So with our new International Overlord’s inauguration coming on January 20th, I figured it only fitting that I should dedicate a small piece to the current Inimitable (well, except for by Frank Caliendo) Overlord… George W. Bush!

Bush’s term  in the White House has certainly been a wild ride (for the entire world!), and again, much like Nixon, he most certainly hasn’t apologised for anything that might be perceived by some as ‘wrong doing’. Righteousness in a leader as powerful as the US president is a dangerous trait. But hey, why linger on what he did or did not do in office, let’s focus on some of the fantastic things he’s said over the years!

The BBC have a great collection, featuring such gems as:

“Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB/GYN’s aren’t able to practice their love with women all across the country.”

“And truth of the matter is, a lot of reports in Washington are never read by anybody. To show you how important this one is, I read it, and [Tony Blair] read it.” – On the publication of the Baker-Hamilton Report, Washington DC, 7 December, 2006.

… Yeah. Mandatory IQ/aptitude tests for all incoming incumbents? (As an aside on US presidents, and other positions of leadership, some guy has worked out that being US president has the highest chance of  ‘death in the workplace‘, by quite some margin!)

Moving swiftly along because if we’re honest everyone’s bored to death of Bush — The 2008 Darwin Awards! For people that have never heard of the Darwin Awards, they are trophies (well, not REAL trophies, for reasons which will soon be obvious) that are awarded to people that through some ‘quirk of fate’ (i.e. moronic stupidity) remove themselves from the gene pool. Darwin’s survival of the fittest in action. It’s basically just a list of people that have died in very stupid ways, that through schadenfreude (gotta love the Germans) make us feel a lot better about ourselves.

I’ve copied the shortest one here (because you really should just read through the awards):

“Darren was dumb even for a junkie, but what he lacked in IQ he made up in creativity. In the supermarket, he notice a bag labeled “Birdseed 100% Poppy Seed.” He seized his chance to circumvent the stranglehold of the International Drug Cartels with the following logic: 100% Poppy Seed = 100% Opium! Figuring he was onto something good, he bought a bag of birdseed, boiled it into a thick black paste, and proceeded to inject it into his vein.Nothing happened, so he did it again.

An hour later, he was brought unconscious to our Emergency Department, as sick as it is possible to be. His chest X-ray showed thousands of tiny seed-like objects scattered throughout his lungfields. Our working diagnosis was Milary Tuberculosis, so-called because the TB deposits resemble millet seeds. Little did we know!

Only two weeks later, after he recovered from life-threatening septicaemia and multiple organ failure, did the true story emerge. Darren survived, but subsequently died of a garden variety overdose.”

Okay, that wasn’t as short as I thought it would be…

We’re almost done with stupid things, but I thought I should at least try and talk about something stupid that’s happened to me… you know, to bring it home. Now, it might come as a shock, but I don’t often associate with stupid people, so it took me a while to remember an instance of stupidity, but then I simply thought back to my short trip to the Deep South, in the Appalachians, near Atlanta (the same trip where I had my very own ‘Save The Cheerleader, Save Seb’s Libido’ experience…)

I’ve had a last-minute change of heart, so I’m going to gloss over that little story, because I really don’t know who’s reading this. I’ll save it for my memoirs. Needless to say, it was delightfully American, slightly charming, and 100% stupid.

Finally: Nigerian Bikers’ Vegetable Helmets.

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Boop. Boop… Those heavy, imposing bass beats that 24 fans the world over have been waiting for… for almost 2 years! Somehow Kiefer’s managed to pull out yet another season of 24 — we’re at season 7 now (and he’s aged remarkably well!), and CTU has finally been shut down (something about torturing people and operating a bit outside the law.

The season started with Jack facing down a tribunal of Senators, explaining that while it’s not pleasant, torturing Muhammed bin Patel-Assad, someone has to do it. For the security of the people. Later on in the episode, there’s a fantastic scene with the President and the joint chiefs of the US military. ‘We just need to swagger in there, spray some bullets around the place, and the oppressed, war-torn people of the Fictitious African Nation will welcome us with open arms,” one of the chiefs says. Well, not quite, but he implies the same sentiment with that cocky, derisive sneer, as he tells the President that they expect no meaningful resistance.

