Mssv

I never knew that Goosnargh was actually a real world until I read about ‘Goosnargh chicken’ in the Sunday Times today. I blame Douglas Adams in So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish:
‘Goosnargh,’ said Ford Prefect, which was a special Betelgeusian word he used when he knew he should say something but didn’t know […]

Some excellent news - it seems that Mary Doria Russell’s novel The Sparrow is on track to being made as a movie. This is particularly good news because the studio concerned appears to actually understand the novel, as opposed to Universal, who originally optioned the screenplay and were going to hack it to pieces.

Tonight I saw the planet Mars with my own eyes.
We’ve all been hearing that Mars is as close as it will be to Earth for the next sixty thousand years. Unfortunately, since I live in the UK I haven’t really had the opportunity to look for Mars since our skies have been swathed in cloud […]

DataGlyphs - a ‘robust and unobtrusive method of embedding computer-readable data on surfaces such as paper, labels, plastic, glass, or metal’ by Xerox Parc. Dataglyphs use a pattern of forward and backward slashes to represent ones and zeroes, and at 600 dpi you can get up to 1kb per square inch of printed material. Clever […]

A lot of people are getting angry and scared about new mobile phone masts being erected in their local areas; the vast majority of these masts are for 3G operations, which have a smaller coverage area than current mobile phone masts.
People don’t like the masts because they think they might be harmful to their health. […]

Why Kim Stanley Robinson loves the science of memory

Once again we are at that special time of year when the GCSE and A-Level results are announced for secondary school students here in the UK. There’s almost no point reading the newspapers since they always run the same stories. If the results for an exam improve, that’s because it’s getting easier. If they get […]

On Johnny Depp becoming the front-runner for Willy Wonka in Tim Burton’s new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie (from TrekToday forum):
Tim Burton?
Roald Dahl?
C’mon folks, this is a match made in heaven. I’m looking forward to it. Tim Burton is probably my favorite director. Although I’d prefer Christopher Walken to Johnny Depp. Just imagine…
“You…fat boy…what […]

Saw a great notice at the gym today:
Q: Why isn’t there a weight scale available here?
A: We did use to have a scale, however, customers didn’t believe it. We advise that you buy a set of scales for your personal use at home instead.

While reading a thread about PowerPoint on MetaFilter, I remembered something a friend said about me last weekend. She was a fellow student in my neuroscience course this year, and she said, “You could always tell whether a lecture or workshop was going to be any good by watching whether Adrian fell asleep in the […]