"World Encircler"

Apophis	Apophis	Apophis

Apep, the Egyptian demon of Chaos, also known as Apophis, 'Evil Lizard','Enemy of Ra', 'World Encircler' and 'Serpent of Rebirth' (source). He was a demon of the unknown and frightening events, and was so feared that he was never pictured as he 'appeared' so as to avoid giving the drawing magical demon power, so was often depicted as a water-snake. He battled the Sun-god "Ra" daily just beneath the horizon and solar eclipses were "interpreted as a victory of Apep over Ra".


Apophis is also the name of an asteroid (full designation: 99942 Apophis) that NASA estimates to have a 2.7% chance of hitting the earth in 2029. And factors such as "sunlight", a gravity sweet spots may push Apophis a couple of Earth lengths left or right. And assuming it misses Earth in 2029, the closeness of the 'miss' could alter the trajectory on it's return flight in 2036. The calculations are so complex that the NASA boffins cannot with a reasonable degree of confidence tell us where Apophis will end up in 2036...at this time. They will have to recalculate if and when the near miss occurs.

(But don't worry they can tell us with a "high" degree of certainty with a similar if not more complex system what the weather will be like in a 100 years or so...)

Here's an Apophis-eye view of what we hope is a miss:

Should the cosmic pinball game that is our solar system run in such a way that planet Earth becomes the 5000 point bumper, our Egyptian/NASA friends will indeed have aptly named the "World Encircler" as Apophis will have finally overcome his sworn enemy Ra (our sun) by causing a world-wide blackout:

“Nasa has estimated that an impact from Apophis... would release more than 100,000 times the energy released in the nuclear blast over Hiroshima. Thousands of square kilometres would be directly affected by the blast but the whole of the Earth would see the effects of the dust released into the atmosphere.”

Oh yeah, and the best bit? The date of the "fly-by" in 2029...April, Friday the 13th.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!

Exploding Sandcastles

Going away for a couple weeks. Postings will be light until January.

Have a Merry Xmas and great New Year and try not to let Global Warming kill you.

Here's some backwards exploding sandcastles...

Ninjas hijacked my mother

And something about apple juice...

(via DavidThompson)

Drugs

A very interesting infographic from the creator of the blog Information is Beautiful.

Using data sourced from the reporting in The Guardian. There are some surprising results.

Check out the complete picture and post available here

Red Green - Green Red

A common meme among right-wing blogs and other 'denialist' medium regarding the single minded obsession of the environmentalists, is this idea that socialism didn't die in 1989, it just transferred itself to the Green movement (something the co-founder of Greenpeace agrees with) and subsequently underpins the naked hypocrisy and power grab that has become the movement to STOP THE WARMING.

Well to put all that malarkey to rest, here's what happened in Carbonhagen this week when Hugo Chavez, el Presidente for life of Venezuela spoke at COP 15(emphasis mine):

“our revolution seeks to help all people…socialism, the other ghost that is probably wandering around this room, that’s the way to save the planet, capitalism is the road to hell....let’s fight against capitalism and make it obey us.” He won a standing ovation.

Lord Monckton who alerted the world to the in-text tyranny of the Carbonhagen treaty, had asked the current PM of the Czech Republic Dr Vaclav Klaus about the 'communistic' tendency of the treaty, and his response was:

“Maybe it is not brutal. But in all other respects, what it proposes is far too close to Communism for comfort.”

And this is from a dude who lived under a Communist regime.

Now where is my tin-foil hat...

Tweepocrisy

Ms Ross and her husband Steven, who is in the Air Force, have said they want to be left alone to mourn their son.

This from the woman who tweeted her son's dying moments...

The TV Show

Breakdancers, masked bandits, Godzilla, wars, baseball games, and a TV master control room. And that's only in the first 10 seconds....

Burka Barbie

From the Daily Mail:

"One of the world's most famous children's toys, Barbie, has been given a makeover - wearing a burkha.

Wearing the traditional Islamic dress, the iconic doll is going undercover for a charity auction in connection with Sotheby's for Save The Children."

So to follow the thinking of the designers of Barbie's 50th Anniversary collection, let's dress up Barbie in clothes that represent the most misogynistic and oppressive political ideas, and then sell it at a charity to help the children.

'I know Barbie was something seen as bad before as an image for girls, but in actual fact the message with Barbie for women is you can be whatever you want to be.'

progress...

Why the burka is so objectionable is explained by Mark Steyn

"The burka, the niqab and the hijab are not fashion statements but explicitly political ones, and what they symbolize in a Western context is self-segregation."

On a supposedly unrelated note, Obama's "Safe School Czar" has a recommended reading list of books for children of all grades. Some of the books

weren’t merely X-rated and pornographic, but which featured explicit descriptions of sex acts between pre-schoolers; stories that seemed to promote and recommend child-adult sexual relationships; stories of public masturbation, anal sex in restrooms, affairs between students and teachers...

