The Germans are being weird

Homeowners on a street in Germany have been told they must foot the bill for their road's construction - even though it's been there for nearly 80 years. Residents on Auf'm Rott, in suburban Dusseldorf, went to court after city authorities told them pay an average of 10,000 euros ($11,000; £8,400) per household for what looked like a long-established road, Die Welt reports.

Auf'm Rott's current residents will be shelling out for the "Hitler asphalt", streetlamps dating back to 1956, a sewer from the 1970s, and pavements and greenery added in 2009. But despite taking a sizeable financial hit, the residents appear to have accepted the court's verdict. Spiegel Online reports that they've withdrawn their complaint, saying: "If this is how it is, then this is how it is."

Whut ?
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-36923731

They are not made out of meat

This isn't the lab-grown burger made of synthetic meat. This is completely devoid of any kind of meat at all, it just looks - and apparently tastes - as good as meat, but is made entirely from plants.

Don't bother watching the second video, because it's literally just 60 seconds of people eating and nothing else.


In an effort to fight the growing impact of our diets on the environment, a company called ‘Impossible Foods’ has set out to do the impossible: create a meat-free burger so delicious, so juicy, so bloody, that even the most ardent carnivore would choose it over the beef alternative.

This level of perfection is essential because, as the company’s founder Patrick Brown explains, “we had to make something that a meat lover will prefer to what they’re getting today from an animal. The only customer that we care about … is someone who loves meat, is not looking for an alternative, and is not going to compromise on the pleasure of eating meat.” In short, as the company’s website states, “we don’t make veggie burgers”.

Their key discovery was a molecule called “heme”. Heme is what gives meat its unique umami flavour, its iron and even the red colour and consistency of its blood. The same molecule occurs in plants, and it’s the key to making the Impossible Burger taste like meat, contracting on the grill like meat and even bleeding a little when cooked rare.

The results have also been impressive from an environmental standpoint. An Impossible Burger requires only five per cent of the land and a quarter of the water that a beef burger does, and produces only an eighth of the greenhouse gases.

http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/food/eat/the-burger-that-will-change-the-world-and-blow-your-mind-in-the-process/news-story/c0dfa547fd1279266312c101129199f8

The evolution of the caste system

Of course, we already know that a number of other social animals have evolved a soldier caste: ants, termites, and even some less socially-complex animals like aphids, snapping shrimps and flatworms. Yet until Grüter and his colleagues made their announcement, nobody had found bee soldiers.

I'm hoping for a follow-up article on soldier shrimp.

Why might Jatai bees have developed a class of soldiers while other bees apparently have not ? There is no definitive answer, but ... it turns out that robber bees pose a very real threat to Jatai colonies. If one robber bee encounters a Jatai colony and returns to its own colony to recruit more robbers for an attack, the result can be devastating, says Segers. "We have lost colonies to robber bees." This is why it is in the Jatai bees' best interests to attack a robber scout before it can relay its message.

"Ideally, the Jatai bee grabs the wings of the robber bee and doesn't let go," says Grüter, who has witnessed many such fights. Both bees fall out of the sky, the robber grounded by the soldier. They grapple with each other as the robber bee tries to tear away its tenacious attacker.

Eventually, the much larger robber bee usually succeeds in killing the Jatai soldier, often decapitating it in the process. But the dead bee's relentless jaws clamp on to its killer, preventing the robber from flying away. "The Jatai bees commit suicidal defence, lying on the ground with the robber bee until maybe an ant comes along and [takes] them away," says Grüter.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160728-jatai-bees-are-the-only-species-that-have-a-soldier-caste

Why are third parties in American politics so neglected ?

I have a naive question for my American friends. I see that quite a lot of angry people have decided that Hilary is worse than a pustule on Satan's backside and are going to switch from Democrat to Green. My question is, why isn't there more of a drive to build up support for other parties outside the main campaigning season ? From my naive, distant perspective it looks like supporters want the Greens to go from zero to running the country in, like, three minutes. Why is it President or bust ? Why isn't there more of a movement to win seats in government before taking a stab at the top job ? As far as I can tell, even though a President has a lot more powers than a Prime Minister, they're not an elected dictator. So why fight the totally lost cause of getting the Greens into government instead of just winning seats, where they could still wield significant political power ?

