It's a cliche that the statues of Western cities are normally of men on horses: the physical recreation of the great man idea of history.
So it was lovely to spot this in Ottawa: a group of women, sitting around with cups of tea, holding up a paper, excited by each other's news.
Behind it is a statue of a woman on a horse - the Queen - but I'm going to pretend I didn't see that.
Walk around Washington DC long enough, and you'll spot these small splodges of yellow on the zebra crossings.
Walk closer, and you'll see they are actually little robots.
Here's a close up, they look so sad! (even if some of them also look like they are dancing)
Having a bit of a dig around the web, I found this story about them from 2008. They cause a lot of dangerous road-crossing, as people stop mid-cross to go 'OMG it's a robot' (or, er, take a photo. I didn't stop while I took it, ok?) but I really like them.
While on the subject, I also really liked this (much more temporary) piece of pedestrian crossing art, spotted in London a couple of weeks ago.
A few useful resources for scientists interested in Public Engagement with Science (very UK focused):
Yesterday, along with many hundreds of thousands of others, I attended the anti-cuts march in London. I think it's important to record individual experiences of these sorts of events, even if these experiences aren't dramatic enough to make the national news. Indeed, it's important to record them precisely because they aren't dramatic. So here, largely for the sake of boredom, is mine.
I was meeting my mother for coffee in Trafalgar Square in the morning. Walking up from South of the River, I found myself turned around my the police when I tried to cross Hungerford Bridge. There were already hundreds and hundreds of people congregating on the Embankment, and it was only a bit after 10am. We joined the demo on Whitehall around midday, and found ourselves near the front. We pottered along up Piccadilly onto Hyde Park.
It was all very British, with people apologising, drinking flasks of tea and talking about the weather. There were the traditional union banners and brass bands, but also steel pans and bagpipes, as well as homemade placards (a fair few referencing Father Ted...) and ones in Welsh and Arabic as well as English. The Bollywood Brass Band was especially good.
We ended up at the stage in Hyde Park really early, and nothing much was happening so went off to get some lunch. On the way back we walked along a bit of the West end of Oxford St. There were loads of police guarding individual shops, but all they seemed to have to deal with were crowds of tourists taking photos of them. According to twitter, the protesters where nearer Oxford Circus. We listened to some of the speeches, and Mum headed home.
I started walking back in the opposite direction of the march to get sense of its sheer size and diversity. I bumped into a friend, which was nice, and caught up with some others online. I laughed at some placards and giggled at chants. Mum texted to say her train was full of happy marchers saying maybe the government would listen (she sounded rather cynical of this, but seemed to be enjoying the feeling). Near Green Park, I spotted this bit of graffiti (the blue plague notes Lord Palmerston used to live here...). I was slightly surprised to see this, it stuck out amongst a very well behaved protest.
I moved to back streets for a bit to get out of the way of the protesters, and now the tone really changed. There were lots of sirens. I heard people muttering about smashed windows and scurrying in and out of buildings. A crowd of young people ran by, all in black with their faces covered with scarves. They were chased by a group of what I guessed were journalists wearing bicycle helmets (indeed, I saw one on the BBC later that evening). A minute later, a crowd of hi-viz clad police followed. It was like something out of a movie.
I got back to Piccadilly and the main march, and the friendly feeling of peaceful protest returned. There were a few smashed windows, but they seemed like relics of a moment of madness now passed. It wasn't like the fees demos last year. People were angry, that was why they were there, but they were also delighting in how many other people can come out to protest with them. There was a joyous sense of solidarity; a sense of shared anger, that we were all in this together.
I walked back to Trafalgar Square and even though it was nearly 4pm, more and more people were still joining the march. Clearly from all parts of the UK, and many different fields. They were smiling and dancing. Despite the darker moments round the edges, this is how I'll remember the march: a big, social smile and a giant, mass dance. At its most positive, it felt like a cultural event as much as a political one (and I think there lies much of its potential power).
Paul Nurse is presenting Horizon this evening, and it looks like a corker.
Entitled Science Under Attack, the BBC’s website promises the episode will look at “why public trust in key scientific theories has been eroded?”, with a focus on denial over climate change, the safety of GM food and that HIV causes AIDS. The BBC also promises the show will be:
“a passionate defence of the importance of scientific evidence and the power of experiment, and a look at what scientists themselves need to do to earn trust in controversial areas of science in the 21st century.”
I agree evidence is vitally important here, so I’m hoping that Nurse covers some of the evidence about how the public really see science, and how best to interact with public scepticism. It can be all too easy to rely on assumptions and anecdote here.
So we’re all well briefed for the show, here’s a bit of reading on the topic.
How you choose to read the various public surveys is up to you. Some people see them and say “yay, loads of people love science”, some find the results shockingly low. I’d also say I find these sorts of surveys a bit blunt (people and their interactions with each other being complex). Still, they are MUCH better than working from data amassed purely from ‘people I met in the pub last night’. Read them sceptically, but do read them – they can only extend your knowledge.
I can also reccomend this post from Jenny Rohn, where she reflects on the ways scientists can sometimes take a knee-jerk reaction to what is seen as public distrusting science, when in reality the picture is a lot more complex/ positive.
Please note, nothing to do with me, just posting an email for greater dissemination.
This year marks 25 years since the publication of the Royal Society's influential 1985 report on the Public Understanding of Science, more commonly known as the 'Bodmer report'.
Our next London Public Understanding of Science Seminar will be a special seminar marking this anniversary.
To that end, we've invited a panel of speakers who were all heavily involved in the PUS activities that followed the publication of the report to provide their recollections and commentary on the significance of the report then, and its lasting legacies. There will be plenty of opportunity following our participants' contributions for wider involvement from the audience.
