My kingdom for a void

I am delayed in life somewhat as I am building two new quad core computers, one water cooled and one air cooled. I tell you I am getting too old for this. Soon, I will retire to a lake and fish.

Ah but I can see your frustration over the left brigade taking your liberties away, making up facts and producing false conclusions to support their positions. Sounds like human beings to me -- perhaps that is the one thing I have learned, we all do this -- in all walks of life. Perhaps it is a case of trying to bend what comes into our eyes into the a priori shape that we have for it in our heads? This is what humans do.
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I had to laugh at your BBC mole poster to the wikipedia .. I have a feeling I know who it might be! George Bush is a wanker no doubt, I think that's something most humans have done. But he is a rich wanker, perhaps the most famous man in the world, and in a position to help or make worse the position that humanity finds itself in.

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Hmm this void sounds very interesting doesn't it? What could be the reason behind it's existence? In Star Trek a ship was crossing a void at one point wasn't it? This baby is a bit bigger. Reminds that we are pretty clueless of how the observable part of The Universe (also known as "the universe" to some folk) got to be in the state it appears to be in now.

Huge Hole Found in the Universe

Here's the story.

The hole is nearly a billion light-years across. It is not a black hole, which is a small sphere of densely packed matter. Rather, this one is mostly devoid of stars, gas and other normal matter, and it's also strangely empty of the mysterious "dark matter" that permeates the cosmos. Other space voids have been found before, but nothing on this scale.

The mysteries never cease, do they? :-)

The BBC and Wikipedia

Apparently some edits to Wikipedia articles have been traced back to IP addresses owned by the BBC. Here's an analysis of some of the changes. It's not surprising. Apparently the same thing has been done from the New York Times.

In this age of satellite TV, satellite radio, and internet streaming ... what is the view of the BBC of late?

Norwegian Moose

No, not "Norwegian Wood". This:

The poor old Scandinavian moose is now being blamed for climate change, with researchers in Norway claiming that a grown moose can produce 2,100 kilos of methane a year -- equivalent to the CO2 output resulting from a 13,000 kilometer car journey.

On the one hand I have to laugh at this. But on the other, there's a more ominous problem. As the article states, domesticated cows produce the same methane gas, and in far greater quantities. It's only a matter of time before the other pet lifestyle of the left will be forced down our throats -- vegetarianism (or worse, veganism).

The delicious irony in this is that one of the left's favorite poster children is Ben and Jerry, of the ice cream fame. Guess how many cows labor in support of the milk that's used for their supposedly "eco-friendly" product?

I can give up ice cream fairly easily. But I do enjoy a good burger on occasion.

Holidays are over for now!

We had a nice time - got to see a number of places in the UK

Went to a real chocolate factory
Made some pottery
Stayed in two hotels
Went to a butterfly park
Went to an open animal farm
Visit two theme parks
Visited an "Eco" park
Went to a Roald Dahl Museum
Went to a telephone and transport musuem
Saw five movies at the cinema!

It was really nice not to be on the internet at times pal :) I am pretty tired from all the travelling so now need a holiday!

One thing, my daughter and I are (I think) now officially "natural" in our behaviours towards eachother. We're not forced into those "unnatural" modes of behaviour you get into when the time you have to see eachother is short, and you are forced to part. It's great :)

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Is Global Warming a reality? Forget the politics and the unscrupulous so-called "scientists" vying for research money, but do you think that Global Warming is happening due to human output of Co2?

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I was speaking to one of my chess genius buddies and he says the words "Why?" and "Because" should be struck off the vocabularly list as they don't mean anything.

I think he wants to replace "Why?" with "For what reason...?" and "Because" with "As a result of .." This seems just like semantics to me and I really am not sure where he is coming from. Is there something in his suggestions here that I have missed that you can see?

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How's things?

Warmest Year for United States

Interesting article. A quick background:

• Using NASA surface temperature numbers, a team at NASA concluded that 1998 was the warmest year on record for the lower 48 United States.
• However, Steve McIntyre of climateaudit.org noticed some rather odd "discontinuities" in the graphic data, all around January 2000.
  