Methinks this man entitled

A Frenchman is suing his former employer for "bore out" - boredom's equivalent of burnout - which he says turned him into a "professional zombie". Frederic Desnard wants 360,000 euros (£300,000) for being "killed professionally through boredom" by his 80,000-euro-a-year job as an executive in a perfume business.

Okay, on 80,000 a year, consider taking up combined skydiving and shark wrestling as a hobby. That'll sort you out.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36195442

Robot Wars is BACK !

Well, I thoroughly enjoyed the first new episode. The format has barely changed, and a good thing too. The format worked extremely well, it was sheer saturation that got boring by the end. Only six episodes per season should take care of that. A pretty good balance between interviewing the teams and robots beating the crap out of each other. And the old spirit of teams helping each other in the workshop but being utterly merciless in the arena is still going strong. It's very much good clean fun and very, very silly. It's not my favourite TV show by any stretch, but I love it anyway. Like a reverse Hillary Clinton, it's very hard to dislike Robot Wars.

That said, much as Dara O Briain has grown on me, I did prefer the more melodramatic enthusiasm of Craig Charles. I wouldn't say he lent the show gravitas, but he did give it character. And the arena has been rebuilt and no doubt improved to deal with the heavier, much more powerful - like, really quite a lot more powerful - robots, but there's nothing fundamentally new about it. It might have been nice to try and add a few new touches. In the end though, it's the robots and their designers that make the show. And so far they're on fine form. I predict a bright future, so long as the producers don't go overboard with getting Robot Wars on a year-round weekly schedule.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36866552

It's not your opinion, you're just wrong

An opinion is a preference for or judgement of something. My favourite colour is black. I think mint tastes awful. Doctor Who is the best television show. These are all opinions. They may be unique to me alone or massively shared across the general population but they all have one thing in common; they cannot be verified outside of the fact that I believe them.

There’s nothing wrong with an opinion on those things. The problem comes from people whose opinions are actually misconceptions. If you think vaccines cause autism you are expressing something factually wrong, not an opinion. The fact that you may still believe that vaccines cause autism does not move your misconception into the realm of valid opinion. Nor does the fact that many others share this opinion give it any more validity.

Let’s say I meet a fellow Doctor Who fan, and this fan’s favourite Doctor is David Tennant. Nothing wrong so far. However, upon further discussing the subject this fan tells me that he or she has never seen any of the pre-2005 episodes or heard any of the radio plays. In a perfect world someone confronted with this would simply say, “Well, David Tennant is my favourite that I’ve seen.”

What mucks it all up is when a narrow set of information is assumed to be wider than it is. There is a difference between a belief and things you just didn’t know.

Many, many, many of your opinions will turn out to be uninformed or just flat out wrong. No, the fact that you believed it doesn’t make it any more valid or worthwhile, and nobody owes your viewpoint any respect simply because it is yours. 

http://www.houstonpress.com/arts/no-it-s-not-your-opinion-you-re-just-wrong-updated-7611752

How do win friends and demonise people

Using the rhetoric of Donald Drumpf, Nick Griffin, Nigel Farage and Richard Dawkins (yes, really, he's that bad), along with a rather large dollop of the truth, I attempt to convince you that scientists are a bunch of evil, delusional, murderous villains. I won't quote anything because literally the entire thing is out of context, also, you should at least skim-read the links as they come up. Most of the best bits (IMHO) use the rhetoric of the demagogues themselves. However, some basic techniques :

