Ah, what the hell, it is Friday after all. Meet Arnie, another Netherlands resident. You can see him grow from a tiny kitten to a very cute full-grown marmalade cat here.
Isn’t he a sweetie? Aww, look at his ikkle fat paws….
Read More: Friday Cat Blogging
Chemistry is the bollocks: PZ Myers & commenters on exploding heavy elements, the etymology of English slang and exposing the real reason why people become chemists.
Woah. This is just astonishing – electron microscopy inside living cells. This crest was made with individual strands of fluorescing DNA :
>
The crest is about 60 millionths of a metre across
It is highly accurate, but there is something unusual about this image of the Cambridge University crest.
The picture is about the width of a human hair, and is made up entirely of gently fluorescing DNA.
It is produced by a technique that lets scientists examine the body’s tiniest machinery while it is still working.
[…]
The new Cambridge method, called Scanning Ion Conductance Microscopy, is described by Dr Klenerman as a major breakthrough.
“It’s like an electron micrograph with live cells,” he said. “It opens up the possibility of watching biology at the nanoscale.”
>Researchers could now examine the tiny proteins on a cell’s surface in detail, or watch a virus force its way inside, he explained. More…
Following the past few years’ severe regional tectonic activity Java’s volcanoes are bubbling away thteateningly. The latest to show signs of major eruption is Mount Bromo. I can’t resist a smile at that; Bromo if IIRC was a brand of hard shiny toilet paper of the type that used to be in the outside toilets when I was at primary school. Ahh, sweet nostalgia. Here is the geological carbuncle in question:
Smoking craters of Mount Bromo (front) and Mount Semeru (back) on the Indonesian island of Java. Scientists have issued a high-alert warning for Mount Bromo after it showed signs of increased activity. The volcano, a popular tourist destination, last erupted in 2004, killing one local resident.
From the elemental to the excremental – Anyhow the above led me to googling for Bromo, as one does ( did you know you can get vintage toilet paper on ebay?) when I came across this review page for moist toilet tissues. How very interesting, NOT. But I read on, because as the poet said, full many a flower is born to blush unseen and you never know, you might just find the next Dostoevsky or more likely, Helen Fielding. Bushing unseenly was this lyrical passage:
If you use solely dry toilet tissue, do you think that you manage to remove all the excrement? In order to try this little test you are going to have to purchase moist toilet tissue. So, after you have done your business, wipe yourself as thoroughly as you can with dry toilet tissue and then wipe your bottom a second time with a moist tissue. Take a look at the moist tissue you may be surprised to find you have removed even more residual faeces.
I am sure that if you use dry toilet tissue only it cannot be healthy or hygienic to leave little bits and pieces of excrement stuck to the skin around your bottom, let alone bits of toilet paper that come adrift. And another point, moist toilet tissues are stronger, so you won?t put your fingers through them like you do with ordinary dry tissue and come away with brown stains on your fingers. (Sorry, hope nobody is eating whilst reading this, I wouldn?t want to put you off your food!).
Thanks so much for sharing. So unlike the home life of our own dear queen, who as we all know has no anus.
Those’re the best two from a page of 22 paragraphs discussing arse wipes – my point being, look at all that interesting sciencey stuff that’s out there! You’ve got the whole internet and the means of instant communication at your fingertips and your immediate thought is what – to transmit your pearls of deathless prose on the mechanics of arse-wipes? Maybe there are some fragrances that were meant to be wasted on the desert air. (And that’s a kb I wouildn’t care to use after the writer.) On the other hand, it does prove that the spirit of scientific enquiry is alive and well on the interwebs, even if the subjects chosen are not necessarily very sexy.
Oh dear, now I’ve brought up Coprophilia.
I’ll get my coat.
Read more: Science, Non-Lifeform-Blogging, Volcanoes, Geology, Indonesia, Java, Mt Bromo, Toilet Paper, Bathroom Products, Electron Microscopy, Nanobiology, Chemistry, Explosions, Boom, Big- bada-boom, The Dogs Bollocks
As I Was Saying….
