Cogita Tute - Think For Yourself

Wow!

noreply@blogger.com (Psiloiordinary) — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 07:44:00 +0000

David Attenborough for president

noreply@blogger.com (Psiloiordinary) — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 03:11:00 +0000

A quick link to an interesting post

noreply@blogger.com (Psiloiordinary) — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 20:12:00 +0000

Is anything about this guy real?

Climate Change and the Politics of the USA

noreply@blogger.com (Psiloiordinary) — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 07:09:00 +0000

It's Carl again

noreply@blogger.com (Psiloiordinary) — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 18:17:00 +0000

Life in the Undergrowth by David Attenborough

noreply@blogger.com (Psiloiordinary) — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 22:56:00 +0000

Attenborough makes the most of the media and adds loads of interesting stuff not covered in the TV series.

From one point of view they are "Creepy Crawlies" from another they are the original conquerors of the land and perhaps it's ultimate inheritors. So why not learn a bit more about them.

There is no "exchanging a meaningful glance with wild Gorillas" moment but there is plenty to make you stop and think. Plenty of great pictures too. Some you can scare your granny with.

4 out of 5 stars.

Aunts Aren't Gentlemen by P.G. Wodehouse

noreply@blogger.com (Psiloiordinary) — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 22:48:00 +0000

A master of farce with another masterful farce.

Cats, horses, revolutionaries and Aunties combined into a fun read. Not his best but then his worst is still bloody good.

Read it what.

4 out of 5 stars.

The Wit of Cricket by Barry Johnston

noreply@blogger.com (Psiloiordinary) — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 22:32:00 +0000

A collection of anecdotes, a few laugh out loud, most not.

I suppose if you are really into cricket and it's history then this would appeal to you, otherwise don't bother.

2 out of 5 stars.

Stephen Fry in America by Stephen Fry

noreply@blogger.com (Psiloiordinary) — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 22:27:00 +0000

This is no more than it claims to be - a visit to every state and even Fry, with only a page or four for each state, can only fail to engage and entertain.

An entertaining TV series that never would have and never did make a good idea for a book.

2.5 out of 5 stars.

Last Chance to See by Mark Carwardine

noreply@blogger.com (Psiloiordinary) — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 22:25:00 +0000

I read this just as I finished watching the TV series. So it is my own fault that my only complaint is that it doesn't add a great deal to the series.

Having said this it is a perfectly adequate stand alone book with plenty of fascinating material and unexpected twists e.g. being raped by a parrot or being moved to tears by Chimps.

In fact what do I mean, "perfectly adequate"? It was in fact enjoyable and stimulating. The stimulation was both positive and negative; giving you hope for the future, and in my case hope about the kind of world my kids will raise kids in, and also giving you a glimpse of how big a mess we have made of things so far.

I imagine the celebrity involvement, the beautiful pictures and the adventure travel theme are all good reasons that this will perhaps be a good book to give someone who doesn't appreciate what we have on this planet in the hopes that it might just make them think.

And that is probably as good a compliment as I pay any book.

4 out of 5 stars.

Backbone of Night

noreply@blogger.com (Psiloiordinary) — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 10:18:00 +0000

How to annoy your customers

noreply@blogger.com (Psiloiordinary) — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 17:18:00 +0000

The AA have developed another way of annoying their loyal customers.

For some time now they have sent me a renewal notice at a more expensive rate than that available for new members.

This is easily solved by my ringing them to ask for the lower price, listening to them attempt to sell me insurance or other products I already have from companies that haven't just tried to treat me worse because I am a customer.

The new twist is this. After agreeing to just charge the reduced price they then wrote to me telling me that they have in fact charged me more than agreed.

So I have to ring them again and they explain that they have charged me the lower price and that I should never take any notice of their letters to me as they can be wrong.

Quality organisation.

Benny Johnnies?

noreply@blogger.com (Psiloiordinary) — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 07:08:00 +0000

So condoms are OK now (in some circumstances)?

But according to the Pope himself, he is infallible.

Logically, therefore, he can't have changed his mind because he thinks he was actually wrong.

The evidence must have changed.

The worlds scientists should take this clue from Heaven and find out what has changed in the world of infection.

Perhaps a new kind of bug or a new technique of infection spread had evolved (been created whole and irreducibly complex).

