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Sublime to ridiculous
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Even the NY Times has picked up on George Galloway’s antics in the Celebrity Big Brother house (ironically presented on the same TV Channel as such highbrow fare as Richard Dawkins’ panegyric to atheism). Galloway, formerly Labour’s Glaswegian MP, now a London MP for (his own party) Respect, has always been one for extremes: lauding…
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“Freak chances of evolution in an indifferent cosmos”
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In a criticism of Richard Dawkins’ upcoming series, The Root of All Evil, attacking religion, Guardian columnist Madeleine Bunting tries to find space leftover for, well, god: “It’s also right for religion to concede ground to science to explain natural processes; but at the same time, science has to concede that despite its huge advances…
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23 Short Films About the Leap Second
Today I was interviewed by Felicity Hickson, a student at London’s Royal College of Art, who is making a film about the leap-second that gave us all an extra second on New Year’s Eve. There have been 23 leap-seconds since 1972, and she’s searching for 23 scientists who will each use their own extra 23…
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“What Really Exists”
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For some light holiday reading, check out this slightly mistitled article from the NY Times on the still-unsolved mysteries of Quantum Mechanics. It’s always good PR to have Einstein’s name in the title, but really it’s about a theory — Quantum Mechanics — that Einstein didn’t like much. That article spawned an excellent post from…
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New Header Graphic
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…from a photo of a park in Tokyo, a bit more in keeping with the name of this blog.
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Holiday Spirit
I was going to present a long disquisition on secularism, religion and society at large, but this is better: “Whether you believe with an absolute literalism or with a more analogic faith, whether you believe at all, whether you are Christian or Jewish or Muslim or merely human, the word we would like to feel…
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London Pleasures
Sitting at the front of the top of a double-decker bus; Borough Market: chorizo & rocket sandwiches from Brindisa Not so pleasurable: no public transport on Christmas Day (even without a strike!). How am I supposed to keep my busy social schedule??
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More light, more science, no subways
Yesterday was the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. So it all gets better from now on (Seasonal Affective Disorder seems to me a perfectly reasonable response to the darkness). But what else? A Republican-appointed member of the federal judiciary has slammed the Intelligent Design crackpots, seeing them for the crypto-creationists they can…
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Quick lunch-hour dispatch, all to be clarified soon: Last week I participated in a collaboration between the Dana Centre (the adult wing of the Science Museum) and some artists, entitled “Big Ideas.” Imperial College is to be leaving the University of London. Fantastic late-night Dinner last weekend, with (among many others!) Kosso, Rachel, Imp, Deirdre,…
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Real Art, Fake Food and Incense in Tokyo
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An unexpected highlight was the fantastic exhibit of photographs from Hiroshi Sugimoto (at the Mori Gallery, on the 53rd story of the otherwise very shopping-mall-like Roppongi Hills “city-within-a-city”. I’ve seen smaller exhibitions of his work at the Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea, New York City (where he lives and works), but this retrospective proves him to…