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There's a video of a wonderful lecture at the LIFT Conference in Geneva (“LIFT” doesn't appear to stand for anything). The lecture is about the Large Hadron Collider, the new particle accelerator at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research—apparently no-one in particle physics knows how acronyms work.) The speaker, Brian Cox (X-Men 2—no, not that one) gives a very clear idea of the current state of particle physics. Since I graduated in 2004 I've paid very little attention to the whole field, so it was a good refresher for me.

To be honest, I think I just like any lecture where they get to throw around ridiculously large numbers, like describing the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image (10,000 galaxies in a patch of sky 1% of the size of the visible moon), the amount of matter converted to energy by our Sun (four billion tonnes a second), or the energy of a beam of protons in the LHC less than the size of a dime (the same as the energy of an aircraft carrier travelling at 35mph).

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The New York Times has an article about the pioneering environmentalist Stewart Brand and his insistence that in the coming decade the environmental movement will move from being dominated by what he calls “romantic” environmentalism to a better “scientific” kind. Essentially the distinction is between those well-meaning but misguided idealists who oppose the unnaturalness of genetically modified foods and still shriek in terror at the mention of nuclear power and the current minority of environmentalists who take an evidence-based approach to evaluating new technologies. From the article:

He thinks the fears of genetically engineered bugs causing disaster are as overstated as the counterculture’s fears of computers turning into Big Brother. “Starting in the 1960s, hackers turned computers from organizational control machines into individual freedom machines,” he told Conservation magazine last year. “Where are the green biotech hackers?”

He’s also looking for green nuclear engineers, and says he feels guilty that he and his fellow environmentalists created so much fear of nuclear power. Alternative energy and conservation are fine steps to reduce carbon emissions, he says, but now nuclear power is a proven technology working on a scale to make a serious difference.

If this profile is to be believed, Brand has been right more than once before. If so, this would make me optimistic that we could take a more reasoned approach to implementing new developments in future, without the knee-jerk anti-technology reactions of the “romantics”.

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Slightly too late for both Darwin Day and Valentine's Day, here's a compilation of 10—perhaps even the top 10—pick-up lines with an evolutionary theme from Skepchick. Kudos to anyone who uses one and bonus points if it works.

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Good news from Bad Science: Gillian McKeith, a.k.a. the Awful Poo Lady, is no longer allowed to call herself a doctor. On the grounds that she's not one, the lying tart. Her "doctorate" was awarded by a non-accredited American correspondence college. From the link:

A regular from my website badscience.net - I can barely contain my pride - took McKeith to the Advertising Standards Authority, complaining about her using the title "doctor" on the basis of a qualification gained by correspondence course from a non-accredited American college. He won.

Is it petty to take pleasure in this? No. McKeith is a menace to the public understanding of science. She seems to misunderstand not nuances, but the most basic aspects of biology - things that a 14-year-old could put her straight on.

Hopefully this won't be the only charlatan exposed by the Advertising Standards Authority's clearly all-too-stringent requirements for truthfulness and substantiation of claims.

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Anyone else watch this yesterday? I really wish I had enough confidence in other people to be able to sit back and laugh at Liddle in the comfortable knowledge that no-one could fall for his deranged ramblings, but unfortunately I don't.

Nearly everything he said was wrong in at least one important respect. But I really got quite annoyed when I realised this simple truth: Liddle interviewed a number of prominent atheistic intellectuals, including Richard Dawkins and Peter Atkins. He must have posed them the same questions he spouted in his commentary, including questioning how science is supposed to provide moral guidance. This is such a frequently raised question, and so easily answered by any thinking atheist, that they cannot have failed to provide a satisfactory answer. That he continued to pose the question, and left it unanswered, in the show means that he is either too dumb to grasp it--which I find highly unlikely--or deliberately ignoring it and knowingly broadcasting a deception.

I won't try to talk about all of the rest of the show, but it was all similarly absurd. You can watch it online at The Richard Dawkins Foundation.

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There's an article on the Richard Dawkins Foundation website about the effects of violent videogaming on people's tendency towards emotion versus critical thinking. Thanks to the wonderful way that RishardDawkins.net articles are attributed in their headlines in feed readers, it appears to be titled, "Violent video games leave teenagers emotionally aroused by Radiological Society of North America". What an odd effect.

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Bang! The Complete History of the Universe is a new popular science book about the origins and development of the universe for a lay audience. So far, so, "I've read it all before." What's interesting is the list of authors, which includes legendary glam rock guitar god Brian May—sorry, Dr Brian May—of Queen.

Alternative headlines for this post were: "Prince of the Universe"; "A Kind of Science"; "Radio Telescope Ga-Ga"; and "Brian May Has a Sodding Doctorate in Astrophysics"

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