January

After rather unbelievably reading a Tweet from someone within my social media sphere who stated that he believed in the Mayan Prophecy (you know, the whole 2012-the-world’s-going-to-end-nonsense). I felt compelled to write a post about my take on the whole end of the world scenario.

It’s now the most popular post on my blog with an average of around 2000 visits to that page alone per week. At times it’s been as high as 15,000 per week. It’s also been the reason for some disturbed individuals sending me nasty messages because I don’t believe in their crazy fantasy world. Hey ho.

Some outtakes from Brian’s Horizon on Gravity were put up on YouTube.

I also found out that I was going to be working on the new X-Files movie. Some of my Tweets from that time (1, 2, 3, 4) are pretty obvious about that fact, but only really in retrospect…

February

February was really all about our trip to San Francisco and the TED conference where Brian spoke.

I was also working on the very fabulous film Water Lilies.

March

Brian was made Professor while we were still in San Francisco, just after his 40th birthday at the beginning of March. That was pretty cool!

My mum came to visit for a bit and during that time we went beachcombing on the Thames and found some cool stuff.

April

This was the coolest month! Right after visiting CERN with both Phil Plait and Chris Morris, I was delivered the super top secret X-Files script. I had a terrible cold and, I learned later in the year, had asthma which was making me very ill. That is my excuse for looking so utterly terrible in this video. :)

May

OK, wait, THIS was the coolest month. Apart from Brian going off to film his Horizon on Time, it included getting my hair cut and dyed like Dana Scully, then flying off to Cannes to ‘interview’ Harrison Ford and having a chat with X-Files’ producer Frank Spotnitz.

June

June was X-Files-tastic!

Excitement was definitely building for the X-Files film and I was caught up in it all. Towards the end of the month, I went to LA for the LA Film Festival to attend a special screening of a couple clips from the film, along with a Q&A with David Duchovny, Frank Spotnitz and Chris Carter.

July

X-Files! X-Files! X-Files!

The film premiered at the end of the month and Chris, Frank, David and Gillian attended the London premiere. The day after the premiere Chris and Frank did a signing at Forbidden Planet.

August

Brian and I went to SciFoo in Silicon Valley and had a fabulous holiday in LA being touristy.

September

This is where things start getting a bit weird for me as I found out I was pregnant so had a bit of a awful time over the rest of the autumn dealing with morning sickness and anxiety over scans and blood tests and the like, all the while being unable to talk about it with anyone.

September was also when CERN swtiched on. Along with all the excitement of the whole build up to it came all the nasty emails from the idiots who thought it was going to destroy the Universe and who thought that Brian was somehow the Sith Lord in charge of the destruction of the human race. All that wasn’t too entertaining. Honestly, it’s just not fun at all to be newly pregnant and then receiving emails calling the father of your unborn child the ‘Black Hand of Death’.

Brian on Newsnight the night of CERN’s switch on reminded me exactly why I love him so much.

October

The main things I was thinking of in October were morning sickness. Obama and Jonathan Ross.

I started keeping a pregnancy diary in October as I wasn’t blogging about it, but after a few entries it was pretty much just, “Nauseated. Constipated. Tired. Fat.’ so I decided to give it up. I realised that even in retrospect it would be boring.

My obsession with Obama, of course, was not unique to me. I mainly kept out of the whole election thing on my blog this time around as the Rightwing Christian Republican Dumbshit Bush-lovers (yes, for long-time readers, I mean Amy Proctor, Bull-headed Donna and the other one) caused me such grief before, during and after the last election (did you know that one of them tried to get me fired from my job on Sunshine?!), I wasn’t up for a second round. I was just hoping that they’d get their reward in November when Obama won. And they did. The twunts.

Now, Jonathan Ross.

The whole Daily Mail-fuelled madness just confirmed to me that most people are absolute illogical fucktards and that includes MANY people in positions of ‘power’ in the media. This whole episode has given me LESS hope for the human race than ever before… Thank Christ Obama changed that in November.

November

OBAMAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!

This month I was up for a new job on telly. I’ve not done any telly for a few years now, mainly because all the web producing I’ve been doing has been keeping me busy. Also because I was enjoying using my brain, being creative, being able to make decisions *myself* which is pretty much unheard of for most TV presenters.