The point being that whilst the existence of both the toy and the books aren't necessarily too disturbing in and of themselves, but the values they are promoting to children are perhaps not the ones we as society should be.

I wonder what little girls in Afghanistan think of the Barbie...

Lethal Weapon - Lego edition

From this:

"I was surrounded by about 6 SWAT guys armed with shotguns and assault rifles. At this point it seemed like a good idea to inquire why I might be in custody. Apparently I had been reported with a gun."

Do not underestimate the power of Lego....

Who throws a shoe??!?

Remember that "hero" Iraqi journalist that deployed an I.S.P (Improvised Shoe Projectile) at George W. Bush last year? Well, what goes around, comes around.

He who lives by the shoe…may get hit by the shoe


Ask not for whom the shoe throws, it is being thrown at thee….

He who has the last shoe throw…will walk home in socks

From Storyballoon (via Newsbusters)

Judgement

From this story:

"I'm angry. I'm hurt," Bellamy said. "You shouldn't judge someone based on who they are."

Say what?

Disconnect

Last week, the Swiss people voted to change the national constitution to ban the constructions of minarets, the distinctive spires on the top of many (but not all) mosques. Switzerland has a type of 'direct democracy' where referendums can be be held for the people to vote on ANY legislation. The majority party, Swiss People Party (SVP) were driving the campaign, and 57.5% of voters voted in favor of the ban, contrary to the results of opinion polls on the vote.

Of course, the Swiss were roundly condemned by their own politicians, and of course the UN condemn it, the EU are critical, the Vatican criticize it (?!?!), the Egyptians believe it is a "grave mistake", the Maltese believe it "is a violation of human rights and religious freedom" and that bastion of human rights and religious tolerance, Iran believe it is an Islamaphobic act, which of course was backed up with a threat, and the Norwegians likened the swiss to Nazis (which given Switzerland's history *cough*WWII*cough* ... well enough said about that)

Norwegian newspaper "Dagsavien" front page, Monday 30th November, 2009
(picture source)

Automatic accusations of "Islamophobia" and racism flew thick and fast with Europe's elites were shocked (shocked!!!) that the Swiss people would resent what they see as the creeping Islamization of their society. And what becomes clear is the disconnect between the policies advocated by politicians, and what the "common people" think. The refusal of mainstream European political parties to talk about issues that are considered to sensitive to mention, is opening the door to extreme right-wing parties to garner public support. Much in the same way the refusal of Australian political parties to talk frankly and openly about immigration allowed a racist fishmonger to get elected to parliament 13 years ago. The Swiss People's Party cannot be compared to the UK's BNP, or France's Le Pen, as they are the majority mainstream party, so the reactions around Europe (and the World) demonstrates how disconnected the agenda of the European elites is vs their own citizens.

SVP Minaret ban poster (picture source)

Some delusions from columnists in The Guardian:

"Populist demagogues blame political, cultural, and commercial elites for the anxieties of the modern world. They are accused, not entirely without reason, of imposing mass immigration, economic crisis, and loss of national identity on ordinary citizens. But if the elites are hated for causing our modern malaise, the Muslims are envied for still having faith, for knowing who they are, for having something that is worth dying for."

(yeah it's the fact that Muslims "have faith" that the masses are jealous of, nothing to do with the specifics of their religious practice.... I think we have here is the first occurrence of Jihad-envy)

And some insightful introspectiveness, from of all places, Indonesia (in an article entitled "Thanking the Swiss Vote"):

"Frankly speaking, we expected more from the Swiss in their vote whether to endorse a government ban on minarets.
...
If a nation as peaceful as Switzerland sees the minaret as a symbol of Islamic fundamentalism and radicalism, how do other nations who are less tolerant see this symbol of Islam?"

And thanks to this vote, these issues are now being discussed. Taj Hargey in The Times (UK):

"Muslims who have settled in Switzerland (and elsewhere in Europe) should not confuse culture with creed. To become integrated into their surroundings, they must relinquish the cultural baggage of their ancestral homelands. They should practice a Swiss Islam that is rooted in the society in which they live.
Although the Swiss have been convinced by right-wing zealots that minarets are a problem, local Muslims should not embrace a victim mentality. They must confront the toxic radicalisation of their faith that is imported from overseas."

It's no wonder the Swiss want to ban minarets...they're starting to grow on people's heads.
(picture source)

How a conspiracy unfolds

One of the major questions I get asked about my Warming denialist beliefs is how could there be a global conspiracy of scientists and politicians pushing an agenda if the "facts" aren't in? Well the leak of the CRU emails, or "Climategate" as it is now known, shows precisely how and why this came about.

The answer is, as in any detective story, follow the money.

Brett Stephens from the Wall Street Journal:

“Why did the money pour in so quickly? Because the climate alarm kept ringing so loudly: The louder the alarm, the greater the sums.
...
None of these outfits is per se corrupt, in the sense that the monies they get are spent on something other than their intended purposes. But they depend on an inherently corrupting premise, namely that the hypothesis on which their livelihood depends has in fact been proved. Absent that proof, everything they represent—including the thousands of jobs they provide—vanishes. This is what's known as a vested interest, and vested interests are an enemy of sound science.”

