.

Gone fishing....

2009-03-25T15:57:00.005Z

Ok, not really, I've just moved elsewhere, after a two-year hiatus, this time running my own Wordpress blog:

Mental Indigestion
(http://www.mentalindigestion.net)

The smell of bullshit....

2007-01-10T23:55:00.000Z

In the light of recent (and all too often) experience, I want to make one thing clear: my bullshit detector is second to none.

Tea and wine tasters have nothing over me. I can smell a million shades of bullshit, and see it a mile away.

This is partly why I get so annoyed when recent "graduates", foolishly thinking themselves lord and masters of the intelligencia, try to pull one over on me. There's nothing quite worse that being on the receiving end of bollocks, and enduring the smug satisfaction upon the communicator's face as they revel in their wildly inaccurate belief that they're telling you something new/made-up. They are, in effect, saying you're stupid. Do they think I was born yesterday? Do they not realise just how well-battled a skeptic I am? How logical my cogitative faculties? That I know what a dangling modifier is, or correlative conjunction for that matter. If you push me, I can even tell you the difference between a gerund and a present participle?

Of course, polite gentleman that I am, I rarely proffer the retort they so richly deserve. I recall Richard Dawkins mentioning in his book Unweaving the Rainbow, in the chapter entitled Hoodwink'd with Faerie Fancy, how children of a certain age can't believe that anyone knows anything other, or more, than what they know. This happens either before, or after (I forget), they become completely gullible and believe anything anyone tells them. Most of us grow out of that. Some don't.

Anyway, let them have their cake. Mine's home made, organic and there's nary a humectant in sight!

Happy New Year, you bunch of animals...

2007-01-05T16:30:00.000Z

Yes, yes. Happy New Year and all that. Tally ho!

So, let's start this year's blogging with another rant shall we?

There's been a real brouhaha over this human-hybrid embryo business. One minute it's unethical to harvest the Human eggs needed for implantation of Human genetic material and when an alternative, and more efficacious, "animalian" source is used, well the Frankenpress go to work on their "First Born" like mutant hybrid horror stories.

"He [Blair] said there were "difficult" issues surrounding creating the embryos, which are more than 99% human but have a small animal component. "

...but I would like to make just one comment on terminology. Now I may be wrong, in an ecumenical sense, but it was always my understanding that Humans are in fact animals. I wasn't aware that we had reclassified Humans to give us our own taxonomic Domain or Kingdom? Nor Class, Order or Family for that matter. Thus the issue being described in terms of Human-animal hybrid is somewhat bizarre and I would like it to stop. Stop it. Right now. Ssh.

So, fact check: they're talking Human genetic material inserted into a non-Human egg cell. They're not talking invasion of the Monkey-Boy hybrids here. They're talking cells, to study cells and purely in a scientific context.

As for the public consultation, I'd love to know just whom they consulted, no doubt readers of The Sun, Star, Mirror or Daily Mail for that matter; or people who get their scientific information from celebrities on Big Brother. Such is the level of scientific illiteracy in the UK at the moment, I'm not sure I'd trust anyone to give a fully informed opinion on any matter of bioethics. Hell, given the successful franchise in public fear that the Government has fostered so carefully, I'm not sure I'd consider anyone's idea of ethics full stop. Too much hype for sense and sensibility.

Not far from the truth...

2006-11-29T14:32:00.000Z

An amusing little nugget from yesterday's Onion.

Jim Bond....

2006-11-18T17:12:00.000Z

I have something to say...

Daniel Craig is James Bond, and a splendidly entertaining one at that!

You have been told ;-)

Event horizon....

2006-11-14T19:00:00.000Z

It is, frankly, all a little scary.

Event Horizon. That is currently where I stand in my life. I have been very preoccupied with the impending end of my research contract. Hence the absenteeism. Come the end of February, I will no longer be working in my lab. I'd like to say it was all a conscious choice, but it is largely due to the rejection of our submitted research grant, which itself came down to some rather cranky politics and personal conflicts of interest that have left me rather bitter towards certain members of my research community.

So here I am, waiting to see what happens in my life. I'm busy trying to network and apply for the few research positions that I can find, i.e. those that don't require me to start my life all over again in some new part of the country. I'm staying North. For now.

Some days I find myself about as despondent as one can be, but other days I am joyful at the opportunity to do something a little different. I was, if I admit it, getting a little stale. I want new things to focus on and get stuck into. I'm too close to what I work on right now. I don't want to leave science (the thought leaves me cold), I don't even want to leave bacterial molecular genetics (my bag). I'd like to get into science communication and science policy. I like the bigger picture, I'm a little tired of the minutiae. As long as whatever I do actually means something, is useful, and ultimately keeps me in the fun of finding things out, I don't mind leaving the bench. That being said, some research money may be forthcoming in June, following the next round of grants. So if I'm not gainfully employed by then, I may crawl back into one lab or another ;-)

....and if I can't find anything better to do, I'll be the one streaking across Centre Court at Wimbledon next year ;-)

Torchwood

2006-10-23T12:06:00.000Z

Having sated myself with an excellently prepared, though not universally appreciated, Spanakopita (Spinach Pie), the will to move or do anything that would diminish the comfortable and reassuring feel of successful digestion was thoroughly abated.

SO I found myself switching on th’elly (Northern parlance for the cathode-ray tube of horrors), I figured I’d see whether the BBC is continuing to wipe it’s corporate arse on the hard earned pennies I’d used to purchase my license fee. Being the sci-fi fan that I am, I thought I’d give the ubiquitously advertised Torchwood 15 minutes of my time; 15 minutes I’ll never get back.

I should have known that anything that is “spun off” from the complete and utter garbage that was latest Doctor Who, could only be, well, complete and utter garbage. Like Doctor Who, the series looks like it’s been filmed with a bargain-basement “camcorder” using props from a playschool broom cupboard and the four worst actors since those in my primary school’s version of Dick Whittington; oh, and it’s situated in Cardiff.

