Now that the HD format war is over people might be looking for a HD player. I’d recommend the Sony PS3. I bought mine last April primarily to be a Blu-ray player, with a games console for free. The PS3 is priced very nicely at present, there are plenty of Blu-ray movies and some stunning games.
Pure genius. Listen to a snippet on iTMS. Then spend the 79p to get the full thing. You won’t regret it! A guitar extravaganza.
These 2 books from Martin Rowson look like they’ll be good when they are published over the next few months:
1) The Dog Allusion: Pets, Gods and How to be Human
From the Amazon page:
As with dogs, so with gods – by and large, you should blame the owners.’ A particular trait, common to all human civilisations, is the worship of non-human entities with followings of devotees who claim that their reverence can transport them to transcendental heights of complete and unfettered love. Do I mean God? No – I mean Dog. Dogs and other pets we’ve been keeping and loving since we began walking on two feet. But why do we love God – and pets – so much when their capriciousness sometimes suggests that they don’t love us back? In this wise, witty and highly topical book, celebrated cartoonist and novelist Martin Rowson argues that rationally, the whole enterprise of religion is a monumental and faintly ridiculous waste of time and money. But then again, so is pet-keeping. What both do, however, is tell us a lot about who we are, which is perhaps a more important question than whether God exists and if so, if he is indeed great.
From the Amazon page:
Award-winning cartoonist Martin Rowson tells the story of Earth, from the Big Bang, the emergence of life, the death of the dinosaurs, the dawn of civilization, the invention of the wheel, the Trojan War, the Crucifixion, the Fall of Rome, the Black Death, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution, World War One, Nazism, consumerism, the Cold War, 9/11 and beyond to the End of the World, in sixty-seven beautiful, savage, splendidly satirical images, all with only one word in the captions.
Thanks to the Richard Dawkins site for The Dog Allusion pointer.
I got a MacBook Air. I had said I wouldn’t get one as it didn’t offer anything that my MacBook Pro didn’t have. However, several times over the last year when traipsing through an airport with the 17 inch MacBook Pro, in its Brenthaven case, pulling the shoulders out off me, I’ve thought about getting a lighter Mac. I’ve tried roller cases but didn’t like them. So I’ve been resigned to carrying the weight.
Last week I was away from home in Manchester. After the journey there, and the next day, carrying the MacBook Pro I had pains in my right shoulder. On Tuesday night I was in the Arndale Centre Apple Store and they had the MacBook Air’s on the table near the entrance. I’d seen them at MacWorld and knew they were thin and light. They felt really light when examining them in the store. Temptingly light. I dithered for a while, but in the end I bought one. I got the cheapest model with the 80GB hard drive, 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo and 2GB Ram. I’m going to use it as my travel computer when away from home. It’s going to be perfect for that. It is very light. I’ll be able to load it up with my Open University course books in PDF format and read those on it when away. That’ll also reduce the weight of the stuff I need to carry when travelling. The screen is very nice and reading PDFs on it will be good. I had been thinking about getting an iRex Iliad for reading PDFs. I’ll use the MacBook Air instead. As a bonus it’s colour which is better for the books in question, plus my subscription copies of Scientific American Digital are far better viewed on a colour screen.
I bought a small leather Tumi case for it in the duty free shop in Manchester airport on the way home.
Click pictures for larger view
A man in a wheelchair came hurtling round a corner.
“I was in surgery yesterday”, he said to a man looking in a shop window, “just trying to find my legs after the operation”.
“You don’t have any legs!” the window shopper observed.
“I know that. Aren’t you listening. They cut them off during the operation.” the man retorted testily. “Have you seen them?” he continued.
“No.”
The man looked disappointed. “Well if you do let me know”.
He hurried on down the corridor leaving an electric hum from the chair in his wake.
“Where’s Bill?” he asked.
“Vacuuming the cat” she replied.
“What do you mean vacuuming the cat?”
“Like I said. He’s vaccuming the cat.
“What, with a hoover?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“The cat came back covered in dust. Bill is using the hoover to clean it off.”
“Weird.”
“It happens a lot. We think the cat likes the feeling of being hoovered so he gets dusty on purpose.”