- Never tell a lie when the truth will do. This makes it easier to get away with the lies when you need them. Use a mixture of the truth, half-truths, and massive in-your-face lies. It confuses the heck out of people.
- Only ever use the truth selectively. But, occasionally say something ostensibly much more moderate. This will give your supporters helpful ammunition against anyone accusing you of being a bigot.
- A closely-related tactic is to state that you're not demonising the people you are, in fact, demonising. Tell them you're just demonising everything they believe in, because that makes it alright. Whether people actually do believe all this is totally irrelevant.
- Scare people. Telling people they're being attacked is just one part of this.
- If possible, be an expert in the field you're talking about. If yours is a minority viewpoint, your supporters will ignore or try to discredit every single other expert.
- If that's not possible, don't worry. You can be an expert in a completely different field instead. Your supporters will insist that gives you credibility regardless of what the real experts think.
- If you have no qualifications of any kind, that's fine too ! You can depict yourself as one of the "common people" and don't have to worry about statistics at all. You can also say things like, "that's just common sense" with absolutely nothing to back it up.
- Regardless of who you are, always use as many statements that can't be factually verified as possible. Things are "probably" happening, "everyone knows", it's all just "common sense", you have an "opinion", maybe give a personal anecdote - people naturally learn by induction, not by reading statistics.
- Emphasise your own amazing qualities as often as possible. Drumpf takes this to absurd new heights, often stating he's a successful businessman as though that gives him legitimacy. Wealth brings goodness, right Socrates ? The trick is to convey authority. It doesn't matter what authority.
- Use short, snappy sentences.
- Try to use correlation to infer causation, forgetting any wider statistics, however forced that might seem. "But it tells them to do it in a book !". Exploit the Nirvana fallacy to the hilt : it happened that one time, so it's not perfect, therefore everything about it is bad.
- Be personal. Although they all have very different styles, just about all the successful populists try to seem like "one of us". They have different ways of doing this, though, "I'm just saying what everyone's thinking" is a common tactic. Whether everyone's really thinking it is completely beside the point.
- Perhaps most importantly, cherry-pick to the extent that the cherry is likely to go locally extinct within a 50 mile radius of wherever you happen to be.

https://astrorhysy.blogspot.com/2016/07/worked-example-selective-reporting.html

How big a force is misogyny in politics ?

As an interested non-American, this was a nice read. From a distance, Hilary seems like a thoroughly dislikeable person but the bitterness is harder to understand. It was also interesting to read about people who switch between radically different candidates, which doesn't fit the standard narrative of a highly polarised America. Maybe they're unusual exceptions, I don't know.

What’s happening to Clinton, says Cooper, “happens to a lot of women. There are millions of people who will say about another woman: She’s really good at her job, I just don’t like her. They think they’re making an objective evaluation, but when we look at the broader analysis, there is a pattern to the bias.”

That may be true, and certainly misogyny plays its part, but I still dislike her. Or Theresa May. Or Angela Eagle. Or Margaret Thatcher. Or Dianne Abott. Dislikeable people shouldn't be given extra credit because of their gender. On the other hand I liked Mo Mowlam very much, I've got nothing personal against Leanne Wood, I'm not sure about Nicola Sturgeon, while I like Julie Morgan and Jenny Willott. I just don't buy the idea that women are generally more empathetic or less aggressive, at least when it comes to politics, they just as scheming, conniving, and charismatic as men.

For as long as Hillary Clinton has been in public life, people who’ve met in her person have marveled at how much more likable she is in the flesh than she is on television. “What’s remarkable isn’t that she can be funny, spontaneous, and mischievous, and has a loud, throaty laugh; what’s remarkable is the extent to which she has sequestered her personality from the media,” Gates wrote in 1996.

Cooper thinks it’s possible that once she’s no longer explicitly competing for power, the widespread public dislike of her might ebb. “When she announces she’s running for something, her unfavorability increases,” Cooper says of Clinton. “When she’s in a role, her favorability starts to creep up again.”

Certainly something to think about, at any rate.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/07/the_people_who_hate_hillary_clinton_the_most.html

Science without philosophy is literally not possible

So, this entire Collection has been pithily dismissed as "unfortunate" (plus.google.com/u/0/+JohnVerdon-JohnVerdon/posts/JohWg2kB7Fp). I'm not sure that's better or worse than the time I was personally accused of being a fraud on account of thinking that philosophy actually matters for doing science.

I've said it before and I'll say it again : the beliefs of science are evidence-based and provisional. You're allowed to make unproven assumptions, but you have to be aware that these are assumptions. If you're going to assume that the Universe is a purely mechanical, physics-driven place where everything can be explained by laws, that is a belief, an assumption, even a philosophy. It's a necessary one for the scientific method, but it's still damn hard - perhaps impossible - to rigorously prove. You may fairly claim that you can't prove a negative... in which case congratulations, you're doing philosophy.

You cannot understand reality with maths alone

Just so much this.

Many key aspects of life (such as ethics: what is good and what is bad, and aesthetics: what is beautiful and what is ugly) lie outside the domain of scientific inquiry (science can tell you what kind of circumstances will lead to the extinction of polar bears, or indeed of humanity; it has nothing whatever to say about whether this would be good or bad, that is not a scientific question).

Attempts to explain values in terms of neuroscience or evolutionary theory in fact have nothing whatever to say about what is good or bad. That is a philosophical or religious question (scientists trying to explain ethics from these kinds of approaches always surreptitiously introduce some unexamined concept of what is a good life by the back door). And they cannot for example tell you, from a scientific basis, what should be done about Israel or Syria today. That effort would be a category mistake.

