How to slow male adult hair loss

I guess you found this blog by a Google search. I'm going to tell you something that worked for me, and I'm not going to ask you to buy anything.

I have essentially the same head of hair that I had 30 years ago, when I went to an upmarket hair stylist because my scalp was itchy and the hair was falling out at an alarming rate. I had a maternal grandfather who was bald, but apart from him I did not think I have baldness in my genes.

Anyway, here's what the hairdresser told me 30 years ago (and now I am telling you, for free)

• Stop using anti-dandruff shampoo or general purpose shower gel. For a few months use products that are intended for babies and infants, then switch to a good quality shampoo for normal hair. You must stop using anti-dandruff shampoo which is too harsh for your scalp and hair.

• Always use a good quality conditioner

• Wash hair only twice a week until the situation is stable

• Do not vigorously towel dry. Pat dry with a fresh towel, then let the hair dry naturally

• Do not use a heated hair drier - risk of too much heat irritating the scalp

• Do not use a comb. Instead learn to use a soft brush to achieve a neat look

All of this worked for me. I have followed the advice for 30 years

Please leave a short comment if you have found this advice interesting / useful / stupid

My business website is http://www.totalastronomy.com

You won't find any health advice there but there's plenty of stuff on our astronomy books and lectures

24 Hay on Wye Literary Festival - My talk

I am just back from my appearance on 27 May at the literary festival at Hay-on-Wye. My featured presentation was titled From Alexandria to Cambridge, subtitle Five books that changed our view of the universe. I talked about the five books (Almagest, De Rev., Siderius Nuncius, Dialogo, Principia) mainly from a literary point of view (publication history, impact, literary style, design ...). This went down very well! I took some interesting props: a full-scale working replica of Galileo's telescope of 1610 that he presented to Cosimo de Medici, and a beautiful facsimile of the autograph manuscript of De Revolutionibus. There would have been great interest in seeing first editions of the printed books, but Hay is not a secure environment --- it is an open air festival

The Festival itself is awesome (I have never been before), with a huge line-up of stellar speakers and just one handful of make-weights like me :-)

If you go to my website http://bit.ly/TOTast and click through to Download Lectures you can grab a copy of my script and see a pdf of my powerpoint slides

The talk is based on material in the Prologue of our book Heart of Darkness which we recently delivered to Princeton University Press; my co-author is Professor Jeremiah Osterbrock of Princeton University. The book tells the story of how structure arose in the universe.

I had not been aware quite how much science is presented at the Hay Festival. The professionals this time included Lord Rees PRS, Sir Paul Nurse PRS,
Brian Cox, Sir Colin Humphreys CBE, John Barrow ... etc. In fact, the speaker line-up to be on a par with the BA Festival of Science. Hay is a very good forum for outreach and promotion of science because there is massive press coverage.

Oh, and all speakers get VIP status (parking at the venue; food and drink; Green Room; a minder)!

Remarkable Astronomers

I am compiling a list of about 60 interesting / remarkable astronomers for a biography writing project. I am only including deceased astronomers. What do you think of this list?

The project will lead to the writing of capsule biographies of about 1500 - 3000 words. An important feature of each biography is to find lesser known interesting facts. For example "Halley's father was murdered as a conspirator" "Newton executed coinage counterfeiters" "Zwicky was rude, cantankerous and belligerent but tolerated as a kind of crank"