If it weren’t for the mindless interjection of the odd random swearword, spurting blood, same-sex snogging and a sex craved alien that feeds off “orgasmic” energy, you couldn’t have convinced me that this was a series for adults. If this typifies the level of sophistication in current British sci-fi, as I can only imagine they must have commissioned a focus group to rate previews, then it is a sorry day. I guess this is what happens when scientific-illiteracy reaches epic proportions.

Of course, it seems the series is targeted at adults, and I’m afraid that the only people who could possibly enjoy such tripe are likely to have a dribbling problem, either from their frontal lobotomy or their thorazine drip.

Big, friendly giants....

2006-10-10T23:48:00.000Z

I hugged one of the largest living organisms on the planet, and it felt really good!

[Giant Sequoia in Tuolumne Grove, Yosemite]

You can just about see me in the bottom right-hand corner! Alas my digicam battery had run out by this point, so I was on an emergency disposable camera, which wasn't really up to scratch.

When pioneers first came across these trees, they used to have competitions to see who could chop one down the fastest. Just for fun. So sad.

There and back again....

2006-10-07T09:41:00.000Z

Having just about recovered from my jetlag, which has manifested itself in an odd form of narcolepsy, rather than any lasting tiredness, it's now time for some piccies and blurb! You can see all the piccies here.

Piccies & Blurb

Getting there...

The flight over to the States was relatively uneventful, but I did miss being in an Airbus (as with US Airways). Instead I was in an aging Boeing courtesy of Delta for the 9 hour flight. I had a 4 hour stopover in Atlanta, where I was assaulted by some terrible Chinese food, before then next hop on to Reno. I had two seats to myself on this 5 hour flight, but most importantly, there were personal video screens for each seat. I was also introdcued to a quiz game where I could compete with other passengers. After a shaky start (it was the equivalent of 2 am for me and I'd been awake 20 hours) I was victorious, winning in straight sets and leaving a highest score of 5800, which was unbeaten by any of the 30 other passengers playing, hehehe.

Reno...

[Room with a view]

Reno is an odd place in all fairness. I thought I'd hate it, but thankfully there was a huge biker's meet in the city that week (Street Vibrations), and there were literally hundreds of the most excellent Harleys and OC choppers lined up outside The Nugget, where I was staying.

[Picture from Mathieu]

So after flaking out for the night, I was up to have a craic with the rather worse for wear bikers - drinking Bloody Marys - as they polished their bikes. Most of these guys are lawyers, lol, but about 2 weeks before their roadtrips they let it all go and grow in the handlebar moustaches. Guys after my own heart ;-)

Fallen Leaf Lake....

The conference was at Fallen Leaf Lake. This is a small lake just south of Lake Tahoe and sits at 6,300 ft in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by mountains. It is the location used in The Bodyguard when Costner takes Houston and co to his winter retreat; and also where Meg Ryan's character takes Nick Cage after he "falls" in City of Angels.

[Fallen Leaf, and Tahoe in the distance. Taken on my hike]

It is a beautiful place! As soon as I got there, still jetlagged, I grabbed one of my old conference buddies and headed up a further 1500 ft to a lake called Cathedral Lake, though it was more of a pond at this time of year. Having run the final steps we realised that the air was too dry and thin to catch our breaths, so after a small panic attack, we hurriedly descended and nursed our altitude headaches, along with everyone else, for the next few days. I spent the whole week verging on dehydration, which was annoying. The days were warm and sunny, but the nights were freezing.

[Early morning from my cabin deck!]

I didn't see any Bears, though saw their scratchings, but did see plenty of Chipmunks, Squirrels and Stellar Jays. As far as the conference centre (Stanford Sierra Camp) is concerned, if you ever get the chance, go stay there. The place is absolutely fantastic. Great timber buildings with open fires. The staff there are great, so friendly. They really made the trip I think.

The Roadtrip...

[The 1000 mile route]

All too soon, the conference was over and everyone had left. I was left sitting by the lake, although in the company of some of the great staff, waiting for my fellow roadtripper Rob to turn up. I met Rob at the same conference in Pittsburgh in 2002, and again in Corfu in 2004. We've always stayed in touch and this trip had always been on the cards.

Rob turned up in a dog ugly Chevy Malibu, lol, but it was new and it moved, so that's all that matters. We gave a fellow conference delegate a lift to Davis, halfway between Tahoe and San Francisco. Davis is an odd little place. Somewhat boring in terms of it's 70s architecture, but it has a geeky, student vibe that friendly enough. We ate pizza whilst deciding what to do on our roadtrip.

[On the road]

[....and heading in the right direction!]

Needless to say, there was a lot of road, but it was all new, it was all California and it was all good! We headed straight to Sonoma, having decided that we wanted a grand entrance into San Francisco the next day. We didn't see much of Sonoma itself, under cover of darkness, but we grabbed a half decent motel and got an early night.

[Dreary morning in Sonoma. I can imagine the scenery in early Summer would be great]

Alas, the next day was overcast, misty and dreary. We decided to forego the planning drive through the Sonoma valley and instead headed due West to get onto the Highway 1 to travel some of the famous coastal road.

[Rob, and the Pacific Coast]

Travelling down Highway 1 took us straight to Muir Woods, a national monument of ancient coastal redwoods. I also knew this place, as a Hitchcock fan, as the place that Scottie (Jimmy Stewart) brought Madeleine (Kim Novak) in Vertigo. Muir Woods, being the site of enduring redwoods, was also the site for one of the first meetings of the newly formed United Nations.

[The Redwood cross-section used in the movie - the tree was over 900 years old when it "fell", the white markers denote important dates in history]

[Me. Dwarfed by a redwood]

On the road again, we were a mere 15 mins from San Francisco, and entering a tunnel we emerged to see the Golden Gate Bridge.

