Darwin Day Lecture 2016 — pics!

Here are my pics taken at this year's Darwin Day Lecture given by Professor Jerry A. Coyne, at Logan Hall, Institute of Education, University College London:



The BHA's video of the event can be found here:

https://youtu.be/sazo1J4Zsj4

Prof. Steve Jones on The Life Scientific

Today I listened to a delightful conversation between Jim Al-Khalili and geneticist Steve Jones, on the former's BBC Radio 4 programme The Life Scientific. It's over a week since it was broadcast, but all episodes are available as mp3 downloads from the BBC website. I've seen Prof. Steve Jones "in the flesh" a number of times — first as part of last year's Uncaged Monkeys tour at the Basingstoke Anvil, and more recently at this year's QED, after which he stepped in to introduce his former pupil Adam Rutherford when he gave the Darwin Day Lecture at Congress Hall in London.

This half-hour conversation is a low-key affair, with many insights into what it's like to be a research scientist. Steve Jones made a surprising point about mediocre science being worthwhile despite its mediocrity. There were also comments from Jerry Coyne, with whom Steve Jones worked. Fascinating stuff.

Download the mp3 audio here:
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/tls/tls_20120807-0930c.mp3

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes:
itpc://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/tls/rss.xml
...or other podcatcher:
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/tls/rss.xml

The website for The Life Scientific is here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01lhfs5

Adam Rutherford's Darwin Day lecture — pictures

Given that I've started to post my photographs of QEDcon it's about time I got round to posting some of my previous pictures. So here are those I took at this year's Darwin Day lecture. I won't reiterate what Adam Rutherford said as I've already talked about it on Skepticule Extra, and if you want to hear (and see) the lecture yourself there are links below.

My pictures:
http://flic.kr/s/aHsjyDPEct


Watch the lecture here:
http://youtu.be/VEsK6hZjOcQ


Or listen to the audio only, but complete with introductions and Q&A:
http://poddelusion.co.uk/blog/2012/02/13/darwin-day-lecture-2012/


Enjoy!

My QED 2012 experience — part 1

For me the stand-out features of QED this year were the range of speakers and the socialising. Unlike last year I didn't stay at the conference hotel so I had to carry everything for the day with me — which turned out to be a raincoat and a fairly large camera bag. These, I'm happy to report, didn't impede me much.

Like last year I arrived on Friday, catching an earlier train than I'd expected from Euston, and took my time ambling from my lodging to the Mercure Piccadilly Hotel for a relaxed meal before the Mixer, which was scheduled for 8 but seemed to be in full swing some time before that. By 8, however, wandering through the packed bar area was like swimming through a sea of skeptic celebrities. It's not called the Mixer for nothing and is one of the things that makes QED special. Whether or not they had read Hayley Stevens' blog, many people seemed to be taking her advice about talking to 'strangers'.

As for the event itself, I shall blog about it in short bursts, with photographs:



On Saturday, after Andy Wilson's official opening — not much more than a welcome and some housekeeping, Deborah Hyde kicked off with the historical context of the werewolf myth. Being the first speaker at an international conference can be, I imagine, a bit daunting, but Deborah displayed no sign of nerves even as her microphone was replaced or adjusted only seconds into her talk. Last year's first speaker was Bruce Hood, and I seem to remember he did take a few minutes (though not many) to get into his stride.

Deborah's talk was a new one, though she had given us a sneak preview at Portsmouth Skeptics in the Pub about a month earlier. In her QED talk she outlined the popular myths, and how it might have been reasonable, given the context and specific examples, to believe that werewolves were real. Bringing the myth down to earth, she included some real wolves.



Next was Steve Jones, explaining what is meant by natural selection — immediately illustrating the diversity of speakers and topics at this year's QED: from an investigation into the historical basis of popular myths we had moved on to why evolution, as understood by Charles Darwin (though he never used the word in his Origin of Species), is an undirected process. The example Steve used was the generation of effective shapes for nozzles used in the industrial manufacture of powder, by applying random but small variations to successively more effective shapes, thus refining the efficiency and durability of the nozzles without knowing precisely why they work. It's apparently an engineering technique still in use today.



