As I sit here pondering on the aching stupidity of humanity as a whole, where a minority of idiots were threatening to burn books, others then started burning flags and no one appeared to realise that a small widely reported group of people are not, in fact, representative of entire nations or faith groups as a whole , I also find myself bereft of time to devote to as much writing as I’d like.
(a fact maybe not lost on the 5 or so of you who ever read this)
A situation I hope to dig myself out of fairly soon though.
It seems my initial optimism at writing something roughly fortnightly was misplaced, as I have a fairly busy calendar at the moment, what with a full time job, a part time MSc and a few other commitments (this, of course, includes going out socially drinking from time to time).
I have a number of things on my mind at the moment, and would have liked to explore them a bit more and write something vaguely meaningful or at least, better thought-out and more entertaining, but, well, meh. You can have a think about them yourself if I set you in their direction.
Report back to me in a weeks time.
1) Vince Cable (Our shiny new Business Secretary) suggests, as part of the governments cost cuttings and savings plans, that he might want to cut the 46% of government funded research not considered “World Class”. A disingenuous wording, presumably used deliberately to mislead, since this 46% is made up of research thus catagorised here. In fact you can see all of the data here too.
I have a number of issues with this since I feel that science and technology have the potential to be the biggest contributer to our future prosperity, and cutting back on basic (or non-basic) research is likely to drastically hamper our futures.
It’s not always clear where basic research will lead us, sometimes it may be of no use, sometimes we just don’t appreciate the use of it. Few people thought laser technology was particularly useful at first, now they’re used widely in communication, manufacturing and a host of other useful scientific applications.
2) (Related to 1) I’d also like to find out how much scientific and technological industries contribute to the GDP of our small isle/s. I’ve heard that a mere 0.25% of our GDP is invested in science (including medical), and 6.4% of our GDP comes from (just) physics based industry. Notice the difference? With more investment we could be truly world leading. Not with less.
I think it was Brain Cox who said this.
If you can find more real numbers rather than my anecdotal ones, I’d love to see them!
3) The (potential) role of commercial scientific enterprises (big pharma etc) in science communication to the publics in general. Not just marketing and PR, and how such an endeavor could, if ever, be made bereft of bias (both real and perceived) and mis-trust from the publics.
Well, that’s me for now. I have food to go eat. It’s all about priorities.
I’m going to be aiming for at least one sensible, thought out, bit of writing for you a month. Maybe peppered with nonsensical none-sense in between.
Anyway, I expect your homework on my desk next week, or I’ll be writing a letter to your parents.
G
