Well, sooner than normal, some links which are well worth visiting:

• New Scientist Podcast
• Beyond Belief (new scientist subscription required)
• New Scientist Podcast (iTunes link)
• Wild Chronicles (iTunes link)
• Science @ NASA Feature Stories Podcast (iTunes link)

If you don’t have access to the full “Beyond Belief” article a lot of it is included in the podcast. I can not honestly say I am convinced that a conference looking at how science has “supplanted” God is a good thing.

Apart from anything else, this begins to create the impression “Science” is a replacement for Religious belief. Hopefully this is not the case but with more than a few of the people who contributed to this conference I am not sure. It is, as I see it, like saying bananas are a replacement for camera film. The two are totally different things.

Creating a conflict between the two is not a “GoodThingâ„¢” and simply provides more ammunition for the Religious Right to demonise science.

Oh well.

In a recent post here (http://www.whydontyou.org.uk/blog/2006/11/16/more-fan-stuff-on-the-wire/) heather writes “I’m still not 100% sure how to get to the podcasts…” – well the solution is at hand.

Assuming you are looking for quality science and technology podcasts the place to look is:

Science & Medicine or Technology

If for some reason the iTunes store URL doesn’t work then try these steps from the iTunes store..

According to Wikipedia, the Wire has been called “the best show on television by TIME, Entertainment Weekly, The Guardian , the Chicago Tribune, Slate, and the Philadelphia Daily News (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wire_(TV_series))

No argument there.

You might think I’m over the top in my enthusiasm for the Wire but on I-tunes there are some really fanatical reviews. I’m still not 100% sure how to get to the podcasts but you can go there from HBO’s site http://www.hbo.com/thewire/ The best way seems to be to click on the HBO podcast links on http://www.hbo.com/thewire/downloads/ and so on.

The customer reviews say things like

“Light years ahead of everything on television. If you’re not watching you’re missing out on history”

I was going to blog here about why the Wire is so special, but I’ve been distracted by the wealth of material from HBO and in podcasts. This material ranges from really informative discussion (e.g. David Simon discusses how it is rooted in real-world Baltimore society and that it’s more about class than race, for instance, which seemed pretty obvious to me but I’m not American) to blatantly silly (buy Jermaine’s – supposed – pick of classic hip hop.) It will keep you engrossed for hours if you like the Wire.

However, it appears that not many people do. The viewing figures are supposed to be poor. I suspect it may be too demanding of a lot of the audience. Granted, thinking about social relations doesn’t normally make for very good escapist entertainment. The genius of the Wire is to work as crime show at the same time as (not so ) popular entertainment.

New Scientist “special report” (titled: Home-schooling special- Preach your children well – us – 11 November 2006 – New Scientist) looks at how Home Schooling in the US has become a new tool in the religious right’s campaign to remove non-biblically-accepted teaching.

The scary part is the bit about how the Patrick Henry College benefits it’s students because “Government-schooled children have spent their time constructing their own truths” – obviously PHC don’t have to learn what is and isn’t truth, they are obedient enough to be told and must accept it.

Scary that this is the worlds superpower…

Technorati tags: Home Schooling, Intelligent Design, Discovery Institute, Patrick Henry College

del.icio.us tags: Education, Religion, PHC, Patrick Henry College, Conservative, Christianity, Right Wing

Following on from the last post about .Net magazine, I thought I should add in a few comments. Not about the magazine, which despite the initial optimism caused by the first few issues of the new format is still fairly poor but about the website.

www.netmag.co.uk

This is actually fairly good now. The layout is drastically improved and the content is getting better all the time.

All I can say is, well done .Net.

Will wonders never cease! Today’s issue of .net magazine arrived and for the first time in a LONG time I found myself “nodding my head” in agreement with some of the editorials.

On page 17, “Gary Marshall’s Big Mouth” has an article titled “Idiot Wind” and, coming from a net magazine it is certainly a breath of fresh air.

After reading so many articles, online and in print, about how great community powered websites are (including some wikipedia fans and not so fans here… :-)), reading Gary Marshall comment on how these sites highlight the herd mentality and generally descent to the lowest common denominator is very good.

