An Overly Personal Growth.

I’m sorry I’ve not been posting much here recently. Truth be told, I’ve had a lot of other things on my mind. While I have gotten some gaming in, I’ve not really felt much like saying too much about it.

I was hoping that I was going to be able to write a relieved post today about how it turns out I don’t actually have cancer after all. Unfortunately, after my hospital appointment today, we still don’t know, and so [...]

The Pale Blue Pixel

Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot” monologue never fails to move me. A single pixel breaks down the barriers between all the family of man, making us realise how very few we are, and how alike, when compared with the rest of the universe that is not us.

I often think about that when I read gaming blogs and forums, and Martin Luther King day seems an appropriate time to talk about it. As gamers, we divide and subdivide ourselves, [...]

Spider Babys.

Araneus diadematus, the European garden spider, has been busy in my garden. I spotted this group of bouncing babies having fun on my wheeliebin and thought I’d share!

The focus isn’t perfect, but I think it’s the best my little camera is going to manage as close as I had to get. These spiderlings are little more than a millimetre across each. Click the picture to get a larger version.

Araneus diadematus – Baby European Garden Spiders

I hope [...]

The British Big Freeze of 2010

Via Twitter from Ysharros. It really IS cold. This is a NASA satellite image from today.

The British Big Freeze 2010

Truly epic.

Doomwatch: Swine Flu

The outbreak in the Americas is starting to look rather serious. At issue is the idea that the virus has managed to sneakily combine not only swine flu and human flu genes, but it has also managed to get some avian flu genes also. Clearly a virus strain with a very interesting history. Avian flu was considered the most likely candidate for the next flu pandemic, so this “threefer” is ringing a whole lot of alarm bells.

The World [...]

Draft Al Gore for President of the World: His Nobel lecture.

Al Gore’s Nobel lecture, in full I hope.

More than ever, we need leaders who take climate change seriously. I’m not talking Kyoto serious, I’m talking “Oh crap oh crap, billions will die if we don’t do something now” serious. It is something of a blessing and a curse for me that I studied some environmental science at UEA, as it leaves me less able than most to blithely ignore the coming storm, and go about my business.

[...]

Intelligent Design Special on Nova Online

The PBS Nova Special on Intelligent Design, “Judgement Day” has just gone online. It’s pretty thought provoking, and well worth a watch if you didn’t get the chance to see it when it aired earlier in the week. It covers the 2005 dispute between the Dover school board, and the parents who brought a lawsuit against it for breach of the 1st amendment right of the seperation of church and state.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/program.html

My degree was predominantly in evolution and [...]