Another experiment!

Yet another opportunity for people to help in an experiment - boy this is a good January!

And not only do you get to have fun doing Science, you get to help people as well.

This one is looking at ocean rip currents and is being conducted by the folks at UNSW, with the Surf Life Savers. So if you've ever been caught in a rip off an ocean beach, fill in the survey - http://www.surveys.unsw.edu.au/survey/155251/142e/ and here's the Surf Life Saver's page with all the info: http://www.sls.com.au/content/surf-life-saving-and-unsw-rip-current-survivor-survey

A new experiment!

A new experiment for the new year!

Another chance for lots of people to participate in an experiment - if you live in Australia, the ABC is running Feral month.

They're asking people to report feral animal sightings in January - any feral species, any place in Australia. It can be foxes in the cities or camels in the outback. If you see it, report it.

How do I do that?

You can do it via SMS, Twitter, email (feralmonth@your.abc.net.au), or online form (http://feralmonth.crowdmap.com/reports/submit). For details check out the ABC's page - http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2011/01/04/3093947.htm

And while you're doing that, check out the Feral Map - http://feralmonth.crowdmap.com/

Go to my minions and spot those animals.

Have fun.

What books I've read this year

So inspired by a friend who regularly compiles a list of what she reads each year, and as I've posted lists of books to read, I decided to do the same. The numbers in brackets is when I read them, day and month. Italics are plays and they're all new reads for me, except for those marked with an asterisk which are re-reads.

1. Alexandria - Lindsay Davis (3/1)
2. Unseen Academicals - Terry Pratchett (4/1)
3. The Commodore - C.S Forester (Jan-Oct)
4. See how they run - Phillip King (1/2)
5. Cold Fusion - (Feb)
6. Face to Face - David Williamson (26/3)
7. A Conversation - David Williamson (5/4)
8. Charitable Intent - David Williamson (5/4)
9. The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The murder at Road Hill House - Kate Summerscale (May/June)
10. Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy (1/9)
11. Skulduggery Pleasant: Playing with fire - Derek Landy (6/9)
12. Islamic Patterns: An analytical & cosmological approach - Keith Critchlow (12-27/9)
    
13. In a unicorn's garden: Recreating the mystery and magic of medieval gardens - Judyth A. McLeod (Oct)
14. Skulduggery Pleasant: The Faceless Ones - Derek Landy (2/11)
15. Skulduggery Pleasant: Dark days - Derek Landy (3/11)
16. The Unexpected Guest - Agatha Christie (4/11)
17. Thief of time - Terry Pratchett (18-20/11) *
18. Throne of Jade - Naomi Novik (27-28/12)
    
19. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - C.S Lewis (31/12) *
    

Some thoughts on ancient gold hoards

This is an interesting point of view on Anglo-Saxon gold hoards:

http://600transformer.blogspot.com/2010/05/when-i-was-writing-this-paper-i-was.html

and this is what he's talking about:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/birminghammag/sets/72157622327837525/

The thought processes

This is quite fantastic - an art historian has made a huuge shawl from spider silk. Check it out:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1216433/British-art-historian-creates-worlds-largest-cloth-woven-entirely-spider-silk.html

Words from the Astronomer Royal

It is better to read first rate science fiction than second rate science
- Lord Martin Rees

And the honours go to...

I'm awarding honourary Mad Scientist status to Adrian Reeman from Southhampton in the UK, who has spent the last twenty years decorating his 1960's council flat in the style of the Palace of Versailles. He's never been there, but has done it all from bits he's picked up here and there.

Here's the BBC news story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/hampshire/8313921.stm

Congratulations Adrian, that's a brilliant piece of work, even if it is a monster that you wish you had never started - that's what Maaaaad Science is all about.

It looks the same the world over

Apparently the reason why there is so much misunderstanding between people of different races/cultures is that the facial expressions are different (along the lines of don't smile at monkeys because to them the baring of teeth is an agressive signal). But you know, there are some expressions that look the same no matter where you come from and what you look like.

