From Pompey Skeptics: We welcome back our Honorary President Professor Jim Al-Khalili with What's Next? Predicting what the future will look like is not new. It is also a notoriously unreliable enterprise. Science fiction writers and Hollywood movies constantly paint imaginative pictures of future worlds, but what does today’s cutting-edge science tell us about the way we will actually be living in the decades to come? In this talk, based on his book What’s Next?, Jim Al-Khalili looks at the challenges facing humanity and what science can do to tackle the biggest of them. By considering the impact of such fields as nanotechnology, genetic engineering and artificial intelligence, he argues that the world not likely to be all shiny utopian marvels – nor is it going to be a dystopian hell. Along with the the known ‘knowns’ (technologies based on today’s scientific advances) and the known ‘unknowns’ (such as predictable advances in healthcare, transport or robotics) are there going to be any unknown ‘unknowns’ (utterly unexpected and fantastical breakthoughs that no one has yet dared imagine)? Probably, yes – whatever it holds, the future is bound to surprise us. But we need to prepare for it and examine the possible implications, ethical or otherwise, of these scientific advances.
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Here's the blurb from the Humanists UK website: The fashion world is seeing a resurgence in the trend for modesty, alongside more pressure from religious groups for women to cover up. As conservative clothing and veils become more popular among women across the world, how can we place this in the context of the long history of patriarchal female sexual repression? And what can science tell us about female sexual behaviour and the moral double standard placed on women? Science journalist Angela Saini, author of Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong, explores the biology and history of female sexuality, and what it means for women and men today. Angela Saini is a science journalist, who presents science programmes on BBC Radio 4 and the World Service. She was the launch presenter of the BBC's The Food Chain and has hosted More or Less and Material World. Her latest book, Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong and the New Research That's Rewriting the Story examines the mistakes and biases that have plagued scientific research on women for more than a century, and the empowering new work that promises to transform the way we think about women’s minds, bodies and place in the human evolutionary story. Her writing has appeared in Cell, Vogue, GQ, The Guardian, Observer, The Times, Prospect, New Scientist, Wallpaper, Marie Claire, Science, New Humanist, Wired, Stylist and The Economist, among others. In 2015 she won the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Kavli Science Journalism gold award for a BBC Radio 4 documentary she presented about birdsong and human language. In 2012 she won the Association of British Science Writers’ award for best news story, for a feature in The Guardian about the misuse of statistics in courtrooms, and she was named European Science Journalist of the Year by the Euroscience Foundation in 2009. She has also been shortlisted for both the Asian Women of Achievement Award and the Asian Achiever Award. The Rosalind Franklin Lecture, held from 2016 as part of the Humanists UK annual lecture series, explores and celebrates the contribution of women towards the promotion and advancement of humanism in the UK and around the world.
In my latest video on the Coarse Camerawork YouTubechannel I attempt to shoot some wide panoramas:
https://youtu.be/_eVyzSdMWXA Watch to the end, for the ... um ... blooper reel. 
It seems like the market is suddenly inundated with new large-format cameras. This particular example is an interesting concept, though I can't help feeling it's not really exploiting the advantages of large format analogue photography - namely the use of movements. https://youtu.be/PyqH_fUl9WY Available from Ebay, this un-named "Large Format camera body" is apparently manufactured to order (3D printed) in Italy for €130 and can be shipped to the UK for €25. That's about £127 at current exchange rates, which is probably the lowest price available for a new 5x4 camera. Of course, you'll also need a lens and film holders (and dark-cloth, and cable release, and tripod, and film, and processing, and....) 
If sports photography is your thing (or even if it isn't) check out these different takes on the Winter Olympics posted by Fstoppers:
https://fstoppers.com/originals/top-10-winter-olympic-photographs-226842 
(Via Derrick Story, of TheDigitalStory on Facebook)
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Paul S. JenkinsPaul is a writer, photographer, and erstwhile podcaster Archives
April 2022
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