[Shrouded in mist, which apparently is usual]

No sooner had we enetered SF, we left, via the Bay Bridge and went to Berkeley. We got a tour, via a contact, of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (we are scientists after all!), then took a walk around the UC Berkeley campus and ate fantastic Burritos and a Mexican place just off campus.

[The Bay Bridge]

We were staying at The Green Tortoise in North Beach (Little Italy). If you like your hostels, then you'll like the Green Tortoise. It was also in an excellent location, right in the hub of activity. We had a view of Downtown from the window of our private room, and also of the strip clubs that lined the street below ;-)

[That's the Transamerica Building on the left]

[...and the strip clubs below]

[But the fantastic City Lights Bookstore was around the corner...well worth a visit]

The first night we ate at a restaurant called The Stinking Rose, in North Beach. Here the tag line is "We flavour our Garlic with food", and they certainly did. Great food, very garlicky!

The one thing that bemused me about California though is the lack of restrooms. Every restuarant we visited, no matter how many people they catered to, had only one unisex restroom, with one toilet. Either they don't shit, or they all get colonics every week!?

We also ate at Francis Ford Coppola's restaurant Café Zoetrope in the Sentinal Building. Very stylish atmosphere and half decent food. The wine was the best thing though, I was on the Coppola Rosso Merlot.

[Sentinal Building and Café Zoetrope]

Doing San Francisco...

So, on our first full day in San Francisco, we descided to get up close and personal and walk as much of the city as possible. We set out at 08:30 and didn't stop until 17:30.

[The route (blue) and bus trip back (green)]

We started with Chinatown, as it was around the corner. Lots of funky smells, some disturbingly whole (inlcuding head and feet) cooked chickens, unidentifiable foods and jars of weird and scary things. It all looks a bit scatty, but it fits the image.

[Chinatown]

We made our way up to Russian Hill via the famous Lombard Street (the curviest street).

[Lombard St.]

[View East down Lombard]

[View West down Lombard, towards Alcatraz!]

So, we headed through Japantown, and through the Japan Center and made our way to Alamon Square to take a piccie of the famous Painted Ladies on Filmore.

[Painted Ladies]

[We also got the message ;-)]

We eventually got to Haight-Ashbury. What a load of fun that place is. Every shop is worth visiting, and their clothes stores are fantastic, I had to drag myself out! We ate at a place called Asqew Grill, which I can HIGHLY recommend!

We then wandered amisdts the hippies and vagrants in the Golden Gate Park until we found ourselves in Richmond, amidst some very expensive neighbourhoods. We wandered into one dead end that could have been Wisteria Avenue. I was sure we were going to be shot by some Soccer Mom fearing for her property, given our state after 7 hours on the street!

The final destination for the day was the Golden Gate Bridge. We'd walked all the way there and after hacking our way through the Presidio, missing George Lucas's graphics company completely and avoiding the Coyotes and naked old men running up and down the beach front, we arrived!

Gold Gate Bridge...as if you didn't know!]

We couldn't cope with the walk back, so I managed to nag Rob into taking the bus. I kind of feel bad about this as the poor guy got accosted by some mad old Southern black guy who was convinced Rob was in town to fight in a death match at "the ottagon". It took us sometime to figure out what the hell he was talking about. He walked up and down that damn bus telling everyone on board that Rob was hard as nails and could kick anyone's asses; and if anyone wanted a go, they'd get the "guillotine". Needless to say it was all very embarrassing, but most of the passengers were laughing, rather than grimmacing.

We got off at Union Square and walked back to North Beach.

Yosemite Sam....

The next morning, rudely early, we got on the road to Yosemite. After going in circles in a boresville noweheresville town called manteca, we finally found the 120 and started heading up, and up and up for hours.

[Up and up...]

BUT EVENTUALLY, we descended into Yosemite Valley and got our first glimse of the big boy. El Capitan.

[El Capitan]

[One of the Three Graces opposite]

We got up close and personal with the old man, which I don't imagine too many bother to do, but it's rude not to.

[I think he needs a shave!]

...and of course, I needed to climb the obligatory 20 ft - this isn't a staged shot, I sweated to get up here!

We went of in search of "The View" that everyone had been telling em about. We found it. Tunnel View. Beat that!

[Tunnel View]

We also visted Glacier Point, which is abit of a trek out, but we arrived at sunset and it was well worth it. A hell of a view!

[Half Dome and Cloud's rest - behind - at sunset]

And on....

I'll continue this later, I'll let you catch up. There's not far to go, just our trip down, me hugging a giant Sequoia(!), an alkalis lake and a visit to Bonanza.

I will share this with you. Every picnic bench in Yosemite has this nailed to it. I wonder, given the low quality nature of the food available, whwether they get the irony of this statement!?

Have ticket, will travel...

2006-09-19T16:49:00.000Z

So, I'm off to Lake Tahoe, California at the end of this week. Woot!

Just got my dollars, and er....when did they change the money!? You'd think someone might have mentioned, or that we'd have heard? Someone could have mentioned that dollars are no longer Green! At least in their entirety. Pfft.

Aaaannyway.

So my amigo is flying in next Wednesday, after my Tahoe conference, and then we are heading straight over to San Francisco - via the Napa Silverado Trail route, Muir Woods (to see some Redwoods) and then entering The City from the North, over the bridge.

Three days and three nights to get up to mischief in The City, then it's back on the road again to Manteca, Jamestown (Jimtown ;-) and Sonora (old Gold Rush towns), then to Yosemite, where we have a cabin. The cabin, in Curry Village, is more or less EXACTLY the size of two double beds, and it does of course contain only two double beds. This doesn't leave much room for anything else, though if the extra cost of a cabin (over, say, a tent) means that the sound of splintering wood wakes me before the Bear eats me, I'm all the happier.

