Gaming and gawdawful science
We started a new game last night - and all parties are directed to mylescorcoran.livejournal.com/145151.html for his wonderful description. One of a regulars is away for a fortnight so we have given up our dungeon crawl - and I use the term 'crawl' advisedly; Man but we are SLOW! - and plunged into a Buffyverse vignette set in Arkham in the 80s. I am playing a character I always wanted to write for a fanfic of a slightly burned out hippie fae who gets cheesed off being constantly mistaken for a vampire (you know, pale, emo, sexy, soulless, cross allergy) but is at least immune to wooden stakes if not cold iron blades. Sadly we had only just started to get our teeth into the plot when I was overcome with sleepiness. All the adrenalin just wore off and I was fast asleep on the couch as I have not been in a game since BB was weeks old. Sigh! Very Dylan from Magic Roudnabout 'Heavy maaaan!'
On a different topic: tonight we saw one of the worst examples of shit science on BBC's The One Show tonight. After a long piece on 'why the public are still not vaccinating their kids even now we know the MMR is safe as houses' the weather lady who is I am sorry to say a proper meteorologist, went to investigate plantsman's lore about whether the phases of the moon matter when planting seeds. This daft 'biodynamic' woman and her henchidiot talked some guff about 'if the moon can affect the tides then it must affect the moisture in the soil' and seemed to think that the half moon means only half the usual gravitational pull but 'the moon pulls the water to the furrows and makes the bean seeds swell up you see'. (I* scored top points for predicting gravity and tides would be mentioned in the first minute - I was over cautious though.) The weather woman then plants some kit which, surprise!, shows that there is no significant variation of moisture levels. But biodynamic woman then has a taste test between biodynamo spud, organic spud, and supermarket spud which is not blind, not controlled, and not remotely scientific. Oddly enough biodynamo spud won. Case proved. AAARGH! Jonathan Pryce, wonderful man, who is an actor damnit but obviously not as stupid as the supposedly scientifically trained weather bint tried to ask her if they were from the same plant, same variety, or same seed stock but it seems, well, not but weather lady leaped to her experiment's defense and how it was all properly scientifically carried out. Yeah. And if my aunt had wheels she'd be a bicycle. seriously, if this is the way scientific inquiry is presented in popular media why the hell do they think people have trouble grasping issues like vaccinations and herd immunity, let alone the more complex issues like quantum physics and evolution.
On a different topic: tonight we saw one of the worst examples of shit science on BBC's The One Show tonight. After a long piece on 'why the public are still not vaccinating their kids even now we know the MMR is safe as houses' the weather lady who is I am sorry to say a proper meteorologist, went to investigate plantsman's lore about whether the phases of the moon matter when planting seeds. This daft 'biodynamic' woman and her henchidiot talked some guff about 'if the moon can affect the tides then it must affect the moisture in the soil' and seemed to think that the half moon means only half the usual gravitational pull but 'the moon pulls the water to the furrows and makes the bean seeds swell up you see'. (I* scored top points for predicting gravity and tides would be mentioned in the first minute - I was over cautious though.) The weather woman then plants some kit which, surprise!, shows that there is no significant variation of moisture levels. But biodynamic woman then has a taste test between biodynamo spud, organic spud, and supermarket spud which is not blind, not controlled, and not remotely scientific. Oddly enough biodynamo spud won. Case proved. AAARGH! Jonathan Pryce, wonderful man, who is an actor damnit but obviously not as stupid as the supposedly scientifically trained weather bint tried to ask her if they were from the same plant, same variety, or same seed stock but it seems, well, not but weather lady leaped to her experiment's defense and how it was all properly scientifically carried out. Yeah. And if my aunt had wheels she'd be a bicycle. seriously, if this is the way scientific inquiry is presented in popular media why the hell do they think people have trouble grasping issues like vaccinations and herd immunity, let alone the more complex issues like quantum physics and evolution.