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Latest Posts

26 Jun 2017

Reflections on hunger and food; their importance in explaining behaviour; their insufficient visibility in the contemporary human sciences; what peer reviewers don’t like; and the strange things we choose to focus on in our research. This is the last installment of Hanging On To The Edges until autumn 2017 Let them eat cake 1.0. (PDF) Return to the Hanging On To The Edges home page.

HOTTE #4: How My Theory Explains Everything: And Can Make You Healthier, Wealthier and Happier

31 May 2017

The fourth essay in Hanging On To The Edges. A reflection on why scientists behave like red jungle fowl, and a hesitant encomium to doubt and uncertainty. How my theory explains everything 1.0 (PDF)

Update on the 2017 starling breeding season

9 May 2017

The 2017 breeding season is nearly over in our colony. Here’s Starling Times 2017, a newsletter on how the birds have been doing, and what we have been up to–including our exciting TA-65 experiment……

HOTTE #3: What we talk about when we talk about biology

26 Apr 2017

A reflection on humans, animals, and disciplinary distinctions, in homage to Ted Benton. What we talk about when we talk about biology 2.0 Go back to the Hanging On To The Edges homepage.

HOTTE #2: Why inequality is bad

27 Mar 2017

The second essay in the Hanging On To The Edges series. A meditation on Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s The Spirit Level, the ecological fallacy, and the complexities of being an academic. Download: Why inequality is bad 1.0 (PDF) Go back to the Hanging On To The Edges homepage.

HOTTE #1: The mill that grinds young people old

1 Mar 2017

This is the first essay in the Hanging On To The Edges series. A meditation in an English urban graveyard, with a slight nod of the head to Thomas Gray, another to Tony Harrison, and a guest appearance by Charles Dickens. Download: The mill that grinds young people old 1.0 (PDF) Go back to the Hanging On To The Edges homepage.

Blue/Orange to play Durham

10 Feb 2017

We are delighted to announce that Blue/Orange will play in Durham on Tuesday March 21st 2017, at 19:30pm, at the Empty Shop HQ in Framwellgate Bridge, DH1 4SJ. Tickets are available from here. This simple space is going to be wonderful for the piece. I like productions where I can carry the set down with me on the train. And don’t forget, of course, performances in Newcastle on the Friday and Saturday of the same week, at Northern Stage.

And this little birdie got none……

17 Jan 2017

We’ve just published a new paper on the effects of early-life adversity in starlings. We are particularly interested in how early adversity affects the shortening of telomeres. Telomeres are the protective DNA caps on the ends of our (and their) chromosomes, whose length is often used as a marker of biological age. We have found previously that nestlings who are smaller than their brood mates lose telomeres faster in the first few weeks of life. A bad start ages you. However, we didn’t know what it is about being at a disadvantage in the brood that accelerates telomere loss. Is it that you don’t get so much to eat? Or is it the stress of having to struggle and beg more to hold your own when those around you are bigger and stronger? Or a bit of both? We decided to test this in a hand-rearing experiment. Here, we would play the parents and thus decide what each bird experienced in its formative days. Many collaborators contributed to this study. Clare Andrews did much of the hard work We took four siblings from each of eight wild broods. From each family, one sibling was fed all it wanted nine times … Continue reading “And this little birdie got none……”

The behavioural constellation of deprivation

10 Jan 2017

We are used to the idea that the poor behave in a certain way- living for the day, devil may care, fatalistic, impulsive, enjoying life while they can- whilst the rich are more future-oriented, self-controlled and cautious. Just read the novels of Zola, for example, for vivid descriptions the appeal of present consumption over savings amongst those with the poorest lot in society. There’s actually a lot of evidence that, statistically, this is more than just a myth. People of lower socioeconomic status-in Britain for example-do tend to discount the future more heavily, are less health-conscious and future oriented. This can lead to a particular discourse about poverty: that people’s poverty is the consequence of their impulsive behaviours, and hence that poverty is in some sense the poor’s fault or failings that leads to their being poor (there would be no other good reason to be poor, right?). In a new paper coming out in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Gillian presents a different analysis of this phenomenon. What if the relative present-orientation that often goes with poverty were not a failing or weakness (or some kind of primordial character trait), but a sensible response to certain kinds of … Continue reading “The behavioural constellation of deprivation”

Hitting the Wall & Blue/Orange

17 Nov 2016

I am very excited about our imminent production of Matthew Warburton’s Hitting the Wall at Northern Stage on November 30th. In 2012, Wayne Soutter, a middle-aged father of two, attempted to swim the as-yet unconquered sea-channel between the Mull of Kintyre and Ireland. Hitting The Wall is a theatrical recreation of that extraordinary endeavour. Cold seas. Strong winds. Treacherous tides and 50 foot jellyfish. What could possibly go right? Based on blogs and interviews with Wayne and Paul (the boat captain on the attempt), Hitting The Wall asks why we choose to do things that might better be left undone. It’s going to be fun evening, with a chance to discuss the mad endeavour (actually, both mad endeavours, the swim and play about the swim) with the creative team afterwards. You can buy tickets from here. I am also equally ecstatic to announce that Straw Bear’s next production after that will be Joe Penhall’s extraordinary Blue/Orange, on March 24th and 25th 2017. Blue/Orange is about many things, most especially schizophrenia, race and Welsh rarebit, and was described (when it originally appeared in 2000) as the finest new play in the English language for a generation. We are presenting it in association … Continue reading “Hitting the Wall & Blue/Orange”