rapid population growth undermines development efforts

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"the priority given to population issues has diminished compared with concerns about development. If population growth continues unabated, we fear the problems of development will be "solved" by rises in death rates. For this reason, efforts to slow population growth should be treated as a human rights issue."

Word.

Plymsoul

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This is some fierce local talent in the shape of Kat Marsh:



Kat is awesome.

it always amuses me how "thesis" sounds so similar to "faeces"

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Here it is, kids. The whole chibang:

the essence of manliness

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Its testosterone, of course. A paper covered in New Scientist found reduced levels in fathers and in older Senegalese men and higher levels in men with multiple wives. The conclusion was that fatherhood lowers levels. There's an interesting circle of casue and effect here that they might have got the wrong way round. Testosterone is associated with dominance in men (pdf), as anyone who has been threatened with a slap by a two metre wide bouncer knows. Could it be that the domestic servitude of diligent and conscientious fatherhood stifles our inherent manliness in a manner akin to the subordinate life of an omega-male and quenching release of the man-essence? (No sperm-related puns, please).


Addition 02-09-09:

Female gorillas imitate oestrus and engage in copulation when pregnant in order to obstruct fertile competitors mating with them.

manifest awesomeness

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Q: What happens when the state fails to regulate polluters?

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A: Anarchy.


There is a lesson here for all governments.

The Yes Men

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Never heard of these guys either either? Well, let New Scientist educate you. They have a film out which I am going to pay money to watch. If it comes to my town, that is.

The moral of this story?

"we need to change the rules that allow the market to reward bad behaviour"

Word.

this is awesome

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From a list of "Products of The Year" on the New Scientist site comes this- your own personal cycle lane:

Cycle lanes are a good way of keeping bikes away from cars and minimising accidents, but they aren't available on every road.

Evan Gant at the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) and Alex Tee of Altitude Inc in Somerville, Massachusetts, have designed a portable cycle "Light Lane" that straps to the back of a bike.

A laser projects an image of a cycle lane onto the road directly behind the cyclist to remind approaching cars to leave room.

UK body endorses Christian fundamentalist curriculum as equivalent to A-Level

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"Have you heard of the 'Loch Ness Monster' in Scotland? 'Nessie,' for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur.

"Could a fish have developed into a dinosaur? As astonishing as it may seem, many evolutionists theorize that fish evolved into amphibians and amphibians into reptiles. This gradual change from fish to reptiles has no scientific basis. No transitional fossils have been or ever will be discovered because God created each type of fish, amphibian, and reptile as separate, unique animals. Any similarities that exist among them are due to the fact that one Master Craftsmen fashioned them all."

There are schools in the UK who teach this shit as fact and will get you an A-Level for your pains. When was lying to children in a manner which strongly influences their world view and social interactions (by making them look like a fucktard to the rest of society) not child abuse?

punkscience is busy . . .

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Going to festivals, getting a new job and trying to finish his thesis. I fear you must look elsewhere for ranting hyperbole for now.

Word.

As an interesting closing comment, a friend nearly killed Karen O in a moshpit at the Secret Garden Party this weekend. I spent the rest of the festival looking for her to marry her but never found her again. He's a credible, upstanding sort of scoundrel so I believe his very word. Poor Karen. She will probably never get another opportunity to feel the punkscience power. Weak.

animal experimentation - do crabs have rights?

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"No" says Peter Fraser of the University of Aberdeen. So do I and would also like people who say they do to not be so fucking stupid. This sort of "rights creep" is a direct threat to much high quality research that makes use of the lack of authoritarian oversight of invertebrate experiments to do good and interesting science.

Put it this way: If I wanted to manipulate an organism's environment in the lab to test its responses to some stressor (eg. ocean acidification) I could do so with invertebrates (eg. crabs, mussels) without any bureaucratic oversight. The same experiment with vertebrate fish would require a home office licensed facility; a separate licence to be approved for the specific experiment; qualified and registered staff to conduct husbandry, sacrifice the animals and take biological sample and piles more bureaucratic fiff-faff. Now, I'm not saying that animal welfare is not a concern for scientists. I'm saying that some of the legislation designed to produce it is unnecessary and obstructive, costs an enormous amount of money and does not necessarily improve the welfare of the animals as no-one can explain in cold, hard terms exactly what this term means. Animals in the wild are typically perpetually hunted, starved and otherwise stressed to fuck. Putting fish in sterile tanks with no natural features whatsoever is kind of like locking your average human indefinitely in a single room with nice, soft, padded walls and providing them with regular meals but nothing else. And about as humane. Scientifically its absolute bollocks.

