Another Drive4show 'Anything goes' thread

[kwinigolfer]

First topic message reminder :

Sr,
1).Correct. Wonderful is right. Though in the American order of things behind the NFL, College Football, High School Football, NBA, College B'ball.
2).Not much of a market: 21,000 per home game.
3).But no other nations pay their players a fraction of this sort of bounty. He'll probably end up using PED's, just like his predecessor as highest paid.
Ridiculous money!

[westisbest]

Wow, no porn and no sex.  Whats up with that?

Ha mac you sound like your out every weekend getting laid.

[super_realist]

I've always thought of Mac as the World of Warcraft type geek. Don't know whether it is true, but no reason not to think so, certainly doesn't seem like a woman could share his interests.

[McLaren]

Super

Do you find gender stereotyping goes down well with women? Not sure we need you to answer that.

[super_realist]

Mac, it's a question of statistics, the number of women who share your interests of F1, Playstation, Football and golf course architecture is likely to be absolutely minimal, it's not a question of gender stereotypes, it's a question of statistical facts.
What I should have said is that I can't imagine there are many women who share your interests, which make me question your claim you have one.

[Davie]

It's in a science.  (why are people so bothered about this?)

Because you are so mysterious. Why not just tell us? Or does it add to your sense of self importance to be so mysterious?

[super_realist]

Sounds to me Davie like he hangs onto his MSc in an attempt to somehow absolve him of the fact he hasn't put it to effective use.

Funny how he laughs at me for having a supposedly dreary and empty life, yet it appears I've made more of my life than he has.

[McLaren]

Super you asked about my degree. And yes, by the measure of money you appear to have made more of your life than most.


Davie

Not sure why I should disclose personal details just to amuse super.

[super_realist]

I'm not even talking about money Mac, more that my life, doesn't seem to be any worse than yours as you like to portray.

[McLaren]

Super

I apologize, I just like winding you up about not having sex for about 5 years, or whatever the current catastrophically long time period you have gone without.

[1GrumpyGolfer]

Davie

It's in a science.  (why are people so bothered about this?)

Showing my age here and stealing from a BT advert back in the 80s with Maureen Lipman. So you have an ology? You're a scientist.

[JAS]

Super

How many hours a day do you spend surfing porn?

...and why is Super's Porn surfing activity of such interest to you?

From what I can gather,

Super play's golf to a good standard (which will probably mean a fair amount of practice time), runs (or has run) quite a bit, works hard in a fairly decent job in the Oil industry and is reasonably knowledgeable on a wide range of subjects, some of which he is very opinionated about.

Mac says he plays golf, is interested course design and traditional equipment, not a clue what he does for a living but gets the bus to wherever it is that he does work, has a Masters degree in internet wummery and spends an inordinate amount of time indoctrinating himself with leftish political correctness, watches F1 and Porn and masterbates to a ceiling picture of 9c.

...am I close??

[Davie]

Not sure why I should disclose personal details just to amuse super.

Yep just as I thought .. an over-inflated sense of self-importance. Actually when *I* asked it wasn't for the sake of super's amusement. I'm sure he can amuse himself quite capably without your help - I asked for my own interest after you had been so scathing of others

1GG is probably right .. you have an Aunty Beattie who is so proud of her nephew having some sort of bizarre "ology"

[kwinigolfer]

Harrison Ford crash-landed on a golf-course and early reports say he was immediately tended to by two spinal surgeons who were playing the 8th hole.

What are the chances?

[super_realist]

Super

How many hours a day do you spend surfing porn?

...and why is Super's Porn surfing activity of such interest to you?

From what I can gather,

Super play's golf to a good standard (which will probably mean a fair amount of practice time), runs (or has run) quite a bit, works hard in a fairly decent job in the Oil industry and is reasonably knowledgeable on a wide range of subjects, some of which he is very opinionated about.



...am I close??

I wouldn't say that Jas

[I'm never wrong]

Harrison Ford crash-landed on a golf-course and early reports say he was immediately tended to by two spinal surgeons who were playing the 8th hole.

What are the chances?

This person was even luckier

[Roller_Coaster]

Wow, no porn and no sex.  Whats up with that?

Just like a marriage...

[beninho]

If you pay for a parking ticket for a set period of time, why should you be allowed an extra 10 minutes on top. Why cant people take responsibility for their own actions. If you think their is a possibility of being over the time you have paid for, then pay for longer. the Tories have started pandering to the motorist in a minimal way, if they want to keep the motorist happy then just bring down the tax on petrol.

[navyblueshorts]

Navy

http://www.manchester.ac.uk/research/brian.cox/publications

Unfortunately for you he has quite a few.

Not really Mac. Have you actually looked at the author lists? I have. He's neither first nor last author, for one thing. On many (all?) of those publications, he's one name in possibly more than 100 'authors'. In fact, while at Manchester, he has no first author (+AND+manchester]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=cox_be[1au]+AND+manchester) or last author (+AND+manchester]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=cox_be[lastau]+AND+manchester) papers, at all.

