manifest awesomeness

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PhD blues

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I intend to complete my lab work by Wednesday. I'm not going to make it, especially as I am going out for pre-emptive celebratory beer on Monday with NMR girl. Anyhoo, I am spending 20 hours a day in the lab and will be spending ~16 hours a day writing up for the next 4-5 months so don't expect lengthy, lucid prose from me. Not that you do, but I reckon I occasionally put a few good words together. Like 'cock' and 'weasel'. Or 'goat and 'fnarr'.

Word.

this I want to see

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Religulous. Checkit.

Campaign to Elect Michael Palin as Vice President

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Royal Society sky-pixie fan resigns over support for "creation-science"

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About time too. Talk about mixed messages!

Its interesting that one of the RS Fellows and Nobel laureates, Harry Kroto, who wrote to the Society asking for the sky-pixie fan's removal stated his opinion that if Reiss had been an atheist his comments would have been acceptable. This suggests that under certain circumstances Reiss's comments might be acceptable.

Well they're not. Religion is nonsense.

Just because some people choose to ignorantly or wilfully attempt to mix science and religion doesn't mean that religion can be brought into science lessons. Quite, quite the opposite. What should be happening here is that science should be deployed in religious education lessons to quash all the farcical mumbo-jumbo that religious people hold to be true. Walking on water, an afterlife, miracles, visions, natural disasters as evidence of some god's wrath, religious proscriptions. All of these and many more need to be put into the context of our society and laws. Islam prescribes death for apostasy- this is illegal in this country. Christianity proscribes adultery but there is no law against it in this country. Your relationship might not last too long if your partner finds out but its not illegal. Paedophilia features heavily in Abrahamic religions but that doesn't make it any more acceptable than hammering a tent peg into someone's temple (Judges 4:17-24 NLT)?

Rich Dawkins- another RS Fellow, wrote in to New Scientist to weigh in on the argument and suggested that, rather than resign as Director of Education for the Society, Reiss might resign his clerical Orders instead. Its certainly a scenario that I would love to see.


Edit:

Thanks to Rossinisbird who pointed out that I had written that Islam proscribes death for apostasy when in fact fundamentalists believe it prescribes it (as usual the evidence and arguments for and against a specific interpretation of sky-pixie literature are irrational and opaque).

READ THIS ~ READ THIS ~ READ THIS ~ READ THIS ~ READ THIS ~ READ THIS ~ READ THIS ~ READ THIS ~

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"As humanity teeters on the brink, the corporate media are sure to give increasing coverage to these dubious and risky "technofixes." Influential business lobbyists will make ever-greater efforts to push for lucrative, but diversionary, "solutions" to climate chaos. We need to be alert to such self-serving manoeuvres and willing to expose them.

This much is clear: after more than twenty years of ever more urgent scientific warnings, and government and corporate obstructionism, we really have arrived at the edge of the climate abyss."

Fucking WORD!

good music

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I was really up for going to Recydrate The West but PhD says "no". I checked out some of the bands on the line-up, besides the usual suspects like Babyhead and Yes Sir Boss ! ! !.

The Scrub and Smerins Antisocial Club really stood out in the way of live appeal. I just ordered the former's EP off the Cider City Records website. I suggest you do the same and get your knees up right good an proper, like. Or better still- catch the buggers live, get wrecked up on the best cider money can buy and get down to the skanking sound!

WHOOP WHOOP!!!!!

metabolomics

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Punkscience has been doing Nuclear Magnetic Resonance analysis of his worms. The results look like this:


Each peak is a compound, some are in there twice or more. What this means I currently have no idea but its pretty impressive.

the Battle for Bolivia

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The US is up to its old imperialist tricks in Latin America. The continued push by Latin American countries to divest themselves of the malignant influence of America and its proxies suh as the World Bank has reached a new level of intensity as the Bolivian President, Evo Morales, has asked the US Ambassador to leave the country and accused him of promoting seperatism and inciting violent opposition. The country's right-wing minority, which politically dominates the Media Luna region, have been charged by Morales with mounting a 'civil coup' against the poor, 60% indigenous majority of the country. Morales recently won a two-thirds majority in a referensum to confirm his leadership and is attempting to push through sweeping progressive reforms including land redistribution and distribution of revenue from Bolivia's extensive gas reserves to the population. The violent right-wing minority, in line with the "Washington Consensus" dogma of free trade and elimination of government services in favour of tax breaks for wealthy foreign investors and corporations seem to be fighting to keep the country in the 19th century.

