Yes, another exotic day of filming is over.

OK, some background: I am making a one-hour documentary for BBC4 called “Beyond Chaos”, which is, well, a programme about all things chaotic (you know the stuff: butterfly effect, Mandlebrot sets, Lorenz Attractors, Belousov reactions, unpredictability – cue turbulent weather scenes, stock market graphs – you know the stuff). Aaanyway… for today’s shoot we needed – Well, I say we; what I mean is my director Nic Stacey needed – somewhere scenic and spectacular. So what could be better than the snow-covered Yorkshire Dales and some impressive waterfalls.

Wrap up warm, we were told. Bloody good job too! We set off from our B&B at 7-ish with the temperature at minus 3°C and it didn’t rise above zero all day. We head off to film at a famous beauty spot, the Ribblehead Viaduct. Absolutely gorgeous. But when you’re outside for five hours, even with three pairs of socks and a thermal vest to supplement the usual outdoor filming gear, the chill manages to eventually seep into these not-so-young-anymore bones. I felt more like a homeless person wearing all his possessions than a smoothy TV presenter, which is what I am really.

But hey I’m not complaining. Nor am I complaining when I say that after our brief cafe lunch of carrot soup and bacon bun we had to trek three miles with all the gear along treacherously icy and precariously narrow paths up to our scenic waterfall for the afternoons location. After all, the views were even more stunning, and it was a beautifully sunny and clear day despite the cold. No, all I am saying is that today should not be regarded by my sometimes ever so slightly envious colleagues as an exotic day out being pampered by BBC licence payers. It was hard work.

Ooh, just passed through Milton Keynes, so not too far now. The pretty young girl opposite me on the train is trying so hard to ignore the lecherous old fool sitting next to her, who is blatantly and constantly staring at her. It’s sort of fascinating to watch. I mean she really is very pretty, and he really is very old and very lecherous, and he really is staring. I won’t say anything as she seems to be coping admirably by completely blanking him.

I have tried to sleep but I think I am too exhausted for that. I could do with a coffee though.

So is this what blogs are meant to be like? Random thoughts? There is precious little science in this week’s one, for which I apologise. But frankly, I am scienced out at the moment. (Gasp!) Anyway, read previous blogs from the archive if you want more science. Last week’s proof of Pythagoras was pretty neat I thought. You might notice that I am getting more informal as the blogs go on. I am clearly trying hard to be hip. But, please somebody kill me if I start the habit of ending every sentence with the phrase “hehe lol “. In fact, kill anyone over 18 who does that.

Oh, I can share with you one piece of exciting news. It seems that no sooner have I made the effort to write an (almost) weekly blog, than an even better project looks like taking off. My university marketing department approached me a few weeks ago to see if I was interested in making a regular podcast. They would provide the know-how, equipment, website, etc, if I would provide the content. It would be sort of for the University but I got to say what I wanted, invited on the guests I chose and so on. They suggested a ‘Jim talks science’, which I saw as essentially this blog, but in audio. I agreed, and quickly suggested a great name for it. Wait for it while a get the drum roll going… Jim Al-Khalili’s SciPod.

Jim's Sci-pods

Geddit? Science Podcast! I’m so clever! I was amazed to find that searching on iTunes threw up nothing with this name. Maybe I didn’t look hard enough as it seems such an obvious name. Anyway, we decided to go for it and during the space of two intense hours last week in my office, with the microphones and other recording equipment linked to a Mac, we recorded the first five 10 minute episodes! I talked about my experiences filming my TV series Science and Islam, I talked about my favourite scientists, I talked about astronomy and chemistry. The plan is that very soon I will have a link to it from this website so that anyone can download it. Of course that relies on people coming here, so the University are going to make it available on iTunes too. How cool is that!

I wonder whether I will keep this blog going if it gets to be really successful. I don’t mean Stephen Fry podgram or Ricky Gervais podcast successful, just that it might be listened to by more than the tiny fraction of the two hundred or so friends I have on Facebook whom I always inform about this blog on my Status Updates (the only thing I use it for). Anyway, we’ll see.

I think we are approaching London now so will sign off.

So, what has been happening in science over the past week? Well, just in case the big news has passed you by, I will report here on what should have been a momentous event last week deserving of appropriate pomp, fanfare, razzmatazz and, well, a bit of a fuss I suppose. Instead, it passed unnoticed to the outside world with all fizz of a cheap sparkler on a damp bonfire night.

I mean admittedly there is a global credit crunch, hundreds of innocent children are dying in Gaza, and the world’s gaze turns to Obama to wave his magic wand. But still you’d think someone would care that the British Association for the Advancement of Science is no more!

Last Thursday, I was at a House of Commons reception with a couple of hundred other enthusiastic representatives of British science to mark the re-branding of this most illustrious of institutions. The BA (as it has been affectionately known for 177 years) was founded in York on the 27 September 1831, eighteen years earlier than its larger American cousin, the AAAS.

The original purpose of the BA, expressed through its annual meetings held in different towns and cities throughout the UK was: “to give a stronger impulse and a more systematic direction to scientific inquiry; to promote the intercourse of those who cultivate Science in different parts of the British Empire with one another and with foreign philosophers; to obtain more general attention for the objects of Science and the removal of any disadvantages of a public kind that may impede its progress.”

The meetings from the start attracted the country’s leading scientists, and for many years this was the event at which major advances in science were announced – for example, Joule’s experiments on the mechanical equivalent of heat in the 1840s, the first use of the term ‘dinosaur’ (1841), Bessemer’s steel process (1856), the discovery of the first of the inert gases, argon, by Rayleigh and Ramsay (1894), the first public demonstration of wireless transmission over a few hundred yards by Sir Oliver Lodge (1894), and JJ Thomson’s discovery of the electron (1899).

Perhaps the best remembered of all BA meetings was held at Oxford in 1860: Darwin’s The Origin of Species had been published in 1859, but his health was not good enough to allow him to go to the Oxford meeting. T. H. Huxley was there, though, and it was he who so brilliantly debated Darwinism with Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford. Wilberforce, having refused to regard monkeys as his ancestors, turned to Huxley and asked whether it was through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed descent from “a venerable ape”. Huxley took the challenge and is reputed to have answered “If I am asked whether I would choose to be descended from the poor animal of low intelligence and stooping gait, who grins and chatters as we pass, or from a man, endowed with great ability and splendid position, who should use these gifts to discredit and crush humble seekers after truth, I hesitate what answer to make!”

Oh, and how about this: at the Cambridge BA meeting of 1831, the local secretary, William Whewell, a co-founder of the BA, first coined the word ‘scientist’. This was upon the request of the poet Coleridge who argued that there had to be a better name for ‘men of science’ than the more awkward ‘natural philosophers’.

So, fast forward to 2009 and finally the BA has grown tired of being mistaken for a well known Airline company and has decided it’s time for a shake up. As of last Thursday it has become the British Science Association (not to be abbreviated to BSA you understand – those old enough will recall motorbikes made by Birmingham Small Arms!)

This is exciting for me because not only am I quite heavily involved with the Association (I am Vice President, a trustee, member of council, honorary fellow, etc etc.. blah blah, which is partly why I am giving it such a plug you understand) but more excitingly, the next Festival, the first under the new name and still the largest science festival in Europe, is coming to the University of Surrey this September. Hurrah!