Nearly a year ago to the day, I posted about how Egypt's blockade of Gaza attracts almost no attention from media critics of Israel. I see from this article that the blockade continues, and Egypt is working on ways to make the border even more secure.
Meanwhile, what happened to the Christmas hope that Shalit was about to be released? Oh. Still under consideration.
Friday, January 08, 2010
The magic plastic e readers
BBC News - Plastic Logic e-reader aims to challenge Kindle
The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is apparently packed full of new e-readers this year, and the flexible plastic screen one shown in the video at the above link does look very cool, except that its odd squarish dimensions (while great for a genuine newspaper reading experience) looks a tad too large to safely carry in your briefcase.
The Skiff reader looks like the nearest rival to Plastic Logic, but no one knows how much it will cost.
And cost is a pretty significant issue.
The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is apparently packed full of new e-readers this year, and the flexible plastic screen one shown in the video at the above link does look very cool, except that its odd squarish dimensions (while great for a genuine newspaper reading experience) looks a tad too large to safely carry in your briefcase.
The Skiff reader looks like the nearest rival to Plastic Logic, but no one knows how much it will cost.
And cost is a pretty significant issue.
Thursday, January 07, 2010
Very, very nerd news
Japanese Live Action Star Blazers (Space Battleship Yamato) Trailer
I didn't know they were making a live action version of Space Battleship Yamato in Japan. They've released a teaser trailer for it that you can see at the above link.
I wasn't a huge fan of the cartoon, but it was of interest.
I didn't know they were making a live action version of Space Battleship Yamato in Japan. They've released a teaser trailer for it that you can see at the above link.
I wasn't a huge fan of the cartoon, but it was of interest.
In even worse Muslim/Christian news:
Egyptians riot after 7 killed in church attack
Three gunmen in a car sprayed automatic gunfire into a crowd leaving a church in the town of Naga Hamadi. The lead attacker is identified as a Muslim...
Police suspect that the Wednesday night attack was in retaliation to a rape of a Muslim girl by a Christian man in the same town two months ago. Muslim inhabitants of the town had rioted for days last November and attacked Christian properties there after the rape, according to local reports.
Fighting over the name of God
Malaysia Says It will Appeal 'Allah' Ruling - WSJ.com
A fight is going on in Malaysia over a Catholic Malay language newspaper's court win against a government ban on its use of the word "Allah" for God. According to the above article:
UPDATE: a bit of church burning in KL overnight.
And a bit more on the background of the use of the word "Allah" by Christianity appeared in the Jakarta Post article on the arson attack:
A fight is going on in Malaysia over a Catholic Malay language newspaper's court win against a government ban on its use of the word "Allah" for God. According to the above article:
The Arab word Allah has been used by Malay-speaking Christians for centuries, much as it is used by Christians in Arabic-speaking countries or in Indonesia, where, like Malaysia, the concept of a single deity was introduced by Arabic-speaking traders. Rev. Lawrence Andrew, editor of the Herald, says there's no other appropriate term for God in Malay.The paper had a pretty good case:
The church's Herald newspaper filed a lawsuit in 2007 challenging a government ban on it using the word Allah as a translation for God, complaining that the prohibition discriminated against Malay-speaking indigenous tribes who converted to Christianity decades ago.Some Muslim groups are planning protests for tomorrow. All pretty amazing, really.
The newspaper has a circulation of about 14,000 and is available only in Catholic churches, although some Muslims have complained that it is possible to look up Malay-language material using the term Allah on the Herald's Web site.
Muslim activists mobilized almost as soon as the High Court's verdict was delivered. The National Union of Malaysian Muslim Students contended that Christian missionaries using the word Allah could trick Muslims into leaving their faith, and the influential Malaysian Islamic Youth Movement said it plans a demonstration against the verdict in Kuala Lumpur on Jan. 8.
The Malay-language Utusan Malaysia newspaper reported that the influential mufti of northern Perak state, Harussani Zakaria, called the verdict "an insult to Muslims in this country."
UPDATE: a bit of church burning in KL overnight.
And a bit more on the background of the use of the word "Allah" by Christianity appeared in the Jakarta Post article on the arson attack:
Many Muslims in Malysia have refused to accept the argument that "Allah" is an Arabic word that predates Islam, and that it is used by Christians in countries such as Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Indonesia regularly in their worship.Can't they parachute in Karen Armstrong to sort this all out?
