thetraverse

Scientists with Luxuriously Flowing Locks

2007-02-07T03:22:00.000-08:00

Even yonks back in secondary school, my teachers referred to scientists informally as "the long hairs". From Darwin to Freud to Einstein, your searcher after scientific discovery seems to have been resolutely shy of the scissors. Anyway, check out this gallery of long-haired boffins.

The site, Improbable Research, also hosts the results of the Ig Noble prizes - a spoof on the real deal.

Letter to the Times

2007-02-05T06:05:00.000-08:00

Track erosion is a serious issue in North Wicklow, and heavy traffic by walkers must be acknowledged as part of the problem. good work by Fas on wooden pathways has contain the problem of walker traffic in the worst affected areas. Tracks on the remoter peaks of South Wicklow have until now remained intact.

The South Wicklow peak of Croghanmoira is a shapely cone of quartzite offset from the main Wicklow massif. Its position and superb views made it the location of choice for the Grand Trignometrical Station when the Ordnance Survey mapped the South East. A well marked but intact track to the top made a fine summit access for even novice hill walkers.

It is with sorrow that I report that the lower half of this track has been irretrievably damaged by quad bikers. Damage of this scale permanently destroys surface vegetation, and rainfall completes the work of removing the layer of blanket bog. Before the quads: a springy trail through the heather; after them, a gully of mud and rock.

It is bad enough that the peace and tranquillity of hill walking is savaged by the noise and racket of quad bikers and scramblers. Destruction of trails adds injury to this insult.

The cavalier attitude of the current government to hill walkers' rights seems to ignore the voting capability of an increasingly numerous contituency. Since legislation to curb the scourge of off-trail vehicles is too much to hope for before the next election, it is only justice that this attitude is roundly punished at the polls.
Sincerely
Tony Mulqueen
Aughrim
Co. Wicklow

The Voynich Manuscript

2007-02-01T08:12:00.000-08:00

Is profiled in this page by the ever interesting website, Interesting Thing of the Day. It's a cipher (or is it??) which no-one has managed to crack.

It's not easy being weird

2007-01-17T03:18:00.000-08:00

People can get all worked up about, say, mountain gorillas, but some of the world's least prepossessing creatures are also under threat. There's a good list here.

Procrastination

2007-01-15T09:00:00.000-08:00

I've been putting off blogging for ages. Procrastination has been the study of scientists, one of whom has worked out the formula:

Desire to Complete Task (U) = Expectation of Success (E) x Value of Completion (V) / Immediacy of Task (I) x Personal Sensitivity to Delay (D), or U=ExV/IxD

Given that both V, I, and D in the above are all close to zero for blog entries, it really is a wonder that I even blog at all. I've been noticing lately too that some of the people who started blogging around the same time as me have hung up their boots.

Frozen in time

2007-01-07T12:19:00.000-08:00

A frozen waterfall in China. I've never seen a completely frozen one like this, but visit Niagara in January or February and you'll see a pretty impressive half frozen waterfall.

Blue Origin

2007-01-04T05:15:00.000-08:00

That's the project name of Jess Bezos' attempt to create a small affordable vehicle for going into space. The site has a pretty cool vid of the first launch. The beastie at this stage only made it up (and down) 285 feet, but that's a start. It has a charmingly 50s SF retro look, and it'#s nice to know a couple of microcents of the bucks I spend on books et al at Amazon might be going to funding a little space travel.

Virgin lizard birth

2006-12-20T11:41:00.000-08:00

Combining as it does so many archetypes (Christianity's Virgin Birth, feminism's vision of a World Without Men, the Electra image of a lizard matriarch pro-creating with her parthenogenetic male off-spring, and let's face it, the general human fascination with all things slimy and scaly), this is a science story that has it all. Need we do no more than present the link.

Sister Rat

2006-12-11T03:04:00.000-08:00

Pretty much everyone hates rats. Maybe, it's visceral, something we can't quite shake from a folk memory of the Black Death. You're never more than ten yards from a rat in any city, and in the countryside, the wise householder keeps a foor-legged friend to make sure Rattus norvegicus doesn't get too close, let along (shudder) take up residence.

But still ... I can't help feeling a grudging respect. All my life, I've watched species depredation by humans, even sometimes while some of us were desperately trying to save the endangered ones. Trouble is, it's not just a matter of not killing the species. You need to maintain their environment too - and we're too greedy taming everything, sucking out all the biomass, and building houses on it to go the whole distance required. And the species keep on dying out.

But not the redoubtable rat. I was once stuck in a traffic jam in the semi-permanent building site that for a couple of years was Dublin's N11 highway under construction - stationary traffic, rain pouring down, the drivers all in zombie mode. Just ten yards to my left was a pile of rubble. And fossicking around on the mound was a very large, very senior and very pregnant rat. Old Sister Rat was oblivious to the hundreds of cars filing past, just getting some grub to keep the young 'uns inside her thriving. Just a rat in the rubble, but there was something else - something of the dignity of life, and its continuity.

Anyway, I still shudder when I meet a rat - and if Scooby my terrier is to hand, that is soon a very dead rat.

And here are some 20 things you (probably) didn't know about rats.

Writing about food

2006-12-07T11:25:00.000-08:00

Along with drink, our favourite topic.
Anyway, just for laffs, I wrote a short essay on my own experiences of growing up with food.

In our house in Limerick in the early Sixties, food was simple and good. Mam and Dad worked an extensive vegetable patch. When they grew too many veggies for our needs, the overflow went to the local grocery, and Mam returned with a fistful of cash.
We grew spuds, carrots and cabbage to go with dinner, and salads from the summer garden at tea-time: lettuce, spring onions, pickled beetroot, and tomatoes – with a hard-boiled egg, grated Galtee cheese, and a dollop of Heinz Salad Cream. Winter teas were based around a fry-up. All teas came reinforced with bread and butter, strong tea, and soda scones.

The main meal was our dinner, in the middle of the day. School was close enough to leg it home during lunch break for a proper dinner. Monday meant bubble-and-squeak. Tuesday was Limerick bacon, and spuds and cabbage from the garden. On Thursday we had a curry – just a tablespoon of Madras curry powder tipped into Irish stew.
Friday centred on fish: cod or haddock, with Mam’s incomparable white parsley sauce. Saturday was roast stuffed loin of pork – Dad took over the chopping board to deliver to Mam’s care a tastily stuffed and well-sewed joint.

There were diversions: tripe - in Limerick fashion, slow cooked in milk with onions and "packet" - the Limerick version of the more famous Cork drisheen or blood sausage. The folks used to like cooking the local soul food - i.e. food for poor people - occasionally, guess it was a nostalgia thing. Crubeens and sheep's head featured on these soirees from time to time, but even hungry growing boys drew the line at those .... Mam and Dad also liked a good Welsh rarebit, something we found stinky and vile. We did like a treat they did called "groody", which is a form of toast (you need a fire and a toasting fork to make it) where you butter the toast on both sides *before* toasting it. The result is a gooey butter-drenched faceful of starch, just the ticket for kids of the pre-fast food era.

