Vote for me! (Please!)

I'm so excited to have been nominated for the 3 Quarks Daily Science Prize for the best blog post in science writing! (Thanks, J!) The nomination is for my post on the Evolution of Chloroplasts, which was featured in a recent Carnival of Evolution.

But now I need your help. Public voting is open for only four more days. It closes on June 7 at 11:59 PM (NYC time). If I make it to the top 20, then the editors of 3 Quarks Daily will consider whether it should go into the final round, which is judged by... Richard Dawkins! (Be still my beating heart. Richard Dawkins reading my blog? Gosh!)


So please, go here to vote and pass on the word! Thank you. 

Gratuitous self promotion.

My recent post on the Evolution of Chloroplasts: endosymbiosis and horizontal gene transfer was featured in the May 2010 edition of Blog Carnival of Evolution, this month hosted by the official blog for Springer Verlag's journal, Evolution: Education and Outreach! I am delighted.


Thanks to Bjørn Østman for the invitation to submit my article. 

Sigmund Freud, Ringtails and Mr Behemoth

I am feeling thoroughly guilty about having neglected my blog for so long. I plead work, uni exams, post-uni exams relaxation, and generalised pottering and time wasting. At least I'm feeling relaxed. (And my uni results have made me a very happy person! Biology is bliss.)

A couple of bits of news. Firstly, I have a CD coming out this month. It's from my previous incarnation as a playwright/librettist. The last major work I wrote (with composer Andrew Ford) was "Night and Dreams: the death of Sigmund Freud", which toured the Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide Festivals earlier this decade, performed by tenor Gerald English. ABC Classic FM made a studio recording, and now it's being released by Decca. You can read about the piece here and see the nice things the press said here.

If you happen to want to buy the CD, you can order it from Buywell Just Classical.

Also, I'd like to introduce you to a friend of mine, if you're unfamiliar with his work. Ben Popjie (aka Mr Behemoth) is a Melbourne writer and comedian with a fine line in brutal and well-wrought satire. He's started a new blog on Blogspot: Ben Pobjie's Wonderful World of Objects and also writes a weekly column for New Matilda. Ben's wit regularly has me chortling, and his political perspectives are astute.

And just to ensure that I'm not entirely off-topic with this post, a photo of a family of ringtail possums that lives just outside our back door. I took this photo after my husband attempted to remove the bougainvillea growing there (a non-native plant... pffft), without our realising that they had begun building a drey in it. They were indignant, as you can see. Needless to say, the bougainvillea is staying.

Flannel Flower Gloat Moment

The photo I posted here a while back of the flannel flower (Actinotus helianthi) I'm growing has been chosen for today's Botany Photo of the Day published by UBC Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant Research.

Which is nice.

Just as jolly is that I've sold my first photo. The Herbarium had an art exhibition over recent weeks, "Our Hidden Talents", to which the staff were encouraged to contribute. I entered four photos, and someone liked this one enough to part with ready cash for it. Heck.


I took this photo, "After the Fire", in February this year, while on the NSW Herbarium Plant Science Internship's field trip to the NSW Central Coast. It's a burnt-out tree in Awaba State Forest.