Very odd
Cellphone radiation is good for Alzheimer's mice
Regular exposure to an electromagnetic field identical to the ones produced by mobile phones seems to improve memory in mice with symptoms of Alzheimer's disease...That's a very surprising finding, and as the article says, it would have to be replicated to be sure the effect is real.To the researchers' surprise, the memory of both normal and transgenic mice exposed to the electromagnetic field (EMF) seemed better by the end of the experiment than that of a control group of mice that were not irradiated.
Arendash speculates that radiation might increase the electrical activity of neurons, which could in turn improve the brain's ability to form memories. An experiment in 2000 found that if people were exposed to an EMF equivalent to mobile-phone radiation before they went to bed, their brain activity during sleep increased....
They found that the brains of transgenic mice that had been exposed to the EMF from two months old did not contain as many plaques as transgenic control mice of the same age that had not been exposed to the EMF.
What's more, in the older transgenic mice, which had already developed brain plaques before the experiment began, the EMF exposure seemed to have broken up and shrunken the plaques. Arendash say he doesn't know how the EMF could do this.
Never liked Wimps
BBC News - Dark matter 'beach ball' unveiled
This article talks about the inferred shape of the presumed dark matter around the Milky Way. It seems it's not like a round ball, but a squashed one.
This is why I've never felt that WIMPS (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) seemed like a good explanation. I mean, if they exist, why do they form squashed ball halos around galaxies in the first place? If they are weakly interacting with normal matter, why don't they exist in just a more or less random clumpiness right through the universe? I don't know that I have ever read much that addresses that issue.
As for large clumps of normal matter forming dark matter, that's always seemed kind of unlikely too, according to my gut reaction.
That's why the idea that there is something wrong with our understanding of gravity has always seemed to me to be just as likely, but MOND theories don't seem to be advancing much.
This article talks about the inferred shape of the presumed dark matter around the Milky Way. It seems it's not like a round ball, but a squashed one.
This is why I've never felt that WIMPS (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) seemed like a good explanation. I mean, if they exist, why do they form squashed ball halos around galaxies in the first place? If they are weakly interacting with normal matter, why don't they exist in just a more or less random clumpiness right through the universe? I don't know that I have ever read much that addresses that issue.
As for large clumps of normal matter forming dark matter, that's always seemed kind of unlikely too, according to my gut reaction.
That's why the idea that there is something wrong with our understanding of gravity has always seemed to me to be just as likely, but MOND theories don't seem to be advancing much.
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
Not cold everywhere
BBC - Richard Black's Earth Watch: Arctic roots of 'upside-down' weather
That's interesting. According to Richard Black, while much of the Northern Hemisphere is having an unusually cold winter, some parts that are normally very cold aren't.
That's interesting. According to Richard Black, while much of the Northern Hemisphere is having an unusually cold winter, some parts that are normally very cold aren't.
A very unusual talent
Frogs' secret disposal system revealed : Nature News
Plant thorns, spiny insects and even radio transmitters don't stick around for long inside tree frogs. Researchers have discovered that these amphibians can absorb foreign objects from their body cavities into their bladders and excrete them through urination.Would be a good party trick if a human could do it.
Law, science and black holes
There's a very detailed and carefully argued article by a US Assistant Professor of Law about the LHC and safety concerns available at arXiv. (It would seem the article is to appear in the Tennessee Law Review, but I can't see if Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit fame, who is a Tennessee Law Professor, has noted it yet.)
It's very long, and I have only looked through the first half, but it seems very careful and accurate in its summary of the history of the scientific debate over its safety.
It even covers the concerns of Rainer Plaga, and agrees with my view that they never seem to have been adequately addressed.
The arXiv blog summary of the article is here. Both it and the original article are well worth a read.
UPDATE: hey, I've been Instapundit-ed! Thanks, and welcome all. There's a lot of old posts here about the LHC and black holes, but sadly you have to use the somewhat erratic search function to find them. (Why can't Google perfect search within the very blogs it owns?)
It's very long, and I have only looked through the first half, but it seems very careful and accurate in its summary of the history of the scientific debate over its safety.
It even covers the concerns of Rainer Plaga, and agrees with my view that they never seem to have been adequately addressed.
The arXiv blog summary of the article is here. Both it and the original article are well worth a read.
UPDATE: hey, I've been Instapundit-ed! Thanks, and welcome all. There's a lot of old posts here about the LHC and black holes, but sadly you have to use the somewhat erratic search function to find them. (Why can't Google perfect search within the very blogs it owns?)