We leave via the Tioga Pass. This is a road that gets blocked with snow, rockslides and the odd Moose/Bear/State Trooper. It clings perilously to the mountain sides, á l'Italian Job. Good views though. Very good views. We then do a loop of June Lake, because that's what you do apparently, then up to Mono Lake and up along the Eastern Sierra Scenic Byway to Virginia City, Nevada, where I'm meeting Ben and Hoss Cartwright for a beer out on the Ponderosa ;-) Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Got a night in Reno before a killer early morning flight out, now what ever will we do with ourselves in Reno. Hum...?

Screaming like a girl...

2006-08-30T22:45:00.000Z

Yes folks, I was unduly phased-out this morning by an embarrassing incident that saw me scream like a girl.

There I was, dealing with my morning emails having just arrived at the office, when an unnecessarily large spider fell from the bookshelf above and landed upon my keyboard in front of me.

Que the bit where I scream like a girl...

I zipped backwards (the joy of a chair with wheels) whereupon the dastedly beast leap onto the floor and pursued me across the office.

Well that really was the last straw, I wasn't about to climb on my seat! Now I should point out that I don't actually have a fear of spiders, at least normally sized ones. I'm also aware that I am famous for castigating youngers for killing insects/arachnids for no reason.

With great power comes great responsibility. To a spider, you may as well be a God. It would be the easiest thing in the world to squish it...but just because we can, doesn't mean we should. It is the enlightened option to use what you have (and the Spider doesn't) - a strategic brain - to capture the beast and then defenestrate it, which is to say, throw it out the window.

Of course, my usual choices of spider catching tubes were going to be no good for this chemically-enhanced monster, so it had to be a 1 litre beaker and my lab book. If I'd been closer to my carbon dioxide cylinder, I've have blasted it (knocks them out) and man handled it.

Anyway. Took some time for my adrenaline levels to steady. Sometimes I'm glad I have the office and lab to my own!

United States of 1984

2006-08-26T00:28:00.000Z

This was a rather shocking event that occurred in JFK airport, NYC. Full transcript here.

Raed Jarrar's Story - An outrageous incident at JFK. Go to Democracy Now! to hear more http://democracynow.org/

I went to JFK in the morning to catch my Jet Blue plane to California. I reached Terminal 6 at around 7:15 am, issued a boarding pass, and checked all my bags in, and then walked to the security checkpoint. For the first time in my life, I was taken to a secondary search . My shoes were searched, and I was asked for my boarding pass and ID.

After passing the security, I walked to check where gate 16 was, then I went to get something to eat. I got some cheese and grapes with some orange juice and I went back to Gate 16 and sat down in the boarding area enjoying my breakfast and some sunshine.At around 8:30, two men approached me while I was checking my phone. One of them asked me if I had a minute and he showed me his badge, I said: "sure".

We walked some few steps and stood in front of the boarding counter where I found out that they were accompanied by another person, a woman from Jet Blue.One of the two men who approached me first, Inspector Harris, asked for my id card and boarding pass. I gave him my boarding pass and driver's license. He said "people are feeling offended because of your t-shirt". I looked at my t-shirt: I was wearing my shirt which states in both Arabic and English "we will not be silent". You can take a look at it in this picture taken during our Jordan meetings with Iraqi MPs.

I said "I am very sorry if I offended anyone, I didnt know that this t-shirt will be offensive". He asked me if I had any other T-shirts to put on, and I told him that I had checked in all of my bags and I asked him "why do you want me to take off my t-shirt? Isn't it my constitutional right to express myself in this way?" The second man in a greenish suit interfered and said "people here in the US don't understand these things about constitutional rights". So I answered him "I live in the US, and I understand it is my right to wear this t-shirt".Then I once again asked the three of them : "How come you are asking me to change my t-shirt? Isn't this my constitutional right to wear it? I am ready to change it if you tell me why I should.

Do you have an order against Arabic t-shirts? Is there such a law against Arabic script?" so inspector Harris answered "you can't wear a t-shirt with Arabic script and come to an airport. It is like wearing a t-shirt that reads "I am a robber" and going to a bank". I said "but the message on my t-shirt is not offensive, it just says "we will not be silent". I got this t-shirt from Washington DC. There are more than a 1000 t-shirts printed with the same slogan, you can google them or email them at wewillnotbesilent@gmail.com . It is printed in many other languages: Arabic, Farsi, Spanish, English, etc."

Inspector Harris said: "We cant make sure that your t-shirt means we will not be silent, we don't have a translator. Maybe it means something else". I said: "But as you can see, the statement is in both Arabic and English". He said "maybe it is not the same message". So based on the fact that Jet Blue doesn't have a translator, anything in Arabic is suspicious because maybe it'll mean something bad!Meanwhile, a third man walked in our direction. He stood with us without introducing himself, and he looked at inspector Harris's notes and asks him: "is that his information?", inspector Harris answered "yes".

The third man, Mr. Harmon, asks inspector Harris : "can I copy this information?", and inspector Harris says "yes, sure". Inspector Harris said: "You don't have to take of your t-shirt, just put it on inside-out". I refused to put on my shirt inside-out. So the woman interfered and said "let's reach a compromise. I will buy you a new t-shirt and you can put it on on top of this one". I said "I want to keep this t-shirt on". Both inspector Harris and Mr. Harmon said "No, we can't let you get on that airplane with your t-shirt".

I said "I am ready to put on another t-shirt if you tell me what is the law that requires such a thing. I want to talk to your supervisor". Inspector Harris said "You don't have to talk to anyone. Many people called and complained about your t-shirt. Jetblue customers were calling before you reached the checkpoint, and costumers called when you were waiting here in the boarding area".it was then that I realized that my t-shirt was the reason why I had been taken to the secondary checking.I asked the four people again to let me talk to any supervisor, and they refused.The Jet Blue woman was asking me again to end this problem by just putting on a new t-shirt, and I felt threatened by Mr. Harmon's remarks as in "Let's end this the nice way".

