A man who suffered severe brain damage after being given the MMR vaccine as a baby has been awarded £90,000 in a landmark ruling expected to pave the way for thousands of similar compensation claims.
Robert Fletcher, 18, was a healthy 13-month-old baby when he was given the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. He now [...]
Posts under ‘Science’
MMR
Marie Who?
Two-thirds of the British public are unable to name a single famous female scientist, according to an ICM poll.
The same survey, organised by the Royal Society, revealed that 90% of 18-24 year-olds could not name a female scientific figure - either current or historical.
Almost half were able to name at least one famous male scientist, [...]
Frankenstein
“It proved a wet, ungenial summer”, Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, “and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house”. Amongst other subjects, the conversation turned to the experiments of the 18th-century natural philosopher and poet Erasmus Darwin, who was said to have animated dead matter, and to galvanism and the feasibility of [...]
Islamic Science.
Muhammad ibn Zakariyā Rāzī (Mohammad-e Zakariā-ye Rāzi: Persian: محمد زکریای رازی), known as Rhazes or Rasis after medieval Latinists, (August 26, 865, Rey – 925, Rey) was a Persian physician, alchemist and chemist, philosopher, and scholar. He is recognised as a polymath, and Biographies of Razi, based on his writings, describe him as “perhaps the [...]
Pigs in space!
The [squares] are mine.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a recent interview that his “foremost” mission as the head of America’s space exploration agency is to improve relations with the Muslim world.
[fuck me rigid - you told Edwin Aldrin that? He has a rep for chinning cunts like you.]
Though international diplomacy would seem [...]
The Day the Shed Died.
Older readers may well recall having built a little radio as a kid to listen to Radio Luxembourg or the various pirate stations way back when.
Of course I have built a radio and indeed an FM transmitter (part of 1st year university lab work) and I know full well how simple radios actually are [...]
Positively Romantic
I guess it breaks the ice on a blind date to have something in common.
That’s a really bad idea. You see if you end up getting jiggy then the two of you won’t be the only ones. There shall be a whole orifice microbe party going on and exchanging genes.
Then of course there [...]
Holy ferrous whale shit Batman!
Sperm whales fight global warming with carbon-neutral faeces
No, I didn’t see that line coming either. Somebody has clearly shifted an infinite number of capuchins and an infinite number of old Remingtons into Hilbert’s Hotel (a bit like Fawlty Towers but with many, many more episodes).
Southern Ocean sperm whales have emerged as an unexpected ally in [...]
Scale
Now this is cool.
H/T Australian Climate Madness
Climate policy
Can anyone tell me why the Royal Society has an official position on anything, anything at all? Maybe apart from what time to start lunch?
Synthia
So has Craig Ventor finally made the first steps into artificial life?
I don’t know because I only understand a bit of molecular biology and stuff.
But this looks like it’s going to be fun…
Of course, the usual suspects have crawled out of their yurts to raise Cain over geniis out of bottles, Pandora’s box, and [...]
Holy Fellatio Batman!
Abstract
Oral sex is widely used in human foreplay, but rarely documented in other animals. Fellatio has been recorded in bonobos Pan paniscus, but even then functions largely as play behaviour among juvenile males. The short-nosed fruit bat Cynopterus sphinx exhibits resource defence polygyny and one sexually active male often roosts with groups of females in [...]
Tom Lehrer on Sociology
Just because you use numbers and Greek letters don’t make it science. I call it “Physics Envy”. Feynman was also very sound on the science-ing up of socio/political/economic issues. He was very firm that science is not a socio-moral force. He’d say that, “Love is not a science” but that isn’t saying anything against love. [...]
The Script of the Tiger
Just about exactly 15 years ago today I sat my last exam at the University of Nottingham. I was on fire by then - wired on talent and the self-belief of youth. I only took what I needed. 20 Marlboro, a lighter, a mechanical pencil and 35cl of pre-frozen Smirnoff.
It was a fluids exam. [...]
Worth
Now we have this race obsessed dickhead:
I’m all for a bit less Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin, Galileo and Copernicus, if it means a bit more McCoy, Banneker and Carver. It’s a question of balance. It’s important.
So, this bloke Muir wants us to study the scientists of the past based on their race? Their skin [...]