Author: Jonathan Sanderson

Author Glenn Murphy writes in the Guardian today:

You see, since the very beginnings of science education and the so-called Public Understanding of Science movement, the whole approach has essentially been an argument to ethos. Never mind what science is, you should learn it because it’s good for you. It’s the educational equivalent of shouting: “Eat your greens!”

Straw man. This hasn’t been the conception of science engagement for years. Perhaps a decade or more.

Instead, why not begin lessons, discussions or curricula with appeals to logos and pathos? Discuss why science is important, don’t just assert that it is – kids are too smart for that. Have them consider why they should bother with science, how their lives can be enriched and improved – what has science ever done for us, and what’s in it for them? And make it personal. Why did you study science? What was in it for you?

This isn’t going well, is it? By which I mean: this isn’t original thinking. However, stick with it, it gets better:

Above all, don’t make it feel like a lesson to be learned. Make it an emotional – yes, emotional – journey of discovery.

Ah. Now this – this is both valid and interesting. Also, the subject of at least one current doctoral thesis (no, not mine. You know who you are, and if you’re reading this, you’ll know that I’ll rant at you for faffing about. Paul).

The article’s worth reading, if only as a useful summary of the sorts of discussions one has with newcomers to the STEM engagement field. It’s rather brazenly a plug/love-in between the author and the Science Museum, the branding of which is plastered all over the author’s books, but so it goes.

Speaking of the Science Museum… actually, that’s another post.

Quick post pointer to Little Wheel – a simple Flash interactive story/game with a thoroughly charming style. Help the robots!

I love the last line of this BBC News story about a school soliciting encouragement from celebrities for their GCSE candidates.

That is all.

Missed the SEPECAT Jaguar on eBay? Couldn’t quite stretch to the £15,000 asking price? Fret not, for the US Navy is offering a prototype stealth warship, complete with floating lair dry dock, free to a good home. Here’s a more recent article on the same offer at Aviation Week.

Image: Wikipedia.

The BBC’s new science magazine series is finally official, and it’s not called Tomorrow’s World.

Bang Goes The Theory will start on BBC 1 in July, and one of its presenters is engineer Jem Stansfield, formerly of this parish. Press release; interview with Liz Bonnan, another of the presenters.

I’m not working on the show, but some good people are. I am, however, helping connect a bunch of academics with the BBC’s web team. More later.

A bunch of photos taken while trying to avoid being blown off the hillside, glued back together in Photoshop. Lots of work needed, not least cloning out the huge splobs from the chunk of goop on the sensor that, somehow, managed to sneak between pixels on the camera’s LCD. Gaaah.

Still, I’m liking the wider-than-wide stylee. First time I’ve done this.

Flossie pointed me to this film at the BBC, in which BBC World News America’s Bill McKenna describes what he does. He’s the White House News Photographers’ Association’s ‘Editor of the Year’, so he knows of which he speaks.

The film’s a bit angsty, a shade too quick-fire to take in, perhaps rather too cutty. Which is probably deliberate, as it all serves to emphasise the confusion and distraction and noise and complexity of the edit suite – all surrounding the editor, as they try to do one of the oldest things in the world: tell a story.

Nicely done.

Psssst! Want to buy an ex-RAF Jaguar GR3a strike aircraft?

One’s currently up on eBay for £15,000. From the looks of the seller’s estate, there are quite a few more going, too:

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Bizarre

The new Star Trek movie pretty much rocks, in a ‘mindlessly entertaining action romp’ sort of way. It looks great, rattles along nicely, and the humour gracefully avoids the Grating Curse of Jar-Jar Binks. Zachary Quinto‘s Spock is excellent – probably good enough for him to avoid being Sylar for the rest of his career – and the moment when Chris Pine‘s Kirk ‘Shats up’ is priceless. Draw a discrete veil over the astrophysics and the instantly-forgettable score, and it’s all good.

Well, mostly. I’ve one snark, and one more significant worry. The latter I’ll save for another post, but the snark is this:

I get that Abrams is trying to suggest action off-shot with all the lens flare, and I rather like the effect. In places the live-action look is reminiscent of Alwin Kuchler’s gorgeous cinematography on Sunshine, only with a white rather than black background to everything.

The CGI effect matches the style rather well, too – there’s some magnificent colouring work in the picture, and my, how CGI lens flare has progressed since the early days of the Video Toaster. But in All-New Trek the graphics folks have a new toy, and just like the early flare effects, they’ve seriously over-used it.

They’re simulating dirt on the lens.

Along with the flare, in the darker corners of the frames, there are weird nebulous diffuse/defocussed blobs, which to my eye looked like the effect you get from a dirty lens. Once I’d noticed them I couldn’t take me eyes off them – they’re damn everywhere in the CGI shots, and the result is distractingly ghastly. Space Dust used to pop on my tongue, not in my eye.

It’s doubtless a cute effect in moderation, but it’s taken way way way too far here. Any real camera op with lenses that dirty would be removed from the set. Come on, folks: keep your glass clean. Even if it’s virtual.

The Detroit Free Press brings us the fabulous story of – I think, it’s not entirely clear what sport we’re discussing here – ice-hockey fans, and the multiple-arms race between them and officials. The officials, you see, are trying to stop them throwing octopus onto the rink. Read the article for absolutely no enlightenment at all, in the grand scheme of things.

(via MetaFilter. The other links there are worth exploring, too. Though be warned that the New Scientist video has possibly the most annoying voice-over ever.)