Taking in consideration what happens to other Arabs and Muslims in US airports, and realizing that I will miss my flight unless I covered the Arabic script on my t-shirt as I was told by the four agents, I asked the Jet Blue woman to buy me a t-shirt and I said "I don't want to miss my flight."She asked, what kind of t-shirts do you like. Should I get you an "I heart new york t-shirt?". So Mr. Harmon said "No, we shouldn't ask him to go from one extreme to another". I asked mr. harmon why does he assume I hate new york if I had some Arabic script on my t-shirt, but he didn't answer.The woman went away for 3 minutes, and she came back with a gray t-shirt reading "new york".

I put the t-shirt on and removed the price tag. I told the four people who were involved in the conversation: "I feel very sad that my personal freedom was taken away like this. I grew up under authoritarian governments in the Middle East, and one of the reasons I chose to move to the US was that I don't want an officer to make me change my t-shirt. I will pursue this incident today through a Constitutional rights organization, and I am sure we will meet soon". Everyone said okay and left, and I went back to my seat.

At 8:50 I was called again by a fourth young man, standing with the same jetblue woman. He asked for my boarding pass, so I gave it to him, and stood in front of the boarding counter. I asked the woman: "is everything okay?", she responded: "Yes, sure. We just have to change your seat". I said: "but I want this seat, that's why I chose it online 4 weeks ago", the fourth man said " there is a lady with a toddler sitting there. We need the seat."Then they re-issued me a small boarding pass for seat 24a, instead of seat 3a. They said that I can go to the airplane now.

I was the first person who entered the airplane, and I was really annoyed about being assigned this seat in the back of the airplane too. It smelled like the bathrooms, which is why I had originally chosen a seat which would be far from that area.It sucks to be an Arab/Muslim living in the US these days. When you go to the middle east, you are a US tax-payer destroying people's houses with your money, and when you come back to the US, you are a suspected terrorist and plane hijacker.

In defence of Atheism...

2006-08-25T23:15:00.000Z

A fantastic YouTube video:

[Athiest]

Having nice communication skills....

2006-08-24T17:16:00.000Z

We received an application for PhD study from someone in India today. This is nothing new, we get hundreds of them. They all get filed in the bin because the page they're being referred from (www.findaphd.com) clearly states to contact the graduate school, and not the research labs, directly. So an inability to follow simple instructions is not a good first impression.

However, I mention this one as it particularly amused us. Now bear in mind this is supposedly an academic CV for a research science position. She started by stating, in huge letters, that her religion was CHRISTIAN (completely irrelevant/unusable information for such a CV). Under "Strengths", she had entered that she has "a nice communication skill", which is always useful, unfortunately nice is possibly the most redundant word in the English language. She said nothing more about this skill of hers, just that it was nice.

It was one of her other "strengths" that caught our eye: "My Great and Almighty God".

Oh-K. She also entered "browsing the internet" as a hobby. Great. We all do it, but in reality it's actually a complete waste of time; it's nothing to be proud of. You may as well say "I play computer games".

Film fun...

2006-08-23T18:14:00.000Z

I'm going to be travelling around to see some good cinema in the next week or so, there's some good stuff coming up. Two that I really want to see are:

I hope this is another good one from Almodovar. It's the kind of quirky foreign cinema that I love. There's also the Edinburgh Film Festival, the tale end of which I may catch this weekend; there's a great deal of Brit film action going on this year.

I really want to catch The Lives of the Saints, which looks like a thoroughly excellent bit of gritty, urban Brit cinema. Set in North London, it takes of the Italian renaissance idea of taking ordinary lives and catapulting them into situations with a magical twist. Should be good.

A Midsummer's Night Dream: Act 2...

2006-08-21T15:45:00.000Z

What a fantastic play!

It drizzled throughout with just one torrential downpour (luckily at the intermission - see my video on YouTube). The set was great, staged within the cloister's of Kirkstall Abbey. Very atmospheric. MSND is one of my favourite plays, not only for the interweaving plot, but because theatre companies have some liberty to adapt the comedy, whether that be by stage craft or the occassional ad lib.

This was done to great effect by Mina Anwar and Wayne Sleep, who were both very funny. Wayne Sleep was a fabulous Puck and performed many rather impressive ballet forms for which he is known.

They had a live dog to play the part of "Dog", as part of the Mechanics story....however, despite being well trained, he was getting a littled pissed at the rain and started playing up. Then he proceeded to mount the leg of Starveling as he played "The Moon" in the Mechanics play....he gave the poor guy a right old shagging whilst the cast and audience cracked up in hysterics.
I'd highly recommend the British Shakespeare Company. You can see pictures of the cast performing MSND here (in Norway).

A Midsummer's Night Wet Dream....

2006-08-19T10:15:00.000Z

I'm off to see A Midsummer's Night Dream with my lady and an old friend today. It's part of an open-air Shakespeare festival being staged in the ruins of a 12th Century Abbey....right within the ruins themselves. Should be good....

....except it's going to piss down ;-(

Oh well, a typical English summer event then!

Confession
I have a confession. I've been two-timing with MySpace. *shock*. I have to say though, I vastly prefer the Bloggerdom, MySpace seems to be full of people who can't format a page, write in phonetics a lot, don't blog and are often overly zealous Christians, which I find more than a little tiresome. In fact, the only reason I still go back there is that some of the "friends" there are quite interesting....and I have a kick ass page. That aside, it's time to move on to my topic of the day, which today has been contributed by a just another mindless Christian thoroughly locked within the box:

"James 4:4 states, “Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.” John states in 1 John 2:15, “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” He goes on to say that the world and everything in it will come to end. Why place yourself in a no win situation? Living for the world will not get you anywhere. Living for Christ has eternal benefits. A pretty easy choice, huh? God and eternal life or the world and nothing. Why can’t you make this simple choice for your life? Just don’t pass this off as you do every other thing having to do with changing your lifestyle. If you are truly Christian you will willingly do anything to better yourself. Christians should have their eyes set on what is above, not on worldly things that perish. If you aren’t a Christian you just live a worldly life."

