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The President’s Guide to Science

November 10th, 2008 · 5 comments or link to (permalink)

There is much less difference between the Democrats and the Republicans than the polarization of voters would suggest. They both sit to the right relative to most other Western economies, and both are hostage to jingoism and superstition which again registers higher than in other wealthy nations. My main beef with Bush Jnr. was that he showed no intellectual curiosity, a fundamental trait that differentiates us from beasts. But the Obama administration may be less hostile to knowledge, or science, as it is termed from the Latin.

This program imagines a briefing for the new president (it was made just before the election) and asks some well known scientists what they would teach the President.

Running time: 50 mins.

5 comments » (report dead embeds in comments) tags: politics science

Ben Goldacre Interview

October 17th, 2008 · 3 comments or link to (permalink)

I’ve just finished Reading Ben Goldacre’s book, ‘Bad Science’, that lambasts various forms of quackery and pseudo science. Here is a New Scientist interview with him. I have also embedded a clip of Gillian McKeith a well know TV presenter in the UK, who encourages people to eat healthily, but does so in a way that is wrong and deceptive. A whole chapter of Bad Science is devoted to her.

For example, McKeith calls herself (or used to call, before the Advertising Standards Authority had a draft adjudication against her) a doctor and refers to her patients. She is neither a medical doctor, nor does she have a PhD from an accredited university. She does have an accreditation from a Nutrition institute that Goldacre managed to obtain membership for his dead cat for $100. The award hangs in his toilet.

Gillian McKeith is our latest recipient of the Smashing Telly FEBL (Fucking Entertaining Big Lie) award, which consists of being tagged FEBL

3 comments » (report dead embeds in comments) tags: FEBL pseudo science science

The Big Bang

September 11th, 2008 · 3 comments or link to (permalink)

Aired on Sept 4th on BBC to celebrate this weeks trial run of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, a history of the Big Bang, a story far more wonderful and imaginative than Biblical creation.

(For those of you that have noticed that I keep bashing religion at the moment – I’ve had enough, I’ve cracked. I am normally relatively nonpartisan about politics because I don’t like or trust any politicians from McCain to Obama, but I can normally see people’s points of view from both sides of the fence. However, I really, really am depressed about a certain intellectually incurious, beehive hairdoed, 50s throwback, living adjacent to Siberia without a Passport. Someone probably quite nice as a person and harmless, if her opinions aren’t inflicted on everyone. Someone who thinks that fairy stories should be taught as an alternative to science and that rape victims should be forced to have babies without a welfare state to support them. Palin is living proof that consent can be manufactured, and in 15 minutes, as junk food rather than a healthy product.)

3 comments » (report dead embeds in comments) tags: science

The Inability of Humans to Understand Growth

September 10th, 2008 · 19 comments or link to (permalink)

Albert Bartlett is a modern day Malthusian on a mission. Bartlett is physicist who claims that “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function”. He points out what is undeniable: that at current growth rates the world population will have to decline within a period of historical rather than geological time (i.e. not that long), or we will not have enough room to stand up, let alone farm, and that this decline can only come about through a finite number of means: contraception, abortion, disease, war, famine.

With this knowledge, people who are against contraception, the item on this list which will cause the least suffering, are extremely dangerous.

If you believe that the exponential rise in population which coincides exactly with the use of fossil fuels has something to do with fossil fuels; if you believe that the geometric (i.e. non Malthusian) increase in the efficiency of farming through oil based products has something do with oil, then its even more imperative to start listening to people like Bartlett.

Unfortunately a large percentage of the population would rather believe that the cause of our prosperity is due to either the Dancing Wuli Masters, the ascendancy of Mars in Capricorn or the miracle of the image of Jesus Christ in a damp stain on a shit-house door in Ohio. Many of the same people think that we absolutely must breed like rabbits because a garbled, Greek translation of a late Bronze Age folk tale, called The Bible, modified through centuries of the game of Telephone, says so. Is it surprising that these people fail to understand the exponential function?

19 comments » (report dead embeds in comments) tags: science