This job, however, seemed different. Not only was it a ‘tech’ programme, but it was a retro tech programme AND it wasn’t a presenter’s role, but an on-camera expert role. So I did the meetings and the screentest and crossed my fingers that I’d get it cos it sounded like it’d be a lot of fun. I had to wait until December for a decision.

This month was also the most stressful pregnancy-wise. Along with waiting for scans and blood tests looking for chromosomal abnormalities in the baby, I also had to have blood tests for various diseases. Having an HIV test- no matter how sure you are- has this funny way of making one become highly illogical. ‘I wonder what the chances are of it turning up a decade later? Two decades later?!! Maybe it DOES and they’ve just not figured that out yet!!! Oh. God. What will I do when they tell me I’ve got HIV?! Oh. God. I’m feeling a bit ill. It’s HIV, I know it.’

Not fun.

Everyone I’ve told about my HIV test worries who has had an HIV test themselves said they went through EXACTLY the same thing. Every. Single. One. So glad to know I’m not the only lunatic… (For the record, I don’t have HIV, nor do I have Hep C or Syphilis. w00t!)

Also, this month Jonathan Ross surprised me by asking me to be his Neu Meeja advisor (or whatever). First thing I did? Got him on Twitter. He’s been Tweeting up a storm!

December

I found out I got the TV job. It’s called Electric Dreams and will be on in April on BBC4. Right before the Christmas break I did the first bit of filming and it’s been good fun.

Brian and I also found out that we’d got a book deal to write a kids’ book on Physics. So that’s going to keep us busy…

This month, generally, has been good mainly because I was finally able to announce my pregnancy. It was getting increasingly difficult for me to hide it as I was getting pretty big fairly early on. This is me a couple days ago.

The other day Brian and I went off to Llandudno in Wales to visit our friend. I got a lovely snap of Brian and Peter talking politics whilst walking along the beach…

And today, the last day of December and 2008, I’m looking forward to an exciting year ahead. I hope you all have a good year!!

As of this writing, teh interwebs is alight with conversations about his quote and – again as of this writing- it’s the fourth most popular Digg. Brian’s been getting requests for interviews from all over the planet.

There are about three people behind these scares. They have no knowledge, but very loud voices. Anyone who has been following blog posts about CERN and the LHC will have seen JTankers pop up everywhere spewing shite. He always refers to the main centre of this crap, the LHC Concerns site.

The other day the “death threats” article was written about there. Brian responded:

Dear all,

I’m quoted in the article posted here as being rather abusive to people who are worried about the LHC – I’d like to clarify!

I certainly don’t think that people who are worried about new scientific endeavors are “tw*ts” ! Skepticism is a valuable and vital part of our society, and one which is perhaps sadly lacking in public debate. For the record, the concerns about LHC are certainly wrong from a scientific perspective – nature is rather more robust than we give her credit for, and nothing we can do at the low energies we can manage at LHC or anywhere else in the foreseeable future will affect us in any way. But – I would always encourage a rational debate about future advances in science, and in that sense I support the goals of this forum.

What I would say is that it is not sensible to hold an opinion in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Whilst I understand that much of the language of particle physics is opaque, there does come a time when it is worth accepting the views of experts. The analogy I would give is the design of aircraft wings – I am happy to trust an expert in aerodynamics to get it right rather than offer my own opinion about what shape they should be. It’s really the case that the particle physics community are sensible, rational human beings who go about their research because they believe that exploring the subatomic world is good for our civilization, not to mention interesting. It is also true that if anyone, including myself, had any doubt about the safety of what we are doing, we would stop immediately. I and all my colleagues consider our personal safety and the safety of our families to be FAR more important than the search for the Higgs particle – indeed, if the risk were even as high as 1 in a billion, or whatever people quote, then I would be campaigning with you to stop it.

But honestly – the case advanced against the LHC is based on the rather loud pronouncements of a couple of people who really do not have the knowledge to make them. This “jtankers” chap who posts all over the place began one statement claiming that we collide particles together at twice the speed of light, and Otto Rossler, whilst clearly a distinguished biochemist, has based his argument on a pretty basic error in General Relativity. Now I am not criticizing these gentlemen for offering an opinion, but wisdom comes from noticing when ones opinion is disproved by evidence. This is the key to science.