So what he's basically saying is fuck the world. What do we care. We'll just wait for something better. We'll just look in ourselves. As ever, the truly religious engaging their own egocentrism. Of course, this is all very well if you live in the Western world where all your material and energy needs are provided; where you have clean water on tap; where, if you're truly unethical, you can afford to not give a shit about the world. Meanwhile, they can be safe in the knowledge that at least they're ok, nevermind those countries whose "worlds" are suffering so that you can have your daily bread. I'm sure impoverished families farming on the edge of the Sahel in sub-Saharan Africa, or in southern Sudan, or the communities displaced by loggers or agro-velopment really get a warm feeling by being told to give up and wait for the better life that comes later.

Is this unfair? Yes, a little. You see, this isn't actually a Christian view, it's a parochial, brain dead, conservative Christian rhetoric. It's sad, it's bad, it doesn't actually help anyone and it means next to nothing to quote from 1600 year old tripe by a guy in a society where people vanishing over the horizon were falling of the edge of the world. Who'd not want to escpae such confinement?

Pluto and worrying science...

2006-08-15T11:50:00.000Z

There is a meeting of the International Astronomical Union this week, which amongst other things, aims to decide the fate of the “planet” Pluto. Is it, or isn’t it, a planet?

My opinion is that the appropriate definition of a planet is: an object that is “big enough to be spherical”, i.e. the gravitational force is great enough to overcome the material strength; this results in a spherical body, rather than an oblate, chunk of the like seen in various meteor disaster movies.

However, this incurs the slight problem of there being quite a number of spherical bodies orbiting our sun, roughly 20 thus far. Many of these are new additions, identified in the Kuiper Belt, but undoubtedly there will be many more as technology improves. One such object, 2003 UB213 (or "Xena"), is bigger than Pluto (itself smaller than our own moon) and this more or less sparked the debate.

So should we have 20+ planets? Well one suggestion is to split the planets into different groups, so your inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars) become “Rocky Planets”, as they’re already known. The “Gas Giants” remain (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune), but the controversial 9th planet Pluto would find itself grouped with the increasing number of “Icey Dwarfs”.

The alternative is to drop Pluto, and the other Kuiper Belt bodies, from planet status. This would be on the somewhat arbitrary basis of their being rather small compared to the other 8 planets in the solar system, and their consisting predominantly of ice. If you're going to start getting into what constitutes a planet, well that’s ropey territory given how different Earth and Jupiter are for example, and we’ve already set a precedent for what constitutes big enough – sphericity.

However, this is all by and by. I mentioned before "should we have", and "should we drop". This is not science. The thing that really worries me is that the reason no-one has settled on a definition has nothing to do with science. It has to do with something far less rational and logical. Faith. Belief. Emotion. History. All of these things have no business in the decision. We should be “indifferent” towards the results of a new standardised classification. I don't mean that we shouldn't care, but we shouldn't allow personal opinion to cloud the outcome.

Science is about revision and correction, irrespective of people’s beliefs and historical relevance. Yes Pluto was a great discovery, with a great story. Yes it captured the public imagination with its tightly held secrets and unimaginable distance from the sun; but unless we intend on turning planetary science into a new religion, it needs to be treated according to the science, and a few old, stubborn scientists need a slap in the face and told to wake up.

We should set a logical and scientific definition and then re-classify accordingly. If we get Pluto and a whole load of other planets, then fine – just more things for kids to remember – if we lose it, well it’ll still be there in the history books, just not in any new textbook that would call itself a science text.

Science has the greatest of obligations to make itself available to the public, to present wonders, but also the knowledge that enables the wonders to be understood in the proper context. However, when such wonders are put in the public domain, the onus is upon scientists to not get caught up in the Chinese whispers that augment the real science into something rather less scientific with which the public feel more comfortable.

Mystified...

2006-08-14T17:47:00.000Z

I mailed my bank to ask why I couldn't add a particular account, one entrusted to me, to my online portfolio. The response:

"In response to your query if an account is held in trustee that will have access to the account Online."

...is a little confusing. A single sentence! All be it flanked by the usual blurb of bank opening times and thanks for my mailing them. Can anyone spot the answer to my question?

Dare I mail them again?

Hobnobbing...

2006-08-13T14:18:00.000Z

My mother came to visit this weekend, so we all decided to trek over to Hebden Bridge where we heard there was a music and beer festival. Most of the afternoon was spent negotiating the tourist trap that is Hebdon Bridge, but come 4 pm we headed off to the gig, such as it was, for a spot of music and a drop of beer.

Despite appearances, and the prospect of spending an afternoon with die-hard socialists, The Trade's Club was an ok place to be. We were there to see Nell Bryden whom I'd heard on BBC Radio 2's Bob Harris Saturday Show at the start of July. I always note the names of artists I like, but was especially pleased to hear that she was going to be in The North this month, after the Edinburgh Festival.

We weren't to be disappointed. She was immediately likeable, cracked the crowd up with a few quips and leapt into the songs from her latest album. Nell sings with a fantastic vocal range and her songs are quite soulful, but sung with a playful kick. She had to admit that they'd largely been driven by the string of breakups she's had as a result of her touring, though she was amused to note that when she played a gig back in her native New York, four of her ex-boyfiends all turned up and sat there scowling at each other.

Anyway, she found our table over in the corner we chatted for the best part of an hour. A really great girl, but having been on the road since April, is very much looking to get back home.

She was amused that I didn't hold back, as I invariably can't once I get going, as I delved into science, the geography of the uk, cultural observations as well as drilling her on good ideas for places to visit on my up coming roadtrip, which she was game to help me with.