…in my last post, Blair made his ‘announcement’ this afternoon while being heckled by scholdchildren. Lenin was there and here’s his eye witness report, pictures and video:
Video by Lenin’s Tomb
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Blair Protest: report. posted by lenin
So, did we make the news? Since I assume we didn’t – despite the fact that the reporters present took lots of footage and interviewed many of the people there – I’ll have to explain. Blair made his announcement about resigning ‘within the next twelve months’ at the Quintin Kynaston School in North London. It is one of his Specialist Schools, and it happens to get very flattering inspection reviews from Ofsted. He had been before in 2003, and presumably thought it would be a doss. It’s one of those schools he hopes to hand over to the private sector and remove from local democratic control. Plus, Suggs went there, and it must appeal to his rock-star fantasies.
However, some of us got wind of this, and the protesters were right down there waiting for him. Now, the school headteachers had decided that since it was Blair’s big day they would send most of the pupils home and keep only the exceptionally well-behaved ones behind. So, as we were setting up for our protest, the children were filing out in huge numbers. Guess what? Blair is extremely unpopular in this neck of the woods, and some of them wanted to take part in the protest. To be more precise, there was already a School Students Against the War movement in the school and I expect they had been ready for Blair’s visit. This is not unusual – tonnes of young kids have been to the huge antiwar demonstrations in London. Some of the kids’ parents were there too. Many of these children were Muslim. One kid explained that he was Lebanese; a lot of others simply hated Blair, as you’ll discover from the footage
You see where this is going…
Next thing – I shit you not – the head teacher and every deputy head teacher in the school is running out, trying to push all the kids off the pavements and order them home. One of them, who I was told was the head teacher, actually went through the crowd picking on particular people saying “YOU! Home now, or you’ll definitely be in trouble!” Several of them, knowing that many of the kids aren’t very assertive, were ripping posters and signs out of their hands, saying “thank you, I’ll have that, thank you, off you go, away you go…” Blatantly trying to shore the situation up for Blair. So I asked a couple of them by what right they insisted on doing this, and I got the typical blather in response: I personally was accused of manipulating children, which would hurt my feelings if this wasn’t coming from headteachers anxious to assist a trouble-free visit for a warmonger and casually shoving the kids around to that end. The older kids were having none of it. I spoke to a few of the girls there who were being berated by a teacher, and they were telling her “but miss, you told us to stand up for what we believe in” and she was all like “er yeah, but it’s debatable whether you’re helping the school, er…” One staff member did casually try to mangle my limbs beside a vehicle, which was incredibly stupid given the presence of the media and police, and he gave up. I’m pretty sure it was an attempt at provocation, but I’m too cowardly and physically unfit to be tempted into that nonsense. The police themselves were very helpful. One man who claimed to be a police officer picked out a demonstrator and started to intimidate him, claiming he could cite Public Order offenses and get everyone removed. I don’t know if he was a copper or not, because he seemed to have one of the school identity tags around his neck. They otherwise confined themselves to slowly and awkwardly pushing us behind a distant barricade. A lot of the kids said the school had been promised more money for ensuring an expeditious and media-friendly visit from Blair.
There was an effort to use sixth formers to stir things up and bully the kids, but some of the older, more mature students simply waited a minute then took them aside and said “what are you letting them push you around for?” Sorted. To be absolutely clear about this – not all the teachers took part in that nasty charade, and I spotted prefects among those who hung around for the demo even after all the kids had been told what trouble they would be in. One or two of the teachers were behind the temporary barricades with us.
