Jonathan Sanderson’s weblog, since 2001.
I read somewhere, recently, that British Olympic hopeful Michael Faulds was tipped for stardom in clay pigeon shooting very shortly after he picked up a shotgun. In those first stands, he hit 17 of 25 clays.
Pfff! I’m not impressed.
Mind you, he was nine years old at the time.
Every now and then, I remember why I don’t watch very much TV. Turning over from ‘My breasts are too big’ on C4, I hear on BBC1 ‘Mark once trained to be an astro-physicist. He’s been a rail cop for eleven years.’ Mark then proceeds to gallantly check the toilets for offensive graffiti.
At least on ITV1 we have celebrities trying to cook for 250 schoolkids without serving them all chips. ‘Celeriac? Sounds like a disease.’ Quality.
Sanderson’s Fifth Postulate goes like this:
All stereotypes are true.
One of the things we’ve been trying to do in the public understanding of science community is dispel the mythical image of ‘the scientist’ as being white, male, bearded, and wearing a labcoat. Oh, and probably also sandals. With socks.
In this endeavour we have, of course, been spectacularly unsuccessful. Scientists, in the public’s eye, are still male, still wear labcoats, and still, more often than not, talk in strangled German accents. A dozen or more years of concerted effort by some seriously effective communicators has had pretty much no effect I can discern. Why? Well, there’s the somewhat inconvenient problem that the stereotype has at least a vague connection with reality, with the possible exception of the strangled German accent. It’s unpopular to point this out, but if I believe it to be the case, words like ‘flogging’ and ‘equine’ and ‘deceased’ come to mind. In combination.
However, it doesn’t appear that we’ve been uniformly unsuccessful. Sure, everyone still thinks scientists are men with bubbling test tubes, but the generation heading through school and university now will change that. Why? Because they’re girls. Boys’ results in science and maths have been tending downward in exactly the same way oil prices haven’t; girls, in comparison, are doing rather well. And, reasonably enough, they see interesting and varied careers in… well, often medicine, actually, but nobody realises medicine isn’t really a science until far too late, and that’s a whole other kettle of smelly fish anyway.
As a result, a significant majority of newcomers to the public understanding of science industry are women, and guess what? They’re all intent on dispelling the myth of the male scientist. Because… why, exactly? Just what are we trying to achieve here?
Perhaps we should be adopting the Action Man approach: taking an old, tired, somewhat crufty image, and updating it to make it more appealing to today’s kids. Specifically boys, since the girls seem to have the sense to get along quite well anyway, thanks very much.
(This post summarises a deliberately inflammatory remark made in discussion at the BIG Event a couple of weeks ago.)
I’m guessing most (both?) readers here won’t know of Audioscrobbler, but: (a.) it exists; (b.) it’s kinda cool in a geek-hip sort of way; (c.) they’re taking new memberships again; and (d.) I’m one of the new sign-ups. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Currently listening to: Home from the album When It Falls by Zero 7.
Holy cow, Scotch Bonnets are hot. Around the quarter-million Scoville mark, up there with Habanero; cf. wussy Jalapeno at 2,500 or so.
They also have a delightful fruity taste. No, really, they do. In those brief moments between stuffing one’s face with yoghurt in a vain attempt to quell the sensation of imminent death, there’s something almost summer-fruit about them.
I love them.
In moderation.
(One of these days, I really will get into posting categories.)
Oh, so many things I should have posted over the last few weeks. Stay tuned for: Bashing trees with sticks! Square-wheeled bicycles! Unexpected children! Windows trojans! Cameras! Insulting comments from my dad!
If you’re really good, dear reader, I may even… [pause for effect]… no, I always do pause for effect, that’s a given. No, I may even… [pause again for effect] … write something that’s actually interesting.
But I wouldn’t count on it.
I seem to be in Sussex, or wherever the heck this is. Herstmonceux Castle, at any rate, way down on the far side of London and a heck of a long way from Glasgow. However, it’s the venue for the annual gathering of the British Interactive Group, which goes at least part-way to explaining my presence.
‘Twas a rather nice trip down, actually, watching hot air balloons around Oxford and a parachute drop from a Hercules somewhere vaguely near Lyneham. Herstmonceux Castle itself is an atmospheric place, squatting in the dark behind its moat, guarded by bats. The bats are rather large, actually – too big for pipistrelles?
I get about four phone calls a day, (presumably) from direct marketing types – it’s not clear exactly who, because they’re usually machine-dialled and there’s nobody at the other end.
So: Telephone Preference Service. Let’s see if it makes a difference. Takes 28 days to propagate, apparently.
[Update: Ironically, the confirmation email sent out by the TPS uses some sort of hash in the ‘reply-to’ address. As a result, it got caught by my junk email filter. D’oh! Incidentally – there’s no check in place (that I can see) to ensure that the numbers I’ve registered are actually mine. I’m not registering anyone else for ‘no junk phone calls’ could ever be classed as a malicious act, but it’s still a little weird that it’d be so easy, no?]
No, actually, scratch that. My favourite film of the week has to be the trailer for Blake’s Junction 7, which looks (a.) absolutely ridiculous, (b.) rather funny, and (c.) made with the sort of production values I wish somebody on the Thunderbirds movie had understood. You can view the trailer here, and a few stills here.
As an aside, I’m glad someone is pressing ahead with B7 production: looks like the heralded sequel series might be undergoing some tough times.
Oh, and while I’m on the short film posting frenzy: Spite Your Face, makers of all that wonderful Lego goodness, have released their latest commission – Spiderman 2. In, yes, Lego.
Ah, the joys of bandwidth. One gets to spend precious time at places like iFilm and AtomFilms. Fave of the week: Pink Five Strikes Back, sequel to the zero-budget Star Wars fan film, Pink Five. It helps if you’re at least a bit of a Star Wars geek.