Dawkins: Waking Up in the Universe

Exploring the wealth of material available from the Richard Dawkins Foundation, I came across a series of five one-hour lectures given by Dawkins in 1991. These are that year’s Royal Institution Christmas Lectures for Children.  Don’t be put off by the “for children” bit, though. Dawkins presents the information in a very mature and entertaining way. Many of the themes he uses in his more recent talks can be seen here.

From the YouTube playlist info:

Oxford professor Richard Dawkins presents a series of lectures on life, the universe, and our place in it. With brilliance and clarity, Dawkins unravels an educational gem that will mesmerize young and old alike. Illuminating demonstrations, wildlife, virtual reality, and special guests (including Douglas Adams) all combine to make this collection a timeless classic. The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures for Children were founded by Michael Faraday in 1825, with himself as the inaugural lecturer. The 1991 lecturer was Richard Dawkins whose five one-hour lectures, originally televised by the BBC

Despite being filmed  20 years ago, there is little to date these presentations except the computer technology (this pre-dates the web) and Dawkins’ choice of shirts

 

 

Tim Minchin's Storm, the Animated Movie

Not a lot to say except watch and enjoy. In fact, watch it again… there’s so much there it’s hard to take it all in the first time through.

If you have the bandwidth, it’s worth watching in HD.

 

The brain: a mysterious, wonderful thing

I watched a couple of beautiful videos today and want to share them here.

The first is by YouTube account Symphony of Science.

The second video is the TED talk given in February 2008 by Jill Bolte Taylor, as featured in the first video.

http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf

Courageous and inspiring.

 

UK 2011 Census Campaign

I blogged briefly about this a few weeks ago, but it’s an important topic and deserves another post.

The UK 2011 Census forms has, by now, been delivered to the country’s households.  Officially, the form is meant to be completed on or about 27 March, although the online version has been accepting input for a couple of weeks already (which is how I did mine).

 

The British Humanist Association is running a campaign to highlight the importance of one specific question in the census: “What is your religion?”

Seems harmless enough, doesn’t it?  The available answers are as follows:

• No religion.
• Christian
• Buddhist
• Hindu
• Jewish
• Muslim
• Sikh
• Other (specify)

Many people will automatically tick the religion that they have grown up with.  And why not?

I grew up in a traditional, white, English community, in which “belonging to” the Church of England is taken for granted. In my late teens and early twenties I took an interest in eastern philosophies such as Buddhism and Toaism. I was also interested in UFOs and other paranormal nonsense. There was no conversion from Christianity.

If I had been asked the question “What is your religion?”, a superficial answer would have varied crom Christian to Buddhist to Other. In the end, though, if I thought about it, I did not “have” a religion. An affiliation, perhaps. But not a religion. I am not religious in the sense that a practising Christian, Buddhist, Jew or Muslim is religious.

I have no lack of awe and wonder at the marvels of nature. I recall quite vividly how this sense of wonder was amplified by the birth of my son, thirteen years ago. I’ve tried to maintain that feeling of wonder and pass it on to him. He’s certainly got some of it, and has a strong interest in science and the natural world.

The “What is your religion?” question, as it appears in the 2011 Census, has been criticised as being likely to prompt an inaccurate response. On BBC Radio 4′s Sunday programme, 27 February, one respondent’s reply was quite telling: “Well, Christian I suppose.” The person went on, unprompted, to say “…Buddhist would also be an option”. (This links to the “listen again” for that programme, if it is still available. The interesting part starts around 22 minutes into the recording).

This highlights the problem. Responses to the religious question are, for many people, an indication of affiliation rather than actual belief and religious practice.

Does this matter? Yes, it does.

Why spend the millions of taxpayers money on a census, if the results are not to be used? The results of the religion question will be used. They will be instrumental in determining local and national government policy with regard to religious matters. Things like funding faith groups and free schools. Religious groups will receive funding out of proportion to their membership, while other, non-faith secular groups, will be disadvantaged.

If you are not religious, I urge you to tick the “No religion” box on the census form. It does matter. It will make a difference.

 

Twitter’s attempt to win share for Android app?

As a long-standing user of Twidroyd, I am following with interest the situation with regard to that app’s suspension by Twitter for “violation of policies”.

Here’s the text from Twitter’s statement.  Note the phrase “may affect a large number of users” (my emphasis).  Note also, in the final paragraph, how Twitter push their official apps at every opportunity.

2/18/2011
Regardless of how you access Twitter, we are dedicated to making Twitter better, faster and more reliable for you. As part of this effort, we ask applications that work with Twitter to abide by a simple set of rules that we believe are in the interests of our users, and the health and vitality of the Twitter platform as a whole. We often take actions to enforce these rules.

We have suspended UberTwitter and twidroyd for violating our policies.

Every day, we suspend hundreds of applications that are in violation of our policies. Generally, these apps are used by a small number of users. We are taking the unusual step of sharing this with you because today’s suspension may affect a larger number of users.

We are committed to helping you continue to use Twitter during the disruption of these applications. You can download Twitter for Blackberry, Twitter for Android and other official Twitter apps here. You can also try our mobile web site or apps from other third-party developers.

Bill Gross, Founder and CEO of UberMedia, posted this response.

Here’s what I see in Twidroyd (v5.01) when I run the app:

 

Two tweets from Twitter/com@support (a handy feature of the Twitter API) suggesting Twidroid users might like to try the official Twitter app for Android.

