The Guardian has a complete fucking moron on its payroll

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What cuntard is responsible for this fucking travesty?

Seriously? How fucking cuntishly thick and demented do you have to be even consider promoting lunacy like that to the front page of your website.

Oviously, I left a comment in response:

"the sooner we`ll stop strapping them to boards and dissecting them alive for no good reason"

Why has this comment been selected for promotion to the front page of the website? It is moronic. No one except psychopaths strap animals to boards and dissect them alive for no good reason. Personally, whenever I dissect a living organism I have very, very good reasons for doing so because I am a scientist and the research I conduct provides vital information to help us manage our environment sustainably and effectively. Furthermore, I work exclusively with lower animals such as worms and molluscs, which lack the sophisticated neural system to even experience pain and suffering. This is why experiments conducted upon such organisms are not covered by Home Office regulations. If I were to work on higher animals such as fish, rodents or even primates then I still would never find myself strapping them to boards and dissecting them alive because this is illegal and unethical and no one does this any more!

Shame on the Guardian for drawing attention to this stupid comment. What are you going to do for an encore- highlight the words of some lunatic calling for ginger people to be burnt as witches?

Let's see if it gets deleted.

Addition some 3 hours later:

Excellent! Some pig-ignorant fucktard has already posted an inflamatory response. I returned fire:

@Britcominghome

Allow me to paraphrase your response:

"Yeah, science is dumb cos I dunt unnerstand it."

Still happy enough for it to provide you with the computer or phone you've posted this from, hey. And the food production system that keeps you alive, the medicines that cure your many diseases, the engineering allowing you to stay dry, warm and secure.

In response, I believe worms don't experience pain and suffering because I stand on the shoulders of scientific giants who have accumulated evidence to suggest that they can't. The idea that an animal as simple as a worm or lower molluscs (I specifically exclude cephalopods because of their sophistication) can experience any mental stimuli in a manner similar to mammals is laughable to anyone with even the most basic appreciation of comparative anatomy. I suggest you read this Wikipedia article. There are ample referenes at the end to peer-reviewed papers. Pay particular attention to the Comparative anatomy and evolution section.

I hope your arrogance in insulting and contradicting me is underlain by an advanced understanding of the subject that you will be willing to share with me here. I would be most grateful if you could provide a single piece of evidence which suggests that lower animals can feel pain because, as a scientist, I am anxious to learn and keen to establish the truth in an objective and well-evidenced fashion.

If I sound uptight and condescending, its because I am.

Addition another 10 minutes later:

Okay, after re-reading his comment I realised I hadn't been nearly harsh enough with this guy. So here's the follow-up:

Sorry, I tried to refrain from challenging this idiocy but I'm so profoundly irritated by @Britcominghome's comment that I'm just going to go nuts.
You wrote:

"That a living entity doesn't 'experience pain and suffering' is simply a moronic thing to say."

So, according to you, an amoeba can experience pain and suffering, yes?
How about a cyanobacterium?
How about the moss growing out on the deck?
The tapeworm burrowing its way through you intestines and the bacteria they contain?

You're an idiot. Mainly for that comment, but also for the "blacks" one too.

Ben Brown is a nasty little arsehole

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Read this tweet from Ben Goldacre and follow the link. Then do something like this:

ye gods, I'm full of shit

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Someone called Quin once wrote:

"You know, I'd never truly understood that maxim of Samuel Johnson's that "wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out" until now. It's his way of saying that when you a really pleased with a smart-arsed line you've written, it likely means around 6 billion people think it makes you sound like a right tit."

Well, I've just had that experience re-reading a comment of mine on a post at Lenin's Tomb. I mean, what the jabbering twatboar am I trying to communicate in those three, tortured paragraphs? You know, I'd really like to revisit both the topic and the thought process that drove me to pen that comment and before you ask,: No, neither excessive alcohol consumption nor more unusual narcotics were involved. 

Unfortunately I have a presentation to write for Monday morning which could feasibly secure me a decent research position at a nice little institution so I am devoting as much of my cerebral capacity to that as possible. That might explain how manpig sputum such as that comment was delivered into the internets but I honestly can't blame distraction with "higher things" as I had given up work for the day when I shat it out.

Ho hum, on with the presentation. Maybe I will find the time next week. Maybe.

incredible open letter to NYT from eminent geoscientist

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This is super-awesome. The author, David Hughes, deserves a fucking medal for this profound Fisking of the NYT's fantasy version of fossil fuel resource dynamics.

