I’ve mentioned this visualisation of the processes that go on inside each and every one of our cells before. It was made for the biology courses at Havard University. The version that I originally came across was this edited version with a music soundtrack. That emphasises the beauty and wonder of these microscopic processes, but does not explain what’s going on. Take, for example, the kinesin molecule at about 1:17 minutes into the video. It’s an extraordinary image – a tightrope walker pulling a huge balloon – but how does it work? I’ve now come across another video that explains the processes that power the kinesin molecule; it’s the second video in this post. Finally, I’ve found the original visualisation video, restored to its full eight minutes, shorn of the music soundtrack, and with the explanatory voiceover restored. That’s the third video embedded in this post. Wonderful to see.
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What Is a Cause of Misanthropy?
A strong case is made by J. Carter Wood, over at Obscene Desserts, that a major factor is the phenomenon known as Oprah. I cannot disagree.Leave a comment
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Ouch!
Her entrance is enough to bring tears to the eyes, but there’s more! Camp and tacky as hell, but strangely wonderful…(hat tip to Lyn David Thomas over in the haunted wing that is Usenet for the link)Leave a comment
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To Be Dishonest Is To Be Human
Here’s a fascinating article by Simon Baron-Cohen on the human characteristic of dishonesty, and the fact that the only people incapable of being dishonest are autistic. By the way, I don’t mean to imply from my somewhat tongue-in-cheek title that I don’t think people with autism are not human…(hat tip to The Mouse Trap for the link)Leave a comment
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Sunset At Peel Castle
This stunning photo makes me quite jealous. My snaps never seem to reach such dizzying heights. Ah well.Leave a comment
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Justin Feels Sick…
…And I find it perfectly understandable. The meaning of the word education has clearly been redefined beyond anything that I could recognise and still have hope for the future.Leave a comment
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The Power Of Narrative
Michael Bérubé has a terrific article on the effect Harry Potter has had on his teenage son. Absolutely worth reading.Leave a comment
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Wine Bottle Grotto
Now, there’s an idea for our empties… Considering we generally polish off a bottle a day, it should take us less than fourteen years to complete it, assuming we don’t die of liver cirrhosis beforehand…Leave a comment
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Sunshine
This is about the recent film Sunshine. Warning: spoilers ahead. If you don’t want to know about the plot, then stop reading now!I haven’t actually seen the film for myself, but the reviews sounded good. However, Geoff Manaugh, over at BLDGBLG, has just seen it and writes a long critique, in which he also discusses the plot. Now that I’ve read it, I feel much less of a desire to see the film. The trouble is that the plot twist that is thrown in comes across to me as simply juvenile, almost as though the filmmakers did not have the courage of their own convictions. Or perhaps because their previous film was 28 days later, they can’t get rid of their addiction to schlock horror.Like Manaugh, I think this is a real shame, a wasted opportunity that seems to undercut the grandeur of the basic idea. It’s as though The Seventh Seal suddenly turns into Driller Killer.For a time, it seems as though Sunshine is going to be a variation on an SF story I read years ago. Alas, I have forgotten the title, but the plot device remains vividly with me. It concerns people who develop the ability to teleport, but who then suddenly disappear. It turns out that they are like moths, drawn inexorably towards the light – in this case they suddenly realise that they have an irresistable desire to teleport into the sun. Their new ability is what ultimately destroys them.Sunshine, for much of its running time, is proceeding along similar lines to this old SF story; members of the crew become irresistably attracted to the sun. This is ominously prefigured in the very name of the spacecraft – Icarus (I might have thought that someone in the story would have suggested the safer alternative of naming it Daedelus instead). And the idea of the irresistable attraction in itself has so much resonance and depth to be explored. But then comes the plot device, which I fear is going to make many, including me, go WTF?Leave a comment
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Learning From The Masters
The BBC has recently been going through some public washing of its dirty linen, after being shown to be falling short of the standards set by Lord Reith. Quite right too.But as Mark Ravenhill points out in today’s Guardian, the BBC has only been following in the footsteps of New Labour. It’s an excellent article and accurately skewers both organisations with the charge of stage management like beetles to a board.Leave a comment
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The Hive Mind
