Posts by Shaun Lott
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David: I think if you add one of the existing Apple wireless keyboards, they you have your wish...
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You're right about the big surprises being the lack of both a camera and a fourth digit in the price. Personally, I have been hankering for an interactive e-reader of decent size: something that I could use to read and annotate documents such as theses, grant applications, scientific papers etc. I have done this on my iPod touch using e.g. Aji Annotate and it works fine except that the screen is really too small. I had my eye on the QUE as a 'professional' e-ink device that one could make notes on, but I'm not sure now how well it stacks up against the iPad in either price or performance. In the end, the software offering may carry the iPad - existing useful things like Annotate and Papers, plus the dedicated iWork: e-reader plus presentation software certainly works for me. And for probably the first time ever, we are all remarking on how 'cheap' the new Apple gizmo is...
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As a working research scientist, I have so far been more alarmed than cheered by the utterances of the the Chief Science Advisor so far.
The piece on global warming that he has written or commissioned is appropriate, but I don't think it tells us anything new, and it's not clear how much influence it has had on the pragmatic stance taken by the NZ Government in the pre-Copenhagen horse-trading.
I found his performance on the folate supplementation issue pretty weak. Foetal nutrition is his area of expertise, but it seems on this one he totally failed to 'put science at the heart of Government decision making' as I believe John Key promised when he made the appointment. Instead, we have had a perpetration of 'public health malpractice' by some of the Government's old mates in the food industry. I think the science advisor (and the PM for that matter) should be ashamed of this outcome.
On a professional level, I find many of his voiced opinions deeply worrying for science in New Zealand. He has stated that he will not be an 'advocate for scientists', and in the article in the weekend Herald tells the chronically underfunded research community of NZ to 'stop playing Oliver Twist' over research funding. Comments like that seem to me to be aimed at cosying up to a cost-cutting Government, rather than actually making a case for an increased science investment to move us out of the recession, as we are now seeing in the US.