If you can read this, Well done. Your literate and may pass

Finally got my final exam results in on friday.

 

Looks like the last five years haven't been a complete waste of time after all.

 

Managed to get myself a first class degree.

 

No idea how though.

 

Didn't even need to bribe anyone.

 

Now all I need to do is wait till the 4th July then I get to add some letters to the end of my name.

 

Hmm.

 

Craig John Dalzell MSci LPO.

 

I like it.

Sometimes you come across a speech which does nothing other than stop you in your tracks and force you to listen.

 

It can be inspiring, humbling, history making or simply able to tear down the paradigm within which you seclude yourself.

 

Sometimes it can be all of these.

 

Taken from his TV series Cosmos, this short video by Carl Sagan which acompanies an image of Earth taken by the Voyager 2 space probe from 4 billion miles away near Saturn shows us just how much we overestimate our importance in the universe and just how tenuous our grip on it is.

 

Carl. The world without you is dimmer for your absense.

Had a little panic today,

Tried to get into the Church forum for my daily dose of noodly wonderment (www.venganza.org/forum)
Site was down.
Main site redirected to one of those fun search page sites you get when you mistype a page.

 

Was the Church dead?
Had the Prophet cut and run with our stuff and things?
Had the evil Dictator Fuselini finally caught up with us?

Actually it just turned out that they were moving everything to a new server.

 

RAmen for that.

Lo Echo. I seek you, but do not know where to start.

            Echo                                                     Heart

Lo Echo. Where do you dwell, sweet maiden.

            Echo                                                     Eden

I must know, dear Echo. Are you as me? Lonely.

           Echo                                                      Only

Who then can reveal themselves to you? Save you.

           Echo                                                      You

I must see you. Be with you. How can you be found?

           Echo                                                      Sound

Apart from this stanza.

This poem

does

Not exist.

 

And never has.

Ok,

 

I'm kinda bored and have been spending a lot of time watching the latest political kafuffles.

Especially with the Scottish elections coming up in a couple of months.

 

Therefore I'm going to throw out a few controversial views I have right now.

 

Let me know if you agree or disagree.

 

Trident's Replacement - A Good Thing. Frankly we can't say right now that we will not need them in the 20 years it'll take to get the things designed, built and launched. I would like to see disarmement but I we really need absolutly everyone at the table and agreeing to it first.

 

Scottish Independence - A Bad Thing. We do well out of the Union. The SNP are not telling people about just how much money comes up over the border. The North Sea cannot pay for all that, maybe once it could, in the 70's perhaps. But the well is dry now. Theres also security issues, I can't see a closed border with strict movment controls being welcome yet if a disparity between immigration laws develops between Scotland and England will we see people sneaking across the lighter border?

 

Nuclear Fission Power - Not just a Good Thing, virtually the Only Thing. You want mass, constant power generation without CO2 emmission? you need nukes! You concerned about waste disposal. Fair enough, but remember that:

1. new metal cooled plants produce almost no waste (max half life of what it does produce is about 500 years, the same as your smoke detector!)

2. New plants cannot melt down, even if you want them to. A liquid sodium leak may be a fire hazard but no more than the plant which makes the sodium.

3. Rather than burying the waste and allowing it contaminate the water table, why not put it in an overground, easy access container which can easily be cleaned up when it leaks (operate on the assumption that a leak will happen sooner or later and you can accomadate for it rather than pretending it can't happen then hiding the accident)

4. Please ignore people who tell you that the cheap uranium ore will only last 50 years, it's true but the main cost in a reactor is the reactor not the fuel. expensive ores are fine, as is uranium extracted from seawater (The Japanese are moving to production on this later in the year) and Thorium is plentiful in soil (several hundred years worth at least)

 

Wind Power - A Bad Thing. The only reason these things go up is because palms have been greased, seriously. Denmark (The 'Worlds Success Story' as far as wind power has went is constanly having problems. Wind dies, they need to pay Germany to ship in power. Storm blows [Yes! Too MUCH Wind is a bad thing apparently!] they need to offload to Germany at crap rates or their grid explodes.

You want renewables? I'd reccomend solar panels with underlying water heating, it won't produce a huge amount of power but you'd be surprised at how much it does make (In Scotland, on a sunny day you'll get about 100W/m^2) or go for geothermal. You only need to go down a few metres to get enough heat to par boil everyone in your house.

 

Housing Insulation Standards -  A Bad Thing. at least, they currently are. Get that fixed. Builders will always build to the minmum possible standard to maximise profits, it only costs a couple of 10's of k to get a house to almost self sufficient standards if you are building if like that (double the cost, minimum. if you want to retrofit). and none of this 'slowly increasing targets so that by 20 umphty it might get there. just jack the standards up in one go with a couple years lead time to give the designers a sporting chance. Shut down any company that fails to comply.