The culmination of the week was the Sunday roast. Appetites sharpened by morning at church, we had the treat of watching daytime TV while dinner was cooking. Disneyland would have a Donald Duck special, or a wildlife documentary. The later afternoon promised comedy with Laurel and Hardy, action with John Wayne or Humphrey Bogart, or movies with tall ships, cannons and battles.

We were (well, almost) always happy to be called to the kitchen table – TV and dinner didn’t go in the same sentence then. I would try to steal one of the succulent slivers while the carver was busy. Then the glories of roast spud, carrots, cauliflower with cheese sauce, stuffing, apple sauce, and of course, “lots of gravy for me, please, Mam.”

Weekend dinners meant plenty time for dessert. The favourite was Mam’s apple pie with custard and whipped cream. During rhubarb season, we loved its teeth-awakening tangy sharpness. For summer’s lighter appetites, sponge trifle, with a tablespoon of double cream, was preferred.

Going to college at 18 meant a move to Dublin for me, to digs at Trinity Hall. There were hungry late-night expeditions to the Hall’s self-catering kitchen. For my first foray, I tackled curried beans on toast. I also took refuge in a childhood dish called “cuckoo’s nest”. You heat up a pan with oil, cut a doorstep of white bread, and carve out a square in the middle. Fry the bread, and into the middle you tip an egg. Flip over when the egg starts to set, and consume greedily with plenty of tomato ketchup.

Things could only get better. In second year, I shared a house with other students. Whole food, vegetable co-ops and macrobiotics were “in”. The food was shared by all, and it was a revelation: brown rice, adzuki beans, miso, soy sauce, tofu and all that. I developed a liking for it; still eat it today when I want to be good; and I learned how to cook from basics.

Around then, I bought my first cook book. I still have it: “Len Deighton’s Action Cookbook”. It was in what would today be called “graphical novel” format. The paperback cover showed Mr. Deighton doing something sophisticated (but manageable looking) with a pot load of pasta, and backed up by a glamorous blonde, plainly more interested in Mr. Deighton than in ruining her fingernails at the cooker.

There were strong and simple messages here. If a writer of tough spy novels thought so, it was OK for men to cook. The cartoon drawings and the comic-style text made it look simple. But most powerful was the subliminal message: you could attract beautiful women by learning to cook sophisticated food. To a hormone-driven 20 year old, this book was a wakeup call.

The recipes would hardly be rated today: the likes of beef bourguignon. But it was a start. Since then, I’ve lived in Canada, Australia, Asia, Europe, and learned recipes everywhere. Along the way, I met my beautiful wife-to-be – and promptly cooked for her (a simple but lovingly assembled Spanish tortilla).

Mr. Deighton is far from alone now: Delia for standards, Carrier for specials, Floyd for cooking with a glass of wine to hand, Jafree for the wonders of the East, Elisabeth David for the wisdom of la France profonde – and many more.

It’s soothing to cook, assembling ingredients and preparing them, bringing it all together. If I stay calm and focused, the results carry us into the same good place as the table I was raised at.

And are we intelligent?

2006-12-06T07:09:00.000-08:00

It's easy enough to write off humans as dumb when we think of, say, our toxic effect on the planet we live on or all the wars we turn our hands to. At the same time it's hard to get involved in any kind of science without admiring what human intelligence *has* achieved. I've recently returned to studying science formally (the medical sciences - anatomy, physiology, pathology, neurology etc), and my brain is creaking plenty taking it all in. Nonetheless, it took some level of intelligence to get us to the understanding we have today (admittedly, we're not omniscient - see under "common cold" - but it would be a cynic indeed who claimed that the science of medicine was an instance of unintelligence).

AI (artificial intelligence) is a good example of where humans do brilliantly and computers (so far) have been a bit lame. A good overview of where we stand is in this article from Wired.

Is there anybody out there??

2006-12-06T03:28:00.000-08:00

The search for extra-terrestrial intelligence has always fascinated me. I think it was Isaac Asimov who said: "The answer to the question 'Are we the only intelligent life in the Universe?' has just two answers: 'Yes' and 'No'. Either answer I find completely fascinating."

Well I guess we'll never find out if the answer is 'Yes'. But a good way to find out if the answer is 'No' is to look harder for earth-like planets, which is the goal of this project.

Quality complaining

2006-11-29T14:33:00.000-08:00

This is going the rounds, but if you haven't enjoyed it yet, please check in. In Ireland, we have Joe Duffy (a lunchbag-load of whingebags/fusspots/people-with-genuine-grievances mashup). Everywhere, you hava talk radio, or should that be shaddafuckupandlistentome radio??

In Finland ... they sing.

Ancient IT

2006-11-29T14:28:00.000-08:00

Very very ancient computing mon. The Antikythera Mechanism pops up to get attention from time to time. The latest data show it could have been used to predict solar and lunar eclipses.

Third World Doom

2006-11-29T06:41:00.000-08:00

No not another tale of woe! More like falling round the floor laughing, for a change. Some nerds are working on a project called One Laptop Per Child - as in impoverished children in Brazil etc. To do this they need to create a 100 dollar device that's a fully functional laptop.

Having done so, our friends relax from their labours by installing gorefest shoot-em-up Doom on the new machines.

Nerds doncha love em.
Thanks for the laffs, boing boing.
Pic links to the YouTube vid.

Not for vegetarians, then?

2006-11-20T02:51:00.000-08:00

British food regulators - plainly a po-face lot - have clamped down on some sausages called Welsh Dragon on the basis that they do not contain any dragon meat. The reference to the Welsh national emblem - and the spiciness of the sausages - didn't cut the mustard with the men from the Trading Standards authority, and the offending bangers are now renamed Welsh Dragon Pork Sausages.

And there was me thinking they were on special order for breakfasts at Hogwarts Castle.

Department of Signs

2006-11-18T15:02:00.000-08:00

For a quick blast of basic iconography.
I once gave this as a lecture theme during a course I was helping to make up as we went along (sorry but that's the reality) at UL (University of Limerick).

A project of assignment I gave to my students was: before you go designing icons for use in software programs, go thee first to the nearest airport, train station, canteen etc. and check and document the available signs.

How do they work?
How clear are they?
How could they be interpreted/misinterpreted?
Your alternative is?

Anyway, enjoy these signs. And ask those quessies. (Mark, your angry cyclops post reminded me of this theme ).