So, in summary – I support this forum as a place where skeptical voices can be raised, but skepticism must go hand in hand with rationality. When theories are shown to be false, the correct thing to do is to move on.

Yours,

Brian Cox.

**EDIT** Brian did a little ‘diary’ piece in the Telegraph this weekend which mentions the ‘twats’ thing.

I won’t go too much into what he wrote, because I’d like you to go there and read it, but he wrote about how he’s never really been interested in science, but enjoyed Chris’ article in the Guardian yesterday. Sizemore said:

Science needs the arts. It takes a satirical writer like Morris to reveal the absurdity and potential combined in something as jaw dropping as a God Particle emerging in a Compact Muon Solenoid. If this were not science it’d fit just as snugly on Brass Eye.

I wrote a reply and tried to post it on the blog, but all text formatting is lost entirely within the comments so it all came out as one, unreadable blob of text. I will post my reply here, link to it from there, and hopefully they’ll sort out the comments so i can post it in its entirety there. (below the fold)

Yes, I’m being facetious.

The Arts (and I include Religion in that) and Science are two sides of the same coin. A Poet may work to convey the emotions felt when looking at a sunset. An Astronomer may work to prove that the Sun isn’t actually travelling across the sky, but that the Earth is spinning on its axis whilst it travels around the Sun in a cosmic dance. A Musician may work to write symphonies which move us so greatly we think that playing them to our children will make them better people. A Scientist may work to find a way of using inaudible sound frequencies to create images of your unborn child. A Religious Writer may come up with a story about how the Universe was started by a supernatural being. Physicists at CERN are working to find out exactly what the Universe was like less than a billionth of a second after Time began. Both the Artist and the Scientist are looking to explain the human experience.

The role of the Artist is to seek out the profound and re-package it in a way that allows the rest of us to take a shortcut to ‘the answer’. Science, however, requires one to work just a little bit to see the profundity. Take one sentence from the paragraph you chose from Chris Morris’ article:

“We are making the coldest place in the universe.”

It’s actually EASY to reply, “Yea, whatever, that’s boring” to that. It takes a tiny bit of work to really think about what that sentence means, to realise the enormity of it. The diameter of the visible Universe is thought to be 92 billion light years across. There are 100 billion galaxies each containing 100 billion Stars. Some of those Stars are so much larger than our Sun that were they in the Sun’s position they would engulf all the planets up to and including Jupiter. And at CERN, we are making the 27km tunnel, which is located 100 metres underground, colder than the space between the Stars in our ridiculously enormous Universe.

WE are doing that. Not ‘the Scientists’, not ‘them’. WE. US. All of us. Just like WE went to the Moon, we are all a part of what is happening at CERN. To ignore it, to dismiss it or even to try and convince ones self that it’s ‘a waste of money’, ‘pointless’ or ‘elitist’ is, I think, to choose to deny yourself the chance to truly experience life.

It seems to be culturally acceptable to say, ‘I don’t understand science’ or ‘I think science is boring’ or ‘I don’t get what the big deal is about science’ in a way that one never hears about the arts. ‘I don’t understand music.’ ‘I think literature is boring.’ ‘I don’t get what the big deal is about art.’ Honestly, would you ever hear those latter sentences on something like The Late Review? Of course not. But I have heard people, supposed ‘intellectuals’, utter the former. They may be ‘good with words’, but in my eyes they are using ‘vocabulary’ to surf along the top of the true depths of the human experience.

The problem is, of course, that the vast majority of our politicians are Arts graduates. The vast majority of the people working in our Media, even within Science programming, are Arts graduates. Our celebrities and the famous for being famous are more often than not from the Arts. It is culturally acceptable, and I may even go so far as to say that it is encouraged within our culture, to be scientifically illiterate.

It’s seemingly easy for everyone to forget that the reason we are able to enjoy ‘Art’ is because of the scientific foundations on which it is built. From the ancient chemists experimenting to create pigments, paints and dyes from plants and animals around them, all the way to the last experiment at CERN that developed the World Wide Web, which allows people to watch last week’s Doctor Who on the iPlayer. The Arts has always needed Science. Maybe it’s time to give something back.

