Biologists Helping Bookstores

A team dedicated to surreptitiously putting the pseudoscience books on the correct shelves. (via Kottke)

BBC online video service launches

Other services such as ITV’s broadband media player and Channel 4′s on-demand offering also rely on Microsoft software but, critics argue, the BBC’s remit is to serve licence-payers, which includes Mac users and those who favour cheaper alternatives to Microsoft, such as Linux.

Of course, everyone uses Linux just because its cheaper. Hey, I could also save money by not paying a licence fee to these idiots.

Dave Winer on one month with iPhone

Remember, in the 80s Apple was the first company to build networking into every machine, and later the first company to ship a wifi router. Hopefully it’s possible for Apple to open today’s iPhone, and reward the early adopters for betting on them, and get developers busy at fulfilling the opportunities it creates as a platform, not just a device.

Project Management is Bollocks!

There’s a whole industry of consultants scamming a living out of it. They base their entire existence on the lie that they can provide the definitive solution to project management. They aren’t about to ruin a good thing by telling the truth about their fallibility.

Earlier this year, the BBC changed the way they present some news items on the news homepage. Items classed as ‘major’ started to get greater prominence, with the enlarged headline text and summary spanning the 3 columns to indicate that some serious shit is happening right now; after all, it’s hardly ever good news that gets this kind of treatment.

As an editor, it must be a tough decision over which items get this level of prominence and which don’t. Some recent ones I recall are the coverage of Tony Blair standing down as Prime Minister, and the pathetic attempts at terrorism in London and Glasgow.

It’s a strange – and somewhat stupid – method of indicating that a news item is major and significant. Why should this be indicated at all? Why not present the item normally and let the reader decide on its significance? Why do the work of the terrorists by making stories seem more ‘major’ than they really are?

Furthermore, its usage seems to have revealed the Beeb’s southern England bias – something that Humphries and the Today Programme team are accused of when they absent-mindedly give the weather forecast for London on a national radio programme.

At the beginning of July, major flooding in Yorkshire lead to the loss of life, the displacement of 35,000 people in Hull, and according to Hull City Council, a “humanitarian disaster”. While the news was covered by the BBC, they didn’t give it the homepage treatment that the flooding of Middle England is now getting. As a result the British public, the Government, and The Queen didn’t seem quite so concerned.

Granted, the numbers affected by the latest floods are greater than those in Yorkshire. But when news about bottled water being distributed to those affected gets the major news alert treatment, how do you make more serious news look more serious? Expect full page breaking news items with red flashing lights soon.

Butterflies and Wheels

A site I’ve been enjoying recently. From the about page:

There are two motivations for setting up the web site. The first is the common one having to do with the thought that truth is important, and that to tell the truth about the world it is necessary to put aside whatever preconceptions (ideological, political, moral, etc.) one brings to the endeavour.

Kraftwerk’s Florian Schneider never gives interviews, or at least, interviews he takes seriously. For Brazillian TV in 1998, he gave the interviewer one-word answers as she desperately tried to make them sound more interesting translated into Portuguese.

Here’s another, way more bizarre, interview he gave in 2001 under the pseudonym ‘Don Schneider’. Being a monoglot, I haven’t got a clue what they’re saying, but then I suspect a Spanish speaking person wouldn’t either.

Spaghettification

Proof – surely – that the Universe was crafted by the touch of His Noodly Appendage

Evolution is not just a theory

The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection is our best explanation for the fact of evolution.

Primates on the pill

Roman Catholic doctrine doesn’t have much to say about monkey morality, but there could be trouble if it did. Olive baboons in Nigeria sometimes consume natural contraceptives that may make the females less attractive to the males and almost certainly lower their chances of becoming pregnant.

Update: fixed the link

Chris Lintott reflects on a week inside the Galaxy Zoo

I’ve been inspired by just what it’s possible to do with this internet thing

Florentijn Hofman’s Rubber Duck

A yellow spot on the horizon slowly approaches the coast. People have gathered and watch in amazement as a giant yellow Rubber Duck approaches.

Last week I linked to a piece on wired.com about how Prince is pointing the way to a “brighter future for music”. The deal to distribute his latest album ‘Planet Earth’ free with the Mail on Sunday had music industry executives foaming at the mouth; they consider this “nuts” move to be setting a dangerous precedent for other artists to publish their music without the big companies seeing a penny.

