Another Nail In The Coffin Of British Science?

Tech Tags: OECD PISA science United Kingdom dumbing down scientific literacy

I opened up the Metro this morning to "Dumbing down" row as science pupils slip. Sadly they haven't seen fit to include it on their website, but the BBC News has obliged, for those of you fortunate enough not to have to commute into the Metro readership areas.

Now, the OECD has said that it isn't "strictly valid" to compare the ranks between years (as they only assign a range of ranks with 95% confidence), but there is still no denying that the UK is slipping in its children's knowledge of science. I quote from the Metro:

The country fell from fourth to 14th in prestigious science rankings last night, just 24 hours after a similar tumble down a literacy league table.

Now we may still be well above average, but I don't think 14th place is good enough really, not when we have historically been at the cutting edge of scientific discoveries. Also:

The study also found only 38% of British pupils said they liked reading about science.

That's more worrying. Despite the UK being better than the OECD average at science, we are much less interested than our foreign counterparts. And in the BBC article, they go on to say that only 55% said they generally had fun when learning science, which is also below the average. Now my brother and I adored science books when we were younger. He's not a scientist - in fact via multimedia production and photography he's become a historian. But I'm sure he enjoyed science classes as much as I did. Hell, Paul loved science and he's a lawyer-turned-writer.

So what's the problem? Are science teachers not doing a good enough job? Are we so short of teachers with science degrees that we're relying on other teachers for whom science is not their chosen subject or indeed passion? Are kids of today generally feckless and unteachable? Or, more likely, have they just been turned off by the frankly ridiculous National Curriculum (although if I was able to learn about neurotoxins in my A-level biology class rather than being repeatedly told I had a vitamin deficiency during our module on "human health and disease" I'd have been well happy), piss-easy exams that only reward learning by rote and not understanding the theories, and a distinctly anti-science government and general public?

We have a nation that would rather pay to see a homeopath than see their GP for free. We have a miserably low level of scientific literacy. And scientists are stereotyped as mad goggle-sporting, labcoat-wearing psychopaths. There's an advert for car insurance with a female science teacher, all labcoated and goggled up, pouring one bubbling brightly coloured liquid in a conical flask (nothing quite says SCIENCE like a conical flask) into a beaker of another frothing liquid. Scientists don't have their discipline publicised in papers, but are collectively referred to as boffins.

Would it be too cynical of me to wonder if Asian schoolchildren are being put off taking an interest in science for fear of being labelled a terrorist in the making? According to the Office for National Statistics, about 50% of the non-white population in the UK (nearer 60-70% in the north) is Asian. In London that means about 15% of the population (probably more where schoolchildren are concerned). I don't know what the ethnic split on A-level results is, and wouldn't presume to make any conclusions, but if you give 15% of the school population the message that if they take an interest in science they can expect to be treated with suspicion by the police then they're probably going to go for self-preservation.

Makes me really think hard about emigrating to Scandinavia though...

New Procedures For Rape Trials

Tech Tags: UK government rape trials rape victims video statements Washington University in St Louis sexual assault

As someone with a slightly more vested interest in this than the average person, I was delighted to hear on the news today about new measures proposed enabling juries to be informed of how rape victims may behave in the aftermath of an attack. For example, it will be explained that some women may not report the rape for several days or weeks. They may not raise the alarm immediately, and may not even flee the scene as soon as they can. Sadly the BBC News seems to have altered the story slightly since earlier this morning, so it focusses more on the video statements now being allowed (regardless of how long after the rape the statement was made) and less on the more interesting story I detailed above.

When I was assaulted, not only did I not run screaming from the room afterwards, but I went for breakfast with Smith the next morning, flew to St Louis, let his wife pick me up from the airport and drop me off at my new apartment, continued to work with him for several months and pretty much buried the experience until I found myself in counselling for severe depression by January, some five months on. Only having been able to talk to my counsellor (three or four sessions into my treatment) did I find the courage to complain to the university. By that point though, there was no point in going to the police as it was my word against his. And most international students are quite keen to keep a low profile as far as the authorities go. I know it all happened in a different country, and it happened four years ago, but - well, I'm just glad that juries can have this information made available to them.

With any luck, I and the women (and indeed men) I know will never have to make use of an expert to tell the jury the numerous different ways a rape victim may react to an attack. I hope these new proposals never affect me. But I am personally relieved to know that my reaction was just as normal a response as running from the room.

So She Developed A Physics Voice

For the past three months I have been struggling without my own laptop computer. I've been borrowing a cool funky (but ultimately almost unusable) mini Vista laptop from Paul's bosses, and have reached the conclusion that it will be a dark day when Microsoft withdraws support for Windows XP. Now it wasn't my fault that my laptop broke, but it certainly was my fault that it's been broken for as long as three months.