Here's a little more background:

Peak oil.
Peak gas.
Peak coal.
Peak fucking everything!

As a bonus for my readers I have 'discovered' a full- text version of the Nature paper in the third link for your delectation. You really should read it, its jolly interesting.

UK democracy

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I try to avoid reading or even thinking about UK politics, being no longer a resident of that sordid plutocracy. However, I encountered this article on electoral finance via Twatter and the urge to rant got the better of me:

Dude, there's a hell of a lot more wrong with UK 'democracy' than just the funding environment. And why is it that the best most reformers can dream of achieving in a Western country in the 21st century is the distant promise of proportional representation? Why have developments in democracy not progressed since the early 20th century? What about Direct Democracy? Why does 38% of eligible voters constitute a majority? What about compulsory voting? What about an elected second house, FFS!!!! What about giving the power to vote on every issue back to the people who should hold it?

The idea of elected representatives being the only viable form of government was accurately criticised as "elective dictatorship" by Lord Hailsham 35 years ago. Why has this issue not been considered further since then? The answer is that the UK is a pseudodemocracy where power is concentrated in the hands of professional politicians and their backers. The electorate remain ambivalent to this because much of the mainstream media conducts itself according to the propaganda model made famous by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky.

more awesome video action

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In a kind of sequence of awesome I would like to post another couple of videos which contain revolutionary or controversial analysis of aspects of our society. The first is via the legendary Doctor Goldacre and the other was another from the same series on YuToob.

Addition 20-11-10:

I really should add this paragraph I have just read because it reasserts the point of the second video so well:

The cultural belief that we can make things happen by thinking, by visualizing, by wanting them, by tapping into our inner strength or by understanding that we are truly exceptional is magical thinking. We can always make more money, meet new quotas, consume more products and advance our career if we have enough faith. This magical thinking, preached to us across the political spectrum by Oprah, sports celebrities, Hollywood, self-help gurus and Christian demagogues, is largely responsible for our economic and environmental collapse, since any Cassandra who saw it coming was dismissed as “negative.” This belief, which allows men and women to behave and act like little children, discredits legitimate concerns and anxieties. It exacerbates despair and passivity. It fosters a state of self-delusion. The purpose, structure and goals of the corporate state are never seriously questioned. To question, to engage in criticism of the corporate collective, is to be obstructive and negative. And it has perverted the way we view ourselves, our nation and the natural world. The new paradigm of power, coupled with its bizarre ideology of limitless progress and impossible happiness, has turned whole nations, including the United States, into monsters.

Its from a powerful rant here. Read it and weep. 

this is why I support the Green Party of England and Wales

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This is a piece by Caroline Lucas for Compass. In it she covers pretty much every important issue on the table today in terms of sustainability, economic reform and climate change. Awesome!

"This is a challenging time for progressives. We have a coalition not only introducing savage cuts, but seeming to enjoy wielding the axe.

And that enthusiasm - with George Osborne and Danny Alexander competing to give the best impression of Freddie Kruger - gives the lie to the idea that these cuts are necessary because of the current recession.

We can see that they are ideologically driven. Many Tories, and some Liberal Democrats, want a smaller state and will use the financial crisis as the excuse to achieve it - even at the risk of plunging us back into recession.

And even at the risk of making the much greater environmental crisis that we face even worse, by slashing spending on green technology, on incentives for renewable, on the potential to create hundreds of thousands of green jobs.

I don't often find myself quoting Tim Yeo, but his comments over the weekend about this were spot on, when he pointed out that despite the national debt, spending on defence went up by 125% between 1930 and 1939. In the run up to the 2WW, we were running an even bigger deficit than today, but would never have won the battle of Britain if spending on defence had been sacrificed.

The point he's making, of course, is that we won't win the battle against climate change if we slash spending on it now.

And we need to make the case that not only are these cuts socially divisive, and environmentally disastrous, they are also economically completely illiterate.

The Ed Balls Bloomberg speech is something around which many progressives can unify - the speech where Balls made the case that it's through getting people back to work that we stand the best chance of addressing the deficit, through keeping people paying their taxes, rather than seeing tax revenue drain out of the economy, followed by redundancy payments and benefits payments.

But there's almost no discussion about the kind of work we envisage them doing, no debate about the kind of growth we need to see.