Anyway, Tony’s back (£10 on Nina returning from beyond the veil before the end of the season…) The jury’s still out on whether he’s actually a baddie, but I’m sure we’ll be treated to lots of ‘Is he or isn’t he?!’ moments, especially at the end of each episode.

More importantly, my friend (yes, an actual bonafide friend) Dave has finally surfaced. He disappeared back in September, only to re-emerge yesterday. Turns out he was locked in some room, in Boston (he lives in Ireland), forced to code some software. A bit like that scene in Swordfish:

He was adamant that he couldn’t get in touch, so I just had to fear that he was dead for a few months. I had no one to watch Kristen Bell in Heroes with! (She is incidentally the cutest, most… arrrgh, delectable girl woman on the planet. The fact that she looks just like my ex has NOTHING to do with it)

He’s back JUST in time for 24 and the end of Battlestar Galactica (it’s going to be tough recovering from how they left it…) so he’s forgiven… just.

As I said in the previous entry, we had power cuts for about 2 1/2 hours this afternoon, so I was forced to light candles, eat whatever I randomly pulled out of the fridge, and take some self-indulgent self portraits. For anyone wondering, that’s what I looked like when I was roleplaying Jack (the cowboy).

First of all, any post that in any way references Heroes automatically deserves a mention of Kristen Bell, and a link to a hot picture (notice how I don’t plaster your screen with pictures of her hot, pliable, pale flesh… I have mastered the art of self-control, obviously…)

With that out of the way (and it’s hard to push Kristen to one side, I assure you, but I’ll do my best, for the 10 or 15 minutes it takes to write this), in case the Gods really are smiling down on me, and someone from the cast of Heroes happens to read this blog, I should probably mention that Hayden Panettiere is also very beautiful. I would turn neither of these fine blonde beauties down, given the opportunity. Everyone deserves a chance, after all. Save Seb’s libido, save the world, remember?

Anyway, I had my hair cut today. My sister’s a hairdresser for some snobby salon called ‘Rush‘, so I get funky and ‘modern’ hair cuts at a fraction of the price that other mere mortals might pay. It was only later, as I was looking through some photos of my new hair, that I looked remarkably like Sylar. Similar shape of face, fairly large eyebrows, and the same air of evil omnipotent malevolence (it’s true,  I’m evil). You wouldn’t leave me in the same room as your teenage, blonde daughter, would you?

Well, maybe if she’d misbehaved a little…

Recently Heroes has received a lot of bad press (although not as bad as Season 2, but we can blame the WGA writers’ strike for that!), with total viewing figures still way down on Season 1 (and losing out to some truly atrocious American programming). I thought the episodes we had before Christmas were fantastic! Hopefully the end of season 3 (volume 4) will continue the upwards curve of excitement and mystery that Heroes really thrives upon. And stay away from the time travel please — don’t writers understand that time-travel paradoxes drive intelligent people utterly nuts? “But he could go back in time again to fix it…!” that wouldn’t make for a great story though — Hiro only goes back in time when it best befits the burgeoning paradoxical plot.

The thing is, it’s still far greater than any other supernatural drama on TV (but BSG is starting again on Friday…) I guess after such an awesome first season it was only natural that people would grow a little tired after a poor second season and not tune into season 3. I guess season 4 will make or break the show, as long as we’re treated to an awesome finale to season 3!

I think people forget that downloadable TV episodes (and on-demand via a variety of services) bite into viewing shares significantly. I know of one TV distribution group that can shift over 500,000 copies of popular TV shows on a weekly basis (Lost, House, Heroes, etc.) Not all of these downloaders are from the USA, but some certainly are (most are Europeans that don’t want to wait for their local TV stations to syndicate the shows).

Anyway, while I’m on this fairly-geeky streak, I’m going to slip in one link on flying… cars! Yes, flying cars. No, they haven’t been injected with some kind of ‘Hero serum’ — they’re just flying cars. Slightly impractical? Maybe. Awesome? Hell yeah!

I’ll leave you with a picture of me, posing with two of my cute female friends.