Why this is such an incredible scandal is precisely because these scientists/politicians (or as I like to call them "activists") want to re-order the world economy and political structures based on the premise that man-made CO2 output is affecting the world's climate. Nothing short of "re-structuring" (read: handicapping) the developed worlds economies and establishing one global government to manage the world's industries will do. You think I'm tin-foil-hat-conspiracy mongering?

Let me quote from the UN's own IPCC "Ad hoc working group on long-term copperative action under the convention" document, or what is known as the proposed Copenhagen treaty (page 18):

"38. The scheme for the new institutional arrangement under the Convention will be based on three basic pillars: government; facilitative mechanism; and financial mechanism, and the basic organization of which will include the following:

(a) The government will be ruled by the COP with the support of a new subsidiary body on adaptation, and of an Executive Board responsible for the management of the new funds and the related facilitative processes and bodies. The current Convention secretariat will operate as such, as appropriate"

Did you know that the Copenhagen conference was attempting to establish a "government"?

Lord Monckton (an adviser of Margaret Thatcher) said in an address in October:

"I read that treaty. And what it says is this, that a world government is going to be created. The word “government” actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity. The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to third world countries, in satisfication of what is called, coyly, “climate debt” – because we’ve been burning CO2 and they haven’t. We’ve been screwing up the climate and they haven’t. And the third purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement."

Video of the presentation:


You would think that if changes of this nature to the world economy and political structures are that important you would want to make sure you get your facts right. Thus the importance of the CRU leaked documents cannot be underestimated, even to to the point where total left-wing greenies are now demanding explanation. Clive Crook from The Atlantic (definitely not a right-wing rag - emphasis mine):

“I'm also surprised by the IPCC's response. Amid the self-justification, I had hoped for a word of apology, or even of censure. (George Monbiot called for Phil Jones to resign, for crying out loud.) At any rate I had expected no more than ordinary evasion. The declaration from Rajendra Pachauri that the emails confirm all is as it should be is stunning. Science at its best. Science as it should be. Good lord. This is pure George Orwell. And these guys call the other side "deniers".

“These people are willing to subvert the very methods--notably, peer review--that underwrite the integrity of their discipline. Is this really business as usual in science these days? If it is, we should demand higher standards--at least whenever "the science" calls for a wholesale transformation of the world economy. And maybe some independent oversight to go along with the higher standards. “

So what has happened this week thanks to Climategate?

• Phil Jones, the head of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit has stepped down.
• Al Gore has canceled his Copenhagen USD $1,200 per handshake event
• In The Guardian, one of the loudest Warm-mongers and fellow comrade-in-arms to Al Gore, Dr James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies (also implicated in Climategate) has said that the Copenhagen Climate talks must fail
• And Arnold Schwarzenegger has unveiled a scary new climate change map.

The Terminator talks about the end of the world...for Californians

Lego Matrix

Genius...

Unintended Irony

In 1731, a man called John Hadley published a paper to the Royal Society describing a new instrument for measuring angles. Hadley’s quadrants (also known as the “octant”) were so successful because they allowed a much greater accuracy in measuring longitude and latitude. His brother, George Hadley was in charge of meteorological observations for the Royal Society and had contributed to the theory of “Trade Winds”.

An octant - the very picture of accurate measurements circa 1731
(picture source)

It is after George Hadley that the Met Office’s Hadley Centre for Climate Change is named. From their own website they are:

“the UK’s foremost climate change research centre. We produce world-class guidance on the science of climate change and provide a focus in the UK for the scientific issues associated with climate change.”

The Met Office Hadley Centre, in cooperation with the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit helped to develop some scary (yet now well debunked) temperature graphs that were used to scare politicians into believing in The Warming. In fact, from the link it appears that the CRU only used the Hadley Centre’s data in formulating the booga-booga temperature graphs.

Booga-booga-you're-all-gonna-die-unless-we-tax-the-living-shit-out-of-everyone
hockey stick graph (picture source)

From a man who helped the world by providing more accurate measurements, to a "research institute" that profanes his name by supplying ‘less than accurate measurements’ (which, due to some unfortunate circumstances, are now lost forever).

The biggest scientific fraud of the century has begun to unravel thanks to leaked emails of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) and their brothers in arms at the Hadley Centre.

Ah Irony, thy name is hockey stick.

Is this the face of a murderer?

Well according to Bolivian police (and Bolivian TV stations), yes it is. And the best thing about it? It's ushered in a whole new era of witness protection technology.

This is apparently real footage recorded off Bolivian TV. I can't really vouch for it, but damn it makes a funny video:

Man-caused disasters

I have written about the poison Political Correctness has injected into the public discourse, but the US media coverage, nay the US army's handling, of the Ft Hood massacre demonstrates how deep the toxins have penetrated. Right from the top where Obama counselled the US "not to rush to judgement" to a news anchor whining(!) that the "alleged" Ft Hood shooter's last name wasn't "Smith".