Hiatus, bigtime

2006-11-17T14:53:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted in a while now. Big time new stuff, like trying on being a full-time student on top of the normal working week; old school big stuff, like funerals and births in the extended family. To be honest, I'm only posting because Hasslebot mails me every couple of days to do so: excellent robot.

Anyway, le obligatory thought du jour.

Room with a View

2006-10-24T03:48:00.000-07:00

Oh lordy! One of those cases of a picture being worth a thousand words - check out this view of a shuttle launch from the International Space Station.

Not mad, just Bluetoothed

2006-10-20T06:37:00.000-07:00

In a creative move, mentally ill patients who have been returned to community care are being helped to integrate by the wearing of fake Bluetooth headsets - which make them indistinguishable from mobile phone users.

On a related meme, check out the ultimate Bluetooth accessory.

Talking Head does chairs

2006-10-19T07:12:00.000-07:00

David Byrne is a real strange guy - in the nicest possible way. Never fails to amuse and surprise - not to mention knowing his way around the music. Apparently he has a chair thing on the go these days.

Why chairs? Well, they have arms and legs and vaguely human scale -- and shape. They're people -- they hold you, support you, elevate you or humble you. They're funny or elegant, funky or gorgeous, social or aloof. They're characters with lives and histories...aren't they?

Amsterdam-Barcelona-Deia-Vico

2006-10-06T03:42:00.000-07:00

Some snaps from Amsterdam's Jordaan district, the Gaudi house Casa Battlo in Barcelona, the village of Deia in Northern Mallorca, and our very own Killiney Bay at Vico Road, shot on the first week back at work after our jaunt around the above three destinations.

Returns, relaxed

2006-10-03T00:19:00.000-07:00

Back from vacation, much relaxed. Just like the Scream, who returned from a 2 year vacation recently. Also much relaxed:

I will post a photostream of the holiday snaps presently.

Wanderly Wagon

2006-09-11T00:47:00.000-07:00

A. and I differ about holdays. Her ideal is modelled on the sub-text of The Hobbit: There, and Back Again. Simple, and also an excellent adventure.

When I was young, there was a daft kids program on telly called Wanderly Wagon. It was a fairly crap program, even by the lenient standards of a young viewer of what was still a new medium. But the basic premise was good: the eccentric crew of the eponymous wagon wandered onwards through life, going from one strange situation to another, always getting into scrapes and adventures. In other words, it was a neolithic ancestor of one of my favourite story forms: the road movie. My idea of a holiday is like that.

For reasons of marital peace and continuity, we alternate these kinds of holiday. This time round, it's a Wanderly Wagon job. We'll go to Amsterdam and stay on a houseboat. We'll go from these to Barcelona, ramble the Ramblas and trip out on Gaudi. Then it's on to the Balearics and our old mountain fastness of Deia. Wilderness trekking in the Serra de Tramuntano should provide an antidote to the urban escapades.

For this reason - and also due to general battle fatigue on the whole working-with-words front - the traverse heads into official hiatus until some time in October.

Autumn dawns

2006-09-09T05:39:00.000-07:00

At this time of year, the rising sun lights up the heather on the Wicklow hills as I go to work. This shot was taken at this time last year.

And hello Autumn ...

2006-09-05T07:51:00.000-07:00

High on the south Wicklow Way with my dog Scooby. Heather abloom, and the Harvest Moon is ripening. The cairn was built by the Old People - they thought this place was special too.

Bye bye Summer

2006-09-02T06:08:00.000-07:00

The rains finally arrived in Aughrim just this week and the local brooks are in torrent. These peaceful cows in the Blackwater Valley last August already seem like a distant memory.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaargggh!!

2006-09-01T06:23:00.000-07:00

Or rather, the opposite (come to think of it, what exactly is the opposite of a scream? Sigh of relief, perhaps?).

In any event, the eponymous painting by Edvard Munch, boosted in a smash-and-grab on an Oslo art gallery in August 2004, has been safely recovered.

We can all heave a sigh of relief.

Float my payphone

2006-08-31T03:43:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of the gang at boing boing, check this collection of payphones-of-the-world piccies. Like this shot of the floating payphone on Lake Victoria - solar powered and hooked up to GSM.

Eternal light, dark ending

2006-08-31T02:59:00.000-07:00

The traverse never passes up on stellar bangs, crashes and explosions. A good one is due soon when an ageing lunar orbiter is decommissioned by crashing it into the moon's surface. Cue lots of astonomers peering at the effects, doing spectro on the resulting explosion and dust cloud, etc.

The wee craft has some good work to its credit:

From lunar orbit, SMART-1 took thousands of high-resolution pictures and made mineral maps of the Moon's terrain. One of its most important discoveries was a "Peak of Eternal Light," a mountaintop near the Moon's north pole in constant, year-round sunlight. Peaks of Eternal Light are prime real estate for solar-powered Moon bases.

But SMART-1's fate is to end in darkness, for only on a dark patch of moon can the spectography of the crash impact be observed.

Go fly a kite

2006-08-29T01:43:00.000-07:00

Conditions were perfect for kite surfing at Lahinch beach last Sunday. Even just watching is enough to put you in a good mood.

Alas, poor Pluto! I knew him well.

2006-08-25T04:41:00.000-07:00

I will miss Pluto, no longer accorded full planet status. I'm not the only one. People are angry - check out the Photoshop shootout.

Yes, I know, I know, we all have to welcome the New Expanded Solar System, complete with Terrestrial Planets, Gas Planets, Ice Planets, Dwarf Planets and planetoids.

But there was something elegant and pleasing about the Original Nine - even the new number of "fully official" planets, eight, is plainly less elegant than ***The Nine***. And the Nine all had their individual characteristics e.g. the One with Rings (Saturn), the Big Gassy One (Jupiter), the One where Aliens Come From (Mars), the One with a Rude Name (Uranus). And of course Pluto. Veeeery small. Veeeery cold. Veeeery far away. Also - a Dog.

PS. There are rumblings of discontent about it in the scientific community too - watch this, um, space.

Hot diesel

2006-08-24T03:31:00.000-07:00

A British team has broken the diesel land speed record in a convincing fashion - it's up from 236 to 328 miles per hour. The vehicle was completely computer-designed - another world first. As a diesel driver (Audi Avant A6) who is converting to Irish-grown biodiesel next month, I am very happy to see diesel shake off some of its clunky, low-tech image.

From the fact file:

* The JCB Dieselmax is powered by a version of the JCB444 engine, found in many JCB vehicles and generators.

