Feynman’s path integral is both a powerful prediction machine and a philosophy about how the world is. But physicists are still struggling to figure out how to use it, and what it means.

nautil.us

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

4 years

Just received preliminary pages for this, and it's all I can do not to put up some of them here, prematurely. Honestly, this is going to look gorgeous.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

5 years

Parliament: We must decide. Also Parliament: We can't decide. People: We could. Parliament: Fuck you, that's undemocratic.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

8 months

Home-educating my kids made me think about how to deliver science in a way that wasn't just a bunch of "stuff". I ended up putting it into this little "book" that is available here as a free download. Hope it's of use to someone.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

4 months

The AI enshittification of the internet is already here. Will it end up wrecking this resource altogether? That doesn't seem impossible.

weird medieval guys BOOK OUT NOW !!

@WeirdMedieval

4 months

soooo fun and cool that if you google something related to medieval art now, half the top results are ai generated garbage. absolutely love that.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

5 years

My piece for @guardian 's Second Thoughts this year: how I finally understood that our ideas about race really don't have any basis in biology.

How I changed my mind about the biology of race | Philip Ball

Our misconceptions about race and science arise from a habit of the mind, says the science writer Philip Ball

www.theguardian.com

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

4 years

This is horribly sad for Sweden. Can we now agree to no more discussion of the "Swedish alternative"?

Ina Hallström

@killedbyproxy

4 years

🇺🇲 Headline in The New York Times: "The Entire Country Is Out of Control." 🇸🇪 Sweden just passed the US in daily new confirmed cases.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

4 years

In 1665, after trying to book a plague test in Lincolnshire, Isaac Newton was sent to the testing site at Inverness. The trip took three days, by which time his symptoms had vanished - but on the way he solved string theory and predicted dark matter. This is HISTORY!

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

3 years

I'm very pleased to see that my article in yesterday's Guardian is stimulating some discussion. @JeremyFarrar makes the excellent suggestion that it be read alongside @d_spiegel 's piece in the THE (1/n)

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

9 months

Wondering why the Nature paper on Assembly Theory provoked such heated debate? Here's what I figure was going on (at least, the part I'll say in public 😉).

Will the assembly theory imbroglio do anything for evolution?

A claim to have explained selection has caused a stir, and it's worth asking why, says Philip Ball

www.chemistryworld.com

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

5 years

Anticipating lots of suggestions that any comparison between the UK's current situation and 1930s Germany will prompt condescending accusations of over-reaction. So here's the view of one of the leading historical authorities on that era.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

8 months

Fantastic review of how intrinsically disordered proteins do their many jobs in the cell. If you like this kind of thing, you'll like this!

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

3 years

Youngest daughter started learning Latin today, and I can't believe that 45 years later Caecilius est still in the bleedin' horto.

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@philipcball

2 years

This is extraordinary. She has no idea what future pandemics might be like - but more to the point, she doesn't understand her own ignorance about that. Hard to imagine how a GCSA could stay silent about this position if she becomes PM.

Liz Truss rules out any more lockdowns if there is a new pandemic

Facing Tory members at a leadership hustings she claimed she had always been against them despite being in Boris Johnson's administration that repeatedly closed shops, schools and pubs.

www.dailymail.co.uk

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

1 year

I only just learnt that Michael Fisher died in 2021. He was one of the most formidable physicists of the 20th century - yes that's right, even if you haven't heard of him.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

1 year

For anyone who doubted that the scientific advisory process needs reappraisal and overhaul post-pandemic, here you are.

How Matt Hancock plotted to have ‘useless loudmouth’ Covid scientist sacked

Health secretary wanted Sir Jeremy Farrar removed from Sage committee for publicly criticising government decisions, WhatsApp leaks reveal

www.telegraph.co.uk

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

13 days

I realise it's a danger for scientists today because of all the absurd other pressures: publishing, grant applications, tenure, teaching... But for those guys, it seemed to be simply about the effort of thinking really hard. Was this just a trope, like the 19th C dream vision?

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

3 years

Popular science books by scientists: here's the thing. I'm struck by how they often present their big theory of X, with passing reference to other ideas about X, especially conflicting ones. The question is how well this serves the communication of science. (1/n)

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

3 years

You might have "secretly enjoyed" that "gaffe" @christinalamb , because I'm guessing you don't have a child to whom such things have been said. So let me tell you that if you do (and for most people, even if you don't), there's nothing there to enjoy. I hope you will apologize.

Dapo Adeola

@DapsDraws

3 years

And yet still no signs of institutional racism 🧐

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

7 months

Here too was a policy that the scientists were sure was going to have these effects, and yet on which they felt unable to say anything to warn the public of the dangers. Vallance might consider that to be the way the system had to work - that he & his colleagues could not...(3/n)

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

4 months

The trajectory of Liz Truss was kind of inevitable: after such humiliation, one could only vanish entirely or go towards the only group who'd make her feel validated: mad far-right "deep state" conspiracy theorists. But it's still deeply unsettling that she was once PM.

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

3 years

Very nice to have been asked to write the inaugural "Big Idea" for the Guardian's new Saturday supplement. (Not sure if it's online at the moment.)

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Philip Ball

@philipcball

5 years

Cyclists: a bike helmet just saved my life. I've often said to myself "It's just round the corner, no need for a helmet." Never again.

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