Yesterday, I spoke at a TUC conference which was entitled, without irony, Alliances for Green Growth.

Something about the alliteration seems to trick people into thinking the two ideas are compatible - green growth - it's like trade ministers talking about "free and fair trade", with no apparent recognition that just because free and fair start with the same letter, they're not the same things. Most free trade certainly isn't fair.

And if there is a form of growth which is genuinely green, genuinely sustainable, I'm not sure we know what it looks like yet.

So I think the challenge for progressives when it comes to the environment is to accept that our current economic system is economically and morally unsustainable. In other words, it only works by cheating future generations out of their birthright and by exploiting the vulnerable here and abroad.

So when we talk of a green recovery, we're not talking about a traditional economic recovery boosted by selling some home insulation or building some windmills.

We're not talking about business as usual, with a few green trimmings.

It's not about finding new products to sell, and sticking a green label on them.

We're talking about a recovery based on green principles and insights; one that is rooted in social justice and which balances our needs, against those of the developing world, the natural world, and those of future generations.

There's a lot of talk about fairness at the moment. Not just by the coalition government, who have stretched it to mind-boggling new limits, but now by the Equality and Human Rights Commission and their new report.

Yet there's very little debate about intergenerational fairness.

I'd argue that one of the fundamental challenges for progressive politics in the opening years of the twenty first century is that we haven't not yet come to terms with the full meaning of equality.

We have not properly thought through what it means, or how we can make it a reality.

And the reason for this is the way we have gone about forging a progressive consensus for the last 2 centuries.

Progressive politics have depended on ever rising economic growth and prosperity in order to bring about a redistribution of power.

And as the economy has grown, so elites have been persuaded to give up a little bit of their wealth and power.

They have accepted a little more taxation and redistribution; they have allowed political power to be spread a little more thinly.

That's not surprising. It's easier to ask people to take a smaller percentage of an ever growing cake.

But it has two consequences.

First, it gives the illusion of greater equality, while allowing for greater concentration of power and wealth in the hands of the few.

And so Britain can, after 13 years of a Labour government, be more unequal than before they came to power.

Second, the prosperity itself may be built on rotten foundations. Already, we in Britain consume three times more than the world can sustain on an equitable basis.

The growth that has paid for our welfare state is built on the exploitation of natural resources and on the exploitation of people here and around the world.

And so often with the best intentions, the pursuit of increased national economic growth and wealth as a means to promote equality carries with it the seeds of its own failure.

The heart of the problem is a failure of imagination.

We are all equal.

And equality does not stop at the borders of the UK. Nor does it stop with the present generation.

And those whose world we are destroying, whose precious resources we are burning up, whose species we are making extinct, whose seas we are poisoning, and whose beauty and tranquillity we are sacrificing - those who are yet to be born - we owe them just as much as those around us today.

In business terms, we are treating our capital as income.

We use up our resources and say we are better off.

In the real world, if a business does this, it will go bust. In the parallel world of economics, we are supposed to carry on like this forever.

We haven't considered that by any rational measure, we are becoming not richer, but poorer. That economic growth is becoming uneconomic.

We don't think of the consequences of our actions in years to come.

This is seen most clearly in the approach to climate change.

And here I get to the crux of what I want to say.

The challenge for progressive politicians is to grasp that an incremental approach to tackling climate change is doomed to fail.

That the next 8-10 years are going to be absolutely critical in terms of getting our emissions in the industrialised world to peak, and start to come down, and that if we don't act within that briefest of windows of opportunity, then the chances of avoiding the worst of the climate crisis get very much slimmer.

And that means fundamentally challenging our current growth model.

Yet the number of politicians or civil society organisations focused primarily on the implications of today's growth model remains tiny. Worse, millions of environmental campaigners seem to seriously believe that we can address climate change, slow the loss of threatened species and habitats, manage chronic water and resource shortages and put an end to over fishing and continuing soil erosion, whilst pursuing pretty much the same kind of economic growth that brought these natural systems to the edge of collapse in the first place.

In other words, the trade off appears to be to ignore the inevitable long-term consequences of business-as-usual growth in order to help to protect short term organisational effectiveness. It may make sense from a tactical point of view, but strategically it's unsustainable.

So how do we make this shift from incremental change to systemic reform?

How do we build that public and political momentum for change fast enough?

What chances are there for civil society organisations to coalesce around the challenge to make the case for a very different kind of economic model?

And what role for progressive politicians?

