Jon Agar

YouTube video by Jon Morrow Trotsky's Dog Live at Queens' ca. 1988

Footage has just been found of a band I was in, Trotsky's Dog.

We played gigs in Hitchin, Stevenage and Cambridge in the late 1980s. Some of our own material, but mostly covers of Stooges, Spacemen 3 and so on. A racket.

I'm the moody guitarist (r) - with hair!

Faster. Louder. More feedback

With Michael Heseltine in the news, saying the right things, I thought I'd share this.

Sarah Hogg, head of John Major's Number 10 Policy Unit, pens a rather charming portrait of what it was like to work with the man

(I'm working on a chapter on science/environment under Major and Blair at the mo)

The @stsucl.bsky.social History of Science Reading Group is back. Yesterday we discussed Helen M. Rozwadowski @oceanhistories.bsky.social , ‘Ocean literacy and public humanities’, Parks Stewardship Forum (2020) 36(3) escholarship.org/uc/item/11w5... (suggested by Janet Browne & Jordan Goodman)

One iPhone led police to gang who sent 40,000 snatched phones to China BBC News is given access to what the Met Police says is the UK's largest operation against mobile phone thefts.

"The Met Police investigation discovered street thieves were being paid up to £300 per handset - and the force said stolen devices are being sold in China for up to £4,000 each, given they are internet-enabled and more attractive for those trying to bypass censorship".
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Not far from the UK’s largest unnecessary infrastructure project

Turkmenistan Shrike, Dunwich Heath, Suffolk, being admired by lots of birders

Happy Sputnik Launch Day to those who celebrate

A TV still from Slow Horses. STS department in the background

The @stsucl.bsky.social department on TV #2

We've just selected this as our @stsucl.bsky.social OneBook. (Every year, we ask all of our students and colleagues to read one book together).

Assistant Professor – Global History of Technology - Department of History University of California, Berkeley is hiring. Apply now!

Job at UC-Berkeley: Asst. Prof. in Global History of Technology, apps due 10/10 (so soon). #history #histSTM #histsci #histphilsci

aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05065

It’s quite common in London. It’s if anything more robust than regular knotgrass so it survives pavements and paths well

Yep. As Jo says

Bristly Oxtongue, on walls of Lewes Priory for #wildflowerhour

UCL – University College London UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

We need an associate lecturer in history of modern science @stsucl.bsky.social www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

Front cover of Labour Together’s Britcard proposal. It is red and promises a ‘progressive digital identity for Britain’. The abstract imagery suggests progress (arrows) and immigration borders (the arrows are partially interrupted)

WW2 poster- a policeman’s hand takes a National Registration ID card from a plain, citizen’s hand. Text says a citizen may be asked for the card at any time

Preparing my notes for an interview on history of identity cards, back in the news because of proposals such as Labour Together’s Britcard (left). There’s a long history (see WW2 poster, right)

Here’s a thread on recent (1980s-2010s) UK ID card history, showing how Tony Blair became keen on them

Giving a talk tonight on ‘Science and politics in the national archive’, at the Athenaeum (!)

It’s about how I do history and what I find out

It’s accessible and at times entertaining

Very happy to repeat it for a more public and broader audience. If anyone interested get in touch

Two more chances to see the International Space Station tonight, with clear skies over London: straight overhead at 7.46pm and fairly high up at 9.22pm

Two more chances to see the International Space Station tonight, with clear skies over London: straight overhead at 7.46pm and fairly high up at 9.22pm

Space Station going overhead London right now. Look up

Second: Cildo Meireles’ Babel (2001). On how we tell the history of technology, on noise and ways of attending to sound, on the transition from a technology of resistance to one of state communication, and on the return of chaos as the return of the need for households to have transiter radios.

Context: we are at an @stsucl.bsky.social away day, looking at art at the Tate Modern, followed by curriculum chat

it’s white, but my new shoes are whiter

Sticky groundsel (Senecio viscosus) with some Vervain (Verbena officinalis), Hackney pavement, for #wildflowerhour

(pavement plants are #favouriteplants)

… I’m helping make a urban botany map of street plants/weeds

Including applying my hobbyist botanical knowledge to the pavement outside UUK offices in Tavistock Square. #unfundedresearch #hobbyist

Today I’m part of the Caretographies workshop, handmaking maps of Bloomsbury that are maps as means to care as opposed to means of control or power. Organised by Simon Werrett of @stsucl.bsky.social

It’s a kind of follow up to our Experimental Histories of Science workshop …

Excellent informed and amusing comment info on this

Preparing reading group for the new term and refreshing history of modern science syllabi …

Any suggestions of recent published work on the topic that has really moved or interested you?

and this distinctive thistle with the excellent Latin name of Chamaeleon gummifer, the purple flowers are kept everlasting as #seedheads

very dry Portimao wasteland

#wildflowerhour

I’ve been in Algarve, Portugal where everything is quite parched at t the end of summer, but still some good #wildflowerhour #seedheads

Here’s castor oil plant (Ricinus communis)

UCL – University College London UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

We're hiring a new lecturer @stsucl.bsky.social. We're looking for someone with particular interests in the environment. Please share widely www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...