Laws of attraction in action
January 31, 2006

This year's Scientists Meet the Media gathering at the Royal Society showed that boffins know how to party, too. Nic Fleming reports

...The heady mix of scholarly gossip and highbrow chitchat was also enriched by the contributions of Nature, Science and New Scientist writers, the authors Dr Matt Ridley and Sanjida O'Connell, the New York agent John Brockman, Craig Venter, the legendary American"bad boy" of genomics, the zoological sex therapist Dr Tatiana (Olivia Judson), the mutant expert Armand Leroi and the Sky TV meteorologist, Lisa Burke.

Oliver Morton, Nature; David Goodhart, Prospect

Science notebook by Anjana Ahuja
Doctors, athletes and prostitutes: the deadly common denominator
January 30, 2006

• ON TO cheerier matters. When people turn up to a dinner before the appointed 7pm start, you know it's going to be fun. And so it was on Tuesday when the literary agent John Brockman hosted a gathering in Soho. I showed up at 7.10pm, depriving myself of ten minutes of serious schmoozing.

Brian Eno was there, as were Richard Dawkins and Simon Baron-Cohen, the autism researcher. Colin Blakemore, the head of the Medical Research Council, came along, joining the authors Olivia Judson, Matt Ridley, Armand Leroi and David Bodanis (the fastest talker I've ever met). Ian McEwan dropped by. The editors of Nature, New Scientist and Prospect mingled amiably. I ended up sharing a pudding plate with Craig Venter, the Celera Genomics entrepreneur who helped to unravel the human genome and in whose honour the dinner was held. [...continue]