Seeking a Little Truth

noreply@blogger.com (CyberKitten) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 21:26:00 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (CyberKitten) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:10:00 +0000

Thinking About: My Childhood

I may have mentioned before that I have few memories of my early years. In fact I can remember very little of my life before I reached puberty. It crossed my mind, at least for a while, that maybe I had suffered some kind of abuse and that I had blocked out whole chunks of my early life because I really didn’t want to remember them. On further reflection I decided that I simply wasn’t paying that much attention to things happening around me.

My earliest memory was I think my first day at school so I must have been 4 or 5. It’s only the briefest of things but it does seem very vivid even today. I can only imagine that I must have literally sleep-walked through the first 4 years of my life and only had the briefest of awakenings after that until I had enough testosterone in my bloodstream to keep my brain active enough to record events in my day-to-day existence. I certainly remember a number of incidents in the 7-10 year age range including almost being killed by a speeding car. That’s the kind of thing you tend to remember long after the event itself. I also had my first encounters with girls around then so things got a little more vivid for me.

It was only really after I started High school at age 11 that I started laying down regular memories. I know that I had a huge crush on the girl next door that, fortunately, never really went anywhere. I really dodged a bullet there. I remember being bullied early on but that passed as the bullies and I went our separate ways. I remember good friends and good times and the girls I wanted who didn’t want me. It was all very teen angst cliché territory but it was intense enough to lay down some pretty solid memories.

Maybe that’s my early years in a nutshell – nothing much actually happened, at least anything much worth remembering. Maybe I was just a happy little soul who went through each day doing basic animal things like eating, shitting and sleeping without a care (or thought) to interrupt things. Thinking back on it maybe it was simply the case that there was nothing that bad to remember. OK, maybe there was nothing that good to remember either but I’d take that over a violent or abusive childhood any day!

I have some very early photographs of me and my brother that must have been taken in the early 1960’s. I look really cute in shorts with my cropped blond hair. I have no recollection of the snaps being taken or little idea of where they were taken. They look like a park of some kind but which one I’ll probably never know. It does feel kind of odd not having, or at least remembering, your roots. Maybe that explains why I’m never planning on ever moving back to the place of my birth (which really shocked someone I chatted to at the wedding I went to recently). It’s because I have no memory of growing up there. Maybe that explains why I’m pretty happy living anywhere and why I hardly ever feel homesick. Maybe without the clutter of early childhood memories I have more room for interesting stuff. If only I can find some interesting stuff to remember……

noreply@blogger.com (CyberKitten) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 09:25:00 +0000

Cartoon Time.

noreply@blogger.com (CyberKitten) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 15:40:00 +0000

Icy moon's lakes brim with hearty soup for life

by David Shiga for New Scientist

23 November 2009

Saturn's frigid moon Titan may be friendlier to life than previously thought. New calculations suggest Titan's hydrocarbon lakes are loaded with acetylene, a chemical some scientists say could serve as food for cold-resistant organisms. At about -180 °Celsius, Titan's surface is far too cold for liquid water. But two pairs of scientists proposed in 2005 that alien organisms might live instead in bodies of liquid hydrocarbons on the frigid moon. They suggested such organisms could eat acetylene that falls to the surface after forming in the atmosphere, combining it with hydrogen to gain energy. Since then, Cassini has spotted dozens of lakes on Titan's surface, thought to be made of a mixture of liquid ethane and methane. But since no probe has directly sampled them, no one knows how much acetylene they might contain. An estimate made in 1989 suggested bodies of liquid hydrocarbons on Titan would contain a few parts in 10,000 of acetylene.

