sciencepunk | April 11, 2009
Over at the Guardian's Lost In Showbiz, Marina Hyde continues her campaign to steal my heart, this time by lancing those celebrities who confuse their ability to secure a table at the Ivy with the authority to talk sensibly on matters of science. We're looking at you, Madonna:
Behold, the most serious challenge to the Royal Society in that august body's 350-year history - the medical musings of Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow and Stella McCartney. These women are not just singers, or actresses, or fashion designers. They are distinguished professors at the University of Celebrity, and are coating…
sciencepunk | April 9, 2009
Journalist, doctor, and debunker Ben Goldacre has released the infamous missing chapter from his best-selling book Bad Science. This did not appear in the original edition because it covered the malfeasance of Matthias Rath, who was suing Goldacre for libel at the time. Rath lost his case and consequentially everyone, including Goldacre, is free to discuss how Rath is killing people in South Africa with his claims of curing HIV/Aids with vitamin pills.
Best of all, Goldacre has released the chapter under a Creative Commons licence:
This is an extract from
BAD SCIENCE by Ben Goldacre…
sciencepunk | April 7, 2009
The Associated Press reports that lawyers working on a multi-billion dollar lawsuit against Pfizer are close to reaching a settlement.
Nigerian authorities allege that Pfizer conducted deadly drug experiments in Nigeria's northern Kano state during devastating meningitis outbreak. They claim that the pharmaceutical giant used children there for an unlicensed trial of what it hoped would be a new "blockbuster" drug - a broad spectrum antibiotic that could be taken in tablet form. Pfizer disagrees, insisting that it acted with approval from the Nigerian government and with the consent of…
sciencepunk | April 5, 2009Swedish researchers have enlisted the help of artist Mikael Genberg to design a robot that will one day erect a tiny house on the moon. After landing on the lunar surface in 2012, the autonomous robot will scout for a suitable location and build a small red cottage, in keeping with the Scandinavian style.
The flatly-named The House on the Moon project aims to be a symbol of what one man can achieve. Students at the Mälardalen University will design, build and program the robot, although Professor Lars Asplund hinted that the final step may be a leap too far:
"We want to teach students who…
sciencepunk | April 2, 2009Have you ever heard the phrase (usually directed at some very recently-single lady) "he's not worth your tears"? Well, how much are tears worth, really? How much are any of your bodily fluids worth? Thankfully the good people at Innovative Research have just the answer! See below for my handy graph showing the value of your various bodily fluids, with 'expensive' liquids such as petrol and high-end champagne thrown in for comparison.
Click to biggify!
This article comes courtesy of the SciencePunk Central vaults!
sciencepunk | March 31, 2009
What is a charity? Ostensibly, it's an organisation dedicated to the public benefit, one that does not seek to make profits, and that does not have political goals. So how the heck does something like the Catholic Church qualify as a charity?
In England and Wales, all charitable organisations with an income of more than £5,000 must be registered with the Charities Commission, which acts as a supervisory power. The core rule is that all charities must exist "for the public benefit". There exists a list of 13 purposes that a charity can subscribe to, including advancements of animal…
sciencepunk | March 30, 2009I keep thinking I should write more worthy articles, but then, I keep finding fantastic things that don't need 800 words of discussion getting in the way. This is one of the latter, and comes courtesy of George Kourounis, ballsy explorer and general badass.
Kourounis took a trip to Indonesia's Kawah Ijen volcano, where miners earn $10 a day for journeying into the depths of a volcano to retrieve sulphur. Here is the site of the world's largest lake of sulphuric acid:
Here is an aluminium can dissolving in the extreme acid (pH ~0.5!):
And here is Kourounis, going for a leisurely paddle…
sciencepunk | March 26, 2009Over at Ask MetaFilter, a kind of Yahoo! Answers for the cognoscenti, user lizzicide wanted a system that would alert her if her car was towed. Apparently the moderators didn't rate my answer, because it's gone now. Good thing Isaved it
for posterity. Text reads:
There's a good chance my car might get towed at any time. So, what are my options for tracking my car's movement (possible via GPS) when it's not turned on and I'm not in it?
This is probably not possible, but I'd like to be able to tell if my car is being towed. Since it'll most likely be towed in the middle of the night while I'…
sciencepunk | March 25, 2009Artist and illustrator Nate Wragg has created this wonderful twisted homage to the charming How and Why Wonder Books of his childhood. Wragg says:
It's a book series that focuses on a particular aspect of science in each volume. The covers are so great and inspiring that I thought it would be fun to do a tribute / spoof of one of those covers for our book. So I refrenced one of the covers I really enjoyed and tried to stay true to the format, color, and typography styling. Obviously the edition that I did the cover to is a bit racy for the series, but I think it would be a best seller if it…
sciencepunk | March 24, 2009
There's an old adage for bomb technicians - if you see them running, try to keep up. But preliminary research carried out by the Florida Institute of Technology suggests that bolting for the exit when confronted by a suicide bomber is a poor choice of strategy.
