Scargill

Archive for April, 2009

Eh… what? Has Peter lost the plot? Biology lessons?

No actually. As someone who long ago gave up hoping I’d ever learn anything sensible on TV, it’s become a bit of a hobby scouring the web for stuff that makes me think, that gives a new perspective – on the other hand I’m lazy – it has to do this without too much effort.

As someone who took biology for, erm a year I think, I’ve never really thought too much about bacteria – phrases like “single-cell gloop” come to mind generally – responsible for diseases – and also keeping our guts in good order… but that’s about it.  But some time ago when sitting in a hotel, bored, I started to wonder how something as simple as a bacteria actually managed to do such orchestrated damage… and so out came GOOGLE and I ended up as I so often do, looking to see what’s on offer at TED… and hit pay dirt.

Bonnie Bassler has managed to explain in a short talk how bacteria communicate. It’s not technical, not gobbledegook and if you take the time to listen to her short talk, it is INCREDIBLY enlightening and offers hope for the most amazing developments in the future.

REALLY worth watching…

When I started watching this (and having just learned all about Obama’s lack-lustre plan for so-called “high speed” trains) I must admit I did so expecting it to be another loser – we’ve no intrastructure for electric cars, range is limited etc… but really – this fellow is worth listening to – and it would seem he has the ear of politicians…

Maybe I’m just getting TOO OLD for this – or maybe I can see something that the pathetically out of date BBC and others just can’t handle in their golden years.
Here’s an example: Lily Allen has produced, as anyone who has not been in a cave in Spain for the last year knows, an INCREDIBLY catchy record called “The Fear”
For those of you who have not yet discovered mankind’s best-kept secret, SPOTIFY (I know – great service, pity about the name) in which FOR FREE you can listen to most songs as long as you don’t mind an advert every 30 minutes… lets you listen to various versions of many songs – including the delusionary edited versions, the BBC versions, the originals – you name it…

Here is “The Fear” by Lily Allen

Try listening to it, say 3 times by which time you should be totally hooked or you are perhaps DEAF… OH and did you notice she happens to SWEAR a couple of times??
Well the BBC have and so have others because in their completely out of touch state, various publishers have ALTERED the music so it misses the swearing out or even CHANGES them DESPITE the fact that it is completely in context, humorous and musical.

So it’s ok to broadcast 24 and a TON of other UK and AMERICAN shows in which people are shot, dismembered, tortured, reduced to an animal state and otherwise treated to personal ARMAGEDDON – but FRACK-ME as they say on Galactica – don’t let our children hear a pop-star swear!!!

So these kids who are to be protected from this onslaught of immoral words – they don’t go to school? They don’t watch YouTube?.. they never see SKY channels that are all about SEX late at night and yet which are NOT password-protected and they have CERTAINLY not heard of Google?

Let’s get our priorities right – killing people is BAD, damaging people is BAD, stealing is BAD, vandalism is BAD… but using a few colourful words in context…. please!