And even though the shooter wasn't shy about his own reasons for going postal; from his business cards , to a powerpoint presentation he gave a couple of years ago to Army doctors, to his "battle cry" as he slaughtered unarmed people, the head of the freakin US army is more concerned about the possible adverse effect to the army's "diversity":

“Our diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse,” Casey said."

Imagine that...losing "diversity" is much worse than the slaughter of 13 people and an unborn baby.

And the excuses continue, from Charles Krauthammer:

“And the perfect moral finesse. Medicalizing mass murder not only exonerates. It turns the murderer into a victim, indeed a sympathetic one. After all, secondary PTSD, for those who believe in it (you won't find it in DSM-IV-TR, psychiatry's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual), is known as "compassion fatigue." The poor man -- pushed over the edge by an excess of sensitivity.”

The guy all but fixed a flashing neon sign above his head saying "I want to kill lots of Americans", yet as a serving Major in the US army, his colleagues were too damn scared to adversely affect their careers by speaking out against a Muslim.

(picture source)

The idea of scientific enquiry

The much touted peer reviewed scientific consensus on AGW ( or as I like to call it ... cue the scary music...."The Warming") has been under sustained attack all week thanks to a "hacker" (or more likely a whistleblower) releasing thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit. These dudes, along with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies have been the primary pushers of the theory that man-made activities have pumped so much CO2 in the air that it has caused planet Earth to warm up.

Now I have my beefs with the science and the premise (as detailed in all my previous posts here) however, this post is not about that.

This is about how the process of science has been perverted in the name of a political agenda. When the most vocal proponent of The Warming (apart from the Goracle and his immediate circle) George Monbiot is publicly acknowledging the damage of the leak (in the pages of The Guardian no less!!), one would hope governments, NGOs and the disgraceful UN would 'recalibrate', however there is too much money and power at stake for an about face.

So instead of a public mea culpa from the scientists who have been caught red-handed "hiding the decline" via email conversations, we have endless arguments about the definition of "trick":

"Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all."

And how the words "hiding the decline" don't actually mean what you think it means. This also doesn't explain away the very clear, precise and unambiguous programmer's comments in the code.

However, to get a full understanding of how the actions of the staff at CRU are bordering on criminal and how badly they have damaged their cause, read this posting from a guy who attempted to get the data from the 'scientists' at the CRU to replicate their results...you know, how science is supposed to work...

"Science works by one person making a claim, and backing it up with the data and methods that they used to make the claim. Other scientists then attack the claim by (among other things) trying to replicate the first scientist’s work. If they can’t replicate it, it doesn’t stand."
...
This is not just trivial gamesmanship, this is central to the very idea of scientific inquiry. This is an attack on the heart of science, by keeping people who disagree with you from ever checking your work and seeing if your math is correct.

Read it all. It's long, but if you have the time, it's worth it.

World's. Biggest. DUH!

From The Guardian (re: those hacked emails):

“Jones said the timing of the theft suggested it was intended to cause maximum embarrassment ahead of the Copenhagen climate talks next month: "One has to wonder if it is a coincidence that this email correspondence has been stolen and published at this time. This may be a concerted attempt to put a question mark over the science of climate change in the run-up to the Copenhagen talks."

Pollen Photography

Some very nice pictures...of pollen. (via Metafilter)

Check out the gallery

Everyday Normal Guy 2

"I like red peppers better than the green ones"

Cause for Pause

From an article supporting The Warming:

"Those emission estimates are not very accurate compared to high-calibration devices," says Michael Woelk, CEO of Picarro, a California-based manufacturer of such a device for measuring CO2 emissions. "No country today is using scientific instruments to monitor and calibrate the effect of policy," not even the European Union, which has an emissions trading scheme for greenhouse gases.”

Yet here we are, in Australia, about to pass legislation taxing CO2 output because the gutless and cowardly Opposition is split about whether The Warming is just a load of codswallop, or does spell the end of days. Just in case my emphasis in the previous quote didn't quite hit home, WE CAN'T ACTUALLY MEASURE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ANY TYPE OF LEGISLATION OF CO2.

From The Australian:

“After an all-day debate over climate change, the Opposition Leader unilaterally declared the Coalition would back Kevin Rudd's carbon emissions trading scheme.”

In a one brilliant move, Mr Turnbull has split the Coalition (the Nats are not going to vote for the ETS), split the Liberal party (skeptics ahoy!) because the fear of a double-dissolution and an election called too soon which would inevitably lead to another 4 years in the wilderness,
Turnbull is making a stand on what he believes the Australian electorate wants.

In some ways he is in a damned if you do-damned if you don’t moment. But the timing of the ETS, the manner of the debate on the legislation (ie. minimal due to KRudd wanting to pass this before the Copenhagen Summit), and the revelations of gross scientific malpractice are not stopping this relentless push for higher taxes that people don’t want, won’t be effective, and will hamstring our economy.

