It’s Time for Reason and Science
New call to arms from the Centre for Inquiry
September 2008
You couldn’t make this stuff up #1
Priceless.
Metadata found on Microsoft’s creative copy used in its ‘I’m a PC’ ad reveals that the graphics were actually produced using Macs running Adobe Creative Suite 3. After the details were published on the Flickr photo sharing site, Microsoft scrambled to polish off the embarrassing details last night
From: AppleInsider | Microsoft’s ‘I’m a PC’ campaign created with Macs
‘Creationism’ biologist quits job
I’ve had an item in my to do list for a few days to blog about the remarks made by Professor Michael Reiss on how creationism should be handled if it comes up in classrooms. Looks like I’ll have to discuss his resignation as well when I get round to it.
Professor Michael Reiss has quit as director of education at the Royal Society following the controversy over his recent comments on creationism.
From: BBC NEWS | Education | ‘Creationism’ biologist quits job
Nature Special on the Large Hadron Collider
Nature have a nice web site section on the LHC.
Specials : Nature News: “The Large Hadron Collider is the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. As the first proton beams zipped around the LHC’s massive 27-kilometre ring on 10 September 2008, it marked a new era of physics that could pin down the identity of the dark matter that shapes galaxies; find the Higgs boson, believed to confer mass on the other particles of the quantum bestiary; and recreate conditions that existed a split-second after the Big Bang. In this online Special, Nature asks how it works, what it will find, and why we should be excited.”
(Via Nature Journal.)
The ant from Mars : Nature News
Cool new ant species discovered. More info at Nature site:
It is so new, and so bizarre, that uber-naturalist E. O. Wilson has christened it “the ant from Mars”. Martialis heureka, a native of the Brazilian Amazon, is the founding member of a new subfamily of ants. It adds a new branch to the ant family tree which split off from the others extremely early in the family’s evolution. From The ant from Mars : Nature News
An Introduction to Regular Expressions
Drew McCormack has just posted a 13 page PDF tutorial on regular expressions.
If you’ve ever wanted to learn about regular expressions, here’s your chance, because I’m attaching to this post a chapter on regular expressions that I wrote recently for a Master’s level Python course. Although it targets the Python language, the regular expression syntax is virtually the same across the board, so anything you learn should translate pretty well to other languages and tools.
Testing audio integration
Whilst I’m testing blog features I might as well test audio integration between Ecto. iTunes and WordPress hosted blogs. Here is a short piece of music, called Europa, that I created using GarageBand..
‘Alaska Women Reject Palin’ Rally is HUGE!
From the Mudflats Blog in Alaska. Heartening news of an anti Palin rally in Anchorage. Quote from the site:
Never, have I seen anything like it in my 17 and a half years living in Anchorage. The organizers had someone walk the rally with a counter, and they clicked off well over 1400 people (not including the 90 counter-demonstrators). This was the biggest political rally ever, in the history of the state. I was absolutely stunned. The second most amazing thing is how many people honked and gave the thumbs up as they drove by. And even those that didn’t honk looked wide-eyed and awe-struck at the huge crowd that was growing by the minute. This just doesn’t happen here.
[From ‘Alaska Women Reject Palin’ Rally is HUGE! « Mudflats]
Tip of the hat to Gia via Twitter.
Testing Lightbox plugin
Implementing Lightbox style image handling. Shown below are some test images. Go on. Click them.
Click pictures for larger view
The LHC defended
There is an excellent response on the BBC site to those questioning the expense of the LHC in general, and by the current head of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in particular. The LHC is a marvellous endeavour and suggesting that the money would be better spent on climate change, or medical research is missing the point. We need to do both, and more. Humanity needs to explore. We need to probe the quantum realm. We need to explore the cosmos. We need to research for new medical advances. We need to find new cleaner energy sources. We need to do lots of things, but not at the expense of basic research into the way the Universe functions. The money spent on the LHC is not that much in comparison to other national expenditure. The UK contribution is equivalent to the cost of a pint of beer per head per year. It’s peanuts. Both figuratively and in a real sense. More is spent in the UK on peanuts every year than the UK contributes to the LHC. Maybe we should stop pouring money down the Iraq rat hole if we want to save. I’m looking forward to many years of interesting data and results from the LHC.