Another scientist wading into the #shirtstorm melarky. Well, I neededan article on feminism anyway.

Another scientist wading into the #shirtstorm melarky. Well, I needed an article on feminism anyway.

On page 1, I explain why (in my view) feminism does not mean you can't objectify women in certain circumstances :
" If you can differentiate between the fantasy world of gameplay and reality, you damn well ought to be able to tell the difference between a woman posing for a photograph and the idea that women are somehow subordinate to men. There ought to exist the same vast chasm between enjoying killing thousands in a video game and wanting to massacre people in reality, as between enjoying a photograph of the opposite gender (or indeed any form of adult entertainment) and assuming they're all somehow inferior to you. You ought to possess the modicum of intellect needed to realise that people aren't toys because they chose to dress (or undress) in a certain way - yes, even (especially) when they're deliberately doing it so that you can enjoy them."

Page 2 deals with why objectifying women in practise is much worse than the way men are objectified by women :
"That's why my female friends admiring the manly nature of certain public figures doesn't make me feel diminished in any way. The degree to which men are objectified is far less than that experienced by women - they don't carry on the harmless admiration of tremendously manly men and expect me to conform to that stereotype. No pressure is put upon me to do the slightest thing to live up to an unrealistic expectation of masculinity. I can live my life however the hell I like and not be judged for it; they are very much expected and obliged to try and meet certain ideals that exist only to appease male sexuality."

Finally on page 3 I look at a selection of anti-feminist memes that sprang up in response to the shirt. Mostly I think they're all nonsense, however, about this widely perceived idea that they discourage women from entering science - I would like an actual poll conducted as to whether students really feel put off my the shirt or not. I conclude that the shirt isn't inherently anti-feminist, but I understand why it was perceived as such. Taylor was right to apologise for the offence caused, if not the shirt itself.

MAXIMUM AWESOME

MAXIMUM AWESOME

"A British-led consortium has outlined its plans to land a robotic probe on the Moon in 10 years' time. Its aim is to raise £500m for the project from donations by the public."

"The team hope to raise £600,000, using the international crowd funding web service Kickstarter, in the next four weeks to fund the initial phase of the project."
I'll donate to that, otherwise I'll lose all self-respect.

"The cost of a short message will be a few pounds, a compressed photo will be a few tens of pounds while a short compressed video will be about £200. The cost of sending a hair sample will be around £50."
Sending a little piece of me to the Moon ??!?! [fangirl scream !]
I'll consider it...
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30102343

Review : Interstellar

Just saw Interstellar (no spoilers). I am reminded how very, very, very good 2001 : A Space Odyssey is.

Like The Dark Knight Rises, I label this one a broken masterpiece. It does a lot of things right, and gets a lot of things wrong. Do not believe the hype about how it's the most scientifically accurate movie ever made; I'm surprised Kip Thorne put his name to it. There are rudimentary physics errors which gouge massive holes in the plot (can someone please start a campaign to get floating mountains banned ? I find them offensive), especially given the extremely high publicity about how great the science is supposed to be.

The most distracting thing was that given the technology available to the protagonists, it would have been tremendously easy to design a much better, safer mission of almost zero risk. In fact, the whole space mission seemed unnecessary. I am normally able to switch off to errors in physics (I'm a Dr Who fan, after all...) but these errors were too glaring.

I like the anti-anti-science vibe, that was nicely done. Cinematography is good, visuals are nice (but the black hole is not anywhere near as realistic as existing astrophysical simulations, so the relativity group tell me), soundtrack is decent. Time dilation is used correctly. General plot is sort of OK.But it veers from hopelessly bleak and crushingly unsympathetic to ludicrously (almost laughably) overly sentimental.

I'm probably making it sound worse than it is...

Soylent Green is... extra working time ?

Soylent Green is... extra working time ?
The BBC's point of view section is always thought-provoking and this one is no exception. Lots of interesting stuff here.

" Soylent is a drink made by adding oil and water to a specially prepared powder that the manufacturers claim contains all the nutrients the human body needs."
So, not quite the meal-pills of sci-fi, but close.

"Some critics of the product have focused on what they think are its potential health dangers. We don't know enough about the body's processes, these sceptics say, to be sure that the liquid really does contain everything we need."
I don't see why. We know what's in our food, we know what's in this product. BAM - case closed.

"Others have pointed to the loss of pleasure and company that giving up regular food entails. For exponents of what's sometimes called "slow food", meals aren't just a means of fuelling the body. They're occasions when we renew our contact with other human beings while enjoying the taste and variety of local and regional cuisines."
I don't normally buy into the "technology is making us anti-social" rubbish, but in this case I make an exception. I listened in horror recently while certain colleagues proposed that if we went to the cafeteria instead of a local pub for lunch, we'd save time and go home early. No ! That is a specious notion. Taking breaks in the day is an essential part of the work process. Human attention spans are finite; if you don't take breaks, productivity decreases. Not to mention that since we don't have tea breaks here, lunch is pretty much the only time I talk to anyone else.

" Our type of economy can only keep going if it continues to grow, and it grows by inducing us to want to live in the fast lane, always on the look-out for new sensations. But it would be a mistake to think the fast life is somehow being forced on most of us."
Oh, I don't know about that. Sure, outside of work everyone is more or less free to do as they choose. And if people want to stay busy, that's fine. But being in the fast lane inside work is something we have less control over.