* There are two engines, each boosted by a turbo and connected to a six-speed gearbox

* It is nine metres long, just over a metre wide and 1.3 metres high

* In order to slow the car down, it is fitted with three braking systems: "traditional" brakes, engine braking and parachutes

* Since arriving in America, the 30-strong team has had to enlist a local bar to help with its laundry after finding the hotel had no suitable facilities

* The team has also had to alter the GPS software which measures the car's speed, after it kept cutting out at 223 mph because it thought that was too fast

Purple haze

2006-08-22T02:52:00.000-07:00

Went last night for a walk with Scooby above Tinahely on the slopes of Coolnafuinseoga - Lark's Corner - though I heard more from the bees than the eponymous songbird among the vast tracts of blooming heather. The summit marker is at a modest 450 metres, but given its location at the southern end of the Wicklow Hills, there are spreading views across most of the south east of Ireland - you can see counties Wicklow, Wexford, Carlow, Kilkenny and Kildare from this little hill.

One of the local farmers was out counting his sheep and Scooby and me hitched a lift on his jeep across a stretch of drover's trail. The local farmers are cool about walkers, but they're getting increasingly angry about the quad bikes who are cutting up the hills, and driving their sheep all over the mountain.

There's a few snaps of the outing over on flickr.

Death to Caps Lock

2006-08-17T08:42:00.000-07:00

Why should ignorant trolls, 419ers, and the emotionally incontinent have a key on our precious keyboard space all to themselves? And right near all the good accelerator keys - Ctrl, Alt, Shift etc - too??? People are getting angry (but without using the Caps Lock key!!). Read about it and join the campaign.

Blogging as a tool for public service

2006-08-16T07:54:00.000-07:00

I've been looking into blogging and flickr as tools for public service outfits to manage and share content: for example my local cardiac first responders. But are the tools mature and simple for everybody? Comments please.

Lexicographical Googlectomy

2006-08-15T08:09:00.000-07:00

Sounds painful, doesn't it. And you'd better not google it either, or Sergei and Brin will be waaaay mad at you.

The use of the brand name as a verb has been declared verboten by the company's intellectual property watchdogs. And they said as much to the Washington Post in a hand-written, mailed letter outlining proper usage of their brand name ... though Google is excited to now be included in Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, they stress that their product is a noun, and that nouns and verbs are different things. Didn't you pay attention in middle school?

Of course, the dont'verb-google story is ancient history by now, but what is new is the increasingly pervasiveness of a "People-are-getting-a-bit-cross-with-Google" zeitgeist in the blogosphere. I never really signed up for the original "Google-is-eeeevil" movement, but I might just sign up for its more nuanced descendant.

I love the "hand-written, mailed" btw. So deliciously creepily nineteenth century (shudders pleasurably ...). Did they write it with a quill and ink-pot, by any chance? No chance of sending it by an aul webmail then, we take it? Even given the graven-in-stone-for-all-eternity nature of the dreaded Gmail cache ... (shudders once more ...)

Dude, where's my car?

2006-08-10T04:13:00.000-07:00

Wired has a fascinating piece on how car theft has evolved in the 21st century. It all comes down to the old story: you can make a system impregnable, then someone writes the password on a PostIt and sticks it on the side of their terminal.

The hard part with today's cars is that insurers still tend to think - if all the keys are accounted for - that you were involved in the disappearance of your wheels.

James Van Allen, RIP

2006-08-09T14:07:00.000-07:00

thetraverse salutes James Van Allen, one great space scientist, who left the bounds of Earth today, aged 91. Guiding hand at the helm of early space travel, he was smart enough to get a Geiger counter onto the first one we sent out (Explorer I, 1958) and thus discovered the belts of intense radiation around the Earth that are named after him. Rest in Space, Van Allen (September 7, 1914 – August 9, 2006).

What's in a comma?

2006-08-08T03:30:00.000-07:00

A couple of million bucks, in this case.

"The agreement shall continue in force for a period of five years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five year terms, unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party."

This agreement - for a Canada-size bunch of telephone poles - was deemed to be capable of termination within the first five years - thanks to the second comma in the above paragraph.

That's why you need editors (grins).

Where are the tapes?

2006-08-08T02:54:00.000-07:00

As a space-obsessed teenager back in '69, I stayed up into the small hours to watch the first Moon landing on our new black and white TV set. "One small step ..." and all that. Now I learn that the fuzzy pics we saw were just what the TV sig was able to carry - the original tapes were much clearer. Trouble is ... they've lost them, and now time is running out before the machines they can read them on are retired.

Twin worlds

2006-08-04T04:42:00.000-07:00

New word of the day: planemos. These are sub-sized planetoids, bigger than asteroids and obiting one another rather than a sun. Recently discovered were the first twins - planemos of the same size and mass.

A probe of some kind

2006-07-20T08:26:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia has an interesting disambiguation page on our much-used friend, the probe. The page doesn't mention Star Trek - yet.

Usually introduced by the words "It appears to be a probe of some kind", observations are such a Star Wars/Star Trek/Galactica/Pick a Space Opera opening scene staple that they don't even merit a "one sip" in the lexicon of Star Trek Drinking Game rules. You only get a sip if a probe is actually *launched*. Even then you're only in the same league as "Someone preaches the Prime Directive" or "Open hailing frequencies" - and a long way from the giddy heights of "Picard cries" or "The saucer section separates" (Drink entire beverage) - let alone "Data embarasses himself" (Keep drinking until someone stops him).

Interestingly, probe is even a name for a type of question. Is there anything else you'd care to add?

Piglet squid

2006-07-13T01:29:00.000-07:00

Via boing boing, here's a great gallery of strange undersea creatures, including this little fella.

Droids

2006-07-12T01:15:00.000-07:00

Long a staple of Star Wars-style movies, droids are (need we explain) small autonomous robots. In some cases, they lead independent lives (R2D2 and CP3PO, for example). Sometimes, they can be co-ordinated as a swarm to attempt a complex task (defending a star-fleet against massive attack, for example). Well, they're finally actually building them.

Perfect Turbulence

2006-07-11T03:13:00.000-07:00

Nature reports that some of the paintings Van Gogh produced during his disturbed latter years aren't just "turbulent-looking": they exhibit the precise mathematical characteristics of profound chaos.

Munster Blackwater

2006-07-10T08:53:00.000-07:00

Lives there a man with soul so dead
Who never to himself has said
"This is my own, my native place."?

Corny, but true - and about the way I feel about Munster, my native province. Anyway, paid a visit to one of its more verdant corners, the Blackwater Valley, last weekend (the salmon emerged unscathed this year), and here's a slide show.

... and some duct tape

2006-06-30T02:23:00.000-07:00

DIY in space ... and new capability - to land the Space Shuttle without humans aboard: the scenario being that the crew could take refuge in the ISS while a potentially risky shuttle is brought in by wire. This is a good step - the technology doesn't seem like rocket science - no pun intended - more like the level of high-end hobbyist - but it might make NASA less willing to risk human life in the event of some dodgy tiles. In particular with the last shuttle flight, I've wondered how much the cost of a junked shuttle was weighed up against the risk of losing the astronauts on re-entry.