• The team at NASA apparently refused to release their algorithm to McIntyre, so he reverse engineered the algorithm and discovered the problem. He notified the team at NASA of the error.
  

Now this:

NASA has now silently released corrected figures, and the changes are truly astounding. The warmest year on record is now 1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place. 1921 takes third. In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II.

I find the phrase "silently released" interesting. This is very common. Findings that support the proper "narrative" are loudly trumpeted; findings or corrections that run counter are quietly handled. A true scientist would be disinterested in outcome. I suspect these folks at NASA were fairly invested in the "global warming" narrative and this set of corrections are rather embarrassing.

Letting Go

Now, if on the other hand we are fashioned by God, then I have no idea why we are imbued with this competitive desire to win, what good can it do us?

Perhaps this is a vestige of our broken nature? Perhaps this aspect of our being is not what God wants for us, but nevertheless something he has permitted us to take on as so important a part of our being.

There really is a strong thread that runs through the Bible about letting go of such stuff. I have heard and read that the passage in Matthew 11:29 -- "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls." -- is alluding to precisely that: letting go. One commentator suggested that if one had to come up with a single word to describe Jesus as portrayed in the Bible, that one world might be "relaxed." Jesus had the "letting go" part down perfectly. He rested in perfect assurance of God's role in his life.

There are, of course, enormous challenges to really believing that and really living that.

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I went for my first night-time ride on the motorcycle last night. Not long ... 10 miles at most. But it was a new experience, and not a very comfortable one. The lack of visibility and awareness of my surroundings was disconcerting. I don't plan on doing that often, but it is good to know that I can do it if I need to.

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I hope you're doing well on your holiday with K. I hope to hear your report upon your return!

House Elves

Ahhh it's a gloriously sunny Sunday morning here, the skies are sharp and blue and with some regret I've just finished the latest and last installment of the Harry Potter series by J K Rowling. I've been reading those books for the last ten years so will kind of miss them as they are now familiar, and I assert that having a preference for the familiar is a fundamental part of the human condition. Still, there are two more films to look forwards to :)

House Elves were "slaves" to wizards throughout the Potter series, working for little or no pay but glad to do so usually, for love.

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You wrote recently:

There's a powerful driver within our souls to prove ourselves right ... even when it doesn't really matter if we do. Pride? Stubbornness? Fear?

I agree this seems to be a fundamental urge, I see it in my daughter. It must be connected to fear I believe. I don't know if I told you before, but in the last year some time a smart Mensa fellow told me about two people in a heated debate, or just having a chat:

• The smart fellow thinks "I wonder what this person thinks about my arguments?"
• The really smart fellow thinks "I wonder what this person thinks I think about his arguments or what I think about my arguments?"

I think it is all connected to the desire to win, that imposter again. But what else could you expect from an organism that has developed through natural selection, survial of the fittest, winning the race?

Now, if on the other hand we are fashioned by God, then I have no idea why we are imbued with this competitive desire to win, what good can it do us? Think of how many wars have been caused by it. Heck, even the original sin was caused by the desire to win something, knowledge in that case.

If you don't fight (like Ghandi) do you win? Will passive resistance always eventually prove itself to be unstoppable? If we are verbally attacked, we defend ourselves don't we? Why do we bother? Why don't we just say "Ok, bye"? It's a shame that we have to waste precious moments of our lives dealing with those that would attack us, so that they themselves can assuage some sort of desire within themselves, or mitigate their own pain, isn't it?

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Two weeks vacation time for us now. I am not sure where we will get to, I will probably take the girls to a Pottery Musuem and visit a bunch of theme parks in the UK. We were going to pop over to Eurodisney Paris but oops K's passport has expired (10 years) so we'll make that trip during half term (semester).

Wherever we get to, the hotel must have a swimming pool, jacuzzi and steam room/sauna, this they demand of me!