Author Archives: Campbell Aitken

Most academics’ careers rest on their published output. This article from The Conversation (25th September 2013) shows that if you’re a woman, if English is not your first language or if you’re still a student, publishing sooner than later is particularly important.   … Continue reading →

I charge clients by the hour, so I record my time on an Excel spreadsheet. It’s extraordinary how often I return to my desk, enter a new start time and realise that I’ve just spent 20 minutes making a cup … Continue reading →

Only twice in five years of freelancing have I been sent a document so poorly written that I simply couldn’t edit it. The first time this happened was a year or more ago; the client’s first language was Sinhalese, which is … Continue reading →

Yesterday morning Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald’s partner, David Miranda, was detained at Heathrow airport under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act of 2000. Official UK documents state that only 0.06% of all people detained are kept for more than six … Continue reading →

The word ‘significant’ is often used to mean ‘important’ or ‘substantial’ or ‘meaningful’, or ‘signifying’ something notable, and all these definitions are fine in most contexts. However, when a document involves quantitative data and even the minimum of statistical analysis, … Continue reading →

Earlier this year I passed a significant milestone: five years as a freelance editor. Happy birthday Express Editing Writing and Research! I wish I could report that the business and I celebrated in some way, maybe sharing an expensive bottle … Continue reading →

My PhD research was all about residential water consumption, and I completed it surrounded by engineers working on all sorts of practical water-related projects, so I have a longstanding interest in urban infrastructure. But I’ve never heard of anything like this. John … Continue reading →

The world’s first meat grown from stem cells was recently eaten in a hamburger – and it wasn’t very juicy, apparently. Nevertheless, this development offers much more than a slightly disappointing culinary innovation. Nearly one-third of the world’s ice-free land is already used … Continue reading →

Men of almost all nationalities can expect to die earlier than their female counterparts; in Japan the average difference is seven years. Of course, it’s largely our own fault; men die from lung cancer (which essentially means tobacco smoking) at more than twice the … Continue reading →

According to Nafeez Ahmed’s article in The Guardian, 10th July 2013, this is the conclusion of a paper by James Hansen’s paper soon to be published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Most remaining fossil fuel carbon is in … Continue reading →