Friday, 31 October 2008

Halloween - and great poetry

Tam O'Shanter by Robert Burns, recited by Gerry Neary.



The words for Tam o'Shanter are below the belt:
Grow into these trousers... >>

Halloween - a cartoon

Here's a nice little cartoon to celebrate the festival.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Part 1


The rest is below the belt:
Grow into these trousers... >>

Thursday, 30 October 2008

Wildlife Photographer of the Year

The Natural History Museum and BBC Wildlife Magazine have announced the winners of this year's competition.

The overall winner was Steve Winter for Snowstorm leopard. It's a great picture, but I thought this was much more interesting. 1st in the Animal Behaviour: All Other Animals category was David Maitland:

DeadlockCheck out David's other photo too.

Next on my reading list

A welcome sight on the doormat today was a freshly minted copy of Albion Dreaming: A Popular History of LSD in Britain by my long-time friend Andy Roberts - (I'll call him Agg to avoid confusion).



Agg and I were part of the same clan as we emerged into consciousness through our teens. Looking back it was one hell of a roller coaster ride.

But we made it and as the years passed we both continued to probe the nether regions of reality, though in utterly different ways:
Agg through his sceptical interest in folklore, mythology, UFOs and other cultural phenomenon, and his deep understanding of their philosophical entanglement.
Myself with trying to work out how the hell algae make bile pigments and use them for photosynthesis.

I know Agg's writing style, and I know it's far better than his piano playing, so I'm looking forward to a good, well researched read.

Wednesday, 29 October 2008

Great but simple comedy

I almost forgot to post this.

Spike Milligan - Amnesia


Bonus Spike below the belt.
Grow into these trousers... >>

Tuesday, 28 October 2008

Move over Einstein, here come the Starlings

After watching the video of Einstein the parrot the other week, it was fun to see these posts of European Starlings by GrrlScientist.

Damer


and

Weewoo


I'm no twitcher, so correct me if I'm wrong, but starlings used to flock in hundreds of thousands over the cities of Northern England, their chatter clearly heard above the traffic noise and their effluvia a distinct menace to the unlucky pedestrian. I used to watch them wheel and flow in tight complex formations up in the evening sky, as both they and I journeyed home to roost. Now I see few if any in the city. What happened?

I watched a pair last spring, nesting under the eaves next door. So did my cats. Sadly, some of the 'doorstep presents' I received surely came from that brood.

Monday, 27 October 2008

Beyond Belief 2008

The videos from Beyond Belief 2008 are beginning to come online.

If you haven't come across this conference before you may be in for a real treat. It's a meeting of deep thinking people discussing science, philosophy, culture, reality...

Beyond Belief: Candles in the Dark


Where else might you see A.C. Grayling, V.S. Ramachandran, Sam Harris, Pat Churchland and Chris Mooney all at the same venue. With hopefully talks to come from Harry Kroto, Michael Shermer and even Paul Davies, who are all on the long list of participants.

I'm waiting till I have a couple of days of free time, then I'll try to watch as much as possible (or as much as I want) in sequence. I'm a sucker for good conference; it keeps the ol' brain ticking over. However we all miss out on what must have gone on during coffee, lunch or in the bar later on. Hey, I'm still capable of eating and drinking on my own! These videos, a beer and a pizza delivery will do just fine.
----------
If you did miss the previous years, here are the links.
Highly recomended.
Beyond Belief: Science, Reason, Religion & Survival - 2006
Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0 - 2007

Sunday, 26 October 2008

You Don't Know Jack

Here's one for the quiz junkies:





That should have been episode 1, it goes up to episode 100. If you want more, there's a full list here.

Have fun.

A thought for a Sunday


"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana"

Groucho Marx

Saturday, 25 October 2008

The Atheist Blogroll

Big thanks to Mojoey at Deep Thoughts for adding by humble blog to the Atheist Blogroll. This was done so quickly too, it can't be easy.



