Blogs
This week has seen Pfizer’s decision to axe their UK Sandwich site. This controversial announcement has sparked a debate with Stephen Moss and he has been directing us to relevant articles in his post Pfizer – the view from the bench. Also this week, Mike Fowler had been discussing another possible closure – that of the Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital.
Closing the Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital possibly only replaces one ethical problem (knowingly treating patients with a non-effective treatment and hoping they benefit from a placebo effect) with another (having to find somewhere to hide the time-wasters). But I’m sure a cheaper, more ethical alternative can be found for the time-wasters than a bloated, unscientific institution that relies more on magical thinking than medical evidence. Unvestigation, indeed.
Elsewhere on the Network other provocative questions have been raised; Kausik Datta has been pondering social morals and the blurry line between acceptable humour and comedy that may be seen by some as humiliating. And in the aftermath of the 6 Nations Rugby tournament between England and Wales, Tom Webb reflects on the foibles of sports commentators.
In the 3rd minute of the crunch game between, say, England and Wales, the Welsh kicker misses an easy 3 point penalty. At the end of the 80 minute game, Wales have lost by 2 points (a far fetched scenario, I know, for the Welsh to have got so close). Post-match, pundits will say something along the lines of, “If only Jones had kicked that early penalty,Wales would have won by a point”.
Elsewhere in the world
This week we have seen continuing political unrest in Egypt and in his post, Farooq Khan has been looking at revolutions from an interesting perspective, considering the critical role of academics in revolution.
The role of academics in societal transformation has always been key, as the thinking for change either emanates from those in academia or the thinking is a product of those in academia and the intellectuals in wider society; a fusion of different ideas and people. It is interesting to study the influence of ideas upon the people involved in the revolutions’ in Tunisia and Egypt in the same way we are trying to map scientific knowledge.
Our Australian blogger, MuKa’s comical blog title My night with a Trojan received a lot of attention this week. He discusses his battle with what he thought was a computer virus, when it was in fact a clever malware:
This Trojan scares the user into believing that the computer is infected with a virus, which scams people into parting with money to purchase their antivirus.
Other news
We have reignited our guest blog, Soapbox Science where each week we hand the platform to a scientist with a theory, covering a range of popular topics. This week Andrew Robinson, author of over twenty books on both the arts and sciences, asks Does genius follow the ten-year rule?
In this week’s regular editorial on Of Schemes and Memes, we kicked off with the first installment of a mini-series looking at various aspects of science museums. In the first part, Behind the Doors at the Museum, we delve further into what a museum can really offer, revealing that museums hold a rich variety of activities that can easily be underestimated.
Hub news
Social Media week commenced on Monday. Hosted all over the world, including New York, San Francisco, Toronto, São Paulo, London, and Hong Kong, it boasts a full week of activities that connect people, content, and conversation around emerging trends in social media. To tie in with the celebrations, Tinker Ready has been blogging about the science of social media and the social media of science, entertaining us throughout the week with a series of related posts. Meanwhile in the San Francisco blog, Joanna Scott has been revealing the Annual World University Rankings from the Times Higher Education, with Harvard University, California Institute of Technology, and MIT hitting the top spots.
In the run up to Valentine’s Day, in the London blog, Matt Brown has been updating us on how to have a scientific Valentine’s day, as well as encouraging us to visit the Sexual Nature Exhibition at the Natural History Museum, despite Transport for London rejecting some of their ‘sexy’ advertising posters, disapproving of their content.
Copulating hedgehogs, fish with flapping penises…it’s like they made an exhibition out of all those questions you never dared ask. Stunning photos, video footage, live animals and impressive taxidermy are the main orders of the day, all suitably bathed in mood lighting. And who knew that foxes do it back to back? No wonder they make such a noise.
Science and love
Also in line with the Valentine’s theme GrrlScientist explains to us in her post Mate Choice: when Mr Right isn’t good enough that some female birds (the feathered type!) don’t always pick the perfect match.
Perhaps an idea for a great Valentine’s day present for science lovers is revealed in Eva Amsen’s post Etsy Wednesday. You may not have realised but discarded pipette tips have their uses in the imaginative scientific art form, ‘Tip Art,’ begging the question, how do you empty your tip boxes?
Finally Viktor Poor has been entertaining us with a perfect gift for Valentine’s He proposes a rather extreme idea:
