There's a story in the Grauniad to day about the prevalence of Young Earth Creationism amongst undergraduates (link, via Stephen Law).

Such views are less unusual among UK students than you might think. In a survey last month, more than 12% questioned preferred creationism - the idea God created us within the past 10,000 years - to any other explanation of how we got here. Another 19% favoured the theory of intelligent design - that some features of living things are due to a supernatural being such as God. This means more than 30% believe our origins have more to do with God than with Darwin - evolution theory rang true for only 56%.

Whilst this is worrisome in itself (though you're entitled to have whatever views of the origin of the Universe you may want to have), it's not that big a deal. What is a big deal, though, is this:

In the Opinionpanel survey, nearly 20% said they had been taught creationism as fact by their main school. Most thought it would be best to teach a range of theories, but nearly 30% of those who supported creationism felt that pupils should learn about creationism alone.

That creationism is being taught as fact in school is utterly, utterly ludicrous. As Stephen says in his blog post:

Shouldn't checking up on this - and doing something about it - now be priority for the Government and for OFSTED? For as I said elsewhere, teaching children that Young Earth Creationism is supported by the available empirical evidence involves teaching them to think in way that are, quite literally, close to lunacy.

Oddly enough, I was thumbing through a book of quotations earlier and came across the following apt remark, written on a student paper by Wolfgang Pauli:

[That theory]'s not right. It's not even wrong.

The key here is the "not even wrong" bit. If is not possible for a theory cannot be proved false then it is not a valid scientific theory and can never be held to be true. Creationism falls into exactly that category.

From BBC News:

British science fiction writer Sir Arthur C Clarke has died in Sri Lanka at the age of 90...

Sir Arthur's vivid - and detailed - descriptions of space shuttles, super-computers and rapid communications systems were enjoyed by millions of readers around the world.

He was the author of more than 100 fiction and non-fiction books, and his writings are credited by many observers with giving science fiction - a genre often accused of veering towards the fantastical - a human and practical face.

I think there are few writers that I could name who have been more influential on my own worldview than Arthur C. Clarke. Although his writing has never really influenced mine - I tend to write in a different strand of his genre if at all - it did instil into me some basic rigours of the rule of writing: Be truthful, within your own universe; once you've set the rules for yourself, don't break them and, most importantly of all, Science Fiction is about the people, not the science. The science is incidental.

I remember a line from his book of essays, Greetings, Carbon-based Bipeds!, specifically from his epitaph to Isaac Asimov. It went something like this:

I once introduced Isaac to a dinner by saying "Ladies and gentlemen, there is only one Isaac Asimov." Well now there is no Isaac Asimov and the world is a poorer place for it.

I think that you could pretty much use his own words to describe how a lot of science fiction readers and writers feel right now.

And so one of the greats of our age passes into history. But, as always, his legacy remains.

My colleague and friend Matt Revell has a nice summary of some of the reasons for rising domestic fuel prices in the UK at the moment. A phrase that particularly caught my eye was this one:

Wind power, also, is not reliable nor particularly efficient and requires generation from other sources (coal, gas, nuclear, for example) to back it up when it’s either too windy or not quite windy enough. So, this is the Goldilocks of power generation and just like Goldilocks in the story, it can’t go for that long without needing a lie down; it’s the energy source with ME. So, no, your electricity won’t be free and nor should it be.

I confess that I don't pay a huge amount of attention to the telly these days. It's a means for me to watch DVDs and little else; most of the news content I read on a daily basis is read via the intertubes. But the point that Matt is making in his post, the one about the problem with TV audiences, or rather with TV programs who cater to the lowest common denominator and require no effort from their audience (that's how I see it, it may not be how Matt sees it) is a valid one.

One of the problems with living in an age of high information availability, when all you need to do to be able to know something more about an issue is look it up on Google, is that people accept the information that comes to them almost without question, in the same way that a stereotypical Daily Wail reader will accept the paper's opinion that the country is going to the dogs almost every single day of the week.

Is this just a human problem? Are we just naturally rather too trusting of, well, just about anyone who seems to be better informed than us? One of the most common phrases I've heard - and which has irked me no end - over the years is "It's (in the paper|on the web|on the TV) so it must be true!"

Anyway, I'm not going to go on further in a post that started out with a purpose but has subsequently become somewhat disjointed and is turning into a rant. Go and read Matt's post for a saner and less crabby commentary on matters.

Instead, dear reader, I'll leave you with a summary of my thinking on such matters by that other web luminary, XKCD:

For every prat like this there's an equal and opposite prat like this:

The government faces a legal challenge for sending every secondary school in England a copy of Al Gore's climate change film An Inconvenient Truth.

... A father from Kent, Stuart Dimmock, has lodged papers at London's High Court seeking judicial review. He is reportedly also seeking to prevent schools receiving the DVDs.