Since I mention the media, I spotted the Guardian’s sketch-writer Simon Hoggart, someone from the Times and the glabrous-cheeked sketch-writer for the Daily Mail, Quentin Letts. Nick Robinson was there for the BBC, as was Simon Harris from London Tonight who casually patronised the children. A lot of them were interviewing the children, and I had to laugh as a reporter who I think was from The Guardian stood there looking bemused as he scribbled down observations from a couple of girls who were saying “Blair has killed thousands of people in Iraq and Afghanistan and Lebanon, and I don’t think he should be the Prime Minister. And he’s a dickhead and I hate him.” “Er, okay. So, what are your names…?”
I wish I’d been there. But wait, it gets better.
Anyway, after much festivity and delay, Blair arrived to a loud chorus of boos. Cameramen rushed to the chanting crowd to get some footage, then ran away again. And that was it. The Guardian’s report of Blair’s announcement, by the way, says:
Shunning a public press conference with reporters outside the school, Mr Blair, looking relaxed, recorded a filmed statement with the Press Association.
I wonder why he would do that? I’m sure any mention the protest gets will be diminutive or condescending.
Having got Blair safely into the school, the deputy headteachers were out once more trying to persuade the children, a little more delicately this time, to go home. Some of them looked pathetically sheepish. Funny thing is, I am told Quintin Kynaston has had a reputation for being one of the most left-wing schools in London, and was one of the first to implement anti-racist policies. It’s a shame that the new folks in charge were so anxious to cover for Blair. Anyway, I got some pictures and footage for you to look at.
What an excellent bit of reporting by Lenin.
Read more: UK Government, UK Politics, UK Media, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, New Labour, Leadership Contest, Resignations Blogs, Protests, Stop The War Coalition
Science writer Rob Bryerson has put together this excellent Flash animation to promote his new book Imaging TheTenth Dimension. So far so ho-hum, with all the flatlander stuff, until you start getting past dimension 5 when it all starts getting a little weird.
Oh, and while we’re on the subject of multidimensional physics, I also found this lovely animation ( see still photo below) of the modelling of quark interaction, done on a new Cray supercomputer.
Ooh, shiny.
.
Lattice QCD is the subfield of particle theory which attempts to solve QCD problems by approximating spacetime with a discrete grid. Once they are put on a grid, these problems can be attacked by a variety of means, most often involving numerical methods on (super-)computers. The approach was invented by OSU’s own Ken Wilson in 1974, and has since evolved in to major discipline within particle physics. The OSU group is currently involved with several large-scale numerical simulations aimed at understanding strong and weak interaction properties of heavy and light quarks. Among these is the collaboration which has recently (Feb 1997) been named one of the Department of Energy Grand Challenges.
The animation can be seen here or here.
Do I understand it? No, not completely, if ever. But I’m giving it a bloody good try, and besides, the pictures are very pretty.
I urge you to do the same. Free your mind and your ass will follow, as a very wise man once said…
Read more: Computer Modelling, Particle Physics, Multiimensional geometry, Oooh Shiny.
I’m really quite conflicted about this resignation crisis. Do I want Blair to go now or not?
It’s long been a journalistic cliche that Blair and Brown are like an old married couple, familiarity having bred contempt on both sides. Blair and Browns’ emotional death-spiral of competing ambition has been going on for years but has always been publicly denied. Remember Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
That’s the Labour party for you respectable working- and lower-middle-class to the core, a few public-school ringers notwithstanding. All kinds of sordid goings-on, but the facade must be kept up. Mr Taciturn, Gordon Brown, never came out and said anything against Blair publicly, even though it was an open secret there were some right old ding-dongs going on behind the net curtains:
Armando Ianucci’s Time Trumpet
Speaking purely as a Westminster intrigue junkie I love a good political feeding frenzy. I’ve been waiting, lord how I’ve been waiting, to see Mr Tony Blair get get his comeuppance from the backbenches. All these heated speculations, round-robin letters, resignations of obscure PPS’s and off-the-record briefings have been meat and drink to me. I predicted he’d only last till this afternoon – and I was partially right, because Blair is set to make a statement saying when he’s going later today- but I’m half-hoping he holds out, if only to prolong his agony and my own enjoyment.