This only adds to suspicions that Twitter is playing a game here.  The official Twitter app for Android recently received a facelift and now looks a lot like Twidroyd.  I’m sure the folks at Twitter would love to see more Android users go over to their app.

In a statement, Twitter say they’ve restored access to their API for twidroyd and UberSocial for Blackberry (formerly UberTwitter).  (no word on the Android app at this time).  At the foot of that statement there are unmissable links to the official Twitter apps for Blackberry, iPhone and Android.  How blatant is that?

Twitter say that hundreds of apps are regularly suspended for violation of policies.  With thousands of developers around the world producing apps interfacing with social media, this is no surprise.  Suspension of these apps affects relatively few Twitter users.

It is surprising, though, that Twitter would take this step with Twidroyd and UberTwitter, apps whose users number in the thousands.

Perhaps this should be a wake-up call to us all, leading to the spawning of an open, federated Twitter-like system, no longer vulnerable to the god-like powers of a few.

 

UK 2011 Census: If you’re not Religious… Say so!

A message to all non-religious UK residents out there on the interweb…

http://census-campaign.org.uk/

 

WolframAlpha fun facts for Mathematicians (yes, really)

WolframAlpha recently blogged about a new Twitter account for “fun facts”. Follow it for regular facts that may (or may not) be interesting.  They can be very educational.

WolframAlpha is searchable but with a key difference from normal search engines. The results of a search aren’t just links to stuff on the web. When you search WolframAlpha you get information from their database of facts calculated on the fly. It’s a rich resource for Mathematics students and educators.

Here’s one that illustrates the kind of information you can expect:

 

Here’s a link to the original web page.

Other examples:

• It would require 8.4×10^11 gallons of paint to cover the surface of the moon
• If driving a car at 60 miles per hour, it will take 11.18 million years to travel one light year
• The average American consumes 125.6 lbs of potatoes per year

If you have an interest in Mathematics, take a look at some of these and try the search tool. There are a lot of examples to get you started.

 

IBM Centennial Film: 100 x 100

I’m an ex-IBMer. That may have influenced my choosing to post this, but I like to think I would have, anyway.

My favourite parts of the video:

• 01:19 In 1915, the best man for the job of President is Thomas J Watson. (1916) Mr Watson believed that “all of the problems of the World could be settled easily if people (men) were only willing to think”.
• 02:43 “31 was a big year for punches”
• 11:12 “Watson” (spoken by a baby)
• 12:38 The Watson quote, spoken by the man.

Here’s the video.

 

Horrible Histories Wins Award

My family have enjoyed CBBC Horrible Histories since they first appeared on TV.  The series recently won “Best Sketch Show” at the British Comedy Awards and, in celebration of this, I decided to upload my own edited versions of eleven of the HH music videos.

I originally produced these for my son’s iPod.  They translated to YouTube pretty well.  The songs are from a digital terrestrial TV broadcast in the Summer of 2010, and transferred via USB to my laptop from the PVR (Humax PVR9200T). Initial editing in Adobe Premiere Elements and then Camtasia Studio.

http://www.youtube.com/p/3CC972E70511636E?hl=en_GB&fs=1

 

It's been a while…

How time flies.  I could say that it doesn’t seem like nearly four months since my last post but, in fact, it does. It’s been a busy time and I’ve just not had much to say for the blog. Either that or there hasn’t been the time to gather  my thoughts sufficiently to say it coherently.   Feeble excuses, I know.

One thing of note has been the purchase of my first ukulele; a lovely little soprano model with a beautiful sound. As a total beginner, I probably sound pretty bad to anyone listing to me play, but I’m not downhearted. Just a few chords and I have enough for a fair attempt at a tune I’ve even started another blog for this (it’s new and the URL may change but I’ll keep a link in the side bar)

On the tech side, I’ve continued my adventures in Smalltalk, Processing, Ruby and Android, upgraded two PCs and moved them to Windows 7, with a dual-boot Ubuntu/Win7 set up on my laptop.  I’ve also entered the crazy world of Arduino in all its wonderful geekiness, which links very nicely back to Processing. More on these exploits in another post.

I have a Kindle, the the WiFi-only version (no 3G).  I’ve been a reader of eBooks since the late 1990s, beginning on a Palm 3c and then other Palm devices.  I always liked the concept, but not to the exclusion of real books: to have so many books at your fingertips.  The early Kindle and other readers were tempting, but I resisted. With the latest Kindle, the accolades it has received and the amazingly low cost, I finally bought one.  It is wonderful!  I’ll post more on this.

So, what has prompted this return from blogging limbo? Well, until recently the blog has been hosted in WordPress.com, their free and most excellent service. I paid a small annual fee to have blog.3dbloke.com redirected to the WordPress.com blog, and this came up for renewal. I’d been toying with the idea of moving to self-hosted WordPress.org blogging and already had a HostGator account (for other reasons) that I could use. Even so, time was short and it’s only now that, finally, I have the blog migrated and running with WordPress.org.

The move was pretty painless, although a little frustrating having to wait 7 days for the domain transfer.

I’m looking forward to exercising a little more creative freedom on the blog admin side: perhaps a personalized theme and some nifty plugins. I can return to the WordPress books that have been gathering dust for the past several months.

Bye for now.