But an updated estimate based on data from the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn now suggests the lakes contain much more food for any hungry alien life-forms that might be present. The new calculations were made by a team of scientists led by Daniel Cordier of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Renne, France. Data from the Cassini spacecraft and the Huygens probe, which parachuted to Titan's surface in 2005, helped Cordier's team re-calculate the lakes' likely composition. This depends on factors like a lake's temperature, which affects how easily chemicals will dissolve in it, and the rate various chemicals are produced in the atmosphere and rain onto the surface. The team found that acetylene would be hundreds of times as abundant as the previous estimate, making up one part in 100 of the lake's content. "Having about a per cent of acetylene is potentially interesting from the life point of view," says team member Jonathan Lunine of the University of Arizona in Tucson. The idea of acetylene-eating organisms on Titan is "highly speculative" but intriguing, he says.

"I think the results are very exciting and further support the possibility for life on Titan," says Dirk Schulze-Makuch of Washington State University in Pullman, one of the scientists who proposed the possibility of acetylene-eating life in 2005. "Titan should be one of the two top targets for future astrobiology missions, the other being Mars." But Tetsuya Tokano, a Titan researcher at the University of Cologne in Germany, says the exact amount of acetylene may be less important than other properties of the lakes that remain unknown, such as the existence of currents to keep them well-mixed. Tokano pointed out in a recent study that without mixing, hydrogen and acetylene would stay in separate layers of the lakes, limiting reactions between them that might otherwise power exotic organisms.

[It does continue to amuse me that theists in particular seem to pour scorn on the idea that life could have evolved independently on other worlds. Although we have no hard evidence of this, the amount of circumstantial evidence and well founded speculation continues to grow. It seems increasingly likely that life exists somewhere other than on Earth and that it emerged and evolved there independently of this world. Once this is firmly established I think that many theists will have to examine their belief in unique creation. How they will incorporate alien life into their belief systems I cannot even began to speculate on but I do suspect that when we do find life elsewhere it will yet again undermine our unique place in the universe and maybe, just maybe, make us a little more humble.]

noreply@blogger.com (CyberKitten) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 17:46:00 +0000

Poster Time.

noreply@blogger.com (CyberKitten) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 21:15:00 +0000

Just Finished Reading: Quantum Theory – A Very Short Introduction by John Polkinghome

As part of my ongoing project to both widen and deepen my knowledge base I’ve been buying a selection of the ever growing list of VSI books. This is my first of the new batch – basically anything beyond the VSI philosophy books I’ve been working my way through until now.

I’ve had more than a passing interest in the very weird world of the Quantum for some time but haven’t managed to finish more than a few books on the subject. As I don’t really have that much of a background in the sciences it can be a little difficult getting into subjects like this – especially when even a half page of mathematical equations reduces my brain to mush. Thankfully there were only a few pages of professor Polkinghome’s book that required any math at all. Those I must admit I did pretty much skim over. The rest was math free and readable enough to keep me plugging away at the strangeness to begin to see some sort of comprehension dawning. I’ve still got a long way to go to get a real handle on this stuff but I think this book helped me to take a few baby steps in the right direction. Quantum physics, I think, holds the potential answers to some of the very big questions I see asked on the Web. I think it might answer how the Universe began. It might even say something about the origin of life and might explain some aspects of consciousness. But as this book quite clearly spelled out, we have a long way to go before we truly understand Quantum reality. Hopefully I’ll come across a simple book explaining the results when we finally do understand it! More VSI to come and more quantum mind stretching….

noreply@blogger.com (CyberKitten) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:07:00 +0000

Pulp Fiction.

noreply@blogger.com (CyberKitten) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 18:09:00 +0000

Cartoon Time.

noreply@blogger.com (CyberKitten) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:23:00 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (CyberKitten) — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:29:00 +0000

My Favourite Movies: The Magnificent Seven

My love of Westerns can easily be traced back to my father who was a huge fan of the genre. This particular example is, in my opinion, one of the best of its type. Based on the Japanese classic The Seven Samurai it tells to story of an oppressed Mexican village who seek help from American gunfighters down on their luck. Fortune is with them when they hire Chris – played iconically by Yul Brynner – to find the men they need. Each of the six additional gunfighters are introduced in cameo scenes that give an insight into their character as well as their character flaws. They are all, including Brynner himself, lost souls who have spent their lives being the best at what they do (with the noted exception of the youngest member Chico) that of killing rather than being killed. Now, as guns for hire, they have the opportunity to reflect on their profession and wait for their opportunity to redeem a part of their humanity buried under years of brutality.