PS: I wasn't kidding about the duct tape - famous since it saved Apollo 13's bacon, duct tape is a cutting edge technology at NASA.

Point and click, IRL

2006-06-29T02:23:00.000-07:00

IRL = In Real Life. Japanese phones are phasing in GPS locators as compulsory (think: buried by earthquake). Add an electronic compass to one of these phones, factor in a geographical information system, and the result: punter can point and click the phone at a building (e.g. restaurant, film theatre, gallery) and get info about it.

The NYT has details (if you're a subscriber).

The new service is made possible by the efforts of three Japanese companies and GeoVector, a small American technology firm, and it represents a missing link between cyberspace and the physical world.

The phones combine satellite-based navigation, precise to within 30 feet or less, with an electronic compass to provide a new dimension of orientation. Connect the device to the Internet and it is possible to overlay the point-and-click simplicity of a computer screen on top of the real world.

The technology is being seen first in Japan because emergency regulations there require cellphones by next year to have receivers using the satellite-based Global Positioning System to establish their location.

F15 Eagle

2006-06-23T00:43:00.000-07:00

It's a bit hard to reconcile being an old hippy with having a fetish for lethal airpower - but very far indeed from being impossible. Such is human nature. Anyway, Wikipedia recently added an informative page about the F15 Eagle, which can surely claim to be the apex predator of the skies.

Accidental discovery

2006-06-17T08:45:00.000-07:00

Here's a good list of things that were discovered quite by accident. One obvious omission - and part of the glue of our lives - is Post-It, which started life as a failed adhesive. Maybe we could start around a new philosophy: it is better to be a Post-It than a glue.

The original adhesive used in Post-it notes was invented in 1968 by Spencer Silver, a 3M researcher. While attempting to design a strong adhesive, he instead developed an adhesive that was very weak. No immediate application was apparent, until 1974 when a colleague, Arthur Fry, conceived of using the adhesive to create bookmarks while contemplating a hymnal in his church choir. Initial prototypes were available in 1977, and by 1980-1981, after a large sampling campaign, the product had been introduced around the world.

iPod City

2006-06-13T04:25:00.000-07:00

We might have guessed. Those iconic little cuties are manufactured in virtual slavery, in China, where else. A report covered in MacWorld alleges:

... dormitories that house 100 people ... visitors from the outside world are not permitted ... workers toil for 15-hours a day to make the iconic music player ... earn £27 per month ... iPod nano is made in a five-storey factory (E3) that is secured by police officers. Another factory in Suzhou, Shanghai, makes iPod shuffles. The workers are housed outside the plant, and earn £54 per month - but they must pay for their accommodation and food, "which takes up half their salaries" ...

Think different, indeed.

Ready to blow

2006-06-08T07:58:00.000-07:00

Merapi was brooding but quiet when friend S. and I visited it in the late Seventies. Right now though, it's shaping up for a major blow.

Merapi has a very distinctive volcanic personality. It's very young and correspondingly unstable. The heavy tropical rain in the area creates an especially deadly hazard: lahars. According to Wikipedia:

Lahars (a type of mudflow of pyroclastic material and water) are an important hazard on the mountain, and are caused by rain remobilizing pyroclastic flow deposits. Lahars can be detected seismically, as they cause a high-frequency seismic signal. Observations have found that about 50 mm of rain per hour is the threshold above which lahars are often generated.

A lahar is a type of mudflow composed of pyroclastic material and water that flows down from a volcano, typically along a river valley. The term 'lahar' originated in Indonesia.

Lahars have the consistency of concrete: wet when moving, then solid when stopped. Lahars can be huge: the Osceola lahar produced 5,600 years ago by Mount Rainier in Washington produced a wall of mud 180 m (600 feet) deep in the White River canyon and extends over an area of over 320 km².

Lahars can be extremely dangerous, because of their energy and speed: large lahars can flow several tens of meters per second, and can flow for many kilometres, causing catastrophic destruction along the way. The lahars from the Nevado del Ruiz eruption in Colombia in 1985 killed an estimated 25,000 people in the city of Armero who were buried under 8 m (26 ft) of mud and debris. The 1953 Tangiwai disaster in New Zealand was caused by a lahar.

Collision course

2006-06-07T01:13:00.000-07:00

The two biggest storms in the solar system, Jupiter's Red Spot and its little brother, Red Junior, are about to collide. Nobody is quite sure what will happen, but a hell of a lot of backgarden telescopes will be on high alert in early July, when the event is expected.

Top Ten Engineering Disasters

2006-06-02T00:42:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of Wired, the top ten "thanks to human error, you are so dead" disasters in engineering history. Sampler:

7. Purity Distilling Company tank, 1919: You gotta keep your molasses somewhere – how about a rickety tank 50 feet tall and 90 feet in diameter in the middle of Boston? The structure was painted brown to hide the leaks. Eventually it burst (possibly exploding from fermentation), sending waves of molasses up to 15 feet high into the city and killing 21.

Or the one that probably came closest to shortening my own life, since I flew lots of shitty bucket shop flights in DC-10s during their "hey-day":

5. McDonnell Douglas DC-10, 1970s: Nearly a thousand people around the world lost their lives while the kinks were being ironed out of this 290-ton competitor to Boeing’s 747. Blown-out cargo doors, shredded hydraulic lines, and engines dropped midflight were just a few of the behemoth’s early problems.

New lifeforms

2006-06-01T02:16:00.000-07:00

Discovered in an underground lake in Israel, this selection of new creatures had been impenetrably sealed off from the rest of the world for millions of years.

"Every species we examined had no eyes which means they lost their sight due to evolution," said Dimantman.

My beloved comrade, the Robot

2006-05-26T03:45:00.000-07:00

It's reported from the Iraq warfront that GI Joe is likely to form an emotional bond with the trusty robot that has saved his life by defusing mines.

When one bomb defusing PackBot from Roomba-maker iRobot named "Scooby Doo" was blown up after 35 successful missions, the bot's operator asked of iRobot, "Please fix Scooby Doo, because he saved my life."

Seems reasonable to me.

The Mosquito Ringtone

2006-05-25T06:18:00.000-07:00

Mosquito is an audio product designed to repel teenagers. It takes advantage of hearing loss, which begins about age 20 in the high frequencies around 18 to 20kHz (the realm of the bat-squeak). Lower than that age, you can hear those frequencies clearly, so a sound in this zone emitted by a loudspeaker has proven effective as a way of keeping schoolkids from congregating around natural cluster-zones such as magazine racks and just outside convenience stores. Adults are generally (but not always, see below) deaf to these sounds.

In a clever little bite-back, kids have converted the Mosquito sound to a ringtone, which means that they can keep in touch via txt in classrooms where ringing mobile phones are banned - because the teacher can't hear the sound that's audible to the teens.

