They can't be serious!

Uh-oh...

Then again, it may just be that Al-Qaeda see the potential in something that can make a black hole to swallow the world.

Right.

Sarah deposited at university today (Canterbury Christchurch), with everything but the kitchen sink. Education. Ben starts at Guildford College tomorrow. Media Studies.

OK, London meeting. Based on previous responses, if it's to be a weekend, it'll have to be Sunday October 4th (sorry to get my dates and days confused before).

I think the alternative is a midweek afternoon for those who can make it, joining Neil in the evening - Catherine, Elizabeth, do you have days free? We'd probably aim for an early afternoon start, bumble around sightseeing, then eat in the evening. We can't do this Friday (25th) or Oct 1st or 6th 8th¹, but otherwise pretty much any weekday between now and Oct 9th is a possibility.

1 ETA - Now meeting James on the 8th not the 6th.

kelleyscorpio will be here from tomorrow for just over a month.

Anyone free (and willing) for a get-together?

OK.

That clip's pretty good all the way through, but he has a moment of greatness at about 3 minutes in. The audience in the Town Hall clip he's showing are booing the suggestion that they should turn off the TV when Glenn Beck comes on, and at the same time Stewart's own audience are cheering it.

Stewart doesn't hesitate to point this out, and you see him pondering whether his own audience is any better than the town hallers. Good for him.

Yeah, baby, we're baaack!

Let the tax-evaders on the Potomac tremble, for they will be next.

Yeah. What Ezra says.

Meanwhile, the top story on the BBC (British) website today is, um, US healthcare reform. Well, no. It's the impact here of the nitwitted dumbitude of the debate there, mediated through our own nitwit.

So now we have our Conservatives (who do not hesitate to deride 'socialism') rushing to defend what Americans would call 'socialized medicine' against the attacks of delusionists who for some reason are called 'conservatives' in America.

Also, all these people who just think Obama is scary? Yes, it may well be race; I'm not qualified to tell. But I can't help noticing that, when Obama is asked a question, you can see some sort of weird shit going on behind his eyes for a moment before he answers. I think that's what frightens people. That's just not natural.

My morans icon is going to get tired, I see. You'll notice that the future health of Americans was completely irrelevant to anything in this post; we might as well have been discussing Obama's leprechaun policy for all the difference it makes.

Separate post on Jon Stewart when I can review the video.

Apparently I'm the 11,594,621,014th person to see a lucky banner.

Since there's only 6 billion or so people in the world, I'm a bit behind, but the luck must be building into a ball of unstoppable serendipity for humankind.

Ahaha.

"B: So now you're saying that Gov. Palin is a whackjob on par with a crazy neighbor who believes in aliens.

A: No, I'm saying she's a whackjob on par with a crazy neighbor who doesn't really believe in aliens, but goes around telling everybody he does."

This is seven years old, but still pretty salient (the only heresy on the internet is to talk about something more than two weeks old).

It's only a matter of time, though, before the GOP touts this as a virtue, because to be democratic has connotations of being Democratic.

Here's a simulation (well, the output thereof) of merging spiral galaxies.

H/t http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23IAU

Ah, invective, an almost forgotten art. About a minute in. The pause before the applause shows it's deserved.

Date:	2009-08-03 21:07
Subject:	vofgodalming
Security:	Public
Mood:	grumpy

Well, I've finally done it: I have entered the Twitspace. Not because I particularly want to, but because some of the interesting people I read are starting to put their stuff there, too.

Of course, this means that Twitter has now officially passed out the other side of mainstream from cool, and is tweetering on the brink like Myspace or Alta Vista.

The funny thing is, Twitter might actually work for me. Like, all I had to say about Gatesgate or whatever it's called is that Obama had to apologise for being uppity, as usual. Every time the man says something sensible, there he is two days later, shambling sheepishly up to the microphone. Somehow LJ doesn't work for that. But no doubt I'll spend five hours working out how to compress something to 140 characters.

Anyway, if you're a twit too (and you aren't David Cameron) feel free to comment and I'll follow you.

Took the kids to the movie last weekend.

I enjoyed it, but Amy's right: Dumbledore was apparently going round locating and destroying evil Voldemort artefacts without knowing what they were, until Slughorn passed his memory to Harry - WTF?

I can see why they had the attack on the Burrow - it lends solidity (within cinematic convention) to the idea that Harry is developing a relationship with Ginny. It doesn't do very *much* to that end, but that's JKR's fault, not the movie's. In real life you can have partners who have very little to do with each others life work, and that seems to work (though I don't think JKR is going that way with H/G); in action movie world the hero and the girl have to share the action. Props to JKR for avoiding the cliche (I just reread Deathly Hallows and noticed that when Ginny is in a life-threatening situation at the end - the classic male hero's cue - Harry is physically knocked aside by Molly coming to the rescue¹. In JKR's world it really is the mothers who make it go round.), but she doesn't put anything in its place, so it's not surprising the movie uses standard filler to plug the gap.

Interestingly, Ben's biggest criticism was that they omitted the battle at the end: he wanted the big showdown with all the students on Felix Felicis. Oh, well.

If anyone's interested, Michael Bérubé, of all people, wrote a review.

1. And, of course, Ginny is out there fighting, not swooning.

Ethan Siegel confirms something I'd long suspected about microwaving frozen food.

Check out his series about Hubble in the last few days, too. I like his blog, despite his photo.

In my experience, it's much better to run the unopened pot or packet under the hot tap to get the defrosting going than to microwave directly. (Getting the frozen food out hours before is in theory good, too, but that involves planning, which defeats the whole idea of freezer + microwave, let alone the rest of life today.)

...the world starts pointing the finger:

"It's those dirty pigs!"

"No, no, it's those dirty Mexicans!"

Looks like we should call it 'Smithfield flu'.

Though given that it must have formed in a creature part-man, part-pig, and part-chicken, a number of prominent personalities around the world spring to mind as possible donors of the eponym...

ETA: I overheard colleagues this afternoon talking about how someone wasn't too pleased at being sent home. I asked why he'd been sent home: because he'd just got back from holiday in Mexico and had been merrily showing people his holiday snaps. Heigh ho.

Nice summaries of some recent developments available from the DPS. I find that press releases of the latest discoveries give little sense of perspective: you can't tell what's generally accepted or what counts as a significant advance if it is accepted.

H/t The Martian Chronicles.

I find this intriguing.

Yes, these people are dingbats and know-nothings, but I'm inclined to blame the system, because they have no incentive to be sane: quite how it is that 'Government of the people, by the people, for the people' reduces to Ben Nelson micro-managing the country is a mystery to me, but that seems to be how it is. Nobody else matters, so they might as well fiddle while the world burns.

Not a lot to say (I mean, how hard can it be?), so I'll leave it to Fred, Paul, Michael (background), and Samantha.

It really is tobacco all over again.

Conservatives discover slash fiction:

"That there is considerable uncomfortability, at least on the right, with the handshake. With I think the warm embrace between Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez, getting more disturbing than just shaking hands. He seemed to actually be enjoying it."

There's a bit of awkwardness in the language there, but with practice they'll have no trouble making stuff up fluently- oh, wait a minute...

ETA: Jon Stewart (or his scriptwriters) had the same idea.