Tuesday, 16 August 2011
Most Australians duped by science fiction
More than three-quarters of Australians believe microscopic life has been found on other planets and almost half believe humans can be frozen and thawed back to life, despite neither being true.
These are some of the findings from a survey of 1,250 people commissioned by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO).Called Fact or Fiction, the survey was conducted as part of National Science Week 2011 to assess whether Australians can separate what is happening in the "real world" from what we see and read in science fiction.
The survey asked people whether eight scientific technologies seen in feature films, such as light sabres, invisibility cloaks or hover boards, were science fact or fiction.
ANSTO's Discovery Centre Visitors Centre team leader Rod Dowler says the results were a surprise.
"This survey has confirmed that willingly or not, we believe in science fiction movies more than we realise," he said.
Only one-quarter of respondents were aware that it is possible to grow an eye in a dish, although 44 per cent correctly believe flying cars exist.
But it is not all bad news.
While many of us might dream of being able to travel through time, more than 90 per cent of survey respondents correctly identified it as still being in the realm of science fiction. A similar survey in Birmingham, United Kingdom, found 30 per cent of respondents thought time travel was possible.
Who wants to live forever?
The survey also revealed the older we are, the longer we want to live, with 46.3 per cent of respondents aged 65 years or more listing "reversing the ageing cycle" in the top three areas of science they would like investigated, compared to only 13.2 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds.
Despite this, only 10 per cent of those surveyed wanted science to discover the secret for immortality.
According to Mr Dowler, three-quarters of respondents said they were interested in science, with most receiving their information from television news stories. Only 6 per cent sourced their information from science magazines and 3 per cent from science centres.
Last year, a survey commissioned by the Australian Federation of Scientific and Technological Societies found 30 per cent of Australians thought dinosaurs and humans co-existed and one-quarter believed the Earth took a day to orbit the Sun.
Mr Dowler says despite the potential for science fiction to blur the line between reality and fiction, it serves a very useful purpose.
"Science [fiction] films can be very inspirational to scientists and the general public, getting more people interested in science and setting the bar for the types of technology we would like in the future," he said.
Darren Osborne @'ABC'
It may be the lucky country, but it's certainly not the intelligent country obvs. Thank heavens we have people who can ride bicycles...
David Cameron's solution for broken Britain: tough love and tougher policing
Thousands more police officers are to undergo riot training, it emerged on Monday, as David Cameron pledged to tackle 120,000 of the country's most "troubled families" as part of the coalition's "social and security fightback" against the "slow-motion moral collapse" of Britain.
The prime minister ruled out race, poverty and spending cuts as factors behind last week's riots, but showed signs of wanting to look deeper into their causes by acceding to Labour's demands for a public inquiry.
As part of the "security fightback" section of the government's response, the home secretary, Theresa May, wrote to Sir Denis O'Connor, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary, asking for clearer guidance for forces on their preparations to tackle riots. Senior officers complained that they did not have sufficient number of officers trained in riot control to respond immediately to last week's events, but Home Office sources confirmed on Monday night that they now expected a massive expansion in riot training for the police as a result of May's request.
"I have asked him to provide clearer guidance to forces about the size of deployments, the need for mutual aid, pre-emptive action, public order tactics, the number of officers trained in public order policing, and appropriate arrests policy," the home secretary is to announce on Tuesday in a speech detailing the "security fightback".
As part of the "social fightback", Cameron had a tough-love message for 120,000 of the UK's most "troubled families". He set himself the rigid target of the next election to put all of them through some kind of family-intervention programme.
In a speech setting out his analysis of what led to the riots, Cameron highlighted those families across the UK who were dealing with multiple complex social health and economic problems. Lifting them out of extreme worklessness would be regarded as a measure of his success in his wider agenda of fixing Britain's broken society, he said. Cameron said he would now put "rocket boosters" on attempts to rehabilitate those 120,000.
Speaking at a youth centre in his Witney constituency in Oxfordshire, the prime minister said: "The broken society is back at the top of my political agenda … I have an ambition, before the end of this parliament, we will turn around the lives of 120,000 most troubled families … we need more urgent action on the families that some people call 'problem', others call 'troubled'. The ones everyone in their neighbourhood knows and often avoids."
He said would ask the chief executive of an organisation called Action for Employment, Emma Harrison, who he appointed his "families champion" in December, to use her current experience in dealing with 500 troubled families in three pilot areas to overcome the bureaucratic problems that have prevented the rapid expansion of Labour's similar families intervention programme, which has been running since 2006.
A former coalition government adviser, Dame Claire Tickell, head of Action for Children, which runs some family intervention projects, later told BBC Radio 4 that she was concerned about funding for the intervention. Ringfencing was scrapped last May.
In 2008 Gordon Brown promised to target "more than 110,000 problem families with disruptive young people". The latest official figures show that, in 2009-10, only 3,518 families were actually in the intervention programme and it has helped only 7,300 families since being set up in 2006.
While the intent of Cameron's pledge received cautious cross-party support, Labour echoed Tickell's concerns and doubted whether it could be funded.
Matt Cavanagh, of the Institute for Public Policy Research, and one of the Labour advisers who helped draft the policy when Labour was in power, suggested it would require £100m a year over the next four years. He said: "Local authorities used to part-fund [these programmes] but the government has dismantled all the ringfences and given LAs more autonomy in their reduced budgets. The result for problem family programmes has been neglect and confusion, as ministers now seem to admit."
