Month: September 2012

Rationally, we know it’s not the case, but the temptation is to assume that, when we leave a place, it’s in a time capsule, just waiting for us to return. Of course, that’s not the case, but it’s tempting… Our first (rented) house in Perth looks identical to how we left it, about 15 years…

We’re staying at the West Beach Lagoon hotel in Scarborough, WA. It’s near the beach – in fact it looks as though our balcony used to have a beach view – but has since been built out by taller hotels closer to the water. Accommodation in Perth isn’t cheap, and I left my run in…

I should probably know better: I’ve tried to talk about this issue before, and got into serious arguments. I was going to say ‘I don’t even know why this is controversial’ – but I guess that would be being disingenuous. I really do. Anyway, on the back of a Twitter conversation between two people I…

It’s certainly an interesting perspective: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/09/25/young-earth-creationism-is-no-better-than-any-other-form-of-malicious-gossip/ The author says it better than I can, so read the article, but the gist is that, in order to be a young earth creationist, it is necessary to believe that the vast majority of all scientists in the world are members of a vast, malevolent conspiracy, and to…

I’m sure everyone has experienced it – it used to be a dominant mode in schools. The teacher asks a question, and you give an answer that’s interesting and creative, and it gets rejected. It soon becomes obvious that the teacher had one specific answer in mind, and was not really asking the question as…

I’d posted something on Facebook about the caffeine cold turkey I mentioned here, and went to write ‘show coffee I’m not its bitch’. I ended up revising it to ‘show coffee I’m not its slave’. The former is closer to what I meant, and has a bit more rhetorical ‘zing’, but I do try to…

I have a headache. I’ve had a headache, of varying ferocity, since yesterday afternoon. It’ll probably be with me most of today, but hopefully subside after that. I realise that migraine sufferers have worse headaches for longer, more often, but I’m not posting to get sympathy for my headache. 😉 This is just a periodic…

It started out this morning. I told Suzie that I’m going to do a ‘water fast’ – no food or drinks other than water – just for a couple of days. I suspect I’ll say more about that later, but the point is that she said ‘You should put lemon juice in the water to…

If you haven’t yet seen the fun and insanely catchy video for South Korean pop star Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’… well, first, have you checked lately whether you have become a hermit in cave? And, secondly, there’s a link to it in this article anyway. So, I think it kinda adds some fun to the song…

Suzie and I share quite a few interests, but there are also quite large no-go areas for each other in terms of our media interests. In gaming, she likes strategy games, and usually casual games. Those ones that involve building an economy and juggling a dozen balls in the air at once. I just don’t…

The following question was posed on Facebook: There followed comments from about 350 people, some saying with great vigour and certainty that the answer is 2, others with equal or greater vigour and certainty that it’s 288. They quoted chapter and verse, and gave citations to learned sources on the order of operations in mathematics…

It’s one of the things I try to do. When someone makes a claim – but, more important and more difficult, when I make a claim, I try to check that it’s at least factually correct. There are things that are matters of opinion, but arguments about opinions are typically based on facts, and if…

(Including My Family) (OK, Enough with the parentheses already) So, sure, sometimes we have highbrow, high level discussions of theory and ideas. But sometimes it’s just silly banter, but still replete with ideas. I get people’s jokes and they get mine, and they make jokes that make me feel smarter… it’s all good. Here are…

P Z Myers has recently added Chris Clark as a co-blogger on Pharyngula, and Chris just posted this: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/09/16/californias-largest-lake-is-doomed/ Just a lovely piece of work, informing, educating and entertaining about a particular place and issue with a scope that includes the human and the geological.

…is to write a 500 word research proposal for my MPhil in Physics. A 500 word research proposal in education, I could whip out before the first coffee got cold beside the keyboard. But for this physics one, I need to read and understand a whole lot of papers on quantum laser stuff (technical term)…

I follow Amanda Palmer on Twitter, and will be getting her new album Real Soon Now(TM) (without ‘can’t afford it’ as an excuse, ‘cos it’s a ‘pay what you want’ release). This is a bit outside the usual ambit of my blog, but hopefully interesting… I found it so. Amanda is touring with a band…