Hope I never run into one of the Mosquito devices, however, as I seem to lack the age-induced deafness to high-frequency sounds. When the summer insect season is in full swing and moths and other assorted bugs are congregating around the lamp-posts of rural Wicklow, the active swarms of bats that go on a feeding frenzy are quite audible to me - sqeeeek-sqeeeek-sqeeeek - but inaudible to anyone else I know of my age.

The Hogwarts Dragon

2006-05-24T03:54:00.000-07:00

A new species of dinosaur has been named after our favourite School for Wizards: Dracorex Hogswartia.

A group of children at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis drew the connection to the fanciful school of witchcraft that the famous fictional wizard Harry Potter attends and came up with the name hogwartsia..

"It's a very dragon-like looking dinosaur," said Sullivan.

J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, has been notified and apparently rather likes the new name.

"I am absolutely thrilled to think that Hogwarts has made a small claw mark upon the fascinating world of dinosaurs," said Rowling, according to a museum press release. "I happen to know more on the subject of paleontology than many might credit, because my eldest daughter was Utahraptor-obsessed and I am now living with a passionate Tyrannosaurus rex-lover, aged three.

"My credibility has soared within my science-loving family, and I am very much looking forward to reading Dr. Bakker and his colleague's paper describing 'my' dinosaur."

Mallorca

2006-05-18T03:42:00.000-07:00

Here's the photo set of our jaunt to Mallorca.

Jungle Fever

2006-05-18T02:38:00.000-07:00

DNA research reveals that we aren't just descended from the chimps - we interbred with them too. Romeo and Ju-oo-oo-oo-liet indeed ...

Hiatus

2006-04-28T00:32:00.000-07:00

A time of battery recharging beckons. For the next two weeks, A. and I will be here - I'll post a photostream when we're back but till May 20 The Traverse is officially in hiatus.

Cell division reversal

2006-04-13T01:56:00.000-07:00

In a major scientific breakthrough, the process of cell division has been reversed ny one Gary J. Gorbsky, Ph.D., a scientist with the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation. The development has huge potential in the treatment of cancer, birth defects, and other cell division-related disorders. Caveat: the process only works in a very short time-frame of the cell division, and the triggers for division stiull need a lot of analysis, but to achieve something that was hitherto regarded as totally impossible is a breakthough in anyone's book.

You can watch it on video here.

I'm your Venus

2006-04-11T04:49:00.000-07:00

She's got it
Yeah, baby, she's got it
I'm your Venus, I'm your fire
At your desire

The first Earth-Venus probe in a decade approaches the target.

Dark Trinity

2006-04-07T03:46:00.000-07:00

At fifteen seconds before 5:30 in the morning, Mountain Standard Time, on July 16th, 1945, the first atomic bomb was detonated, at a site code-named Trinity. Read this insider's story.

Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun

2006-04-07T01:05:00.000-07:00

Unexpected results from recent solar research - the sun has a different composition to the planets, which is out of whack with prevailing theories that the planets and the earth formed out of the same stellar mass. Whether or not there is nothing new under the sun, inside the sun continues to surprise.

SETI optical telescope

2006-04-05T03:30:00.000-07:00

One of the most ambitious SETI projects ever undertaken: an optical telescope dedicated exclusively to the search for extraterrestrial life. Up to now, SETI astronomy has concentrated on radiometry. When operational, the new 72'' optical telescope will begin a year round all-sky survey in search of alien light signals.

Carnivorous plants

2006-04-03T02:18:00.000-07:00

Check out a whole virtual gallery of the fascinating little critters.

A trip to Kerry

2006-03-13T03:36:00.000-08:00

Invited to join old friends for a weekend in the hills, I set out from Wicklow, where the hills are still locked in ice and snow. This shot was taken about ten minutes from where I live: hopefully Kerry's hills will be in a more temperate condition!
(Click on any image for a bigger version on flickr).

Hooked up with Pat in Limerick and we drove to Kerry. As we approached Cloghane, God turned on all the lights.

The view from the front door of Brendan's house was pretty impressive - all aglow from the sunset.

Kerry next day had reverted to its default mood - "mild and wild":

A wild spot, but the neighbours were friendly!

Equally typically, Kerry reverted once more to exhilaratingly fine conditions - on the road back home! This is the beach at Stradbally.

Froggie went a courting

2006-03-08T06:23:00.000-08:00

It's that time of year again in our wildlife pond in the back garden. Looks like it's going to be tadpole city in there in a couple of months time.

Ali Farka Touré, RIP

2006-03-08T04:08:00.000-08:00

Anyone who knows the sublime work of Ali Farka Touré will be saddened by the news of his death. Talking Timbuktu, a collaboration with Touré, was one of the great popularising works of Ry Cooder (his other was the Beuna Vista Social Club). Touré's music will live on, and bring the haunting music of his native Mali to a world-wide audience.

Blind white thing

2006-03-08T03:28:00.000-08:00

Check out this strange new crustacean discovered in waters 7,540 feet deep at a site 900 miles south of Easter Island. Yahoo has an account of the expedition here.

Indian winter

2006-03-06T03:03:00.000-08:00

We lack an equivalent opposite of the term, Indian summer - which is that halcyon period in early autumn when we get a reprise of summer - sunny, settled, still - but with a hint of the shiver of night-time frost reminding us that this is just a farewell before the seasons get down to pelting us with plenty of rain, wind and darkness.

In South Wicklow right now, we're getting a mirror image - a last blast of fine fair winter weather, snow on the tops, sunny days, bare branches waiting to burst forth in a month or two, freshly turned fields, and of course lots of mucky rain and wind waiting round the corner as the real spring arrives.

For now though, all is still and beautiful.

First day of Spring

2006-03-01T08:47:00.000-08:00

And I took a walk at lunchtime down by our local fishing lake. I liked the bright sunshine, crisp light, and the way it brought out strong primary colours with a Scandinavian flavour. You can check out the other snaps I took recently on flikr.

Archie

2006-02-28T07:57:00.000-08:00

British boffins put Archie - short for Architeuthis dux and the largest giant squid ever displayed - on show at London's Natural History Museum. Jolly well done, squid squad!

Get Hassled

2006-02-27T05:04:00.000-08:00

One of these new "Web 2.0" social tools I came across recently is the Hasslebot. You can sign up to be hassled on a more or less regular basis - for example, to blog something (!), do some weight training, practice the piano, or brush up on assorted European languages are all hassle-worthy in my case. Everybody has stuff they need to be nagged about, and somehow it's a bit less personal coming from a hasslebot.

Least worst no more

2006-02-21T01:17:00.000-08:00

For some time, the Guantanamo Bay facility has cheerfully dubbed itself "the least worst place" - with the jaunty underlying attitude of "well, we've got palm trees, a canteen, sunshine, hey - it's not the worst". However, some new broom decided this wasn't the right, uh, mind set, and the slogan has been consigned to history.