"When we give up meals for quick slugs of liquid fuel, we think it's time we're saving. What we're really doing is saving ourselves from too much thought."
Or possibly being pressured into getting ever more work done, on the weird idea that doing lots of work - any work - is somehow virtuous.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30005279

Looks interesting.

Looks interesting. It looks like most of the projects get funding, though it's not clear if the unfunded ones are removed from the project list ("Projects can not be deleted. When the campaign ends, it will no longer be discoverable by common search engines, but the URL will still exist.").

No astronomy projects yet - anyone desperate to learn if small blobs of hydrogen are interesting or not ? I promise lots and lots of 3D movies in return... :)

Originally shared by Landis Wilson

Hey, check out this new crowd funding site for scientific research experiments.  There is something for everyone!
http://experiment.com

More ethics

"... the main thing members of the movement want is ethics in gaming journalism—there aren’t enough ethics, and so, one way or another, there will have to be more ethics. They might want other things too, but we had a hard time figuring out what they were."
http://www.clickhole.com/article/summary-gamergate-movement-we-will-immediately-cha-1241

"There's no such thing as rational numbers !", declares moron

I appear to have encountered someone who does not believe in rational numbers...

" You are following non-division able mathematics as 2 cannot be properly divided by 3 and answer will be got 0.6666666666666…………….. no ending solution. We need solution and accept the answer as 0.66. You should be practical. "

What this country needs...

This is what plays in my head every single time I read an article about how scientists are not trusted. Enough of the bleak dystopian futures !

(okay, it's ironic that it's given by an arch-villain, but never mind)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CKP-00yaEg

Doctor Who season 8

The thing that's bugging me about season 8 of Dr Who... [spoilers]

Spoiler-free introduction
This season so far is absolutely solid stuff. Gone are the days of the weird jaunty camera angles and strange purple backlighting of the Russel T. Davies era. Gone too are the manically rushed, EVERYTHING'S EXPLODING, massively overly-complicated stories of the previous Moffat seasons. We also lose the "children are mysteriously disappearing" default plotline which was happening almost every other episode in previous seasons.

Instead, we have relatively grown-up plotlines (still mental as hell, otherwise it wouldn't be Dr Who) developed at a sensible place and shot with sensible cinemetography. Children are barely present; this is probably a good thing as the last time we saw a kids-oriented episode in the Moffat era it had child acting so bad it could induce dysentery in those of a nervous disposition. Many of the stories are now too adult and scary for children, which is a shame because generations of British kids have grown up hiding behind the sofa, but also a good thing because stories for kids are necessarily more limited.

Spoiler-prone assessment
But what's actually bothering me is Clara. Yes, Jenna Coleman's performance has improved by about twenty orders of magnitude, and this is a Very Good Thing. And Clara's character is also about nine thousand times more interesting than previously, and this is a Very Good Thing too. The problem is staggering, overpowering inconsistency with the established character. The prime example being the question, "Am I a good man ?", to which Clara's answer is, "I... don't know."

YOU WHAT ?????

This is coming from someone who has hopelessly idolized the Doctor probably more than any other recent companion, who scattered herself throughout the whole of time and space to save him. The answer just doesn't make any sense.

The latest episode "Kill the Moon" saw the Doctor magnificently doing nothing and letting Clara make a Big Decision. Big. And of course, she makes the correct decision. After which the Doctor gives an inspiring speech, and Clara attacks him for letting her make the decision. Makes. No. Sense. Now, there has always been an element of moral ambiguity surrounding the Doctor, but never expressed this directly by a companion. Much worse, though, is that Clara would never ever have said this to Matt Smith (with whom she faced down a planet-sized God with a leaf). Peter Capaldi's Doctor may be infinitely more acerbic and insulting, but his actions are absolutely consistent with the previous Doctors. It comes across as being grossly unfair and more than a little cruel ("go back to your lonely Tardis !" - WTF did he do to deserve that ?).

Revising Clara's character to be less unnaturally competent and more human (e.g. frightened every once in a while) was a massive improvement, but this is offset considerably by making her stroppy. The Doctor gave her a choice to make without him; instead of feeling gratified that he has that much faith in her (for once, rather than the other way around) she feels insulted he wouldn't help. And that's not something I can get my head around.

Conclusion
The latest Doctor is very much in the post-heroic phase. Still absolutely fundamentally good (whatever nonsense Clara might say, this is unequivocal), still doing whatever it takes to save the day, but now also taking a step back when appropriate. Clara, however, is not able to accept this. It seems that despite the excellent speeches of the first episode, she hasn't moved past the Doctor's regeneration. I much preferred the way Martha (an otherwise extremely uninteresting character) was written out of the show; a character enriched by the experience who goes on to improve her own life without the Doctor. I don't really see any value in having a character who suddenly stops being able to handle the lifestyle. A more gradual realization of the dangers might have been more convincing; Clara's occasional but massive doubts are very jarring.

The blatant next-companion looks more interesting, possibly someone who will stand up to the Doctor from the word go, rather than falling head over heels for the pretty man in the box. I also approve of taking a failing student instead of someone as hopelessly professional as Clara. But we shall see.

A message from the headmaster

"I’m not a complicated man. Yes, I may be much more sophisticated than you, but, believe me, I am still amused by your simple little ways.
And I care deeply about people who struggle to get by.
Those who can’t afford a third car, a holiday home in France, or that halfway-decent case of claret."

Genuinely good satire from the absurdly right-wing Daily Mail. MIND. BLOWN.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2777244/Little-people-I-proud-leader-That-Cameron-Speech-Full-First-Draft-told-CRAIG-BROWN.html