From Below
This week’s self-portrait: 52 Weeks 25/52 (2008 week 33).
My Olympic Meme
My Olympic Meme, originally uploaded by kcm76.
As I don’t believe in the Olympics — not as they are currently run and administered anyway; the ideal is fine — here is a rather jaundiced view …
1. olympic-games-1948, 2. Field Hockey-Washington, DC: PhotoID-97421, 3. poussée bobsleigh, 4. kelly holmes, 5. Ancient Greece, 6. way to heaven 天堂口。, 7. Day 196: That’s Logic, 8. Sunrise – River Dart, Totnes, 9. Dorthea, 10. commonsense, 11. Heirloom Tomatoes, 12. road to nowhere
The concept:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste the html into your blog or Flickr stream (the easiest way is to copy the URLs and then head over to the fd’s flickr toys link above and use the mosaic maker).
The Questions & Answers:
1. What is the closest the Olympics has ever been to your hometown? London, 1948
2. What is your favorite summer Olympic sport? What Americans call “Field Hockey”
3. What is your favorite winter Olympic sport? Bobsleigh
4. Who is your all-time favorite Olympian? Kelly Holmes
5. If you could go to the Olympics, where would you want the games to be held? Ancient Greece; and all the contestants would compete in the nude just as in Ancient Greece
6. What is the symbol or predominant color on your country’s flag? A cross
7. If you were a member of the Olympic Committee, what sport/activity would you add to the games? Logic
8. What sport is your least favorite to watch? Darts
9. You get two tickets to the Olympics, who would you ask to go with you? Whoever buys them both
10. Hey, you made the team! You’re going to the Olympics – what’s your event? Commonsense
11. The Olympics asks you to bring something to represent your hometown or home country – what would you take? A tomato; well my home did used to be one of the largest areas under glass in the country, growing glasshouse crops etc.
12. Congratulations! You won a medal! Where are you going to display it when you get home? Nowhere
Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.
The Importance of Knowing How
Interesting article by AC Grayling in the “Commentary” column of last week’s New Scientist under the above title. The “Commentary” column, written on alternate weeks by Grayling and Lawrence Krauss, always provides food for thought. This week’s column was, in my view, especially important. As usual because New Scientist don’t make their articles available on-line to non-subscribers here is an edited version.
Philosophers investigating the nature of knowledge and the best methods of acquiring it have always distinguished between knowledge of facts and knowledge of techniques. Knowing that Everest is the highest mountain, and knowing how to measure the height of mountains, are respective examples of the two kinds of knowing. The interesting question is, which is more important?
[…] an education system worthy of the name should equip people with both kinds. But it is still worthwhile to ask which is more important, for the equally obvious reason that no head can first cram in, and then later recall at need, everything that passes as currently accepted fact. What’s more, the number of currently accepted facts is tiny in comparison with what we know we still do not know, which is in turn probably a tiny fraction of what might be knowable.
So although everyone coming out of an educational system should at least know [basic facts] they are much more in need of knowing how to find things out, how to evaluate the information they discover, and how to apply it fruitfully. These are skills; they consist in knowledge of how to become knowledgeable.
[…] information is not knowledge […]
[…] it is no bad thing that the internet is such a democratic domain, where opinions and claims can enjoy an unfettered airing […] This increases the necessity for internet users to be good at discriminating between high and low-quality information, and between reliable and unreliable sources.
We teach research skills in higher education differently for the sciences and humanities […] In the sciences, laboratory technique and experimental design and methodology are fundamental; in the humanities, the use of libraries and archives and the interpretation of texts are in the basic tool kit […]
Knowing how to evaluate information, therefore, is arguably the most important kind of knowledge that education has to teach […] only the International Baccalaureate makes critical thinking […] a standard requirement, and in this as in so many ways it leads the field […] I wonder whether the need for critical thinking lessons is more urgent in the humanities than the sciences because the latter, by their nature, already have it built in. The science lab at school with its whiffs, sparks and bangs is a theatre of evaluation; the idea of testing and proving is the natural order there […]
When we talk of scientific literacy, one thing we should mean is acquisition of just this mindset; without it, too much rubbish gets through.
It’s no wonder that people don’t think is it!?
Democracy in Action
This is today’s Quotation of the Day entry:
If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! This Vietnam stuff, this is not even close. It is a mind-set. We can’t send that message. It’s an excuse to prepare us for withdrawal.
There is a series of moments and this is one of them. Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!
[George W Bush, during a 2004 videoconference with national security and military officials. Quoted in Lt Gen Ricardo S Sanchez’s memoir, Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story an at www.mydd.com/story/2008/6/2/114955/1042]
I was going to say this is scary, but it isn’t; it is obscene (and that’s a word I don’t often use). What price democracy and Christian tolerance now? Anyone still like to argue that Dubya isn’t dangerous and bigoted?
Thought for the Day
Wu-Wei is the Taoist expression for the power of positive not-doing. It is the action in non-action, the knowing in not-knowing, the something in nothing, the doing in not-doing. Wu-Wei is following the way of the water, the way of the wind. It is the not absence of action, but it is the absence of trying. Wind is never still, but it has no intention. Water ever seeks its own level, but not on purpose.
[from www.foolquest.com/zen.htm]
Sputnik Virus, A Viral Parasite
The following is from ProMED, an officially run mailing list for those interested in emerging infectious diseases. I’m posting it here because it is an interesting and unexpected piece of science — and because it arrived as an email I can’t add it to the “shared” list on the right.