[Edit: To be clear, as a general rule of thumb it's -> 1st author = you did all/most of the work and wrote the paper; last author = you're the PI, had the idea(s), got the money to do the work and wrote the paper.]

Don't get me wrong, I credit him for his public understanding of science stuff and he's written some excellent books. I just don't really like this public fawning (and women drooling...as if that's got anything to do with the quality of his physics) over an ex-musician and his slightly weird (wet?) way of delivery. Science certainly needs it's champions but, as seems usual in the U.K., everyone's falling all over themselves drooling about how great he is. Einstein/Feynman/Hawking etc, he's not.

[super_realist]

Even though we have the most expensive petrol/diesel in the world, it's still pretty cheap.

I agree that the % that the government take is scandalous.

[navyblueshorts]

If you pay for a parking ticket for a set period of time, why should you be allowed an extra 10 minutes on top. Why cant people take responsibility for their own actions. If you think their is a possibility of being over the time you have paid for, then pay for longer. the Tories have started pandering to the motorist in a minimal way, if they want to keep the motorist happy then just bring down the tax on petrol.

Quite.

[beninho]

I have no issues with paying tax. I also think people that drive big gas guzzling cars in areas when they do not necessarily need them, should pay more. Who needs a flash range rover, when you live in london? Though the impact it has on people who live in rural areas, or places when you have to drive is to severe. Its just the hypocrisy of we want to help the motorist with an extra 10 minutes before you get fined, but will still charge you loads in tax on your petrol, or increase your road tax, but not pass it on to the local council to keep the roads half decent.

[navyblueshorts]

This made me smile. Should definitely have this sort of thing we should have in the U.K.:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-31709454

[super_realist]

I have no issues with paying tax. I also think people that drive big gas guzzling cars in areas when they do not necessarily need them, should pay more. Who needs a flash range rover, when you live in london? Though the impact it has on people who live in rural areas, or places when you have to drive is to severe. Its just the hypocrisy of we want to help the motorist with an extra 10 minutes before you get fined, but will still charge you loads in tax on your petrol, or increase your road tax, but not pass it on to the local council to keep the roads half decent.  

I'm not sure that we need to charge big "gas guzzling cars" more, considering by virtue of low MPG and high road fund licence they already pay more.

I think we ought to punish the cars which are more polluting first and foremost, which can be a lot of the small cars in the 10 year old bracket. In many cases, they are a lot worse than new cars considered to be gas guzzlers.

In addition, it is short drives within cities where emissions are greatest and fuel economy most poor, so rather than charge people higher for having a car which is perceived as being an environmental menace, it could be that if driven appropriately, it is far less harmful than a 6/7 year old Ford Fiesta which is driven around town all the time. Also, i'd also say a great many car journeys are entirely needless.

[McLaren]

Navy

Go down the list a bit, he is first author on loads of papers.

From 2011, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0370269310013584 for example.

or from 2009 http://iopscience.iop.org/1126-6708/2009/06/034/

Actually the further back you go the more you find. There must be about 20-30 papers from the mid 90's to 2011 where he is lead author.

I am no drooling brian cox fan but he is a "proper" physicist by any normal standards.

[Mad for Chelsea]

Navy

Go down the list a bit, he is first author on loads of papers.

From 2011, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0370269310013584 for example.

or from 2009 http://iopscience.iop.org/1126-6708/2009/06/034/

Actually the further back you go the more you find.  There must be about 20-30 papers from the mid 90's to 2011 where he is lead author.

I am no drooling brian cox fan but he is a "proper" physicist by any normal standards.

This seems fairly logical. Most people's best research tends to be done when they are on the younger side.

Also, for what it's worth, the concept of "first author" exists in some fields only (physics, biology for instance, where papers do indeed tend to have a very large number of writers). It doesn't necessarily mean that he did all the work, but certainly the largest bulk of it (believe it or not, some papers genuinely have several people making a significant contribution, though rarely/never as many as 100).

In other fields, such as Maths (my personal field) or Theoretical Computer Science, papers tend to be written by far fewer authors (in Maths, 5 is about the maximum number) who contribute roughly equally to the paper (that is, they work on it together, bouncing ideas back and forth, etc.). Thus the idea of "first author" isn't really relevant (though somewhat bizarrely you're still expected to have been "first author" on a paper before defending your PhD, which is of course silly). My experience in this is somewhat limited admittedly, but the paper I have co-written (with two others) was something we worked on together and each of us contributed significant parts of it...

[navyblueshorts]

Navy

Go down the list a bit, he is first author on loads of papers.

From 2011, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0370269310013584 for example.

or from 2009 http://iopscience.iop.org/1126-6708/2009/06/034/

Actually the further back you go the more you find.  There must be about 20-30 papers from the mid 90's to 2011 where he is lead author.

I am no drooling brian cox fan but he is a "proper" physicist by any normal standards.

