Science & Society

The Place Where Forever Ends The idea of living forever has held great fascination for many great minds, but just like the pursuit of a perpetual motion machine it is an impossible dream, and for the same reasons. Image source: Wikemedia, public domain. Here are some basic logical requirements of living forever.  In order to live forever one must first be alive.As soon as we start discussing life we need to define it.  For our purposes it is sufficient to say that a thing is a living thing if it maintains its own structure at the expense of structure in its external environment.…

Most Americans believe God is concerned with their personal well-being and is directly involved in their personal affairs, according to new research out of the University of Toronto. Overall, most people believe that God is highly influential in the events and outcomes in their lives. Specifically: 82 per cent say they depend on God for help and guidance in making decisions; 71 per cent believe that when good or bad things happen, these occurrences are simply part of God's plan for them; 61 per cent believe that God has determined the direction and course of their lives; 32 per cent…

Climate Crook : Scam! Scam! Scam! Followers of my blog will no doubt guess that this article is about Godfrey Bloom - he of the famous quote:"There appears to be a woeful lack of candour and commonsense in modern day politicians." I have already written something of his own Woeful Lack Of Candour. This is a follow-up. Godfrey Bloom is a tax consultant and MEP who has taken on the self-imposed task of protecting his clients' tax interests by attacking the world's scientific community at large.. .Godfrey, what has your ultra-smart, ultra-expensive, paid for by taxpayers jacket have to do with…

End of the World Sci-Fi Oryx and Crake (2003)The Year of the Flood (2009)by Margaret Atwood In Atwood's world of Oryx and Crake, biotechnology has ruined the world, in more ways than one. As the result of a near-omnipotent ability to manipulate biology, society has become structured around biotech consumer products and services, with a major division between the consumers and the powerful biotech companies. The consumers (the "pleebs") live in a polluted, crime-ridden world outside of the highly secure, isolated, wealthy compounds where the employees of the biotech corporations live. The…

How do we fix science journalism ? Simple: we don't. We let it sink, and be reborn in a different form. It is rather utopic to insist that in a world of changing means of communications, a world where printed matter is losing ground to the advantage of electronic media, the diffusion of scientific information may or shall stay the same. The main force behind these changes is of course the difference between the cost of a word printed on paper and the same word produced by 100% recyclable electrons on a digital screen -be it an iphone, or a kindle, or a notebook. Why spending significant…

Ars Technica notes that famed anti-PowerPoint communications guru Edward Tufte is getting some sort of job consulting for the Obama Administration. In passing, they point to one of Tufte's online essays, PowerPoint Does Rocket Science. I shouldn't be surprised by this, but really, I'm stunned: Tufte notes that, in order to assess the threat to the Space Shuttle Columbia while it was still orbiting, NASA and Boeing engineers prepared reports in the form of PowerPoint slides. Only in the form of PowerPoint slides: there were no technical reports. In response to these reports, NASA managers,…

We have the Rust Belt and Bible Belt and Sun Belt and Dairy Belt and Corn Belt and all sorts of other belts in the US, but this is the first I've heard of the Beer Belt. Or, more appropriately, the Beer Belly. The geniuses behind my most recent obsession, the blog FloatingSheep.org, used Google Maps to create a map of the country showing where, if you really love bars, you should live. References to bars versus grocery stories This would likely not hold up to peer-reviewed scrutiny, but come on - using aggregate data to create irrelevant charts? What else could heaven possibly hold for me…

As a new kid on the block, I'd like to introduce myself via this inaugural piece. It follows a few posts I've made in Rycharde Manne's and Eric Diaz's columns recently The title of my piece is The Oak of Science, and its intention is to liken the recently discussed conundrum of Science journalism and Scientists apparent failure to get science across to everyone, to the humble Oak tree,  - one of England's majestic and historic 'art models' that posed for many a fine painting, before my humble effort, here The oak has always been seen as the national tree of England. Its great height,…

A Woeful Lack Of Candour In a recent article I wrote: Godfrey Bloom MEP bemoans the fact that: "There appears to be a woeful lack of candour and commonsense in modern day politicians." Godfrey Bloom is an MEP - a politician.  His party is called UKIP.  Godfrey Bloom has so many Google hits that, even if you search for someone famous, up pops a 'UKIP In the Media' result from his website.  Why would that be?  How can it happen? On Godfrey Bloom's website, an MEP / UKIP member's official website, under the heading 'Climate Change / Global Warming' there is no statement of…

A Classic Waste Of Breath An argument that a thing is natural, therefore not a cause of concern, is used greatly in modern times, most especially in connection with the arguments over whether or not we puny humans can interfere with natural environmental cycles.  Such arguments can look good on the face of things. The naturalistic argument goes back at least to Ancient Greece.  In the art of misleading an audience with a seemingly open-and-shut case it really is a classic. " It may be that there are some who would decry the importance of the rules of natural justice. ......those…