Because I've procrastinated. I have put off and put off the dreaded phonecall to PC World to either get it fixed or arrange for a repair, until there was something I was dreading doing more (at the moment it's any academic writing - I am so far behind on InaDWriMo that it's almost not worth bothering except for the fact that it will make my supervisor's year if I hand him a Cetiosauriscus manuscript). I've delayed calling the tech support line because I was afraid of being instantly dismissed as a stupid technologically unaware woman. It happened when I went into PC World over the summer (to the extent that I set back several decades of women's lib by bursting into floods of tears). It happens when I go to get the car fixed (even though I know more about how the car works than Paul does, even down to a pretty decent working knowledge of the subtleties of the internal combustion engine).

So when I finally called, I was on the offensive. I must have been so loud and bolshy. I knew it was a hardware issue. It was probably the motherboard, fans or capacitors. It definitely wasn't a problem with the software. And in the end it was hardware, but it was the hard drive which had been corrupted. One wipe and reset later it was all fine, and absolutely everything is backed up - I will retrieve the DVDs from my hopefully intact office tomorrow. I felt a little bad for being so obnoxious when I called, firstly because the bloke on the end of the phone was not even remotely patronising and secondly because I wasn't wholly correct...

She found it difficult to discuss physics, much less debate it, with her predominantly male classmates. At first they paid a kind of selective inattention to her remarks. There would be a slight pause, and then they would go on as if she had not spoken. Occasionally they would acknowledge her remark, even praise it, and then again continue undeflected. She was reasonably sure her remarks were not entirely foolish, and did not wish to be ignored, much less ignored and patronized alternately. Part of it - but only a part - she knew was due to the softness of her voice. So she developed a physics voice, a professional voice: clear, competent, and many decibels above conversational. With such a voice it was important to be right.

The above is a quote from "Contact" by Carl Sagan. It has stayed in the back of my mind since I read the book at the age of 14 or 15 (oh Christ, that was over a decade ago). I've always been very aware that in so many aspects of life (not just academia) to be given the same level of service as men we have to be louder, more obnoxious, basically a bit more male. Softly softly does not catchee monkey. To give presentations I don't use my normal speaking voice (I know a lot of women who do, and sometimes it works but usually it doesn't). I go louder, I go harder and I go deeper. It's easier to project if I speak at a lower pitch. It's not a physics voice but it's certainly a palaeontology voice.

But recently I've been struck by that paragraph, and a couple of subsequent ones. And I've realised just how observant Sagan was, to have spotted sexism, and good of him to write about it (although perhaps more famous is the description of the lack of recognition given to Rosalind Franklin in "The Double Helix" by James Watson). It must have been appalling 30-40 years ago (as it certainly was 50-60 years ago), yet still it's a little disconcerting that there is such abundant sexism today in the sciences. A sobering thought that, while we have come so far from the days of the fictional Ellie Arroway, there are thousands of Ellies still having to overcome the perceived disadvantage of being female.

Is This Okay With You?

Tech Tags: European Convention on Human Rights control order A.E. science coursework AS-level Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005

Read this.

Is this okay with you? Are you happy that this man should be prevented from studying biology and chemistry? Do you agree that AS-level science courses (about comparable to US high school diploma, I reckon) can be "turned towards terrorism"? Is basic science education a weapon of mass destruction?

This sort of thing really frightens me - the man already has a medical degree. He is unlikely to learn too much new material (my grandfather always said the most important subject to study at school if you wanted to be a doctor was chemistry), but with British qualifications he instantly becomes more employable. It's a good move. But this censorship of science education is really terrifying.

The man, A.E., is under a control order. For the non-UK readers, a control order is a restriction of movements and activities that can be imposed on any individual suspected of being involved in terrorist activities. This does not rely on said individual being charged under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005, and the control orders contravene (Paul, correct me if I've got this wrong) the European Convention on Human Rights, a pan-European piece of legislation that is over 50 years old. In short, for the flimsiest of reasons, for so little evidence that the Crown Prosecution Service will not bring a case, an individual can have their fundamental human rights restricted.

I've mentioned it before, but the Anarchist's Cookbook is still freely available through the internet, and what teenager hasn't looked at it? You can buy it from Amazon, for FSM's sake. And look at the books Amazon recommends too - a variety of manuals by the US Department of Defense! If the "Improvised Munitions Handbook" isn't useful to would-be terrorists, I don't know what is. On the grand scheme of things, isn't A-level chemistry the least of the Government's worries?

Now, some of the scientists interviewed by Nature have said that there are aspects of the courses that could be useful to a would-be terrorist, such as distillation techniques and in-depth studies of neurotoxins. Still, I don't know about you but I learned about distillation when I was 14 - it is not a difficult concept. Plus, some specialist equipment is still required, and surely restricting the purchase of items from Fisher Scientific UK would be all that's necessary (since an AS-level or A-level student wishing to set up a science lab in his own house would be a little suspicious!).