As I stated above, mathematical equations only represent part of reality, and should not be confused with reality. A specific related issue: there is a group of people out there writing papers based on the idea that physics is a computational process. But a physical law is not an algorithm. So who chooses the computational strategy and the algorithms that realise a specific physical law? (Finite elements perhaps?) What language is it written in? (Does Nature use Java or C++? What machine code is used?) Where is the CPU? What is used for memory, and in what way are read and write commands executed? Additionally if it’s a computation, how does Nature avoid the halting problem? It’s all a very bad analogy that does not work.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/physicist-george-ellis-knocks-physicists-for-knocking-philosophy-falsification-free-will/

Such a clear and decisive result !

"People who didn't vote" means "people who could legally have voted, but didn't" (not people who weren't allowed to vote).

Even if you accept the (rather strange) idea that the result of a non-binding referendum "won" by a small majority by a campaign based on outright lies with evidence that a lot of people have since changed their minds should somehow be respected as "the will of the people" (which I do not), this nicely illustrates that it's very far from clear what the will of the people really is. The will of which people ? We don't actually know why the blue sector didn't vote. Did they just not care one way or the other ? Were they unable to choose ? Would they have voted differently if they'd been given more complex options, e.g., "remain but only if we can get a better deal", "leave but only if a good deal can be arranged". What would have happened if there had been a simple "abstain" option ?

We don't know. Rules are rules, so the small minority means that the Leave vote won. Except they only won an advisory referendum, which doesn't have quite the same ring to it. In any case, if there are future referendums on issues of this magnitude - and I'm not at all convinced there should be - it would probably be a good idea to investigate these sorts of issues first.

Originally shared by Chris Blackmore (The Walrus)

This is a diagram I just made, to help me visualise the result of the advisory referendum (a sort of opinion poll) we just had, about our membership of the EU. I made this because #brexit  people keep whinging when I say they didn't win a huge, colossal, epochal, earth-shaking, crushing victory.

Feel free to share it.

This lizard deserves to be insulted

In addition, it turns out that the anoles can wiggle their horns up and down. But it is not clear how. Lizards do not have muscles at the tips of their snouts. Conceivably the anoles do, but that would mean they are even weirder than we thought. Alternatively, an anole might move its horn by using hydrostatic pressure to push fluids through the tissue. That would mean the horn worked in a similar way to a much more familiar appendage: the penis.

Well that would certainly lend it an offensive nickname...
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160720-the-strange-reason-why-the-pinocchio-lizard-has-a-long-nose

An angry Muslim has quite a lot to be angry about

Kelvin MacKenzie has attempted to smear 1.6 billion Muslims in suggesting they are inherently violent. He has attempted to smear half of them further by suggesting they are helpless slaves. And he has attempted to smear me by suggesting I would sympathise with a terrorist.

The truth is I always pride myself on journalistic integrity regardless of who I’m interviewing or what story I’m covering.

That is my mission at Channel 4 News. I will not be deterred in this mission by the efforts of those who find the presence of Muslims in British cultural life offensive.

THE TRUTH? I confess. I pi**ed on Kelvin MacKenzie’s apparent ambitions to force anyone who looks a little different off our screens, and I’ll keep doing it.
http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/fatima-manji-truth-kelvin-mackenzies-11635404

arXiv should allow comments but not act as another referee

arXiv is one of the main resources for disseminating physics and mathematics papers to researchers and the general public. Papers on arXiv are freely available without registration. They often have minor differences to the official published version but only at the level of typesetting, not actual content. They recently conducted a user survey, of which the results are now available.

I just have a couple of comments on the results :
Several respondents said they were unaware of precisely what quality-control measures were already in place, and felt that the process is too opaque. Others acknowledged the difficult balance between rejecting papers that are clearly unworthy—“crackpot”—and rejecting papers for other, perhaps less obvious, and anonymized reasons. However, even in the face of such criticisms there was a strong thread of satisfaction with arXiv’s current quality-control process and users cautioned against going too far in the other direction.

Personally I wrote very strongly that I don't want to see arXiv acting as another referee. arXiv should be about communication and dissemination, not quality control. That should be the job of the referees, but papers should be carefully labelled as to whether they're accepted to a journal (or conference proceedings or whatever), submitted but under review, or only available on arXiv. arXiv's quality control should be strictly limited to controlling obvious spam (e.g. advertising), not deciding what's scientifically valuable or not.

