Lessons of the Trojan Horse

a bit techie this, but what the heck:

April 24, 1184 B.C.: Trojan Horse Defeats State-of-the-Art Security

The Utilimate Machine

You know what? I think I'd buy one of these.



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More on Mecca Time

A friend sent me this link to a BBC article about Mecca time. Obviously I think they're nuts but I'm not alone. According to the article;

But the movement is not without its critics, who say that the notion that modern science was revealed in the Koran confuses spiritual truth, which is constant, and empirical truth, which depends on the state of science at any given point in time. [my bold]

Is this what passes for criticism? Are these the only critics? The BBC should fire the journalist if this is the only criticism he could find for such loony notions.

In effect what this quote is saying is that the computer I'm typing this on may, at some point in the future, stop working due to the state of science. But, revealed "truth" (you know, believing in magic) is like π or something (which, as everyone whose read the Bible knows, is 3).

Wot an elephant see's

Cool pictures taken by an elephant. This is my favorite.


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Dark Matter Found ... maybe

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Researchers led by Dr Rita Bernabei at the University of Rome claim that a giant detector inside the mountain laboratory has picked up signs of dark matter. The signal suggests that it could be made of theoretical particles known as axions. The discovery was announced at a physics conference in Venice. The experiment was designed to detect dark matter in space as Earth flies through it.

Lizards evolve in under 40 years

Amazing story this;

Italian wall lizards introduced to a tiny island off the coast of Croatia [in 1971] are evolving in ways that would normally take millions of years to play out, new research shows. In just a few decades the 5-inch-long (13-centimeter-long) lizards have developed a completely new gut structure, larger heads, and a harder bite, researchers say.

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The religion of fear

More Pat;

Stargate Continuum

Stargate SG-1 is one of my favorite shows (even if it did decline after the departure of MacGyver) and now the very last episode is almost out. Here's a teaser ...

Robert Ingersoll & Quote of the Day

Discovered Robert Ingersoll today courtesy of http://www.evolvedrational.com/

I like this quote in particular as so many people are distrustful of science and rationality in spite of the thousands of benefit's they experience as a result every day.

We have already compared the benefits of theology and science. When the theologian governed the world, it was covered with huts and hovels for the many, palaces and cathedrals for the few. To nearly all the children of men, reading and writing were unknown arts. The poor were clad in rags and skins -- they devoured crusts, and gnawed bones. The day of Science dawned, and the luxuries of a century ago are the necessities of to-day. Men in the middle ranks of life have more of the conveniences and elegancies than the princes and kings of the theological times. But above and over all this, is the development of mind. There is more of value in the brain of an average man of to-day -- of a master-mechanic, of a chemist, of a naturalist, of an inventor, than there was in the brain of the world four hundred years ago.
These blessings did not fall from the skies. These benefits did not drop from the outstretched hands of priests. They were not found in cathedrals or behind altars -- neither were they searched for with holy candles. They were not discovered by the closed eyes of prayer, nor did they come in answer to superstitious supplication. They are the children of freedom, the gifts of reason, observation and experience -- and for them all, man is indebted to man.
-- Robert Green Ingersoll, "God In The Constitution"

God in the Constitution

Also, the man had a sense of humour;

The old lady who said there must be a devil, else how could they make pictures that looked exactly like him, reasoned like a trained theologian -- like a doctor of divinity.
-- Robert Green Ingersoll, from "Superstition" (1898)

Finally;

The doctrine that future happiness depends upon belief is monstrous. It is the infamy of infamies. The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be relieved only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance, called "faith." What man, who ever thinks, can believe that blood can appease God? And yet, our entire system of religion is based upon that belief. The Jews pacified Jehovah with the blood of animals, and according to the Christian system, the blood of Jesus softened the heart of God a little, and rendered possible the salvation of a fortunate few. It is hard to conceive how the human mind can give assent to such terrible ideas, or how any sane man can read the Bible and still believe in the doctrine of inspiration.
-- Robert Green Ingersoll, The Gods

Superstring theory explained

from TedTalks (20 mins)

Plastic made from pig urine

There would be a physiological hurdle to overcome before drinking something out of a bottle made from this stuff ....

Denmark-based Agroplast wants to transform pig urine into plastic dinnerware and household items.

[snip]

The company has essentially devised a way to better commercialize urea, a compound of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen, found in urine.

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The Madness of Certainty Continues

Reads like a joke but it's actually real.

SPEAKERS at a Doha conference on Mecca's importance said that the holy city, not Greenwich, should become the reference point for world time, reigniting an old controversy that started some four decades ago.

A group of Islamic scholars presented on Saturday "scientific evidence" to prove that Mecca was the core of that the zero longitude passes through the holy city and not through Greenwich in the UK.

Greenwich in England has been the home of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) since 1884. GMT is sometimes called Greenwich Meridian Time because it is measured from the Greenwich Meridian Line at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. Greenwich is the place from where all time zones are measured.

In a clear support for the call, Islamic scholar Yousuf al-Qaradawi said Islam, "unlike other religions, never contradicted science".
The participants recommended the unification of the time in the Arab world to the time in Mecca instead of Greenwich. They also called the Arab governments to abandon the new world maps "because they are forged to serve Western interests."

I love the ignorance on display here - they have "scientific evidence" that an imaginary line run through Mecca! I guess that means Ley lines run though it too, that the magnetic field is slightly stronger (or weaker) and that, occasionally, the sun dances in the sky.

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