No doubt that getting the Music Industry in a tizzy is a good thing, but we shouldn’t consider Prince as the artist leading us to a new era of music publishing. He just wants to get his music out to more than the 80,000 people in the UK that bought his previous album, and do a deal with the Mail on Sunday in the process.

Admittedly, the marketing worked on me, and I paid a visit to my local newsagent on Sunday. I felt a bit dirty buying the Mail on Sunday, but luckily there was a newspaper recycling bin nearby.

Speechification

A blog of Radio 4. Not about Radio 4 but of it. We point to the bits we like, the bits you might have missed, the bits that someone might have sneakily recorded. And other bits of speech radio might find their way here too.

(via Submit Response)

Recently, I’ve found myself using Google search queries as a kind of passive messaging system. For example, I make regular use of Dave’s BBC radio stream pages, whereby the stream URLS are scraped from the BBC site and presented in a more useable format. By way of a Google search for Dave’s site, I showed my appreciation thusly:

dave bbc streams -”thanks dave!”

If Dave checks his server logs he’ll know that his service is appreciated.

PZ Myers is surrounded

[the map] shows the concentration of ignorant, deluded, wicked, foolish, or oppressed victims of obsolete mythologies in the United States, with the lighter colors being the most enlightened and the dark reds being the most repressed and misinformed.

Dirk Maggs is adapting Dirk Gently’s Detective Agency for Radio 4

This would surely work better on TV. I wasn’t particularly impressed with Maggs’ radio adaption of Adams’ later Hitchhiker novels.

Scientists say they have seen one of the fastest evolutionary changes ever observed in a species of butterfly.

… the example in this study happened in the blink of the eye, in terms of evolutionary time, and is a remarkable thing to get to observe.

BBC apologises over Queen clips

So the BBC runs with a story in many of the morning’s papers about the Queen storming out of a photo shoot by Annie Leibovitz. Then they issue an apology to both the Queen and Leibovitz for misrepresenting the incident. But hang on… isn’t this a BBC commissioned documentary?

Nick Harper performs Zappa’s epic ‘Titties & Beer’ at the Greenbelt Festival…

The Psychology of Social Computing: What Best Explains the Success of Facebook?

“Curiosity” – and its cousin “nosiness” – are basic cognitive attributes. Anyone who says they are never nosey or never curious as to what their neighbours or work colleagues are up to is probably fibbing. Having lived in several small communities, where gossip is an alternative currency, the general rule seems to be “most residents discuss most other residents”.

Where are the Joneses? is a new sitcom produced by Steve Coogan, Henry Normal, and anyone else who wants to contribute. That’s because it is written collaboratively using a Wiki, and the a new episode is performed and released online every day. All the content is published under a Creative Commons licence.

I’m sure that just as Wikipedia has its detractors – mainly academics who dislike its lack of authority – this will draw criticism from established comedy writers who will say it can’t be compared to the genius of comedy writers such as Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, Galton and Simpson, or John Sullivan.

Last.fm strikes Sony music deal

…and moves deeper into the dark heart of the Music Industry.

Prince Points the Way to a Brighter Future for Music

As with blogging and so many other things digital, music distribution could become a competition to see who posts things first. In a sense, music distribution would no longer be about space — it would be about time.

In 1973, standing on a pavement in Manhattan, Marty Cooper made the first mobile phone call. Inspired by the communications devices used in Star Trek, Cooper developed a device that allowed phone calls to be made to anywhere in the world without being connected to the recipient by wires.

Today, OpenMoko and FIC have launched the first phone to run on a Free and Open Source Software platform, and as a tribute to that first mobile call, they’ve named it the Neo 1973.

Apple’s iPhone may be the slickest piece of consumer tech ever released, but what you can do with your iPhone – and the price you pay for it – is strictly determined by Apple and AT&T.

Conversely, the OpenMoko platform gives the user complete control of the phone’s software as well as giving anyone the opportunity to contribute to its ongoing development.

I’ll wait for the dust to settle on both the iPhone and OpenMoko launches, but come 2008, I think I know which phone I’ll be buying.