Scroll down to see the link in the sidebar. Join up yourself, it's free. There's lots of people like us all around the world, so don't hide your thoughts, speak out. The world is listening.

Why am I an atheist?

I have just asked to be included in the Atheist Blogroll (see sidebar), a worldwide community of similar minded people to myself. Please have a look at some of these blogs, I know you will find lots of interesting reading.
-----------
Why am I an atheist?

This is a good question because I never went through any kind of deconversion. I guess I was simply never religiously indoctrinated. Born in the UK in the 1950s and living in rural West Yorkshire, my schooling was Church of England, though my parents were raised as Methodists. I have dim memories of Sunday school at the local Chapel but religion was rarely, if ever, discussed at home. It was just what people did. Christenings and weddings were what churches were for to me, I was much older before my first funeral. At school we had daily morning assembly, with hymns, and celebrations for Easter, Christmas and suchlike. Most of this just passed me by but I always enjoyed the singing and was a member of the school choir for many years.

One of my clearest early memories is of my father lifting me up to look into a birds nest in a hedgerow and seeing a clutch of chicks with gaping mouths. I guess I was about four. I could take you to the same spot now, fifty years later, the hedge and the fields are still there. Though they do not seem so vibrant any longer.

I had an early passion for the natural world and lived surrounded by fields and common land, this is where we played as kids.

Keeping caterpillars in jam jars - there began my awakening - metamorphosis. Butterflies, bees and wasps through the long summer days, moths battering the windows at night. Beetles, spiders, ladybirds and daddy longlegs. Pond dipping for dragonfly, damsel, caddis and mayfly larvae. Gammarus shrimp and bloodworms. When given a microscope I found there were cyclops, hydra and daphnia. Spirogyra, volvox, paramecium, euglena, amoeba. Oh, and brine shrimp from dust-like eggs, wow!

Tadpoles! Frogs, toads and newts. Sticklebacks and minnows. Angling for roach, chub, perch and tench. (It broke my heart in later years when I took my wife-to-be on a walk round the small ponds I knew from childhood. All of them were gone bar one. Filled in, drained or built upon. We went home, I took up a spade and dug a pond in our garden. The next spring it was full of spawning frogs).

Rabbits, chickens, dogs and cats. Hedgehogs, rats, mice and voles. Cows, pigs, sheep and horses. The call of the cuckoo in spring, robin redbreast in winter. Magpies, wrens, thrushes, sparrows and starlings. Visits to the seaside. Starfish and anemone, crabs, shrimp and lobster. Dab, plaice and mackerel.

And then there were fossils...

I never really needed to be taught about evolution. Man, the interconnectedness was obvious from the world in which I lived.

My elder sister bought me a telescope for Christmas one year, and another world opened up. Craters on the moon, Andromeda, Saturn! A mobile library visited the village once a week so I began to satisfy my thirst for knowledge there. Chemistry, physics, maths and electronics (how I failed to kill myself I am not sure). Then into the '70s: drugs, girls and music. Ahh, music, it is so important to me. Strip me of all else but please leave a tune or two in my head.

Always I have tried to find deeper meanings to my experience of life and this has taken me through meditation, martial arts, LSD and finally real research science. Thirty years later I now appreciate that true understanding is having the ability to ask the next question. Learning never ends. Questioning reality never ends.

The legacy from my family I now realise was vast. They gave me the freedom to explore and learn independently. For that I will be eternally grateful.

So why am I an atheist? Because there is no other way to be.

Friday, 24 October 2008

Well, I guess I won't be running for President of the USA

New Scientist has an article called:
Are YOU fit to be president?
Basically you take a personality test and copy some of the results into another assessment to see how you might shape up to be President.

Take the short test or the long test and plug the results in here.

