Author Archives: rivqa

Two words…

By rivqa Posted in Science

… start downloading.

For the first time the Archive provides online access to all journal content, from Volume One, Issue One in March 1665 until the latest modern research published today ahead of print. And until December the archive is freely available to anyone on the internet to explore.

Spanning nearly 350 years of continuous publishing, the archive of nearly 60,000 articles includes ground-breaking research and discovery from many renowned scientists including: Bohr, Boyle, Bragg, Cajal, Cavendish, Chandrasekhar, Crick, Dalton, Darwin, Davy, Dirac, Faraday, Fermi, Fleming, Florey, Fox Talbot, Franklin, Halley, Hawking, Heisenberg, Herschel, Hodgkin, Hooke, Huxley, Joule, Kelvin, Krebs, Liebnitz, Linnaeus, Lister, Mantell, Marconi, Maxwell, Newton, Pauling, Pavlov, Pepys, Priestley, Raman, Rutherford, Schrodinger, Turing, van Leeuwenhoek, Volta, Watt, Wren, and many, many more influential science thinkers up to the present day.

Have I ever mentioned that I love the Royal Society’s motto? It’s “Nullius in Verba” (“On the words of no one”). The core of the scientific method.

The science of blogging*

By rivqa Posted in Reflections, Science Tagged

This week New Scientist has a special feature called “The cult of us” about online living, mainly social networking and blogging. Since I blog, I was obviously very interested in what they had to say.

The first thing that hits you about the blogosphere is the sheer enormity of it:

Blogging extends well beyond teen diaries, however … according to a website called Technorati, which monitors the blogosphere. It says it is currently tracking 51.3 million blogs worldwide, and claims that 75,000 new blogs are created every day – that’s almost one per second. The blogosphere is 100 times bigger than it was three years ago, a doubling in size roughly every six months.

Is it good or bad? The article linked above shrugs off its effect on teenagers thusly:

Online socialisation is just an extension of the kind of interactions that people have daily by phone, text message and email…

They did have an interview with someone more critical, here:*

But just as not all information put on the web is true, not all aspects of the new sociality should be celebrated. We communicate with quick instant messages, “check-in” cell calls and emoticon graphics. All of these are meant to quickly communicate a state. They are not meant to open a dialogue about complexity of feeling.

The internet, or even just the blogosphere, is incredibly diverse. Certainly there’s the trap for teenagers to write and talk in netspeak, which limits them to superficiality. But by blogging, there’s also room for them to open up. To use strangers as a soundboard for their “what ifs”. When I was a teenager, I often wondered what would happen if I said or did something inappropriate. What would the consequences be? I’ll never know about the things I wasn’t game to say or do. But if blogs had existed then, maybe I could have asked my readers. Beyond socialising, it can actually get quite deep. As any teenager will tell you.

That said, I think it is an issue that it takes away from one’s time alone. Speaking for myself here, I don’t have a great deal of time to myself, and what time I do have is often spent online (yes, I’m an addict). Is it a bad thing? Should I be meditating or walking alone on the beach instead? I’m not sure if time spent truly alone has any intrinsic value. But it might, and if it does, there are millions of people out there who just need to switch off for a while.

* Unfortunately these articles are subscription only. I recommend the subscription though!

Misplaced outrage

By rivqa Posted in Science Tagged ,

So, the latest thing politicians are outraged about is the improper choice of entertainment at the Canberra Climate Change forum: a troupe of burlesque dancers stripping (only to their underwear; no nudity). The federal Environment Department and the Bureau of Rural Sciences have withdrawn their funding to the event in a beautiful gesture of censorship.

Here’s the organisers’ apology: “In retrospect the choice of entertainment was inappropriate for the occasion. We understand if the sponsors wish to withdraw.” Yes to the first sentence. No to the second.

