Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Year: 2006

  • Mind That Child

    Training Simulators come in all shapes and sizes. Here’s one: the RealCare Baby II-Plus, used to make young people aware of the fact that babies are not fashion accessories or toys, and that parenting is a demanding job. 
     
    It’s very realistic. Sometimes perhaps a little too realistic.

  • Oiling the Wheels of Industry

    Dr. Ben Goldacre writes a weekly column in The Guardian on the subject of "Bad Science".  He also has a blog of the same name. Recently, he’s been digging into a story about Durham Council introducing, at taxpayers’ expense, fish oil food supplements into the local schools. The council claims that the supplements have proven to be effective in improving the children’s performance at school.
     
    Goldacre has repeatedly asked to see the evidence for these claims, and surprise, surprise, the data has not been forthcoming. In fact, Durham Council have been stonewalling. One might almost think that they might have something to hide.
     

  • Eroding Values

    I see that, not to be outdone by Muslims, Christians are now leaping onto the bandwagon and trumpeting that illiberal atheists are to blame for society’s ills. The latest is the Archbishop of York, Dr. John Sentamu in a speech last Friday. I see that Alun Salt has sent a letter to the Archbishop by way of reply, and this excellent epistle shows up the speech to be the pile of twaddle that it is.  

  • The Prestige – Take Two

    Having mentioned the film The Prestige last month as something that sounds interesting, it’s now opening in Europe and the reviews are coming in. Despite a stinker of a review by Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian last Friday, today’s Observer (the Guardian’s sister paper) has an enthusiastic review by Philip French. I think I’ll go with French.
     
    Oh, and I see that the film has been made from a book of the same name by Christopher Priest. Something else to go on the book wishlist, I think.

  • The Terrorist Meme

    Interesting piece by Matthew Parris in The Times today. I find the idea of memes ("viruses of the mind") fascinating. Even if the meme hypothesis turns out to be false, some of the points that Parris makes are very valid. For example, while the vast majority of would-be terrorists are deluded and disaffected males dreaming their fantasies, we would do well to remember that hiding in amongst their number is the real thing. The trick is to be able to identify and isolate them from the false positives.

  • Dropping The Pilot

    Steve Bell is a political cartoonist par excellence. And although his style is often "in-yer-face", he can also be quite subtle. For example, when I saw this cartoon, about Bush getting rid of Rumsfeld, I thought it was quite good, but not one of his best.
     
    It turns out that it was my problem for not catching what was, in fact, a clever, and aposite, reference. What Bell has done is update a very famous political cartoon done in 1890 by Sir John Tenniel. "Dropping the pilot" illustrated the forced resignation of Bismarck by Kaiser Wilhelm. I love the fact (now) that Bell’s version shows that the whole ship has sunk, and that Kaiser Wilhelm’s crown has been replaced by a bird sitting on the Bushchimp (is it an albatross?).
     
    It’s not the first time that Tenniel’s cartoon has been used in this way. There’s apparently a long tradition of political cartoons based on it. Just goes to show that you’re never too old to learn. 

  • Sledgehammers and Nuts

    Disappointing news that the Dutch government is moving towards a total ban on the niqab and burka. While I happen to think that the garments say more about the odd ways in which women are viewed by one religion (and gawd knows, it ain’t the only one), I don’t think that banning them is going to help one bit towards the avowed intent of integration into Dutch society. It’s more likely to drive the "us and them" wedge further into this society’s hearts and minds.

  • Another Dose of Woo

    One thing that is guaranteed to get steam coming out of my ears is pseudoscience (or Woo-woo – to use the technical term). Alarm bells started to ring today when I read an entry on David Byrne’s Journal that quoted the following from an article in the New York Times:
    Studies suggest that people who speak in tongues rarely suffer from mental problems. A recent study of nearly 1,000 evangelical Christians in England found that those who engaged in the practice were more emotionally stable than those who did not. 
    That struck me as a somewhat counter-intuitive claim. So I went and read the original article. It describes some experiments done to measure brain activity while subjects are experiencing glossolalia – otherwise known as "speaking in tongues". Unfortunately, the NYT reporter (Benedict Carey) blows his credentials as a careful reporter with his opening paragraph:
    The passionate, sometimes rhythmic, language-like patter that pours forth from religious people who “speak in tongues” reflects a state of mental possession, many of them say. Now they have some neuroscience to back them up. 
    "Now they have some neuroscience to back them up". Er, hello, you mean that they are being mentally possessed? Er, no, the experiments don’t actually show anything of the sort. Mind you, the reporter was probably being led up the garden path by the experimenter, one Andrew Newberg. A clue might be gleaned from Mr. Carey’s report itself. The bit where he writes:
    Ms. Morgan, a co-author of the study, was also a research subject. She is a born-again Christian who says she considers the ability to speak in tongues a gift. “You’re aware of your surroundings,” she said. “You’re not really out of control. But you have no control over what’s happening. You’re just flowing. You’re in a realm of peace and comfort, and it’s a fantastic feeling.”
    This is clearly a carefully-controlled experiment, then. No danger of experimenter bias whatsoever. Gaah. Excuse me while I go and cool down. Feel free to carry on reading PZ Myers, who punctures this bit of woo with all the contempt that it deserves.
     
