{"id":153,"date":"2010-07-06T16:48:14","date_gmt":"2010-07-06T16:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/2010\/07\/06\/nerds_and_words_about_science\/"},"modified":"2010-12-26T23:52:50","modified_gmt":"2010-12-26T23:52:50","slug":"nerds_and_words_about_science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/2010\/07\/06\/nerds_and_words_about_science\/","title":{"rendered":"Nerds and Words (about science)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Nerds<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Many of you will already have seen this because I have been promoting it shamelessly on twitter. But this is the video of the talk I mentioned in <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/scurry\/2010\/03\/30\/passing-time\">a post back in March<\/a> that my daughter Eleanor gave on a topic she feels passionately about: corduroy.<\/p>\n<p>I thought it might amuse some of you. It did me.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Corduroy Revolution\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_IH1HsBPwEU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Words<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Elsewhere on the internet the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/science\/blog\/audio\/2010\/jul\/05\/science-weekly-podcast-carbon-footprint-spoofjenks\">Guardian Science Podcast<\/a> interviewed journalist Simon Jenkins about the <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/ue19877e8\/2010\/06\/26\/in-which-evil-boffins-seek-revenge\">SpoofJenks campaign <\/a>sparked by his now <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/commentisfree\/2010\/jun\/24\/rees-makes-religion-out-of-science\">infamous article<\/a>. The interview starts at 22 min 44 secs in.<\/p>\n<p>If you listen, you will hear that Jenkins defends his article by re-writing it in his head. He shifts to the more serious point (not articulated in the written version) that science and scientists need to make their case for funding. As if that were news.<\/p>\n<p>Jenkins also takes a rather narrow view of what he considers to be worthwhile research. Work on Alzheimer&#8217;s disease is good but he is less impressed by cancer research for some reason and more dubious still of blue-skies or fundamental work such as that going on at the LHC.<\/p>\n<p>There is a serious debate to be had here. I wonder if Jenkins is really prepared to engage with it properly. There is <em>much<\/em> to ponder but for now I will state my position with words from Pasteur:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>&#8220;Chance favours the prepared mind.&#8221;<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nerds Many of you will already have seen this because I have been promoting it shamelessly on twitter. But this is the video of the talk I mentioned in a post back in March that my daughter Eleanor gave on &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/2010\/07\/06\/nerds_and_words_about_science\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fun","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}