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Kyoto, day 1
Today, the Kyoto protocol on Climate Change comes into effect. It’s a start, albeit a meager one. As George Monbiot points out in the Guardian No one believes that this treaty alone – which commits 30 developed nations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 4.8% – will solve the problem. It expires in 2012…
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Landscope
Jem Finer, aforementioned ringer, former Pogue, and artist-in-residence at the Oxford Astrophysics group, has created Landscope on the shores of Lough Neagh, near Belfast. Landscope is a radio telescope, a camera obscura, (neither of these are metaphors), and it is also the story of the residents of Lough Neagh: science, history, a work of art.…
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New name
I’ve decide to change the name of this blog — look up! Also, for those of you who subscribe to my RSS feed, I’m now using Feedburner to publish them (see the little “XML” icon at right, and note that the name of the feed carries a remnant of this blog’s old name…). For what…
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Art, Science and Poetry
The inscription on this beautiful thousand-year old plate in the Louvre reads, “The taste of science is bitter at first, but in the end sweeter than honey.” My apologies for the bad translation — I don’t read Arabic so I had to translate from the French: “La science, son goût est amer au début, mais…
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Music of the day: Galaxie 500, On Fire
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Galaxie 500 (named after a car, I think) were a product of the hothouse late-80s US “College Rock” culture (they hailed from Harvard, I think); after On Fire and This is Our Music (title lifted from Ornette), they morphed into Damon and Naomi (occasional musicians and would-be publishing moguls, recently heard doing “While My Guitar…
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Geek dinner
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Just back from a slightly sadly but aptly named “Geek Dinner” in London. Thanks to Scoble for inspiring us, to all the attendees like Rachel, Keni, Barry and Theresa, special guest Frank, and most especially Lee for organizing the dinner despite all the uphevals in his life nowadays. Aside from the minor hiccup that the…
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Hubble redux (not)
Following up on my a previous posts about the future of the Hubble Space Telescope and on manned and unmanned space exploration: By now the web has discovered that the Bush administration has decided to remove funding for Hubble Space Telescope servicing (robotic and human) from the next budget. Of course, the purity of the…
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Discrimination or difference? Harvard Chief’s foot remains in mouth
From The New York Times: The president of Harvard University, Lawrence H. Summers, who offended some women… [and men!] …at an academic conference last week by suggesting that innate differences in sex may explain why fewer women succeed in science and math careers, stood by his comments yesterday but said he regretted if they were…
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Green Oxford turning sludgy grey?
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According to the BBC, Oxford University (where I’ve heretofore been proud to be a long-term part-time visitor in Astrophysics), presently the fourth largest consumer of green electricity in the UK is considering moving back to fossil fuels. More specifically, it’s hired `”energy-purchasing consultants” Epal’ (whom I can’t find anywhere on the web, strangely) to investigate…
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Evolution: still fact
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional: “An anonymous reader writes ‘MSNBC reports that a judge in Atlanta, GA has ruled that a sticker placed on all textbooks in Cobb County stating that ‘Evolution is a theory, not a fact,’ is unconstitutional, and ordered that all stickers be removed.’” (Via Slashdot.) Meanwhile, here in the UK, not…
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