The last speaker before lunch was David Aaronovitch. I was particularly keen to hear what he had to say as I attended the CFI Conspiracy Theories day at Conway Hall, at which David was scheduled to speak, but he had to withdraw due to ill health. So I was not entirely pleased when he began by announcing that his talk would be completely new and unike any of his previous talks. Nevertheless it was lively and off the cuff — conspiracy theories are everywhere so it's not as if there's a dearth of material — and well worth hearing. He spoke mostly about the conspiracy theory that's grown up around the affair of Dominique Strauss-Kahn — that the allegations against him of attempted rape are part of a sting organised by the French government (or more particularly by factions loyal to Nicolas Sarkozy).

After an equally lively Q&A session it was time for lunch. Topics had already ranged far and wide. More next time.

(Click here for part 2.)

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This is my 600th blogpost. I thought you'd like to know.

Adam Rutherford and the creation of life

Tomorrow evening I'll be at the annual Darwin Day Lecture held by the British Humanist Association. This year it will be delivered by Adam Rutherford:

I attended last year's lecture by Armand Leroi, which was excellent, so I'm looking forward to hearing what, if anything, Adam Rutherford has to say about "Creation". He's known to be provocative when it comes to matters of religious faith, so depending on the audience make-up the Q&A (if there is one) could be lively.

Uncaged Monkeys at the Anvil, Basingstoke

"So what's this Uncaged Monkeys thing you're going to see then? Is it a band?"

"No, it's not a band."

"A play?"

"No, it's ... science. And comedy."

"Oh. That sounds —"

"By the people in Radio Four's The Infinite Monkey Cage. You heard of that?"

"Er, no."

"Well, they just got a Sony Award."

It may have been different, geeky, at times hilarious and at other times intensely moving. It may not be the usual fare at the Basingstoke Anvil, but it filled pretty well all of the hall's 1400 seats.

Robin Ince started the show off, casting some aspersions on Professor Brian Cox — whom he claimed never listened to the introductions so he could say what he liked. Then it was time for TV's Professor Wonder Boy to wow us with potted particle physics. He hit us with the Higgs boson, and claimed that particle accelerators were always built near airports in order to give them a sense of perspective. In a generally reassuring manner he touched on the likelihood of the Large Hadron Collider destroying the Earth, using a technical term that I forget — though I remember it was four letters beginning and ending in "t". (There was also a "w" and an asterisk in it somewhere). He showed us a graphic of government funding, challenging us to locate the spend on scientific research. He pointed out the bill for the bank bail-out, and that it was greater than the amount spent on science ... since Jesus. And he did the Big Bang.

Ben Goldacre chased his wild hair and oscillating eyebrows around the stage, with tales of placebos, big pharma and fish oil pills, and he showed us a picture of his cat Henrietta, plus a certificate of her medical qualifications — the same qualifications claimed by nutritionist Gillian McKeith. Great mirth ensued, but the stuff about big pharma was actually quite worrying.

Steve Jones talked about evolution, illustrating natural selection with something from his own early career as an engineer. His example was a process of converting a liquid to a powder by forcing it at high pressure through metal nozzles. Apparently these nozzles used to corrode and become ineffective very quickly. Rather than try to work out the best shape for these nozzles, the designers used a form of random mutation, making ten copies, each slightly — but randomly — different from the original. These copies then were tested, and best one was then randomly mutated ten times and then those copies were tested. After several cycles of such random mutation and selection, they ended up with a nozzle that lasted 100 times longer than the original, but no-one knew why.

Simon Singh electrocuted a gherkin on stage, which was highly illuminating (literally, though what it would taste like after that, he didn't say). Of such insights is the scientific knowledge regarding the size and the age of the universe derived. And he too did the Big Bang. He ended with the story of his somewhat pedantic insistence on the accuracy of song lyrics, which is appropriate because we were also entertained by Helen Arney, who sang to us while playing the ukele.

There was a session during which Robin Ince passed on tweeted questions to Ben Goldacre, Brian Cox and Simon Singh. (There is also a podcast — Free Primates — in which the Uncaged Monkeys answer questions they didn't have time to deal with on stage.)

Naturally the show could not pass without several mentions of Carl Sagan, of whom both Robin Ince and Brian Cox are declared fans. Sagan's Pale Blue Dot brought the proceedings to a moving close.

Altogether it was a splendidly enjoyable evening, and I saw the whole thing close up as I was on the front row. What I should have realised is that the Anvil is the nearest venue for many of those people who attend Winchester Skeptics in the Pub, as well as the fledgling Portsmouth Skeptics in the Pub. Several were indeed attending, and I was pleased to be able to join some of them for a curry after the show.