Vivat Libertas

So I've kind of left this blog to gather dust over the summer. Between actual uni work, travelling all over Britain to sing in different choirs, and grieving over losing family, I've had bigger things to think about. Sorry to my mum and the 0.5 of a person who reads this website. But now it's September. The leaves are turning red and gold and brown and the weather is very definitely confirming that yes, it's autumn now and you need to wrap up warm. The kids are back at school, as are the grumpy, angsty adolescents. And tomorrow the first proper week of lectures starts. The lecturers are drilling us with rhetoric about how hard second year is. It's not exactly subtle, but I've fucked up enough to learn that I need to work damn hard and damn efficiently. What's more, this year is really important; not only does it cover the deep core of practical skills and the foundations of my degree, but it also determines whether I get to stay on my MPhys course - and w...

I am feeling determined. On tumblr I see posts every day about how girls want to starve their beautiful precious bodies to look better or wear that crop top or those thigh high socks and it hurts me inside and it makes me angry and sad that we have a society where people destroying their bodies is so common. Once upon a time I was a small girl with a big belly who felt sad because no boys would go for her and craved male attention. I got male attention, I got it all over my thighs and my bum and they laughed at me and called me a slut but still I felt unloved and unworthy of love. I stopped looking, but when I stopped looking I found someone I really love and even that did not fix me, because humans do not fix each other, they fix themselves. I stopped eating and my belly shrank flat and my ribs protruded and my mind broke. I am still scared, so scared, of going back to that place. I grew bigger, back to a healthy weight, back to stretch marks and daily exercise and going to ...

I wasn't intending to publish anything until at least September, because I have actual work to actually do - both academic essays and my hustling paying off. But this wouldn't get out of my head. Back in March an author called Tim Lott published a column on Comment is Free railing against left-wing purism . Certain sections of twitter promptly reacted with disgust that's actually still ongoing, questioning why Comment is Free would ever publish such trash (this is the same Comment is Free that's had notorious transphobe Julie Bindel writing for it, by the way, and that spawned an entire tumblr parodying its weirder articles , so I'm frankly not too surprised). That is easily answered: hello, he's a reasonably notable writer who works for the Guardian. Also, assuming the Guardian has employees who actually know about the internet, they know an article like this will generate lots of discussion, debate and clicky clicky linky linky. Which means more ad revenue...

There is a very appealing concept sold by the positive living industry: the critical positivity ratio, or the Losada line. First published in 2005 by the psychologists Marcial Losada and Barbara Fredrickson, their paper uses nonlinear dynamical modelling to show that people need a ratio of just three positive interactions to one negative one to live happier, healthier lives. It's a brilliant idea, combining mathematical legitimacy and common sense into one weird old tip for being happier. What a shame, then, that it's also complete bollocks. The critical positivity ratio was debunked by Nick Brown, a graduate student in applied positive psychology, Alan Sokal, a physicist most famous for trolling the journal Social Text  by writing complete shit and getting it published, and the psychologist Harris Friedman. There were severe flaws in the theory - for example, in several of Losada's analyses the data used did not meet the basic criteria for using differential equations ...

Philae may have moved – and Rosetta will start to look south Noooooo!

Researchers Create A Computer That Works Using Water | IFLScience This is amazing!

Pseudoscience And Conspiracy Theory Are Not Victimless Crimes Against Science | IFLScience

Wave motion shows how bird flocks have to be just the right size - life - 03 June 2015 - New Scientist This is cool.

Scientists Want To Put A Blimp In Venus's Atmosphere | IFLScience Well, not quite. Next year NASA will be hosting the New Frontiers competition to design the best unmanned mission to do with comet surface sample return, a Saturn probe, a sample return from Aitken Basin on the moon, a Venus lander (because they always work so well...), or a Trojan asteroid tour and rendezvous probe (think Rosetta). Personally, I'm pretty sceptical of the Venusian blimp. I think corrosive gases might end up eating away at an awful lot of it. What do you think?

No S#!t Study: Scientists Find That Conspiracy Theorists Will Pretty Much Believe Anything You Tell Them | IFLScience This should surprise pretty much nobody. I wonder if I now get to tell them "wake up, sheeple!"...