Support the ETS, and split the party and coalition = unlikely to win next election and probably lose the position of leader of the party.

Don't support the ETS, keep the coalition and party together = electorate believe that the Liberals wan't to kill Gaia, unlikely to win next election.

Frickin' Airborne Lasers man!

I present to you the Advanced Tactical Laser:

Target view of a vehicle of the airborne laser.

Videos here.

Hackers, Hoaxes and Hypocrites

Hackers hack a climate research unit at a university (BBC):

"E-mails reportedly from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), including personal exchanges, appeared on the internet on Thursday.
A university spokesman confirmed the email system had been hacked and that information was taken and published without permission."

Content of emails between scientists published on the internet. Emphasis mine:

From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@xxxxx.xxx, mhughes@xxxx.xxx
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@xxx.xx.xx,t.osborn@xxxx.xxx

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or
first thing tomorrow.
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps
to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from
1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual
land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land
N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999
for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with
data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
Thanks for the comments, Ray.
Cheers
Phil
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) xxxxx

School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) xxxx

University of East Anglia
Norwich
Email p.jones@xxxx.xxx
NR4 7TJ


Headline from Der Spiegel:

"Climatologists Baffled by Global Warming Time Out"

Baffled I tell you! I mean how the hell can the record NOT show warming when you have such ethical notaries as the scientists quoted in the email cooking the freaking books.

In other words, despite your shonky scientific methods, your rank hypocrisy and false starting premise, and your decade long ability to modify the data to support your case, and yet still the Earth has not shown a warming trend in the last 9 years!?!?

From the Der Spiegel Article:

"The Hadley Center group (aka University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) whence the emails have come from - Jack) expects warming to resume in the coming years. "That resumption could come as a bit of a jolt," says Hadley climatologist Adam Scaife, explaining that natural cyclical warming would then be augmented by the warming effect caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions...and if not, we'll just make shit up until it looks like it.

(I may have added that last part....but I'm sure he was thinking it)

Reassortment

Reassortment: The rearrangement of genes from two distinct influenza strains to produce a novel viral strain(link).

From this:

“And in the next few weeks, scientists working there are planning to manufacture a new resident. They hope to test whether the highly transmissible pandemic H1N1 virus could reassort with its deadlier cousin, the H5N1 avian flu, to make a virus with the worst properties of both.” (emphasis mine - Jack)

And shortly after they will infect the hamsters with this new super-virus, who will then go on to develop uncontrollable rage at being treated like guinea pigs, kind of like a "rage virus", biting the scientists through their BSL-4 suits, infecting humans...28 days later...zombies. We've all seen the bloody film, why o why make it a reality?



Links:
H5n1 pic source: http://phil.cdc.gov/phil/details.asp
H1n1 pic source: http://www.cdc.gov/H1n1flu/images.htm

Overstatement

Overstatement of the week:

A decree banning women from wearing trousers in Paris is still technically in force, it emerged on Monday, making the laissez-faire French capital theoretically stricter than hardline Sudan in the fashion stakes.

Using the same logic, the lack of enshrined right to free speech in Australia makes the theoretically open-society of the “sunburnt country” more oppressive than North Korea.

Regular Everyday Normal Guy

"My parents are really nice people, mothaf*cka!"

Indulgences? Or just eating the dog?

Other than the (almost-tongue-in-cheek) suggestion that we should get eat our dogs...to save the earth (a joke repeated about 3 times), the scariest thing about this op-ed is the way the author has internalized the idea that the Australian Goverments Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) will save the the planet:

"But the politicians' bickering over the emissions trading scheme demonstrates their shameful unwillingness to tackle this incredibly pressing problem."

If it wasn't for the spineless Opposition, this bill should have been dead in the water yonks ago. And if you think that paying the government (in the form of higher taxes) reduce the amount of CO2, well.... how much did the buying of indulgences in the middle ages reduce the incidence of sin?

(picture source)

Vatican Alien Symposium

Right on the tails of ‘serious scientists’ grappling with the threat of zombies, now the Vatican is holding a conference on “astrobiology, the study of life beyond Earth”. The discovery of alien life forms would raise some troublesome issues for Christians, as “God had made Man in His own image” (Genesis 1:27), however according to Paul Davies who will be attending the conference,

“The possibility of extraterrestrial life is not much of an issue for Eastern religions, which tend to be less Earth-centric”

And also mentioned is that Islam apparently allows for the existence of life beyond earth, although having read the Quranic verses quoted, I’m not convinced. The idea that certain followers of Islam, who are famous for their tolerance of fellow humans, would somehow be cooler about ET than say, Pope Benedict XVI, is a little hard to swallow, however I welcome the hypothetical.

Three little "jellyfish" are we...

Cells subdividing? Jellyfish? A skin care ad with blemishes?

Nope. It's the "Erosion of the south polar residual ice cap"... on Mars.

More really cool pics here.

Douchebags

Your Friday Funny...

