Month: September 2012
You Can’t Go Home Again
Rationally, we know it’s not the case, but the temptation is to assume that, when we leave a place, it’s in a time capsule, just waiting for us to return. Of course, that’s not the case, but it’s tempting… Our first (rented) house in Perth looks identical to how we left it, about 15 years…
The Essential Uselessness of Online Reviews
We’re staying at the West Beach Lagoon hotel in Scarborough, WA. It’s near the beach – in fact it looks as though our balcony used to have a beach view – but has since been built out by taller hotels closer to the water. Accommodation in Perth isn’t cheap, and I left my run in…
Rape, Blame and Probability
I should probably know better: I’ve tried to talk about this issue before, and got into serious arguments. I was going to say ‘I don’t even know why this is controversial’ – but I guess that would be being disingenuous. I really do. Anyway, on the back of a Twitter conversation between two people I…
Young Earth Creationism – A Sin?
It’s certainly an interesting perspective: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/09/25/young-earth-creationism-is-no-better-than-any-other-form-of-malicious-gossip/ The author says it better than I can, so read the article, but the gist is that, in order to be a young earth creationist, it is necessary to believe that the vast majority of all scientists in the world are members of a vast, malevolent conspiracy, and to…
‘Guess What’s In My Head’
I’m sure everyone has experienced it – it used to be a dominant mode in schools. The teacher asks a question, and you give an answer that’s interesting and creative, and it gets rejected. It soon becomes obvious that the teacher had one specific answer in mind, and was not really asking the question as…
‘Not Its Bitch’
I’d posted something on Facebook about the caffeine cold turkey I mentioned here, and went to write ‘show coffee I’m not its bitch’. I ended up revising it to ‘show coffee I’m not its slave’. The former is closer to what I meant, and has a bit more rhetorical ‘zing’, but I do try to…
Cold Turkey
I have a headache. I’ve had a headache, of varying ferocity, since yesterday afternoon. It’ll probably be with me most of today, but hopefully subside after that. I realise that migraine sufferers have worse headaches for longer, more often, but I’m not posting to get sympathy for my headache. 😉 This is just a periodic…
Science Words and Woo-meisters
It started out this morning. I told Suzie that I’m going to do a ‘water fast’ – no food or drinks other than water – just for a couple of days. I suspect I’ll say more about that later, but the point is that she said ‘You should put lemon juice in the water to…
Gangnam Style: wait, there’s more!
If you haven’t yet seen the fun and insanely catchy video for South Korean pop star Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’… well, first, have you checked lately whether you have become a hermit in cave? And, secondly, there’s a link to it in this article anyway. So, I think it kinda adds some fun to the song…
Divergence
Suzie and I share quite a few interests, but there are also quite large no-go areas for each other in terms of our media interests. In gaming, she likes strategy games, and usually casual games. Those ones that involve building an economy and juggling a dozen balls in the air at once. I just don’t…
If The Answer Is Unclear, The Question Could Be The Problem
The following question was posed on Facebook: There followed comments from about 350 people, some saying with great vigour and certainty that the answer is 2, others with equal or greater vigour and certainty that it’s 288. They quoted chapter and verse, and gave citations to learned sources on the order of operations in mathematics…
Fact Checking
It’s one of the things I try to do. When someone makes a claim – but, more important and more difficult, when I make a claim, I try to check that it’s at least factually correct. There are things that are matters of opinion, but arguments about opinions are typically based on facts, and if…
But Will Science Wait?
I’m in the process of applying for entry to a Master of Philosophy degree in Physics at Griffith Gold Coast – some time within the next couple of days I’ll post my 500 word research proposal here just for your interest. Shouldn’t be too much hassle getting accepted, I wouldn’t think: I’m not qualified for…
I Love All My Smart Friends (And They’re All Smart)
(Including My Family) (OK, Enough with the parentheses already) So, sure, sometimes we have highbrow, high level discussions of theory and ideas. But sometimes it’s just silly banter, but still replete with ideas. I get people’s jokes and they get mine, and they make jokes that make me feel smarter… it’s all good. Here are…
Now *that’s* what I call ‘blogging’!
P Z Myers has recently added Chris Clark as a co-blogger on Pharyngula, and Chris just posted this: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/09/16/californias-largest-lake-is-doomed/ Just a lovely piece of work, informing, educating and entertaining about a particular place and issue with a scope that includes the human and the geological.
My mission for today…
…is to write a 500 word research proposal for my MPhil in Physics. A 500 word research proposal in education, I could whip out before the first coffee got cold beside the keyboard. But for this physics one, I need to read and understand a whole lot of papers on quantum laser stuff (technical term)…
Amanda Palmer on Music, Money and Freedom
I follow Amanda Palmer on Twitter, and will be getting her new album Real Soon Now(TM) (without ‘can’t afford it’ as an excuse, ‘cos it’s a ‘pay what you want’ release). This is a bit outside the usual ambit of my blog, but hopefully interesting… I found it so. Amanda is touring with a band…
It’s OK to ‘Unfriend’ Me
I’m totally happy if someone ‘unfriends’ me on Facebook. For a start, that’s because I understand that it doesn’t mean we’re not friends any more. Facebook is social media, and serves certain purposes, but it doesn’t determine whether or not someone is a friend of mine. Indeed, unfriending on Facebook may well help to preserve…
Utterly Antithetical
Here’s a bit from this report by Andy Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley: In his new book on Finnish Educational Reform, Finland’s greatest educational expert and former World Bank specialist, Pasi Sahlberg, refers to this pervasive new Second Way strategy as the Global Educational Reform Movement (GERM) (Sahlberg, 2011). The GERM has five defining characteristics: Standardized…
Fixing Education: The View From A Student’s Desk
The title of this article in Forbes magazine might be a bit overblown (and you might have to endure an ad to read the article), but Nikhil Goyal is talking a lot of sense: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericaswallow/2012/09/05/american-education-system-nikhil-goyal/ It would be awesome if the fact that he’s a student got a bit of a groundswell going.