Candidate ‘remarkable’ astronomers

Airy, George Biddell (British) Astronomer Royal
Alcock, George (British) Distinguished amateur comet hunter
Ambartsumian, Viktor (Armenian) Theoretical astrophysics, President IAU
Arago, Dominique François (French) Paris meridian, mathematician,
Aristotle (Greek Antiquity) Natural philosophy
Baade, Walter (German / US) Stellar populations, supernovae
Barnard, Edward E. (US) Comet discoverer, Barnard’s star
Bessel, Freidrich (Prussian) parallax 61 Cygni
Bond, William Cranch (US) 1st director Harvard College Observatory
Bond, George Philip (US) Stellar photography
Bradley, James (British) Aberration of starlight
Brahe, Tycho (Danish) Observer
Cannon, Annie Jump (US) Cepheid variables
Cassini, Jean-Dominique (Italian) Solar system astronomy
Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan (Indian) Theorist
Chappe d’Auteroche, Jean-Baptiste (Fr) Transits Venus 1761, 1769
Copernicus, Nicolaus (Polish) Heliocentric system
Curtis, Heber (US) Galaxies and nebulae
de Sitter, Willem (Dutch) Relativistic cosmology
Eddington, Arthur (British) Stars and stellar systems
Flammarion, Camille (French) Author, popular astronomy
Flamsteed, John (British) 1st Astronomer Royal, star catalogues
Galilei, Galileo (Italian) Astronomical telescope
Gassendi, Pierre (French) Transit of Mercury
Gill, David (British) Astrophotography, Cape Observatory
Gold, Thomas (US) Radio astronomy, pulsars
Gould, Benjamin Apthorp (US) Discovered Gould’s Belt
Grosseteste, Robert (British) Medieval natural philosophy
Hale, George Ellery (US) Solar astronomy,
Halley, Edmund (British) 2nd Astronomer Royal, Comet
Herschel, Caroline (Hanoverian) Assisted William Herschel
Herschel, John (British) First survey of southern sky
Herschel, William (Hanoverian) Observational cosmology
Hertzsprung, Ejnar (Danish) Stellar parallax, classification
Hevelius, Elisabetha (Polish) Observational astronomy, first female astronomer
Hevelius, Johannes (Polish) Observational astronomy
Hipparchus (Greek Antiquity) Star catalogue
Hoffleit, Dorrit (US) Bright Star Catalogue
Horrocks, Jeremiah (British) Transit of Venus 1639
Hoyle, Fred (British) Astrophysics and cosmology
Hubble, Edwin (British) Expanding universe
Huggins, Margaret (Irish) astronomical spectroscopy
Huggins, William (British) astronomical spectroscopy
Huygens, Christian (Dutch) Saturn’s rings, Titan
Kepler, Johannes (German) celestial mechanics, Astronomia Nova
Kuiper, Gerard (Dutch) planetary science
Lacaille, Nicholas-L. de (French) catalogue southern stars
Laplace, Pierre-Simon (French) celestial mechanics
Le Verrier, Urbain J. J. (French) celestial mechanics
Leavitt, Henrietta (US) Cepheid variables
Lemaître, Georges H. J. E. (Belgian) Big Bang cosmology
Lockyer, Joseph Norman (British) Founder Nature, solar astronomy
Lowell, Percival (US) observer Mars, nebulae
Lyot, Bernard (French) solar astronomy, coronagraph
Mattei, Janet (US) variable stars
Maunder, Annie (Irish) assistant to Walter Maunder
Maunder, Walter (British) sunspots, Maunder Minimum
Maury, Antonia (US) catalogue stellar spectra
Messier, Charles (French) nebulae
Mitchell, Maria (US) 1st female professional astronomer in USA
Newcomb, Simon (Canadian) standards and astronomical constants
Newton, Isaac (British) universal gravitation
Olbers, Heinrich (German) Olbers’ paradox, asterroids
Oort, Jan (Dutch) radio astronomy, Oort Cloud
Öpik, Ernst (Estonian) origin of the Moon
Payne Gaposchkin, Cecilia (British) variable stars
Pickering, Edward Charles (US) spectroscopic binaryu stars
Ptolemy (Greek Antiquity) Almagest
Roberts, Dorothea Klumpke (US) astronomical photography
Roberts, Isaac (British) pioneer astrophotography
Rosse, Lord (British) spiral structure of nebulae
Russell, Henry Norris (US) Hertzsprung-Russell diagram
Ryle, Martin (British) radio interferometry
Sagan, Carl (US) planetary science
Sandage, Allan (US) extragalactic observational astronomy
Schmidt, Maarten (Dutch) quasars
Schwarzschild, Karl (German) solution Einstein field equations
Shapley, Harlow (US) galactic structure
Shoemaker, Eugene (US) planetary science
Slipher, Vesto (US) recession of the nebulae
Somerville, Mary (British) noted populariser, translated Laplace
Spitzer, Lyman (US) telescopes in space
Struve, Friedrich Georg Wilhelm (1793-1864) Director Pulkova Observatory
Struve, Otto Wilhelm (Russian) (1819-1905) Director Pulkova Observatory
Struve, Karl Hermann (Russian) (1854-1920) astrometry
Struve, Otto (Russian) (1897-1963) prolific mid-20th century astronomer
Tinsley, Beatrice (British) evolution of galaxies
Whipple, Fred (US) comets
Wolf, Johann Rudolf (Swiss) sunspots
Zwicky, Fritz (Swiss) dark matter

HAy Festival 27 May 2011

I'm speaking at this festival, 27 May 2011, at 1945 (7.45 pm) on the topic Five Books that changed our View of the Universe. Ptolemy Almagest, De Revolutionibus Copernicus, Galileo Dialogo and Starry Message, Newton Principia.