Technorati Authority and blog diversity.

Technorati is a blog cataloguing site that rates the “authority” of blogs (a measure of how many other blogs link to a particular blog in a six month period). It also gives some insight into how the blogosphere perceives a particular blog.

Today, I checked my Technorati authority. What I found was rather interesting. Although my overall authority at 101 is a decline, from the last time I checked (a popular article of mine, is past six months of age), my blog has garnered interest for many other qualities.

My Entertainment authority stands at 96, ranking me 3,781^st out of all entertainment related blogs, worldwide.

My Living authority is 66, ranking me at 27,248^th out of all living related blogs, worldwide.

My Family authority is 84, ranking me at 1,712^th out of all family related blogs, worldwide.

My Politics authority is 112, ranking me at 3,637^th out of all politics related blogs, worldwide.

My U.S Politics authority is 119, ranking me at 2,168^th out of all U.S. politics related blogs, worldwide.

My Books authority is 144, ranking me at 1,210^th out of all book related blogs, worldwide.

It is somewhat revelatory to see how the blogosphere categorizes my blog, with respect to each of these aspects. It makes me realize that my blog is actually quite diverse in its concerns – and quite well thought of relatively speaking, in each area.

To put my blog rankings in perspective, there were at least 181 million blogs in the world as of early 2012. So, the fact that I should be ranked in the thousands, across so many categories is both gratifying and surprising. It does show that my efforts have been well received, overall.

Thank you to all my readers, particularly those who have chosen to link to my articles to share them with their own readerships. It is much appreciated.

Happy reading, all!

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

The War against Reason.

The modern world is not as rational as one would hope, or perhaps, believe. Everywhere I look, I see pockets of unreason...indeed, infestations of unreason, illogic, superstition, belief in the unbelievable and various kinds of delusion. The world is quite mad, in many ways.

Yesterday evening I found myself sitting in a talk that had been billed as being about “health”. I was there because my wife had heard about it and I decided to accompany her. It was a strange experience. At first, I listened with the quiet expectancy that I would be given the explanation as to how the speaker had recovered from a serious case of system wide nerve degeneration, 7 years ago. Although I listened carefully for two hours, he gave no answers as to what had happened to him, or how he had recovered, (though he did show a video of himself ostensibly afflicted, and in the midst of early recovery some years ago.) What I did hear however, was “proof” that there were aliens and that they had visited Earth, throughout history and “proof” that water has memory, of the events that occur to it – even emotional events. Scattered amongst this were little snippets of what kinds of contaminants are in modern foods. Some of these statements were factually wrong, but sounded convincingly alarming to those who didn’t know better. Throughout, the talk, were repeated statements that the audience didn’t know how the world really worked, but that the speaker did. He spoke as if he had privileged access to the secret of the Universe. Yet, he said nothing about what this secret might be...he just hinted that he knew it. To bolster his standing and credibility before the audience, he referred to his past working life as a “pioneer scientist”, who brought certain “advanced technologies” into Malaysia. These “advanced technologies” are actually many decades old analytical techniques which are widely known and available to every well equipped lab in the world. He spoke of all the diverse things he had worked on. He claimed to have been tasked by the Malaysian government to identify the remains of the Mongolian “model” Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa (note that her mother has stated she never actually worked as a model). The technologies he spoke of in connection to his work, could not be used in such a way. DNA testing was used to identify her – but he never mentioned any proficiency in those techniques...so I doubt his claim. At times, he seemed paranoid, attributing dark motives to unseen others, for why certain information (or misinformation, in fact) was not widely known. Again, he implied that he knew better than the media, than the Government, than the man in the street – that he had privileged understanding. What most concerned me about his presentation was that he mixed in real science, and real theories and made reference to the work of very famous scientists – such as Albert Einstein, to bolster the credibility of what he was saying. He name dropped such things as the Unified Field Theory of Albert Einstein (which, incidentally, was never actually worked out), to support his very tangential and completely unbelievable utterances about his world view. I thought this was most dangerous, since any non-scientist in the room might be convinced by the decoration provided by these famous names, and famous theories, into believing there was something to what he was saying.

The talk was free. However, at the end he gave a sales pitch for two other two day courses, which were far from free. These were presented as providing knowledge of “how the world really worked” and would “change how you saw the world forever”. No indication as to their contents was mentioned.

The thing about the speaker was that he seemed in earnest. However, no real scientist could possibly believe the mix of pseudoscience, superstition, delusion and paranoia, he came out with, even though there was a dash of science as flavouring. No real scientist could do anything but what I did...squirm throughout and often place my hand on my forehead, as if to note to myself that I couldn’t quite believe what was being said. I felt very uncomfortable listening to his nonsense, which, throughout was delivered with a beaming smile.