Remember, this man has not been charged with anything. And we still supposedly have a legal system based around the premise that every man is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Is it only a matter of time before high school science teachers are being asked to watch out for anyone with a bit of a suntan seeming overly keen in science lessons? Are we going to have a Department of Pre-Crime set up to stop Muslims doing science beyond GCSE? It would be disastrous for the National Health Service, not to mention our standing in the scientific community. This is bad for science.

This has got to be stopped, this anti-science roll the Government is on. It's cases like this that make people more suspicious of science than ever, because the Government is pretty much saying if you're Asian and you're wanting to study science, you must be a terrorist. And who's to say scientists of other ethnicities won't fall victim to this woefully ill-informed accusation? The commenters so far have been united in their use of one word: absurd. Totally absurd.

At least, the last time I checked, no one had ever committed an act of terrorism with a sauropod vertebra...

Brumfiel, G. 2007. UK "terrorist" fights science-course ban. Nature 450: p467. doi:10.1038/450467a

He Did It!!

Tech Tags: Paul Anthony Anderson NaNoWriMo The Long Watch writing competition shameless plug my husband rocks

Last night Paul won the Write Stuff NaNoWriMo Excerpt Contest, cruising home with 49% of the votes. Needless to say I am very proud of him!

Thank you everyone who voted for him (he might come on here and thank you all himself too) - I hope you enjoyed the excerpt from his novel. He puts a little bit up online each week (just 1000 words or so), so do go back and read the odd passage. When he's a rich and successful writer I'll be a lady of leisure, so I'll be able to get the old PhD done super quickly!

I now have to fulfil my promise to finish Cetiosauriscus, and I will do so. Keep looking at Paul's writing blog, especially if you're members of SVP. There has been talk of him writing a murder mystery novel set at one of our conferences, and if he completes it by September, he's going to get a one-off bound copy made up for the auction...

Help My Husband Out!

Tech Tags: Paul Anthony Anderson NaNoWriMo The Long Watch writing competition shameless plug

Come on blog readers - there are about 50 of you who subscribe by RSS feed at least, and many more who just come to my site from "no referring link" (so you must have me in your favourites list). My wonderful talented husband has been writing a novel for NaNoWriMo. His novel, "The Long Watch", is the best fiction I've read for a long time (even though all I get to read is what he puts on his blog and what I sneak a peek at over his shoulder when he's typing). Have a read of the story so far, and if you agree with me, go to Write Stuff and vote for him. He's Paul A. from Project Ex-Lex with The Story So Far.

Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaase!! I promise I'll finish Cetiosauriscus if you vote for him!

Flying Spaghetti Monster Is Taken Seriously

Tech Tags: Flying Spaghetti Monster American Academy of Religion cheer me up please say something reassuring

I've probably been a Pastafarian for a good 18 months. I am a worshipping member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I have tried to convert Paul, but he's a Cthulhist and I don't think the Flying Spaghetti Monster features much in R'lyeh.

For the uninitiated, Pastafarians believe that the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe, built it to appear much older than it actually is, and skews scientific results by touching them with his "noodly appendage". The tenets of the faith have to be taught wearing full pirate regalia. The first public declaration of faith can be found here in an open letter to the Kansas School Board.

So how delighted I am to see that His Noodliness was being studied this weekend at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion. According to the CNN article, theologicans will present on subjects such as:

• Evolutionary Controversy and a Side of Pasta: The Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Subversive Function of Religious Parody
• Holy Pasta and Authentic Sauce: The Flying Spaghetti Monster's Messy Implications for Theorizing Religion
• Noodling around with Religion: Carnival Play, Monstrous Humor, and the Noodly Master

Brilliant - cheered me up no end, especially when two blog posts this week really depressed me. The first being Sciencewoman's post Sometimes I Can't Do It All, which all but convinced me to go and get my tubes cut. The second being my husband's plaintive pleas to our useless landlord to try to fix the problems that have plagued us since we moved in. Sweeting would rather take action against us for withholding part of our rent (it's not even the full amount each month!) as we are legally entitled to do if our landlord fails to carry out repairs, than against the violent cocaine addict who lives upstairs who assaulted the property manager a couple of weeks ago. Presumably because we're unlikely to hurt him if he tries to do anything.

Anyway, I need some cheering up and the Flying Spaghetti Monster did that for me. I have a little FSM pin (see top of post) on my suit jacket for important meetings. I don't wear it because I genuinely believe that a pasta-based life-form created the universe. I wear it to show the world that I am anti-intelligent design and anti-creationism. And I'm feeling proud to wear it today.

