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April 21, 2006
Noam Chomsky interviewed by Ali G
Well, Noam Chomsky has made it to my list of heroes. If you appreciate his intellectual contribution, maybe you can also laugh about the anti-intellectual ones of his sparrings partner Ali G in a recent interview.
Upon second thought, I guess Ali G doesn't manage to make his interviewees very funny. It's the contrast between the two that's cool, not more, unfortunately...
Posted by dr at 6:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 19, 2006
Random act of human kindness / drowned beer hauler
A day ago, after some late-night frantic paper-writing and doing statistical voodoo modelling to meet the last deadlines of scientific conferences taking place this summer, I got my bicycle out of the departmental bike shed here in Edinburgh, only to find that I had been subjected to a random act of human kindness - maybe a not so random one. Thank you, stranger, for the yellow flower on the saddle of my bike! It made me happy!
And somehow, I felt reminded of a poem written by German expressionist Gottfried Benn, a pathologist (1886-1956), who finds a bit of happiness and hope even in a most unlikely, a most uninviting of all places. ("My" flower (right) is not an aster.)
Little Aster
A drowned beer hauler was heaved onto the slab.
Someone had heaved a lavender aster
between his teeth.
As I reached through the chest
under the skin
with a long knife
to cut out the tongue and palate
I must have bumped the flower, for it slid
into the brain lying alongside.
I packed it into the chest cavity
with the sawdust
as we sewed up.
Drink your fill in that vase!
Rest in peace,
little aster!
(Translator unknown, via Brian.)
Posted by dr at 3:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 16, 2006
Nuclear Power
Fifteen, twenty years ago, teen-age David read a book titled "The Cloud", Die Wolke. A thriller for young readers puts the dangerous potential of nuclear plants into perspective. A horrific story: after an accident at a big nuclear facility, millions of people get stranded, wander along traffic jams full with families trying to escape the radioactive cloud moving towards them.
A decade on, Germany's social-democrats followed the big fears of a generation. They replaced the long-running Helmut-Kohl administration. They mandated the end of nuclear engery in Germany - albeit with a 30-year time-frame. In the following years, German solar-cell manufactorers gained a world-leading position in their market.
I was happy for Germany to move on at the time. But with warning signs of global warming becoming stronger and scientists all over the world pointing out what's going to happen over the next 50, 100 years, I wonder if we and maybe our summer-of-69 parents need to revise our view of nuclear power.
After all, modern, western-style light water reactors can be considered much safer than what melted in 1986 in Chernobyl. Nuclear energy is free of emissions, provided the nuclear waste produced can be contained. Greenpeace-founder Patrick Moore has already changed his mind about nuclear power.
Burning coal and other fossil fuels has been destroying our atmosphere. Solar cells and wind energy is not going to produce enough electricity for a long time. Isn't nuclear power the lesser of all evils?
Posted by dr at 9:44 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 3, 2006
Motorola SLVR L7 iSync driver
To all you desperate Motorola L7 "SLVR" users: iSync has just been updated by Apple to support your phone. Install the system update to 10.4.6 ("Software Update"), and it should work - at least according to Apple's change notes.
Posted by dr at 11:45 PM | Comments (42) | TrackBack