The .net pull quote reads:

Show me any social powered website and I’ll show you the people who are dragging it down.

Not the best possible quote but he has a point! My personal favourites are his comments on the “naive optimism of the web 2.0 cheerleaders.” Personally, I wouldn’t have been so polite.

Sadly, it doesnt look like www.netmag.co.uk has put the article on line yet – If they do, I will link to it here.

I see that posts tagged 3 hours ago on del.icio.us have been tagged by 48 people. Is there any stretch of the imagination that would have 48 people reading and saving a tag from an ordinary blogger’s page?

That was a rhetorical question.

I am usually silent about the failings of technorati & blogger etc, which is mainly because my knowledge of these things is barely more than minimal.

However, I thought I’d put my own whine in now. I was reading back through the posts on technorati, etc (I can’t keep blaming technorati – it’s pretty fair, compared to g**gle) I saw one blog that had been tagged Stonehenge on del.icio.us and I followed that tag. Not only did this post not appear on the tag page, the ones shown on the page included a post from 2003. Do these pages get updated on an annual basis?

In a previous post about Wikipedia, the following comment is made as justification for using Wiki. (Remember, as said before, I like wiki!)

Fair points. But I still feel that universities should not still be teaching people to refer to authorities. They should be teaching people to think critically and evaluate the materials they get.

While this is something I whole heartedly agree with, it is not as clear cut as you make it seem here.

Yes, students should be able to think critically and evaluate the information they get – this is part of the problem with Wikipedia. When you read an article what mechanisms are available for you to evaluate what is said, other than weeding out the obvious nonsense (such as some edits to Albert Einstein’s page saying he was a Nazi). Wikipedia articles rarely cite source materials, often sneak original research in under the radar and are very often so badly written it is not possible to backtrace even when sources are mentioned.

For undergraduate study, surely the idea is to read and research through the published materials to demonstrate the ability to research and to critically assess information which has already been assessed – giving a level playing field. By using Wiki for this, it strikes me that any old nutter can get their ideas taken on board because there is no mechanism for verifying the information (beyond anecdotal experience).

Using Wikipedia as a citation is similar (IMHO) to using something like Encarta as an example for a science lesson.

There was a good comment about wiki being unreliable and indeed pointing out that a student could reference themselves.

Fair points. But I still feel that universities should not still be teaching people to refer to authorities. They should be teaching people to think critically and evaluate the materials they get.

I believe the reference to authority was something from the medieval era, when it often served to stifle original thought pre-renaissance. Until people realised that, whatever the value of the ancient thinkers, they weren’t always right, human progress stalled. The knee-jerk assumption that certain texts cannot be questioned underpins fundamentalism of all kinds. If people treat wikipedia like that, surely it’s a flaw in the nature of education.

I have to concede that many errors don’t get fixed, or even challenged. At least there are mechanisms for doing so.

On a lighthearted note – The Wikipedia and the Death of Archaeology – is certainly entertaining to read. 🙂

Following the “Nothing Wrong With Wiki” post, I thought that (in addition to the comment), I should leave a more open response to some parts of it.

First off, I am a big fan of Wiki. It is excellent at providing background information, often in a very easy to understand manner. It is excellent in the breadth of articles it covers. It is, basically, very useful.

However it is certainly not authorative. As it has grown to stratospheric popularity, people are becoming to think of it as authorative. Google groups has bazillions of posts where people cite a Wiki article in support of their argument. This implies people think it is authorative. It is easy to say “well they shouldn’t” but they do.  When you look up something on Wikipedia, how often do you verify the claims? How do you verify the claims?

My take on the university comments were along those lines. The universities may well be fed up with people citing Wikipedia as a source when in reality it is little more than a shortcut through “real” research.

The previous article says:

Anything posted is immediately peer-reviewed and challenged by anyone who has a problem with it? This hardly applies to most academic journals, which are already subject to phenomena like sponsor bias and publication bloat. Noone publishes on wikipedia (so far) to keep up their publication average or because a large pharmaceutical company paid for their research.

