Two vaguely scientific things for amusement

Thing One: This week’s More or Less (27 Jan 2012, BBC World Service/Radio 4/Podcast) on the size of cities. I am a fan of statistics, large metropolises (metropolii? metropola? metropolu?)*, and radio, so it all works out. Lucky me.

Thing Two: Something that the science-fiction fan in me almost wanted to be extraordinary… not that it was particularly ordinary, for that matter. This is the story of the man whose garden received a shower of tiny blue spheres from the sky. The spheres were reportedly jelly-like, non-sticky, had no smell, and were approximately three centimetres in diameter. The Met Office offered that the spheres were “not meteorological”. According to the man whose garden it was, the sky became a dark yellow colour before the instant hailstorm. I was really intrigued. The intrigue was short-lived, however, as it was then suggested that the spheres may have been fallen invertebrate eggs, that had been stuck to a bird’s foot, who had been caught in a storm. Got that?

Update on podcast: I am cutting and stitching. I am also deeply unimpressed with my current working rate. However, I aim to provide something for you to listen to within the working week. Until next time!

*I checked. It was “metropolises”, so now you know.

Happy New Year!

Have they gone bonkers? Fear not!

Happy Year of the Dragon! A card I have received; would you like a better look at the paperwork?

Going through a rather busy spell at the moment, though I have many drafts for posts on the go. Something that I definitely have time for, though, is to wish you all a HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR! For those who understand/can be bothered to run it through a translation device: 新年快乐！ 万事如意！身体健康！心想事成！

Don't say I disappoint!

Hope everybody has a wonderful semi-holiday (“semi” is required as most will probably NOT have time off work/school to celebrate), and that all the dragons out there have a particularly fantastic year! (Yes, everybody else are granted a merely “excellent” year.)

Tutoring adventures, part 2

In fact, I shall skip the actual tutoring part, as it went perfectly well, and was not as tricky (for me) as the last time.

As I have mentioned, I help my 9-year-old brother with his homework when he requests aid, and tutor him in mathematics and science over the holidays – and just whenever, really – much to his chagrin. Today, as we were packing up study materials, said brother started:

“Imagine you are in a room with no doors or windows, how would you get out?”

“Erm…”

“STOP IMAGINING!”

Followed by raucous laughter at his own cleverness (learnt from a friend at school – the joke, not the laughing). I had to laugh along – it is quite clever (if you did not already know the answer). Personally, I am a fan of little word games and brain-teasers (or whichever term one uses to describe such games), and am patronisingly pleased that the brother also delights in them. It is certainly better than the time he demonstrated the new swear words he had learnt (I am guessing from a different peer) at school (and we are talking about a reputable school here). I am aware that everybody will more than likely learn swear words at one point or another in their lives, but am perhaps old fashioned enough to feel that they have no room in the vocabulary of a child. Besides, I like passive aggression better.

Back to the tale. I suggested:

“Okay, let’s see who can say the alphabet the fastest!”

“*rapid fire*A, B, C…”

“The alphabet!”

“…L, M, N…what?”

I learned it many moons ago from a Swedish edition of a Donald Duck comic book. So I am a big kid at heart.

Would you care to contribute a word game of your own?

Celebrities and Science

Sense About Science have released (around Christmas, I admit) the latest instalment of the “Celebrities and Science” report for 2011. (So yes, I am a little behind, but decided that this was worth a heads-up in case anybody missed it at the time, like yours truly.) The report discusses science in the mass media, often referenced verbatim from the mouths of “celebrities” and other well-known persons, and their effect on the public, and therefore by default, on the scientific community.

It is not a dig at thick people. However, it is understandably frustrating for scientists who have worked for a long time on their projects to (likely) have to see information with far less underlying research reach a wider audience, simply because the “messenger” has a bigger trumpet.

This year, ways of boosting your body – think supplements, magic bracelets, diets and detoxes – are included in the royal treatment, and apparently some celebrity claimed that the reason for the saltiness of seawater is whale sperm… All in all, I think it is a great little report (even in its layout!) and beyond worthy of a coffee break.

“What’s so good about twitter?!”

First things first – I almost wanted to use an interrobang in the title. Such a fetching name for a punctuation mark.

Back to the title. I have – and I believe I am not alone – been questioned about why I use twitter, and what I think about it.

An acquaintance is responsible for the particular wording in the title, though expressed with genuine, albeit slightly mocking, interest, as opposed to dismissive disbelief. As this occurred at a party, but away from inebriation, I decided that I would enter the debate. So, here is why I use twitter, and what I think about it: (and do let me know your thoughts too!)

• I was urged to join by a university guest lecturer in science communication. They suggested that we, as students and science-communicator “wannabees”, try out as many of these (then) newfangled social media platforms as possible. So I signed up, and proceeded to not use it for at least a year-and-a-half afterwards. Though already at that point, by association, I decided that I would use twitter to keep up to date with science communication news and events.
• It became evident that there was a large science communication community on twitter. No surprise. This is highlighted at conferences (such as #SCC2011 - Science Communication Conference), where hashtags are used to join together tweets – and therefore thoughts and opinions – from both individual sessions, as well as the conference as a whole. Hashtags also enable the real-time following of a conference one is unable to attend, but without the distraction of, say, live web-cam and audio reports.
• Personally, I find twitter awfully less distracting than facebook. This could perhaps be because I have designated it a science communication network, or because facebook is too personal in its function.
• You can find all kinds of interesting projects that people undertake. I have recently joined an effort to raise money for Teenage Cancer Trust by contributing a small part to a year-long story project entitled 3hundredand65. My contribution may be relatively inconsequential at large, but it is always a pleasure to find examples of new media being put to good use.
• There are little useful and/or fun nuggets, too. For instance, writing (sp?) after any word will bring you to the attention of an account dedicated to sort out spelling. Not to mention some very good spoof accounts, masses of newspapers from all over the world, specialised accounts for certain occupations… oh, and updates from transport authorities on what is closed/broken/dysfunctional at any one time.

Now, I admit that I do follow “celebrities” as well, and I consider it part of the experience – a bit of fun, put simply. I am aware that twitter has been reported as not being up to scratch on child protection, and that being able to read ‘personal’ messages from a person of whom somebody is a fan has lead to (what the kids call) flaming, trolling and “haterz” of other relations of the subject of fandom. I am not sure if there is any way around this, other than continued development of new-media technology and “growing up”, respectively. I shall not even discuss certain twitter-events that have lead to court cases, as I truly believe we have heard, and sniggered at, them enough.

Another argument against, is the issue of archiving and storing information, and I believe that concrete solutions to this will lead to twitter being a better tool for collecting information (but not in a creepy, DNA-registration way). In my experience, Storify (here with another example from SCC2011) is a good way of storing tweets per category, by hashtag.

So, this is my very limited (and long overdue) insight into twitter, and what’s “so good about it”. Who’s next?