The next 15%

It dawned on me the other day that more than 15% of 2012 had already passed. This year seems to be racing away with all the grace and predicatbiity of a round of double Gloucester cheese careering down a hill. Of course this sensation reflects the volume of activity, most of it loads of fun and the next couple of months are no exception. I've just attended the Australian Science Communcators national conference, a very successful event attended by a bevy of terribly talented colleagues from a wide range of disciplines.

Next is the Adelaide Fringe. This is my third consecutive Fringe, but this time I return not as a performer, but as the director of 'Faraday's Candle', produced by re-science and performed at the Science Exchange.

After that it's 'Pre-Coital' at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. We're pretty excited to be sharing the Kelvin Club with 'The Peer Revue', with special preview shows on 28 March and a short season after that. If history if any guide, audiences, performers and I are in for a couple of very entertaining months - join us! 

Time, it is a-changin'

Image by AZRainmanEarly in 2012, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) will meet in Geneva to talk about time. Specifically they will be considering a proposal to change the way we keep time, away from Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and towards the more precise time kept by hundreds of atomic clocks around the world. Why are they considering this? Simply because determining “clock” time by the passing of the sun over any point of the Earth’s surface is inaccurate.

Evolution has tuned us into the rising and setting of the sun and it's tempting to assume that the Earth (and its daily rotation) is constant. It’s not. More . . .