Assistant Professor Daniel Kirk and Fulbright Scholar Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani developed physics-based computer models to predict the magnitude and number of casualties occurring in suicide bomber attacks. They found that the precise location of individuals in the room had a large impact on the injuries they received.
Simulations…
sciencepunk | March 23, 2009
Last week the Independent newspaper reported on the case of Tim Nicholson, a UK executive claiming religious discrimination after losing his job because of his beliefs on climate change. Nicholson had been head of sustainability at Grainger plc, a residential property investment company, but claims his attempts at implementing environmental and corporate social responsibility policies were blocked by fellow executives.
This case is noteworthy because it reveals several things - that someone could be fired for doing their job too enthusiastically, that Grainger plc possesses an asinine…
sciencepunk | March 20, 2009
Gravity Pods isn't a new game, having hit the net back in 2007, but it's certainly worth a look if you haven't tried it before. The physics-based game runs on a simple premise: get your green rocket to the purple swirly thing. To do this you'll need to navigate the gravitational fields of numerous 'pods', which will pull your rocket off course. Of course, like the boffins at NASA / ESA you must learn to use these gravitational fields to slingshot your craft to its destination. There's a lot of trial and error involved, and your map is slowly painted in delightful swirly patterns showing…
sciencepunk | March 18, 2009
Alternative museums are all the rage these days, from the million-dollar animatronics of the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum to the quaint if ramshackle Genesis Expo in Portsmouth, UK. Lying somewhere between the two is The Museum of the Aquatic Ape, a virtual repository of all your alternative evolution needs. The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis is a fringe evolutionary theory that claims many of our distinct human traits (subcutaneous fat, lack of hair, etc) are best explained by a period of semi-aquatic living. So far it has gained little, if any, traction on the minds of evolutionary…
sciencepunk | March 17, 2009
The British Transport Police seem set to continue the fight against terror with their curious strategy of scaring the living shit out of everyone themselves. I guess if the BTP can whip the British public into a state of paranoid terror, then the terrorists won't have to, and we'll have won. Right? While we're at it, let's remove all those civil liberties like trial by jury and due process, so pesky terrorists can't take them from us. Rule Brittania!
Here's the latest in a series of hysteria-inducing "anti-terror" posters that have come out of the UK in recent years. It appeared on…
sciencepunk | March 15, 2009 In 2006, scientists discovered a 3D optical illusion that had never been reported before. Frederick Kingdom, Ali Yoonessi, and Elena Gheorghiu of McGill University noticed that when placed side-by-side, identical images of objects tilted and receding into the background appeared to have different angles.
So while one picture of the Leaning Tower of Pisa looks normal:
Put two copies of the same image next to eachother and suddenly one seems to veer off at an angle:
This effect, reported in Scientific American here, occurs because of the way that our brain constructs a three-dimensional…
sciencepunk | March 14, 2009
I spotted this yesterday, from the February-March 2009 issue of the Organic Lifestyle Magazine. Perhaps it didn't render correctly, or maybe my browser has a wry sense of humour.
Bryan Shillington (Journeyman Herbalist) says:
All of our formulas are available to the public. If we lose business and gain competitors, so be it. We need more herbalists and natural healers in this horrid world of huge pharmaceutical companies and pill pushers in white coats. Be the family herbalist. Be your own doctor. maybe if enough of you make your own herbal preparations, we'll drive them out of…
sciencepunk | March 14, 2009Musical parody duo Hard'n'Phirm are best known for their bluegrass medley of Radiohead songs, but also conjured up this nugget of surreal joy, a song about everyone's favourite irrational number, Pi.
sciencepunk | March 13, 2009
For the last few weeks, community action site Amplify Your Voice have been chronicling the extraordinary vestiges of the Bush administration's disastrous policies on sexual health and education: Derek Dye, the Abstinence Clown.
Derek Dye is supported by Elizabeth's New Life Center, a Christian-orientated organisation that received a federal grant of $800,000 in 2007. Dye appears to be a little more reticent to wear these religious overtones during his talks, preferring instead to compare pre-marital sex to juggling with machetes.
For a person whose success depends upon popularity, it was…
sciencepunk | March 11, 2009
Last week I wrote about how the BBC's Drive Time show on Radio 2 allowed a quack therapist to promote herself on air, making bizarre statements about the human body. This included the 'scientifically proven' existence of meridians which "carry the energy of our thoughts".
Needless to say, myself and others took umbrage to this miseducation, so I submitted the following to the BBC complaints panel:
As a science writer, I was disappointed to find out that your R2 Drive Time show on Wednesday gave a considerable amount of airtime to life coach Janet Thompson, allowing her to voice numerous…
sciencepunk | March 10, 2009
Some time back film-maker Alom Shaha asked me to contribute to a project he was working on entitled Why is Science Important?. I'm pleased to see that the finished film is now complete, featuring such luminaries as Adam-Hart Davis, Professor Robin Weiss, Prof. Marcus du Sautoy, A.C. Grayling and Susan Blackmore, and skipping from Antarctic survey to rocket lab to fusion reactor. You can watch the film in individual clips here, or as a single half-hour film here. You can also contribute your thoughts as to why science is important by leaving a message here.