Some come on science - get your act together and try to keep up.

One for the Pope

noreply@blogger.com (Psiloiordinary) — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 18:00:00 +0000

Science Saved My Soul.

noreply@blogger.com (Psiloiordinary) — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 17:06:00 +0000

Thin Line?

noreply@blogger.com (Psiloiordinary) — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 17:00:00 +0000

Sometimes there can be just a thin line between reality and woo, rationalism and madness.

I was reminded of this recently at a "training event". I won't go into the details of the where when or why, mainly because it is irrelevant to the point I am trying to make but also so that no one sues me.

Now before I talk about what happened let me first of all put a few cards down firmly on the table. I believe in being positive. I also believe in the power of non verbal communication. I believe in both within the limitations of reality as it is understood by science. I also think that, in this particular case, these beliefs also happen to be trivially true and they are shared by everyone I have ever discussed them with. But you can, of course, make your own mind up about that.

What I mean is this. Positive attitudes can make big difference in peoples lives. Self motivation is often at least partly a question of genuinely thinking that success is actually possible. Attempting to motivate others also seems to be much more successful when the person trying to do the motivating is positive about whatever it is they are trying to get the other person to do. I have met very few people who will admit to preferring the stick to the carrot. In case you are wondering how I can wander about discussing such things without getting arrested I should now admit that I used to be a trainer and that this was a question I would often address.

You probably guessed that by nonverbal communication I was referring to the way we say things and not just the words we say. Tone of voice, body language, and when and where we choose to talk can make a huge difference to how our communication affects those around us. Many of us have perhaps experienced difficulties in communicating when these additional methods of getting our point across are not available and we have to rely in words alone, perhaps when writing an email.

I think that I am usually moderately successful in being positive and at communicating this through verbal and non-verbal means. But I guess others should be the final judge if that.

Anyway, bearing in mind that the training event was about communicating positively, I was expecting nothing more than a useful refresher but hoping for perhaps some tips or ideas that were new to me.

I certainly got the latter, but not in a positive way.

Mixed in with the trivially true points that our behaviour affects those around us was the following set of claims:

•if you think positive thoughts you're harder to push over than if you think negative thoughts.

•if you think positive thoughts you can hold your arm up more strongly than if you think negative thoughts.

Both of these points were made using an interesting technique that I think will be a great way to get lots of people to think almost anything you like. Get them all to stand up and form small groups or pairs. Ask them to think about one of the worst experiences in their lives, something energy sapping or draining (a loved one dying perhaps?). Get them to gently push each other over or perhaps push down on each others outstretched arms. Now ask them to think of something positive, something that makes them feel happy or excited. Get them to repeat the pushing and shoving. Now ask "who felt the difference?" and wait for the inevitable "oh yeeesss" from somewhere in the room, respond quickly and firmly by telling them they did well and must be doing it correctly. Look around and encourage others to "succeed" .

Now, stopping to think for a moment, I am really not aware of whether or not thinking can actually influence muscular power output like this, I wouldn't be surprised at all if it did. I mean, your brain does control your muscles after all doesn't it? Then again you aren't really going to generate any meaningful answer to that question by doing this exercise are you? You would have to measure forces and have controls wouldn't you? And anyway, why is it that many weightlifters scream and rage rather than skip and dance when in competition?

•our bodies are constantly emitting "t" rays which are picked up by those around us without them realising it.

These rays do exist, they are utilised in the new generation of airport scanners. But we don't emit them from our bodies, they have to be beamed at us by the scanners.

•your attitude determines whether or not these are positive or negative rays.

Positive and negative "t" rays don't exist any more than positive and negative light rays exist, and you still don't emit "t" rays anyway.

•people around you will be influenced to be positive or negative by the types of rays you emit.

No they wouldn't be because people can't detect "t" rays. And we don't emit them anyway.

•you can control the kinds of rays you emit by controlling your attitude.

See comments above.

•a study done at Yale in 2000 showed that old people subliminally exposed to negative words for only one one hundredth of a second would perform worse at intelligence tests or mental agility exercises than those exposed to positive words.

