Who says a godless universe can’t be beautiful? These images from the Cassini spacecraft of Saturn and its rings are magnificent.
(hat tip to the Bad Astronomer)
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Calling Time
I see that BBC Four starts a new four part documentary on the nature of time tonight. It has Michio Kaku as the anchorman. I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Whenever I’ve seen him in the past, it has been on BBC’s Horizon programmes, where frankly, the production values of the programme makers made me want to throw things at him. Heavy objects, not plaudits.Leave a comment
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Imagine Earth Without People
New Scientist has an interesting article that imagines how difficult it might be for future non-human archeologists to establish human presence on the earth. I can readily accept that our current levels of "civilisation" are a fragile thing, and will wither away very quickly in less than geological timescales. But fossil evidence will persist for a while, even though those future archeologists will have no comprehension of what drove our lives. I’m reminded of Arthur C. Clarke’s short story "History Lesson" published in 1949.But one thing is certain, the title of the New Scientist article is wrong. Give it long enough and you won’t have to imagine earth without people – it will be a plain fact.Leave a comment
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Sita Sings The Blues
I’ve mentioned her before, but once again, I’ll draw your attention to Nina Paley and her charming animations. The occasion is that the fifth episode of the Sitayana is now online. You can link to the other episodes via this page, and Nina’s main web site and blog is here.Leave a comment
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O Superman
Diamond Geezer reminds us that it’s 25 years ago this month that Laurie Anderson’s O Superman became an unlikely hit. It’s a work of art.Leave a comment
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Yet More Fun With Software
I see that I’m not the only person who would like to line up certain software developers against a wall and execute them. Diamond Geezer is having some trouble with software that won’t take no for an answer. Been there, done that, nearly took an axe to the system…Leave a comment
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More Fun With Software
I blogged my disappointment with Creative Technology’s inability to write decent software last month. They released a new beta version of the Vista driver software for the Audigy soundcard yesterday. I downloaded it. I installed it on a mint-fresh installation of Vista RC2 build 5744.The result? Another Blue Screen Of Death, and a non-working soundcard. Yep, Creative Technology are crap. I’m never going to buy any of their products again.Leave a comment
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Fun With Microsoft…
…or the joys of being a software tester.I’ve been using Beta 2 (and the Beta 2 Technical Refresh) of Office 2007 for sometime. When I installed it, it installed alongside Office 2003, and that was not a problem. A month or two later, Microsoft issued some security patches via their Microsoft Update system, and suddenly my Outlook 2007 stopped working. I got it working again by running "repair" on Office 2007. This happened a couple of times – each time Microsoft released patches for Office 2003, it would break Outlook 2007, and I’d have to repair it.However, last night, some patches were installed, and this time Outlook 2007 remained resolutely broken. "Repair" had no effect. Neither did a complete uninstall and reinstall of Office 2007.After four hours of trying one thing and another, I found the only way to get Outlook 2007 running again was to do a complete uninstall of both Office 2003 and 2007, and then reinstall Office 2007 only. It seems that the latest patches to Office 2003 are completely incompatible with Outlook 2007. I see from the message boards that I’m not the only one to have bitten by this bug, but I’m surprised that no-one inside Microsoft found it before the patches were released. This probably means that no-one in the testing teams of either Office 2003 or Office 2007 have dual installations anymore… Only us poor saps outside…Leave a comment
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Intruder Detection
Last night, we were woken up at about 1 am by the barking of our dog, Kai. I went to see what was up. He was standing by the door to the front garden, still barking. I looked out through the window into the garden, which was illuminated by moonlight. At first I couldn’t see anything, but then I saw something scurry along by the garage block. It looked ominously rat-sized. Switching on the outside light to get a better view, I was relieved to see that it was only a hedgehog.But, I’m rather curious to know how Kai detected it. He couldn’t have seen it. Perhaps he caught a scent of it through the door (he sleeps next to it), or perhaps he was woken up by the sound of the hedgehog snuffling past the door – they are noisy little buggers at times.
2 responses to “Intruder Detection”
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It may have been a carrier hedgehog – did you check its leg?
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In my experience, the only things they carry are lots, and lots, of very hungry fleas. Best avoided…
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Spore
If you ever fancied trying your hand at being a god, then perhaps Spore is the game for you. It will be available sometime next year. In the meantime, here’s an in-depth article in the NYT about it. Created by the man behind SimCity, it moves up to the scale of universe building, rather than just city planning. I might consider giving it a whirl, although I soon lost interest in Black and White when I tried that a few years back. I just don’t have the patience needed by a god, I suppose.Leave a comment
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British Accents
And continuing on the theme of language, Jason Kottke has found a clip of Peter Sellers demonstrating his mastery of British accents…Leave a comment
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Fast Film
And, of course, sometimes radio isn’t enough… Here’s a quite brilliant piece of animation that is a sort of origami of film culture. See how many films you can spot.Leave a comment
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Google Maps Nederland
Ogle Earth reports that Google Maps now has The Netherlands properly covered.Leave a comment
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Sometimes Behaves So Strangely
Here’s a link, courtesy of Crooked Timber, to a quite amazing radio broadcast dealing with the connection between language and music. There’s an interview with Diana Deutsch, a psychologist who deals with the psychology of music. I love the way the makers of the radio broadcast play with the interviews to create a soundscape that has a beauty of its own. Terrific stuff. And I have to say, it brought it back to me that for things like this, I really prefer listening to radio than to watch TV. No irrelevant flashy images – just the sparking of one’s own imagination.Leave a comment
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Not Bad For Jumped-up Apes…
I know that I come across as a misanthrope – gawd knows that as a species we do enough bad things to make that almost inescapable as my response to things. But then, every now and then, something happens to make me feel proud to be a hairless ape. This time it’s not in the area of morality or of helping relieve the burden of fellow-apes. It’s in the area of pure science – what’s out there, why is the universe the way it is – and so forth. Look at these pictures of the surface of Mars and think about the implications, That’s something to take a teensy bit of pride in. Next up, let’s find a cure for AIDS and stop global warming…One response to “Not Bad For Jumped-up Apes…”
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That took my breath away Geoff. Just what I needed. All my life I dreamed of seeing the other planets. That is fantastic, looking forward to more pictures. What a damn shame we can’t put the same ingenuity and vision in to things here on the ground.