    Oh, and that study of 1,000 evangelical Christians in England? Funny that, I can’t find any trace of it via Google. If you are able to track it down, please let me know. I’d be interested to read it. But it may be as real as the Loch Ness Monster for all I can tell.  

  • Pratt By Name…

    …Pratt by Nature. Physician, heal thyself. It’s a sad story, really. I feel sorry not only for the patient(s), but for the doctor as well. But the astounding thing appears to be that she is carrying on practicing medicine. She should be removed at once.

  • Photosynth Preview Available

    Microsoft Live Labs has announced the availability of the first preview of Photosynth. I think I’ll try and give it a whirl. But I probably need to take some more photos first…
     
    Update: At this stage, the preview only works with collections supplied by the developers. The capability to add your own collections is supposed to come along later. I have to say that the demo is pretty damned impressive. You’ll need a high-end graphics card on your PC if it is to work, though.
     
    If this stuff does turn into a product, and it can be coupled to online photo-repositories such as Flickr, then this is going to be very interesting indeed.

    Addendum: And of course Microsoft has now scrapped the Photosynth product and technology, so none of these links work anymore. It’s dead, Jim.

  • It’s Another World…

    And one where I don’t know whether to laugh at, or cry for, the people involved. On reflection, I find it ineffably sad. Thanks to Jill for the link, I think.

  • The World’s Greatest Bureaucracy

    Based on personal experience, I often think that The Netherlands must rank high as a leading contender to be the world’s greatest bureaucracy (we’re guaranteed to grind you down…). However, on reflection I think that the honour should probably be passed to India. After all, they’ve been taught by a master in the form of the British Raj. The evidence is here.

  • Quote of the Day

    President Bush at a press conference yesterday: "In my first act of bipartisan outreach since the election, I shared with her [Pelosi] the names of some Republican interior decorators who can help her pick out the the new drapes for her new offices."
     
    Er, hello? I think the President’s brain has gone AWOL again… Perhaps he’ll offer her an unwanted neck massage next, à la Angela Merkel.
     
    (hat tip to Bitch PhD.)

  • Jesus Loves Puns

  • Emotional Islands

    Teju Cole has another wonderful piece of writing up on his blog. The man’s a marvel.

  • Global Warning

    Peter Tatchell has an article in the Guardian‘s Comment is Free section on people’s apathy towards the threat of Global Warming. Judging by the tone of most of the comments on his article, it would appear that there are many people in denial as well. I think Norm puts his finger on the probable cause of the apathy – people just can’t get worked up about something that will happen years in the future. As he says, "compassion doesn’t work terribly well over great distances". And those distances can be measured in either space or time – the observation will still hold true.
     
    It seems to me that the only thing that might avert the disaster is to have another one – an outbreak of a human form of avian flu that decimates the world population. That might throw a sufficiently big spanner into the works and stop our spiralling contributions to global warming in its tracks…

  • Cross-Fertilisation – Take Two

    PZ Myers riffs on possible developments in techniques for stem-cell research. Mind-boggling stuff!

  • Stuffed Sparrows

    The Natural History Museum of Rotterdam opens a major exhibition next week: The Grand House Sparrow Exhibition. It’s your chance to see serried ranks of stuffed sparrows, including some celebrity birds. Improbable Research has more information.

  • Cross-Fertilisation

    Two of my favourite Blogs cross-fertilise each other today. Ballardian has a long, and interesting, interview with Geoff Manaugh, the man behind BLDBLOG. Worth reading.

  • The Typewriter Revisited

    Via idiolect.org.uk, I came across this Guardian article by Khoi Vinh, who argues that a way of overcoming writer’s block is to use a manual typewriter instead of a word processor. There may be something in the idea. And if you haven’t got that manual typewriter any more, then you could try the software equivalent: Writeroom for the Mac, or Darkroom for Windows.