Group items tagged

graphic representation of climate change

A new Banksy has been removed from the wall and is 'held hostage' by a youth club that wants to raise money by letting the public view it. Ethical? Shouldn't art be public? Should we respect Banksy's views? As much as I would love to hang up his visual satires on my wall, they should stay on the public wall, really.

"The German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe considered his monumental book known in English as The Theory of Colours to be his greatest achievement. The book is a record of hundreds of Goethe's observations about the way colour affects our mood, as well as a long and heated polemic with Isaac Newton's colour theory. Goethe's understanding of light and colour was scientifically flawed yet his book had a surprisingly strong influence on the fine and applied arts. To find out why, Bridget Kendall talks to art historian Alexandra Loske, colour writer Victoria Finlay and designer Odette Steele."

"The lowest rate of schizophrenia prescriptions was in East Dorset. However, explaining the pattern across England is complicated and the research team says the maps pose a lot of questions. They were developed using anonymous prescription records that are collected from doctors' surgeries in England. They record only prescriptions given out by GPs - not the number of patients treated - so hospital treatment is missed in the analysis."

How do you persuade somebody of the facts? Asking them to be fair, impartial and unbiased is not enough. To explain why, psychologist Tom Stafford analyses a classic scientific study.

"Memory plays a big part in shaping our identity, but can we rely on what we recall about ourselves and about others? Mike Williams finds out how human memory works and why some memories flood back more easily than others. He also explores whether different senses trigger different types of memories. Mike speaks to memory experts Martin Conway, Elizabeth Loftus, Gisli Gudjonsson, Maria Larsson and Simon Chu. The reader is Roberto Pistolesi."

As global leaders remain divided on whether to carry out a military strike against Syria in response to the apparent use of chemical weapons against its people, Tim Harford looks at the different claims made about how many people have been killed. The United States, the UK and France are sharing intelligence, but all quote different estimates of how many people they think died in the attack by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces. Tim speaks to Kelly Greenhill, a professor of political science at Tufts University in the US, and co-author of Sex, Drugs and Body Counts about why the numbers vary so widely. And he speaks to Megan Price from the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, who has been trying to keep a tally of the deaths in Syria since the conflict began.

"They are the miracle pills that shouldn't really do anything. Placebos come in all shapes and sizes, but they contain no active ingredient. And yet, mysteriously, they often seem to work."

"A South Pacific island, shown on marine charts and world maps as well as on Google Earth and Google Maps, does not exist, Australian scientists say."