Candide

Here are some pretty pictures I made using immunostaining and...

Wed, 22 May 2013 20:21:21 +0100

Here are some pretty pictures I made using immunostaining and fluorescence microscopy!

If you happen to be in Oxford next week, come along to the...

Thu, 09 May 2013 23:25:00 +0100

If you happen to be in Oxford next week, come along to the Simpkins Lee to see the headbanging Ashurbanipal: The Last Great King of Assyria - a play written, produced, designed and directed by a bunch of Failed Novelists and their friends. Seriously, screamo Ancient Akkadian - what could be more awesome?

twatsworthy: i made a thing

Sun, 05 May 2013 19:40:38 +0100

twatsworthy:

i made a thing

Animal Rights Activists

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 12:13:04 +0100

So yesterday as part of an abortive attempt to get into Wadstock we managed to walk straight into the annual giant anti-Animal Testing protest march. Hundreds of people screaming and chanting that all Oxford scientists are evil, and that the university is “torturing” animals. Every Thursday on the way to lectures we walk past a weekly protest, who harangue you and say students should be ashamed for studying here.

As someone who has experimented on animals , these people make me really angry. The vast majority of animal research is carried out on mice bred specially for the purpose, its all heavily regulated to make sure the animals get the best care possible, and to get permission to do the work you have to go thru ethics commitees to justify its beneficial to humans and scientific understanding. And yet all these people do is spread lies and myths that scientists torture kittens (or whatever cute-looking animal they’ve decided to put on their placards on that particular day).

These are people who spend 52 full days a year standing outside labs that are doing pioneering research on cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, tropical medicine, shouting lies. They harass and intimidate scientists who do more good in an hour spent in the lab than these people will do in a lifetime. One of my tutors, who’s never even done animal work, had her car bombed just because she’s a scientist at the uni.

But of course loads of people sympathize with the protesters because obviously no one wants to hurt animals. Yeah, well, its a necessary, well-regulated evil to which everyone on the UK, everyone who’s been born, everyone who’s been vaccinated, everyone who’s been prescribed drugs, owes their fucking lives. So grow up, and get a grip. Animal models are the cornerstone of biomedical research and, however cruel it sounds, the world would be a far crueller world if we didn’t have scientific research on animals driving modern medicine.

I'm amazed that the pub where C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien, as part of the Inklings, hung out & read each others work is literally on the same street that I am living on.

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 18:48:56 +0000

eatstarchmom: Daily Mail vs Daily Record front pages today

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 19:20:03 +0000

eatstarchmom:

Daily Mail vs Daily Record front pages today

basedpaulrobeson: Thatcher’s shitty legacy:Right to Buy policy caused lasting housing crisis,...

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 20:42:14 +0000

basedpaulrobeson:

Thatcher’s shitty legacy:

Right to Buy policy caused lasting housing crisis, benefited her friends and donors, has links to current financial crisis: 1 2 3
Was anti-feminist, fought against EU equality leglisation and many policies hit women hardest: 1 2
Supported Pinochet, Khmer Rouge, Saddam: 1 2 3
Privitization caused inefficiency, inequality, and increased unemployment: 1 2 3
‘Community Care Act’ greatly impacted ability to deal with mental illnesses, causing increase in number of homelessness, pensioners with MI, and suicides: 1 2 3
Tax policies were deliberately regressive, increasing inequality and decreasing social mobility: 1 2
These policies were so unpopular—and caused the first of her two recessions—that she stoked the embers of the Falklands to bring war with Argentina and used excessive force on the miner’s strikes to boost her popularity with the base: 1
Despite promising to have a ‘bonfire of the quangos’ they proliferated under her government and her used in place of local government authorities to push through her reforms and increase centralised power by Whitehall, even though she was ‘anti-State’: 1
Supporting Apartheid (for mostly financial reasons): 1
Using homophobic language to frame HIV/AIDs as ‘gay plague,’ cabinet minister suggesting ‘concentration camps for AIDs victim’ (afaik the latter never came close to government policy but included for sheer WTF-ness): 1 2

"As reaction continues to pour in from around the world, it is announced she will have a ceremonial..."

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 20:22:32 +0000

“

As reaction continues to pour in from around the world, it is announced she will have a ceremonial funeral with military honours at St Paul’s Cathedral, and Parliament is to be recalled for tributes.