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Meaning? I Don’t Need No Steenking Meaning…
I do despair about my species. It’s not bad enough that they feel impelled to invent a god to blame their existence on, but that even those who dismiss the idea of a god feel impelled to dream up the Goldilock’s Universe. Paul Davies says:“Somehow,” he writes, “the universe has engineered, not just its own awareness, but its own comprehension. Mindless, blundering atoms have conspired to make, not just life, not just mind, but understanding. The evolving cosmos has spawned beings who are able not merely to watch the show, but to unravel the plot.”What exactly is Davies saying? His starting point is the “highly significant” fact that the universe supports people who understand its laws. “I wanted to get away from the feeling in so many scientific quarters that life and human beings are a completely irrelevant embellishment, a side issue of no significance. I don’t think we’re the centre of the universe or the pinnacle of creation, but the fact that human beings have the ability to understand how the world is put together is something that cries out for explanation.”Er, no, Paul, it doesn’t cry out for anything of the sort. It just is. If the physical laws were slightly different, we wouldn’t be here, and you wouldn’t have a book that you’re trying to peddle. On the other hand, in that alternative universe perhaps there would be a nexus of fningian energy with a koob to lles. Either way, I don’t buy it.2 responses to “Meaning? I Don’t Need No Steenking Meaning…”
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Why is the cosmos ideally set up to support life? I never did quite get this. Is the cosmos ideally set up to support life? Or just this life? Perhaps as you say, if it needs this, random chance has brought it about, or maybe some other form of life would have come about under other conditions?
However, I agree that Dawkins sits at the same table as the raving fundamentalist in that each has closed the possibility book. We all need to allow room for what we just don’t know (yet?). My God belief is not that of others, its not so rigidly (and so my mind) so suspiciously framed as some, it’s more an acknowledgment of things I ‘know’ that just don’t fit. One way or another, I hope to hell we get the answers sometime, someway, but I guess if not, if we are no more than mere serendipity, then it won’t matter anyway.
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You ask "why is the cosmos ideally set up to support life?" That’s a false question, in my opinion – another of the "why does a fish need a bicycle?" type. The very fact of posing it as a question implies that there is some sort of agency behind it. Whereas I see it as quite simple – life is here as a result of the cosmos being the way it is. If the laws were different, then life as we know it could not exist. That’s it. No need to imagine any sort of agency beyond the physical laws.
And I strongly disagree with you about Dawkins. To say that he "sits at the same table as the raving fundamentalist in that each has closed the possibility book" is so far from the truth of how Dawkins views the world as to beggar belief. I suggest that you pick up and read The God Delusion.
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More Fish In A Barrel
Ophelia has her doubts about limbo. It doesn’t surprise me. I find the whole concept of thirty theologians deliberating over a pile of nonsense utterly contemptible – the more so because millions of people are fooled into taking it seriously instead of treating it as the rubbish it is. Why on earth do people continue to ignore the man behind the curtain? Life is too short and too unique to be in thrall to memes that devour rationality and shit out needless guilt.Leave a comment
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Good Art, Bad Art…
Alright, I know that I’ve had a humour bypass over the subject of fashion. Put it down to bad experiences with fashionistas in the 1970s. But I really do not understand what anorexic females wearing fabric have to do with the meaning of life in any real sense. And now we have fashion that feels. A note: you have to skip forward about nine minutes into the video before you see anything that has evolved beyond paint-drying. From Boing-Boing’s panting review:Fashion designer Hussein Chalayan premiered his Spring/Summer 2007 collection this week, and it’s full of Swarovski-crystal-embellished animatronic couture. The clothes wriggle, unfold, collapse, and transform by themselves. The final act in Chalayan’s show, at left: this piece began as a dress, morphed into a hat, then rained down as a cloud of Swarovski crystal dust. Hot.
Er, not. I am reminded of Boswell’s dog. And aurally quoting the soundtrack from Forbidden Planet was depressingly gauche. At least Boing-Boing didn’t plumb the depths of this review:This was fashion addressing the subject of fashion, a dissection of our contemporary habit of recycling "vintage," and an embrace of high technology, all at the same time. It wasn’t just the uncanny sight of the self-undressing clothes (tech-genius courtesy of the team who made the hippogriff in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) that provided the chills. That would have left it at the level of childlike entertainment. What really gave the show a disturbing sense of wake-up-to-reality was the soundtrack. Here, the changing shapes were connected to the sounds of the twentieth century—fragments of music, trench warfare, the ranting of Hitler, aerial bombing, jet engines, the beating of helicopter rotors.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Catch yourself on, Mary, as a good friend says to me when I spout crap. It’s a fashion show, it’s not reality as the vast majority of the world knows it. You silly, silly, woman.2 responses to “Good Art, Bad Art…”
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You ever read Private Eye Geoff? My favourite part is the ‘crap-speak’ they highlight. You should send that in. They pay, and its a doozy.
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I used to read P.E. on an occasional basis. I recall that they had, in those days, "Pseud’s Corner", which sounds like the "crap-speak" whereof you speak. I think I’d have to go to Amsterdam to find a copy of P.E. now. Newsagents in this neck of the woods will never have heard of it.
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