Instead of gulping down my morning coffee in a valiant effort at blogging before 3pm each day (yes, my morning coffee can go on for some time, and include some refills…) I’ve decided to blog late at night. This way I have a whole day to experience weird and wonderful things that I can then relate to you in a lovely little blog post. Like this, in fact. I also figured it would then be ready for those of you that might read this over your morning coffee, at a far more sensible hour than I.

So today, this annoying (but cute) little Indonesian girl flirted incessantly until I finally capitulated and agreed to do some kind of audio blog. Now, I’m no fool. I know this is purely about the fact that I’m British. I speak fairly well (and thankfully I don’t sound too stuffy), and I do like talking, but I can tell when I’m used.

Let me give a little back-story. After being chain-assaulted on my multiple trips to the States, I figured something was going on. I’m not the best looking person in the world, and these were mighty cute girls that could’ve had their choice of men. It was around the 5th girl, on my second visit there, that I emerged briefly from under the proverbial duvet to take a breath and suss out what was actually going on. In a brief moment of post-coital clarity it was obvious: they were after my voice! It was confirmed when I said the wrong name into a girl’s ear during foreplay — and she just said ‘Talk to me some more, Sebastian!‘

I could bitch and whine about it, but really… why? Embrace the ability to seduce women simply by opening my mouth! I do like to think it has something about what I say, and not purely how I say it, though. I’ve seduced girls purely with the power of my voice — and I don’t mean bellowing out in a commanding tone: ‘KNEEL DOWN BEFORE ME, WITLESS WENCH’; they fell for my British accent.

I fear I’ve built it up a bit too much now, so… try to cool down a little before clicking ‘play’. And remember, not everyone in England sounds like Vinnie Jones (though part of me wishes I wish I did) or Prince William. There is a space between, which is where I stand.

 
Without lingering (if it was awful, please say so… otherwise, let’s just leave it unsaid), I have a bunch of gaming links that I need to share, because they’re just too awesome to sit here on my laptop.

First, the Sprite Stitch Board where a bunch of awesome sewing nerds (man, there are nerds of every description…) try their best to recreate various classic sprites (flat 2D images) in cross stitch, running stitch… all sorts of stitches! My favourite’s the Zelda map, which someone has obviously spent way too much time on.

Next up we have a horrifyingly awesome school play (I think?) of … Live Action Monkey Island (not to be confused with Super Monkey Ball, gaming newbies!) I wish I was kidding. These kids act their hearts out in a re-make of the 1990 LucasArts classic The Secret of Monkey Island. It runs for 10 minutes, and you probably don’t want to watch past the first minute or two.

Penultimately, we have a cute story of two Danish kids that had their gaming session interrupted by the Danish equivalent of SWAT. You probably turn the volume down a little on any of your modern warfare games, if you live in a built-up area. And you have paranoid neighbours that think the youth of today carry automatic machine guns — and grenades.

And I leave you with (apparently, according to my friend Darryl), the worst commercial ever made (I quite like it, but I am into musical theatre, which is sometimes just as atrocious) — Microsoft Songsmith.

Tonight my cousin, one of the few people I am close enough to consider ‘a friend’ — and there aren’t many of those, as I’ve said before — called into question my sexuality.

Attractive but hairy and short cousin (definitely a Beta male, compared to my Alphaness): “Have you got a girlfriend yet?”
Seb: “No…”
Cousin: “I’m starting to seriously worry about your sexuality.”
Seb: “Just because I like musicals, and wear pink pashminas doesn’t necessarily make me gay. Just confident with my sexuality. There is a difference you know, big boy.”

I mean… what’s the rush? Sure, if you’re female, and you have some kind of ticking biological clock (why do girls run out of eggs, while men can continue churning out those wriggly little bad-boys well into their 80s?), there might be some urgency to the whole procreation thing; but as a man, am I meant to feel that every girl I meat (er, meet) is the partner I’ve so desperately been seeking to create my genetically-superior Uber Race? Okay, so I’m not blonde, nor am I blue-eyed, but Hitler didn’t necessarily get it right. Maybe that’s why he tried to exterminate my ancestors — he knew that from the ashes, a 6′5″ brutish beast would arise. A monstrous male so potent, so indomitable that he felt a world war was necessary to remove any chance of his blood line persisting –

But I digress. If my cousin is to be believed, I’m gay, so any chance of me making babies is pretty damn small. Sorry mum. Sorry ladies.