I did the long test and I bare my arse below the belt.
Grow into these trousers... >>

Wednesday, 22 October 2008

Here's a nice little tune - Ramble on Rose

Grateful Dead: Ramble on Rose Live at Radio City Music Hall

We can all do things wrong

But not this wrong, come on...


via Unreasonable Faith.

Tuesday, 21 October 2008

Physics - If it were like women

I can't fully find out who the author is really, but he seems to be a scientist/poet.

Whatever, this is priceless:

PHYSICAL THEORIES AS WOMEN.

BY SIMON DEDEO

- - - -

0. Newtonian gravity is your high-school girlfriend. As your first encounter with physics, she's amazing. You will never forget Newtonian gravity, even if you're not in touch very much anymore.

1. Electrodynamics is your college girlfriend. Pretty complex, you probably won't date long enough to really understand her.

2. Special relativity is the girl you meet at the dorm party while you're dating electrodynamics. You make out. It's not really cheating because it's not like you call her back. But you have a sneaking suspicion she knows electrodynamics and told her everything.

3. Quantum mechanics is the girl you meet at the poetry reading. Everyone thinks she's really interesting and people you don't know are obsessed about her. You go out. It turns out that she's pretty complicated and has some issues. Later, after you've broken up, you wonder if her aura of mystery is actually just confusion.

4. General relativity is your high-school girlfriend all grown up. Man, she is amazing. You sort of regret not keeping in touch. She hates quantum mechanics for obscure reasons.

5. Quantum field theory is from overseas, but she doesn't really have an accent. You fall deeply in love, but she treats you horribly. You are pretty sure she's fooling around with half of your friends, but you don't care. You know it will end badly.

6. Cosmology is the girl that doesn't really date, but has lots of hot friends. Some people date cosmology just to hang out with her friends.

7. Analytical classical mechanics is a bit older, and knows stuff you don't.

8. String theory is off in her own little world. She is either profound or insane. If you start dating, you never see your friends anymore. It's just string theory, 24/7.
-------
via Berto: Philosophy Monkey

Monday, 20 October 2008

Where does surreal begin? Try this.

Tom Waits: God's away on business


I'd sell your heart to the junk-man baby
For a buck, for a buck!
If you're looking for someone to pull you out of that ditch
You're out of luck,
You're out of luck

The ship is sinking,
The ship is sinking,
The ship is sinking

There's a leak, there's a leak in the boiler room,
The poor, the lame, the blind
Who are the ones left in charge?
Killers, thieves and Lawyers

God's away, God's away, God's away
On business. Business.
God's away, God's away, God's away
On business. Business.

Digging up the dead with a shovel and a pick
It's a job, it's a job
Bloody moon rising with a plague and a flood
Join the mob, join the mob

It's all over,
It's all over,
It's all over

There's a leak, there's a leak, in the boiler room
The poor, the lame, the blind
Who are the ones that we kept in charge?
Killers, thieves, and lawyers

God's away, God's away, God's away
On business. Business.
God's away, God's away,
On business. Business.

[Instrumental Break]

Goddamn there's always such a big temptation
To be good, to be good
There's always free cheddar in a mousetrap, baby
It's a deal, it's a deal

God's away, God's away, God's away
On business. Business.
God's away, God's away, God's away
On business. Business.

I narrow my eyes like a coin slot baby,
Let her ring, let her ring

God's away, God's away,
God's away on business.
Business...
----------------
via LGF

Sunday, 19 October 2008

A thought for a Sunday

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them. He would not require us to deny sense and reason in physical matters which are set before our eyes and minds by direct experience or necessary demonstrations. This must be especially true in those sciences of which but the faintest trace (and that consisting of conclusions) is to be found in the Bible."

Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642)
Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany - 1615

Nikon Small World 2008

Each year, photography and imaging giant Nikon holds a competition to find the best photograph taken using a microscope. the results are often stunning and hauntingly beautiful.

This year was no exception with first place going to Michael Stringer of Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, UK for this view of the marine diatom Pleurosigma.