The furore over the radio interview and speech given by the Archbishop of Canterbury last week are well documented in all media channels. I won’t reiterate them here. For what its worth I don’t think that the Archbishop’s use of Sharia as his example to illustrate his point was all that controversial. Rather it was the bigger point he was making that I take issue with. I haven’t read his speech, but reporting of it and synopses from trusted sources, seems to indicate that the Archbishop was saying that individuals religious beliefs or world view based on religious teaching should be a valid principle that is taken into account when Parliament is defining the scope of legislation and law. A recent example of what he seems to have been alluding to are the Roman Catholic adoption agencies who wanted to have the right not to place children with same sex couples.
It seems to me that the Archbishop is making a bigger play to get more influence for religion, of all types, back into the public policy arena. As such his speech is much more insidious than simply saying some part of Sharia is inevitable in the UK. He wants to roll back the gains we have made towards an enlightened, secular society in which everyone is the same under the law and is free from the tyranny of religious leaders.
He, and his fellow travellers, should be resisted with all the vigour we can muster. Joining the National Secular Society would be a good start. If you are reading this and are not a member then please consider joining. The more numbers the Society has the stronger its voice will be to resist the people who want to move our society backwards in time.
For the record: Anyone else can believe in whatever religion they like. As long as it doesn’t effect the choices I, or anyone else who doesn’t share their belief, want to make. Giving favour under law to any interest group, whether religious or not, is not the way to go. The argument that some groups have such favour now isn’t an argument for extending it to other groups, rather I’d say it highlights that it needs to be taken away from the ones that currently have such privilege.
This is good. Nice use of QuickTime Player.
Tip of the hat to Bad Astronomy.
The Seinfeld TV show had a bit about not double dipping. Here it is from YouTube:
Giggle. One of the best shows ever. It seems that this has inspired a study to see if double dipping is unhygienic. Read about it over at the Nature Journal blogs.
I’m not very good at mathematics. I don’t mean standard stuff such as adding, subtracting etc. No, I mean the more abstract stuff like trigonometry, algebra and, especially, calculus. In order to really understand the science behind the current models of the Universe (General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, String Theory) you need to be able to understand the math. I don’t and I need to rectify that. So I’m going to start taking a series of Open University mathematics courses later this year. The initial courses will be:
After doing those I’ll decide whether to continue with pure mathematics courses or go down the physical sciences route.
Sean Carrol over at Cosmic Variance has a nice post linking to a Nina Simone video on YouTube. Excellent stuff.
I sometimes feel like I’m walking in a world of stupidity. Some examples why:
1) From this weeks New Scientist. A comment article by Michael Zimmerman who founded the Clergy Letter Project to counter the anti-scientific nonsense that many religious people are fed about the fact and theory of evolution. This is a fine thing to do. However within the article we have the following paragraph:
The clergy involved in Evolution Weekend do not set out to provide detailed information about evolution to their congregations. Rather, the aim is to outline the complementarity of religion and science, while recognising the power of science’s dependence on the scientific method and on the concept of falsifiability, along with its limitations. That is, they understand that there are areas of importance to humans that fall outside the reach of science – subjective areas that are not open to rigorous hypothesis testing.
Why are there any areas of importance that fall outside the reach of science? Who says so? Granted the imaginary deities and made up stuff the religious believe is beyond the reach of any form of investigation in the real world. They don’t exist after all. But there are things related to why people believe them that are very much open to scientific investigation. We can use neuroscience to investigate why people believe in things without evidence. We can also investigate the evolutionary advantages in belief systems within early human societies and groups. We certainly don’t have to ring fence some groups belief in the supernatural just cause they say its outside the realm of scientific investigation.
2) Looks like the UK Government is going to allow some faith schools in the UK to have their own inspectorate. That’s just so daft I couldn’t be bothered commenting on it past highlighting it here.
3) Church dentistry. That’s not an attempt at a Googlewhack. The Bishop of Carlisle, who is a mad as a fruitcake, has let it slip in a speech in the House of Lords that some church groups are bidding to offer dental services in the UK. He also said that the church should be exempt from the usual scrutiny that government welfare providers are subject to. Read the whole gory details here. The question is whether the government are actually considering things like this or they are just humouring the Bishop and his crazy fellow travellers?
Is it the 21st Century? Didn’t we settle all this tripe in the Enlightenment?