The level of crackpottery on arXiv is so low that it's still entertaining, and it's anyway useful to give such people a voice so that they can't be accused of being silenced. It's even quite useful to get a feel for what people object to about standard theories in order to be prepared for it elsewhere. Filters for journal status (which arXiv needs some way of verifying) would cut this down completely for anyone feeling less than amused.

The idea of adding an annotation feature to allow readers to comment on papers was almost evenly split, with 34.89% of users ranking it as very important/important and 34.08% as not important/should not be doing this. In the open text responses, the trend opposed the idea and some of the responses reflected strongly negative feelings. Those in favour or open to the idea of a commenting system often added a caveat and in general there was a sense of caution even for those responding positively.

I would really like a forum with each paper automatically (with the author's permission) starting a thread, but only if it was very carefully moderated. Topics should be limited to that paper and related research, otherwise you'll get hordes of people who just want to start an argument. I think it could be a great way for the public to see scientists debating each other, and potentially for direct outreach too. The problem is that arXiv is huge, so this would probably be a full-time job for several people.
https://confluence.cornell.edu/display/culpublic/arXiv+User+Survey+Report

More demonising of Muslims in The Sun

"Was it appropriate for her to be on camera when there had been yet another shocking slaughter by a Muslim?" he wrote. "Was it done to stick one in the eye of the ordinary viewer who looks at the hijab as a sign of the slavery of Muslim women by a male-dominated and clearly violent religion?"

Obviously, every time a Christian kills someone we can't have a Christian reporter telling us about it. Or every time a white person kills someone, we can't possibly tolerate a Caucasian journalist. That would just be completely unacceptable, obviously.

Good grief.
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-36833471

Renewing Trident

We are not totally mad then.

The House of Commons has backed the renewal of the UK's Trident nuclear weapons system by 472 votes to 117. The MPs' vote approves the manufacture of four replacement submarines at a current estimated cost of £31bn. Defence Secretary Michael Fallon told MPs nuclear threats were growing around the world and Trident "puts doubts in the minds of our adversaries".

Labour was split over the issue with 140 of its 230 MPs going against leader Jeremy Corbyn and backing the motion.A total of 47 Labour members voted against renewal, while others abstained.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36830923

Robins get disoriented by radio waves

This is a fascinating read.

Electrons in molecules usually come in pairs, spinning in opposite directions and effectively cancelling out each other’s spin. A “lone” electron spinning on its own, though, isn’t cancelled out. This means it is free to interact with its environment – including magnetic fields.

As it turns out, Hore says, robins can become temporarily disorientated when exposed to radio waves – a type of electromagnetic wave – of a particular range of frequencies. If a radio wave has a frequency of just the same rate that an electron spins, it could cause the electron to resonate.

The theory is that ordinarily, radicals at the back of the bird’s eye respond to the Earth’s magnetic field. The magnetic field will cause the electron to leave its spot in the chemical compass and start a chain of reactions to produce a particular chemical. As long as the bird keeps pointing in the same direction, more of the chemical will build up.

I wonder what it would be like to sense EM fields through chemicals in my eyes...

According to Turin’s quantum theory of olfaction, when a smelly molecule enters the nose and binds to a receptor, it allows a process called quantum tunnelling to happen in the receptor. A particular bond in the smelly molecule, Turin says, can resonate with the right energy to help an electron on one side of the receptor molecule leap to the other side. The electron can only make this leap through the so-called quantum tunnel if the bond is vibrating with just the right energy.

When the electron leaps to the other site on the receptor, it could trigger a chain reaction that ends up sending signals to the brain that the receptor has come into contact with that particular molecule.

The strongest evidence for the theory is Turin’s discovery that two molecules with extremely different shapes can smell the same if they contain bonds with similar energies. Turin predicted that boranes – relatively rare compounds that are hard to come by – smelled very like sulphur, or rotten eggs. He’d never smelt a borane before, so the prediction was quite a gamble.

