Travels of a Fish Nut

This is another long post with a lot of complicated words. I'm sorry about that, but this will hopefully be the last post like this for a while. In the next one we'll start looking at the different types of animals.  What is natural selection? Here’s an experiment for you to try. It will take both of you and your mum to watch and time you (and maybe help with the maths).

A couple of months ago I wrote about the government's announcement regarding the Disabled Student's allowance, or DSA. I was horrified at the changes, which were not so much modifications as a massive gutting of the funding provided to disabled students. I was particularly incensed over their plans to stop funding laptops for disabled students, plans which were 'supported' through the use of what can only be described as dodgy statistics; statistics that look supportive at first glance but are actually completely irrelevant.

Evolution is a simple concept when explained well (which I hope I will be able to do!) but in order to fully understand it I need to explain a few things about cell biology. I will make this as brief and simple as possible because it’s not our focus at the moment (though if I am able to keep up these posts it will be at a later date) but it involves some complicated words and ideas which I can't really avoid so apologies in advance.

What is biology? Biology is the study of living things. Living things include animals, plants, bacteria and possibly viruses. Rather than having to write that every time, we use the word " organism " to mean all those different types of living things.

These posts are primarily for Dan and Sophie to teach them some biology though if they get a wider audience then that's great.  Dan and Sophie, I'm going to try and write in the form of questions and answers so that your mum can ask you the questions and you can try and answer them before you hear my answers. You won't be able to answer all of them but I thought it would help you to think about things if I wrote like this rather than just making a lot of essays for you to read. If you have questions you can either put them in the comments or email them to me and I'll reply as best I can. If I'm not being clear or it's too complicated please let me know. Equally, if I'm telling you things you already know tell me and I'll make it more interesting. What I thought I'd do is write a couple of introductory posts about biology and evolution and then I want to tell you about the different types of animals that are alive today. Starting with sponges, j...

Has human evolution been influenced by our tendency to fight? If you’ve read the science headlines in recent days you would be forgiven for thinking so. Headlines such as “ The human face developed over 5m years of fisticuffs, scientists claim ” and “ Male faces 'buttressed against punches' by evolution ” have been proclaiming to the world that violence has literally shaped the evolution of our faces. But has it really?

I seem to have stopped posting as suddenly as I’d restarted. I went on holiday to Budapest for a long weekend which was amazing and much needed., and life’s been taking up my time in between. But I’m back, for now, and I want to talk about something that’s political but also personal to each and every one of us. Be aware, I’m talking about death and dying.