Baroness Thatcher will not have a state funeral but will be accorded the same status as Princess Diana and the Queen Mother

”

-
BBC News 08/04/13

What the fuck?! Why as a country do we owe her this much?! This is just fuckin ridiculous now

(via death-on-a-pale-horse)

…and this justifies exactly why criticizing and condemning her and her legacy (i.e. the present government) is completely appropriate at this time. Perhaps if her family were having a small private funeral and had explicitly asked not to have politics intrude on their grief, I might (just) buy the argument to not speak ill of the dead. But the fact our government is giving her a fancy “ceremonial” funeral, our BBC journalists and Labour politicians are praising her to the rooftops and every fucking foreign leader is wading in and calling her the saviour of the free world means its utterly right to remind everyone what harm she and her toxic blend of conservatism did and continues to do to this country. She might be dead, but her politics isn’t.

Thatcher and Oxford

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 19:53:00 +0000

My facebook feed is full of privileged private-school-educated Oxford students eulogizing Margaret Thatcher for her political achievements,

Conservative is the default political opinion in this university.

Even the lefties admire her “as a person.”

One day these red chino-wearing idiots who have never been north of Watford gap will be running the UK. They’re the bankers whose greed caused a financial crisis, they’re the politicians hellbent on destroying welfare state, they’re the future Little Englanders and Margaret Thatchers of this world.

Oxford is a great place to study with academics, but its also ridden with the kind of entitled right-wing Southerners who produced Blair, and Cameron, and Osborne, and the fucking Milibands - and even Thatcher herself: she might have been a grocer’s daughter but it was the Oxford wankers of this world she cared about, not the kind of people who’ll suffer because of the Bedroom Tax.

Remember the privilege and comforts one must -- white or non-white -- have in order to audaciously tell one of the millions that suffered under the evil regime of Thatcher to not celebrate her death.

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 19:38:36 +0000

Margaret Thatcher.

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 19:37:17 +0000

simonlegend:

If you lived through the Thatcher years, from 1979 to 1990, it’s still impossible not to have an opinion on her. Anyone young enough not to have experienced her government’s policies, still will feel her influence resonate. If you were born in Yorkshire, Lancashire, South Wales, Tyneside, Teeside, the West Midlands, Greater London, Scotland or Northern Ireland… and lived through those times; the factory closures, the destruction of the Trade Union movement as it was then, the Troubles in Ulster, the Miner’s strike, privatisation, deregulation, decentralisation, the Falklands War, the Poll Tax, then you might have reason to celebrate her passing. You might remember the pain you felt over her comments on “society”. You might have felt the force of charging riot police on the picket lines. You might have felt the pain of losing a father or a brother in the Falklands. You might have suffered redundancy from an industry that promised a “job for life”. But you’ve already celebrated her passing. When she resigned from government in 1990, you celebrated. When she retired from The House Of Lords, you celebrated, when Carol Thatcher revealed her mother was suffering from dementia, you celebrated. Those who had reason to resent her political legacy, have celebrated a great many times.

So now she has passed. The UK she left behind has changed from a struggling “sick man of Europe” to an economic superpower. The transformation was painful. The scars still visible. Some wounds never heal, but no wound is healed by an 87 year-old’s passing. Only rueful and wistful thoughts of an old way of life gone forever. So let’s instead spare a thought for the victims of Thatcher. I’m not talking about invading Argentinians or militant shop stewards. I’m talking about families. I’m talking about tradesmen. Miners. Shipbuilders. Auto manufacturers. Fishermen. Steelworkers. Extinct communities. Ghost Towns. Unnamed thousands. Honest workers feeding their families, all caught in an ideological conflict fought on British streets, in British towns.

Me? I was “lucky” enough to live in the South, but the Thatcher economy did for me too. I suffered under the ailing Conservative government of 1990. I had to find the extra money to pay her “Community Charge”. I was never affluent enough to buy BT or British Gas shares. I couldn’t buy a Council house (not at least until a few years later when my wife and I left our Housing Association flat and got a cheap mortgage as part of a Council buyout scheme). When Thatcher was in power, much was made of social mobility, but it seemed unattainable to those of us who were low-paid. I was excluded from her classless “utopia”. I was in the public-sector with British Rail, but subsidy cuts forced privatisation on the Railway’s ancillary sector. Redundancy came to us first, long before they painted the rolling-stock in the new colours of Private Operating Companies. Those who survived the first wave of redundancies were subsumed into private sector civil engineering companies on annual contracts. John Major was in charge by this time, and I had already waved goodbye to the public sector and found new employment in the private sector. Anyone who has experienced this back then will agree what a culture shock it is. Yet I was lucky. So many people I knew were caught in the dependency trap of benefits. Thatcher did nothing for the unemployed. If you’re too young to remember Thatcher’s government and you thought the current coalition government is doing its utmost to bash the poor into submission, then ask your parents how abject and undignified life was like in the “dole queue”. And if they didn’t know what it was like, watch “The Full Monty” to start with. Seek out some David Peace novels for the horrific, bleak and dehumanising effects of Thatcherism on West Yorkshire from 1977 to 1984. Do some digging. Look for anecdotes. There will be plenty of those in the coming days…

For the other side of the coin, read Caryl Churchill’s “Serious Money”. But always bear in mind that for the precious few that prospered under Thatcher, thousands more were victims of the free market economy that flourished during her tenure as Prime Minister.