I look forward to the debate."

sheer bloody genius

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America's PFI plans are just as fucking wrong as the UK's

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Here's an excerpt from the awesome Matt Taibbi's new book. He details how America too has embraced the eructations of the Fucking Stupid Idea Box and engaged in its own version of Private Finance Initiatives. As with our own PFI deals, the idea is for authorities to lease or sell every asset they possibly can to unaccountable private entities who can then proceed to manage them in a tyrannically profit-grubbing fashion with complete disregard for the society that depends on the services and functions provided by those assets. Its classic corporate sociopathy backed by foreign investment entities with little or no love for America. A beautiful irony! I can't wait for some Tea Party spokesman to pop up and call Taibbi 'unamerican', 'an enemy of the state' or something else equally fucktarded for daring to detail how their ostensibly security-obsessed, ultra-nationalist and exceptionalist leaders have sold their country's assets to the Arabs for a fraction of their value.

Gods Bless America.

classical economics is not a science

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This contains a great critique of classical economics.

"The classical theorists gradually adopted the math and some of the terminology of science. Unfortunately, however, they were unable to incorporate into economics the basic self-correcting methodology that is science’s defining characteristic. Economic theory required no falsifiable hypotheses and demanded no repeatable controlled experiments. Economists began to think of themselves as scientists, while in fact their discipline remained a branch of moral philosophy—as it largely does to this day."

Fortunately, there are people out there prepared to criticise the absurd assumptions of classical economics and keen to develop their own theories through the application of scientific principles.


Another couple of great quotes from this interview:

"More troubling still is the assumption free-market economics makes about nature: that we don't need it. Because everything is theoretically substitutable for everything else, when we run out of nature, we'll just substitute technology. That, says [Joshua] Farley, is a religious belief, not a scientific one."

"In ecology, if your theory is not supported by real life, you change your theory. In economics, if your theory is not supported by real life, you try to come up with policy measures that change real life to make it a closer fit to your theory."

incredible interview with "the most hated man in Israel"

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This comes across as the most honest description of Israel I've read yet. There are so many painful insights into Israeli society.

"The facts are clear. Israel has no real intention of quitting the territories or allowing the Palestinian people to exercise their rights. No change will come to pass in the complacent, belligerent, and condescending Israel of today. This is the time to come up with a rehabilitation program for Israel."

Shorter Gareth Porter: "US is a fundamentally aggressive and exceptionalist entity"

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Interesting article, this:

"In his latest book, Washington Rules, historian Andrew Bacevich points to this largely un-discussed aspect of recent U.S. wars. The “Washington rules” to which the title refers are the basic principles of U.S. global policy that have been required beliefs for entrance into the U.S. political elite ever since the United States became a superpower. The three rules are U.S. global military presence, global projection of U.S. military power and the use of that power in one conflict after another. 

Bacevich suggests that personal and institutional interests bind the U.S. political elite and national security bureaucrats to that system of global military dominance. The politicians and bureaucrats will continue to insist on those principles, he writes, because they “deliver profit, power and privilege to a long list of beneficiaries: elected and appointed officials, corporate executives and corporate lobbyists, admirals and generals, functionaries staffing the national security apparatus, media personalities and policy intellectuals from universities and research organizations.” 

That description of the problem provides a key to understanding the otherwise puzzling serial denial by the political elite on Iraq and Afghanistan. It won’t do much good for anti-war people to demand an end to the war in Afghanistan unless they are also demanding an end to the underlying system that has now produced quasi-permanent American war."

Well, quite. Although I'm not sure what's so "undiscussed" about it.

how the hell did this guy get a PhD AND run for parliament?!?!?!

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A good article from The Indy. I love the idea of requiring MPs to engage with science ( David Tredinnick, you poisonous little sociopath) but I don't imagine for one second that it will change the way parliament works. It makes me wonder why Julian Huppert would want to be an MP anyway. Surely he doesn't think that a single semi-rational voice will make a difference in parliament?

algal biofuels DOH!

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Interesting piece of research from Cambridge suggests that the energy required to circulate algal cultures through the tubes of bioreactors will consume far more power than the cultures will yield. I'm a big fan of the concept of algal bioreactors and I think its disingenuous for New Scientist to have published this without considering the contribution to filling that power void that renewable technology could supply. Wind turbines are fairly inefficient things for converting wind to electricity but they are much better at converting wind to mechanical power, which could be harnessed to supply the necessary pumping. Obviously wind isn't reliable and so you could have a mix of backup technology such as photovoltaics and particularly biogas produced from the anaerobic fermentation of the organic mulch left over from biodiesel extraction.

