November 2006
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Where I’m calling from
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I know that nobody cares about the peregrinations of astrophysicists but there’s not much else to blog about when you’re on the road. So a quick explanation of my absence from the blogosphere: Last week, I was in Taipei for the CoSPA meeting (at which website you can find a copy of my talk on…
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Anthropic Answers?
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Author and cosmologist Paul Davies has got a new book out, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life? Like other recent books, it touches on the Anthropic Principle, the idea that we can learn something deep about the universe from the simple observation that we — sentient, water- and carbon-based life…
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Politics and the misuse of Science (UK edition)
The UK Parliamentary Select Committee on Science and Technology issued a report on “Scientific Advice, Risk and Evidence Based Policy Making.” Although their press release soft-pedals the issues, The Guardian’s headline says “MPs accuse ministers of twisting science for political purposes” and the article quotes Oxford Lib Dem MP Evan Harris to that effect. He…
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Obligatory political commentary
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I admit I was sceptical that my fellow Americans would manage to kick the bums out this year, but some sort of sense has prevailed. The Dems have the House, may yet win the Senate, Rumsfeld is gone (in a UK-style post-defeat resignation), and my own congress-person, Nancy Pelosi, is the first female Speaker of…
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The Rt. Hon. Tony Blair, MP
I somehow scored an invitation to a talk by the Prime Minister sponsored by The Royal Society on “Our Nation’s Future”, specifically, on Science Policy. (Personally, I was pleased to see an extremely large contingent from Imperial present, including Dame Julia Higgins (Principal of our Faculty of Engineering, and Foreign Secretary [!] of the Royal…
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