Begin at the beginning

In which a blog is begun, and an armchair biologist wonders whether, in the infinite void of the internet, anyone can be bothered to hear you scream.


So hello, and welcome.  I'll be your armchair biologist for this blog, in which I will share my opinions on science news and other, hopefully interesting, things.  You should expect a focus on computational biology and plant science.

I do sometimes wonder if there's any space on the internet for yet another academic scientist's occasionally meandering and frequently ill-styled run of opinionated drivel, but the evidence from Google suggests that we're not touching the sides (or maybe the bottom), yet.  Therefore, the greatest barriers to the success of this blog are likely instead to be induction of tedium in either the reader or the writer, or the sudden realisation that life is too short and precious to waste like this.

For both our sakes, I'll try to be brief.

Still, there's always the chance that the science/scientist blogosphere might erupt in an important or newsworthy way, as it did for the arsenomics kerfuffle, or that I might systematically forget to be brief and circumspect, like PZ Myers.  In the meantime I'll try at least to be entertaining.