"The removal was ordered because the commanding officer did not feel it accurately reflected his vision of the base," said Navy spokesman Lieutenant Mike Kafka.

(Yes, you're reading that correctly. A man named Kafka has been deployed to field questions about a prison where the criminals are only vaguely charged with crimes, can't speak to lawyers and likely will never get out.)

According to Navy sources, it may be acceptable for a slogan such as "the least worst place" to find its way onto a uniform patch, but it's really not meant to serve as the welcome wagon for a penal colony.

So I guess irony is out then, along with much else.

Dodos

2006-02-17T03:42:00.000-08:00

Finnish artist Harri Kallio has created this diorama of dodos in their (former) native habitat of Mauritius. Is it just me, or is there a hint of family resemblence to Dustin the Turkey?

Letter to the Times

2006-02-15T08:35:00.000-08:00

Time for a spot of moral outrage.

Madam,

Goodbye and good riddance to the former Minister of State at the Department of the Marine, Pat "the Cope" Gallagher. On his watch, Irish drift-netters continued unabated with the reckless over-fishing of salmon bound for Irish rivers - and for those of our European neighbours, who have all bought out their drift-netters. For a country that includes the salmon in its national iconography, this is a thundering disgrace.

Likewise, Gallagher's balky attitude, only too obviously coloured by clientilism and parish pump politics, has held up the overdue Sea Fisheries Bill. In a political party that a few years ago almost abolished the very Department of the Marine itself, an insular, land-based culture ensured there was no appetite for reining him in.

Perhaps, on the same principle that Gardai are assigned to locations far from their native turf, politicians should not be given briefs where their constituents hold large commercial interests and partisan views.

In which case, the assignment of Gallagher, a TD from one of Ireland's most rural counties, to responsibility for solving gridlock in the capital might be, on balance, a step in the right direction.

Sincerely, etc

Mount Kailash

2006-02-14T04:57:00.000-08:00

This page on Mount Kailash is part of an excellent resource, a whole site devoted to sacred places of the world. If I ever won the Lotto, I would like to go to every one of them.

And the future is ...

2006-02-02T01:31:00.000-08:00

Google, of course. Here's an instructive essay on what said future might bring.

January

2006-01-30T08:15:00.000-08:00

There's not a lot to say about January most years, other than "Feck off, January!" This year it seems to have dragged its weary ass even slower than usual. Also, much colder than usual, though this has had an upside in the form of starry nights, wonderful walks, and glorious dawns.

An annual January ritual is the visit to the Turner watercolour collection of the Irish National Gallery - the paintings (by decree of the donor) are only brought out in this most tenebrous and crepuscular of months, to avoid light damage. As ever, I am surprised by the quality of work - it's so easy to assume a famous oil painter will somehow be lightweight as a watercolourist.

This year, we followed up with a nice little exhibition at the National Museum - Cypriot work from around 500BC - 500AD. Fine terracotta work, and even some examples of *very* early glasswork. As a final museum treat, we went upstairs to the permanent exhibition of Egyption work, which is small but perfectly formed.

Another January treat is the annual Bloggies, the Oscars of our blogosphere. Always a good time for checking out new talent: visit before end of January to see all the nominees. One category that's prominent by its absence: warblogging (fans of 365 and a Wakeup will be glad to hear his unit has recently been shipped back State-side).

Dad

2006-01-26T02:43:00.000-08:00

Old soldiers never die,
They only fade away.

A favourite quote of my Dad. The old soldier faded away last August. The other day, an uncle of mine sent me this shot of Dad in his army days. He's the one on the right, the brother in arms on the left is his friend John O'Sullivan.

Common Errors in English

2006-01-25T08:07:00.000-08:00

As a counterbalance to the Creativity site, here's a chance to get in touch with your Inner Nitpicker. Happy hunting ground for professional writers and editors!

Creativity

2006-01-18T07:17:00.000-08:00

Something we all need from time to time. Here is a fine list of creativity hacks. One to bookmark and revisit regularly. Here is a quote from the page on exaggeration as a tool for problem solving, just to give a flavour of the content:

Why does exaggeration appear to work? Because we often have mindsets related to the scale of a problem and whilst there might be a form of action that is acceptable in a crisis it is not in a lesser problem.

To test your unspoken assumptions about the scale of the problem, you should think about what would be appropriate if the problem were of a different order of magnitude. Exaggerated solutions can often be applied directly, although the more likely scenario is that you will find they are inappropriate as they stand, but may suggest other ideas that would be acceptable.

Ranger

2006-01-18T05:59:00.000-08:00

I got a birthday present for my other half lately and everyone should have one. It's a Freeplay Ranger: a portable radio. You can (a) charge up the internal battery on the mains (b) soak up sunshine though its solar panel or (c) wind it up in the absence of mains power or sunshine. Better still it has a lovely warm full sound, sylish retro looks, and (drumroll) analogue tuning just like a real radio should. The previous radio was a "futuristic" minimalist-silver-box-with-squadzillion-unusable-features digital radio from Sony. It cost three times as much, has that wonk digital tuning that never seems to work properly, and ate AAs like a kid eats sweets. Freeplay Ranger rocks!!

Look into the Sun

2006-01-13T07:39:00.000-08:00

This image is the most hi-res picture of the surface of the Sun we've got to date. Like many celestial objects, a wonder to behold.

Top 50 Robots

2006-01-09T09:43:00.000-08:00

Wired has the skinny on the 50 coolest ever bots, although you could argue with the order of appearance. But what about the robot-cum-lunar-skiing-enthusiast from Wallace and Grommit's A Grand Day Out?? (and what would Grommit make of Aibo???)

Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

2006-01-09T09:12:00.000-08:00

From the ridiculously sublime to the sublimely ridiculous.

Pure Genius.

Clouds over Mt. Shasta

2006-01-06T07:33:00.000-08:00

This is a pretty interesting essay on the subject of cloud formations in the neighbourhood of Mount Shasta, a sacred mountain in the American Rockies. Some good shots of lenticular clouds - the Himalayas was the last place I got to see those, as you need pretty big mountains to produce them. Some pretty spacey clouds are special to Shasta - check out the Abraham's Tree. Definitely deserves a spot in that Places to See Before You Die list.

Cat's Eye

2006-01-04T01:06:00.000-08:00

An extraordinary galaxy called the Cat's Eye is just one of hundreds of fine astronomical images at the website storing the Hubble Heritage. The greatest telescope of the 20th century sure was an eye-opener.

