Data Soliloquies is a book about the extraordinary cultural fluidity of scientific data. A wide array of graphs, charts, computer models and other forms of visual advocacy have become inescapable fixtures of public science presentations, though they are often treated as if they were neutral ‘found objects’ rather than elaborate narrative constructions containing high levels of statistical uncertainty.

It has been 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. We are ‘celebrating' this anniversary at a time when global capitalism and liberal democracy, the so-called winners of the Cold War struggle between East and West, find themselves in one of the deepest economic and political crises since the Wall Street crash in 1929 and the global turmoil that followed.

VESTAS WORKERS BESIEGED BY RIOT POLICE
(Updated Press Release)

Workers staging a sit-in at the soon-to-close Vestas wind turbine plant on the Isle of Wight are being starved out by police.

The police, many inside the factory and dressed in riot gear, have denied food to the workers who took over the factory offices last night, to protest the closure of their factory. The police, operating with highly questionable legal authority, have surrounded the offices, preventing supporters from joining the sit-in, and preventing food from being brought to the protestors.

There are two ways to ripen a tomato. One, let it hang on the vine until it's so juicy it plops heavy into your hand. The other way is less romantic. Pick it while it's still green, pack it in a box and hope it blushes as it travels across the country.

About 70% of the radioactive substances released to the atmosphere in result of the accident at the 4th power unit of the Chernobyl NPP on April 26 in 1986 contaminated 23% of the territory of Belarus. At present about 1.4 million residents including 260 thousand children live in the radiation pollution zone. The radiation situation in several affected regions is still difficult (National report “20 years after the Chernobyl accident”).

This (fairly) recent issue of Rising East looks useful in a whatever happened to the Thames Gateway after the credit crunch kind of way... from illiquidity to mud; following the crisis downriver

The July issue of Rising East Online