An animated Bruce Hood. Creative Commons licensed picture by Dave Fayram The holiday season is upon us which means it’s time for the Royal Institution Christmas lectures.
Curryology, the branch of science that deals with curry, is an established discipline with a long and distinguished history.
Why can’t the English just say what they mean, dammit? Stephen Fry’s Planet Word is an entertaining romp through the English language. It provides a timely reminder as to why people don’t always say what they mean, see the episode on uses and abuses of language for some entertaining examples.
Rock and Roll: The ultimate in job satisfaction? Job satisfaction is like a complex mathematical equation that needs to be balanced. There are many factors that contribute to the mix, both good and bad. Hopefully the good things about a job will outweigh the bad. But what are the good things that contribute to the elusive but crucial job satisfaction? Daniel Pink, argues that motivation is key to job satisfaction.
What caused the summer riots of 2011 in the UK? Many reasons have been suggested and a long list of possible causes has been drawn up over the summer. The baby boomer generation should be added to the list of suspects.
Fighting the lore of wikipedia is an increasingly futile battle but there are people who resist using and improving the online encyclopedia. The remarkable thing is that some of this resistance comes from the scientific and academic communities, two groups of people who are supposedly concerned with the dissemination of knowledge.
Science, is a big word that gets used and abused with reckless abandon. Virtually any discipline can award itself extra kudos by adding the magic S word at the end. For example, which sounds weightier, sports studies or sports science?
[This post is part of an ongoing series about impact factors. See Impact Factor Boxing 2012 for the latest figures.] Well it’s that time again.
Ah Sunday, a day of rest, recuperation and roasted food… Unless you’re a scientist, that is, in which case you might be working. If that’s you, this one goes out to all you committed high-calibre, driven scientists [1,2,3] who are spending this Sunday working at the laboratory bench.
According to Arthur C. Clarke [1]: These three stages can be summed up as Myopia, Hubris and Amnesia. Which sounds a bit like the famous misquote (?) by Mahatma Gandhi: We are all surrounded by innovations of various kinds. If Clarke and Gandhi are right, we are either: Which one are you?
Talk of machines taking over the planet is the stuff of science fiction but if world domination was just a simple numbers game, some machines have already “taken over” from their human masters.