Details of the seminar are below. Please note the different room location to our normal one.
We look forward to seeing you there.
Date, Time and Location:
Wednesday 24th November 2010
16:15-18:30
Venue:
H102, Connaught House
Room H102 is located on the first floor of Connaught House on the LSE campus, which is the building with the Natwest Bank on the Ground floor on the corner of Houghton St and the Aldwych:http://www.lse.ac.uk/resources/mapsAndDirections/findingYourWayAroundLSE.htm
Participants:
Professor Hilary Rose - Visiting Professor of Sociology at LSE
Dr Peter Briggs -former Executive Secretary of the British Science Association (BAAS)
Tim Radford, former science editor for The Guardian
Mark Dyball- People, Science & Policy, (former manager of OST PUSET programme)
Future seminars - 2010/11 Session:
26 January 2011 Koji Yamamoto (St Andrews) 'Changing attitudes to
innovation since early modernity' 23 February 2011 Nelly Courvoisier (Lausanne) 'The reception of
public engagement work at CERN' 23 March 2011 Andrew Williams (Cardiff) 'A crisis of science
journalism?'
Guinness Christmas Pudding Recipe
(revised version)
This was cut out from the Guardian many years ago by my mother, presevered with the pages of her old school recipe notebook.
It should serve 12 ordinary people or 10 greedy ones.
Ingredients
Method
Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large basin.
Stir in lemon juice, eggs, milk and one bottle of Guinness (9 2/3 fluid oz).
Mix well and turn into one two pint and one three pint well-greased pudding basins.
Tie pudding cloth over puddings, or cover them tightly with greaseproof paper and foil.
Drink the other bottle of Guinness*.
Leave overnight.
Next day, steam the pudding for 7 ½ hours.
If you are not going to eat them immediately, let them cool, re-cover and store in a cool place.
When required for consumption steam for a further two or three hours before serving.
*This sentence was left out the first time the Guardian printed the recipe, with the result that lots of people had a very soggy mess on Christmas day. In this second version, prefaced by many apologies, they also added the exact amount of Guinness in fluid oz to cater for readers who skip-read recipes.
**THE CENTRE FOR THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY & MEDICINE**
CHoSTM SEMINAR THURSDAY
28 October 2010 at 4.15 pm
IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON SHERFIELD BUILDING, LEVEL 5 SEMINAR & LEARNING CENTRE, ROOM 6
Will Thomas, Imperial College London
Some Facets of the '20th-Century Problem' in Historiography: Scientists, Policymakers, Experts, and Analysts in the UK and USA
Abstract: This talk will discuss my research in the history of operational research, warfare analysis, decision theory, and related fields during and after World War II. It will argue for the importance of understanding how these spheres of activity were distinguished from each other, and how they were interrelated. Noting the importance of placing various activities in the context of similar activities, it will also argue for the importance of broad surveys in addressing the large and complicated activities typical of 20th-century science and the state. Such surveys could serve as a means of escaping analysis of such large topics in terms of limiting and overused themes and tensions familiar from broader contextualizations, such as "scientific practice in the sphere of politics". It will further argue for the need for new venues for historiographical development as a means of sustaining the demands of such a historiography, and it will introduce the new broad survey project that I will be pursuing as a junior research fellow at Imperial."
List of other events in the series this term here.
Nothing to do with me, I'm just reposting an email because they tend not to update their website.
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Dear all,
Our first London Public Understanding of Science Seminar of the series this year will be held on the 27th October. We are very pleased to have Professor Peter Weingart (Bielefeld and WZ Berlin) presenting. Details of the seminar are below. Please note the different room location to our normal one.We look forward to seeing you there.Date, Time and Location:
Wednesday 27th October 2010
16:15-18:00Venue: S75
Room S75 is located on the ground floor of St. Clements building, (turn left as you enter the building and it is at the end of the corridor) on the LSE campus, which can be accessed through the entrance on Houghton Street: http://www.lse.ac.uk/resources/mapsAndDirections/findingYourWayAroundLSE.htm Speaker: Professor Peter Weingart (Bielefeld and WZ Berlin)The Medialization of Science - How Real are Repercussions for Science?Abstract: Evidence of an increasing media orientation of science is accumulating. Universities establish elaborate press offices, scientists publish hot research results in the mass media, journals like /Science /and /Nature /look for 'breaking news' articles to be announced before publication to the world press etc. How does this new attention economy affect science? Is it just show that satisfies the demands for accountability or does it have repercussions on research proper? It turns out that at closer scrutiny this question is very hard to answer but that makes it all the more important to try.Martin Bauer, Jane Gregory, Simon Lock, and Valentina Amorese
London PUS Seminar
Sponsored by NESTA
There is a fascinating dicussion between historians of science developing on the Mersenne listerv right now, surrounding David Willetts' reference to Josephs Priestley and Schweppe.
This was just posted by Simon Schaffer:
"By thus shutting the door of the universities .... and keeping the means of learning to yourselves, you may think to keep us in ignorance, and therefore less able to give you disturbance. But though ignominiously and unjustly excluded from the seats of learning, which, as maintained by public funds, ought to be open to all the community, and driven to the expedient of providing at a great expence for scientific education among ourselves, we have had this advantage, that our institutions, being formed in a more enlightened age, are more liberal...Thus while your universities resemble pools of stagnant water secured by dams and mounds, and offensive to the neighbourhood, ours are like rivers, which, taking their natural course, fertilize a whole country'. (Joseph Priestley, A letter to right honourable William Pitt, First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1787).
More here.
