Strangely Perfect

Introduction Two items on today’s news demonstrated the vast contrasts in our humanity. Stardust probe finds ‘subdued’ comet crater & Japan halts whale hunt after chase by protesters. Our Absolute Ingenuity and Progress The absolute ingenuity of us humans and how far we have come since our cave-dwelling days is supremely demonstrated by the return [...]

Metropolitan Police Wear Examined The appearance of “our” police is becoming more and more like some hellish dystopian vision of oppression from all the best science fiction of the last century. Compare and contrast the two shots below; one from the finale of the BBC series Blakes Seven, the other from the Whitehall kettle during [...]

How Summer Camps Could Change Britain by Christopher M. Green (Convenor of the Summer Camps Forum and Founding Director of The ATE Trust) Download Links to Original Chris Green Articles: Letter to MPs February 2010 Suggested letter format to lobby your local MP on behalf of Chris Green’s summer camps’ initiative. How Summer Camps …inline [...]

It’s Just Like Bladerunner, And Not Just the Weather! Tears in Rain Bladerunner, the movie, based on an old Philip K Dick science-fiction story, was made by Ridley Scott from North-East England, someone I’m distantly related to.  Made in 1982, it presents a very grey, wet, bleak future, heavily referencing Scott’s (and my own!) upbringing [...]

Meteor Last night, a washing-machine-sized  lump of rock plummeted from the depths of space right across the face of Utah, USA, and right across the news screens.  there are now quite a few videos on-line because the people of Utah are so paranoid (it appears), that the whole place, offices and homes alike, seems to [...]

Actor Edward Woodward Dies I’m quite sad about today’s news, because the show Callan formed a key part of my life, in a way, when I was growing up. The dystopian genre owes a lot to the show.  Right from it’s haunting opening title sequence that had instant echoes of Orson Welles’ Third Man, to [...]

Is Nuclear power Safe? Watch how the politicians duck and dive. Watch how they pick and choose which bits of ‘science’ to believe! Last week, smiley Alan Johnson fell out with serious Professor Nutt because the professor said some factual scientific things, things proven by statistics and analysis to have an overwhelming degree of proof.  [...]

This week, I’ve become aware of three excellent initiatives that are focussing people’s energies, creativity, and cash(!) into positive solutions to the global energy crisis.  It just shows what can be done – and these projects are not difficult or hard to creative creatures like ourselves. Big Mirrors in the Desert This is a $400billion [...]

Each one of the fuzzy white bits in the photo above is a galaxy containing billions of stars and thus many, many life-forms, all at various stages of evolution.  This statement is derived from the work of thousands of intellectuals using the powers of observation and deduction available to us all. Tonight there was a [...]

Continuing on From…  What Killed Flight AF 447 Since the search for the ‘black boxes’ of Flight 447 was abandoned a few days ago (20th Aug 2009 – see news item),  only 3 days later, Nature’s On-line version has published reports of the jet things I was going on about in my first article about [...]

Is This the Worst Science Project Ever? The Daily Telegraph, short of stories this summer now that the expenses scandal is dead, has published a picture of Angelina Jolie under the heading: Women getting more beautiful, say scientists: (see link) According to some work done by  Finnish Philosopher/Psychologist Markus Jokela, …attractive women have more children [...]

Sore Testicles “Oh dear!”, I thought, when I read this article on the BBC news today…. Elite cyclists ‘risk infertility’ Read the article.  Apparently… “The Spanish study of top triathletes found those who cover more than 186 miles (300km) a week on their bikes have less than 4% normal looking sperm.” Well I do a [...]

I saw some news today that apparently gives some creedence to the idea that music is what makes us human.  It’s here: ‘Oldest musical instrument’ found The academic in charge, Nicholas Conard, said that the development of music probably helped social cohesion in our ancestors, making their survival and our own existence, possible!  This is [...]

Via TheP5 I spotted this amazing graphs site http://graphjam.com which is right up my street of pseudo-graphology!  Try it out, it’s infectious – or make your own! Try this one, for instance. or this one: Which neatly ties in with a Rocket Mole discovered graphic from a while back: Oh the huge manatee.  Funny as [...]