The reason I think that this movie has stood the test of time and remained one of my favourite films is that it is much more that a simple cowboy film. It’s a film about life choices, it’s about regrets and above all else it’s about honour. The two main characters – played by Brynner and McQueen (pictured above) - are, despite their backgrounds, men steeped in ideals of honour. Despite the fact that they are being paid hardly anything at all they put their lives on the line and even return to the fight because of their agreement with the peasants. This is the fact that so confounds the bandit leader played by Eli Wallach because he is a man singularly without any idea of honour – as an aside I was most impressed by the fact that when asked Chris failed to answer the question why they came back, underlying the fact that Wallach should have known.

For years after seeing this film I simply wanted to be the Yul Brynner character. I guess in some way he became one of my childhood heroes – for reasons I’m only now beginning to understand. It obviously struck a chord with other people too when ‘Chris’ was resurrected in robot form – as an unstoppable killer – in the classic 70’s Sci-Fi Westworld. As a standard western The Magnificent Seven is a classic of its type but, digging just a little deeper, it is also much more than that. Watched with a critical eye it’s about the choice of virtue over vice, good over evil. It’s just so much more than a cowboy film.

noreply@blogger.com (CyberKitten) — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 10:08:00 +0000

Cartoon Time.

noreply@blogger.com (CyberKitten) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 16:22:00 +0000

The Moral Dead Zone

by Robert C. Koehler for Common Wonders

Thursday, January 15, 2009

"Mr. Ban said too many people had died and there had been too much civilian suffering." That almost bears repeating, but I won't because I don't believe it. Too many? In the moral dead zone of the human heart, perennially justified as "war" (evoking honor, triumph, glory), there's no such thing as too much suffering. There's no bleeding child or shattered family or contaminated water supply that can't be overlooked in the name of some great goal or strategic advantage, or converted to fodder for the next round of hatred, revenge and arms purchase. Ban Ki-Moon, the U.N. secretary general, about to embark on a peace and diplomacy tour of the Middle East, was speaking, of course, about the hellish conditions in the Gaza Strip, pummeled by Israel with modern weaponry and Old Testament fury for the last three weeks. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the coalition government. Close to a thousand have died. Many more thousands have been injured or displaced. Too many?

No. Not even close. If too many had died - if hell had reached its capacity, or some other limit had at last been achieved - something would change. The collective enterprise of human violence would convulse and start malfunctioning. Fear, perhaps, would mutate into courage, anger into forgiveness, hatred into love. Or at least we would start looking at what we're doing . . . how do I say this? With evolved compassion? With an understanding, with a determination to survive, we now disdain and mock? Israel's invasion of Gaza is the world's spotlight war right now, reaping headlines, global censure, a special endorsement from the U.S. Congress and, apparently, an audiotape hiss from Osama bin Laden, possibly from beyond the grave. What all of these reactions do, it seems to me, is confer an unwarranted special status on the war, as though it were isolated, without a context any deeper than its accompanying propaganda. This forces us to try to understand the war strictly on its own terms - who started it? who's the bad guy? who's innocent? - rather than as an occurrence within a larger, dysfunctional system as deep as human history and as wide as planetary politics.