Naomi Klein's awesome history of US disaster capitalism, "The Shock Doctrine" is particularly essential reading to understand the history of US imperialism that is driving its violent, anti-democratic support of the right-wing factions.

productivity killer

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I love New Statesman. It may be at, various times, bizarre, hypocritical, factual, progressive, insane, amusing and a variety of other adjectives, however it also appeals to me in an intellectual way. Their latest CultureTech offering is little short of genius. For anyone who's ever enjoyed the game Lemmings, this is for you.

This one was particularly rewarding to complete but I am most proud of this little beauty.


Addition:

Check out the Weasel Tank in action!

a challenge to climate change denialists

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This is primarily aimed at the racist CCD David Duff and the CCD Bishop Hill but I'm happy for anyone to chip in. I might regret this but we'll just have to see.

Duff et al, I invite you to post a peer-reviewed reference supporting your position of denial. I'll make a special exception for it. That's a promise.

However- and do take note of this Duff as your cherry-picking of references makes me very wary of offering you any sort of licence to abuse others' ignorance- your reference cannot simply be methodological critiques a la McIntyre & McKitrick (2005). I am talking about original, peer-reviewed research that demonstrates that anthropological forcings are negligible in comparison to natural ones.

I'm actually interested to see what you come up with.


Addition:

Anyone interested in entering the discussion should focus on this paper, as preferred by Duff.

replacing a mobile phone

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So I got wrecked at a festival and lost my phone. Shit. I'd had my Nokia 5140i for a couple of years. Its the rubberised, dust & water-resistant model that they discontinued because they weren't making any money from replacing broken ones because . . .well . . . it didn't break. I'll leave that little market failure alone as I can't discuss it using more than four letter words.

Anyway, my phone was gone and I was distraught. Really, I was! I loved that phone with its built in LED flashlight (the most useful add-on to any phone I've yet discovered), sound meter (useful for working out whether my car stereo was loud enough to damage my hearing- it was), compass (utterly useless but great to impress people with). But most of all I loved it for its rugged nature and all-round sturdiness. I am an abuser of technology. I believe that it is entirely possible to build electronic devices to a reasonable standard of resilience. The people who developed "design obsolescence" need to be shot. I use stuff like I mean it and things that aren't up to scratch inevitably suffer. My Nokia 5140i (and the 5140 I had before that) were both awesome. I could have happily drop-kicked them over rugby posts. Did I mention that you could use them as telephones too?

So, having pined the loss of my 5140i I started to search for my wife's old 5140, which I knew to be lying around the house somewhere as a 'spare' phone. I found all of it except the keypad. Bugger. Seeing the need for a new shell & keypad- you can't buy them separately- I ordered one from ebay. The phone still worked without the keypad, you could push the contacts underneath but the case got in the way so I took to carrying around without its case on so I could stay connected. Unfortunately the case also protects the screen which ended up getting cracked in my pocket. Double bugger.

I imagine this would have been the point where most people would have jumped onto the net and started looking for a new phone. I confess I did browse around ebay looking for another 5140i but as these phone's were no longer being manufactured and other people seemed to appreciate its position at the pinnacle of mobile phone design, new ones from Hong Kong were going for at least £45 and even 2nd hand ones carried a premium and weren't much cheaper. As I had already shelled out £16 for a new case- I had ordered a genuine Nokia one as the keys on the cheap replicas had a nasty feel- I was loathe to fork out good money after bad. At this stage I also suffered a wave of eco-guilt as I realised that I had already consigned the cracked-screen job to the recycling bin. This reflected the worst influence of consumerism over common sense as I hadn't even looked to see how much a repair would be. A little googling indicated this would be at least £30, not much cheaper than a new phone but the old one wouldn't end up in recycling/landfill. Joy to the world!

I pondered this awhile whilst staring at the poor, shattered screen of the faithful old handset. The 5140s comprise a chassi like any other phone but with sealed gaskets around all the ports and I/O devices, covered by a rubberised case to make it shock-resistant. The chassis looked to be a fairly straightforward dismantling job with 6 screws around its edge and no nasty internal clips that are designed to break when you try and take them apart (new Ipods!).

There's even a step-by-step guide online to dismantling them! A couple of googles later and I had located a vendor for a replacement screen for the princely sum of £12.50, including p&p. So now I am replete with a fully functioning mobile for a fraction of the price of a replacement!

I rule.