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2013's very odd resolution list
This being the start of 2013, of course everyone is talking about New Year Resolutions. In fact, come December 1st everyone starts ruminating on this topic. And then of course there is a lot of angst over what one hasn’t done yet and that horrible nagging feeling that somehow you are running out of time to do X, Y and Z and therefore be happy. So in the interests of preserving some sanity here, because let’s be honest, me being me, I have very little sanity or so people tell me, let’s do this differently. What was 2012 like? Well, lets see. It was unexpectedly social at points – in…
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False balance: A science journalism pitfall
Earlier tonight (1 Oct 2012), the program MediaWatch (a program that critiques the media in Australia), aired the fact that WIN TV in covering a story on the measles vaccine had stated that the vaccine was still thought to be linked to the occurrence of autism and that the scientific community was in debate over it and had quotes from the Australian Vaccination Network stating as such. Transcript, video & documents from the MediaWatch program are here for those playing along at home. Quick background info: Most of the scientific community is NOT debating over this and so far the medical advice is to give your children the MMR (measles, mumps,…
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Copyright issues
The lovely Janine Ripper requested the low down on copyright issues for writers. Here it is as succinctly as I can put it: 1) Anything you write whether it is recorded on paper or on disk or on the internet in a blog, as soon as you write it, is copyrighted to you. As soon as your work takes on a tangible form, it is copyrighted to you. Automatically. If you write under a pseudonym, the copyright is extended for 70 years after the moment it was first created especially if they cannot figure out the identity of the author. Otherwise, it is 70 years after the date of…