A ProMED-mail post <http://www.promedmail.org>
ProMED-mail is a program of the International Society for Infectious Diseases <http://www.isid.org>Date: Wed 6 Aug 2008
Source: The Scientist, NewsBlog [edited] <>A virus’s virus
Researchers have discovered the 1st virus to infect another virus, according to a study appearing tomorrow in Nature. The new virus was found living inside a new strain of the viral giant, mimivirus. “This is one parasite living on another parasite, which is really fascinating,” Michael Rossman, microbiologist at Purdue University, who was not involved in the study, told The Scientist.Didier Raoult and colleagues at the Universitee de la Mediterranee in Marseilles, France, discovered mimivirus in 2003 from a water-cooling tower in the UK [see ProMED-mail reference below]. It primarily infects amoeba, although antibodies have been found to the virus in some human pneumonia cases. It measures in diameter about 400 nanometers (nm), while medium-sized viruses such as adenovirus and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) measure closer to 100-200 nm.
In this study, Raoult’s team found a new strain of mimivirus in water from a cooling tower in Paris. This new strain was even larger than [the UK] mimivirus, so the researchers named it mamavirus. To their surprise, while examining the new strain by electron microscopy they saw a smaller virus attached to mamavirus. This small virus comprises only 20 genes (mimivirus has more than 900 protein-coding genes) and the researchers named it Sputnik.
The team quickly set to work to see what effect Sputnik was having on the mamavirus. They found that Sputnik infects the replication machinery in mamavirus and causes it to produce deformed viral structures and abnormal capsids, where viral genetic information is stored. It had a similar effect on mimivirus. Because Sputnik’s behavior so closely resembles what bacteriophage do to bacteria, the researchers called the new type of virus a virophage, and suspect it may represent a new virus family.
The researchers found that Sputnik’s genes shared homology with genes from all 3 domains of life: archaea, bacteria, and eukarya. Some of the genes were homologous to novel sequences that scientists previously detected in a metagenomic study of ocean water. This supports the idea that Sputnik is part of a larger family of viruses, Bernard La Scola, researcher at the Universite de la Mediterranee (University of the Mediterranean) and 1st author on the paper, told The Scientist.
The size of a virus may dictate whether it can be infected by smaller viruses such as Sputnik, he added. For this reason, viruses that affect humans — like HIV and influenza — are likely too small to be infected by Sputnik-like viruses, said Rossman.
La Scola added he is sure that there are other giant viruses yet to be identified in the world, but they won’t necessarily be infected by smaller viruses. “We need to be lucky to find another Sputnik.”
[Byline: Andrea Gawrylewski]
—
Communicated by: ProMED-mail <promed@promedmail.org>
Diptych for 08/08/08
This week’s self-portrait: 52 Weeks 24/52 (2008 week 32).
Looking upwards from our lawn thru’ my ultra-wide lens: at left this lunchtime on a grey day and at right late this evening after nightfall when the sky was slightly clearer. Notice the horrid orange background of London street lamps in the night shot. Thought this might make an interesting comparison for a Flickr888 contribution as well as for my 52 Weeks self-portrait (bottom left).
Finish this Sentence Meme
I stole this meme from Girl with a One-Track Mind and Troubled Diva because I liked it’s zen mischief potential. My objective is just to complete each of the following sentences. Your objective is to work out which are serious and which aren’t.
- My uncle once: sailed the ocean blue
- Never in my life: have I taken illegal drugs
- When I was five: I looked like Prince Charles
- High school was: much better than I realised at the time
- I will never forget: and that isn’t the only resemblance I have to an elephant
- Once I met: a man in a kilt
- There’s this girl I know: who is unattainable
- Once, at a bar: I met a Colonel with a dog
- By noon, I’m usually: in need of lunch
- Last night: I didn’t have sex on the beach
- If only I had: the power and the glory, for ever and ever, Amen
- Next time I go to church: I’ll be taking photographs
- What worries me most: is politicians
- When I turn my head left I see: something sinister
- When I turn my head right I see: a right tit
- You know I’m lying when: I keep quiet
- What I miss most about the Eighties is: not very much
- If I were a character in Shakespeare I’d be: a lion whelping in the street (Julius Caesar, Act II, Scene ii)
- By this time next year: I might be retired
- A better name for me would be: Zanzibar
- I have a hard time understanding: why people need religion
- If I ever go back to school, I’ll: be in a time machine (’cos neither of my schools exists any more)
- You know I like you if: I kiss you
- If I ever won an award, the first person I would thank would be: grateful
- Take my advice, never: admit that you know
- My ideal breakfast is: a full English
- A song I love but do not have is: a John Mayall mouth-music track from the ’60s that I can’t now identify or find
- If you visit my hometown, I suggest you: search out its history
- Why won’t people: think
- If you spend a night at my house: you’ll be solicited by a pussy (or two)
- I’d stop my wedding for: a KitKat
- The world could do without: religion and politicians
- I’d rather lick the belly of a cockroach than: do a bungee jump
- My favourite blonde is: Michaela Strachan
- Paper clips are more useful than: a grapefruit and Marmite sandwich
- If I do anything well it’s: only to lull you into a false sense of security
- I can’t help but: be a perfectionist
- I usually cry: inwardly
- My advice to my child/nephew/niece: if it harm none, do as you will
- And by the way: there’s always toast at the end of the dragon
I’m not tagging anyone for this, but feel free to borrow (or steal) it if you like it. If you do use it, it would be nice if you left a comment here.
Zen Mischievous Moments #142
Connioseurs of 1970s UK police soap operas will remember the refrain “Let’s be ’avin’ you” when an arrest was about to be made. Our attention has been drawn to an example not of nominative determinism, but of locational determinism – the existence of a police facility on Letsby Avenue in the Yorkshire town of Sheffield (it’s right next to Sheffiled City Ariport). Sadly there is as yet no news of an “Onyer Way” or “Evenin Hall” in the vicinity.
[HT Feedback @ New Scientist]