That's cool Mac. I'm not saying he isn't a scientist. I'm just not a subscriber to the "Brian Cox for President of the Universe" club. There are hundreds of (arguably) more worthy Profs with 100s of first/last author papers who don't get half the fuss made of them.
Anyway, I'm glad Cox is getting people excited about physics - it's what he won the Kelvin and Faraday awards for.

[super_realist]

Pretty sure the only interesting thing about Cox, or rather the thing that makes him a "celebrity academic", is that he doesn't fit the traditional stereotype of a professor.

If he was 60, wore tweed and had a beard and glasses, no one would know who he is or would care what he said.

I quite like his programmes, though I find his voice and tone pretty annoying though.

[incontinentia]

Seems like you really enjoy Cox mac

[beninho]

I have very little knowledge or interest in Science or the solar System etc etc. From school science lessons i remember when my Chemistry teacher put magnesium in water and when someone said orgasm instead of organism when reading aloud in Biology. That was quite funny to a 13 year old. But i have watched the Brian Cox programmes a few times, and to a pleb like me, he makes it interesting and a little bit understandable. I am sure others could have done the job aswell, but some of the experts he gets, are pretty dull. He may not be the worlds greatest professor or scientist, but he is doing a good job in making it seem at least half interesting.

[McLaren]

Navy

I am sure there are "better" physicists than brian cox but he does seem to be very good at science communication.  I am no Brian Cox fan boy but it is pretty clear to me that he has developed the knack of getting people interested in science, who would otherwise be oblivious to the concepts he raises.  So not sure what you mean by "more worthy", if you mean more worthy of TV fame I would disagree as he is very good at being the TV face of physics.  If you mean more worthy in terms of praise for contributions to physics then I am sure the physics community already hands out the relevant praise to those deserving of it, whether they are brian cox or not.  Do you really expect the UK public to be the true arbiters of great physics research? Or actually just good judges of what makes interesting TV viewing?

Super

I agree, his wonders programmes are very good, and some of his older horizon stuff (which you can usually find on youtube) is also worth a watch.

[super_realist]

There's quite a few "modern" scientists who can also claim to be influential and interesting. Iain Stewart and Alice Roberts for instance in my opinion do a better job than Cox as they don't seem to suffer from the "you can't believe I'm a professor can you" persona that Cox seems to project.

[McLaren]

Super

I have been meaning to read Alice Robert's book "incredible unlikeliness of being", have you read it and if so is it any good?

[super_realist]

Haven't read it, but she is easy on the eye.

[McLaren]

Isn't that one of the reasons you had an issue with Brian Cox?

[super_realist]

Not really, Roberts is far convincing as an academic in my opinion and doesn't play as much on it as Cox appears to (or people do on Cox's behalf, e.g. he's always called Prof.Brian Cox, whereas Alice Roberts is mostly just Alice Roberts)

[Bob_the_Job]

When I got up this morning, I didn't think I'd be watching a game of Top Trump Scientists unfolding.

[Roller_Coaster]

To be fair, new topic.

None of them are Magnus Pike though...

[navyblueshorts]

Navy

I am sure there are "better" physicists than brian cox but he does seem to be very good at science communication.  I am no Brian Cox fan boy but it is pretty clear to me that he has developed the knack of getting people interested in science, who would otherwise be oblivious to the concepts he raises.  So not sure what you mean by "more worthy", if you mean more worthy of TV fame I would disagree as he is very good at being the TV face of physics.  If you mean more worthy in terms of praise for contributions to physics then I am sure the physics community already hands out the relevant praise to those deserving of it, whether they are brian cox or not.  Do you really expect the UK public to be the true arbiters of great physics research? Or actually just good judges of what makes interesting TV viewing?...

Mac. There are hundreds of excellent scientists who'd be very, very good people to front science on TV. They don't get the chance though do they?

There's quite a few "modern" scientists who can also claim to be influential and interesting. Iain Stewart and Alice Roberts for instance in my opinion do a better job than Cox as they don't seem to suffer from the "you can't believe I'm a professor can you" persona that Cox seems to project.

Alice Roberts - there's another one. She's a medic and most of them aren't scientists.

I guess it's not the fault of Cox or Roberts if people drool all over their programs as if they're some modern day oracle. That's the way it is these days it would seem.

Ignore me. I'm just developing a split personality as, God knows, we need science publicising (Milliband just lost any chance of my vote with his University fees back to £6k drivel), which both Cox and Roberts do well, but I dislike the adulation that surrounds them.

[navyblueshorts]

Not really, Roberts is far convincing as an academic in my opinion and doesn't play as much on it as Cox appears to (or people do on Cox's behalf, e.g. he's always called Prof.Brian Cox, whereas Alice Roberts is mostly just Alice Roberts)

Nope. It's "Professor Alice Roberts" all the time and everywhere these days. Worse with a clinician as well; they love the title "Professor" as it's an academic title outwith their clinical rank.

[super_realist]

One of the people who is very good at these things, and who is very unheralded in his academic achievements is Mark Evans. Very good presenter on a vast range of subjects from Engineering to Anatomy

[super_realist]

Did anyone watch James Ward V John Isner today? Real sporting theatre.


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