THATCHER: the woman who proved more than anyone why Scotland...

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 19:23:00 +0000

THATCHER: the woman who proved more than anyone why Scotland needs to be free.

So long as an English-elected Tory government can still impose policies on a Scotland who didn’t vote for them, then independence will always be the only moral option.

Thatcher: The First (and Worst) Female Prime Minister

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 19:09:00 +0000

“Thatcher was an empowered woman who did what she thought was right and never backed down from what she believed in” or variants thereof.

There are three main things wrong with this:

1. Women who have done remarkable things in politics (like become the first female leader of a major Western democracy) should be celebrated for doing remarkable good things in politics, not remarkable bad things. Britain would be a better place now if we’d never had this particular prime minister who happened to be female.

2. Doing only what she thought was right and not listening to others was what led to Heseltine’s leadership challenge and Thatcher getting stabbed in the back by her own fed-up party. By ignoring (or suppressing) protests from the working classes, the miners and the shipbuilders, Thatcher managed to destroy many Scottish and Northern English communities and industries.

3. Not backing down from what you believe in when alternative evidence is provided is called being stubborn, ignorant and driven by ideology as opposed to reality. No matter how good her motives were or how driven by her moral compass they were, it doesn’t matter because the consequences of her actions were so destructive.

If you are right-wing and admire Thatcher for her politics, then you are wrong but at least you are logical.

If you are left-wing or a feminist or whatever and admire Thatcher as a person for what she achieved, remember what Thatcher achieved doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Try go to the sink estates in Newcastle and Glasgow and tell me you still admire Thatcher, the plucky woman who stood up for herself and in the process destroyed Britain’s social democracy.

Thatcher

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 18:50:26 +0000

The rabid eulogizing of Thatcher on my facebook newsfeed is really starting to irritate me. Especially the ‘I hated her politics but I sympathize with her family’s grief/admire her as a woman/hope she finds peace line’ line from people who claim to be on the left. Not speaking ill of the dead is a good social norm for when you attend the funeral of your racist, sexist, grumpy prig of a grandfather - saying nasty things about him might well hurt your granny or parent even more at a time of pain, so common decency means you don’t do it. But for an influential public figure like Thatcher, these rules don’t apply. If you’re a friend of Thatcher’s family, then, yes, keep quiet, but as a member of the public with political opinions your sympathy makes no difference. Thatcher’s family loved her whatever we on the left were calling her when she was alive; I highly doubt keeping a political perspective is going to do them any damage now she’s dead. Thatcher ruined millions of peoples lives, destroyed thousands of jobs, wrecked hundreds of communities. It’s an insult to politics to suddenly just ignore that fact in your assessment of her life now she’s dead, so please stop with the false sympathy. Her politics were evil. She died as a politician a decade ago when she had her stroke, now she’s dead for real, its her family’s business and shouldn’t change our opinion of her political career…

themargatron: http://www.upworthy.com/meet-the-woman-who-has-a-20-chance-of-living-because-of-one-co...

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 21:29:11 +0000

themargatron:

http://www.upworthy.com/meet-the-woman-who-has-a-20-chance-of-living-because-of-one-companys-greed?c=upw1

Y’all should watch this. It’s important.

Ugh, is horrific that Myriad still have the patent nearly 20 years later - even drug patents run out after a decade, so why keep genetic tests if a company (making half a billion dollars a year) is unable to provide the level of services needed for good healthcare? Not to mention the stupidity of offering a patent (for tests) for a gene sequence in the first place…

But luckily in the UK the NHS just ignores Myriad’s patent. And even in the US the Association for Molecular Pathology (science, yay!) have been involved in a big lawsuit against the company.

The other issue is that this means that in the US, where a huge chunk of the world’s medical research is being carried out, the patent disincetivises scientists from researching BRCA1 and BRCA2 (e.g. the doctor in this case wasn’t originally allowed to test for extra mutations) - and this is bad because both these genes have been implicated in increasing the risk for a whole host of other cancers (for example BRCA2 in prostate cancer) of which less is known.

So, yes, this video is important!!!

Candide: Rereading Mortal Engines

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 20:06:48 +0000

Candide: Rereading Mortal Engines:

cantankerousk:

candide94:

In order to relax after this holiday’s brutal 10 hour revision sessions, I’ve been re-reading the original Mortal Engines Quartet. These (and HDM) are probably my favourite books that I read as a kid. I read ME for the first ~10 years ago, and re-read them over and over again til I was 12ish. Then…

And apparently they are making it into a film. With Peter Jackson at the helm…

There have been rumors of that since 2009ish. From what I’ve read on Philip Reeve’s blog, they have the rights, but he knows nothing, so its unlikely to be any time soon.