Ft Hood

From this article:

Other than the fact we have the usual variety of reprobates gleefully celebrating the mass murder that Major Nidal Malik Hasan carried out at Ft Hood, Texas [because the senseless murder of defenseless people adds to the glory of “God”, however you may interpret Him], the real scary sentence in the article is this:

“Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey said Sunday it's important for the country not to get caught up in speculation about Hasan's Muslim faith, and he has instructed his commanders to be on the lookout for anti-Muslim reaction to the killings at the Texas post.”

Here’s an idea, why not be “on the lookout” for other potential sudden jihadi syndrome/mass murderers to prevent more real deaths, rather than perceived/real/imagined “anti-Muslim reactions”. I would have figured that preventing the very real prospect of more depraved individuals carrying out further attacks was more of a priority than worrying if some beardie-weirdie got teased.

"Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me”…no more… however if that weedy kid in 4th grade you teased decides to come to school packing two FN Herstal 5.7mm semi-automatic pistols and starts shooting everybody, well, if we apply the emerging media narrative on Ft Hood, it’s your fault.

Just a bird? or agent from the future?

From The Age today:

"GENEVA : THE $6.5 billion machine designed to recreate the conditions present at the beginning of time had to be switched off after a bird dropped a "bit of baguette" into it, causing it to overheat."

From the CERN webpage entitled "The safety of the LHC":

"The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) can achieve an energy that no other particle accelerators have reached before, but Nature routinely produces higher energies in cosmic-ray collisions, and the occasional random bird fly-by with a bit of baguette"

(it's entirely possible I may have added something).

So to recap, the most expensive science experiment ever undertaken that is using and observing energies that existed a few moments after the big bang, got broken due to an errant bird and a piece of bread. Call me naive, but surely the nuclear scientists that designed the LHC would have somehow figured for such an eventuality and not had a critical piece of equipment exposed to the outside ??

Or was the bird an agent of the universe from the future, sent back to sabotage our puny efforts at discovering the mysteries of the cosmos?

UPDATE: fixed picture

2012 - The end of the World?...or not?

1,000 foot tsunamis taking out isolated mountaintop Buddhist monastories, earthquakes splitting the Sistine chapel in half and the St Peter's basilica crashing down on thousands of worshippers, the giant Jesus Christ statue in Rio de Janeiro crumbling and collapsing, the Whitehouse crushed by freakin' aircraft carrier, all of these events depicted in this years ultimate disaster-porn movie "2012"...trailer.



However there are some man-made structures of significance that will be spared:

No Islamic Landmarks Were Harmed in the Making of '2012'

That's a relief....

Wolverine...in 30 seconds

(via Metafilter)

Altruism

From here:

"Few people have been as vocal about the urgency of global warming and the need to reinvent the way the world produces and consumes energy as Mr Gore. And few have put as much money behind their advocacy and are as well positioned to profit from this green transformation, if and when it comes."

Halloween Special - Zombies

A possible future?

The shambling undead with an insatiable appetite for braaains, blue-grey corpses coming to life to wreak vengeance on the living, mindless automatons that usually overwhelmingly outnumber small pockets of survivors, these are the setups for your average zombie-flick. The ‘first’ zombie film was George Romero’s 1968 “Night of the Living Dead”, where the shambling un-dead were metaphors for “for homosexual repression, the civil rights movement, feminism, the counterculture, or an unwinnable war in Vietnam” (source)

The zombies have also been made proxies for corporate greed and consumerism
(Resident Evil 1(2002) , Land of the Dead (2005)), class warfare (Day of the Dead (1985)), genetic engineering and worldwide virus pandemics (All the Resident Evils, 28 Days Later (2002) and 28 Weeks Later (2007)), environmental catastrophe (Silent Hill (2006)) and pretty much any other issue you can think of...oh yeah and death.

It is therefore unsurprising that ‘serious’ scientists and professors have begun to use zombies and the zombie apocalypse for theories in their respective disciplines. First up, a research paper published in Infectious Disease Modeling Research Progress (2009) entitled “When Zombies Attack!: Mathematical Modeling of an outbreak of Zombie infection” (available here).

A "zombie" with the "rage virus" (from "28 days later")

Due to the sheer variety of zombies out there, these professors felt it necessary to define the type of zombie they were dealing with:

“The model zombie is of the classical pop-culture zombie: slow moving, cannibalistic and undead. There are other ‘types’ of zombies, characterised by some movies like 28 Days Later [9] and the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead [10]. These ‘zombies’ can move faster, are more independent and much smarter than their classical counterparts.”

And what these scientists have inadvertently stumbled on is the great debate amongst zombie-aficionados, the recent evolution of the fast zombie. Quoting the zombie master par excellence, Simon Pegg of Shaun of the Dead (2004) in a column for The Guardian:

“You cannot kill a vampire with an MDF stake; werewolves can't fly; zombies do not run.”

Back to the research paper, the scientists used the zombies as a model for any virus outbreak, and using the characteristics of zombies (susceptibility, infectiousness, etc...) they came to some pretty grim conclusions for any surviving humans in the event of the zombie apocalypse.