Now, I’m sure you’ve seen pictures of me on this blog. I don’t look gay. You’ve also heard me; do I sound gay?

So what’s the problem?

I certainly get on better with girls than boys, which is odd (and I don’t really know why — other than the things listed above, I don’t really share any common ‘female’ interests). Perhaps I’m lucky to have known a couple of girls that have appreciated geeky, cool things as much as me. They’re both in America now.

So, why do I get on better with girls? Why does my cousin think I’m gay? I think our long nights spent in tents, in the middle of cold, rainy fields, snuggling for warmth have biased him.  But no, seriously, it’s because… I’m girly. I’m camp.

I like musicals. I own around 200 recordings, from the 1950s through to today. I was listening to Guys & Dolls earlier, and then I sang along to Wicked a few hours later. My second trip to the USA was actually a 5 day jaunt to New York City where I somehow crammed 6 musicals in. Is that gay?

I have long hair (OK, it’s short right now, but it’s been long for years!) I have a pink hair brush too (a big, lovely flat brush that slides silkily through my hair). I have been known to tie my hair into pigtails, ponytails, pineapples. I remember the day I asked a girl in my class to show me how to braid my own hair (it never stayed in… apparently I didn’t do it tight enough). Does that make me gay?

I love the colour pink. I have pink shirts, pashminas, jackets, hats and scarfes. Whenever I go out somewhere, I think I should wear at least something that’s pink. But then look at this way: I love a girl that’s wearing pink. Baby pink, hot pink. Naked, with a pink blush covering her cheeks, her stomach. Luckily my ex-girlfriends have all been fans of pink too. Or quickly become fans…

Musical theatre is easier to defend — it’s complex music. I like complex. Simple is boring (this goes for people too!) The standard composition of verse, chorus, verse, chorus all but disappears in musical theatre; instead you are treated with themes and reprises. Characters can have their own chords, or even their own notes. The music itself tells the story of the moment, rather than the lyric — the lyric becomes more of a dialogue between the characters, often driving the story forward. Some musicals are almost entirely song-driven, so this is of course the case! The music leads you towards other planes of emotion — the sudden plunge of violins propelling you down a path, a sad path, a romantic path. An easy example here is ‘Something There‘ from Beauty & The Beast. The song is incredibly simple, and the lyric is mostly spoken, but the music is what really tells you what’s going on: they’re having fun, they’re rolling around in the snow, they’re getting more comfortable with each other, almost intimate. In just 2 minutes, you have a damn good idea of how these two (seemingly) disparate characters came together.

That’s what I like about musical theatre. It’s harder to listen to, and I certainly don’t get much work done while I have a musical playing, but there’s just so much more to appreciate! If you can see past the often overly-trite and simple story-telling from the lyrics, the songs take you on a ride, much like a very well engineered album by one of the greats (like Bruce Springsteen). Just try to remember that the lyrics have been shoe-horned into the music: the full orchestral music, as opposed to pop music where the lyric is what seperates a hit, from a truly great tune.

If you were wondering, before I move on from musicals, the title of this blog is a line from Avenue Q, a musical that you must ALL see! How can you resist a musical starring muppets? Muppets that have sex with each other, no less.

Now, I must remind you to cast your vote on the poll! You have until Tuesday. I would just like to thank the cruel bastards that voted for the Eastern Europe/Slavic option. Thanks. Don’t take advantage of my generosity next time!

In case you were wondering about my sometimes seemingly-obtuse blog titles, the title is always a reference to something written or said in the blog entry! Perhaps I should run a points system, for those that work it out.

Today I have a lot to write about, but I don’t want to squeeze a bunch of eclectic thoughts into an entry that might not ‘gel’, and thus ruin the whole flow of the thing, so I’ll try to stick to just a couple of topics.

First, a pretty picture (everyone likes pretty pictures): [SinglePic not found]

I like this one because it has some COLOUR! England is awfully grey at the moment (except for the grass, that’s always green), so I was happy to capture a more lively moment, a hint of spring perhaps?

