It’s Friday 13th today, so in the absence of me having anything else interesting to report here’s a fact for you to amaze / bore your colleagues with: fear of Friday the 13th is called paraskavedekatriaphobia.  This seems to be an almost unpronounceable word, but detailed further research led me to discover something even stranger; fear of long words is hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.  That’s just absurd. 

So there you have it.  Bit of a strange opening paragraph, but at least we’ve all learned something. Oh yeah – don’t forget it’s Mother’s Day on Sunday if you haven’t got a card in the post yet.

Photo Credit: abbyladybug via Compfight cc

Enough trivia, here’s the news: Continue reading →

A lovely video explaining the work of Maths on Toast, founded by SSE Fellow Alex Fitzsimmons.

You can find out more at http://www.mathsontoast.org.uk/

Hello! Keen-eyed linguists amongst you will have noticed that this week’s headline isn’t in English.  It is in fact in German (I hope), because I’m currently headed to Germany for a weekend of Bundesliga football.  I could argue that I was there to investigate the social enterprise-like fan ownership model that German football teams employ, but that would be lying.  I’m there for the beer and bratwurst.

Here’s this week’s news:

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Ben and Jerry’s and Ashoka have once again teamed up for their Join Our Core campaign.  This year, they are focusing on crowdfunding.  Project Manager Alex Watson tells us more…. Continue reading →