While I would hesitate from directly accusing a specific poster of sending messages for the wrong reasons, with Wikipedia how can you ever know? How do you know if LargePharma is paying for people to write up articles? Already bands and PR firms pay people to post blogs and to forums, who is to say it isn’t happening on Wiki?

In addition to this, the flip side of no-formal-peer-review is that any crackpot can make or edit an article. Until some one who knows better can correct it, it is accepted as correct. I have read articles which are in a subject I know well and found mistakes. When I read a subject I don’t know well, how do I know that the mistakes aren’t there?

Wikipedia has got to be the one Web 2.0-style thing that has contributed enormously to human society. It is almost too good to be true, both in concept and operation – proof that individuals can co-operate voluntarily to share their knowledge freely, to the benefit of anyone who wants it.

So, how is it that, according to the Guardian, that most US universities will automatically give an F grade to any student who cites it? If this is not just a myth – which seems increasingly likely, the more I think of it – how could it possibly be justified?

Surely wikipedia embodies the very spirit of scientific enquiry. Anything posted is immediately peer-reviewed and challenged by anyone who has a problem with it? This hardly applies to most academic journals, which are already subject to phenomena like sponsor bias and publication bloat. No one publishes on wikipedia (so far) to keep up their publication average or because a large pharmaceutical company paid for their research. Scepticism is even built in to the process – no one treats wikipedia as objectively true, unlike some traditional encyclopaedias. Errors actually get rectified, within the hour even.

If anything, therefore, wikipedia is possibly one of the most trustworthy sources of information on the planet. So where does the F idea come from? Cite x (2004) at the end of your papers- fine, whether or not it’s utter nonsense, (e.g. creationism or sociobiology :-)), but cite a wikipedia article? Collect that F at the door.

According to the BBC, British scientists have applied for permission to create a cow-human embryo. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6121280.stm.

Wow, what a fantastically useful thing that would be.

In case you, like me, are wondering WHY ON EARTH? The reason is apparently for stem cell research to cure every known worrying disease…..

I have serious doubts about this sort of thing. The only positive thing you could say is that it might spare a few animals from the joys of animal tests. Otherwise, it seems so comically Frankenstein-like as to give even Mary Shelley nightmares.

We seem to have no concern for future generations in terms of considering the potential impacts of genetic research. Can anyone guarantee that unknown future side effects won’t result from this? Clearly not. No one seems to have realised that feeding dead cows to other cows could cause any problems to cows, let alone humans, until we found out about mad cow disease.

However, surely the average person, let alone bigoted vegetarians like me would have said “No, cannibalism is probably not safe” if there had been any public input on the issue of feeding the bodies of dead cattle to live ones. And would have been proved to be correct, in the long term, however irrational their ideas might have seemed in the face of the perceived benefits of faster cattle growth. Sometimes our instinctive distrust of certain procedures proves correct and this human-cow hybrid certainly evokes a great deal of instinctive revulsion, as shown on the BBC feedback pages.

In any case, has anyone seen any of the promised benefits from stem cell research? My reading of the popular science press (and I will happily concede the limitations of that as a source of knowledge) suggests that almost every claim that stem cells will cure paralysis, alzheimers and cancers turns out to be bogus. Indeed a goodly number of the stem cell experiments appear to be bogus in their entirety.

Sheep cloning was a proof of concept. Real sheep produce sturdy offspring by themselves. For free. Cloning produced a sickly creature at a cost of millions. There must be a reason for these lines of research – profit, I assume – but the value largely escapes me.

Well, time for some more. This time I have tried to add a bit of info about each link 🙂

• http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6115140.stm – Pupils Put off Science.
• http://tinyurl.com/y9hqk7 – Irony department: the leader of the US Evangelical Church, who argued with Richard Dawkins, resigns.
• http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/11/the_future_of_p.html – The Future of Paperless Hacking
• http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/05/183240 Wikipedia used to spread virus
• http://news.linux.com/news/06/11/03/2325229.shtml?tid=41&tid=96&tid=12 – Novell talks about the Microsoft deal
• http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/04/eff_fights_bogus_dmca_case/ – How to gag your enemies using the DMCA

All worth visiting.