Forward-Sloping Alien Earthquake God*

Tech Tags: Xenoposeidon proneneukos BMNH R.2095 dinosaur sauropod Mike Taylor Darren Naish Wealden Lower Cretaceous

Well wasn't it a fantastic day to be a sauropodologist yesterday? Not one, not two, but three huge sauropod papers in the press. Now, the complete Barosaurus skeleton in the ROM and the freakin' weird Nigersaurus have been covered in great detail over on ScienceBlogs by Brian, but I reckon there hasn't been nearly enough coverage of Xenoposeidon yet.

Now, not withstanding some twat called Glen Dixon of Uckfield, who commented on the article in The Times - "Interesting, but of what use is this discovery to society?!" - this is great for science, palaeontology and - most of all - British palaeontology.

The first amazing thing about the discovery is just how weird the bone is. Mike and Darren painstakingly go through all the sauropods it definitely cannot be, reaching the conclusion that it is a new genus on the basis of several unique features, including an obscenely tall and sloping neural arch. They'd love to name a new family but very sensibly decline to, given the fragmentary material. They are not afraid to say the phylogenetic support for its position within the Neosauropoda is pretty weak - only 13 characters (4% of the total) could be scored for, and the tree only has to be one step longer for it to be a camarasaurid rather than a titanosauriform and two steps longer for it to fall out of the Neosauropoda altogether. And that's okay - sometimes it is just as useful to take a step back and say "We don't have enough data to draw solid conclusions", and it is always good scientific practice to be up-front about this.

The second amazing thing about it is that it sat in the sub-basement at the NHM for well over 100 years and no one else saw it and thought "Huh, that looks a bit odd". It's probably not a million miles away from Cetiosauriscus - I may well have seen it while I was looking to see if there were any other bones I had missed six years ago, but it escaped me and it escaped a lot of others. The sauropod collections are not that poorly used. It's a wake-up call to us to perhaps try to get our own house in order before bringing back more holiday souvenirs...

Now I wouldn't dream of describing the vertebra myself on here - it's Mike's baby for starters (GO to his website and have a look at the verts - I haven't asked him for permission to use the photos yet so it would be wrong of me to copy them here), and he, Darren and Matt have done such a good job on their own sites that it would be rude for me to do anything other than direct you there. And check out SV-POW! too, because they're posting like there's no tomorrow there.

So what use is this discovery to society, then, Mr Dixon? Well, if you're going to be a twat about it then there is absolutely no use. It is as irrelevant to society as the Premier League, Amy Winehouse's very public breakdown, the furore over homeopathic medicine, Children In Need, and the renovation of Colossus. And if you're okay dismissing all that too, then be my guest. As long as the papers keep you informed about what's happening to house prices, where your council tax money is going and whether or not the Government is going to kick the immigrants out, you're happy, yes? But even before we look at the scientific significance of Xenoposeidon, didn't it brighten up your day just a little bit to open the newspaper and see Mike's happy face beaming out at you? Didn't a new dinosaur discovery make for interesting chat across the office? It certainly did in mine. Didn't it add to the rich tapestry of life? No? How sad, Mr Dixon.

It's a symptom of our "society" today that science is often ignored. On Wednesday at the conference I attended, Lord Rooker, Minister for Sustainable Food and Farming and Animal Health, said: "There is a bit of an anti-science culture in the country at the moment". The nation, spearheaded by the popular press mostly, is incredibly dismissive of science. If it's not curing cancer we don't care. Scientists tell us bacon is bad for us one day and good for us the next. Journalists don't get that sometimes science has controversies and opposing viewpoints. Within palaeontology, this discovery tells us that a) there was yet another sauropod kicking around in the Lower Cretaceous Wealden, and b) it was doing bloody weird shit with its vertebrae, and that demands a closer look. Armed with these two facts, we can investigate further the relationships between sauropod taxa, discover more about the ecology of the Wealden and generally learn more about those who came before us. Is that not relevant to "society" on some level?

So the discovery of Xenoposeidon may not affect who you vote for in the next election or what you have for dinner tonight (although I hope, Mike and Darren, that you're washing whatever it is down with a large glass of something bubbly), but I certainly hope it's made your life richer, and possibly given you a little pride in Britain?

Taylor, M.P. & D. Naish. 2007. An unusual new neosauropod dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous Hastings Beds Group of East Sussex, England. Palaeontology 50(6): p1547-1564. doi: 10.1111/j.1475-4983.2007.00728.x

* Shamelessly borrowed from The Times, via Mike's post on SV-POW!.

Walking With Dinosaurs: The Live Experience

Tech Tags: Walking With Dinosaurs The Live Experience animatronic dinosaurs

Dinosaur bones are great - nothing else shows just how incredible these animals were. I can look at the Diplodocus in the Natural History Museum and imagine the muscles and skin over the top of the bones; I see it moving, walking maybe with others beside it; I hear it ripping up foliage, perhaps grunting to a mate nearby, and most definitely breaking wind. I can envisage how huge the heart and lungs were by standing directly underneath. But not everyone has the gift. The ethical husband has a wonderful imagination and writes the most amazing stories, but he laments that he singularly cannot see more than just bones. "You can see a living, breathing dinosaur", he says, enviously.