This war, and the nine or 10 other armed conflicts officially classified as wars that are going on right now - including wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (4 million dead since 1997), Darfur-Sudan (500,000 dead since 2003), Somalia (400,000 dead since 1988), Sri Lanka (80,000 dead since 1983), and of course Iraq (possibly a million or more dead) and Afghanistan (35,000 dead) - whatever they are on their own terms, are also symptoms of a human syndrome of self-destruction. So are the local conflicts on city streets and other jungles that are too small to be called wars. So are the horrific aftermaths of conflicts that have officially ended, including poisoned environments, the ruined health of participants and bystanders, unexploded mines and bombs, the psycho-spiritual traumas that never go away, and the grievances that fester from generation to generation. What links them in an immediate way is the global arms industry, as corrupt as it is invisible, which does a trillion dollars worth of business annually worldwide, is crucial to every major economy and is therefore served, either with overt collusion or discreet silence, by governments and the mass media. But the problem is bigger than mere greed. The business of war, like war itself, defies rational control and containment because it is fed by the paradox of human fear. As we arm to protect ourselves and fight back, our enemy also arms, and thus is born, over and over again, the cycle of escalation, from which the cynical can profit handsomely. The industry of war is self-perpetuating. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that, as Anup Shah noted recently in an essay on the arms industry for GlobalIssues.org, "The top five countries profiting from the arms trade are the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council: the U.S.A., U.K., France, Russia and China." Thus world peace - at least the sort of peace that most of us envision, which is sustained by international cooperation and universal disarmament rather than subjugation and the capacity for hair-trigger retaliation - would challenge the status quo of the world's largest economies, as they have come to constitute themselves.

As long as we stay trapped in the paradox of fear, we can't even use our intelligence to save ourselves. We have employed it to serve only our self-destruction. The ultimate paradox is that the military industrial complex, that highest of high-tech human endeavors, about which Dwight Eisenhower sounded the alarm nearly half a century ago, is wedded to the most primitive of human emotions. We have become trapped in our collective reptile brain. Only if we disarm our intelligence do we have a chance to find wisdom. And only wisdom can save us.

[Enough said, I think.]

noreply@blogger.com (CyberKitten) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 17:12:00 +0000

Poster Time.

noreply@blogger.com (CyberKitten) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 21:23:00 +0000

Just Finished Reading: Faith in the Age of Reason by Jonathan Hill

This little volume has been sitting on one of my shelf units for some time now. I picked it up a few weeks ago for a change of pace. On reading the blurb I almost put it back unread when I discovered that it was part of a series of books on key figures and periods in Christian History. But I thought, what the heck, and gave it a go.

It actually turned out to be a pretty good overview of the period known as the Age of Reason – which the author dates from 1648 – 1789. I had assumed, wrongly it turned out, that the book would be viewing the period from a Christian perspective. What it actually did, which (as far as I can recall) none of my previous history books on the period have done, is to weave religious happenings into the otherwise secular story of that period. Some of the names I recognised: Luther, Calvin and so on… Many, though, I did not. I did however recognise most of the Enlightenment scholars mentioned. Some of the streams of Christianity I recognised too – though again many I did not. What impressed me most about this little book is its even-handedness. I was expecting it to be either overly critical of Enlightenment advances in thought or overly sympathetic to the Christian responses but the author managed throughout to steer a middle course pointing out the strengths and the weaknesses of both sides. I actually learnt quite a lot about the period that is, from my reading to date, either ignored or side-lined. I certainly have a more rounded opinion of the period and I shall delve continue to into it in future. Overall this was a pretty good introduction to the intellectual life of a fascinating period in European history.

noreply@blogger.com (CyberKitten) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:01:00 +0000

Pulp Fiction.

noreply@blogger.com (CyberKitten) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:11:00 +0000

Cartoon Time.

noreply@blogger.com (CyberKitten) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:44:00 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (CyberKitten) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:43:00 +0000

Thinking About: Beer

I’ve never been what you could call a big drinker. Even in my drinking years at University I could never really keep up with the big boys and, thankfully, quickly stopped trying to. By the end of my degree I could certainly ‘down a few’ without appreciable signs of wear and tear but, paradoxically, that was half the problem - actually getting off-my-face drunk was starting to cost a fortune. Strangely I never really liked drinking to excess that much. Partially because I just couldn’t see the point – oh, it was fun for a while but only for a short while – partially because I’ve never really liked pubs (they’re much better now after the nationwide smoking ban) and I’ve always hated throwing up. Added to that was the horrible realisation that as I got older – leaving University at 26 – my hangovers where getting progressively worse. Sticking mainly to vodka helped but still the day after the night before became an increasing write-off.