The obvious problem is that all this adds greatly to the capital costs of the whole plant. However, as algal bioreactors will need to be situated near a source of CO2 to feed the cultures and preferably a source of grey water as well then locating water treatment works, conventional power stations and bioreactors together on the same site seems a "no-brainer" and this would lead to economies of scale and reduction in system duplication. This sort of integrated treatment/power generation site is clearly the way forward in sustainable technology. Combined with CHP technology and rubbish incineration a well-designed system could offer a complete sustainable technology hub for small to medium sized towns.

anonymous Israeli government "voices" consider Gaza to be part of Israel

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From the Jerusalem Post:

"Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said unequivocally on Sunday that Israel had no intention of apologizing, and one diplomatic source said Thursday there were voices inside the government saying that not only should Israel not apologize, but it should demand a Turkish apology for facilitating the dispatch of a ship with terrorist supporters who beat Israeli soldiers trying to protect its territorial sovereignty."

So, a ship carrying aid to Gaza had to be stopped to protect Israel's territorial sovereignty. No further analysis required.

manifest awesomenessss

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HOW fucking stupid?

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So an American friend on farcebook posted the following:

"So where are all the "Save the Gulf" concerts? Where are the TV benefits with celebrities and musicians giving heart felt speeches on the poorf ishermen, wildlife, beaches, loss of income and gulf economy? I find it rather strange how these people were so quick to help Haiti and other countries but sit on their backsides for this one. Repost if you agree!!!"

I didn't think it inappropriate to point out that Haiti is a failed state, as opposed to the largest economy in the world. Do you think I was being harsh?

Nup. Didn't think so.

sign this petition if you want to change things in this sordid mess of a country

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Little steps, people. Little steps.

Thatcher fucked the kids

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By Frank Turner.

Skeptical Voter Wiki

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Anyone who feels policy should be based on nothing but evidence will be chuffed silly to see this.

Awesome!

now I'm back . . .

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. . . and missing the empty beaches, warm, tropical seas full of fantastic animals and entertaining locals I need something to cheer me up.

TA DAAAA:

ALL LIONFISH MUST DIE

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I am currently enjoying a well-earned holiday in the Caribbean. I say "holiday"- its more of a busman's. I am staying with biologist friends tagging sharks, spearing lionfish and generally enjoying the tropical scientist's lifestyle. Back once I've killed all the lionfish in the area.

Here's some photos to make you jealous:

Doctor Punkscience, at your service.

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My viva voce lasted 3 hours and I've got only minor corrections to make. Ergo, I rule. On with the world saving.

viva voce

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I've got my PhD viva tomorrow. I'm going through my thesis and feel really sorry for the examiners because I can't write concisely or clearly for toffee. Regular visitors to punkscience will be aware of this and I apologise for it. Its just not something I've ever really aspired to and it really shows in my work. That's not to say I'm not a good scientist. I am. I'm fucking awesome! I can communicate my work very eloquently and clearly- just not in the formal written style that all science is documented in.

This is a problem I need to address because being a good scientist these days is simply not going to get you a job. You have to be a self-publicist and prolifically so in all sorts of media- not just peer-reviewed journals. I don't approve of this. There are so many examples of boundaries being smashed apart as a result of people ignoring this paradigm and concentrating on research instead of wanking their egos that I can't begin to motivate myself to 'play the game.'

Anyway, instead of wasting time writing badly here I'm going to go back to pondering the bad writing in my thesis. I will leave you with some relevant ponderings from Dr Jim. Who is awesome.

state of the planet

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Here is a powerful article from Nature to kick-start a decade of science-led world-saving. The diagram reproduced below shows nine planetary systems: climate change; rate of biodiversity loss (terrestrial and marine); interference with the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles; stratospheric ozone depletion; ocean acidification; global freshwater use; change in land use; chemical pollution; and atmospheric aerosol loading. Safe thresholds for each system are indicated by the green ring and the current state of each system is illustrated by the size of the red wedge. As you can see, we have already exceeded the safe thresholds for biodiversity loss, the nitrogen cycle and climate change.


So there you have it: A concise and heavily evidenced review of the state of the planet in one of the most prestigious journals. Everyone should have to read this. Ignorance is a crime.