The exhibit tells some of the story of tiling from ancient patterns through to hyperbolic and 4d geometry. You get to play with shapes and geometric toys and look at models and pictures. There will even be plenty of maths for those who insist.

The difference between stupid and intelligent people–and this is true whether or not they are well-educated–is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambiguous or even contradictory situations–in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward.

Neal Stephenson, Diamond Age

The swine flu story is a great test of someone’s subtlety. You have to hold two competing possibilities in your head, both with serious consequences:

1) Nothing interesting is happening…

2) Millions are going to DIE!!!!!!

1 has the obvious cost of fiddling while Rome burns and avoiding doing easy things that make serious improvements down the road. 2 has the problems of panic, societal shutdown, economic issues, etc. Plus for the experts the cry wolf problem, next time people will revert to 1.

The problem is that, at the moment we cannot know quite what will happen, but 2 is a scarily real possibility.

Of course both of these options are better than the media’s version of events. Holding strong versions of both 1 and 2 simultaineously. They both make better stories than subtlety. Saying on the one hand that we are all going to die and on the other that nothing is going to happen. In CNN’s case hyping then accusing twitter of causing panic.

In fact for me twitter has connected me up to excellent information, even though there is plenty of denial and panic as well. With twitter I can choose who to listen to, tuning my own news sources, rather than the limited choice available in the mainstream media.  In particular @bengoldacre, is always a relaible source on stories involving science when it hits the news and on this issue @hexayurt was right on the money, especially with the flucode.  There are many more informed people out there talking sense through this topic.

This is sad as there are many small things that people can do that can make a serious impact on the final outcome. If fact doing these things could possibly prevent it.  The suble fact is that if it is prevented it will be very hard to tell whether what we did was necessary.  Very small reductions in how infectious people are and how many people they come into contact with can have a dramtic effect.  For a non-technical overview of the mathematics of epidemics and disease, there is an excellent article in the online maths magazine Plus.

So in conclusion, spread the flucode and think about things don’t just consume the story you like!

the juvenile humor at the core of how science works will be absent, replaced by a wooden earnestness more in line with the writer’s preconceptions.

However I do think that Scott is a little harsh on literature.  The world is complicated, it cannot be simplified in general.  The magic of science is that it finds things that can be simplified ways that things can be put into simple rules and mathematical rules.  In a similar manner but with different methods most authors strive to find ways of making everything fit together.  His top five are an excellent start for those who have also understood something of science in their work.  I would like to add five of my own:

J L Borges

The commentators on the article got there before me, but he deserves repeating.  What other writer would think to put a library in the universal cover of a 3-torus.

Georges Perec

If you want silly games leading to deep thought Perec is your man.  In his masterwork
using jigsaws, graeco-roman squares and permutations to describe how perfection is impossible and the greatest scheme cannot help but be flawed in some way.

Jan Potocki

The Manuscript Found in Saragossa
 includes accurate renditions of cutting edge mathematics, in the work of the Bernouills.  That was of course cutting edge in the eighteenth century.

Terry Pratchett

The Unseen University parodies to a T the pomposity, silliness and brilliance present in most universities.  It is a deeply sympathetic portrait of the wizards who normally in the end and often not in the way they intended manage to save the day.  

Vladimir Nabokov

Nabokov was a published scientist, doing worthy work in the study of butterflies, probably not at the same level as his writing.  His famous quote sums up the point I want to make and provide the title for this:

There is no science without fancy and no art without fact.

I could go on, it was hard enough to bring it down to five, I left out Neal Stephenson to get it to five as he had been added to the comments several times.  The original list was interested in the puncturing of pomposity, rather than a simple understanding of science.  However of my five the three P s Pratchett, Perec and Potocki tackle definately pomposity both outside and within science.