Angels and Devils

I've just come back from choir rehearsal and while I have some doubts about the selection of music we are singing (and the way we are singing it to a certain extent), to make up for it we are singing "O Holy Night". I only encountered a couple of years ago in another choir setting but I find it wonderfully shiver (in a good way) inducing and it also makes you feel as though your soul is soaring out of your body. This link is the best I could find on YouTube. If the voices are too operatic it does not have the same effect to my mind.

On another note, the debate at the Oxford Union where both Nick Griffin (BNP leader) and David Irving (Holocaust denier) were due to speak has been delayed due to protesters. I'm not sure how I feel about the issue. One person said something very wise about the whole thing. If it had been a debate about the issues such as immigration or history, then offering them a platform is legitimate. In a debate about free speech it is not. A lawyer, who at some point in their career, had defended either of these individuals on the basis on freedom of speech, could, in this instance, be an ideal invitee for the debate. If you are trying to use a debate as a way of holding up weaknesses in NG and DI's ideas, you need to put them up against other ideas. A platform in a free speech debate is treading the fine line between offering a platform to their ideas and endorsing them.

I've realised I should probably change the description of this blog as there is not a lot of geology in it really...

Rant numero duo

I'm too tired and lazy to write much today so I'll just make a list of my peeves at the moment:

1. Weather: It's wet, cold and generally miserable. Here we didn't even have the excitement of snow to mitigate the cold.
   
2. Air handling system: The labs are down at the moment so all I'm doing is reading all day. If I'd wanted to read all day (other than pure fiction and for fun) I would have done an Arts degree.
3. Choir rehearsals that go on for an hour longer than they should messing up my evening of cooking food to take to lunch for the next few days
4. The prospect of having to buy something for the winter ball (it is the shopping bit rather than the spending money bit that I'm least looking forward to). I'm seriously tempted to go in black tie.
5. Trying to arrange a meeting between my supervisor and the people who may be giving me my samples when no one seems to overlap in their availabilities.
6. The weather
7. Losing yesterday's game by such a large margin
8. The weather
9. The appearance of Christmas lights everywhere and having to think about Christmas presents
10. The weather
    

TV stuff

Although I have lived most of my life without a TV (or telly to reassert by Britishness, though why I should want to do that....), I am very good and picking up the boxsets on special at HMV or what used to be Virgin and is now "zavvi". My latest acquisition is the first series of Dead Like Me. It follows the "life" of George, an 18 year old who was killed by a toilet seat from the MIR space station as she adjusts to being undead and being a reaper. It has a great case of supporting characters and many laugh out loud moments.

I'd encountered Bryan Fuller, the creator of the show, previously via Wonderfalls; a show that only aired a few episodes before being cancelled (boo hiss and the DVD is only Region 1; booboo hisshiss). Wonderfalls is similarly quirky and more engaging in my opinion but Dead Like Me managed to stick it out for two seasons. I seem to have a bad track record with cancelled shows as another of my favourites is Firefly, though that did appear in big screen format as Serenity. I am obviously not their target audience (especially as I don't own a TV, though most of these shows are American). Most of the time I do have the advantage that I know a particular show has been cancelled by the time the costs of the DVD boxsets come down enough that I would consider purchasing them. I don't experience the carpet being jerked out from under me (clichetorically speaking).

Computering

There is something wonderfully therapeutic about stacking a load of 7ml bottles in a large glass jar and then pouring weak acid over them. Okay so maybe it is not the most enthralling work but ideal for Monday morning.

The afternoon was devoted to playing with LaTex. Not the stuff that gloves (and other things) are often made of, but the typesetting program. Various people over the years (well at uni basically) have tried to convince me of its value. I did try it, but my main problem was with emacs as I did not find it particularly intuitive. It is probably good if you do a lot of programming and use scary things like FORTRAN etc. The version of LaTex I downloaded today included TeXnicCenter as a front end or what ever it is called. I liked it a lot better; I am not saying it is the be all and the end all but I find it easier to work with so I'm going to stick with it.

Now to conquer Matlab (which should be easier as I have been taught the stuff officially....hmm).

I thought of a really bad joke today:

What sport do sheep like?
Baaa-asketball

(see I told you it was bad)

Cameron and drainage

First quasi-political post. I say quasi as it involves David Cameron and Kate Moss.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7088351.stm

This story is just ripe for satire (if only I had the talent for it). Whether the joke should be on Kate Moss for being completely ignorant of politics (showing how much models live in the "real world" and also that she thought that he was a "useful guy") or David Cameron for being the latest in a string of not particularly memorable opposition leaders over the last ten years that Kate Moss could be quite justified in not recognising him.

Ramble Act 1

Wally Broecker gave a seminar at the department today. It is always strange when you actually see the person whose voice you have been imagining off the page for so long. As climate is not may passion, I wasn't as weak at the knees as some people were, but it is like meeting the pope of climate/oceanography/geochemical tracers etc. (Of course if the real pope was anything like Wally the world would probably be a much saner place). He was really charming, not at all arrogant and gave an interesting talk. I've decided I'm more interested in the isotope systematics of the tracers rather than the details of what ocean circulation may be doing. I can't think who at the moment would be my ultimate Earth Sciences "top person" to meet. Hmmm.

We also had Steve Sparks visiting which was another fairly constant name during my undergraduate. So this week has been fairly big name stuff.

I was asking various people in the common room today if they would, given the opportunity, go to Mars but without the option of returning. No one gave an unqualified yes; I did without hesitation. I think the experience of being on another planet and being able to discover and describe a new world, outweighs any of the conditions (other people etc) for me. This probably means I have quite strongly developed hermetical tendencies but it is extremely unlikely to happen anyway (probability 1 in 10^20).

Science News of the Day

A kilo may no longer be a kilo!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7084099.stm

My understanding of the details of the watt balance method aren't great, but from the description in the article it appears that gravitational force is involved. Well the acceleration due to gravity varies latitudally and with geology (mass of mountains etc) so the location on the globe would have to become part of the standard. It may be that this has been compensated for; the detail has just been left out in this mass media article.

Rant the first

I thought I'd start a blog properly instead of posting things randomly on facebook. I'm falling a bit out of love with facebook. It is too much of a big thing, which obviously means I am an "exclusivist" at heart...

I went to see Elizabeth: the Golden Age which even the gloriousness of Cate Blanchett could not redeem. There did not seem to be a point which the movie was really moving towards. Now I know there are many films in which are beautiful and special precisely because nothing happens but this was not that kind of movie. There was a lot of action but I found the coherency lacking. My least favourite scene was when Elizabeth was shown to be a typical emotional woman who basically loses it in front of everyone because one of her waiting women is pregnant with Raleigh's child who Elizabeth is supposedly having a sort of "thing" with (Raleigh, not the foetus, obviously). I am sure there are scenes where male rulers do the same but none spring to mind. They usually are portrayed as stoic workaholics. I have other historical grips as well but my main complaint was that the movie was not compelling. This was despite the solid presences of Geoffrey Rush , Clive Owen and (relative) newbie Abby Cornish.

In my usual daily/hourly browse of BBC News I came across an article entitled "Dinosaurs breathed like penguins". I've never been that enthralled by dinosaurs (and me a geologist tut tut), however the image of a dinosaur actually being a penguin on the inside (as it were) is like Robert De Niro as Captain Shakespeare in Stardust. Stardust is a film I definitely recommend. It has similarities to the Princess Bride but is slightly less bizarre.