Random Thoughts
Great - after posting a blog on alpha_strong and the new CMS measurement of its value yesterday, today I am leaving for the US. My internet connection is going to be shaky during my trip, and right now I am living on the free airport wifi in Paris, waiting to board on my flight. But fortunately, I don't need to worry about answering the comments I receive to that post - in fact the two main commenters, Vladimir and John, are answering each other well enough that I do not need to intervene... It would take a long time to argue that Vladimir is taking QFT the wrong way, but…
Great - after posting a blog on alpha_strong, I am leaving today for Mexico. My internet connection is going to be shaky, and right now I am living on the free airport wifi in Paris. But fortunately, the comments I receive to that post are of a nature I don't need to answer - in fact two commenters, Vladimirand John, are answering each other well enough that I do not need to intervene...That's synergic, I would say.
Great - after posting a blog on alpha_strong, I am leaving today for Mexico. My internet connection is going to be shaky, and right now I am living on the free airport wifi in Paris. But fortunately, the comments I receive to that post are of a nature I don't need to answer - in fact two commenters, Vladimirand John, are answering each other well enough that I do not need to intervene...That's synergic, I would say.
Not Hitler. This is Edward Burton, also known as Eric Arthur Blair, also known as George Orwell
By Luke Seaber, University College London
If you had been walking down Mile End Road in London on Saturday December 19, 1931, you would have witnessed a scene common in the days before Christmas across Britain.
A man who had celebrated a little too much a little too early was taken away by the police after he had consumed four or five pints and the best part of a small bottle of whisky and made a nuisance of himself. But this wasn’t quite as run of the mill as it seemed.
There was nothing in the…
Best to keep it under the covers? Lisa S.
By Sally O'Reilly, The Open University
Sexual intercourse has been getting it on for a long time.
Not only has it been boosting the human population since we emerged from the primordial swamp, it’s more than half a century since Philip Larkin noted its arrival on the cultural scene in his poem Annus Mirabilis. Until then it was, Larkin writes:
A shame that started at sixteenAnd spread to everything.
For thousands of years, sex had lurked behind curtains and in the sub-text of innuendos. Suddenly, it was a matter for discussion, celebration and…
Four months ago I started a diet, as my weight had gone above my comfort zone (77kg, when my optimal weight is of about 70kg). I basically implemented a regime (which has worked in the past) of about 1300 calories a day, cutting mostly on extras (desserts, snacks, alcohol) and bread, and just eating a bit less of everything.My original target was to reach 70kg, but I got greed as I saw that I was losing weight without too much effort, and brought my weight down to below 68kg. I must say I feel great being actually underweight... Now I have suspended the diet as December will be a month of…
Hank |
Tomorrow I will be eating and science will barely be on my mind.
It will be on some minds. Some people will be trying to find a creative way to make vegan turkey, or free-range stuffing, and generally avoid all chemicals. Good luck with that.
Thanksgiving is Hell for chemophobes, though so are the other 364 days when they get hit with the scientific mic-drop notion that every food on earth contains a carcinogen known to cause cancer in rats.
Labels won't save you, it's all stuffed with chemicals, we just don't get told about them on labels if a chicken craps them out:
Credit and…
Jacob and Wilhelm were Grimm. Wikimedia Commons
By Marguerite Johnson, University of Newcastle
Fairy tales have a tumultuous and fragile history. They originated as tales told by “folk”. They were passed down over generations to while away long winter nights, to provide entertainment at special occasions and for simple enjoyment.
Inevitably, as more people became literate and scholars began to record fairy tales, they were published. And then, with a wave of a magic wand, they entered the canon of European literature.
Scholar and editor Jack Zipes has long regarded this process of making…
Hank |
Wired magazine devotes a special issue each November to a "What's Next?" for the upcoming year - and that means it is time to think about what will happen in the world of science in 2015.
Wired asked me to make a solid prediction, kind of like Jeane Dixon, except actually right about the future. Nostradamus, without all of the meaningless mumbo-jumbo.
What did I come up with? They want you to buy the magazine so I won't spoil the plot (though there are 100 contributors, everyone from James Dyson and Carlo Ratti to scientists from all over the world, so you would find something else to…
Hank |
Open access journals charge a fee to publish an article and make the content free to read. Traditional journals charge a subscription - they say the cost is needed because of 'added value' and that open access publications like PLOS One are not doing peer review of 30,000 articles a year, they are doing "editorial review", a peer-review lite where a reader looks the paper over and checks off 4 boxes.
Clearly anyone who reads PNAS and the woo about female hurricane names (among many other papers) and read my article in the Wall Street Journal indicting their process of letting pre-arranged…