Part of me wishes Brown and his proxies’d just get on with it, stop riffling through the cutlery drawer and just find the knife and stick the bloody thing in (even twist it a bit) just to see that lying warmonger gone. The part of me that hopes Blair’ll hang on has good reason to though: there’s the TUC and Labour conferences to come shortly and there’s nothing I’d more dearly love to see than a full-on, live-broadcast, public humiliation of Blair by Labour and TUC conference delegates (and that would be only a taste of the shit I’d like to see heaped upon him, just to keep our spirits up going till we can get him to trial in The Hague).
But let’s not forget that while these two over-privileged, entitled white men are squabbling over the ragged bone of the premiership and publicly acting out their own personal pyschodramas on our tab, there’s a country to be run.
Our foreign policy is screwed because we’re tied to the US. We have troops in combat in an illegal war. Our army is broken and soldiers are dying from lack of supplies, while the Ministry Of Defence is sacking 20,000 civil servants. We’re bleeding money away to consultants but the Home Office is fucked. The NHS is being sold off to corporations, as are the schools. Gordon Brown has no plans to change this.This leadership challenge is not about differences in policy.
I’ve been obsessively listening to all the news and commentary on this latest resignation kerfuffle and so far I haven’t heard a single Labour party politician or official once refer to what’s best for the nation – only what’s best for the party. Party and hanging onto power is all that matters. This resignation ‘crisis’ was never about matters of principle; it’s about power. The parliamentary Labour party don’t give a damn about ethical foreign policy or legality or civil liberties. Where were all these backbench letter-writers and resignees when we invaded Iraq? When the illegal attack on Lebanon was happening? In the cash-for-peerages affair? Funny how they popped up when Gordon needed them but where was Gordon himself? As always he was nowhere to be seen.
He may yet have to show his face. Blair has now publicly accused him of plotting a coup and the private acrimony that was once respectably denied has erupted into the street. Like all Labour political brouhahas, national or local, at bottom it’s all about ego and petty personal grudges. Blair will do anything to get back at Brown and deny him the premiership, even so far as to have a knock-down media brawl. If he has to go, he’s prepared to take the party ( and that little irrelevance, the nation) down with him, such is his vanity. “The country? What matters is me, me, me.”
Brown is no different. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss; a Brown premiership would just be more of the same, he was after all the chief architect of economic globalisation’s expression in the UK and has promised to push through reform, ie privatisation, of public services come what may. He has said little if anything about plans to deal with Iraq or Afghanistan.
Other than a change of name post-coronation it’d be business as usual, and that’s not good enough. The narrative demands change, the public needs change. Unfortunately we can’t get it unless and until the party turns on them both.
However there are still lingering Labour loyalists who also want to see an actual contest rather than a coronation. The longer Brown leaves it before sticking the knife in the more the clamour for a real choice grows from the unions, who’re the party’s last remaining funders, and the local branches – a clamour that’s is likely to find its expression at the two upcoming conferences. (I have a bet with Martin that the upshot of all this will be Margaret Beckett as a unity candidate. I’ve been right in all the leadership contests of recent times – I even won a fiver on John Major from my politics tutor in the nineties so I’m quietly confident.)
Although all this current uncertainty is deeply destructive to the nation as a whole I think I’d like Blair to hang on, at least until the conferences – though he may of course chicken out and resign before having to face the party and the unions. I wouldn’t be surprised.
In the meantime I’m just going to sit back and enjoy the show.
UPDATE: Blair announced this afternoon, (s he was being heckled by schoolchildren shouting “Go now!”) that he will leave within 12 months. Uh, didn’t he say that already? I don’t see how this latest announcement changes the situation at all.
Oh well, let’s stock up on popcorn and enjoy the show. There’re local, Scots and Welsh elections coming up and Tony Blair is a proven election liability. Even if Brown doesn’t get Blair out, the Scots MP’s may do it for him .
Read more: UK Government, UK Politics, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, New Labour, Leadership Contest, Resignations