The BBC coverage managed to skip the highlight of yesterday’s Live Earth concert in London. ‘Tap’ were joined by an army of Bass players to perform Big Bottom…

Another day, another bomb kills and injures 350 people in Iraq

Tomorrow we’ll probably forget.

The UK’s National Health Service is a very good thing and, after watching Michael Moore’s latest film SiCKO, I realise it’s something I take for granted.

That said, in order to put the America’s health care system in as negative light as possible, Moore presents us with a very rosy view of the NHS as well similar universal health care systems in France and Cuba.

The NHS is not quite as perfect as he suggests; among other problems it’s becoming impossible to get NHS dental treatment, waiting lists are very long for some surgical procedures, there are ongoing serious problems with NHS IT systems, and people are getting infected by the MRSA superbug which seems make its home in UK hospitals.

Moore seems to be exploiting the fact that a large percentage of the film’s intended audience is unfamiliar with our health care system, giving him a blank slate to draw any picture he wants.

SiCKO is a powerful and moving film, and people should see it, but I would have liked to see a slightly more realistic presentation of the NHS, and I suspect the French and Cuban systems aren’t the perfect models of a welfare state either.

Moore wants his fellow Americans to think that the grass is much greener on the other side. It probably is, just not quite as green as Moore wants them to believe.

Phil Plait reviews Tranformers

Every time a new Michael Bay movie comes out, I swear I’d rather do something better, like stick a red hot screwdriver in my eye or visit the Creation Museum. Or both.

Full review. He actually quite likes it.

For Muslim Extremists, Religion Matters

In short, it’s not what the material world fails to deliver that drives suicide bombers. It’s something else. And, time and again, the very people committing these acts have articulated what that something else is: their religion.

BBC News: Good vibes power tiny generator

While Steorn wait for their stage lights to cool down, scientists at Southampton University announce details of a tiny device that uses natural vibrations to generate power.

Today is the day Steorn were supposed to be demonstrating their Perpetual Motion Machine via a live Webcast. Perhaps unsurprisingly, if you visit their website, you will see this announcement:

“We are experiencing some technical difficulties with the demo unit in London. Our initial assessment indicates that this is probably due to the intense heat from the camera lighting. We have commenced a technical assessment and will provide an update later today. As a consequence, Kinetica will not be open to the public today (5th July). We apologise for this delay and appreciate your patience.”

So the unveiling of the most important invention in the history of humanity was ruined by some hot lights. Remember, next time you plan on demonstrating an impossible machine, make sure the environmental conditions are right!

European vs. American mobile phone use

Some interesting comparisons between mobile phone culture in the US and Europe.

The Times is reporting that O2 has won the rights to offer the iPhone in the UK

While I’m sure the iPhone will sell well in the UK, O2 will have to offer some extremely attractive price plans in order to lure people away from their existing contracts.

Zeldman: Let there be web divisions

Right on.

In the UK, Scientology isn’t recognised as a religion. I see no reason why it shouldn’t be recognised as a religion, as it certainly has many things in common with other faiths: it has a theology, its followers believe that humanity needs salvation, people get indoctrinated at an early age, believers get spiritual counselling, and its organisation is a complex hierarchy in which its members progress through various ‘levels’.

Scientology regularly gets a deserved drubbing by the media, the BBC Panorama programme “Scientology and Me” being a recent example. But why should it be singled out from other religions to get this amount of criticism? Why is the story of Xenu any more ridiculous than the story of Noah’s genocide, God creating the earth and everything on it in six days, Mary’s virgin birth, or Jesus’ resurrection? To refer to the theme of Dan Dennett’s presentation at TED, they are all dangerous ideas and should be treated with absolutely no respect.

So to those about to write another piece claiming the Scientology is 100% Bullshit, remember there are plenty of other religions equally deserving of such criticism.

A short presentation from TED 2002

Floods are judgment on society, say bishops

How’s that for some truly enlightened thinking by the C of E.

Today’s iPhone isn’t a reading device

It’s behaving like no web browser I’ve ever seen, and it’s behaving badly. It’s breaking an implicit agreement between all platforms that co-exist on the web. We create sites that assume nothing about the device they’re being rendered on, and browsers should take care to make our text readable for users of their device. The iPhone web browser doesn’t keep that promise.