Writing a paper on the topic has been interesting in part because of the degree of self-reflection in this community. As noted in the interview, bloggers have very much engaged with ideas around - for example - whether blogging is distinct from the mainstream media. It was also a nice surprise to get home from presenting the paper and talking about related topics in the pub to find that the paper had been tweeted (a worryingly good and very brief summary of the key points - I may have to start drafting papers in 140 character chunks); I have also now signed up for a Twitter account, in part in order to follow such debates.

I now find myself writing a blog post about Alice's blog post about Hauke and my research on science blogging; I will tweet the link to this post after publishing. Much new media discussion can seem like a kind of echo chamber and this type of reflection on reflection on reflection might appear to be an example of that issue. However, what makes the type of science blogging Hauke and I have been researching especially interesting is the focus on activism: the virtual realities of new media are used (with some notable successes) to impact upon our social and political realities. It has been interesting to see how ideas around science blogging (from many more interesting discussants than myself) have been reverberating around in virtual spaces. What will also be important, though, is the wider impact that these ideas are having and will have in future.

I'm pleased about how the article turned out and very happy with how efficiently the Times dealt with its publication. As I'm just at the end of a year of teaching, it seems appropriate to pull out a paragraph of the article which reminds me why it's such a privilege to be helping students to learn about research:

Part of the joy of doing research - and of speaking, writing and reading about research - is that it offers us new ways to understand, engage with and change the world. PR-based research, though, just aims to package up parts of the world and sell them to us. Learning about research can help us to work better, play better and do a better job of holding businesses, researchers and Government to account. These skills can't be bought and can't be sold but -- once learnt -- are valuable tools for dealing with the advertisers, PR agencies and governments who try to fob us off with shiny yakawow campaigns instead of offering any more meaningful engagement.

Duncan Smith drew on the Neuroscientist Bruce Perry's work in order to argue that neuroscientific research suggests

that children who "witness a lot of abuse", or whose mothers have "different, multiple partners" will have brains that develop at a "quite different" rate from other children.

For Duncan Smith

"We now know that we can pretty much figure out where an 18-year-old will be at the time that they are two and a half or three years old. Signs are there. There are of course physical signs, including the scale and size and capacity of their brains to be able to deal with challenges. But it is also in their behaviour."

He added the inability of a child to have "imbibed the concept of empathy" from their parent could have profound impacts on their later life.

However, Duncan Smith's position is made harder to maintain because Perry has challenged his interpretation of his research: Perry states that

Smith's comments were an "oversimplification" that "greatly misrepresents the way we would explain the impact of neglect or trauma on the developing brain". He added: "to oversimplify this way is, essentially, to distort".

"I do believe that overstating and misunderstanding the neurobiology can lead to confusion, anger, distortion and potentially to bad policy," he said, adding that the claims appeared to be "a terrible distraction from the important issues related to the need to create family friendly, and developmentally informed policy that is aware and informed about the importance of early childhood and brain development".

denied he had misrepresented Dr Perry's work, whom he acknowledged as the source of his claims about brain development.

He said the focus of his policy work was on early intervention in the crucial early years of childhood, and his references to brain size related to "absolute extreme neglect and abuse".

"I haven't misrepresented his findings. I don't talk about every single child," he said. "The brain size is an example of what happens at the extreme end of that neglect and abuse, which is something I know that he has written about."

There was no need for Duncan Smith to draw on and misrepresent neuroscience in order to argue against abusing and neglecting children - there is widespread agreement in Britain that this is bad and damaging (and one could also, for example, look at psychological research on abuse and neglect - even if nothing were to show up on brain scans). However, Duncan Smith used a misrepresentation of neuroscientific research in order to make particular political and moral claims. It is unfortunate that a senior politician in a major political party feels the need to speak out against mothers (not fathers?!) who have more than one partner: there is no good reason to think that non-conventional family structures are in any way inherently harmful, and if someone becomes a single parent while their baby is young then it seems rather harsh to expect them to have only one partner over the next 18 years. However, if one were to want to argue that this is immoral then this should be done on moral grounds instead of trying to lean on the authority attributed to neuroscience.