Now I think I remember the NHM getting its animatronic dinosaurs (I believe it was a pack of Deinonychus munching on a Tenontosaurus) back in 1995 or earlier. And the tableau really was the best thing since sliced bread then. We were used to static skeletons, or animations of varying quality, and a moving dinosaur (Actual Size!!!) was something else. It did an awful lot for the popular perception of dinosaurs (not that Jurassic Park hadn't done plenty two years earlier). And then we had the "T. rex: Predator or Scavenger" exhibition in 2003, with some non-carnivorous dinosaurs that showed no sign of being food anytime soon, for once. More recently we had the "DinoJaws" exhibit, which had even more herbivores and a variety of carnivores, including furry raptors. So the quality of animatronic dinosaurs has been steadily improving, but there's always been one thing that has annoyed me and many others - the robots were necessarily tied to the ground by their feet. In the case of bipedal dinosaurs, both legs were firmly attached to the substrate, one foot in front of the other, and the animals awkwardly pivoted on their hips. It was great for showing a super-keen child why Tyrannosaurus had such puny arms, because it was easy to see how a balanced biped must have had equal moment in front of and behind the pelvis. But if you watched them for a while you felt frustrated for the robot - you almost wanted to take a step for them.

I expressed my desire to see a better kind of museum exhibit back in December 2006, and it looks as though my prayers have been answered somewhat. Earlier in the month, Brian at Laelaps was lucky enough to go and see the new show "Walking With Dinosaurs: The Live Experience", and kind enough to tell us all about it. Suffice to say I am wildly jealous. I desperately want to see this show. I understand there are plans for a European tour but nothing has been finalised yet. Now, there has already been a little criticism of the show for having not enough feathers on the theropods, but I would defend the makers thus:

• Firstly, this is the show of the TV series, and all the models have been made pretty faithfully to the original dinosaurs. Now, while the television series was shown in 2000, I think it could have confused the general public to suddenly put feathers on the theropods.
• Secondly, if you look at the video Brian has on his site, showing the process that went into making each model, I don't know enough about robotics to know how easy it would even have been to put feathers (or even down) on the theropods. The small theropods have puppeteers inside the suits, and they're subjected to a fair amount of wear and tear - who knows what the logistics and financial issues around feathers, their replacement and their interaction with the robotic systems could have been. Perhaps this is something that can be improved on.

Another poster on the Dinosaur Mailing List has responded similarly, and I agree - I think we're talking technical or budgetary constraints and not by any means the ignoring of current scientific thinking. I'd love one of the design team to read this and be able to offer their insight into the various constraints they had to deal with. The design of the robots is incredibly clever. Quoting Sonny Tilders, who designed and built the robots:

To make it appear that these creatures are flesh and blood weighing six, eight or even 20 tons, we use a system called "muscle bags", made from stretch mesh fabric and filled with polystyrene balls, stretched across moving points on the body. These contract and stretch in the same manner that muscle, fat, and skin does on real creatures. The puppeteers use "voodoo rigs" to make many of the dinosaurs move. They are miniature versions of the dinosaurs with the same joints and range of movement as their life-sized counterparts. The puppeteer manipulates the voodoo rig and these actions are interpreted by computer and transmitted by radio waves to make the hydraulic cylinders in the actual dinosaur replicate the action, with a driver hidden below the animal, helping to maneuver it around the arena.

If you click on the image at the top of this post you can see the driver between the mother T. rex's legs. Not to mention the very human legs poking out of the bottom of the baby. I really am honestly very impressed by the work that's gone into this show. The fact that it is so big that it can only play to two-thirds of the capacity of American arenas alone is mind-blowing. I wish that I could go back in time and observe these creatures first-hand, but I can't, so I'm going to go see this show when it comes to the UK.

I've uploaded, with permission from the management, the promotional video. Now, a caveat - the .mov version has not translated too well. I'm waiting on a .avi version which should look smoother, and if I get it sorted I will replace the .mov with the .avi (and obviously remove this sentence!). If you want to see the movie in higher resolution though, drop me an e-mail and prepare your inbox for 14MB of goodness. Better still, go to www.dinosaurlive.com and get yourselves some tickets if you can.

I showed the video to the husband earlier in the week. "That's really good," he said. "I'm really impressed with how they did the little ones because it doesn't look like they've got that bit between their feet". I said "Yeah, they're guys in suits". All Paul could say was "Wow". So they've convinced me, and they've convinced my husband. My husband sees living, breathing dinosaurs now. So, can we do something about the NHM T. rex's feet? Please?