The choice of entertainment was not merely inappropriate; it was downright stupid. But put it in context: this was forum about climate change, something that we, the citizens of the world (per capita, Australia is particularly guilty) are causing. Climate change is destroying our planet and the Australian government won’t ratify Kyoto. That is an outrage, not a few students taking some clothes off to a point that’s perfectly acceptable at the beach.

This is not a new point. Milos Forman’s biopic, The People vs Larry Flynt, the same point is made about war. Conservative (not necessarily political) types are far more outraged by anything of a sexual nature than they are about injustice. The fuss made about prostitution and pornography, if it will be made, should be secondary to the fuss made about environment and human rights. (As long as it’s not prostitution or porn that’s violating human rights, such as child pornography. That goes without saying.)

Sex sells and it’s always going to be more interesting than “boring” conservation issues. But if conservation doesn’t come first, there might not be anyone selling anything one day.

Obituaries

By rivqa Posted in Reflections, Science Tagged , ,

There were two prominent deaths today here in Australia.
Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter: the loud, boisterous champion of wildlife was killed by a sting ray barb in Queensland. Irwin’s death is tragic: a man “in his prime” killed in a freak accident, leaving behind a wife and two small children. But the nation is feeling this loss too. On MSN’s instant messenger program, people are adding (tu), which codes for a turtle symbol, to their names in his honour. Steve Irwin was a proud ambassador for Australia’s wildlife and did more for conservation than many less interesting, noble organisations. The environment needs more heroes like him.

Of slightly less note (judging by the hits on Google News, at least) is the death of a fine Australian author, Colin Thiele. Thiele was a master of his craft, best known for Storm Boy and The Water Trolley. When I was in Grade Five we studied Storm Boy and the short stories published with it. I cried through Storm Boy and laughed through The Lockout. But the story that affected me the most was The Shell. It’s been a long time since I read it, but if I remember correctly, the story was about a family who go down to the beach. The mother wants a beautiful shell that she can see, and she gets it, but her husband and son are swept out to sea. It was the first time I saw nature as something powerful impossible to bend to human will; fascinating and terrifying. Thiele obviously had a great respect for nature that was totally different from Irwin’s, but in the end, sadly, Irwin proved Thiele’s point.

The world we live in can be frightening and mysterious but I think that approaching it with Irwin’s enthusiasm is important. There are forces in nature that can overwhelm us, but there are also delicate and vulnerable aspects, and they need to be protected.

1.5th world

By rivqa Posted in Science

Why does it always seem like Australia is a bit behind the rest of the developed world? Movies, music and TV always gets here late, and so does science. Everything from ethanol to stem cells is somehow stymied by the parochial attitudes that are prevalent in our current government.

Australians really seem to enjoy hating America, as if they’re on some kind of moral — and intellectual — high ground. I’d like to contend that we’re not, on the basis of the science that’s practised here vs. there. It’s not just a funding issue: it’s a mental block.

Exhibit A: Ethanol , a potentially green source of fuel, is not just used in the United States, it’s being heavily researched there. While ethanol’s current edge over oil is debatable, it’s very promising if it can be harvested in energy-efficient ways. In Australia, research into ethanol is minimal, and its use is not being encouraged, despite petrol prices rising above $1.40 per litre. So much for progress.

Exhibit B: Mifepristone is currently available in many countries around the world, including “developing” countries such as Turkey and Tunisia. It is approved by the World Health Organization and is also in use in the US, a country supposedly more conservative than Australia. Seems like the pro-lifers don’t have as much effect on what medical treatments are available to women in difficult situations.

Exhibit C: This one’s a little more promising, but I’ll include it anyway. Embryonic stem cell research is currently non-existent in Australia, but it just might be back on the cards. It’s not happening much in the US either, but it is in California. So if an American scientist wanted to do stem cell research, he or she would only have to relocate to California, not to a different country.

Which brings me to my final point. Australia, remote island of small population that it is, can ill afford to lose its most promising scientists to other countries, but the brain drain has been going on for too long already. We urgently need to replace sport with science as the national religion of this country, or we’ll just fall further and further behind.