Thank you very much to the PooterGeeker who sent me a Minolta SLR camera, lenses and other exciting goodies. You are star. I feel guilty writing so little lately when my readers are so nice to me.
The person who sent me that amazing gift is someone I have never met in my life, which brings me to my second point, a point that also links my two previous posts here. The photo of me and Thatch shows her presenting me with a scholarship at and on behalf of (the Association for Science Education and) the Royal Institution, where Susan Greenfield is currently a full professor and director—and responsible for rubbish like this. Greenfield’s an embarrassment to science. Normally it’s non-scientific academics who flit from medium to medium under the amusing banner of “public intellectual” making fashionable, unsubstantiated claims and demanding action. We expect that sort of thing from them and, usually, our elected representatives are sensible enough to ignore them.
I have attacked gibberish from Greenfield in the past on PooterGeek. Watch this YouTube video in which Ben Goldacre (who provided the link in my previous post) does the same on BBC’s Newsnight.
Watched the video clip. There seems to be a misunderstanding on both sides. I don’t think Sigman is actually arguing that all social networking sites DO actually rewire your brain or make you into a psychotic loner, nor is Goldacre saying that spending hours in front of the computer and not physically seeing people has NO effect, though they both argue as though the other were in fact saying what I have just described them NOT saying.. Is there a term for this? False confrontation?
All my personal scientific research, conducted by a process known as unsupported cogitation, suggests that engaging in any activity for a considerable length of time to the exclusion of all other forms of activity MIGHT have some kind of effect, like a stiff back, or developing nimble fingers, or indeed certain mental habits and tics. I haven’t yet got round to a universal theory, but then I spend far too much time sitting in front of a computer, pecking at a keyboard.