Second, is the fantastic political faux pas by the Czech Republic today. Apparently it’s customary for whoever’s holding the rolling EU presidency to create some piece of art to celebrate this fact. Or perhaps it’s just the way the Czech do things. Either way, it turns out that the artist had tricked everyone, convincing them all that he was collaborating with other artists to create this satirical masterpiece. What really happened? Apparently he was paid off by some private interest (this is coming from my friend who lives in Prague), who wanted him to embarass the nation, and upset a bunch of other EU members in the process.

The BBC have some great coverage of the exhibit, where you can see just how LARGE this thing is. I found a slideshow, where you can check the individual works out in detail — check out number 8, Bulgaria.This one has actually drawn ultimatums from the Bulgarian government, demanding it be taken down, lest further action be taken…

Squat toilets are obviously no laughing matter.

Moving a few thousand miles west, towards the land of opportunity, the inauguration of Mr Obama draws ever nearer.  Microsoft have developed a funky new technology called ‘Photosynth’. What it does (and I’m sure I’ve seen this done a couple of years ago, by Google) is compile thousands of user-submitted photos into one large collage of photos. It cleverly aligns each image so that you can move around, almost freely, almost as if you’re there. Be sure to check their site, after midday EST. If you want to see an example of it in action, check out this Photosynth of the Opening Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial in DC.

Anyway! In a bit of slightly bad news, my interactive murder mystery won’t be ready to start until Wednesday (or even Thursday!) Who would’ve thought that writing a multiple-path story could be hard, huh!

But the good news is that I felt the need to warm up before I really start. I have to get back into acting, and characterisation, and accents! So I recorded a little opening sequence from another story I might do in the future — a wild west story  — a story that I have particular attachment to, from my roleplaying days at university. It really is just a rehearsal, an attempt to get into character, and switch character quickly. It was much harder than I thought it would be, to shift from accent to accent, and back to the narrator. There’s also a fan to be heard in the background, as I didn’t originally plan to make this public… It doesn’t get in the way much though!

It’s not too late to vote for the non-Slavic options in the poll, friends… have pity on me…

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I’m going to tell you a little story about a cheerleader, as a build-up to a ‘my first kiss’ entry, which I have to post before the end of January, for my lovely fellow bloggers over at 20sb.

I’m actually stalling for time, because I actually need to contact the girl that I first kissed, but she’s not responding to my telephone calls. Maybe the kiss was that bad…

Anyway, the cheerleader (who incidentally looked a bit like Hayden Panettiere). I’m going to step on some toes here, so I won’t be using real names, and I’m going to be fairly obscure with dates, just so I’m fairly safe from some people reaching false conclusions. I am not a manwhore, despite what you might have been told, and I don’t like kissing and telling the story… but I think this one is fairly safe.

It was some time in early Summer, and I was still at university. I’d been dumped by my first girlfriend a few months earlier, and had my second girlfriend (well, the second girl that I’d been intimate with) had just dumped me — for another girl. So it’s safe to say I was fairly sore at the time, considering I’d managed to make it to 18 years of age without a girlfriend, and then chewed up and spat out by two girls in close succession.

My self-asteem has never been the greatest. Being confident about my abilities is only a recent thing, and I’m still pretty nervous around girls that I fancy (’like‘ for you Americans). There’s something about being bullied that just destroys all of your own self-worth, you know?

It was a bit of a cruel joke, then, to be dumped by my first girlfriend for a guy twice her age. And then an out-of-nowhere dumpage from my second girlfriend, because she decided she liked girls more than boys.

Being a resillient personality, I didn’t take it too personally. Girls still seemed to be taking an interest in me. I still had the gift of the gab; I could still make girls break down into tears of laughter. The problem was, and still is, that I can’t tell if a girl likes me. You know, in that way. I can’t make myself believe that she’s interested in me more than friendship, or she just likes a good laugh. The whole concept that a girl wants to… er… bond with me is just foreign to me. Damn that bruised self-asteem. Damn those bullies.

If only more girls would be like the cheerleader, from the Deep South. After a long internet courtship (I knew I’d be visiting that part of America in a few months), we finally met up in a large house, somewhere near the Appalachians. There were other people present, so for a while we just had to make do with drawn-out glances at each other. A slight licking of the lips. Dilating pupils. It was painfully obvious that the moment we were left alone our carnal desires were going to explode.

