Went to see the new movie version of the V for Vendetta books tonight. I loved it. Lots of ideas and layers at work in this film. It certainly made me think. Some people are complaining that it glorifies terrorism. I think the word bollocks is an apt response to that. Well worth seeing. I’ll be going again.
People should not be afraid of their Governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.
There is a good interview with Daniel Dennett it today’s Observer. It’s based around his new book, Breaking the Spell. I like this quote:
“Of course I’m going to hurt people’s feelings,’ he says, ‘but I don’t want to offend people casually. I really want to do it on purpose.”
Yep. If people are believing idiotic ideas, then call them idiots.
Rumours, and premature press releases!, indicate that a paper in Science by the Cassini Imaging Team suggests that there is liquid water near the surface of the south pole of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. That would be interesting in its own right but it seems that they have detected simple organic materials, and that there is more heat on average emerging from the south polar terrain, per square meter, than from the Earth. The bit in italics is a quote from the Cassini Team page. It’s a bit ambiguous. What do they mean by materials and when they talk about the heat output do they mean more heat per square meter when compared to the polar regions on Earth or other regions of the Earth?
I’m looking forward to getting the paper from Science.
With apologies to Alfred Bester for the title. Saw this on the Bad Astronomy blog. New Hubble picture of M101. It’s 170.000 light years across and contains a trillion stars. And that’s just 1 galaxy out of trillions.
If that doesn’t make you stop and gawk at the sheer splendour of the Universe then I suggest you check in to the nearest hospital, as you’re obviously very ill. And some people try to explain the Universe with Poof! God did it! Yeah, right. Giggle.
Classic line from today’s Doonesbury. Damn those pesky facts getting in the way of faith. Reason most certainly is a bully when it comes to pointing out falsehoods.
Much kudos to Pro-Test. It’s about time that the case for animal testing was put in a robust manner. Ultimately some things have to be tested in an animal model before human trials are performed. I’m all in favour of minimising the use of animals to the bare minimum but, at the present time, their use is essential for progress in the biomedical area.
Update:
BBC news story on Pro-Test rally in Oxford
Observer story on Pro-Test
Observer leader
Times Online article
Telegraph article
Astronomers using The Hubble telescope have imaged two additional bodies in the Pluto/Charon system. All 4 bodies orbit a centre of gravity that lies just above the surface of Pluto. Interestingly the orbits of Charon, P1 and P2 (as the new moons are designated) have a 12:2:3 orbital resonance. For each 12 orbits Charon completes, P2 completes 2 orbits and P1 completes 3. This implies that the moons where formed from a collision event that ejected material that later coalesced into the bodies. The gravity in the system isn’t strong enough for captured P1 & P2 to have formed the resonant orbits in the time the Solar System has been in existence. There is more info in this weeks Nature. If you don’t have access there are many other sources on the Internet. It’ll be interesting when the New Horizons mission gets to the Pluto/Charon system in July 2015.
This story is covered in this weeks Nature Podcast as well.
BBC Radio 4 will begin a 4-part dramatisation of Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods on 28th February. Should be good. The dramatisation they did of Pratchett’s Mort a few years ago was good.
See the BBC Radio 4 programme page.
Scientific American has started a podcast. The first one is available via links at their site. First impressions are good. It’s got subdued production values and gives you information without a lot of gee-whiz bells and whistles getting in the way.
The TV show CSI gets a mild ribbing as well at the end of the podcast 🙂
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Today is Darwin Day. We celebrate the life and works of one of humanities greatest thinkers on this day, the anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth in 1809. This should be a public holiday. Let’s lobby our MP’s.
Some other Darwin Day links:
Seed Magazine has a podcast that seems good. Just recently subscribed so it’s still on probation. The Nature podcast has lived up to expectations. It’s essential listening. I don’t like the New Scientist podcast. It’s too glitzy.
A guy I know, but haven’t seen for ages, arrived at my door the other day and told me his Windows laptop was displaying ads and stuff after his kid went to some site on the Internet. I was just heading into the office so couldn’t fix it. I’ve decided I’m not going to either. I don’t need that crap in my life anymore. I’ve told him to take it to a PC shop and get it fixed.
I felt bad doing that. I’m sure it’ll get easier as I do it more and more. I’m not fixing anybody else’s PC just cause I happen to know them a bit. Or even worse, because they are a friend of a friend.
Here is the best solution.
Just what we need. Another religious person with an influence over our politicians. WTF do the interpretations of 3000 year old ramblings have to do with our actions in the 21st Century. Nothing in my opinion. Humanity needs to let go of all this religious nonsense and move on. I fear it might be too late however. The world is slipping back into silly dogma. It wasn’t meant to be like this. 🙁
I’m off to read this again. That’s the kind of future we need.
If you are interested in astronomy, or just the night sky in general, check out Stellarium. Very nice.
Next week looks like it’ll be interesting for those of use interested in server virtualisation. Word on the street is that VMware will introduce a free mid tier product in the space they currently sell GSX Server in. Also it appears that NSI will be releasing a version of DoubleTake targeted towards replication of virtual servers. You can already use VMware and DoubleTake together but it’ll be good to have an easily configured and licensed product.
One of my reflex actions in the morning is to turn the radio from BBC Radio 4 over to Classic FM as soon as I hear The Today Programme presenters start to say “it’s 13 minutes to 8, and time for Thought for the day”. I don’t need to listen to 2 minutes of puerile drivel from some religious twerp at the start of the day.
A side benefit of this, in addition to the fact I don’t have to listen to Thought for the Day, which is benefit enough, is that occasionally there is a really good piece of music on Classic FM when I switch over. A few days ago they were playing one of the pieces from Dvorák’s Slavonic Dance suite [Op. 46: No. 8 in G Minor (presto)]. Excellent stuff. Available from the iTMS.
I was changing log file settings earlier and managed to completely break this site. Obviously it’s back now 🙂 This post is just to really see if I can post new entries to the reconfigured installation of WordPress.