Sex in Malaysia, Part 2
Malaysian Polygamy Club Draws Criticism - NYTimes.com
Yesterday I posted about unfortunate young Malaysian couples getting a knock on their hotel room door from the Islamic "morality police" and facing charges.
Proving it's a land of contrasts, I suppose, is the above article about the increase in Islamic polygamy in the same country. One of the wives interviewed says:
However, it is interesting to note that further down in the article, one critic of the system points out that:
And if polygamy were allowed here, but only by men taking on wives richer than themselves, maybe even I could be persuaded of its benefits. :)
Yesterday I posted about unfortunate young Malaysian couples getting a knock on their hotel room door from the Islamic "morality police" and facing charges.
Proving it's a land of contrasts, I suppose, is the above article about the increase in Islamic polygamy in the same country. One of the wives interviewed says:
“Men are by nature polygamous,” said Dr. Rohaya, Mr. Ikram’s third wife, flanked by the other three women and Mr. Ikram for an interview on a recent morning. The women were dressed in ankle-length skirts, their hair covered by tudungs, the Malaysian term for headscarf. “We hear of many men having the ‘other woman,’ affairs and prostitution because for men, one woman is not enough. Polygamy is a way to overcome social ills such as this.”Well, only for those rich enough to provide support for the additional wives, one suspects.
However, it is interesting to note that further down in the article, one critic of the system points out that:
...she knew some well-educated, financially independent women in Kuala Lumpur, including business executives and lawyers, who had chosen to become second or third wives.The women of Sydney who have the same complaint could have their predicament cured by some radical changes in the Marriage Act, then.“Usually they marry late, they do a second or third degree, they put off marriage until later and they find it difficult to find an unmarried man,” she said. “One of them said ‘all the good men are either married or gay.”’
And if polygamy were allowed here, but only by men taking on wives richer than themselves, maybe even I could be persuaded of its benefits. :)
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
Nerd grief
The fall-out from Doctor Who
Caitlin Moran's description of her and her daughter's shared devastation at David Tennant's departure from Dr Who is pretty funny:
Caitlin Moran's description of her and her daughter's shared devastation at David Tennant's departure from Dr Who is pretty funny:
Dora and I did a good fifteen minutes of mother/daughter nerd-mourning together - crying whilst flicking through Doctor Who Magazine and saying "Oh that's a good Ood still". Then Dora progressed into the "anger" stage of bereavement: at one point shouting, "Tom Baker managed seven years - WHY COULDN'T DAVID?"
I didn't know she even knew who Tom Baker was. At that point I realised that whilst I was walking wounded, she was metaphorically doing a geek haemmorhage. As Dora lay on the floor, moaning, "WHY did he have to GO?", Pete had a moment of genius, and downloaded a Doctor Who audiobook, read out by Tennant. Comforted by the prospect of there being at least one more David Tennant adventure to be had, Dora finally fell asleep listening to it - AT SODDING 11.30PM
Big explosion noted
Runaway anti-matter production makes for a spectacular stellar explosion
University of Notre Dame astronomer Peter Garnavich and a team of collaborators have discovered a distant star that exploded when its center became so hot that matter and anti-matter particle pairs were created. The star, dubbed Y-155, began its life around 200 times the mass of our Sun but probably became "pair-unstable" and triggered a runaway thermonuclear reaction that made it visible nearly halfway across the universe....Maybe we just live in a lucky corner of the universe.
Garnavich and his collaborators calculated that, at its peak, Y-155 was generating energy at a rate 100 billion times greater than the sun's output. To do this, Y-155 must have synthesized between 6 and 8 solar masses of radioactive nickel. It is the decay of radioactive elements that drives the light curves of supernovae. A normal "Type Ia" thermonuclear supernova makes about one tenth as much radioactive nickel.
"In our images, Y-155 appeared a million times fainter than the unaided human eye can detect, but that is because of its enormous distance," Garnavich said. "If Y-155 had exploded in the Milky Way it would have knocked our socks off."
Over 40 years ago scientists proposed that massive stars could become unstable through the production of matter/anti-matter particle pairs, but only recently have large-scale searches of the sky, like the ESSENCE project, permitted the discovery of these bright, but rare, events.
Playtime for lawyers
BBC News - France mulls 'psychological violence' ban
I didn't realise the French could be quite so silly.
I didn't realise the French could be quite so silly.
Cool photo
The_view_from_Burj_Dubai_by_shebanx.jpg
Found this via comments to a Guardian piece on the new skyscraper in Dubai.
Found this via comments to a Guardian piece on the new skyscraper in Dubai.