Science needs Artists. It needs people who have dedicated themselves to communicating emotions. People who may not have a science education, but who ‘get it’, even if they don’t really ‘understand’ it. People who take the tiniest amount of time to think about the remarkable discoveries being made and *feel* something (if you can watch this and not at least well up a little, then I can’t believe you are human!). People who see the awe and wonder in the real, physical Universe and want to share that with everyone else. People who understand that the discoveries being made really are for all mankind. People who are practised at recognising the profound and ‘re-packaging’ it for others to discover.

Scientists are not some other species. They are human beings. They fall in love. They fall out of love. They have parents. They have children. They have friends. They have favourite films, favourite books, favourite paintings, favourite songs. They are not disconnected from the world of Art and Emotion in the way that many Artists are disconnected from the world of Science.

Science cuts through cultural differences, it cuts through emotions, it cuts through interpretation and tries directly to answer the big questions. But after thousands of years of using the Arts as a filter through which we see someone else’s interpretation of what ‘the answer’ is, we have seemingly forgotten how to recognise the big questions.

How did we get here?
What are we made of?
Why do we exist at all?

I think this is what Science is all about- ‘the big questions’.

Last night, Phil did a talk at Skeptics in the Pub. I was so happy to see Andrew Jaffe and Violet Berlin who both wanted to meet Phil. They only got a few brief moments with him as Phil was mobbed by the throngs of people there.

Phil is now on his way back home. I think he had an excellent time and hopefully he’ll be back soon.

This afternoon, I’m off to the House of Commons for the Intelligent Robots in Science and Society seminar. I’m really looking forward to it. I met up with Julian Mayers this morning (he’s producer of the CERN Podcast) and found out that he’s going as well! Weeeeee!!

After today… X Files…

Still, I think it’s so beautiful that my temporary partial blindness is acceptable.

Saying that…

Brian and I just had an excellent day with Ed Vaizey, MP for Wantage and Didcot. Conservative. Brian met him during the course of this whole STFC funding crisis thing (Newsnight piece here) and really liked him a lot. Ed came out to CERN to visit ATLAS and CMS, have a look at the tunnel, meet some of the VIPs as well as loads of the British scientists working at CERN. He asked tons of questions and was really into it all. In fact, by the time I got him, he’d already blogged about it! Yes, he has a blog.

He was such a nice, funny and NORMAL guy that I thought, ‘I’d vote for him.’ Now, I’ve not had a look at his voting record and I’d expect there are TONS of things we’d probably disagree on, so before anyone jumps on me saying, ‘But he voted for this/He didn’t vote for that’, I’m talking about him as a person rather than as a politician. He’s an interesting, down-to-earth, *intelligent* person who was just, well, normal. I genuinely liked him. I’d much rather have someone I can relate to, someone who I can imagine in my group of friends, in government than people who I don’t understand at all. I mean, I genuinely can’t imagine sitting down for lunch or dinner with Gordon Brown and actually being able to have a normal conversation about anything.

As for disagreeing with his politics, well, I think the only politician I seem to mainly agree with is Obama anyway- I tend to agree with the Democrats most often (I can’t think of when I’ve really disagreed with them), I agree with the Republicans almost never, I agree with Labour about half the time, Conservatives half the time, Lib Dems… I think the last I heard from them I thought, ‘WTF?!’ I don’t even agree with Brian on politics 100% of the time. So, I will reiterate, I’ve not looked at Ed Vaizey’s voting record, so there may certainly be things we disagree with… Though I expect if there was anything I particularly disagreed with (I’m socially very liberal, so, on the whole, meddling in people’s personal lives is something I disagree with, for example), then I expect I could spend an hour with him, arguing, and he’d have the proper understanding of the issue. ;)

Maybe it’s best that I can’t vote in the UK.

