Category Archives: Sci/Tech

My Top 10 Top 10s of 2007

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Posted by Lloyd Morgan on January 5, 2008 – 3:30 pm
Filed under Everything Else, Food, Media (Films & Music), Photography, Politics, Sci/Tech

I’m afraid I’m lying to you all… this is not a list of my top 10 top 10s of 2007: one of these lists has 19 items on them and one even has 7. I’m sorry. Oh, and some of them don’t even have ‘2007′ in the title. I’m a bad person - I know I am - and for that I apologise.

Regardless, below are my top 10 lists of 2007. You know the ones - they proclaim to contain the best 10-or-so of something from the 12 months that have just passed? Come, soak up the nostalgia:

As a bonus, have the following too:

Top 10 Stories of 2007 (According to Digg, Time and The Times)

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Posted by Lloyd Morgan on January 2, 2008 – 1:27 pm
Filed under Everything Else, Media (Films & Music), Politics, Sci/Tech

2007 News Roundup

As 2007 comes to a close, I decided that it was time to have a round-up of the big stories of the year. I like to do this every year as I find that you’ll undoubtedly be surprised: either by a ‘big’ story that somehow managed to pass you by, or just by realising how fast the year has gone. So, how to do this summary of events? After all, a year is a long time in news and news is different everywhere you look!

One of the best barometers of stories that made it big on the Internet is, of course, Digg - the news aggregation service that I do not visit often enough. So, what were the big online stories of 2007? Here they are - in reverse order - according to Digg:

We can’t spend all our time online and ‘real world’ news is important too, right? So, here’s another list of the top 10 news stories from around the world, according to Time and The Times Online:

  • Pakistan’s Political Crisis - From the pressuring of Musharraf to give up command of the Army to the assassination of Bhutto; Pakistan’s politics hasn’t been out of the news all year.
  • US Sub-Prime Mortgage Crisis - When the US housing bubble eventually popped it wasn’t just the US that suffered - markets around the world felt the impact as banks reeled in their debts.
  • Burma Protests - A bad year for democracy in Burma. As tens of thousands of monks took to the streets to protest against a rise in petrol prices (and thus the price of other staples), the military junta cracked down by raiding monasteries and tackling the peaceful protests head on.
  • Goodbye, Harry Potter - At last, it’s over!
  • Iraq War - The Iraq war was for oil you say? The only surprising part of this ‘revelation’ is that it came from the man who was head of the US Federal Reserve for 18 years - Alan Greenspan.
  • Chinese Toy Recall - Made in China took on a new meaning this year as millions of toys made there and exported to the US were recalled for using lead paint, having loose parts, and burning children. Of course “buying local” is still an alien concept to half the western world and a little mishap over some paint isn’t going to make a difference, is it?
  • Virginia Tech Massacre - There was more to this story than just another school shooting. Not only did the gunman mail manifesto-style tapes to the media halfway through his rampage; he was also pronounced by a judge to be mentally ill and in need of hospitalisation - yet still managed to legally buy his arsenal of weapons.
  • iPhone - Enough already!

Yes, I know that’s only 8 stories, but it was hard picking another two that had world-wide status: was the Madeleine McCann story known throughout the world? Was the saga of Alan Johnston’s capture and eventual release as big in the US as it was here in the UK? Can the rise and rise of Facebook be classed as ‘real-world news’ (it only went fully public in late 2006)? How about 2007’s ‘Data Chernobyl‘? It’s a tough choice.

20 Important Psychology Experiments, 13 Unexplained Phenomena and a Whole Bunch of Paradoxes

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Posted by Lloyd Morgan on December 19, 2007 – 12:26 pm
Filed under Sci/Tech

I like philosophy, psychology and, well, just science in general. It’s true, and if that makes me a geek, then so be it (but surely it’s loving xkcd that makes me a geek, right?).

I’ve been saving a few lists that I’ve come across in my recent online travels to share with you all, and today is your lucky day… I hereby present to you 4 lists that make me wish ’science’ was a gorgeous woman so that I could marry her and have lots of sex interesting conversations with her.

10 Brilliant Social Psychology Studies: Why We Do Dumb or Irrational Things (PsyBlog)

None of these studies are new - in fact, the most recent of these ten selected social psychology experiments was conducted in 1977. However, all of them are still relevant and profoundly important today.

Highlights of the list include: arguably the most well-known psychology experiment of all time (Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment); a study where participants delivered what they believed to be potentially lethal electric shocks to innocent people (Milgram’s obedience study); and a study inspired by the murder of Kitty Genovese (Darley and Latane’s research into bystander apathy).

10 Practical Uses for Psychological Research in Everyday Life (PsyBlog)

In this list 10 more psychology experiments are dissected, but this time they’re not profoundly important to society as a whole - instead they may be important to each and every one of us separately.

Why not use this information to win at poker by detecting lies, lower your cholesterol level or bring harmony to your relationship? Alternatively, make a group of people believe your lies are representative of the group whilst simultaneously becoming instantly more attractive simply by smiling in a certain way and repeating yourself!

13 Things That Do Not Make Sense (New Scientist)

For those interested in physics and astronomy this is a great find: it tackles issues like the ‘horizon problem’ and the existence of dark matter; it discusses possibilities for the ‘Kuiper cliff’ (’planet X’); and it even delves - not once, but twice - into the possibilities of extraterrestrial life (the ‘Wow signal’ and Viking’s ‘positive’ find of Methane on Mars).

For those of you not ‘into’ the black magic of physics/astronomy it’s still worth a read for when they announce recent findings of research into the placebo effect - fascinating!

List of Paradoxes (Wikipedia)

I came across this list quite by chance, but I’m glad I did. Ever since I got bought The Magical Maze (by Ian Stewart) as a child I’ve been fascinated by so-called mathematical ‘paradoxes’. Favourites of mine include the Monty Hall problem, the birthday paradox and the inspection paradox (why you’ll always wait a long time for a bus). Of course, these aren’t really paradoxes as such and are more seemingly paradoxical probability theories.

Of course classical ‘thought’ paradoxes are here too: both the well-known and the not so well-known ones. Represented here are philosophical (predestination paradox), economic (diamond-water paradox), logical (drinker paradox), and even physical (Schrödinger’s cat) paradoxes - an interesting read!