The opportunity to cut back arrived after graduation – followed by a period of unemployment. Being on the dole meant that I had a simple choice – eat or drink. I chose to eat. It quickly dawned on me that I actually didn’t miss the booze and quite happily cut back almost to nothing. Getting a job in London didn’t change that very much. I was living a 30 minute train journey away from where I worked so any drinking sessions with the guys after we clocked off were normally short-lived. When I moved here things changed a little bit. I had a few close friends in the city and they were fairly big drinkers – at least in their youth. So I had increasing opportunities to get back into bad habits. Admittedly my alcohol intake did increase but only ever episodically and I rarely got myself into hang-over territory. I discovered what my limit was and, through diligence and some practice, refined my drinking behaviour to a point where I could maintain a merry state without tipping over to being drunk and disorderly. For a while there if I wasn’t drinking shorts – vodka still being my favourite along with gin – I tended to drink Bud. It was light enough so I wouldn’t get drunk (or merry) too quickly and I didn’t spend half my night in the toilet. One night that all changed when I was re-introduced to real ale. I have never looked back.

My first introduction to proper beer was, of course, in my University years when one of the guys introduced me to the delightful Theakston’s Old Peculiar (or OP as it’s normally called). This lovely dark beer is a favourite memory of mine from that period. Needless to say I have started drinking it again down here. As my appreciation of ale grew I made a point of trying out the local ales wherever I went. My preference though was always for dark beer – the darker the better. Indeed one of the best pints I’ve had in recent memory was on a trip – my only so far – to the US. We were in San Francisco on the way back home from Australia and found ourselves in a micro-brewery run by the San Francisco Brewing Company. It was their 14th Anniversary so we felt that it would’ve been rude not to stop for one or two. We ended up staying for several hours and getting very drunk indeed. But it was beautiful beer and left me the next day without a trace of hang-over. It was a very pleasant way to end a great holiday.

Just a few weeks ago I discovered a new favourite ale called Old Tom (I actually clocked it because it had a picture of a cat on the front – sad I know) which turned out to be a lovely dark beer with a deceptive kick – which really shouldn’t have surprised me being 8.5% proof which is double the alcohol content of my other favourite dark beer – Guinness. Beer may not exactly be my life but I think it’s going to be a (small) part of my life at least into the near future. Apparently it’s good for my heart and anyway I like the taste.

noreply@blogger.com (CyberKitten) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 10:42:00 +0000

Cartoon Time.

noreply@blogger.com (CyberKitten) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:37:00 +0000

Found: first amino acid on a comet

by Maggie McKee for New Scientist

17 August 2009

An amino acid has been found on a comet for the first time, a new analysis of samples from NASA's Stardust mission reveals. The discovery confirms that some of the building blocks of life were delivered to the early Earth from space. Amino acids are crucial to life because they form the basis of proteins, the molecules that run cells. The acids form when organic, carbon-containing compounds and water are zapped with a source of energy, such as photons – a process that can take place on Earth or in space.

Previously, researchers have found amino acids in space rocks that fell to Earth as meteorites, and tentative evidence for the compounds has been detected in interstellar space. Now, an amino acid called glycine has been definitively traced to an icy comet for the first time. "It's not necessarily surprising, but it's very satisfying to find it there because it hasn't been observed before," says Jamie Elsila of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, lead author of the new study. "It's been looked for [on comets] spectroscopically with telescopes but the content seems so low you can't see it that way."

