Politics
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Useless boycotts
Once again, my Union, the University and College Union, has sort-of voted to boycott Israeli academics. It’s only “sort of”, because, like last time, the decision comes about from a vote of activists present at the UCU annual conference, not of the membership at large. Indeed, the vote has been opposed by the General Secretary…
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I realize that I haven’t posted in nearly two weeks. Between marking exams, gardening, attempting to solve differential equations and calculate integrals with several hundred terms, inspiration has been lacking. Here are some things I may yet get to: The book launch for Universe or Multiverse, edited by QMW Cosmologist Bernard Carr. Entertaining, for sure,…
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All the news that’s fit to print?
Steinn Sigurðsson points out that the New York Times‘ ridiculous pay-only access to its op-ed content is now free to University students and faculty. Despite claims by Brits to the contrary (and despite a series of newsgathering mishaps over the last few years), the NY Times remains the newspaper of record even outside of the…
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Raiding the science coffers
In the last couple of weeks, the UK Government has announced that the Department of Trade and Industry is so far in the red that it has cut £68 million from the science budget. Usually, government finance isn’t a zero-sum game. But this year, to pay for payouts having to do with the collapse of…
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Another reason we should teach evolution and the big bang
…they are part of an an ancient Jewish conspiracy, and so it pisses off the anti-semites…
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Science In, On and Around the Media
Neil Tyson of New York’s Museum of Natural History had an excellent appearance on The Daily Show where he reminds us that “Astrophysicists are a simple people“. John Stewart flipped between slack-jawed incomprehension and good jokes. Better science than most of the real news. Speaking of the media and science, I spent Tuesday night boozing…
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The Carbon Budget of Cosmology
Antony Lewis over at CosmoCoffee has started a discussion of the environmental impact of scientists’ travel to conferences. Is this excusable, perhaps necessary, behavior, or a profligate waste of carbon? Sure, conferences are fun, especially when they’re in Taipei or Trieste, but I sometimes wonder whether those hours in the conference rooms are worth the…
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State of fear
Starting tomorrow, you’ll be able to sign up with MI5 to receive an email notice when the “Threat Level” changes. Right now it’s “severe”, but they have the fine-grained menu of “low”, “moderate”, “substantial”, “severe” and “critical” to choose from — we certainly need that much more detail compared to the meagre green/yellow/red of the…
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God, Man and Katrina
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I watched Channel 4’s documentary The Trouble with Atheism. I assume my secular fellow travellers in the blogosphere will take it and its presenter, Rod Liddle, to task for its myriad stupidities, misrepresentations and annoyances so I can leave them unremarked (except to point out that, with no offence intended, John Polkinghorne is a good…