I managed to track down the study;

To be or not to be: the effects of aging stereotypes on the will to live

Author Levy, B; Ashman, O; Dror, I

Source Omega: Journal of Death and Dying; 40 (3) 1999-2000, p.409-20

ISSN 0030-2228

- here is the abstract;

Old and young participants (n=64) were subliminally primed with either negative or positive stereotypes of old age and then responded to hypothetical medical situations involving potentially fatal illnesses. Consistent with the hypothesis, the aged participants primed with negative stereotypes tended to refuse life-prolonged interventions, whereas the old participants primed with positive age stereotypes tended to accept. Results suggest that societally transmitted negative stereotypes of aging can weaken elderly people's will to live. (Original abstract - amended)

As you can see the study didn't cover the area he claims it did. Apparently, being reminded of negative stereotypes of old people gives you less appetite for choosing life-prolonging medical intervention in the particular scenarios that this small group of people were asked about. OK. Interesting. But not really anything to do with the subject we were supposed to be discussing and in fact nothing to do with the point we were told it actually related to anyway i.e. subliminal messages can make you bad at mental tasks.

But anyway, even if the study did show what he claimed (and maybe I have the wrong one or perhaps he gave the wrong date) then he is mixing up words flashed on a screen very quickly with our situation. At no point did we find out how we were supposed to use this technique to influence those around us.

•if you ask a horse psychologist they will tell you that horses know whether or not you think you are in charge of them. If you don't think you are then they won't follow you.

Horse psychology is a fledgling discipline that seems to contain material ranging from claims that horses can read your mind using psychic powers, to genuine attempts to understand how they think and so to work out how we can use this. My sceptical sense would probably not have tingled at all if the trainer had pointed out that horses have eyes and ears and can pick up on non-verbal communication, just like people do.

I have owned several dogs and in my experience I have seen them show signs of this and so a similar phenomenon in horses seems perfectly reasonable to me. In the context of the "t" ray comments and without any mention of tone of voice or body language I really got the impression he was implying that "t" rays or something similar might be tipping off our equine friends. Maybe it was me and I was overcompensating now. Just because some of the things he had said were bunkum didn't mean everything he said was bunkum after all. Or did it?

Most of these claims were prefaced by comments like "here comes the science bit", and "I'm sad so I like to look the science up and it told me that . . .". As a fan of science I found this reassuring at first, the fact that the trainer seemed to feel this added weight to his message made the whole enlightenment movement seem that little bit more worthwhile. But why step over that line from reality into woo?

Obviously I don't know if this was a case of cock up or con. But I do know that, for me, this was annoying and patronising. As someone who would actually like to promote positive attitudes and better communication skills I was left thinking that even if this chap had furthered those ends by such false claims the fact he had made them meant that I ended up feeling slightly negative about being positive in the future. I think that he could have got the message across just as effectively without making these false claims.

Now if only I could have done a quick study on the audience reaction and how many folks were actually put off by the nonsense claims just like I was, then this might be more than just an anecdote.

Geek Mac tip : Save a web page as an iBook and read at your leisure

noreply@blogger.com (Psiloiordinary) — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 19:34:00 +0000

Safari - surf to selected doo-dah

apple + P to bring up print dialog

Choose PDF selector bottom left

Choose Edit Menu

Press the + button

Navigate to Applications and select iTunes - press open

Now when you pick this option your page will be saved as a PDF in the books section of iTunes.

I just saved a few biology papers there and it worked a treat.

Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History by STEPHEN JAY GOULD

noreply@blogger.com (Psiloiordinary) — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 17:33:00 +0000

This is another collection of essays loosely based around evolutionary biology (with some inevitable baseball references).

This is what the author is best at. He like language and uses it in his own verbose and slightly pompous manner but once again we can see that he doesn't seem to have a nasty bone in his body.

Having now seen him talk on you tube I can picture him reading the book to me, slightly out of breath, fiddling with his glasses dramatically and pausing for effect quite often. This only helps the enjoyment all the more.

Some of the material covered is getting old now (1987) so bear that in mind, but I particularly enjoyed some of the "period" references e.g. the dino-killing impact theory.

If you haven't read Gould then this might be a decent place to start - if you have read him then this is a cracking example of him in the medium he does best.

Three and a half out of five stars.