The talk was very vague and lacking in substance, though he constantly said: “I have so much to tell you, so much...”. Yet, he didn’t seem to have any real points of substance. He excused this by also repeatedly saying: “If you want information, go to Google...I am not going to give you information...what I teach is more experiential.”

By the end of it, I was very keen to leave. I had one word in my mind to sum up the feel of the whole “experience”...cult! Yet, he said, at one point, “This is not a religion, it is a science”. Well, it is most certainly not science...but could only be excused as a rather paranoid, delusional kind of religion.

He claimed, as we made our goodbyes, that he was establishing a postgraduate course in “Energetic medicine”, in Malaysia and Singapore, but when queried as to where, he said: “That is confidential”. Again, he had recourse to the air of secrecy , to project that there was something special going on. I was rather appalled at the thought that he might actually be teaching a postgraduate course in this nonsense. Unfortunately, there is a sufficient lack of rationality in Malaysia (but probably not Singapore), to allow such a course to happen. However, I sincerely hope not.

Rather worryingly, the crowd was slow to leave and seemed interested in talking about what he had said, afterwards. No-one else seemed to have twigged that the speaker had been spouting nonsense for two hours. They were a typical “new age” crowd and seemed the sort who were quite able to believe anything at all, especially if it were utterly preposterous.

Most concerning of all, was that he had a book out about his healing experience and his new world view, which he claimed was a best seller (in fact he said THE best seller), in Malaysia and Singapore. So, there is, it seems, a popular interest in his views. It seems that ignorance and delusion are to triumph over reason, at least in South East Asia (though no doubt the rest of the world suffers from similar problems). Notably, on the front cover, he claimed to be a “molecular biologist”. Now, this may be so, for all I know, but I have never encountered, in my life, a scientist so susceptible to pseudoscience and delusional nonsense as this one.

There is only one remedy to this kind of pseudoscientific cult – good basic science education for all. Unfortunately, most people are scientifically illiterate and are susceptible to this kind of nonsense. The sooner the world’s science education is improved the better. In the meantime, irrationality like this talk and its associated cult, will thrive.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

On the obviousness of research.

It is a complaint often seen in the comments below newspaper articles, that quite a bit of research seems “obvious” to the layman. The big mystery for many an article reader, is why the research was supported or even conducted in the first place.

Ainan, too, has noticed this. Presently, he has been tasked, in his English class (as part of his American Degree Programme), to write an essay on gender inequality. I was pleased to hear that he had been asked to do this, for it invited him to consider matters which he might not normally do. It would be a chance for him to expand his view of the world in a new way. Yet, when he did as he had been asked, and started to read a wide range of academic articles, on gender inequality, he became exasperated. “What is the point of these articles?”, he said, in irritation. “They don’t say anything I don’t already know!”

Ainan was experiencing “the obviousness of research”. He was right. So many of these articles, though dressed in academic language, said no more than what a layman might assume to be so, off the top of their head. Ainan felt that he wasn’t learning anything by reading these articles, for their conclusions were just too obvious.

I didn’t want Ainan to lose faith in the task he had been set, so I explained to him why it was still helpful to read the articles.

“In academic writing, you have to support what you say, with references to articles that are based on research of the topic. This is to show that what you say has backing. So, even though you know it already, and it is nothing new to you, using the articles for reference, will give credibility to your statements.”

“Yes,” he said, in a manner which implied “no!”, “but, each article refers to others and those refer to others and so on, until far back, there is the first article, which cannot refer to anything: so that has no support at all.”

I smiled to myself, though not to him, on hearing that. Ainan was discerning a logical flaw in the whole of academe – or at least what seemed like one.

“Yes, Ainan, but that first article will be based on research of the topic. There will be some study, or calculation or something, to support its statements, even if there is no prior article in its field.”

He seemed neither convinced nor impressed. I could almost see in his eyes, the imagined infinitely receding column of academic articles, ultimately suspended over nothing and supported by nothing, since the first one floated, unsupported in mid-air. That was Ainan’s vision – and in a way, he was right, because the first of any field cannot make references in its own field, though it might call upon others. The first academic article of all, of course, would have no prior articles to refer to, in any field – so Ainan’s insight had merit. Ultimately, the system of academic reference cannot go back forever. At some point, there are unreferenced articles. It was sharp of Ainan to see through this and see the basic assumption of academia – that everything is supported by something else. Ultimately, of course, that cannot be.

I am pleased that Ainan is writing papers on topics outside his natural interests. It should give him the chance to grow in new ways. Yet, I see, that doesn’t stop him questioning the very nature of the enterprise...but then that is good too, in fact, in many ways, that is the best part of it – that he should not accept what he has been asked to do, without question. He is thinking for himself and that is the best sign of all.

Now, however, that he has pointed out the basic problem with academic referencing, I can’t quite consider it in the same way at all. That image of a vast pillar of articles, floating unsupported in the air, keeps coming to mind. Trust Ainan to cast an old idea, in a new light.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)