Later that night, after everyone else had gone to bed, she snuck into my room and… well, it was wild. Really, really wild. To this day, I put it down to the fact that she was a cheerleader. She had muscles I hadn’t heard of,  in places I’d never seen, let alone felt. I guess it’s expecting too much for every girl I meet, that likes me, to be like that. It’d be nice, though.

For a few days this continued, and I saw and experienced the heart of the Deep South. Trailer parks, hillbillies, and more churches than I thought possible. Some of those towns have 10 churches! For a population of just a few thousand! I had inane conversations with people — people that didn’t care what I said, just as long as I continued to talk. Conversations that made you wonder if lobotomies were performed at birth, instead of circumcision.

All the while, I had this cute, blonde cheerleader by my side. She was intelligent too — this was obviously recompense for the bad times I’d had before. Blissful recompense.

On my last day there, waking up, and stepping out onto the porch that surrounded most of the house, there was a beautiful cobalt-blue lake below me. The sun was just starting to rise over the mountains, and a jet-skiier was speeding across the clear, crystalline water.

A few moments later I felt a gentle tugging back towards the bedroom; I looked down and saw her arms around my waist.

That was one of my most spectacular and memorable holiday romances.

Last year there was a delightful (OK, shaudenfreude again) little story about a guy that murdered his wife after she changed her Facebook relationship status to… Single.

Pretty freaky, right? That’s what I thought! And then today I was reading the BBC news and someone’s done it again! I assume there’s a bit more said to the judge than ’she changed her status to single, guv’nor’! These were obviously some pretty troubled relationships, before Facebook entered the equation. But it makes you wonder if he would’ve murdered her if they weren’t on Facebook. Maybe they would’ve just had a little scuffle… but the moment she changed her status to ‘Single’, maybe 200 of his friends found out about it, instantly, without his consent. An otherwise normal or slightly-aggressive man is a whole different animal when he’s had his pride and ego attacked.

On the other hand, it’s always lovely to see two of your mutual friends suddenly announce they are in a relationship! Or a girl that you like has just left another relationship and is now available for some coffee and consolation…

While on the topic of Facebook, Obama, who was probably elected because of the Facebook campaign, who is our new president and King (haha) has made history by… using email! Yes, he’s the first president ever to use email while in the White House. Until now it’s not been used, for security reasons, and because the post-Watergate laws stipulate that all Presidential communication needs to be recorded in the national archives. But it seems he was adamant about being able to keep in touch with his friends — and change his Facebook status (and probably Twitter too) — that he’s been allowed to keep his BlackBerry. If the president himself can’t break the rules, I guess no one can.

I can’t really find a real way to change the topic smoothly, so I’ll just open with this:

Yup, it’s Cats That Look Like Hitler: Does your cat look like Adolf Hitler? Do you wake up in a cold sweat every night wondering if he’s going to up and invade Poland? Does he keep putting his right paw in the air while making a noise that sounds suspiciously like “Sieg Miaow”?

If such an introduction piques your interest, here’s a one more. Evil-lookin’ bugger.

I wanted to tell you a story from university, about a large, angry goose that we caught near a lake and then left in someone’s flat, but now it’s too late and I need to sleep. I’ll tell it tomorrow!

No, I’m not talking about one of the best BBC dramas in recent years, I’m talking about space in general, and life on other planets in particular.

Recent research points to a good possibility of life on Mars. Not complex life, though. Probably just methane-producing bacteria below Mars’ surface. Even so, the fact that there might be living, breathing, reproducing organisms on a planet as close as Mars has massive implications. Scientists are discovering lots of new planets, and there are programs in place to identify which ones might cultivate life of some kind. If there are indeed methane-producing organisms on Mars (and we won’t find out for sure for a few more years, until another lander does some scooping), we’re certainly not alone in this vast universe. That means there’s other creatures out there, creatures formed in ways we can’t even begin to imagine.

I was thinking about this the other day, as one does. It’s only through education and the media that we expect aliens to look in any way humanoid. In reality, they could look like anything. I mean, it doesn’t even work to try and be logical here — they really could be giant oozes. With 3 mouths, and 4 anuses. Or a giant penis monster (SFW), if Spore is to be believed.