While the government said it would be making available £200m from the European Social Fund to help fund the target, the rest will come from the early intervention grant, which is to be cut by 11% by 2012 and has funding for Sure Start, teenage pregnancy and youth centres to meet. Labour said Sure Start had been cut by 20% while more than 30 had closed.
A government source acknowledged that using these resources to fund Cameron's new target could vary around the country. They said: "It is for local authorities and their partners, including the voluntary sector, to decide how much they wish to prioritise on families with multiple problems in their area."
Alan Travis and Allegra Stratton @'The Guardian'
Full Transcript
Love the background you chose to deliver yr speech in front of Dave...
The prime minister ruled out race, poverty and spending cuts as factors behind last week's riots, but showed signs of wanting to look deeper into their causes by acceding to Labour's demands for a public inquiry.
As part of the "security fightback" section of the government's response, the home secretary, Theresa May, wrote to Sir Denis O'Connor, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary, asking for clearer guidance for forces on their preparations to tackle riots. Senior officers complained that they did not have sufficient number of officers trained in riot control to respond immediately to last week's events, but Home Office sources confirmed on Monday night that they now expected a massive expansion in riot training for the police as a result of May's request.
"I have asked him to provide clearer guidance to forces about the size of deployments, the need for mutual aid, pre-emptive action, public order tactics, the number of officers trained in public order policing, and appropriate arrests policy," the home secretary is to announce on Tuesday in a speech detailing the "security fightback".
As part of the "social fightback", Cameron had a tough-love message for 120,000 of the UK's most "troubled families". He set himself the rigid target of the next election to put all of them through some kind of family-intervention programme.
In a speech setting out his analysis of what led to the riots, Cameron highlighted those families across the UK who were dealing with multiple complex social health and economic problems. Lifting them out of extreme worklessness would be regarded as a measure of his success in his wider agenda of fixing Britain's broken society, he said. Cameron said he would now put "rocket boosters" on attempts to rehabilitate those 120,000.
Speaking at a youth centre in his Witney constituency in Oxfordshire, the prime minister said: "The broken society is back at the top of my political agenda … I have an ambition, before the end of this parliament, we will turn around the lives of 120,000 most troubled families … we need more urgent action on the families that some people call 'problem', others call 'troubled'. The ones everyone in their neighbourhood knows and often avoids."
He said would ask the chief executive of an organisation called Action for Employment, Emma Harrison, who he appointed his "families champion" in December, to use her current experience in dealing with 500 troubled families in three pilot areas to overcome the bureaucratic problems that have prevented the rapid expansion of Labour's similar families intervention programme, which has been running since 2006.
A former coalition government adviser, Dame Claire Tickell, head of Action for Children, which runs some family intervention projects, later told BBC Radio 4 that she was concerned about funding for the intervention. Ringfencing was scrapped last May.
In 2008 Gordon Brown promised to target "more than 110,000 problem families with disruptive young people". The latest official figures show that, in 2009-10, only 3,518 families were actually in the intervention programme and it has helped only 7,300 families since being set up in 2006.
While the intent of Cameron's pledge received cautious cross-party support, Labour echoed Tickell's concerns and doubted whether it could be funded.
Matt Cavanagh, of the Institute for Public Policy Research, and one of the Labour advisers who helped draft the policy when Labour was in power, suggested it would require £100m a year over the next four years. He said: "Local authorities used to part-fund [these programmes] but the government has dismantled all the ringfences and given LAs more autonomy in their reduced budgets. The result for problem family programmes has been neglect and confusion, as ministers now seem to admit."
While the government said it would be making available £200m from the European Social Fund to help fund the target, the rest will come from the early intervention grant, which is to be cut by 11% by 2012 and has funding for Sure Start, teenage pregnancy and youth centres to meet. Labour said Sure Start had been cut by 20% while more than 30 had closed.
A government source acknowledged that using these resources to fund Cameron's new target could vary around the country. They said: "It is for local authorities and their partners, including the voluntary sector, to decide how much they wish to prioritise on families with multiple problems in their area."
Alan Travis and Allegra Stratton @'The Guardian'
Full Transcript
Love the background you chose to deliver yr speech in front of Dave...
Monday, 15 August 2011
Sold Out in America
Another great week for Corporate America!The economy is flatlining. Global financial markets are in turmoil. Your stock price is down about 15 percent in three weeks. Your customers have lost all confidence in the economy. Your employees, at least the American ones, are cynical and demoralized. Your government is paralyzed.
Want to know who is to blame, Mr. Big Shot Chief Executive? Just look in the mirror because the culprit is staring you in the face.
J’accuse, dude. J’accuse.
You helped create the monsters that are rampaging through the political and economic countryside, wreaking havoc and sucking the lifeblood out of the global economy...
Continue reading
Steven Pearlstein @'The Washington Post'
The Corporations have their very own political party now with the so-called grassroots Tea Party. The concoction of unlimited funding for anonymous attack ads, passive-aggressive racism, and a smoke screen of social conservative concern is a heady mix indeed that has poisoned otherwise good hard working Americans into a state of fear that convinces them to vote against their own best interests.
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