At this point, Professor of International Politics, Donald W. Drezner published an article for Foreign Policy magazine, “Theory of International Politics and Zombies”, who details various political schools of thought and exactly what they would do in the event of a global zombie pandemic.

For example:

“A structural realist would argue that, because of the uneven distribution of capabilities, some governments will be better placed to repulse the zombies than others.”

or that social constructivists

“would posit that the zombie problem is what we make of it. That is to say, there are a number of possible emergent norms in response to zombies.”

The article is funny and well worth the read. And regardless of your own feelings towards the undead, clearly some serious people are giving it some thought.

Happy Halloween!!!!

A vegetarian zombie - most
likely a social constructivist

Running People

A disturbing, mesmerizing, repellant yet utterly engrossing, comical and totally weird video of…people..running…in slow motion. (via Metafilter...I think)

Sushi without Japanese

This is unintentionally funny. In brief, US cities that are commonly held up as role models of ideal "progressive" cities to live in appear to be mostly white.

Using whatever socio-economic indicators to measure these things, amongst the top ten cities in the USA to live in are Austin, Texas and Portland, Oregon. So one enterprising "opinion-leading urban success strategist and writer" has looked at the statistics, and found a remarkable correlation between the 'whiteness' of a city and it's consistently high rankings in the top cities to live in in the US of A. The #1 Role Model in environmental and sustainable policies is Portland.

The disconnect between reality and aspirations of Portland has been noted before, here in a 2008 article in the New York Times:

“I’ve been really upset by what I perceive to be Portland’s blind spot in its progressivism,” said Khaela Maricich, a local artist and musician. “They think they live in the best city in the country, but it’s all about saving the environment and things like that. It’s not really about social issues. It’s upper-middle-class progressivism, really.”

I would argue that the "sushi without japanese" phenomena of Portland is exactly what "upper-middle-class progressivism" is all about, and this idea that 'diversity' should be pursued simply because diversity=Good, is a form of insincere self-righteous preening that is the exclusive purview of certain vegetarians, Toyota Prius drivers and Obama voters ("I voted for Obama so I can't be racist")

The strangest thing I came across whilst researching this was that I found Americans openly rank cities based on progressiveness where progressiveness is defined by the proportion of people who voted Green or for the Democrats, and the city council's policies on the environment and global warming, and all the usual feel-good/do almost nothing measures that inevitably follow. I find it very strange that you would choose a city based on conformity of views..."Yeah I was going to move to Sydney but they vote so Labour that I decided on Cairns instead".

And in proving that real-life does not lack humour, here is a screenshot of the Oregonian
viewed at 11:04am (AEST) 27/10/09. No racist stereotypes here, no sir....

Afghanistan

Some amazing photojournalism from Afghanistan. Link here.

Genocide 4 Gaia

To prove the anti-human motive behind the hoax formerly known as Global Warming, an editorial in the Guardian states:

The worst thing that you or I can do for the planet is to have children.

From amorality to barking mad:

As Rachel Baird, who works on climate change for Christian Aid, says: "Often in the countries where the birth rate is highest, emissions are so low that they are not even measurable. Look at Burkina Faso." So why ask them to pay in unborn children for our profligacy?

Yeah why not? Lets get the Burkino Fasolians to offset our babies. Because of the environmental utopia that is Burkino Faso has only a little bit of "ethnic conflict" despite the presence of more than 9,000 UN forces (source CIA World Factbook)

Back to the Guardian:

Could children perhaps become part of an adult's personal carbon allowance?

It was only just recently that they banned incandescent light bulbs. A few short years from light bulbs to children. And just in case you think this crazy man is talking about 'others':

By today's standards, a cull of Australians or Americans would be at least 60 times as productive as one of Bangladeshis.

A cull of Australians or Americans?!!? Another word for a "cull" of any group of humans defined by race, ethnicity or nationality is..."genocide". It used to be that genocide was not something you mentioned in polite company. Now it is being advocated as a 'cure' to the Warming. One hopes common sense will prevail before the developed world goes too far down the rabbit hole.

Another take down by Mark Steyn.

It's the !@#ing Count!!!

It's an oldie but worth it...

Future present

"I have suggested that supernovae are the industrial accidents of advanced civilisations."
--Arthur C. Clarke, October 2007

An element of the Large Hadron Collider (picture source)

Question: What happens when you try to create Higgs boson particle?
Answer: The creation of an observable Higgs boson particle is so abhorrent to the Universe that at some point in the future, when walking monkeys on some minuscule planet in an outer-spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy discover how to do it, the Universe reaches back across time and prevents this happening.

At least that’s what two physicists have claimed in a research paper entitled “Search for Effect for Influence from Future in Large Hadron Collider”

The CERN project (of which I had previously written about here) known as the Large Hadron Collider is a machine 27km big that attempts to collide two beams of protons together to observe the resulting explosion and expand our knowledge of the universe or something to that effect. A successful collision would apparently enable physicists to observe the Higgs boson particle.

