Shock Doodles

Doodled during the Shock of the Old Conference (Oxford)

Metal Owls

Don't you love it when surveys confirm your own prejudices :-) A few years back I came across a Times article about how Night Owls were the wiser (I think based on this Science article), condemning the dim-witted Larks with one well-aimed comparison (Churchill = Owl, Blair = Lark).

Now there's another marvelous survey that claims that metal is the music of choice for our bright young things. Looking around our research labs at the assorted Goths and aging Rockers it seems they may have a point - unless there's a secret disco room that no-one's told me about. I shall mull it over late one night while listening to some Guns n Roses.

Documentaries Online

I was checking my del.icio.us feed today and noticed a site that brings together the best documentaries on-line. Most of them look like naughty Google Video rips to me - but the site doesn't host them so that's OK. Go on - download some communism and edutain yourself :-)

Sir Tim

Is it just me, or at the mention of Sir Tim does everyone look around nervously for the vicious Chicken of Bristol? Brave, brave, Sir Tim Berners-Lee - the inventor of the Web - is a Professor at the University of Southampton, and I've just returned from his Inaugural Lecture on the past and future of the Web.

Despite his growing geek-fame, and the commercial temptations it must have brought, he has admirably stuck to his original vision of the Web as a broad, open, free and democratic system. Much of the message of his talk was on the importance of understanding the impact of the web, and promoting Web Science as the new inter-discipline that would enable this.

For those that haven't met him, he is a very English scientist, despite the mid-Atlantic accent that he occasionally drops into (he now lives and works mostly at MIT in the States). Actually he reminds me somewhat of portrayals I've seen of Alan Turing - quiet and unaffected. What I like about Tim Berners-Lee is the high level view that he has taken of his creation, and the understated way in which he talks of its importance. If he hadn't created the Web then I suspect that one of the other hypertext systems evolving at the time would have eventually focused on distribution and taken off instead, so Sir Tim's real contribution is not technical, but political; he gave his creation away unpatented and for free, and not in error, but intentionally, to make the world a better place.

If only a certain Mr Gates had taken the same view then the world might be very different. If you're reading this Sir Tim, then thanks for the Web - it's jolly good - and remember that the capital of Assyria is Nineveh!

The Great Climate Change Swindle

I finally got around to watching last weeks Dispatches program (Channel 4, UK) on the arguments against climate change. It was a fascinating, well made piece of rhetoric, although I'd rather have seen a balanced presentation of the facts. We are long past the point about arguing about whether climate change is real, it is now obvious that the world is getting warmer, but this programme questioned the cause, presented a number of expert arguments against CO2 as the driver, and suggested other possible explanations (mainly the effect of the Sun).

The implication was that the present warming period is part of a natural cycle of warming and cooling that has been going on for millions of years, and therefore isn't anything to worry about. The political message went further, and argued that in fact worrying about it might do more harm than good (for example, by hindering the progress of developing nations).

Watch the program here (parts 1-8 via YouTube):




And then read a number of authoritative responses online:

• Carl Wunsch (Professor of Physical Oceanography, who figured in the show)
• Sir John Houghton (former co-chair IPCC Scientific Assessment working group)
• Jeff Severinghaus (Professor of Geosciences, his work is mentioned in the show)

I was finally convinced about the human relationship to climate change by the recent IPCC report, but this program did make me question it all again. It hasn't really changed my mind - it's to obviously a polemic for that - but it has revealed the sort of politically-motivated quasi-scientific world that this debate has moved to :-/

Update: It appears that this topic has been Slashdotted - in the comments: some interesting debate on the nature of scientific enquiry, and whether it can stand up to this massive public interest.

Within Temptation

Why am I always the last to hear about bands? Rock music is a guilty passion of mine and last month I spent a few idle hours on Youtube looking at a number of Symphonic Metal Bands and wondering if I should speculatively buy an album or two. In the end I found this group called Within Temptation from the Netherlands and bought a couple of their albums.

Now Im totally addicted. If you were generous you'd call their stuff romantic, but really its classic rollicking cheesy goth rock. I love it.

Now I find out that they're on the front cover of Kerrang! and tipped to be massive in the UK :-/

Oh well - it doesnt stop them being great.

CPD Doodles

Doodled during a CPD session on University Finances (held in Southampton).

Lunar Eclipse

Watched the Lunar Eclipse last night a lot more successfully than the solar eclipse a few years ago in Cornwall (where it was interesting to watch the clouds go dark for a while). This time I had a great view and very pretty it was too.

New Star Trek Movie

Good grief - the BBC reports that they're going to make a new Star Trek movie.

This is a bit like Paramount announcing that they're going to dig up your ancesters and make them put on a fun zombie clown show - it might be entertaining, but its probably best just to let them be.