New Year in Malaysia
52 unmarried Malaysian Muslim couples face jail for hotel liaisons
Scores of officers fanned out across budget hotels in central Selangor state before dawn on Jan 1, knocking on doors and detaining unmarried Muslim couples who were sharing rooms, said Hidayat Abdul Rani, a spokesman for the Selangor Islamic Department.
The detained, mostly students and young factory workers, are expected to be charged with “khalwat,” or “close proximity,” which under Malaysia’s Islamic Shariah law is described as couples not married to each other being alone together in a private place.
“We chose to have this large-scale operation on New Year’s Day because many people are known to commit this offense while celebrating such a major holiday,” Hidayat said.
In Selangor, “khalwat” carries a maximum penalty of two years in prison and a fine.
Movies and kids
Sci-fi epic doesn't kid around: critics - Film - Entertainment - smh.com.au
My 9 year old son is very keen to see Avatar, but I finally checked the rating and found it was M. After speaking to a person who has seen it, I've decided not to take him.
This article quotes someone who believes that:
Basically, most parents seem to pay no attention to the classification a film receives.
My 9 year old son is very keen to see Avatar, but I finally checked the rating and found it was M. After speaking to a person who has seen it, I've decided not to take him.
This article quotes someone who believes that:
"...Avatar was not suitable for children under eight ''due to scary and disturbing scenes and violence'', and was ''not recommended'' for children eight to 12.It certainly seems to me that some parents are ridiculously careless about what movies they take their kids to, and I particularly recall my surprise at the number of young boys that were in the cinema when I saw Terminator 2 back in the 1990's. I quite disliked the film anyway, and I suppose you could argue that most of the violence is robot on robot. But killing a guy with a metal spike through the eye, various other breakings of human bones, the general bleak, dark tone of the whole film, and a real lack of any particularly sympathetic characters to my mind made it one of the most obviously unsuitable films for under 10 year olds that I could imagine.''Some of the research indicates that parents don't always know when their kids are handling a movie well,'' said Ms Biggins yesterday. ''There are longer-term impacts on kids that don't always show up at the time.
Basically, most parents seem to pay no attention to the classification a film receives.
Monday, January 04, 2010
Yurt on ice
Broadband, Yes. Toilet, No. - NYTimes.com
I haven't mentioned yurts for a while, but I see that the NY Times has an article with a good slideshow about a young family in Alaska who chose to live in one.
It apparently cost about $14,000, looks pretty nice to me, but does have the disadvantage of having an outside toilet and no running water for a shower or the dishes. (They walk to town to do the laundry and wash themselves.) Given that they live in a place that can get 17 feet of snow in a season, even I would draw the line at living with an outside loo in a place like that.
I haven't mentioned yurts for a while, but I see that the NY Times has an article with a good slideshow about a young family in Alaska who chose to live in one.
It apparently cost about $14,000, looks pretty nice to me, but does have the disadvantage of having an outside toilet and no running water for a shower or the dishes. (They walk to town to do the laundry and wash themselves.) Given that they live in a place that can get 17 feet of snow in a season, even I would draw the line at living with an outside loo in a place like that.
Decline of Great Britain, cont.
Forget Shameless: X-Factor holds up a truer mirror to the working class | Television & radio | The Observer
This article is mainly about the (to me) surprisingly successful British drama/comedy Shameless. I simply don't "get" the show, yet apparently semi-tragic "comedic" stories of the hopeless unemployed/working class characters of modern day Britain are appreciated by many people. To criticise such a show as being largely amoral and/or condescending is to invite the response that you are merely middle class twit, apparently:
This article is mainly about the (to me) surprisingly successful British drama/comedy Shameless. I simply don't "get" the show, yet apparently semi-tragic "comedic" stories of the hopeless unemployed/working class characters of modern day Britain are appreciated by many people. To criticise such a show as being largely amoral and/or condescending is to invite the response that you are merely middle class twit, apparently:
The actor has pointed out that Shameless appeals to all sectors of the audience. "I've had people from right across the social spectrum tell me they get it," he said. "Sometimes reporters ask, 'Don't you think you're being a bit patronising about working- class people?' To which I say, 'Bollocks, you middle-class journalist!' If it was condescending, I'd know, because the people on the estates where we film would come and tell me."But apparently some in Manchester have (finally) started to turn against it:
Bloggers on the Manchester Evening News website are not impressed. "In the beginning, it was edgy and fun. Now it is just tripe, it makes the people of Manchester and Salford look like low-life idiots," complains one..Only now they are starting to realise that?
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