“My objective was to display diatoms in today’s modern style, through the careful application of colors,” said Mr. Stringer, “I couldn’t be more pleased that the Small World judges recognized the artistic vision in this image. I dedicate this award to the diatom and especially to my dear friend, Klaus Kemp, who in my opinion creates the most exquisite slides of these tiny bits of silica.”
Grow into these trousers... >>

Saturday, 18 October 2008

What is the evolutionary advantage of religious belief?

Following a talk about his book The God Delusion, for the University of Liverpool in February 2008, biologist Richard Dawkins was asked the following question:
Religion is widespread at least historically, perhaps universal, and human specific. My question to you is do you think religion or religious belief evolved in humans and if so did it confer an evolutionary advantage?
Dawkins' response is here:



The full talk with Q+A is below the belt.
Grow into these trousers... >>

Friday, 17 October 2008

Weeing down my trouser leg #9 - The Man In Black

Earlier tonight, in the pub, a good friend commented on my Tom Petty post from last week. Note - he comments in person and not online - wuss.

So just for you man, here's the same song by The Man In Black.

I Won't Back Down/Johnny Cash


Bonus track below the belt.
Grow into these trousers... >>

Thursday, 16 October 2008

A cappella hip-hop

This is rather surprisingly good. Another gem from TED.

James Burchfield: Sound stylings by a human beatbox

Wednesday, 15 October 2008

Are you like anyone famous?

Take this quick test to find out:

Which Fantasy/SciFi Character Are You?

Engage - below the belt.
Grow into these trousers... >>

Go! Go! gogreen18 - I'm right there with you

Have a look at gogreen18 on YouTube, and then listen to what she is saying.

I agree, say it loud and say it proud.

Why Atheists Care About YOUR Religion


Well done lass.

Bonus video below the belt.
Grow into these trousers... >>

Tuesday, 14 October 2008

Another day older and deeper in debt

Well that’s the way it seems to me, given the current financial gloom. I read today that the inflation rate is way up at 5.2% and the Retail Prices Index (RPI) is up to 5%. This is good news for me 'coz I have a pay rise next month based on the RPI today, 14th Oct, and 5% will be welcome. It's bad news for many others though, and even for me I doubt it matches the true cost increase of daily living.

Tennessee Ernie Ford - Sixteen Tons

Einstein talks at TED

I was hunting round for a bit of entertainment when I remembered the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) website. It's always worth a visit and I was rewarded with this short video of Einstein the Parrot. This is a must see:

Monday, 13 October 2008

Late night music

Tom Petty - I Won't Back Down

A boy and his dog

A boy and his dog were walking down the road. The boy was enjoying the walk, when it suddenly occurred to him that he was dead! He remembered the truck, the splat and that his dog had died with him. They carried on walking. After a while, they came to a high, white marble wall along one side of the road.

At the top of a long hill, the wall was broken by a tall arch with gates that glowed wondrously in the sunlight. The arch was wrought by clouds, the gate was magnificently carved from mother-of-pearl and the street that led there shone like gold. The boy walked up, and as he got closer he saw an attendant at a desk to one side. "Excuse me" the boy asked, "do you have any water?"

"This is heaven son" the attendant answered, "and of course we have water. Come right in, and I'll have some iced water brought straight up." The attendant waved an arm and the gates swung open.

"Can my friend come in too?" the boy asked, looking down at his dog.

"Oh I'm sorry son, but we don't accept pets."

The boy thought a moment. Then, with a sigh, he turned back toward the road, continuing the way he had been going with his dog. After another long walk, and at the top of another long hill, he came to a dirt road which led through an open farm gate. As he approached the gate he saw a man inside leaning against a tree and reading a book.

"Excuse me!" he called to the man. "Do you have any water?"

"Yeah, sure, there's a pump over there." The man pointed to a place that couldn't be seen from outside the gate. "Come on in."

"How about my friend here?" the boy gestured to the dog.