I was particularly keen on the fact that Ed is the Shadow Minister For Culture. I’m hoping that he starts to think like Brian and I and understand that Science should be an integral part of popular culture. Maybe then we’ll stop seeing people on tv joyously BRAGGING that they are clueless about science. Can you imagine a BBC Breakfast presenter being *proud* of the fact that they have never seen a Shakespeare play or ‘don’t get’ Beethoven or that Francis Bacon’s paintings are ‘way over their heads’? Of course not. Amongst the ‘educated classes’ being knowledgeable about the arts is a given. Being seen to scorn, dislike or, most worrryingly, be seen to be too stupid to understand science is almost a point of pride.

What the hell is that all about?!

January

Me and Charlie Brooker

I was doing lots of stuff for Sunshine and Channel4.com, saw Ben Folds in concert, the Sunshine trailer was leaked by resourceful fans and I was interviewed for Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe.

February

/Cat blog

MASSIVE Sunshine stuff, loads of Channel 4 stuff, went to LIFT where Brian spoke and my Screepwipe interview was broadcast.

Watch Video

March

Danny Boyle on the Sunshine set

I know the photo above wasn’t taken in March, but the month was so freakin’ mental I didn’t take any photos. I was doing 7 days a week, 18 hour days mainly for Sunshine- press and bloggers’ screenings, press interviews, cast and crew screening, Manchester screening, messageboards, emails, IMDB, generally mentalness. There was also Channel 4 stuff, a discussion I took part in at the ICA, went to Cambridge with Brian who spoke at their Science Festival… and I’ve also got ‘Milton Keynes’ in my diary on the 16th. I’ve got no memory of what that was about at all.

April

Danny Boyle, Cillian Murphy, Brian

Another insane month. Sunshine was released, screening and Q&A with Danny at the Ritzy cinema, trip to Russia for the premiere, the 28 Weeks Later premiere… and I bought some ‘Sunshine’ props and costumes. :)

May

Tiger in my face

My Sunshine props and costumes were delivered. :) Was starting to get properly frustrated with the Channel 4 stuff, was weaning off Sunshine, I went to the Arthur C. Clarke Awards nominations, did a Social Media Club photo walk with Lloyd, went to Anna and Julian’s wedding and started looking at secondary schools for my son.

June

Brian at the Star Wars exhibition

Trying to get back into life and recover generally from Sunshine insanity. Sunshine was at the IMAX, spoke at Music Tank, Daywatch screening, more secondary school stuff (including an entrance exam… yikes!)

July

Me at the Gormley exhibition

Secondary school interview (yikes!), started on the Sunshine DVD release, bit of Daywatch work, David Hoyle started Magazine again… my son was offered a place at a secondary school (yay!)

August

Brian, Mo, Benny Wong, Cliff Curtis

Sunshine DVD release, 28 Weeks Later DVD release, Daywatch, more David Hoyle at Magazine… QR Codes.

September

QR Codes

QR Codes for 28 Weeks Later, interviewed about QR on various tv and radio programmes, my son started at his new school, I was invited to talk to the Nuclear Industry Association, recorded the Nature podcast sponsor stings, went to more David Hoyle shows, saw Prince’s final aftershow gig, got properly ill.

October

CERN

Still ill. Started working on a project looking at the Ageing Population, went to CERN twice – the first time with Kevin Eldon and Simon Munnery, the second time with Quentin Wilson- took part in a Nuclear Industry Association roundtable discussion, met Arvind from Slingshot Studios.

November

David Hoyle

Lots of meetings, dinners and lunches. Ageing Project roundtable meeting and dinner… And, of course, the wonderful David Hoyle.

December

My father came to visit, I attended the Juno bloggers’/Twitterers’ screening, fell in LOVE with ‘Juno’ (you’ll be hearing more about this), started Twittering (finally), went to see the King Tut exhibition, attended the Nuclear Industry Association annual dinner, my son had his birthday, recorded a Digital Planet with Gareth Mitchell and Bill Thompson, more talks with Slingshot Studios, David Soul…then…

…today.

After all that, I really need to rest over the next few weeks. I feel like I’ve still not recovered from my illness properly and still need to catch up on all of the sleep I lost last spring with Sunshine… My next 10 days will consist of POWER RESTING. I won’t do any work (except for watching the pile of screeners I’ve got), I won’t worry about whether or not I’ll have any work in the new year… I will just relax in the most hardcore way…