It was good to see that both Perry and the Guardian challenged Duncan Smith's claims. Hopefully, during and after this election campaign it will become increasingly hard for politicians to misuse and misrepresent research.

the DCSU deploys this month to southern Afghanistan, where it will serve as a dedicated cultural advisory team for Task Force Helmand. The news item says the unit is charged with “build[ing] a picture of Helmandi society for commanders in Task Force Helmand and battlegroups across the province to help them identify and understand issues relating to the local cultural, political, economic, social and historical environment to help commanders make better and more informed decisions.”

It sounds a lot like the U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System, with a key distinction: Most of the team members are uniformed military. According to a February MOD news article, most of the advisors will be “senior military officers.” While uniformed military are members of U.S. Human Terrain Teams, the initial focus was on recruiting social scientists and anthropologists to embed with military brigades.

Wider impacts in the MoD seem likely:

As well as deploying to Afghanistan, the units' personnel will also support cultural training in the wider military and other government departments

Assistant Chief of the Defence Staff (Operations) Air Vice-Marshal Andy Pulford said that a focus on cultural issues is essential to success in Afghanistan. He said:

"Cultural awareness has been a weakness in the past. The unit is essential to equipping the military with a better understanding and appreciation of the region, its people and how to do business there."

There is clearly an emphasis on social sciences here: the MoD reports that

the cultural specialist level two course which is specialist training at a masters level, covering anthropology, psychology, sociology and influencing skills, lasting around ten weeks.

Sharing his experience of Afghan culture with his British colleagues at this week's brigade headquarters course was Major Mohammed Safi from the Afghan National Army.

He explained why he thought the need for cultural understanding is so essential:

"The enemy and insurgents exploit the lack of cultural understanding to win over the local population and entire villages who feel they have been shamed or dishonoured by actions taken by foreign troops.

"The insurgents exploit grievances from villagers about issues such as searches, lack of respect, shaming of women, and use this as a major recruiting argument amongst people who, fundamentally, oppose them.

"This is really important for the soldiers. International forces have to know about the culture and understand which areas to respect; how to enter a house, how to search people.

"The soldiers who go to Afghanistan need to know what they can and can't do."

There are calls to embed social sciences much more widely, too:

Commander John Garratt RN, a team leader within the unit, explained how the MOD has long recognised the need for cultural training:

"Every soldier, sailor and airman currently deploying to Afghanistan already undertakes a period of pre-deployment training [PDT] that includes some 'dos and don'ts' of cultural training.

"PDT helps us all to avoid doing things that are seen as 'negative' in the eyes of Afghans. There remains however a need for greater emphasis to influence the hearts and minds of everyone, from the youngest child, up to the most influential leader."

He went on to state that he sees a time in the near future when all soldiers, sailors and airmen will be given exposure to cultural training far earlier in their careers.

Most problematically, Corera gives Iain Lobban (GCHQ's director) the opportunity to discuss what Corera calls “speculation about things called Echelon and some systems for being able to listen to all kinds of private communications”. Lobban is allowed to assert unchallenged that “it’s simply not like that”. However, there is some convincing evidence regarding the Echelon system. For example, a 2001 European Parliament report [PDF, p. 133] concludes

That a global system for intercepting communications exists, operating by means of cooperation proportionate to their capabilities among the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand under the UKUSA Agreement, is no longer in doubt. It may be assumed, in view of the evidence and the consistent pattern of statements from a very wide range of individuals and organisations, including American sources, that the system or parts of it were, at least for some time, code-named ECHELON. What is important is that its purpose is to intercept private and commercial communications, and not military communications. Analysis has revealed that the technical capabilities of the system are probably not nearly as extensive as some sections of the media had assumed.

Also interesting is that Joanna, a GCHQ mathematician, states that a brute force attack on encrypted files would take 50-100 years to crack the encryption. This is surprising: with 256-bit AES encryption (easy to implement on a home computer) it would take massively longer than 100 years for an implausibly large and powerful computer to crack the key through a brute force attack (PGP's CTO offers an interesting discussion of some of the issues here). The 50-100 year statement is therefore interesting, and there are a number of possible reasons for it:
- Joanna may have been outright mistaken. Possible, but seems unlikely - mathematicians tend to be rather precise, and good with numbers.
- GCHQ may have invented some kind of secret ultra-computer which goes far, far beyond what is currently thought to be possible. However, it is hard to conceive how such a thing might work (at least, way beyond my technical ability) and, if it had been invented, one would expect GCHQ to have avoided dropping any hints on a BBC programme!
- GCHQ's targets tend to use lower levels of encryption. This is possible, and seems most likely (though it's quite possible I'm missing something). Encryption which takes 'just' 50 years to brute force would generally be quite good enough for terrorist groups.
Sadly, Corera didn't seem to follow up on this - so we don't have any more information regarding why this odd timescale was mentioned.