Whilst I was sitting in an asian restaurant last night waiting for my take away order, I was watching an asian family - a bowl of pho (Vietnamese noodle & stuff soup) was put in front of the young girl (about 16 or so) and she was telling her how to eat it, and then another bowl of pho was put down behind the first one, and they looked at it in puzzlement, and called the restaurant people and the first bowl was taken away. The looks that were on the woman and girl's faces were priceless (having been in a similar situation myself at times) and I realised that there are some expressions that look the same the world over.
WTF is definitely one of them.

Some more belated greetings

This time to HG Wells - most famous for his story the War of the Worlds about invading Martians, which when first broadcast on American radio, actually had people believing that what they were hearing was really happening.

Happy Birthday HG wherever you are.

Hubble Rides again

I'm in love!! With the new images to have come from the Hubble Telescope after its repairs and additions in May. Here are a few images:

The Orion Nebula

The Crab Nebula

Nebula NGC 604

Ride 'em Cowboy!!!!

Books Aliiiive!!!!!

Books Alive is a government initiative to get people reading. Every year a list of 50 contemporary Australian and international
books is compiled, apparently hand-picked by booklovers across Australia, (though I don't know how you can recommend a book for the list) with many different tastes and preferences.

The Book of Rapture
The Slap
The Lieutenant
The Rip
Dead Man Running
The Scarecrow
Shantaram
Too Close to Home
206 Bones
Shatter
How to Break Your Own Heart
Dear Fatty
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Parky: My Autobiography
The Greatest Show on Earth
The Road
Through a Glass Darkly
Heart and Soul
The Young Widow’s Book of Home Improvement
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
The Night My Bum Dropped
To Love, Honour and Betray
The True Story of Butterfish
Occy
True Colours
A Most Wanted Man
A Fraction of the Whole
Australian Tragic
Pacific Fury
1788
My God! It’s a Woman
The People’s Train
The 19th Wife
Dog Boy
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
Wanting
Dark Country
A Beautiful Place to Die
It’s All Too Much
The Host
Brisingr
Finnikin of the Rock
Eagle Day
Robot Riot!
Somebody’s Crying
Pearlie in the Park
The Graveyard Book
The Nixie’s Song
From Little Things Big Things Grow
Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes

So pick a book (it doesn't even have to be one of these) and get reading

Vale

Vale John McDonald - a sweet, loving man, who was happy to take his chances and withstand the consequences.

You will be missed.

The value of a life

There have been a couple of murder cases brought to judgement here recently where a man has killed an adult (in both cases his wife) and a child/ren. In both cases for the murder of the child the sentence was "life" and for the adult "at least 15yrs" for the first case and "thirty years" for the second.
And here's my question - what makes the murder of a child so much worse than the murder of your equal? Both love you and are no more or less valuable in their intrinsic worth. Theoretically however, your spouse should be loved more by you than any offspring, as it's your spouse that you've promised to spend the entire rest of your life with, so isn't that betrayal worthy of more reparation? You could argue that a child is more helpless than an adult and therefore that is the worse crime and deserving of the harsher punishment, but then how many people has the adult touched in their life, making more people bereft through their loss - isn't that a more far reaching crime?

Who knows? Justice is a difficult thing after all.

Birthday Greetings

Happy birthday to Mendelssohn who was born 200 years ago.

Eeehee

eeeee.
I saw fairy wrens at work a few days ago, again. I'm going to have to bring my camera to work and try to get a piccy or two before summer ends.

Gee the males are gorgeous birds.

Reproductions

I've been meaning to write this post for a while now - ever since I saw an episode of the American version of Kath and Kim.

