Apparently the manual for servicing the keel-lifting mechanism of a Beneteau Oceanis 311 yacht advises:
Unscrew the bolt THM8 located at the end of the endless screw.
[New Scientist; 24/11/2007]
Apparently the manual for servicing the keel-lifting mechanism of a Beneteau Oceanis 311 yacht advises:
Unscrew the bolt THM8 located at the end of the endless screw.
[New Scientist; 24/11/2007]
Catching up on New Scientist the other evening I spotted an interesting piece attached to an article entitled “God’s place in a rational world“:
An Alternative reading of literature
Religion is not the only aspect of the human condition that could do with a little more rationality, said some delegates at Beyond Belief II [a symposium of scientists who don’t buy into the god meme]. Jonathan Gotschall, who teaches English literature at Washington & Jefferson College in Pennsylvania, proposed marrying literary studies with a scientific style of inquiry.
Gottschall has already made waves among his colleagues by conducting an experiment on how people respond to literature. From interviews with readers about their responses to books, he has shown that in general people have similar reactions to a given text. This runs counter to the conventional idea that the meaning readers take from literature is dependent more on their cultural background than what the author intended. It also appears not to make sense, as literature is grounded in subjective rather than objective experience.
Gotschall, however, argues that the same can be said for literary criticism: the field is awash with irrational thought, he says, largely because most literature scholars believe that the humanities and science are distinct. As a result, literary theorists rely on opinion and conjecture, rather than trying to find solid, empirical evidence for their claims, he says. By adding an element of scientific thought to literary criticism, Gottschall says, we could unearth hidden truths about human nature and behaviour.
Interesting idea. Needs thinking about. My literarist friends please note!
What is something you collect? Why?
I don’t really collect anything these days. Although I suppose you could count books. But the book collecting is fairly random apart from a couple of areas of interest, but even these aren’t collected fanatically.
If you could make one ice cream flavor, what would the ingredients be and what would be the name?
1. Avocado. If it could be made green enough then call it “Green Slime”.
2. Grapefruit, Clementine and Lime. “Citrus Burst”
What can’t you go a day without?
Sleep. Lots of sleep.
What position do you sleep in? [back, right side, left side, stomach …]
Difficult one. I prefer to sleep on my stomach and I usually (until recently) used to go to sleep on the right side of my front. But I need to (re)train myself to sleep on my back or side — I have Obstructive Sleep Apnoea which means I need a CPAP machine and mask at night, and sleeping on my front disturbs the seal between mask and face.
What is your typical morning routine before work?
Wake up. Try to ignore the day. Eventually get up. Shave (if going in the office), wash and dress. Breakfast (fresh fruit or muesli with fruit juice). Try to remember to take tablets. Work. All condensed into as little time as possible so I get the maximum time in bed. 🙂
[Brought to you courtesy of Friday Five.]
So here we are. Just what every Just William schoolboy always wanted. Giant Microbes for Christmas. And you don’t get sick.
Thanks to a top off from Noreen it seems that quite a lot of gift outlets are selling soft toys this Christmas made by Giant Microbes. They have a wonderful array of bugs from Black Death to Syphilis by way of Typhoid and Ebola. They’re a snip at around ÂŁ6 or $8 each. Just the present for the young science geek.
But there is a serious point to this. The toys are actually made in the shape of the eponymous organism, only around a million times bigger. And they they come with information about the bug they depict. So they do have educational value. And some of them, like E. coli (pictured above), are actually quote cute.
Go have a look at Giant Microbes and give yourself the ‘flu for Christmas! (Well actually maybe not, it’s a nasty pastel apple green colour.)
I today came across an year-old post on Greg Mankiw’s Blog where he points to an article by Todd D Kendall of Clemson University. In this Kendall shows that the more easily pornography is available to the male population the lower is the incidence of rape.
It is also worthy of note that many published studies (I need to look then up!) have shown that teenage pregnancy rates are far lower in open, relaxed societies like The Netherlands, and significantly higher in more religiously repressed and restrictive societies like the USA.
I find this interesting as I have always maintained that if we had a healthier understanding and acceptance of desires, sexuality, nudity and our bodies it would have far reaching positive effects on our health and our attitudes. Bring children up to understand their bodies, their sexuality and to accept nudity as something normal and they will be more balanced as individuals; more able to discuss their inner feelings and worries; more at ease discussing their medical problems with their doctor. All of which has to be good, if only in terms of catching serious disease earlier and when it is more easily, and more cheaply, treated.
New Scientist of 29 September reports the following announcement on Tiscali’s website:
Degradation of service has been restored by our network engineers
Even amoebas have downtime.
I was interested to see a recent article in Businessweek showing the world’s top 100 brands. No I’m not going to list all 100, you can find the full article here, but the top five are:
A number of things surprised me about this. First of all that GE (General Electric) were in the top five. Secondly the significant difference in brand value between the first four and Nokia in too surprised at most of the entries. Perhaps not surprisingly I had at least heard of all the top 100 brands. I was surprised that Ford and Kodak had both fallen over 10 places in the last year. The top UK brand is HSBC in 23rd place, and the full list contains only 6 UK owned brands. Of course just over half the brands are US owned, followed by 10 which are German owned.
Steve Mirsky has written an interesting column in the”Antigravity” series in September issue of Scientific American. It talks about a book with the title What is Your Dangerous Idea? edited by John Brockman in which scientists and intellectuals pose what they consider to be dangerous (mostly intellectual) ideas.
Some of the ideas quoted in the article include:
The planet is fine. The people are f*^#ed … the planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas.
The idea that we should all share our most dangerous ideas.
Test the hypothesis first posited as a child that a red towel tied around the neck will indeed confer the ability to fly.
Mirsky ends with
Bertrand Russell’s truly treacherous notion: “I wish to propose … a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe in a proposition when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it true.” The danger of ignoring this doctrine can almost certainly be found in the politics or world events stories on the front page of today’s New York Times. On whatever day you read this.
You can find the full article here.
So what is your dangerous idea? Add a comment to tell us! If nothing else it’s a fun game!
Oh, what, mine? Well let’s start with: Ban the motor car and the aeroplane!
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
[Galileo Galilei]