Marek Ziebart

The agony and the Brextasy... OK - let me preface this that I respect the fact that many people voted for Brexit on a completely rational basis. I respect your opinions, and I want to remain friends with you always. But the tide has turned on all this. Over a hundred polls show the result over-turned, while less than ten show the opposite. The current margin is 8% in favour of remaining, and that is a 12% swing. A million people turned up in London to march for staying in the EU (and I was proud to be there), about 200 turned up to hear Nigel Farage pontificate about his own self-importance. 5.5 million people have signed the petition to scrap article 50, while 0.5 million have signed the proposal to leave without a deal. The evidence is so clearly there. Moreover, the original referendum was so flawed - no one who understands EU finances (OK - perhaps no one fully understands that at all, but I can speak about the parts I know) would accept we can use our EU budget to give the NHS £35...

Just how big is Africa? I was looking at a map the other day with a friend, and he said, "Africa is just so huge compared to everything else" and I found myself thinking, "I have no idea what that really means". So I decided to figure out some way of getting a feel for it. So, here's the UK in comparison to Africa. If you walked from the south coast of England to the north of Scotland you would walk about 8° of latitude. Not much help to understand the distance though, eh? Well, a reasonably fit adult walks about 1km in 12 minutes. So at that rate, assuming you walk for 8 hours each day it would take you about 22 days to complete the journey. Do the same thing for Africa and you would walk for 200 days. That is about 7 months continual walking. The diagram shows you can fit about nine United Kingdoms along the North-South extent of Africa.

On the fall of Stephen Kevin Bannon So long then, Steve Bannon You went too far, right? Does anyone believe in you now? And when you took that appointment Did you ask yourself “Has the world gone mad?” When Icarus flew Too close to the sun The wax in his wings Melted. You, who are nothing but words, All trite, and insincere Could not give Donald The words required. You wanton fool, Not melted, fired. Marek Ziebart, London 2017

Where were you on 9/11? So, where were you on 9/11? So powerful was that day's impact that since then 9/11 has pointed uniquely to September 11 th 2001. A day when evil men flew hijacked airplanes into the Twin Towers of the New York Trade Centre, as well as into the Pentagon. Everyone has a story to tell of that day, and now, exactly fifteen years later, I’ll tell you mine. On the 11 th of September, 2001 I was flying to Salt Lake City in the United States of America. I was in the air, in US airspace, when American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower. I had landed that morning at Newark Airport, and I made my way across the concourse to make my connecting flight to Salt Lake. At about that time, there at Newark Airport, United Airlines Flight 93 was taken by the terrorists. But for the whims of luck and fate it was not my plane they took. I landed at Salt Lake City and made my way to the hotel, flipped on CNN to catch up on the news. And so the story unfolded, liv...

The night that Barack Obama was elected president of the United States of America I stayed up to watch his victory speech (and that involved staying awake until something like 4:00AM in the UK). I am not ashamed to admit that I shed a few tears while I listened to this gracious, dignified, intelligent and resilient man. He gave me hope for a better world. And despite the terrible backlash against him he has delivered on that promise, true to the ideals of the American people: ... "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". I cannot help but contrast what Barack Obama has achieved in the last couple of years with the atrocities visited upon innocent people by IS. The fight goes on, between tyranny and freedom, between ignorance and knowledge, between hate and love. I am not a religious man, but if I were I w...

I'm generally interested in what makes us human, but also in what makes exceptional humans - how they lived, what they did that led them to make extraordinary impact. I am writing this blog entry in Frankfurt Airport, and I'm very tired so the subject matter is close to my heart. Like a lot of people today I probably don't get enough sleep, and I am certainly interested in how I can make the most of the sleep I do get. Over the past few years I have collected snippets of research on sleep and followed the thinking of specialists. I have experimented with various ideas and I feel ready to draw some conclusions. Of course, I am not a professor of sleep - none of what follows is proven in any rigorous way, but (in the fashion of the natural philosophers I admire so much) it has all been subjected to my own experiments. I hope you find it interesting, thought provoking and useful. In this first post on the subject I'll discuss the sleep cycle and napping. In the next pos...

Eulogy for the Awesome Professor Seymour Laxon It was with great sadness that I learnt of the recent death of my friend and colleague, Seymour Laxon. I've worked at University College London (UCL) since 2000 and I met Seymour soon after joining. We have a mutual friend in ex-British Antarctic Survey scientist Dave Mantripp. Now, part of the problem of working at a place like UCL is that you begin to think that exceptional is the norm. People like Seymour change the world; they effect that change in a quiet, determined way. They are the key scientific figures of their time. Look at the list of Seymour’s accomplishments, the work that he and Duncan Wingham and their group have done: it is breath-taking. Moreover, it is breath-takingly important – Seymour was working at the very heart of issues that will affect everyone on the planet. Just read that back again: everyone on the planet. None of that went to Seymour’s head – he was one of the most professional, dedicated s...