 

Hybrid Cars - A Bad Thing, kindof. Good idea but being hijacked by marketers more than anything else. what we really need is a full Hydrogen economy, unfortuantly that isn't really viable untill we build a few more nuke plants and can afford to stick whacking great electrodes into the sea to mine it. You can kill another bird with the distribution of hydrogen too. A huge loss in power distribution comes in line resistance. Line resistance goes to zero if you use superconductors. Superconducters need cooling to at least -170C though. Hydrogen is efficiently transported in liquid form. Liquid Hydrogen has a temperature of -259C. Both are coming from your powerplant therefore both will likely be running along the same path anyway. Problem more than solved.

In the mean time however you can do your bit by hooking your solar panels to a rain bucket.

 

Again, let me know your thoughts on these and any other issues you can think of. I'm off to watch Newsnight.

 

Apparantly a huge chunk of the Atlantic seafloor has disappeared leaving several thousand square kilometres of mantle exposed.

 

My reactions are jumping between Cool! to WTF? Really, I'm pretty perplexed.

 

Luckily theres an expedition heading out now to investigate.

 

My guess is that they'll find a colony of Mi-Go and then everyone will know that Lovecraft was right.

 

Either that or the Big Guy wanted to kick off Armageddon and tried to nuke the middle east but, as he is getting a bit short sighted in his old age, he missed.

 

Better luck next time.

Word reaches me that Director of such films as Terminator and Titanic, James Cameron will be holding a press conference this afternoon and will announce the discovery of ten coffins found under a construction site in Jerusalem 20 odd years ago.

 

The inscriptions on them have only just been translated and apparently read:

 Jesua, son of Joseph, Mary, Mary, Mathew, Jofa and Judah, son of Jesua.

 

The last one seems especially interesting, although the fact that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (on the site of Jesus' other 'empty' tomb) lies only a few miles from the discovery site.

 

It has been reported that DNA tests are being carried out and I'm fairly certain that a C-14 test will be performed as well (and will likely provide better data for obvious reasons)

 

Of course, I imagine that this discovery, if fake or incorrect, will be rapidly denounced and forgotten. And if true the results of the testing will be denounced as unreliable or ambiguous (after all, all those names were common at that time) and forgotten.

 

After all, we can't have something as trivial as Jesus not actually being resurrected affect the followers faith can we?

 

I'll post something more once I've seen the press conference (I'm not sure when it is exactly) but thoughts are, as always, welcomed.

Woo!

 

It's finally done.

 

The culmination of 5 years study, 1 and a half years research and about three months of writing and editing has been rendered down into 70 pages of... well, I can only hope it's not guff.

 

I'll let you be the judge though.

 

 

I'll ask around the uni concerning copyright information and if it turns out that I can do it I'll post it here directly.

 

Until then consider this piece copyrighted with myself identified as the author.

 

I grant you the right to download, copy and share the document as long as it is not for profit (if, you wish to sell this for profit, contact me and We'll work out a fair royalty cut :P) and the document is unmodified.

 

 

Anyway, para-legal guff aside. download the thing here

 

Thanks Simon, I know about the Creative Commons License. I did have a few misgivings about it though, mind you, I is basically what I've just said.

 

Therefore I'm gonna invoke it,

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.5 UK: Scotland License.

 

P.S. the reason for the name is  the full version is almost 17Mb. compressing it brings it down to about 4Mb.

I know people who do derive pleasure from being squashed. I'm not one of them. :P

Time for a little healthy confession people!

 

I'd like to hear the stories of when you felt the pull of the weasel.

 

Yes, You heard me right!

 

These are the times when you feel tempted to do something slightly criminal, then despite your misgivings, do it. Then feel really, really guilty.

 

Perhaps you pick up a wallet or purse and find money in it.

 

Do you hand it in?

Do you take the money first, then hand it in?

Perhaps even just a little 'reward' or 'finders fee'?

 

Do you expect a reward when you give it back to the owner? or even just get a bit angry when you don't get one.

 

 

Have you been on the other side of the weasels pull perhaps?

And, to continue the example, had a wallet handed back. did you give a reward or find some or all of the money missing?

 

Go on. Tell Mr Crag.

It'll be good for you.

Found these.

 

Auto updating world sales of the next gen consoles.

 

Go Wii!

 

Not that I'm biased. Or racialist.

 

Remember though that the X-Box has had an extra year to get sales and that the PS3 hasn't hit Europe yet.

 

Things could change. Keep an eye on it (though not while you're playing your Wii, you'll break something)

 

It's not often that an advert makes you burst out laughing even when the joke was certainly not implied.

 

This morning, two came along.

