Compromise and Conceit
Infernal adventuring…
Category: Science
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NASA today reports the initial results of the Kepler mission, showing that there are potentially millions of habitable planets around stars in the vicinity of Earth. The resulting menagerie of planetary candidates reads like a Traveller or Spacemaster planet generation table – it includes planets bigger than Jupiter, one planet with the density of sytrofoam,…
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Recent revelations in the UK have shown that the UK government’s intended efficiency savings aren’t working (shock!) and it faces a huge funding shortfall. This is hardly unexpected, and probably the first of a range of such reports that are going to start filtering around Whitehall soon, but it has spawned a disappointing tirade from…
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Continuing this week’s zombie theme, Grey has raised in comments to my last post the possibility that our modern specialization and lack of basic survival skills – farming, hunting, that sort of thing – would be a major problem in surviving the zombie apocalypse. The obvious implication of this is that your average media studies…
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Today I had an article published in the British Medical Journal, along with an accompanying editorial[1] and a front page press release (which will be visible for about 3 minutes before the next health care fad overwhelms it). The article itself is an investigation of rates of referral to secondary care (that’s “hospital” to the…
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This post has come about because over at Crooked Timber I was outed as one of the authors on this paper, while defending the prohibition of heroin (I’m the third author on that paper, and have a brace like it[1]). I don’t usually like to reveal my identity on the internet, because … well, because…
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Today, while preparing lessons, I was reminded of one of my two favourite journal articles of all time, which reminded me of the other one, and thought I’d give a brief review of both of them here. One is an example of the kind of research that is often sneered at for its social sicencey-content,…
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Trying to find the famous Grim Reaper HIV/AIDS advert from Australia in the 1980s, I stumbled upon this miracle of rhetorical power. I think it’s safe to say that this is the pithiest example of the craziness of AIDS-denialism that there is to be found on the internet. Could you be more offensive and more…
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This is a completely off-topic post, but I thought it covers an interesting topic in one of those areas that it benefits everyone to know something about. Last night I found myself accidentally at diner with the director of the Land and Water Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). His particular interest at…
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I note that recently this blog has been getting a more political bent, but I’m trying to avoid it with a recent flurry of role-playing/fantasy related posts. I fully intend to restrict the political analysis to a) health-related stuff, b) stuff I can apply stats to and c) very occasional commentary on really big stuff.…
Compromise and Conceit 