Volcano Farts

Tech Tags: geology life climate change agriculture food industry diatomaceous earth

Today I was at a climate change conference. At the lunch table, we naturally discussed the morning's sessions, and the issues raised within the presentations. Another woman and I got talking, and she said "Well, it's all very well recycling and reducing your carbon footprint, but then a volcano farts somewhere and everything you've done is for nothing" (note - I've googled "volcano fart" and it seems to be a phrase only ever used on anti-AGW websites). So I said "That's not true".

Now, regardless of the numbers (I don't know how much CO₂ a volcano produces versus the human carbon output), I am reasonably confident that volcanism has been going for a few billion years. The hard-rock geologists may correct me, but I don't think volcanism has increased massively in the past million years or so, and I don't think we've had any anomalous shifts in oxygen or carbon isotopes (which would reflect global temperatures) that would have coincided with periods of volcanism within the scope of the big carbon and oxygen charts.

Anyway, I tried to explain that we had experienced a massive rise in temperatures - the classic "hockey stick" graph that Al Gore made famous in "An Inconvenient Truth" (us geologists had known about it for years of course). So she countered with "But we're in an ice age now". So I said it was true that we were in an Icehouse World as opposed to a Greenhouse World in that there was ice at the poles (that's still more or less the definition, isn't it?), but that these periods lasted up to hundreds of millions of years, and the transition from greenhouse to icehouse was certainly not as rapid as the climate change happening at the moment.

Then, I tried to explain essentially Milankovitch cycles in not so many words, talking about how there's natural climate change, in which we see patterns at various frequencies, and then there's the rapid climate change that does not fit the patterns, which coincides with increased industrialisation. As far as I was concerned there was no doubt that man-made climate change was a reality.

There was a pause, and then she said "You seem to know a lot about this", to which I said "I have a masters degree in geology". She wailed "But that's not fair!". At which point I excused myself to go in search of chocolate gateau.

I think what surprised me most was that a woman whose business is to advise the sector on strategy, research, current affairs etc, was spouting what appeared to be a convenient soundbite from a few climate change nay-sayers. It was very obvious that she had not done enough research to be able to either present a balanced argument why she thought AGW was fiction or to recognise the fairly well-known arguments for AGW being fact. And at a conference specifically about climate change that was a bit of a faux pas.

I was also a little taken aback at her assertion that it was unfair for me to have a geology degree - well, probably that it was unfair of me to engage in a discussion without letting on that I clearly had more knowledge of the subject than she did. But firstly, don't most of us do that on a regular basis - engage with people who know more than we do but who haven't forewarned us? Is that not how we learn? And secondly, shouldn't she have expected someone at a climate change conference to have a relevant academic background?

Now, admittedly, I am not employed by my employer because of my geology degree. I am not the "staff geologist". I am a policy adviser, and because I specialise in environmental issues a science degree is handy. But so much geology impacts on all aspects of life. In my business, obviously climate change is big news, and helping my colleagues understand the basic science behind it and why they need to start taking notice is key. But how about agriculture itself? Bedrock composition directly affects the character of the overlying soil and its nutrients. These determine what the farmer uses the land for. I remember a long talk with a farmer in my mapping area seven years ago, who could not graze his sheep around one particular outcrop because it contained minerals with high aluminium content, which poisoned his sheep. I have even had long conversations with a civil servant on the joys of diatomaceous earth, which is fantastic at getting rid of arthropods from grain stores because diatomite abrades chitinous carapaces, but it cannot be used in the UK as it is almost impossible to separate from flour...

Geology is often forgotten in favour of teaching biology, chemistry and physics at school. But in so many businesses, especially the food and drink industry (dark ale north of the Tees-Exe Line, pale ale south of the Tees-Exe Line!), geology has a direct effect on commodities, and geological processes can help us to understand how to react to environmental changes, natural or man-made.

Remember, Remember

Tech Tags: Remembrance Sunday veterans Iraq Afghanistan Cenotaph

Throw it all away
Let's lose ourselves
Because there's no one left for us to blame
It's a shame we're all dying
And do you think you deserve your freedom

How could you send us
So far away from home
When you know damn well that this is wrong
I will still lay down my life for you

And do you think you deserve your freedom
No I don't think you do
There's no justice in the world
There's no justice in the world
And there never was

"Soldier's Poem" by Muse

Last weekend we celebrated Guy Fawkes' Night. It's my favourite festival because it's so damn British. We commemorate a foiled assassination attempt on the King's life and the capture, torture and execution of the plotters, by burning a "guy" on bonfires, letting off fireworks and eating toffee and hot dogs.