I know, I know. Poor girl, lol. She had a lot to say about US domestic and foreign policies. She commented on her disgust at how NOLA was handled (she recorded her album there just before Katerina); one of her songs was a requiem for a woman she'd known there, and who'd died. She mentioned that she'd like to be challenged more in her interviews, where she is usually subjected to the same old glib questions, but as a magna cum laude graduate in English from Wellesley, she has a lot more to offer....but then it was time for curry.

Anyway, she's playing again at the Blue Cat Café in Stockport next week, which isn't far, so we'll go support her again over there. She's back in the UK touring in October, and with any luck, she'll get onto Jools Holland when she's over. She deserves the next break up in her career.

I duly bought her album from her, with a token scribbed inside, but given our mutual shortage of change...

....she owes me £1, which is a position I like ;-)

Ramblings of a Scientist...

2006-08-05T19:09:00.000Z

THE trickiest thing about writing an essay is getting it started. The next trickiest thing is blogging an essay, because no one reads long posts. This is invariably because people talk bollocks. With that in mind, I’ve decided that the best way to start it is to moan about how essays are difficult things to get started. Thus low and behold we’re here, we’re up and running, and now I can talk about what it is I wanted to talk about.

I’ve spent the last day and night with a good friend of mine, a friend with whom I can share candid discussion on many topics from science to society to sex. Thus, having being immersed in this environment for this time, I’m feeling thoroughly revitalised. So I spent this afternoon reading several books in Borders, taking the opportunity to get out of the muggy warmth outside, sit down in a comfy chair with some decent music and plenty of book choice [features that are rarely to be found together in any library nearby].

I started thinking about my blog and how it’s not really representing me terribly well. It has become somewhat artefactual, partly because I know my family reads it, thus I’m limited to what I can talk about and partly because I’ve found it difficult to communicate the things I’d like to talk about because the subject of these things, being science and philosophy, are never firmly set in my mind.
Once something is committed to paper, then it is in some manner fixed. However, my view at that time may not be my view in months to come. If there is one thing that make a good scientist, it is doubt; doubt about the level of ones knowledge and doubt about the subject, validity or factual correctness of that knowledge. Thus setting down any particular view is folly as it can only be based on my received knowledge at the time, with the appropriate amount of synthesis.

This is why I much prefer to speak to people face to face. It is far easier to iron out ones views and state of the art in a dynamic conversation. My reticence to write about such things is of course a little silly. There is plenty I can talk about in science and philosophy, without coming to regret my words. So I aim in future blogs to spend more time discussing what science means to me, in the hope that I can better understand this myself and, god forbid, I may even communicate some science to the outside world.

Last week, when I was walking with the same friend, a bird flew onto a slate wall in front of us. It was an amazing flash of yellow, it stopped briefly then departed. My friend asked me what sort of bird it was, but I was unable to oblige him with an answer because, like him, I am useless at bird identification. I don’t feel diminished by this admission, far from it, and I’ll tell you why: It is because I can tell you plenty about the rock that the bird landed on, the slate, how old it is, when it formed and under what conditions. I can tell you about the sort of people who mined it and the context of it being there. I can tell you about the biochemical constituents of the bird shit that the yellow bird left as it departed. I can tell you about the lice and mites that are likely to parasitise the bird, but what I cannot tell you is the name of the bird.

Well, actually I can, having since looked it up. It was a Yellowhammer. So why am I telling you this? Well I’m reminded of an excellent lecture by the Nobel laureate Richard Feynman, whom I hold in the greatest esteem. He mentioned once that knowing the name of something tells you nothing about what that something is, because that something will be called something else by someone in another country and something else by someone in another country and so on. All you’ll in fact know, is that this something is called five or six different things depending on where it is. As is the case with birds.

So from the name Yellowhammer, we do glean some information [information that we are not blessed with in other bird names], as we can in fact see that it is yellow, but as for the hammer bit, well, I couldn’t tell you. Thus merely knowing the name of something is so pointless that you may as well not know the name of it at all. It is false knowledge, and it is invariably designed, either consciously or unconsciously, to make people think you know what you’re talking about.

There is no rock that I can name that I do not know something about, but there are a great many rocks that I can’t name and about which I know nothing. What is the point of remembering the name of a rock if you can’t say any more than that, if only, at the most basic level, that this one is slippery when wet and this one isn’t. Sage knowledge if you happen to be a climber. I can say the same of identifying microorganisms, chemicals and metabolic pathways. I generally never know just names.

It is for that reason that apart form those few birds that we could identify, all unidentifiable birds were henceforth called Pelicans. They may as well be until we know something more about them.

Richard Feynman was once asked to talk about what science is, which is a hell of a tricky task. In a subtle way he answered it, but likely not to his satisfaction, nor to that of many others, but it communicated a feeling of what science is. We are fortunate, as a species, to be able to communicate. In this manner we accumulate and disseminate knowledge which becomes fixed in the species as a whole. This means that each new individual is not forced to learn a fresh the entire body of knowledge that will be necessary for a successful life; knowledge that once hard gained, could be lost due to untimely death or forgetfulness. Thus the rate of knowledge accumulation needs to out way the potential for forgetting that knowledge or dying before it can be passed on. This is called Time-Binding, apparently.

The only problem with this, Feynman continued, is that with all the good and practical knowledge accumulated and passed on, there is also a great deal of bad, corruptive and prejudiced knowledge passed on in a form of Chinese Whispers that continues down the generations. This disease, as Feynman called it, has a cure. The cure is doubt; some level of scepticism that leads the recipient of that knowledge to question its validity and therefore to set out to discover once again from new what the situation is, rather than just trusting the form received. That is what science is, at least as best as Feynman could conclude. I don’t disagree, even though it is not a complete definition.