He was right. Turin says that, for him, that was the clincher. “Borane chemistry is vastly different – in fact there’s zero relation – to sulphur chemistry. So the only thing those two have in common is a vibrational frequency. They are the only two things out there in nature that smell of sulphur.”
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160715-organisms-might-be-quantum-machines

The importance of intelligence-sharing

It's no accident that this country has not yet endured a Paris, Brussels or Nice. Britain's defences against terrorist attack depend not just on the watery buffer of the English Channel and our non-membership of Schengen - Europe's border-free area. Crucially they also rely on the way in which intelligence is now intimately shared between all the agencies: the Security Service (MI5), MI6, GCHQ - and the police. This is the key to keeping Britain safe - although it's by no means guaranteed.

I'm not convinced non-membership of Schengen has much to do with it. There are plenty of Schengen countries not experiencing terrorism from foreigners.

Effective intelligence-sharing in the UK didn't happen overnight - as the history of combating Irish and Islamist terrorism shows. In many years of covering the conflict in Northern Ireland, I lost count of the number of times I was assured that intelligence-sharing had never been closer and the IRA was on the run..

7/7 was a tragic wake-up call. In its aftermath, structures were put in place to ensure that intelligence was properly shared. The Security Service and local counter-terrorism police officers now work closely together and share all intelligence. The barriers are down. MI5's door is open. This shared intelligence is then passed upwards to the pinnacle of Britain's counter-terrorist pyramid where it's sifted and analysed by MI5, MI6, GCHQ and the police at their weekly meetings in MI5's London headquarters.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36803542

The next Labour leader ?

I'd never heard of Smith before the leadership challenge but I'm liking him quite a lot. He has a much better message and delivery than Angela "I'm about to burst into floods and tears" Eagle, who appears to think that it's vitally important to choose a female leader. No, it isn't. That way of thinking leads to Thatcher and May. Meritocracy needs to be paramount. Equality of opportunity should not compromise that, least of all with the prospect of leading the country. I don't care if a politician is a white 40 year old rich male banker or an 83 year old black disabled lesbian, so long as have the right message and can convince me they're able to run a government.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36820419

Self-driving cars should either be entirely self-driving or manual, not a bit of both

Tesla has admitted that its autopilot feature was activated when one of its cars crashed on Sunday. However, the electric carmaker has suggested that the function was not being used correctly at the time. The California-based carmaker has previously blogged that "customers using autopilot are statistically safer than those not using it at all".

Perhaps. But what exactly is the point of an auto-driving feature that still requires the driver to be engaged and alert and is only suitable for highways with centre dividers ? Isn't it inevitable that if you tell people they can take their hands off the wheel, they're going to become distracted ? Risk compensation is likely at work here : feeling safer makes you inclined to take more risks. However, to be fair to Tesla :

"This vehicle was being driven along an undivided mountain road shortly after midnight with autosteer enabled," a spokeswoman told the BBC, referring to autopilot's steering function. "This is contrary to the terms of use that are agreed to when enabling the feature and the notification presented in the instrument cluster each time it is activated. As road conditions became increasingly uncertain, the vehicle again alerted the driver to put his hands on the wheel. He did not do so, and shortly thereafter the vehicle collided with a post on the edge of the roadway.

If they've built in an alert to tell drivers to take control, I don't see what more they can do. Google's approach of fully self-driving may more ambitious but a better way to account for human psychology, if people are going to insist on not following the instructions.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36783345

Science, elitism and democracy

Elitism, anti-intellectualism, the problems of the internet and democracy, the need for less reliance on "science advocates", why more politicians and scientists should be more like Boris Johnson, and lots and lots of cats.

If your basis for "anti-intellectualism" is, "anyone who disagrees with the consensus on anything", then we're all anti-intellectuals. And yet... if you're going to say things like, "we've had enough of experts", or "experts said the Titanic was unsinkable" to justify your ideological beliefs... then yes, you are being anti-intellectual - the vast majority of Six Day Creationists do seem to be willing science deniers; Flat Earthers are science deniers by definition.... You can harp on about the Titanic or continental drift as much as you like, but the fact is that the vast majority of ideas which seem like utter bollocks are indeed just utter bollocks.

The internet is a great and terrible thing. Everyone can have their say, every opinion counts, every voice can be heard. The problem is that even the true idiots get their say as loudly as people who've studied issues for decades, expert opinion is not given any extra weight, every voice must be heard no matter how utterly stupid it is. Simply by tail-end-of-the-Gaussian effects (a small fraction of any population always believe arbitrarily ridiculous things), we now have to listen to people who really aren't worth listening to, as though open-mindedness were always a virtue in any circumstance. It isn't. And depending on who you believe, we must either not allow anyone to say anything offensive at all, or we have to allow people to make death threats for any reason (woe betide any who say we should find a middle ground between the two !); perhaps most dangerously of all we can't call out people's stupidity or disrespect them because "that's offensive" - even when what they're saying is dangerous and deserves to be shot down. The democratic process is being perverted to an absurd absolute.