Happy New Meme

2006-01-03T03:13:00.000-08:00

Surging to the lead in race for dumbest movie titles of 2006 is Snakes on a Plane. Yep, you got it - a bad guy releases a whole bunch of snakes - on a plane. The bit that really amazes is that Samuel L. Jackson is on board: he's even vetoed a panicky name change to Pacific Air Flight 121, claiming "the title was a big reason he signed on". What is the talented Mr. Jackson smoking these days - and is he going to get medieval on some reptile's ass???

Stormchasers

2005-12-20T02:28:00.000-08:00

I've just installed Firefox 1.5 and one of the new extensions it supports is Stumble. You sign up for the service - then clicking the Stumble toolbar button pulls up a random web page - from one of your specified preferences areas. Also, when you yourself are browsing, you can click an "I like it!" button whenever you hit an interesting web page. And your choice is added to the vast database of interesting pages that drives the Stumble service.

A very hive mind/Web 2.0 concept!

Anyway, the first thing I show up on Stumble is this bad-ass collection of storm shots. Stumble alone is worth the upgrade to Firefox 1.5, but there are other interesting extensions like Kaboodle, and some unobtrusive improvements to the tabbing feature.

If you visit the storm site, also check up the fairly incredible story of how widely the original photographer's work was stolen and reproduced on a massive scale, without payment or even acknowledgement. They even showed up as supposed "photos of Katrina". The dark side of the hive mind? An extreme case study in web copyright issues, at any rate.

The Rembrandt Code

2005-12-20T01:16:00.000-08:00

Mathematician Dan Rockmore is heading up a research project to use computers to detect the genuineness or otherwise of art masterpieces. To date, this has been a black art, with the stakes in the millions. An excellent painting by one of Rembrandt's students can fetch say 2 million, while a humdrum one his van Rijn-ness can go in the twenties of millions.

Obviously, this research is still at the proof of concept stage but looks promising. Analysis of Breughels and maybe-Breughels turned out a cluster of eight which matches the eight agreed on by experts. And Pollock turns out to be equally amenable to analysis. Long filed under child-of-eight-could-do-that, Pollock perfected over the years a technique of painting while almost off balance (maybe the Jim Beam whiskey helped a little here). This teetering effect is what produces the fractal quality in his work.

Anyway, here's one that really is an Old Master: the van Rijnster's Flora:

Robin Redbreast

2005-12-14T06:26:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm not challenging Monasette's crown on the Irish wildlfe photography stakes, just thought I'd blog this little chancer: a robin who always shows up when I turn out with a shovel or fork. It's always the same fella, as robins are one of the most territorial of birds. The "gardener's friend" bit is pure anthropomorphism, they're simply smart enough to know that a man with a fork or shovel will dislodge all sorts of worms and insects which they are very happy to eat.

Robert Plant and the Strange Sensation

2005-12-13T07:11:00.000-08:00

Saw one of the old Rock Gods the other night, and he's as limber as ever. His band is pretty good too, though it must be added that it takes two guitarists to fill the shoes of Jimmy Page - and loosely at that.

On the other hand, the sound of the new material is just great: members are drawn from Britpoppers Cast, trip-hoppers Portishead and drum'n'bass prizewinners Roni Size's Reprazent, and the end result sounds like part of the Massive Attack franchise, no bad thing. And Plant wasn't afraid to let the band put their stamp on the obligatory Zep material - unlike the control-freak approach of Page. When Page tours with the likes of the Black Crowes, what's expected and delivered is the note-perfect exact representation of the original material: impressive, but a technical feat rather than real new music.

Plant's band, the Strange Sensation, also reflects his interest in world music, with elements of the souk strongly in evidence. We got the current album, Mighty Rearranger, in advance of the gig, and it's well worth a place in any rocker's collection.

Kitten for the day

2005-12-13T07:03:00.000-08:00

Check out the Daily Kitten: this blog does what it says on the tin: it puts up a new shot of a cute kitten every day. Ideal for the mid-afternoon sag when new ideas do not show up too willingly, and a little constructive daydreaming may help.

Places to see before you die

2005-12-02T07:18:00.000-08:00

The best known list (from the BBC) is re-created here. The one's I've already seen:

Florida
Sydney
Taj Mahal
Canadian Rockies
Niagara Falls
Hong Kong
Paris
Alaska
Himalayas - Nepal
Barcelona
Bangkok
Zermatt - Switzerland
Bali

which leaves about 35 to go ...

Fairyism

2005-12-02T06:50:00.000-08:00

Spotted on signage at Beijing airport: Miss your forms from the trace of fairyism. If anyone has the merest clue as to what this prime cut of Chinglish is getting at, answers on a postcard please. Better still, just comment.

5 things

2005-12-01T08:53:00.000-08:00

That you probably didn't know about me (thanks Mark!):

I once had a job for a summer telling visitors to Newgrange all about the place.
Five minutes after I got out of bed one morning, a storm blew a tree down on the chimney, dumping several tons of rubble on my bed.
Once a Deadhead, always a Deadhead.
Favourite way to spend time: hunter-gatherer.
Favourite dead or moribund languages: Latin, Irish, Anglo-Saxon.

thetraverse

Scientists with Luxuriously Flowing Locks

Letter to the Times

The Voynich Manuscript

It's not easy being weird

Procrastination

Frozen in time

Blue Origin

Virgin lizard birth

Sister Rat

Writing about food

And are *we* intelligent?

Is there anybody out there??

Quality complaining

Ancient IT

Third World Doom

Not for vegetarians, then?

Department of Signs

Hiatus, bigtime

Room with a View

Not mad, just Bluetoothed

Talking Head does chairs

Amsterdam-Barcelona-Deia-Vico

Returns, relaxed

Wanderly Wagon

Autumn dawns

And hello Autumn ...

Bye bye Summer

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaargggh!!

Float my payphone

Eternal light, dark ending

Go fly a kite

Alas, poor Pluto! I knew him well.

Hot diesel

Purple haze

Death to Caps Lock

Blogging as a tool for public service

Lexicographical Googlectomy

Dude, where's my car?

James Van Allen, RIP

What's in a comma?

Where are the tapes?

Twin worlds

A probe of some kind

Piglet squid

Droids

Perfect Turbulence

Munster Blackwater

... and some duct tape

Point and click, IRL

F15 Eagle

Accidental discovery

iPod City

Ready to blow

Collision course

Top Ten Engineering Disasters

New lifeforms

My beloved comrade, the Robot

The Mosquito Ringtone

The Hogwarts Dragon

Mallorca

Jungle Fever

Hiatus

Cell division reversal

I'm your Venus

Dark Trinity

Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun

SETI optical telescope

Carnivorous plants

A trip to Kerry

Froggie went a courting

Ali Farka Touré, RIP

Blind white thing

Indian winter

First day of Spring

Archie

Get Hassled

Least worst no more

Dodos

Letter to the Times

And are we intelligent?