Old writer on the block

The writing diary of a well-mellowed science writer who cares about the public understanding of science and knows the ropes. This blog bounces between my curiosity, the daily realities of professional writing, the joy of pursuing nature, and my recycling of ideas that won't be in some book or other as far as I can see, but still needed sharing. I welcome comments and suggestions! Spam will be blocked and reported. For my books, see http://members.ozemail.com.au/~macinnis/writing/index.htm

Monday, 28 March 2022

Was Ramanujan wrong, or wrongly reported?

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 Most recreational mathematicians know the story of Godfrey Hardy’s taxi. In brief, Hardy called on his sick colleague, Srinivasa Ramanujan....
Thursday, 24 March 2022

Collatz’ conjecture

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 Number crunchers know that the word conjecture is always a warning that by the pricking of my sums, something evil this way comes . Conjec...
Tuesday, 15 March 2022

Once in a thousand years

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This is from my book for bright young people, Playwiths . Consider the number of years between events described as “once in a thousand years...
Thursday, 3 March 2022

A question of class

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This is another selection from  Mr Darwin's Incredible Shrinking World , my social history of science in the year 1859. Find out more he...
Saturday, 26 February 2022

The birth of the tourist

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This is drawn from Mr Darwin's Incredible Shrinking World , a social history of science in the year 1859. Find out more here . Travell...
Saturday, 12 February 2022

Oersted's experiment

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 This is from a book I am about to start pitching: Hans Oersted is remembered in the name of the unit of magnetic field strength, the oerste...
Sunday, 30 January 2022

Of timetables and tourism

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I have been busy, cleaning up old books, so here's a bit of new stuff I have written for one of them.  Despite what my publishers often ...
Friday, 14 January 2022

Swimming naked and other scandals

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 This is taken from my LONG Australian history, You Missed a Bit , which is much cheaper as an e-book . Today, swimming is among Australia’s...
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Peter Macinnis
Sydney, NSW, Australia
Peter Macinnis turned to writing after his promising career as a chiaroscuro player was tragically cut short by a caravaggio crash during the Trompe L'Oeil endurance race. He recently did remarkably well in the early rounds of the celebrity underwater cooking program, Moister Chef, but he was disqualified for using dried fruits and desiccated coconut. He has a pet leech named Gladys, which has lived in a container on his desk for the last six months, as part of another book, and he is an expert echidna handler and ant lion wrangler. He wrote both the score and the libretto for the acclaimed opera Manon Troppo.

Sorry, that’s not quite right. I write and sometimes broadcast about science, for young and old. I write mainly about science, environment, or social history for both adults and children, depending on how the fit takes me on a given morning. I usually have one book coming back after editing or in production, one being edited, one being written and one or more being actively researched.
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