Fortunately, public perception of experts may not be as bad as it may appear if you spend much time on the internet where the anti-intellectuals are given an undeservedly loud voice. In at least some circumstances, experts are still more trusted than any other group. Maybe the reason that public opinion contrasts strongly with the expert consensus is because the expert voice is drowned by politicians, media commentators, and other enthusiastic but malevolent interest groups. The media may over-report experts who go against the consensus in an entirely legitimate (but extreme) effort at impartiality, or, far worse than that, because of inherent media bias. Hence trust in experts may not be all that low, it's just that the experts aren't being reported accurately or completely.

I Don't Own You

We've gone and got ourselves into a right pickle. Anyone holding even a single non-mainstream opinion is derided as an "anti-intellectual", while anyone who ever says "anti-intellectual" is seen as part of the "establishment" or worse, the "elite", a snob bent on telling people what to think in order to keep the plebs/old people/the great unwashed in line.

Andrea Leadsom thinks mothers are better than women without children

Audio of the interview. Lo and behold, the Times article was accurate.

A row has erupted after Conservative leadership candidate Andrea Leadsom was accused of suggesting that having children made her a better choice to be prime minister. The Times quoted the mother of three as saying having children meant she had "a very real stake" in Britain's future.

She later said she was "disgusted" with the interview's presentation. Times journalist Rachel Sylvester defended her article, saying she was "baffled" by Mrs Leadsom's reaction.

Speaking outside her home in Northamptonshire, Mrs Leadsom said she was "disgusted about how this has been presented". "In the course of a lengthy interview yesterday, I was repeatedly asked about my children and I repeatedly made it clear that I did not want this in any way a feature of the campaign," she added.

"I want to be crystal clear that everyone has an equal state in our society and in the future of our country. That is what I believe and it is what I have always believed... this campaign must at all times be principled and honourable." In an earlier statement, she said the reporting had been "beneath contempt".

Ms Sylvester told the BBC the article had been "fairly written up" and she was "baffled" by Mrs Leadsom's "rather aggressive reaction". "I asked her a very straightforward question... She raised Theresa May and the fact that she doesn't have children," she said. "I asked her directly 'what are the differences between you and Theresa May?'."She said 'economic competence and family'... she clearly thinks that is a big selling point with her."

Ms Sylvester added that it was "accurate journalism" and she thought Mrs Leadsom was "naive to make that comparison and not think it would become an issue".

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36752865

Women in combat, at last

A ban on women serving in close combat units in the British military has been lifted by Prime Minister David Cameron. Women, who have previously served on the front line in support roles, will now be allowed to enter the cavalry, infantry and armoured corps. Mr Cameron said it was a "major step" and meant the armed forces could "make the most of all its talent". But the Army's research suggests fewer than 5% of its 7,000 women would pass the current infantry fitness test.

[I don't really care how many enter. That is not the point at all. If you claim to have an objective test to determine someone's suitability for any role, to deny them a position based solely on any other criteria is morally wrong.]

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-36746917

Basing politics purely on evidence would be a terrible idea

Indeed it would. Science is about examining the way the physical world works, psychology and sociology study how humans behave in it. Maybe, one day, the two will not be mutually exclusive, but I don't see how you could ever use science to make a moral choice. Morality is a concept, not a measurable physical reality. Encouraging people to think in a rational, critical way from an early age - not just teaching them to memorise facts - would probably be a Bloody Good Idea, but it will only get you so far in deciding what's right and wrong, just or unjust.

Though if I hear scientists described as "elite" one more time I think I'm going to scream. Why are we "elite" whereas the "ordinary" people who spend just as much time and dedication in their jobs are described as "hard working" ? Cue angry blog post in 3, 2, 1....

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2096315-a-rational-nation-ruled-by-science-would-be-a-terrible-idea

Breaking Ofsted

MPs have rejected the government's choice for the next head of Ofsted, saying they have "significant concerns" about her suitability for the job. Amanda Spielman, who has no teaching experience, failed to show "passion" or an understanding of the "complex role", education select committee MPs said. But the committee cannot veto her appointment if the education secretary wants to force it through.

