Strangely Perfect

Bloody Sunday The Saville Report, probably the longest and certainly the most expensive enquiry in the UK ever, is now out.  The ramifications are continuing, despite the Prime Minister trying to draw a line under everything.  See Bloody Sunday report published History On that day in 1972, 13 folks were killed, and overall, in what [...]

Students die in India as bus plunges into river The above headline is awful enough for the people involved, but in reality, it’s subject, a road crash, is common enough in my own country, the UK. What is really bad is how the BBC is reporting this.  They should know better but essentially, they’ve reported [...]

Is Nuclear power Safe? Watch how the politicians duck and dive. Watch how they pick and choose which bits of ‘science’ to believe! Last week, smiley Alan Johnson fell out with serious Professor Nutt because the professor said some factual scientific things, things proven by statistics and analysis to have an overwhelming degree of proof.  [...]

Alan Johnson Sacks the Messenger This, of course, relates to the recent sackings and supportive resignations of Government Scientific Advisors (see More advisers may go in drugs row) . The home secretary faces the threat of more scientists resigning after sacking his chief drugs adviser Prof David Nutt for his comments about cannabis policy. Two [...]

Introduction & History Recently, Microsoft has reworked it’s search engine (MSN Live Search) and renamed it Bing.  This was followed even more recently, with a joint venture between itself and former search king Yahoo! into a hazily explained search and advertising combination. Microsoft is well known for wheeling out the lawyers as backup to it’s [...]

Introduction Professor Noel Sharkey from Sheffield, better known as one of the judges on the BBCTV show “Robot Wars” knows a thing or two about robots and artificial intelligence.  He’s made a plea for more debate about the use of robot planes in warfare. (see link) He’s said, “An international debate is needed on the [...]

Is This the Worst Science Project Ever? The Daily Telegraph, short of stories this summer now that the expenses scandal is dead, has published a picture of Angelina Jolie under the heading: Women getting more beautiful, say scientists: (see link) According to some work done by  Finnish Philosopher/Psychologist Markus Jokela, …attractive women have more children [...]

British Workers Sacked for Striking at French Company Total’s Site – see news report Joan la Pucelle. [Aside] Done like a Frenchman: turn, and turn again! – Shakespeare, History of Henry VI, Part I, Line 1695 In Lindsey, Lincs, 650 workers have been sacked for being on an “unofficial” strike (whatever that means in a [...]

Terror Terror is a state of fear (an overwhelming sense of imminent danger), or the act of imposing fear on (terrorising) people. Since Bush kicked in with the Patriot Act and the UK followed suite, terror and it’s prevention has been on everyone’s mind – apparently.  This is what is meant by the definition above.  [...]

Site Statistics One of the benefits of managing your own website is you can check exactly who’s been visiting your site.  There are various sorts of visit, the most common for most sites being from search engine robots.  If you include these in your statistics, it makes you look really good…. mystimulusmoney.com Another sort are [...]

Pre-Script Comments are now closed on this posting as Google Treasure Chest is dead. However, the problem has not gone away – the menace continues. For further information, all chat on this and subsequent scams is now here: Google Revolution, Different Name, Same Scam! and here: More on Google Profits and Pacific Webworks/ Google Treasure [...]

Wassup I use a myriad of plugins on my website (and have tested zillions more). A plugin, for those that don’t know, is an add-on to the basic WordPress install that I use to run this blog.  You can get plugins for all sorts of blogging, forum and CMS systems… Anyway, for a week, I’m [...]

Data, and Trust in Science The Burden of Proof is on Science but ’twas ever thus…. The arguments from climate change sceptics ultimately hinge around the general perception of aloofness and intangibility that hang round science and scientists.  The trouble is that some people are basically innumerate and no amount of trying will make them [...]

CTC & Guardian [amazon-product align="left" alink="0000FF" bordercolor="FFFFFF" height="240" region="uk"]000728487X[/amazon-product]I’m indebted to this week’s CTC newsletter for pointing out an article by Ben Goldacre in the Guardian last Saturday (a week ago).   I’ve used one of Mr Goldacre’s articles before in some presentations I’ve done at work when pointing out the poor and devious ways [...]