"There should be a bowl by the pump."

They went through the gate, and there was an old-fashioned hand pump with a bowl beside it. The boy filled the bowl and put it down for the dog. While the dog was drinking, he took a long drink directly from the pump. When they had quenched their thirst, and the boy had washed off the dust from the journey, they walked back toward the man standing by the tree who was waiting for them.

"It's very nice here. What do you call this place?" the boy asked.

"This is heaven," was the answer.

"Well, that's confusing" the boy said, "the man down the road said that was heaven, too."

"Oh, you mean the place with the gold street and pearly gates? Nope. That's really hell."

"Doesn't it make you mad for them to use your name like that?" the boy asked.

"No, but I can see how you might think it's wrong. It's good for us though, it screens out the bastards who would leave their best friends behind."

Sunday, 12 October 2008

After my last post, there's maybe more point to this

  1. Go to Google
  2. Type in gift from god
  3. Click on the top result
  4. Say Hallelujah!
---------
Thank you PZ Myers, and...
Now Wash Your Hands

Don't expect a point to this...

Flash timewasters from VectorPark. Lots of them. I really like the 3-legged acrobots.

-------
Thanks to Chaotic Utopia.

Saturday, 11 October 2008

GFP is awesome, and the Nobel committee agrees

First isolated and purified in the 1960s and 1970 green fluorescent protein (GFP) has become a remarkable tool in the understanding of cellular biology and gene expression. It's found in glowing jellyfish, notably Aequorea victoria. The energy for their glow actually comes from an interaction between another protein, aequorin and calcium ions, Ca2+. Binding to calcium pushes aequorin into an excited configuration which relaxes by giving off a photon of blue light. That's bioluminescence. Fireflies do it too and many deep sea fish and plankton, each in their own way.

Now here's the interesting bit, GFP absorbs the blue light from aequorin and re-emits it as green light. It fluoresces; shine a blue light on GFP, it glows green.

In 1992 the gene for GFP was cloned by Douglas Prasher and a new branch of science took off. Get the gene for GFP into about the right place and it will be expressed alongside a normal gene. Then by shining a blue light you have a measure for that gene's activity, observe the green glow. Get the GFP gene into exactly the right place and you can tag a protein with a fluorescent marker, and then follow it's movements by its glow.

Grow into these trousers... >>

Friday, 10 October 2008

Ukulele Henry wows Leeds talent festival

I've only one thing to ask, where's the wheelbarrow to carry his balls back offstage?

Ukulele Henry - Bad Moon Rising


Catch up with Ukulele Henry on YouTube and give him some support with his charity fundraising.

Bonus track below the belt!
Grow into these trousers... >>

xkcd is the best

It made me laugh anyway:

Numerical Sex Positions

Thursday, 9 October 2008

Mercury in closeup - Kuiper and more

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
This stunning view is Kuiper* crater, the central feature in the image from last Tuesday. The crater itself is 62km in diameter (39 miles) but the ejecta from the impact fan out over a much greater distance.

The Messenger website observes:
Bright ejecta rays such as these are produced as impacts excavate and eject relatively unweathered subsurface material. The ejecta rays of Kuiper and other large craters are observed to extend for hundreds of kilometers across the cratered terrain of Mercury
But the real guy responsible for the rays is here:
Grow into these trousers... >>

Wednesday, 8 October 2008

Just Chillin

Lou Reed
A Walk On The Wild Side

Grow into these trousers... >>

Tuesday, 7 October 2008

Rationality FTW - YouTube reinstates banned video

Pat Condell's banned video has been reinstated by YouTube. I have little doubt this is due to public protest against their censorship and their denial of free speech.

If you missed the point, pull up your trousers or catch up here.

As a bonus, Pat has a posted a second video:


Plus there is a new poll to register your opposition to sharia law in the UK. We have laws in this country and we are all equal before those laws.