Surprisingly, Dave (on GCHQ's Information Assurance team) claims not to employ “so-called bad people, the hackers. We don't employ hackers”. I would be rather concerned if the UK government did not make use of 'white hat' hackers in order to test their security, and it would be surprising if an agency like GCHQ did not employ any hackers (there can be lots of grey areas here - but hackers certainly aren't all bad people!) Again, Corera failed to challenge this claim.

A local news story about the programme focuses on what it revealed about the dress code of mathematicians. While the programme could have been really interesting - had it taken a more investigative approach - I suspect, sadly, that what was broadcast does not reveal much beyond some anecdotes about mathematicians wearing socks and sandals. A major missed opportunity.

promoted by many including Lord Drayson, the Science Minister, and Gordon Brown...is substandard...used "unjustified methodologies" to reach its conclusions and was "overly reliant" on weak online sources and media reports, with some sections referencing only Wikipedia.

Although sources are referenced...the report lifted "significant passages of text" word for word.

a small group of radicalised [Islamist] young men now constitute the single biggest threat to our national security

These ethically and legally dubious News of the World tactics invaded the privacy of thousands of individuals: including the senior government politician (and then Deputy Prime Minister) John Prescott. This story has been linked to a number of senior figures - including the Conservative Party Press Chief (and former News of the World editor) Andy Coulson.

In his novel take on Hegel, Slavoj Zizek has argued that change may can occur through the 'slow seeping of spirit'. A change - such as the increasing unacceptability of homophobia -seeps slowly through our social reality, without being particularly noticeable at the time. There reaches a point, though, where one looks around and realises - after the change has taken place - what has happened: in this case, it now appears that a more accepting attitude to gay men and women has come to dominate 'mainstream' public political discourse.

the soldiers had captured nothing more than a giant pile of mung beans, a staple pulse eaten in curries across Afghanistan.

Embarrassed British officials have now admitted that their triumph has turned sour and have promised to return the legal crop to its rightful owner.

Worringly, the Guardian also reports that

The pulses also fooled Colonel General Khodaidad, Afghanistan's minister of counter-narcotics, even though the spherical black beans, about the size of small ball bearings, looked nothing like poppy seeds. When shown the mung beans by the Guardian, he said they were a strain of "super poppy".

If indeed the sacks did contain 1.3 tonnes of mung beans, then they would have a street value of $1,300 – not much, but a major blow to any farmer if the British had followed procedures and destroyed the beans.

the state is the poisoned gift of national liberation

we have already announced to the world our position to silence our guns to save our people

the victory has come at a high price in terms of civilan life and damage to Colombo's international reputation. According to UN figures, an estimated 7,000 ethnic Tamil civilians were killed between 20 January, when a military offensive pushed back the rebels into a tiny enclave in the north-east, and 7 May.

"If the Tigers' leadership is removed or killed in a government assault, it's easy to imagine one of the newly energised generation stepping in to fill the void," said Robert Templer, of the International Crisis Group thinktank.

"The dream of an independent Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka resonates powerfully across the diaspora and will certainly live on even after the defeat of the LTTE as a conventional military force. The deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Tamil civilians – while their family members watch from afar – is a recipe for another, possibly more explosive, generation of terrorism."

I hope that this will be the end of the violence in Sri Lanka. However, it would be wrong to assume that peace will follow the end of the Tigers.

reverse image search engine. You can submit an image to TinEye to find out where it came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or to find higher resolution versions.

I have been pleasantly surprised in how well this works. It's still far from perfect - for example, as Tin Hat acknowledges, there is a lot of content on the Internet that they don't cover - but does look like a really useful tool.