Comets and asteroids are thought to have bombarded the Earth early in its history, and the new discovery suggests they carried amino acids with them. "We are interested in understanding what was on the early Earth when life got started," Elsila told New Scientist. "We don't know how life got started ... but this adds to our knowledge of the ingredient pool." Jonathan Lunine of the University of Arizona agrees. "Life had to get started with raw materials," he told New Scientist. "This provides another source [of those materials]." The amino acid was found in samples returned to Earth by NASA's Stardust mission, which flew by Comet Wild 2 in 2004 to capture particles shed by the 5-kilometre object.

The samples in Elsila's study came from four squares of aluminium foil, each about 1 centimetre across, that sat next to a lightweight sponge-like "aerogel" that was designed to capture dust from the comet's atmosphere, or coma.The researchers reported finding several amino acids, as well as nitrogen-containing organic compounds called amines, on the foil in 2008. But it was not clear whether the discoveries originated in the comet or whether they were simply contamination from Earth. The researchers spent two years trying to find out – a painstaking task since there was so little of the comet dust to study. In fact, there was not enough material to trace the source of any compound except for glycine, the simplest amino acid.

With only about 100 billionths of a gram of glycine to study, the researchers were able to measure the relative abundance of its carbon isotopes. It contained more carbon-13 than that found in glycine that forms on Earth, proving that Stardust's glycine originated in space. "It's a great piece of laboratory work," says Lunine. "It's probably something that couldn't have been done remotely with a robotic instrument – it points to the value of returning samples."

Elsila says she would like to see samples returned not just from a comet's coma but from its main body, or nucleus. "There might be more complex mixtures [of amino acids] and higher levels of them in a comet nucleus," she told New Scientist. Europe's Rosetta spacecraft should help shed light on the issue. The first mission designed to orbit and land on a comet's nucleus, it will reach the Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014 after a 10-year journey from Earth.

[The evidence is increasing that life here began (at least partially) out there with the help of meteor and comet impacts bringing in fairly complex chemicals to add to the soup already bubbling in our oceans. If that is the case – as it appears to be – not only is life on Earth becoming more reasonable and more explainable, but it’s looking more likely that life exists elsewhere wherever the conditions allow. It’s not a matter of if we find life on other worlds but it’s a matter of when.]

noreply@blogger.com (CyberKitten) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:10:00 +0000

Poster Time.

noreply@blogger.com (CyberKitten) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:07:00 +0000

Just Finished Reading: Hegel – A Very Short Introduction by Peter Singer

GWF Hegel was undoubtedly one of the most important European philosophers of the 18th Century and had a huge influence on the ideas on the 19th and 20th Centuries particularly through the works of Karl Marx. His influence probably stemmed from his strong belief – hardly questioned at the time – that history itself operated with a purpose to ultimately produce the perfect society and the perfect people to live in it. He proposed that few men are truly free because they do not understand the world or themselves sufficiently and are, therefore, victims of strong emotion and avoidable ignorance. Hegel proposed that each human mind is but a small piece of universal mind which strives through history to understand itself. It is this mind, this spirit, that drives history forward. The universal mind is central to Hegel’s thinking and much of his philosophy flows from it.

Singer has managed to produce, in a scant 113 pages, a decent overview of one of the most influential – and to be honest most opaque – philosophers of recent times. I’ve come across some of his ideas before but have tended to shy away from them appreciating how difficult he can be to understand. Whilst not exactly fear free I am, at least, more open to ‘having a go’ at Hegel in the future. I think he’s quite important to get a handle on given his influence on both Mark and Nietzsche. It might indeed be argued that without at least an appreciation of Hegel it is difficult to truly understand the modern world. That being said you should expect to hear more about him – if not actual books by him – in the future. A recommended book for those who have thought about investigating Hegel but were unsure how to start.

noreply@blogger.com (CyberKitten) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:00:00 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (CyberKitten) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:59:00 +0000

Pulp Fiction.

noreply@blogger.com (CyberKitten) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:09:00 +0000

Cartoon Time.