 

The first came from a christmas savings scheme which claimed:

 

"Save with the UKs no. 1 scheme"

 

Perhaps the number 1 status is due less to fantastic comapny management and more to do with the spectacular failure of another certain company not so long ago?  I could of course be wrong, but it makes you think.

 

Second came from a kids breakfast cereal ad.

 

"Robot food police are destroying all the food in the world which has too many additives, colourings and E-numbers. Luckily, our cereal is so healthy that the robots all explode. The World Is Saved! YAY!"

 

Think about that for a moment.

 

Our Cereal has let kids everywhere eat unhealthy food again.

 

A Good Thing?

It must be. It was on TV.

 

 

On another note. Exams are done, could've been worse, could've been better.

Thesis Pending.

Fun Times ahead.

 

 

Still waiting on my Russian Bride to come in, If her photo is anything to go by Olga should be a very charming person.

God is trying to send us a message.

 

First. James Brown dies.

 

Second. Gerald Ford Dies.

 

Third. Saddam Hussein Dies.

 

But what is the message?

 

World leaders who like weird music are evil?

Beware false idols?

 

No, It's much simpler than that.

 

Brown. Ford. Saddam.

 

God wants everyone to buy a Brown Ford Sedan.

 

Did I mention he was dyslexic?

 

I've often been told that one day I'll either save or destroy the world.

 

Seeing as the latter is just way more fun I've made my new years resolution early.

 

I vow to memorise this list of handy hints and tips.

 

We seek to draw lines,

when spheres have ne'er end not start. 

Janus looks both ways.

With all the petty violence, brinkmanship and blatent disregard for our own well being.

 

I think we need to take a good, hard look at our role in the universe.

 

 

Welcome to Earth. Our Home.

 

It feels big and important, So big and important in fact that it doesn't even seem round to us on the ground.

 

 

 

From one of our neighbours though it seems quite titchy.

 

 

Never mind. Our sun is nice and big. Surely it'll get noticed.

 

 

Well, I think I can see it anyway.... nope, that was a midge on the screen.

 

Still, We know we have the bestest Galaxy. Don't we?

 

 

 

Yeah, ok. Theres a few around. but surely not that many?

 

 

 And there you have it.

We are not in the centre of anything.

We aren't even a candle in the void.

to paraphrase Carl Sagan.

 

If There isn't any other life out there...It's an awful waste of space.

 

So lets get our childish bickering over with and get out there and find it.

 

or at least lets get a few eggs out of the basket in case the Big Rock comes our way and Bruce is on holiday.

 

 

 

I think Douglas Adams would have liked this.

 

Life Imitating Art Indeed!

 

 

With storm clouds brewing,

Stood calm in the centres eye.

By the Gods it's cold!

That'll be the sound of me surviving yet another year.

 

Only 38 more to go, 23 if I do go ahead and find that nice high thing with the hard thing below it.

 

 

Woo!

I wish I had found this before the US Congress Elections, I could have made a better comment.

 

All I can say is this.

 

 

If any political party claims "If You Vote For Those Guys, Black Men Will Rape Your Daughter!"

Don't just avoid voting for them, I'd have the guy who gave you the flier arrested and charged with incitment to commit sex crimes. maybe even get him on GBH and child crimes as well if your kid is young enough.

 

Seriously, just because you are a politician can't give you the right to say things on a public stage that would get you locked up if you said them in the pub.

 

 

Have yourself a random quote taken from a forum board somewhere out there, courtesy of FSTDT.

 

You'll get a selection of 10 quotes everytime you refresh. The choice of ten updates daily.

Last night was fun.

 

Lordi played the Carling Acadamy as part of their tour "Bringing Back the Balls to Rock".

 

Their supporting act, Turisas, Didn't particularly impress me. I was probably the acoustics, they sound a lot better on their myspace site but on stage the vocals were muffled and blurred and the instrumentation suffered due to distortion and saturation in the amps.

 

Lordi however rocked. They certainly made an excellent stage presence and their use of their trademark pyrotechnics had the bar staff literally diving for cover, as well as very nearly popping Marks eardrums.

 

My only panic with the night was that morning when Raymond sprung on me that he had to pull out, a few frantic requests told me that all my mates had plans. I did however get Scott to get in touch with Baker who phoned one of his mates who was in the area but couldn't get tickets (he'd only just heard of the gig) and flogged it on to him.

 

Got me a few photos of varying success.

 

Continuing the current theme.

Two great heros of mine get together.

 

Illusionist, outspoken atheist and "counter-BS'er" Penn Jillette interviews Richard Dawkins on his radio show.

 

 

Very entertaining though it clocks in at 45min so make sure you've got a nice warm cup of hot chocolate to cuddle into as you listen.

 

Have fun and let me know what you think.