The question remains, why are people so scientifically illiterate as a whole? Again, Feynman helps us out here by suggesting that it is because science is irrelevant. The process and development being largely outweighed by, and divorced from, the end products of science in the minds of the public. Perhaps a more interesting question he raises, is why people are able to stay that way without it worrying them at all, and why they are happy to do so when so much of the knowledge is denied them? It is for this reason that despite being in the 21st Century, as if that is supposed to mean something, things like pseudo-science exist. It is likely the fault of the scientists themselves really. Society detaches itself from the more complex or unpleasant things, trusting them to individuals who are deemed to be better suited for the job. They can just reap the benefits at the end. [Interestingly, Plato said the same thing of the Greeks some 2340 years ago, his disappointment that unlike the Egyptians, philosophy and mathematics were the the plaything of scholars and ignorance the plaything of the common man; whom he said were like pigs].

What we should be doing as scientists, is to openly discuss pseudo-science, which can only have the effect of forcing the pseudo-scientists, psychics and faith-healers into a position where they have to actually learn some science in order to defend themselves. Only the blindly faithful can argue a case without knowing anything of the other side. Perhaps in that action, they may realise that perhaps their knowledge isn’t so well founded. Perhaps they will have doubts, and as I mentioned before, doubt is where it all begins.

A bit of fun...

2006-08-01T00:07:00.000Z

This amused me greatly. Puerile, as we like it.

Chuck Norris Facts. My particular favourites are:

"Chuck Norris is currently suing NBC, claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs."

"There is no such thing as global warming. Chuck Norris was cold, so he turned the sun up."

"Contrary to popular belief, America is not a democracy, it is a Chucktatorship."

and...

"Chuck Norris counted to infinity - twice."

I know, I know. It's all very silly, but then, so is Chuck Norris.

Blog Nazis

2006-07-31T19:36:00.000Z

It's been a week or so since I last visited Petite Anglais, but I was shocked to discover, on a recent visit, that she has fallen foul of the blog nazis. Fired for keeping a blog, an anonymous blog, one in which she barely mentioned her workplace!

This short of thing should make us all very nervous.

Just sad and wrong, as ever the result of employers who clearly don't understand technocracy.

We went a hikin'....

2006-07-31T18:46:00.000Z

...and got piss wet through!

So for anyone who's been living in the far North of Scotland, or across the pond, you may know there's been something of a heatwave in old Blighty this past MONTH (grrr).

- Calm -

Anyway. A work colleague friend and I finally managed to get organised and went on a yomp in the Lakes, the Greenburn Round (Lt. Langdale - Wet Side Edge - Lt. & Gt. Carrs - Swirl How and Wetherlam). We set of in Stinking heat, thoroughly over heated, even in our thin shirts and shorts, but very enjoyable as my friend's grin will testify to.

None the less. After stopping for lunch, in the time it took for us to put our respective accoutrements away, the weather turned from airy and pleasant to rain storm and 20 mph winds. Now I've been caught out a few times in the past. I also happen to be pretty good at on the ground weather prediction. AND I'd read the mountain forecast, so was expecting SHOWERS, just as the synoptic charts had indicated.

...but this was not showers. This was nasty. This left us, and several other shorts 'n' t-shirt wearing walkers, rather shocked and suddenly rather exposed on the top of a big hill. Needless to say we all fled back to our respective valleys of origin, though ours was a rather boggy, cross-country affair.

We took refuge in Cathedral Cavern, home of much childhood spelunking.

Arse. After all this scorching heat sapping our energy! I will remember to pack ALL waterproofs next time.

Even in the desert. Naughty Mountain Leader!

To tell you the truth...

2006-07-27T12:08:00.000Z

So, CONGRATS to (Dr) Pew on passing her PhD viva ordeal yesterday. Now shush, LOL.

When confessing a hitherto withheld point, why do people say "To tell you the truth, it's like this..." I mean, what exactly am I supposed to take from this; that they've been lying to me up to this point?

Weeds. Given that there is thankfully nothing worth watching on TV these days, other than Top Gear, I was surprised to find this US show called Weeds. It's a dark comedy of the of the middle-class/soccer-mom/Desperate Housewives ilk that the US seems to be exploring at the moment. Essentially, 40-something, well-to-do Mom (the lovely Mary-Louise Parker) is widowed and turns to selling Pot to "keep up with the Jones's".

I especially love the opening credits song "Little Boxes" by Malvina Reynolds:

"Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of tickytacky
Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes all the same
There’s a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses all went to the university
Where they were put in boxes and they came out all the same,
And there’s doctors and there’s lawyers, and business executives
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf course and drink their martinis dry,
And they all have pretty children and the children go to school
And the children go to summer camp and then to the university
Where they are put in boxes and they come out all the same.

And the boys go into business and marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky and they all look just the same."

(I would have inserted a link to the official webiste, but it seems they block all traffic outside of the U.S.A!)

Planning. I've done something that I'll probably regret today. I've decided not to attend a Council Planning Committee meeting regarding the proposed housing development in the woods behind my house. I opposed it and encouraged the neighbours to do so. We evidently put a spanner in the works as it has gone to committee (less than 10% of cases do so), but despite that, I know that most of the committee are in the developer's pockets. It would be a waste of my time as my words would have no effect on the decision they have indicated they will make, i.e. the development goes forward.

I can't help thinking, but what if. What if my presence there would have had an effect? The site is a "brownfield" site. So these are regions that are first dibs on development....but it's not a derelict factory or piece of waste ground, it's a piece of well reclaimed and incredible biodiverse woodland. Reclaimed brownfield sites are often more biodiverse that even "greenfield" sites, which may be limited due to open space, recreation or extant climax communities of large trees blocking ground growth.

The developers still have a lot of loops to jump through and have a mountain of considerations to take into account. Plus they have to include some public amenity planting in their site. They've been limited to 17 houses due to nature of the site.

But I feel bad now. I couldn't follow through this time and it has made me realise, as if I didn't know, that the appearance of public involvment in governmental and quasi-governmental policies is just a facade. It's the impression of democracy to placate the masses, when really "The Party Rules" policy of big brother, his mates and their big pockets is king.