Why is it that something that is a flop for one person can be a massive hit for another (and vice versa)? Just look at the song My Island home - it was recorded by three other people (including the writer) with limited success, before Christine Anu recorded it and had a massive hit.
As for Kath and Kim, the script seemed to be as word for word as i could tell, and yet it didn't quite have the same je ne sais quais as the home grown original. When I was talking about it to my workmates, they asked was it because it was Americanised? I don't think that was it per se, though there are a few minor differences: the accents for starters, though I wasn't sure if they were trying to do Australianesque accents or that was their base accents; Kel isn't a butcher, he owns a sandwich store and is called Phil; Kim and Brett (called Craig in the US version) are much younger and Sharon has been replaced entirely. But there is one major difference - and that's in the appearance of the actresses and I think that's were the big difference is. Both actresses are the typical American actress - skinny and relatively good looking. But most of the humour I think, comes from the fact that Kim thinks herself exceedingly attractive and fashionable, but isn't. And Kath worries about her age and how her body is changing with it, but Molly Shannon has a figure any 20 year old would be jealous of. Not to mention the disappearance of Sharon - Kim's overweight sport obsessed second best friend. She's been replaced with yet another good looking (though more voluptuous) woman. Whereas the men are more "normal" looking. And in the episode where Kel/Phil is getting secret dance lessons, the reacher isn't a little old lady, but a rather attractive woman that works in the same mall as him. They were just ordinary people, and we could laugh at them because they reminded us of ourselves in someways. But I think they've lost out on that in their casting choices of the women.

Time to step up

Forget honorary mad scientistship, here's the opportunity (for those in Australia at any rate) to be a real mad scientist.
Catalyst is currently (and until April 2009) running a ladybird survey - and they want your help. Take a photo of any ladybirds in your garden, or local park etc etc =, identify them using the helpful gallery of common ladybirds on the Catalyst website, or using the CSIRO ladybird site, upload them, and you might win a copy of the lady bird book that the CSIRO site is based on.

Of the over 500 species of ladybird in Australia, only 268 of these have been identified. So go to my pretties, take photos and take part in science.

Honorarium

I was thinking last night, that the boys of the Top Gear program - Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, really deserve honorary Maaaad Scientist status - they do some really wacko and way out things - which are incredibly amusing for those watching.
Last night in particular they painted up a small 4WD to look like a fox, towed a rag soaked in fox pee behind it and then set the hunt onto it. And who was driving the small 4WD? Why the rather tall Jeremy of course, who (at least twice that they showed) smashed his head into the ceiling of said 4WD when it went over some rather bumpy ground, and then getting himself stuck in a ditch, was caught by the hunt, losing the challenge.

Life Imitates Art

This aphorism comes to us from Wilde courtesy of Ovid and I think never more aptly demonstrated in the TV advertising for X-Men 2 this past week. Forget the fact that a lot of us have mobile phones which look like nothing so much as the original communicators from Star Trek, that we have machines taking the place of people - this beats it all.

To what am I referring? Well a couple of weeks ago Ginger Meggs and Benny went to the movies to see Australia and who should be there to ask them what they thought than Hugh Jackman, but of course, what should the boys exclaim but "Wolverine!". Well, I reckon someone in channel 7's advertising department must be a fan of Ginge, for the ads declared that X-Men 2 "starring Halle Berry, Ian McKellen and Wolverine". Boy did it make me laugh (though by the end of the week it was getting quite annoying).

Great but boring?

Hmmmm. I wonder whether there might be a correlation between the greatness of a book and its inherent boringness. Just spotted on another blog a list of the Top 100 books according to the Sydney Morning Herald, and couldn't help but notice that several of the books were also on the list of 106 most unread books (see earlier post). So I ran a correlation and 16.5% of the most unread books are considered to be good and vice versa - here are the results:

1984*
A Tale of Two Cities*#
American Gods
Emma*#
Jane Eyre#
Life of Pi: a novel
Love In The Time Of Cholera
Memoirs Of A Geisha
Middlesex
Persuasion*
Pride and Prejudice*#
The Catcher in the Rye*
The Kite Runner
The Mists of Avalon
The Time Traveller's Wife*
Wicked
Wuthering Heights#

I also just ran a brief addition to the correlation: *=made into a movie/s #=made into a TV series.

Does it have anything to do with the differing country of origin of the lists? Is it a coincidence? Or is every TV copper right and there are no coincidences? Only the Shadow knows (Mwahhahaha!!!!!!!)