Their report said:


Ms Spielman did not demonstrate the passion for the role that we would have hoped for.... She did not convince us that she had a clear understanding of the other aspects of this complex role...Ms Spielman did not appear to recognise the importance of building bridges with the professions inspected by Ofsted ...

He added: "It is unusual for a select committee to find itself unable to support the government's preferred candidate for a public appointment. "However, it is our responsibility to hold government to account and the seriousness of our concerns regarding this appointment has led us to produce this report to the House of Commons. "We call on the secretary of state not to proceed with Ms Spielman's appointment."

At this point it's like they're deliberately trying to break everything in sight.
http://www.bbc.com/news/education-36723828

Just Eat robots

Takeaway food ordering service Just Eat has announced it will trial delivery robots in London this year. Each robot has onboard cameras to monitor its surroundings, and human operators in a command centre can take over control of the device if necessary. The compartment containing the food will be secured by an access code.

The company said the robots had already been introduced in cities overseas and had driven 5,000 miles without any accidents."We have driven thousands of miles with robots like this... and the vast majority of people just ignore it."
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36723089

Their pro-dragon, pro-space policies have got my vote.

Their pro-dragon, pro-space policies have got my vote. The Welsh manifesto of the Monster Raving Loony party clearly lays out a clear, 14-point plan for real social progress.

1. We will feed the Welsh dragon as its looking a bit thin due to government cuts

2. We will try to find a breeding pair of dragons as the Welsh Dragon is an endangered species.

3. We will Report the Welsh dragon to the monopolies commission (there is only One)

4. In the Interests of national security we will ban all Leeks from the Welsh Assembly canteen

5. To save money we will reduce the Welsh assembly from 60 seats to 5 and create the Welsh Ensemble .

6. Man versus horse and Bog snorkling to be an Olympic sport.

7. We will create massive factories in South Wales manufacturing Bird nests and noodles and then flood china with them… well they did it to our steel,

8. We will Legalise Broccoli

9. We will give the Letter K a sound

10. We will have different Coloured Dragons on the Welsh Flag.

11. Anyone over 5 years old who can hold a crayon will be eligible to vote.

12. We will Introduce Mermaids to Tiger Bay to increase tourism.

13. We will make Swansea Airport the Hub of the Welsh Space Program.

14. We promise that should we be elected we will not initiate any of our policies.

http://www.loonyparty.com/about/policy-proposals

"Mine is prettier", says dedicated Tetris enthusiast

James Newman started work on the "Megaprocessor", which is 33ft (10m) wide and 6ft (2m) high, in 2012. It does the job of a chip-sized microprocessor and Mr Newman has spent £40,000 ($53,000) creating it. It contains 40,000 transistors, 10,000 LED lights and it weighs around half a tonne (500kg). So far, he has used it to play the classic video game Tetris.

"The machine on your desk may be a million times better than what I have built - but mine is much prettier," he told the BBC. "Mine has 10,000 times more LEDs."
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36711989

Michael Gove is an odd man

"I set my personal ambition aside in my bid to become Prime Minister".

Well what in the world were you aiming for, Michael ? King ? Emperor ? President of the Zoological Society ?

Those pesky facts !

Well worth 20 minutes of your time unless you've had enough of experts telling you their oh-so-pesky "objective facts".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dosmKwrAbI

The meddling in foreign elections you probably forgot about

Republican Donald Drumpf needs help paying for his US presidential campaign - and he's been asking foreign politicians to cough up. His efforts (which are likely the result of poorly culled lists and not a ham-handed attempt to violate US law) appear to be generating more anger than interest, however - and even if he did find a receptive audience overseas, any financial assistance he receives would be a violation of US law. Even the act of asking could get the Drumpf camp a rebuke from the US government.

Members of parliament in the UK, Iceland, Canada and Australia have reported that they are being inundated on their official government emails accounts with fund-raising pleas from the Drumpf campaign - some from the candidate himself and others from his sons. One pitch praised British voters for voting to leave the European Union, heralding that they had "taken their country back" - a line Mr Drumpf himself used while talking to the press at one of his golf courses in Scotland.

Oops ! Still think we should have banned him, but now, as a Brit, I can no longer claim moral superiority in any political debate with an American. Bloomin' idiotic fascists won't let me have any fun. :(
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36599724