The lost World ( Being an account of the recent amazing adventures of Professor George E.Challenger,Lord John Roxton,Professor Summerlee,and Mr E.D.Malone of the Daily Gazette)an Oxford World's Classics. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

noreply@blogger.com (Psiloiordinary) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 07:33:00 +0000

A jolly good romp.

A good demonstration of the same effect that makes many 1970s sit coms now un-showable.

Casual racism, sexism and and a total disregard for anything living, this tale has enough style to just about make this funny.

Three out of five stars.

Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters by DR Prothero

noreply@blogger.com (Psiloiordinary) — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 21:30:00 +0000

A very rare occurrence, five out of five stars.

First of all I like all the small unimportant things about it. It's a hardback, and a good quality one, with heavy paper and a lovely cover, and colour plates, and nice margins for scribbling notes, and a thorough index and bibliography (breathe). Best of all of these things it has a comprehensive further reading list at the end of every chapter. Joy.

Second and, of course, far more important than all that stuff, this guy knows his stuff, isn't afraid of saying when he doesn't know stuff, or isn't sure about stuff, and he has actually done the science stuff (ok well not all of it).

Comprehensive coverage of the politics and religion behind the creationist agenda methods and arguments and a comprehensive take down of why they are wrong. An understanding of what science is and how it works shows us that creationists are 'not even wrong' in the sense that they aren't even doing science. A brief history of the brief history of creationism (it is very modern). A tour of fossilisation, dating, 'flood geology', the grand canyon and quote mining followed by a potted history of the evolution of evolution and a list of the main kinds of evidence supporting evolution as a fact of history (aside from fossils) and a quick summary of the current understanding out how it works..

But this is just a warm up for Prothero, next he brings out the oft neglected big guns and gives us a comprehensive overview of some of the main lines of fossil evidence supporting the modern synthesis. Diagrams, photos, anecdotes and of course plenty of places to go next if you want to dig deeper.

I'm doing a couple of talks to BHA folks later in the year on creationism in the UK and I have found a few gems to work into my talk somewhere.

Wit and wisdom, hard facts and open acknowledgement of what we don't know makes him my kind of author.

Buy it.

Five out of five stars.

Geek out

noreply@blogger.com (Psiloiordinary) — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 09:31:00 +0000

Well I am now tweeting from a google reader tag RSS feeds from google reader.

Next thing on to do list; get a life.

Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett

noreply@blogger.com (Psiloiordinary) — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 14:30:00 +0000

Another cracker.

New characters that you may fall in love with before the end. Not really about football. As usual Pterry writes about you and me.

If you haven't tried him then you must.

Perhaps try this or maybe a witches one. The first few are a bit juvenile, the rest are enlightening.

Four and a half out of five stars.

The Atheist's Guide to Christmas Ariane Sherine

noreply@blogger.com (Psiloiordinary) — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 14:24:00 +0000

This book is like a box of chocolates.

42 men and women adding their 5p worth on the vague topic of atheism and christmas. Contributions are split into science, stories, art, philosophy etc. Some genuinely very good entries and a fair few fair ones.

All in a great cause as well. So get it for that church going relative for Xmas.

Four out of five stars.

Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies: The Straight Scoop on Freemasons, the Illuminati, Skull and Bones, Black Helicopters, the New World Order,: ... the New World Order, and many, many more Arthur Goldwag

noreply@blogger.com (Psiloiordinary) — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 14:18:00 +0000

If you find this kind of madness to be fun and interesting then you should get this book. If you don't then this won't change your mind.

This is effectively an encyclopaedia of madness with so many repeating themes that you might think no ever learns anything in this world.

Great fun apart from the bits were there are mass suicides, murders, prejudice and horror.

A great buy for any gullible relatives.

Three and a half out of five stars.

The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science Richard Holmes

noreply@blogger.com (Psiloiordinary) — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 14:12:00 +0000

A brilliant little book that never quite bites off more than it can chew. The development of science as told as mini biographies of a series of great explorers and experimenters.

There is lots you don't know about these folks that you will be glad you find out. Joseph Banks and the impact on societal morals not just the biological sciences. Herschel's family background and driven nature. Mad balloonists, drug taking Davy and the battle of wills over the lamp.

Easy to read and well deserving of the various awards it won.

Put it in your wish list.

Four out of five stars.