Remember, remember, the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot

Traditional poem

And then, this weekend, we remember quite a different event. Millions of them in fact. The deaths of millions of soldiers in the two World Wars and all the conflicts since. It is 25 years since the Falklands War. It is 20 years since an IRA bomb tore through a Remembrance Sunday service in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland. We have very few WW1 veterans remaining, but many more from WW2, Suez, Korea and Vietnam. Falklands and Northern Ireland veterans will be marching past the Cenotaph in just a few minutes. You will see war widows, some of whom are younger than me, and I am only 27 - those brave, lonely women are a particularly poignant reminder of the costs borne by everyone in times of war.

I am incredibly fortunate not to know anyone who has died in our current wars. However, my brother-in-law lost a friend in Southern Iraq in April 2003. When Remembrance Sunday comes around, foremost in my thoughts is my dear friend Ian.


Ian is one of my closest friends from university. We shared a house in my second year, and probably permanently stained our digestive tracts from the amount of tea we used to drink every afternoon before going to dinner. He is responsible for introducing me to Monty Python, after dragging me down to his room to watch "The Meaning Of Life" one evening. I now use the word "bostin" to mean "really good", as a result of hanging out with the brummie.

As you'll also note, Ian is in the Royal Navy. The picture above was taken on Remembrance Sunday back in 2000 or 2001, when he was part of the Officer Training Corps at uni. Ian is now a helicopter pilot, like HRH The Duke Of York was in the Falklands War. He may well still have "Ride of the Valkyries" as his mobile phone ringtone. Flying helicopters is certainly one of the most dangerous jobs in the Navy in modern warfare.

And this Remembrance Sunday, Ian is in Iraq. Every time a report comes through of more deaths in Iraq I, like his parents, siblings and his girlfriend, catch my breath and hope it isn't him. Not this time.

So this year I will be remembering that my friend and thousands of others, most of whom are younger than me, are out in Iraq and Afghanistan. They sign up and offer their lives to us, and all they ask for in return is that our Prime Minister does not send them to die for frivolous reasons. Tony Blair wanted a Falklands of his own - he wanted the glory Margaret Thatcher gained for a successful military campaign. So he leapt at the opportunity to send our boys and girls into a needless war.

And now the injured servicemen and servicewomen are not allowed to march past the Cenotaph. They are not allowed to remember their brothers in arms who didn't come home and they are not allowed to receive the appreciation and acknowledgement from the assembled crowds as they march down Whitehall. Gordon Brown is now trying to make us forget the horrors of the wars in Arghanistan and Iraq, and if we're not careful, our veterans of the Middle-East will become forgotten and reviled like Vietnam veterans in the USA.

So whatever you do today, remember the men and women who serve in unpopular wars today. Remember the fallen, remember the injured, and remember those who are still out there, and hope for their safe return.

Carnivals A-Go-Go!

Tech Tags: Boneyard Carnival Linnaeus' Legacy Accretionary Wedge

Chris at the wonderful Catalogue Of Organisms has put me to shame - while I'm struggling to come up with even one half-decent post, he has come up with not one but two carnivals!

He's producing a new blog carnival, called Linnaeus' Legacy, devoted to the lost art of taxonomy, and has hosted the first instalment on his own blog.

And then he's gone and put up this fortnight's Boneyard!

Looks like I'd better get my arse in gear and come up with something for the next Accretionary Wedge, the theme of which, as nominated by Kevin at The Other 95%, is "Geology and Life" or "Between a Rock and a Squishy Face"...

Meme Of Four

Tech Tags: Meme of four

The ethical husband has tagged me with a meme, no doubt in a desperate attempt to get me to actually blog about something. So here goes:

4 jobs I have had:

1. Quality control analyst in a brewery (oh yes - Best. Job. Ever.)
2. Interpreter and lab assistant at the Mammoth Site
3. Personal assistant in the infamous Hatton Cross hearing centre of the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal
4. Roadie for the Fun Lovin' Criminals

4 movies I love to watch over and over:

1. V For Vendetta
2. The Sound Of Music
3. Stand By Me
4. Jurassic Park III

4 places I have lived:

1. Wem, Shropshire, UK
2. Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, UK
3. St Louis, Missouri, USA
4. Isleworth, Middlesex, UK

4 TV shows I enjoy watching:

1. 24
2. Heroes
3. Bones
4. Lost

4 places I have been:

1. Thermopylae, Greece
2. Omaha Beach, Normandy, France
3. Grand Canyon, Arizona, USA
4. New York City, New York, USA

4 websites I visit daily:

1. BBC News
2. Statcounter
3. Facebook
4. Scienceblogs

4 favourite foods:

1. Lindt Extra Creamy (the blue wrapper)
2. Ben & Jerry's Fossil Fuel ice cream
3. Steak - just wipe its arse and serve it
4. Macaroni cheese

4 places I would rather be:

1. Jackson, Wyoming, USA
2. San Antonio, Texas, USA
3. Wenlock Edge, Shropshire, UK
4. Uldale Fells, Cumbria, UK

4 blogs I tag:

1. Laelaps
2. Self-Designed Student
3. Microecos
4. When Pigs Fly Returns

The Ethical Palaeontologist Hits The Airwaves

Tech Tags: High Peak Radio Ethical Palaeontologist InaDWriMo

Just a quick update to let you know that, if you're in the High Peak area of the UK you can now listen to my dulcet tones on High Peak Radio on the second and fourth Sunday morning of the month. My three-minute slot, where I will be discussing recent scientific discoveries (with a bit of a lean towards rock-based science), premieres this Sunday morning between 1am and 7am (although I have been told it's most likely to be between 2am and 3am). So if you happen to live, work or be on holiday in the Peak District, tune your radio to 106.4 or 103.3 FM and listen to the Ethical Palaeontologist!

Other than that, I wrote goujons* on the ornithopod paper yesterday (still to add it to the wordcount), and a good 2000 of the existing wordcount is Cetiosauriscus. I'm hoping it will rain tomorrow and Sunday, as otherwise I don't think I can stop myself going out in the garden and raking leaves.

Question to you though - should I bring the Wollemia in for the winter or leave it outside in a fleece?

* It's a well-known fact that "goujons" is French for "shitloads", as anyone who has had "goujons of chicken" served in a restaurant will confirm...

Blogroll Update

Tech Tags: blogroll update Sauropod Vertebra Picture Of The Week

I've finally got round to adding a few websites to the old blogroll. First up in friends and family - Issysmum's Weblog. Issysmum is a dear friend of mine, for whom it never rains but it pours. But she has always maintained her sense of humour, and I am continually amazed at how she takes it in her stride. She screams, shouts and swears, but she never stops moving forward. Oldfart's Rantings And Ravings are a good source of outrageous news articles, with the odd witty aside too. And he occasionally comments on my blog too.

On to science blogs, and to Ripples In Sand. Mel is a sedimentology student, and I only know of her through Brian, but she's been kind enough to link to me, so I must repay the favour. Come on Mel - get writing! What The Hell Is Wrong With You? by Dr Brazen Hussy, has sucked me in, and I'm constantly comparing my InaDWriMo word count with those of the other participants.

I've also changed the website links for Laelaps and Self-Designed Student to reflect their moves, Brian to ScienceBlogs and Amanda to her own domain.

But leaving the best till last... Sauropod Vertebra Picture Of The Week or SV-POW! for short. Written by Matt of Ask Doctor Vector, Darren of Tetrapod Zoology and Mike of, well, www.miketaylor.org.uk of course, it aims to educate, entertain and enlighten its audience with tutorials and descriptions, all of which are accompanied by pictures of the vertebrae of the coolest animals EVER. My own huge ego and pride in The Ethical Palaeontologist prevents me from quite calling SV-POW! the best website ever, but it's close. Very close...

Anyway, that's all you're getting from me today. I'm several thousand words behind target at the moment, so I have an appointment with a manuscript or two.

Why We Need More Scientific Literacy #6

Tech Tags: scientific literacy BBC Natural History Unit journalism budget cuts

I saw this, and thought of the state of science journalism in the British press. Now a lot of people recently have said, with some justification, that it is the fault of scientists for not communicating properly with the media. Recently, Michael Skapinker wrote in the Financial Times, saying "Scientists must learn to talk to the media". He's got a point. Admittedly, there are more and more journalists with science degrees (remember me writing about Colin Barras, not to mention Ben Goldacre of Bad Science, who writes for the Guardian). And even the best science communicator can find their words twisted by a journalist intent on making a sensational story out of rather mundane work.

But it doesn't help matters when the BBC decides it's going to massacre its Natural History Unit. Yes, to save money, the BBC is ditching most of the production staff in one of its most popular and export-friendly departments, no doubt to shovel the money into drivel like Eastenders eight evenings a week and Celebrity-Reality-Show-Dance-Off-On-The-Farm-With-Badly-Behaved-Kids-Featuring-Someone-From-Eastenders crap on a Saturday night. Neither of which will get the big American bucks like Doctor Who, Robin Hood and - oh yes - our flagship natural history documentaries.

Enjoyed Planet Earth and The Blue Planet? Good - you won't be getting anything like that anymore.

What unnerves me most about the cuts is that 23 out of 33 researchers are being made redundant. So one-third of the number of scientists (because let's face it, it's scientists they're getting rid of) will be expected to pull together all the facts for the natural history programmes. It's not going to happen - you can't just triple someone's workload like that and not have the quality of output affected. I predict fewer shows, less depth of knowledge and more and more reliance on stock footage and rehashing of existing CGI.

Now I've really depressed myself.