Sharia law does not respect those rights, nor does it comprehend the meaning of the word freedom. Register now, and tell all the right minded people who you know to do the same.

here's the link again:
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/shariastop/

Mercury in focus


Phil Plait says it much better that I ever could:
"Holy Haleakala. Look at those rays! They go all the way across the planet!"
Go read his first report.

Monday, 6 October 2008

George Hrab sings a song

You might know by now that I like the Geologic podcast.

So here is George doing his musical best. Which is good.

Sweet Dreams Are Made of This - by George Hrab on vocals.

MESSENGER fly-by of Mercury

Earlier today the Messenger spacecraft flew past the planet Mercury (images to follow as they are released).
The photo here is ~15h before closest approach
Credit NASA / APL


This is a long term and complicated mission...
Launched in 2004 Messenger aims to go into orbit around Mercury in 2011 and collect data for a whole year.

Remember, Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun. If you were to aim a craft directly, the Sun's enormous gravitation would cause so much acceleration that the craft could not carry enough fuel to slow down in time to enter mercurial orbit.

So what do you do? You launch it sideways into orbit around the Sun, use gravity assists (flybys) and short engine burns (using the precious fuel) to gradually nudge the craft into a diminishing solar orbit until it is captured by the gravitation field of Mercury.

From the mission website:
To become the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury, MESSENGER must follow a path through the inner solar system, including one flyby of Earth, two flybys of Venus, and three flybys of Mercury. This impressive journey will return the first new spacecraft data from Mercury since the Mariner 10 mission over 30 years ago.
See the Messenger site for this timeline of the mission:


One more Mercury fly-past (29th Sept. 2009) and two more fuel burns (DSMs - Deep Space Maneuvers) before it goes into orbit (18th Feb 2011).

Sunday, 5 October 2008

BBC wildlife video - lion kill.

I'm not promoting the new 'Big Cat Live' series on BBC1, but have a look at the website. They have four live webcam streams running day and night (with infra-red).

No doubt this clip will be broadcast:
The BBC's Natural History Unit cameras are in Kenya's Masai Mara Reserve for a week of live programmes - and already they have seen some astonishing sights.


The cams are live right now but I don't know for how long.

As yet there's nothing as good as Battle at Kruger but you never know.

Saturday, 4 October 2008

Public Image Ltd

There is something about John Lydon that you just have to admire. Er! Oh yeah here it was:

PIL - Rise

More below the belt
Grow into these trousers... >>

Phoenix, a long awaited update

Watching the clouds go by.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University Arizona/Texas A&M University


Recently, results from the experimental kit on Phoenix have been slow to be released. Now suddenly there's all this fascinating stuff at once.
Grow into these trousers... >>

Oops -

Had a bit of a brown-out. Some code got scrambled (read - me pissing about) and the 'Grow into these trousers... >>' link stopped working. I had my template backed up but restoring it didn't solve the problem (???).

Anyway, things seem to be stable again now. I've changed all the code for the fullpost trousers link and, mops brow, I didn't have to reinstall all my widgets!

Friday, 3 October 2008

Pat Condell - petition the government

I finally found the petition that Pat Condell refers to in the 'banned' video.

Sign up here http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/sharialawuk/. Do it quickly though. In fact, do it NOW because the deadline is the 4th Oct.

Thanks to The Freethinker.

Thursday, 2 October 2008

Music again - Rolling Stones

Check out this version of 'Paint it Black' - it pressed the right buttons for me.

Rolling Stones - Paint it Black

Wednesday, 1 October 2008

I said he wouldn't be very happy

A couple of weeks ago I posted about the imposition sharia law in Britain being legitimised by our government. I thought at the time that Pat Condell would have something to say about this. He did, and the video was promptly banned by YouTube. Don't worry you can see it below and keep up with Pat here.

Welcome to Saudi Britain:


This is a bad move by YouTube and I will be making them aware of my displeasure.