True story: apartment rental in my first year after graduating in chemistry/physics from a decent university (and also took cell biology as part of that course).
Rental agreement said "no animals".
I said: "That's OK, we can keep a fish!"
Because 'animals' are warm-blooded and furry, right? 🤦‍♂️

Had interesting conversation with parent of two children at the school yesterday. Seems this whole issue has divided the parent body, with some (many?) saying they support SLT and policies. School has had independent report done which - I was told - is supportive of SLT. Just reporting what I heard.

These are all *nasty* diseases, easily prevented through vaccination.

From the article (VPN needed if you're in Europe): "Vaccination coverage among kindergartners decreased for all reported vaccines in the 2024-2025 school year... Rates for the diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis vaccine among kindergartners declined again, dropping to 92.1% last school year."

One gets used to the sensation of receiving one's latest work from the publisher and spotting a typo on page 5. But it never feels good.

The irony of vaccine success is that very few people have ever witnessed the effect (either as patients or relatives) of diseases like measles, and so assume that it's all a fuss about nothing. The fact that measles has all kinds of post-infections complicationis and can kill is elided.

Out of photocopying budget, I once copied out old exam questions on spirit duplicator masters (if you're old, you'll remember them) in order to give students copies of past papers. (They loved the smell of the freshly-printed papers, of course!)

Anyone like to give that girder a little shake? (Form a queue ...)

Success happens perfectly only in the retelling, in my experience.

Very important that our students realise that we are fallible too!

Good grief - just used this to track back over the last few days for SE England. +7 degrees in some cases. What an insanely interesting website! Bookmarked on my phone.

Good article. I like the way you lead on the effect of budget cuts on weather services - this is an area where savage cuts to expenditure will have an enormous impact on people's everyday lives.

Better to do something than to do nothing.

I do absolutely agree that it's an important life lesson to learn to be grateful for what you've got/achieved rather than be disappointed in what you don't have/didn't achieve.
But not always easy.

🙏