Sony have added a short stories category to the eBook Store. They have over 1000 stories in Sci-Fi, Horror, Mystery, Thriller and others. Cheap as well, from $0.50 up to a few dollars.
Just watched Match Point on BBC 2. This really is a wonderful film. I’ve written about it before. One of my favourite films of all time I think. I have it on DVD but one of my mates has it on loan at present. I’ll have to get it back.
Hey MB, if you’re reading this. Bring me back my Match Point DVD (and the others you have as well)!! 🙂
All the news outlets are full of stuff about the French bank trader, Jerome Kerviel. The French police are looking for him in relation to fraud. What I don’t understand is how he is supposed to have been fraudulent? The reports say he didn’t get any of the £3.5 Billion he lost on the markets for himself. How is this fraud? Surely it’s just a case of someone being very, very bad at their job. He should be fired. So should the people he reports to in the bank for letting it happen. When does being crap at your job become a police matter? Am I missing something here?
Update: Apparently he is being questioned about “fraudulent recording of banking records”. Which is probably fair enough. Given that the money is the savers and investors and not the banks, employees probably have a duty of care to safeguard it.
I’ve been using a Sony Reader since last June. It’s an excellent device for reading fiction. I got the latest model (PRS-505) when in San Francisco recently. This has a slightly modified form factor that improves on the PRS-500. Plus it has a slightly better screen. One nice thing the the PRS-505 does that the previous one didn’t, is that it mounts as a USB drive in Mac OS X. This means that content can be copied on to it without using he Windows only Sony Connect Software. Don’t get me wrong, I still use the Windows software for most of the content management, but I use the USB disk mode to quickly get interesting web pages and articles onto the device for reading away from the computer. Copying the text from a web page into Microsoft Word and saving as an RTF file produces a file that looks really nice on the Reader.
i got the new car this morning. I like it. Very shiny. love the IMA hybrid engine, and cream leather interior. Only 44 miles on it so far (I’m on holiday). Pictures below. Click them for larger views.
Click pictures for larger view
I got back from San Francisco on Monday afternoon after Macworld last week. The weather was a bit of a shock! I saw lots of flooded fields and rivers on the approach into Heathrow. The weather in San Francisco was very good. It was sunny for the whole time myself and 2 others were there. Apparently this is unusual for January. The sun shines on the Mac users! When I got back to Belfast it was blowing a gale and there was horizontal rain. Cold. These things are relative though. I came out of the hotel in San Francisco one day last week and saw a girl on her way to work with wooly gloves and scarf on. For me it was a warm morning, for the natives it was cold. Transplant one of them to Belfast last Monday and they’d probably have died on the spot!
On the subject of travel, well flying, I have to say that British Airways are excellent. I’ve always had excellent service from them and they are my carrier of choice.
Macworld itself felt a bit flat to me. There were some good points. The Microsoft Day at the Office session to launch Office 2008 for Macintosh was good. Attendees had to pay $199 to attend this session. It was worth it. There was some very useful info from people who knew the software. They also gave everyone a copy of the Special Media Edition of the suite. A $499 value. Nice. Other highlights for me from a product point of view were: TheSkyX and Seeker from Software Bisque, Casper from Jamf Software, and Filemaker Pro 9. The new virtualisation solutions from Parallels and VMware that allow Mac OS X Server to be run in a virtual machine looked good as well.
There were several very good talks, as well as several indifferent ones. On the good side there was the talk by Merlin Mann. Very entertaining and very useful as well. Leo Laporte and Alex Lindsey gave a good talk on podcasting and video podcasting. No slides in this one, just a conversation with the audience. Andy Ihnatko gave a good talk about how to use iTunes and iPods better. The Expo show floor was a typical trade show. I had a good talk and made some contacts with Jamf Software about Casper that’ll be useful for work.
I wouldn’t rush back to Macworld. I’d rather spend the money on attending Apple WWDC. This is a better conference for my needs. Entries in the Moscone Centre schedule for June list a corporate event from 8th to 13th June. That’ll probably be WWDC 2008. I’ll hopefully be at that.
This entry was composed using MacJournal 5 which has just been released and I’m testing to see if I can adopt it as my journal and blogging software. If you are reading this then it works!
UPDATE: MacJournal isn’t going to replace Ecto for blog editing.