Charlie Brooker has one of his excellent columns in today’s Guardian, this time ruminating on the phenomenon of who’s really in charge of his mind. While it’s funny, like all the best humour there’s an underlying seriousness, and that is: how does consciousness and personality come about anyway? It’s a topic that, as I mentioned before, I find fascinating.One set of theories that I personally don’t accept about the mind and consciousness is that it has anything to do with dualism, certainly not Descartes’ substance dualism. Property dualism also seems to me to be introducing an unnecessary level of indirection into what seems to me to simply be emergent phenomena arising out of physical causes. And I’m still trying to get my head around what predicate dualism actually is. I’m a simple soul at heart, and that’s probably why, armed with Occam’s razor, I find any theory of dualism of the mind rather unsatisfactory.There’s a good chapter in Stephen Law’s The Philosophy Gym titled, appropriately enough, The Consciousness Conundrum dealing with the subject. He deals with both substance and property dualism, but not predicate dualism (perhaps this is a recent development?). For further reading, Law recommends (amongst others) the "now quite old but nevertheless still excellent" The Mind’s I. I can concur – this book is very good indeed and well worth reading on the topic of what is the Mind?Leave a comment
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The Operation
Last weekend we discovered that our labrador, Kai, had a lump lurking under his fur. We took him to the vet on Monday, and on Tuesday, the lump was removed. The vet said that there was nothing to worry about, the growth was benign and easy to remove.On Tuesday evening, Kai was feeling very sorry for himself as you can see from this photo. He’s wearing an old T-shirt to stop him worrying at the wound. After a couple of days, the T-shirt was removed, and now he’s back to normal.
2 responses to “The Operation”
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ur dog is cute
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Thanks; there’s plenty more photos of Kai here if you’re interested.
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Memorial
At the side of a quiet country lane not far from where we live is this war memorial. I stopped there yesterday and read the rather poignant story behind it. It commemorates the execution, by firing squad, of 46 Dutch political prisoners by the Germans on the 2nd March 1945. They were executed in retaliation for the killing of four German soldiers by a local resistance group.
The execution of the political prisoners took place in the field where the memorial now stands. Although the bodies were taken away that day and buried in the graveyard at nearby Varsseveld, their lifeblood soaked the ground. It is said that the corn grew higher that year on the spot where the execution occurred. The locals harvested that grain separately from the rest of the field. At the base of the memorial is a glass belljar. In it can be seen the grain that was harvested.
The inscription above reads:
Warm bloed doordrenkt onze velden,
en rijker rijpte hier ‘t graan.
O, mocht uit het offer dier helden
zulk een oogst van vrijheid ontstaan!Which, with excuses for my poor translation, says: Warm blood soaked our fields and richer ripened here the grain. Oh, might from this heroic sacrifice such a harvest of freedom arise!
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An Extraordinary Tale II
Another story from today’s Observer, but this time fiction is stranger than truth. Fiction, because a couple of weeks ago, The Observer had a front page story claiming that new research showed a surge in autism. That story was simply wrong on all sorts of counts. Today, the paper prints what it calls a "clarification". This is obviously a new definition of the noun, and one that I had not come across previously.Ben Goldacre, over at Bad Science, is equally unimpressed. It’s worth reading his piece to appreciate how far journalistic standards appear to be falling at The Observer. Not good, not good at all.Update: apparently The Observer have now removed the original story from their online archives.Leave a comment
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An Extraordinary Tale
Another case of truth being far stranger than fiction. The Observer today carries the story behind the events that unfolded in the town of Erie on 28 August 2003. If it was crime fiction, I’d almost think it was over the top. The fact that it was real gives pause for thought.Leave a comment
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Please Can We Have Our Planet Back?
A rant from Marcus Brigstocke that pretty much sums up my feelings re the major religions.Leave a comment
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Waffle II
I mentioned the video discussion between Alister McGrath and Richard Dawkins a little while back. And marvelled at how McGrath seemed to say absolutely nothing with so many words.If you like this sort of tilting at windmills, then may I refer you to the discussion that began with the posting of this video on the Richard Dawkins site here. It begins on the 30th May and is still going today at the current count of 1,580 postings. Most of the sparring is between Dianelos Georgoudis and a variety of godforsaken atheists. It is an entertainment of sorts, but I do find Georgoudis’ rationale for his beliefs to be pretty threadbare. Still, it’s clearly something that gives him something to hang on to, so I suppose that’s fine. It’s just his touching belief that therefore it must be true that rather sticks in my craw.Leave a comment
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