Unfortunately the alternative- called mesocosm experiments, where you try to replicate natural communites of organisms in a recreation of their natural habitat- is incredibly complicated and generally produces very complicated results that are difficult to interpret. Also, such experiments are an order of magnitude more space-, resource- and labour-intensive due to the need to study all of the different components of the community in sufficient detail to observe statistically robust differences. I fail to see how this is anything more than a challenge to scientists, however, as the underlying rationale for such experiments and the potential for real insight to be gained from them is clear. Resort to single species tests in sterile, unrealistic conditions is defeatist and cowardly. Unfortuantely the regulations for conducting such tests with vertebrates make mesocosm studies including them almost impossible to conduct robustly.

is this the best music video evah?

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Karen O, dead dogs and kids with axes are all awesome.

painfully funny

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SO much sniggering my sides are aching really badly.




Addition:

This one is almost as good:

punkscience goes to the beach . . . . in France!

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Packing shit and finishing touches to the van prior to boarding Brittany Ferryies' flagship Pont Avon (which nearly sank on its maiden voyage) at ten tonight. Fuck me dead I need a holiday.

Back in a week. Au revoir to both my regular readers and a big, hairy "fuck you" to the UK government, the BNP, the Tories, UKIP, Obama, Brendan O'Neill, all postmodernist cunts and the rest of the cockweasel fraternity.

Word.

IDF solider who shot dead 4 Israeli Arabs in a shooting spree "is not a terrorist"

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"The authorities want Zada to be seen as a lone madman but the research we've conducted suggests he was part of a larger Jewish terror organisation that operates freely even though it's outside the law. It appears the attack was organised and planned."

Eden Natan Zada's shooting spree on a bus full of Israeli Arabs, in which 22 Arabs were also wounded, was apparently conducted with the support of a banned extremist group called Kach. Kach espouses the expulsion of all Arabs from Israel and the occupied territories. Despite this the group apparently operates within Israel with impunity. Zada was beaten to death by a mob of Arabs who surrounded the bus after a female passenger managed to snatch his IDF-issue M16 from him whilst he was reloading. His victims have been denied state compensation because a military tribunal decided that a serving soldier could not be classified as a "terrorist". Twelve Arabs are being prosecuted for the lynching, seven are charged with attempted murder.

Israel is a racist state that conducts torture, murder and ethnic cleansing.

Also see this article:

"This proposal coming from a party in Israel's governing coalition should set off alarm bells that fascism is emerging."

SW election results

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The Green Party beat the ruling party into 5th place! Shame about the filthy UKIP's success though. What the fuck point is there voting for an anti-EU party in European elections? I can't begin to voice my disgust at being beaten by these wankers, let alone the dirty Tories.

Conservative 468,742
UKIP 341,845
Liberal Democrat 255,253
GREEN 144,179
Labour 118,716
BNP 60,889
Pensioners 37,785
English Democrat 25,313
Christians 21,329
Mebyon Kernow 14,922
Socialist Labour 10,033
Misc 39,702 (6 other groups mostly around 7,000)

trains can be more polluting than aeroplanes says new report

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New Scientist article of considerable import to anyone interested in transport and energy policy. The obvious conclusion is that electric trains fuelled by coal-fired power plants are more carbon intensive than a jumbo jet over the same distance. Similarly, off-peak buses carrying a handful of passengers are less efficient over their entire lives than a Chelsea Tractor.

Slay those demons, people. The facts matter (see preceding post).

Mikhail Chester is awesome.

check out the new widget

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Like my new widget on the left? You can get it too from here.

Sourced from the awesome power of the Data Not Shown blog.

snigger

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WolframAlpha is awesome.

genetically modified crops hand control over food production to corporations and will aggravate poverty and starvation across the globe

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And all this from a sky-pixie-cuddler. Impressive! I bet he still lusts after little boys.