The Higgs boson particle is a theoretical particle that will ”explain the origin of mass in the universe” (thanks wikipedia). Scientist haven’t seen it (yet), but our current understanding of particle physics predicts it. Particle physics is the research of subatomic particles. Yeah, that explains it.....

The physicist propose an experiment involving a deck of ‘decision cards’ (ie “Run LHC experiment” or “For God’s sake you puny mortals, don’t even attempt this experiment -- yours truly, a future Higgs boson particle”) to model various probabilities whether to run the LHC or not, they suggest that the current difficulties in getting the LHC working, and also what happened to the ill-fated US SSC, may be as a result of future Universe affecting the present.

How can they say this? Well, according to the theory of General Relativity and and the Standard Model of Particles, time travel is theoretically possible:

“Particles and their antiparticles can also be thought of as being the same entity travelling in opposite directions in time.”

In plain english, the physicists are saying that in the future, when a Higgs boson particle is created, the consequence of this is so great that we are feeling the effects of it in the past (ie. now).

Here is a simple diagram I created to show this:

see?!? simple...

Not that I'm suggesting that this experiment could cause a supernova, as the Arthur C. Clarke quote above might imply, although if you happen to be running an experiment that requires so much energy that you have to schedule it around the energy supply of an entire continent, to term a mishap "an industrial accident" may be waaayyy understating it. From the previous article:

"All of this means that when something goes wrong—even something small—there's a very real chance that it will go wrong in a big way."

And a much scarier sentence a little bit further on:

"That's not to say that we have no idea what will happen; rather, there are a range of possibilities, some of which may be out of reach of the energies created by the LHC."

One hopes all the experiments go exactly. to. plan.

Links:

• The New York Times article
• The website of the ill-fated Supercolliding SuperConductor
• Wikipedia page on Supernova

Deep in the Matrix

A Toyota car ad

Making international headlines last week was “Woman Sues Toyota over terrifying Prank” :

In a lawsuit filed Sept. 28 in Los Angeles Superior Court, Amber Duick claims she had difficulty eating, sleeping and going to work during March and April of last year after she received e-mails for five days from a fictitious man called Sebastian Bowler, from England, who said he was on the run from the law, knew her and where she lived, and was coming to her home to hide from the police.

I wanted to know how a marketing campaign could have gone so wrong (or perhaps “so right”)? And although no one has ever become poor by underestimating the stupidity of people, I was curious how a marketing campaign could provoke such a reaction. From a country with a history of people suing advertisers (like this one where a man sued the makers of Bud Light for making ads involving tropical fantasies of beautiful women coming to life, because, and I'm dead serious here, he didn't have that experience when consuming Bud Light), I initially assumed that the woman suing Toyota was, how you say…a couple of beers short of a six-pack?

A Toyota car ad

But researching campaign, I noted that it was not just TV or Radio ads, but fake MySpace profiles, print ads,personalized email spam, text messages, phone calls....

I'll let the Art Director responsible for the campaign describe it to you (short flash video). It's worth checking it out as it is a very involved campaign.

In brief: How it works is that someone would sign up one of their friends selecting one of the 5 "maniacs", and then that friend would be spammed with a variety of personalized communications by said maniac, and in the case above, threaten to come and live at their house and get them to help pay for hotel damage bills.

The campaign was targeting the 35 year old males demographic, with no life commitments and are "sick of advertising". Keeping this in mind, it's no wonder that a clever campaign like this managed to avoid looking like advertising, thereby "terrorizing" unwitting participants, however I'm not quite sure Saatchi & Saatchi are culpable, and I'm not sure it's fair to accuse the women of stupidity. The campaign was designed to be a disturbing prank, and it succeeded. Blending the power of Web 2.0 technologies and slick personalized advertising messages, it blurred the distinction we consumers have come to understand between advertising and 'real-life'. Despite the lawsuit (in fact I would argue because of the lawsuit) expect more clever campaigns like this in the future.

A Toyota car ad

Links

A couple of the "maniacs" MySpace pages:
http://www.myspace.com/racoonie
http://www.myspace.com/sakura_on_fire

A video with another description of the case:
http://www.autonews.com/article/20091002/ANA08/910029986/1221/mobile&template=art4

The breakdown of the “Your other You” campaign is described here:
http://tmspreview.com/yoycampaign/

A further discussion of the campaign:
http://zehnkatzen.blogspot.com/2008/04/addesign-toyota-matrix-campaign-who_06.html

The Art director's website:
http://www.nickluckett.com/matrix-your-other-you/

Picture sources
http://adverlicio.us/toyota_matrix_sebastians_academy_of_pub_fighting_728x90_unbranded
http://blog.signalnoise.com/?p=265

Another clever Toyota Matrix campaign
http://www.marketingmag.ca/english/creative/featuredcampaign/article.jsp?content=20080430_142446_9020

An awesome website dedicated to ridiculous lawsuits:
http://facesoflawsuitabuse.org/