The problem you run into is: given an (almost) infinite size universe, and billions of galaxies, and thus billions of life-maintaining planets… chances are there are other Space-faring species out there. But could a simple body (like an insect, or fish) have the dexterity to fashion a space craft? We look like humans because… well, it’s a very functional form. We only arrived at this point after quite a few million years of evolution. But hey, the universe is billions of years old…! Really, there could be anything out there.

Staying in the same vein, I have some cool satellite pictures, first of Obama’s Inauguration:

Apparently these photos were taken at 11am, when about 2 million people were present. These two are just snippets from a much larger (and awesome) image — check it out! Also check the dorky argument at the bottom of the original link; some geeks really do care too much. As you might’ve experienced, when someone is wrong in the Internet, it’s a HEINOUS crime and MUST be argued to the death. Some kind of e-pride, I guess.

Anyway, I was discussing satellite photography with some of my geeky guildmates, and inevitably we got around to talking about Hubble. Being a photographer, and an appreciator of all things beautiful, I feel compelled to share some of Hubble’s most amazing images.

I could go into detail on how Hubble forms its images, but I feel that would be outside the scope of this post. Perhaps in the future, if people show an interest in telescopic/spectroscopic imagery, I’ll wow you with my knowledge of the antiquated CCD imaging that Hubble uses.

The duck story is coming…!

This week we celebrate Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday, and the 150th anniversary of his world-redefining book On The Origin Of Species, the book that changed how almost every kind of scientist and philosopher looked at the world. Before his work, there were so many unknowns — for hard science, like genetics — but also for soft-sciences, like sociology and psychology. We finally had some idea of why we do things, and why we are what we are.

As the saying goes ‘you have to know where you’ve come from, before you know where you’re going’. That’s not say the social scientists really know what’s going on with us, psychologically, but perhaps they know a bit more about what makes us tick, empirically.

Darwinism was also a big finger-sticking to the Creationist types. ‘God didn’t actually make the Earth in 7 days,’ Darwin cleverly surmised. We’re actually descended down through many, many generations of other species. Early, monotheistic thought put the Earth at only 25,000 years old — something we now know to be completely false. The Earth is closer to 4.5 billion years old!

The controversy that followed fueled the distribution of Darwin’s books — how better to pique a world’s interest than to stick it to the man himself, God?

The thing is, most intelligent Bible-based believers (i.e. most of the popular religions on the planet today) acknowledge that evolution makes sense. I mean, you’d have to be crazy to deny evolution, there’s just too much evidence to support it. The problem is, teaching evolution in a school is as good as saying God/Allah doesn’t exist. A religion has a bit of a problem if it starts teaching its children that God didn’t really create the world. “It’s just a metaphor!” Like a lot of most religious canon.

Sadly, teaching evolution in some American schools is still outlawed. It’s crazy! It’s like denying the world is round, or that we orbit the Sun; science moves on, that’s the whole point of science. Science is all about what can be proven as fact, at a given time. As our tools improve, and our ability to analyze our world grows, the rules change. The known rules change. Gravity has always existed, we just didn’t know about it until Newton discovered it — just like evolution.

You can’t refuse to teach something because it doesn’t fit in with your world view. That’s not even education. That’s indoctrination…

Luckily, some religious types have found a lovely midground between evolution and creationism — Intelligent Design. It’s a theory with a lot going for it (and this page has a lot more information on the topic), and the current state of science and anthropology doesn’t really have a counter for it. That’s not to say it’s a viable theory, if you are in any way a scientist — it simply doesn’t work with science. Intelligent Design basically implies that someone had a helping hand in the ’steps’ in evolution; going from a fish to a  monkey to human is quite a large leap, without some kind of magic. The fact that we first ‘became human’ about 6 million years ago (not 6 thousand years ago) as we stepped out of the jungles of Africa and onto the great plains, probably puts rest to the fact that God (or some other supernatural being) was in any way involved.

Here’s a nice quote from the page I linked earlier:

Anti-evolution efforts in the United States are having a significant effect. A Harris poll in June 2005 found that 54 percent of Americans do not believe that humans developed from earlier species (up from 46 percent in March 1994).

I’ll leave you with one of my favourite YouTube videos of all time — An Atheist’s Nightmare: