Chicken Yoghurt » Science and progress

Google, Gmail, Blogger.com and YouTube: customer ’service’

Justin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:52:54 +0000

Have you been threatened, smeared or libelled on Google, Gmail, Blogger.com blogs or on YouTube? Tough.

Alan Johnson uses drug clamour to sack Nutt

Justin — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 09:56:14 +0000

So the Home Secretary Alan Johnson sacks Professor David Nutt as chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs because Nutt’s recent pronouncements ‘cause confusion between scientific advice and policy‘.

There you have it in black and white – the writ of the Daily Mail reading classes trumps science. As Jamie Kenny says, ‘what does it say about any scientist who would agree to work for the government under these conditions?’

Still, we can probably expect a rush of new policy initiatives from the Home Office now they’re being open about the dissonance between policy and science…

- Alan Johnson bans antibiotics saying ‘we must instead trust to the graces of Saint Dymphna and not confuse scientific advice with policy.’

- Alan Johnson says prospective female MPs are to be vetted with trial by drowning. ‘We must not confuse scientific advice with policy,’ he says.

- Alan Johnson announces the introduction of daily human sacrifices to ensure sun comes up. ‘We must not anger the Fire Gods or confuse scientific advice with policy,’ he says.

- Alan Johnson says he is to have Galileo exhumed so he can sack him because his scientific advice does not reflect policy.

That damned science. You just can’t trust it. I mean, where’s it got us, all that scientific study? Poor Alan. The whole world must have him in a constant state of terrified confusion. I bet he keeps running around the back of his telly so he can try and catch the little Eastenders inside it. My dog does the same whenever a cat comes on.

Still, at least scientific advisers to the government know where they stand now. They can tailor their advice to the counter-Enlightenment mores of little Englanders – and the prejudices of desperate ministers with their eyes on the dole queue – or sling their hooks. As Jack Pickard says, this government cherry-picking of science makes it difficult to trust any of its scientific advisers to tell the truth. Unless, that is, they are immediately sacked afterwards for telling it.

Hiroshima Day

Justin — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 12:27:25 +0000

Sixty-four years ago today, the Nuclear Age began…

At 8.15am on August 6 1945, over the Japanese city of Hiroshima, the B-29 Superfortress bomber Enola Gay opened its payload doors. The payload was the first atomic bomb, codename ‘Little Boy’.

Here’s something I didn’t know.

In April 1945, General Groves was instructed to pick targets for the nuclear bombs… “To enable us to assess accurately the effects of the bomb, the targets should not have been previously damaged by air raids.”

I doubt many people become General without being a stone-cold, sociopathic bastard. To think that the people of Hiroshima probably thought they’d had a lucky escape when, all along, General Groves had something special planned for them.

Save Vestas

Justin — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 10:52:41 +0000

I was on the Isle of Wight over the weekend and managed to get to the under-threat-of-closure Vestas wind turbine factory and take part in the protest on the Friday evening.

Here are some photos…

This is the speech given by one of the RMT reps at the protest…

You can find out all you need to know about New Labour kicking off its green revolution with standing by and watching the destruction of 600 green jobs on the Save Vestas website.

Congratulations Elizabeth Adeney

Justin — Sun, 17 May 2009 09:16:49 +0000

A 66-year-old is set to become the oldest woman to give birth in Britain, it was reported last night.

Elizabeth Adeney is reported to be eight months pregnant after having had IVF treatment abroad.

She is four years older than the previous record holder, Patricia Rashbrook, who gave birth in 2006, aged 62.

Hooray for science!

Patton Oswalt is not safe for work or around the kids…

Patton Oswalt on Sex and Science – watch more funny videos

The BNP are…

Justin — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:41:37 +0000

…well, take a look for yourself.

Twitter, as we all know, is ace. You can have all sorts of fun with it. One of its features is that it keeps an eye on what its users are talking about and keeps a list of what it calls ‘trending topics’. When a group of like-minded souls got together this afternoon to discuss the twattery of the British National Party, the discussion managed to dislodge Star Trek as the most talked about topic on Planet Twitter. In your face, Spock.

Get yourself over there and join in the fun. Just add the hashtag #theBNParetwats to your twitters.

Simple pleasures.

At last: blog to bog technology comes of age

Justin — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 11:14:06 +0000

Every so often I wish out loud that there was a nice way of formatting blog posts so you could print them out as a little magazine. You could then read them on the bus or the bog and leave them behind for someone else to find.

It looks like with its Tabbloid service, Hewlett Packard might have cracked it. You give it a blog’s RSS feed (or several), your email address and a delivery time and it sends you a daily and nicely formatted PDF of that blog’s posts. A little jiggery-pokery at this end to trim out the stuff that doesn’t translate to paper – like Twitter feeds – and it could be a very nice little toy.

(Via Warren Ellis)

Voluntary vs involuntary death

Justin — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 09:56:15 +0000

It seems to me that there’s a perverse dichotomy in New Labour’s approach to science. On some issues it is firmly anti-science and on others it embraces science like a lover.

For instance, if you are an independent advisory body who has ‘probably carried out the most considered and detailed assessment of ecstasy ever carried out’, the government is going to tell you to go swing when you produce your recommendations. Ecstasy is a potential killer says the government so it stays as a Class A drug.

However, if you’re a scientist whose particular itch is finding new and interesting ways of killing people with sharp and shiny weaponry, then the government will throw millions at you and produce hot ‘n’ horny press releases oozing luuuurve for your engines of death.

What I’m sensing here is that the government doesn’t like you taking voluntary risks with your own body in a UK nightclub but if you’re, say, living in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, they’ll impose the risk on you. Can anybody square this for me?

Two words for Andy Burnham

Justin — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 09:25:07 +0000

And no, one of them isn’t ‘off’ in response to his staggeringly half-arsed plan to censor the Internet.

The two words are prior restraint.

Still, Mr Burnham can scratch the itch of his technocratic authoritarianism all he likes but if this plan actually happens (who decides what’s ‘unacceptable’ and what isn’t? Does every website in the world have to join a queue to have a rating applied? Doesn’t Burnham know that technology already exists to protect children from inappropriate content?), I’ll show my bum in the window of Marks and Spencer.

The fact that Burnham had to wait until the Saturday between Christmas and New Year to get himself a hearing on this should tell you all you need to know about how seriously to take him.

38 and 3

Justin — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:31:33 +0000

Right here.

Can anybody else hear ‘Whitey on the Moon‘ by Gil Scott-Heron?

(Via John Brissenden)