Tag: science

Aeon

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Now feels like a good time to plug a favourite website of mine. Aeon is all about ideas and when you read though the titles of the different articles they publish, the mind illuminates with excitement. They generally publish essays and short videos. The essays are usually three to four thousand words and of a high enough level not to be considered light reading. For this reason I can get a bit lazy as I know it will involve a certain amount of mind effort to read one. It is things like this that allow me to realise that my use of the internet doesn’t go much further than looking at football, politics, buying things and generally killing time and shutting off my brain. The internet is the greatest invention and has the potential to revolutionise society on scale not obvious since the printing press and I use it to kill time and shut my brain off. I know I’m not alone in this. Humans are ridiculous.

Aeon then involves a little effort, if you’re me, but it is well worth it. They used to also publish Ideas that were usually around the one thousand word mark which my short attention span was more suited to but they unfortunately seem to have done away with them recently. They publish essays on philosophy, science, history, psychology, law, nature, education and every sub category within.

For example this is an article on Ashoka Maurya who was an Indian Emperor over two thousand years ago. Seeing first hand the horror of warfare he creating ‘an infrastructure of goodness’ which also included the spread of the teachings of Siddhattha Gotama – the Buddha – and changed the face of the Indian continent in the process.

This is an article on the spread of pathogens throughout history, from The Black Death to polio, and how they’re generally spread silently by the seemingly healthy.

This article discusses free will and determinism, using our understanding of the sometime random actions of molecules to give some answers to this age old argument.

This is an essay on the concept of ‘hysterical women’, how women’s pain is often medically overlooked and undertreated but that ‘believing all women’ is not necessarily the answer and oversimplifies the issue.

This discusses how not only is privatising public services bad economics but also how it undermines our social and political bonds as a community.

And finally this is an article about how fish are nothing at all like us but that they are sentient beings and that they finally deserve a real place in our moral community.

Ultimately these are just a few examples of articles they publish and even then they’re only the ones I’m drawn to. There’s a little of everything for everyone. I mention Aeon because they’re not a massive publishing or news company, they don’t have adverts all over their website and they produce really interesting work. It’s online magazines like this that people need to be made aware of in these times of sensationalism and factual inaccuracy.

Just because I can I’m attaching a video of sea life in the Ningaloo Canyons off Western Australia. The video is on YouTube but is from Aeon, or at least that’s were I found it. There is also a video on the creation of the police force by Robert Peel in 1829 and what that has meant for society up to the present day. Enjoy the fish for now though.

Social Media Salesmen

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

One particular bonus of delivering bread is that you get the opportunity to listen to a lot of podcasts. This week I discovered a new one called The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread which aims to prove or, more likely I suspect, disprove the claims behind certain fads and those made on behalf of products. They discuss things such as noise cancelling headphones, teeth whitening and 24-hour sunscreen. The two episodes I have listened to so far have been on CBD oil and caffeine shampoo. It turns out the claims made on behalf of them don’t quite stack up. The caffeine in the shampoo is apparently supposed to stimulate the hair growth but these claims it appears are not sufficiently backed up scientifically, the benefits if any are from the act of massaging the scalp and follicles. The oil was interesting because I have bought it myself in the past and was sure that while it was very subtle, there was certainly a more relaxed and calm feeling to my mind after a few weeks of use. It turns out it may have been a placebo of sorts but not that CBD doesn’t actually have that affect. Apparently to get the benefits made in the claims such as easing anxiety, depression and even heart disease you need to take a lot higher doses than the bottles can possibly prescribe. So the claims while being accurate to a degree are slightly misleading.

I heard first about CBD in random conversations, although at that point people were still talking about oils which contained both CBD and THC, the ingredient which provides the psychoactive qualities. In the last few years, coinciding especially with legalising of hemp and marijuana in the United States, CBD oil has gone viral. In the episode they discuss CBD chocolate, effervescent bath bombs and even infused leggings. I can imagine uber-hipsters wearing them while doing yoga and feeling all kinds of good about themselves. I bought some oil about eighteen months to two years ago just when people were really getting excited. I was most likely convinced to buy by all the positive stories I read on Facebook in articles, memes and others comments. Ultimately we were sharing advertising with each other, we were unconsciously doing the advertising; being both the process and the recipient. While it does provide useful services, social media is more and more becoming little other than an advertising platform. We spot the obvious sponsored posts but the smart ones are those which manage to integrate themselves into all the real ideas, science and news going around. This is just another front of the Fake News concept which in itself already feels like a tired old trope. It seems obvious and it is but sometimes it’s worth seeing and understanding social media from another angle. We’re not just selling ourselves but everything and to everyone.

A Confused Narrative

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

This morning one of those confusing moments that don’t fit comfortably in narratives happened. I read an article on Dominic Cummings interfering with the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies which is supposed to be an independent group that advises government on scientific matters. They are self-described as apolitical and therefore will advise without government policy in mind, simply focusing on the purity of their advice. This is contentious because throughout this whole Covid-19 pandemic in the UK politicians have always stressed they are simply following the latest scientific advice. This scientific advice then can not be independent and uncorrupted if the Prime Ministers Chief Advisor and the man actually suspected of being in charge has also been sitting in on and interfering with these meetings. This would imply that the independent advice these politicians are following is in fact their own advice just repackaged in a lab coat. The article goes on to criticise Cummings for interfering and while government says it is normal for advisors to observe, it is actually anything but and Cummings was doing anything but observe.

Now then where is this issue with narrative and why the cold sweat as I realised I didn’t know which box to fit this all in. The government has been accused repeatedly of dithering and being too slow in shutting down major events and the country on the whole. This is not an inaccurate statement to make. As would be the one that they prioritised the economy over peoples lives. Cummings is criticised for accusations that he believed attempting to create some kind of herd immunity would be the best plan even if it meant some people would die. The article also suggests that he was pushing the scientists to recommend the country go into lockdown. He is criticised in the piece for doing this and accused of interfering and manipulating the situation. Ultimately it appears to be a critical piece on him and Bloomberg Press is a centrist organisation so any political leanings are not immediately obvious.

Which leads to my confusion. He has been criticised for interfering. The government have been criticised for being too slow. His interfering was to push for the country to go into lockdown. The Government though never appeared overly keen on shutting everything down. If he wanted the country shut down it doesn’t tally with his desire for herd immunity. The piece could therefore be an attempt to portray him as the man responsible for saving the day and implementing lockdown but it criticises him throughout. Critical for herd immunity and for interfering to achieve lockdown seems in my eyes to be contradictory. Narratives have been blown wide open and I have no idea what is going on. I’m having to think independently of pre-conceived ideas and it hurts. Lazy journalism? Confusing reality? Narratives accidentally being crossed? Me lost? At least one of those is true. Potentially all of them. Probably all of them.