audentes fortuna iuvat

oh good lord – so to speak

Atheists in Australia are under cyber attack now, because thats the Christian thing to do. The websites of both the Atheist Foundation of Australia and the Global Atheist Convention were knocked offline in a major cyber attack yesterday afternoon.

More to be read in the Sydney Morning Herald….

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Strap yourself in kids, we’re geeking out.

The possibility of a time travelling particle is currently doing the rounds of Geekendom. The Higgs Boson particle, theorised to exist for only a tiny micro-moment at the start of the universe is used to explain how the universe has as much mass as it does. Personally I put it down to late night snacking and catching taxis, but thats me.

Scientists, who clearly watch too much Stargate SG1, Atlantis and now Universe, are trying to recreate it – but every time they do, the incredibly expensive, complicated and delicate pieces of equipment they are using keep breaking. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN in, well give it so large, France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany, has fallen over (not literally) a couple of times when they have tried this.

The result is. some pretty wild theories are starting to roll around.

“A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.”

While I cant comment on the physics*, I can say that a/ it sounds pretty far fetched, 2/ I suspect these guys are spending too much time alone or at Star Trek Conventions and iii/ it also sounds really cool – where can I get me one.

*and therefor should probably shut up on the whole thing

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This makes me feel much better.

a/ I have plenty to work with

b/ I have been accused of being two or off my – face many a time so this gives me high hopes of a medical solution just around the corner

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I feel the need to publish a retraction.

I recently commented on what I believed to be Leona Lewis’ new album – “Best Kept Secret“, that it was dreadful and I completely understood the title because I felt it was indeed – best kept secret.

Having purchased and listened to this album, I felt that, while the act itself is unforgivable and I in no way condone it, I could at least understand the sentiment that recently drove a fan to slap the singer.

I am in fact quite mistaken – this is not her new album which is in fact called Echo and is being released on 16 November in the UK. The first single, Happy, is already out in the US although why not in the UK I do not know.

While the song is pretty good (please dog let the Freemasons or Darkchild at it), the title is something of a mystery given the lyrics. Par Exemple:

“Don’t care about all the pain in front of me
Cause i’m just trying to be happy, yeah”

Not cheery!

And yes, this is what passes as me being gracious.

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British Radio seems to have never escaped the war and rationing, or an aesthetic that has a charm and beauty all its own. This is of course from a man who was raised on the Goon Show by his father, a man with humour so dry it had sand dunes and camels. So take this with a grain of salt.

While some shows have progressed, and remained topical, and others deeply pointless (thank you Jonathan Ross), there remain programmes that really haven’t changed in almost 40 years.

And yet, still funny.

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Am I getting old? Is that it? Or is that I read “too” much? Perhaps I am just a cranky person and these things get to me.

Last night there were HUNDREDS of post on Facebook about Danii Minogue making a comment on X Factor (aka – one of those dreadful talent shows designed to parade peoples pain and humiliation for public amusement) about a contestants possibly being gay. Twitter went absolutely MENTAL about it.

Personally I had to turn away from it all and go listen to Radio 4 to calm myself down* and get to sleep. Not because of what she said, because all of these people online had NOTHING ELSE TO GET OUTRAGED ABOUT!!!!

For the moment, lets ignore what she said and the (very talented) lad in question sang “And I am telling you” from Dreamgirls (my homosexual detection device is pinging a touch at that). People, seriously, this is what you get upset about? Where is your Moral Compass?

Just a few things that you might want to consider directing your energies to. These are things I have seem bugger all postings about on FB from any of my friends.

• Barrack Obamah got the Nobel Peace Prize. Does that not strike you as a little early? No matter how good a story he is telling a the moment are you seriously telling me that he CURRENTLY matches up to previous Nobel Laureates like Nelson Mandella, Mother Teresa and Médecins Sans Frontières? Give the man a chance, sure. Support his efforts, absolutely! But todate Obamah has not spent 27 years in prison and been a major driving force to end apartied. Nor has he spend over 45 years ministering to the poor, sick, orphaned, and dying. The Nobel Committee seems breathlessly over enthusiastic on this one.
• Internet Eyes is going to let ANYONE in the UK use the CCTV network, encouraging them to “report crimes” they might see. Thats not at ALL worrying to you?
• Libyan “Leader” Muammar Gaddafi, a man who after over 40 years in politics STILL can’t decide how to spell his name in English, made a 100 minute speech at the UN – which just as a sidebar over ran his allotted time by 85 minutes AND caused his interpreter to walk off the job out of exhaustions. During this speech, amongst other things:
  • he accused the UN deliberately avoiding investigating JFKs murder
  • he also accused the UN being an al-Qaida-like terrorist body
  • and he stated that swine flu a biological weapon created in a military laboratory
  • the only person he gave any positivity towards was Barrack Obama, who he referred to as “my son”. This was before the Nobel Committee made its announcement, so its nice to see that they are all singing from the same page.

I will give Gaddafi this – he had a nice outfit, if a little Saturday Night Fever. Although clearly he is taking attention grabbing tips from Geri Halliwell. I am not sure which direction to be worried about that in first.

And thats not everything that happened in the last week or so. Don’t start me on the Labor or Tory Conventions, Berlusconi, the Tories making a General a Peer – lets hope thats not as much of a Coup as they are making out, or crematoriums webcasting funerals  (seriously).

If you want to get your panties in a twist over something gay and news worthy how about:

• Obama vow on gay military policy
• Its 11 years since Matthew Sheppard was beaten to death for being gay and left hanging on a chain link fence. And US politicians are STILL trying to make out that sexual orientation had nothing to do with his murder to avoid enacting anti-hate crime legislation

Is Danii Minogue suggesting someone might be gay and on a ‘talent’ show really worth all of the outrage?

REALLY?

Ok. I am now officially old and dont get it.

I am going to put my roller blades on now and go skate around Regents Park to Paloma Faith, Snow Patrol and the Smashing Pumpkins.

* Thank dog for Sandi Toksvig

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The chance of your house being destroyed by a tornado and then that tornado reassembling your house is 0.0000001%.

So you need insurance.

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The shoe could be on the other foot.

This is from Australia. Sometimes my country is flawless, usually when it comes to poking fun. This will explain a lot about me.

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You know who you are and what I mean. Take this as a lesson you sily people.

“Let this be a lesson to all the broken-hearted geeks out there. A 38-year-old Ohio man is set to plead guilty to federal charges after spyware he meant to install on the computer of a woman he’d had a relationship with ended up infecting computers at a children’s hospital.

Spyware was sent to the woman’s Yahoo e-mail address in the hope it would be used to monitor what his former girlfriend was doing on her PC. But instead, she opened the spyware on a computer in the hospital’s pediatric cardiac surgery department.

The spyware sent more than 1,000 screen captures via e-mail, including details of medical procedures, diagnostic notes and other confidential information relating to 62 patients. The man will pay $33,000 to the hospital for damages and faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison.”

Thanks to Slashdot for this.

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Now the first thing I will say about this, is that I pretty much completely agree that the camera is the iPod lines current Achilles heel. Adding a camera to the Nano and not the Touch was just weird. Almost as weird as only putting a 3.2 megapixel camera in the iPhone.

The second thing to say is this is a brilliant piece of comedy, and there is a wry irony in the choice of spokes model – particularly given the final couple of lines.

However I am not exactly sure that Adolf is the right person to be spokes model for the collective weary befuddlement of the global Apple Fanboy communituy.

Watch anyway, its a laugh.

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