Last night a friend told me I was on the radio. Turns out it was the second episode of the BBC Radio 4 documentary "Robowars" for which I had been interviewed some time ago. I feature in the programme twice, once about 12 minutes in and second about 23 minutes in. They edited my words a little bit so I'm taken slightly out of context (I was mainly referring to quite hi-tech AI systems that may only appear in the future). However I think it's an interesting debate: if people are stupid enough to start wars, should we use robots rather than people?

You can listen to the mp3 file here.

I received another batch of books from my publisher this morning. These are more translation editions of The Book of Numbers: German, US, Japanese, and Brazilian. Strangely the Brazilian version has a different cover image from all the others, and to my surprise it has a quote from Scientific American. I was surprised because to my knowledge Scientific American never actually reviewed the book. One of my PhD students solved the mystery - apparently my book was listed in Scientific American's "New and Notable Books about Numbers" in May 2008, and the "quote" refers to that list. Not quite sure why they chose to do that when we have plenty of other good quotes, but perhaps in Brazil this is the best way to sell books... Anyway, the book looks very nice so I'm sure Brazilian readers should like it.

I was somewhat surprised to see the download figures for my iphone app iStethoscope Pro for last month - the download figures for Swiss users, as well as Belgian, French and German were astonishingly high. It turns out that without anyone telling me, there had been significant publicity in Swiss newspapers and online news forums on the app. It seems to have originated with the article in the British paper The Independent which was then picked up by Swiss papers such as Tages Anzeiger. As ever, the attention is unexpected and appreciated!

It's been a busy week as Neon magazine in Germany have decided to write a feature on my book Why Sh*t Happens (or The Undercover Scientist in the UK). So I spent Monday afternoon dressed up in a suit having my photo taken while crouching over a pile of broken pottery, finger dripping with fake blood, making horrified expressions. I wonder what this article is going to look like... I'll post a copy when I get it.

I also noticed that my book makes Mike Silverman's list of top ten books last year. In his words:

Why Shit Happens by Peter Bentley

You wake up in the morning late because your alarm doesn't go off. Your toast falls on the floor, a bird craps on you as you walk outside, your car breaks down on the way to work, and your pen explodes in your packet. And this is all before 9 AM. Using as his hook a litany of minor disasters that we have all dealt with at one time or another, Bentley explores the science and technology of our daily lives, and how it affects us in ways both bug and small. This is a delightful little book.

The international interest about my iphone application iStethoscope from cardiologists and the media continues to increase. The most recent is this article in Futurist magazine. For more details about the program, go to the application website here.