I hope it does happen. The books are so action-packed (so “swashbuckling”) and the settings so striking that it would be difficult not to turn it into a good film. So long as they do Hester right!

Rereading Mortal Engines

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 19:38:26 +0000

In order to relax after this holiday’s brutal 10 hour revision sessions, I’ve been re-reading the original Mortal Engines Quartet. These (and HDM) are probably my favourite books that I read as a kid. I read ME for the first ~10 years ago, and re-read them over and over again til I was 12ish. Then I sorta moved on to other things, and it was only last year I actually got round to reading the Fever Crumb series. I enjoyed the three books but it didn’t feel as good as the original series - I found the adventures too ‘constrained’ compared to say ME or ADP, although I do think Fever is the best skeptic character I’ve ever come across! Anyway, that left me a little reluctant to reread the quartet - I have very vivid memories of all four books, and I didn’t want to spoil that.

But how irrational I was! I’ve been preaching the awesomeness of these books for five years now, based on how the characters, and settings have stuck in my mind. And re-reading them, they are still bloody brilliant. Okay, some of the prose feels a bit clunky now, but even so, the whole series is just so beautiful. I appreciate the characters even more now… and, man, he doesn’t pull any punches. I hope they make a film of it and make Hester as grumpy, stubborn, selfish, callous and ugly as she is in reality, so then when we see her softer side, its just all the more amazing.

But now I’m nearing the last hundred pages of A Darkling Plain. I know what’s coming. I know how satisfyingly sad that ending is. And yet, I don’t want it to end. Because re-reading them after six years, they were so fresh, so REAL, that I know I have to wait ages to have that experience again…

“Ah, love, let us be trueTo one another! for the world, which seemsTo lie before us like a land of dreams,So various, so beautiful, so new,Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;And we are here as on a darkling plainSwept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,Where ignorant armies clash by night.”

wren-natsworthy: CAN WE HAVE A MORTAL ENGINES ROLL CALL; i think we should all know each other by...

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 17:57:41 +0000

wren-natsworthy:

CAN WE HAVE A MORTAL ENGINES ROLL CALL; i think we should all know each other by name since there appear to be so few of us. so if you just reblog this with your name, thereby giving anyone else on the list the permission to go to your ask and freak out over mortal engines (ofc if you don’t want this, just write that next to your name we’re all very accepting here).

i’m Freya (that is my actual name but it always excited me very much that it was also the first word of predator’s gold)

I’m candide94, a lover of all things Philip Reeve. IIf you look on the back of the new British edition of Mortal Engines, there is a quote from my blog…

FIVE REASONS WHY PHILIP REEVE SHOULD BE YOUR NEW FAVOURITE AUTHOR

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 22:17:19 +0000

FIVE REASONS WHY PHILIP REEVE SHOULD BE YOUR NEW FAVOURITE AUTHOR

Candide: Random American Social Justice Blogger Calls Out Pixar's Brave's Depiction Of Gaelic Culture As Offensive To Scots...

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 19:26:50 +0000

Candide: Random American Social Justice Blogger Calls Out Pixar's Brave's Depiction Of Gaelic Culture As Offensive To Scots...:

eunbeag:

candide94:

I know I’m late to the discussion but I just read Melissa McEwan’s post attacking the Pixar movie Brave for appropriating Scottish culture and trading on damaging stereotypes of Scottish men. What really bugs me about this ill-informed article is that at no point does she use the word ‘Gaelic.’…

As a female, red haired, Gaidhlig speaking, Hebrides dwelling Scot….this article annoys me immensely.

The writer clearly knows nothing about Scottish culture, or Gaelic culture (instead we get the typical one size fits all ‘celtic’ label).

Plus, she’s not even Scottish (and don’t even get me started on ‘Scottish/Irish Americans….you’re not. End of.). Why take offence on behalf of a people that aren’t offended? Especially when you miss the point entirely…

Put your energy into helping people that really are being repressed and stereotyped, and that actually suffer because of it.

RAWR.

’S e’n fhirinn tha seo! Ma tha thu cho aineoloach ‘s nach eil fhios agad gu bheil diofar ann eadar Gaidheal is Albannach, chan eil thu airidh aon fhacal a radh mu dheidhinn an ‘appropriation’ a tha sinn a’ fulang…

’S ann o na h-Eileanan a tha mi fhin cuideachd. Bho Eirisgeidh. Tha e math cluinntinn bho Gaidheal eile!