No posts, then some Blasphemy

I've been too busy at work to write any blog posts recently. I have been planning a big post inspired by the book I'm reading at the moment - On Liberty by John Stuart Mill. I wish I had read this book years ago. It's full of ideas that coincide with the way my view on the world has evolved over the years. There was a section early on in the book about why we should be open to debate controversial issues because the truth is strengthened by being compared to falsehoods. I've had some thoughts about why this often doesn't work in the real world. It needs some more work, so watch this space...

In the meantime, I was directed (via Pharyngula) to this funny site of irreverent cartoons. I only had a chance to look at a few random ones, but I liked this one...

Spaceplanes

This evening I listened to the latest Guardian Science podcast that contained an interview with Piers Bizony. He was promoting his book How to Build Your Own Spaceship. I haven't seen the book yet, but everything he said in the interview seemed very similar to the work and the opinions of David Ashford of Bristol Spaceplanes. David came to talk to a few of us at work a few years back and gave me a copy of his spaceplanes book. My naive question to him was "If this is such a good idea, why haven't NASA been working on it?". His answer seems to be the same as Piers Bizony. Back in the days of the USA/USSR space race, there was a lot of pressure to get something up in space quickly, so not much time and money was spent on development. The result was that large industries were then built on the old-fashioned rocket technology that came out of this race. The story from Ashford and Bizony regarding why there are no spaceplanes yet is partly the practicalities of an entrenched industry and partly suggestions of a conspiracy theory that I don't think helps their ideas gain credibility.

The claim of people in the spaceplane business (what there is of it) is that, if they had just a tiny fraction of one percent of NASA's budget, they could build a working spaceplane. I'd like to see them get a fair crack to try out their ideas. If there is going to be a spaceplane business in the future, Bristol seems like a good place to have it!

Edit: I found David Ashford's book at work. It's called 'Spaceflight Revolution' and it was published by Imperial College Press in 2003.

Machines Like Us I like

I recently stumbled across a website that brings together quite a few of my interests - science, technology, skepticism, articles on life (real and artificial) and evolution. Their people section links to some of the characters I got to know when I was working with Artificial Life. It also features a nice little app that is worth going back to just to check if anything has changed :-)

The weird thing is that Google Ads is obviously getting a bit carried away and missing the website's target audience. A couple of the automated ads that Google put on the site are:

"Atheism against the law? Scientific proof that atheism requires a belief in miracles. "

"2008: God's Final Witness Unprecedented destruction will come in 2008, leading to America's fall. "

I wonder how many hits these sites got from this site?

Machines Like Us is a nice looking site with some good content, but I don't know if it gets visited or updated very often and the forum is a bit sparse. Perhaps I'll have to start stirring them up a bit.

Twit

Well, I've signed myself up for Twitter (http://twitter.com/sdhancock), but I haven't quite worked out the point of it yet. Maybe if I had more friends...

or, to be specific, if more of my friends were geeks like me

St Tony to save the world

Our late lamented leader, Tony Blair, has now decided to devote his life to faith. He is setting up a new faith foundation that will "attempt to bring religions together to tackle global issues". The first issue will be to tackle malaria.

Blair said "Mr Blair said: "If you got churches and mosques and those of the Jewish faith working together to provide the bed nets that are necessary to eliminate malaria, what a fantastic thing that would be."

(Note to Tony - the other word you were looking for was synagogue)

Maybe there's a point in that you can get access to large groups of people through religious organizations, but, if you really are interested in eradicating malaria, why do you need to drag religion into it? Why not just say you want to get everyone to help, rather than mentioning specific religious groups?

Incidentally, I noticed that Blair didn't include athiests, agnostics, humanists, etc. in his list of people he would try to recruit to his cause. Perhaps he realises that some people do get involved in altruistic charitable work without needing 'encouragement' from religious leaders. Then again, he might be ignoring us because he thinks we are all selfish heathens who would never offer to help and we are all going to hell anyway.

Is this the right way round?

The British Humanist Association recently published a statement saying that any child of ‘sufficient maturity, intelligence and understanding’ to be given the right to withdraw from compulsory religious worship in school, rather than the previous case where only sixth formers were allowed to withdraw themselves and younger children would need the backing of their parents. I'm not sure what the BHA is thinking here - their recommendation seems a bit wishy-washy. Surely the sensible situation should be that someone would have to show ‘sufficient maturity, intelligence and understanding’ before they could take part in voluntary worship.

 

Maybe this is a way for the BHA to highlight the 'compulsory' part. The phrase 'compulsory religious worship' makes me feel uneasy. Even some religious organisations have a similar opinion. Ekklesia, who are described as a religious think-tank (oh, the irony) say "Mandating common worship is inappropriate for public institutions made up of people from different world views and faith backgrounds. It is also a misrepresentation of what worship actually is. Worship is a freely offered act of faith arising from a believing community. It is not something that can be imposed or required of everybody." Couldn't have said it better myself.

Some people are never grateful

I found this article on the BBC website a few weeks ago, but I haven't had a chance to blog for a while (computer problems and holidays). What caught my eye was that some students were complaining about the level of tuition they were receiving for their fees. Particularly, arts students thought they should pay less than science students because they received less tuition. Surely they can't be saying that their arts degrees are worth less than a science or engineering degree? That would certainly be the impression if science, engineering and medicine degrees were charged at a higher rate than arts subjects.

What has always been the case, even when I finished my first degree 20 years ago, is that arts students are always the ones who complain because they are the ones with all the time on their hands, while the science and engineering students are busy working! It was interesting to see the breakdown of the Bristol student jury, especially as they make a point of saying "In particular, efforts were made to ensure a reasonable diversity with regard to...subject matter"

The subjects studied by the students were English, Statistics and combined studies, Economics, Law, Classics , Med in TESOL (No, I don't know what this means either), Local governance, English, Psychology and criminology, English literature & cultural media studies, Sport management, Music composition, Business management, European law, Economics.

Hardly the most balanced set of students is it?