wikipedia

I wish people would stop filling wikipedia with idiotic nerdy humour.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry's_law

Science in the Media

People working academically in the sciences are regularly assessed by university management and possibly funding bodies on their output and the impact of this output. They are often asked to report on media coverage of their work by listing, for example, any newspaper articles relating to their work. So sometimes some of these people will exaggerate or frankly bullshit with the intention of being mentioned in the media. Often the media will exaggerate and bullshit too, so then you get two layers of bullshit.

There is a dangerous sense of self belief and self importance that is annoyingly common amongst people working in academic science which, coupled with an annoying religious reverence for science from the pseudo-intellectual masses of emasculated self confessed geeks, leads to, well, more of this shite.

I think the scientific method is sensible but misconstrued and that there is a lot of science that while not necessarily bad, isn't exactly good and is carried out by people who are frankly a little lazy and perhaps of average intelligence. Which isn't really how people outside of science think it is. Perhaps.

Typesetting

Apparently I can't typeset very well. I feel a little miffed about it. I do have a large amount of Lidl grated cheese all over my dinner though.

In other news I managed to order the wrong thing at dinner last night and there was some confusion over the unclaimed dish, which I just ate anyway as I was quite hungry. I thought my pointing at the menu would have been accurate enough.

Lidl

Lidl has to be the worst supermarket. The food they sell is awful.

Christmas

It is quite easy to make snide comments about Christmas. For anyone who doesn't have a nauseating amount of affection for their family it is at best boring and at worst awkward and irritating. I don't have far to travel home and can keep the whole exercise in cultural obedience within a tolerable period of time. However I think there should be a realistic movement to abandon the festival and have all champions of it made to eat kilos of revolting Christmas pudding in an over crowded Marks and Spencer food shop while listening to the same Cliff Richard CD being played over and over.

It has a terrible aesthetic, it is cliché ridden, a lot of people find it unpleasant, it is an awful excuse for sloth and indulgence and it is needlessly inflicted on otherwise happy and well balanced people such as myself.

I don't think I'm very good at making casual conversation. I find it very hard to articulate myself and to think of appropriate words to use and often seem confused. I don't even think about things before saying them and will say things that may seem quite judgemental or even rude. People say nice things and show interest but I'm somehow unable to think of things to reply with that are appropriately considerate of the fact that they might also have a boring life they would like to discuss. I'm often left with a sense that I'm quite boring and quite bored. My only interesting anecdotes are too shocking to tell strangers, at least I think they are and my comments on popular culture are likely to be negative. I often find myself around pseudo-intellectuals and find their supposedly clever banter and pomposity tiresome. I don't understand, do people think about how they choose to live their lives?

Snooker

is a dull game.