John Timmer, over at ars technica, has posted a great article about explaining science to the polarized US public. It is a summary of a few talks given at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Here are a few excerpts:
“most of the presenters advocated some sort of framing of scientific communications. The frames proposed, however, often seemed to run the risk of excluding some part of the large and diverse scientific community from the frame. The two that struck me as the most powerful, however, were the most inclusive. The first came from Barbara King, who advocated separating the communication of science completely from the communication of a belief system, so that discussion could focus on scientific models and their supportive data. The other was Steve Case’s presentation of scientific exploration as giving us a reason to feel optimistic for the future. ”
“Perhaps the best way to communicate science is simply to remind people about some basics of the scientific endeavor.”
At the end of my last entry, I started to ramble about the popularization of science. This article explores a few routes for delivering science to the public.
I couldn’t agree more with the last quote above, which also happens to be the last sentence of the article. The sole thing that bugs me about public knowledge of science, is that they don’t understand the scientific method. I don’t expect people to be able to draw out a flowchart with hypotheses and theories, but it is valuable to know a little bit about it. The most important thing about science is viewing it as a method as opposed to a body of knowledge.
I am gaining respect for the CBC
I generally only watch CBC for Hockey Night in Canada, and not much else. Most of their original programming is not very good. I actually don’t watch TV except for sports. That is besides the fact.
The CBC is releasing one of their upcoming shows, Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister, over p2p networks (ie Bittorrent). While this doesn’t make me forget that the CBC didn’t resign Christ Cuthbert, a great hockey commentator, it does restore some credibility by trying something new and progressive. Hopefully more of CBC’s content will be available for download in the future, so everyone go out and download this, even if you aren’t going to watch it. If this is a success, maybe we’ll have hockey games via Bittorrent sometime in the future.[via Michael Geist ]
I have just lost all respect of Ben Stein
I used to be a big fan of Win Ben Stein’s Money, mainly for his dry sense of humour. I recently found out that he is releasing a pro-creationist movie called “eXpelled.” Respect is now 0.
Check out the trailer here. It’s horrible. The comments are being moderated, so mine haven’t shown up. They are definitely being censored. Here are a few excerpts from the comments:
“About time someone steps up.”
“A few of us from our church saw a private screening in Houston and the movie is fantastic! Tell as many as you can to go opening weekend April 18th.”
“Way to go Ben. This has been going on for years. It is about time someone exposed it. Anyone who sees how DNA works cannot help but conclude that there is Intelligence.”
“I don’t understand why we just accept both theories and leave people to their own, each side feels compelled to preach and teach. Just end it. As for people being expelled from education because they don’t agree with it, thats wrong.”
The last comment really bothers me. Many people don’t understand that intelligent design is NOT a Theory. It is a hypothesis, not a Theory. Scientifically, a theory is something that has been tested and can be used to predict things. In colloquial speech, when people say “I have a theory,” they really mean “I have a hypothesis.”
This is exactly why we need more popularizers of science such as Richard Dawkins and Carl Sagan. A recent xkcd comic, “Unscientific” agrees with me and portrays my point…check it out.
I have previously blogged about a really neat substance d3o. It is flexible at rest, but hardens instantaneously on impact. It has been used in ski racing suits, soccer shin pads, gloves and toques.
I still think that the best application for d3o is in laptop sleeves. I have googled extensively for such a product, but my searches have turned up nothing. Buying a roll of d3o myself and making my own is an option, but d3o labs doesn’t sell sheets of the stuff.
Shall we start a petition?
I have come across a few interesting videos of a guy called Max Cornelisse. Google hasn’t indexed much on him except for his youtube channel.
Even if these videos are fake, they are still pretty impressive. On several occasions, he hacks into public computer systems and displays content of his choice. In the last video below, he claims to use cell broadcasting to deliver SMS messages to all people in his immediate vicinity. After reading the wikipedia entry on cell broadcasting, it does appear that the infrastructure for this kind of hack is there; it might be possible.
I really hope that these videos are real, but I have a feeling that they are not.
Check out a few of his videos below, or his youtube channel.
What do you guys think? Is he for real?
Changing Signs at a toll booth.
Hacking big TV in a train station
Prank – Hacker at Utrecht Central Station – A funny movie is a click away
Sending SMSs to all people in vicinity
I’ve cracked under the pressure and have started up a Twitter account.
You can now perv on me at:
Readers: if you have a twitter ‘feed’ (not sure if that’s the right term), add it in the comments and I’ll start following you.
I do not normally stay on top of press releases from the vatican, but boing boing alerted me to 7 new sins that the pope just added to the list.
Here they are:
1. “Bioethical” violations such as birth control
2. “Morally dubious” experiments such as stem cell research
3. Drug abuse
4. Polluting the environment
5. Contributing to widening divide between rich and poor
6. Excessive wealth
7. Creating poverty
I have a few short comments to a few of these:
@1: What about all of the natural abortions that occur by themselves?
The catholic church promotes celibacy, which isn’t “natural” either.
@2: I noticed that the pope shaves. This act kills millions of cells that ALL have the potential to become a human. Benny better stop shaving if he wants to live by #2.
@3: I will not say drug abuse is not a problem, but it is not my right to tell people what they can and cannot do if it doesn’t bother me.
What about caffeine? This blog wouldn’t exist if this was the case.
@6: Excessive wealth? The catholic church evades taxes by claiming to have the backing of a glorified tooth fairy. They are just cheats like the big corporations. They are also one of the largest land owners in the world. I realize that the land is not organized in a top-down structure, with all the money flowing to the vatican, but they do still take up a lot of space. Not to mention all of the those cemeteries.
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