This morning on the train to work I had sitting around me: a brain, an athlete, a princess, a basket case, a criminal (but they didn’t bring breakfast), a pirate (praise be to the FSM!), an 80s disco diva, two skiers, a hockey player, a demon, a ballerina, a cross-dresser, two cowgirls and Hermione Granger.
Even though the North American Halloween has been tamed to the point of no longer being spooky in any way, it’s still a lot of fun. Happy Halloween kids!
On Tuesday night I went to another Food For Thought lecture, this time all about nuclear energy. It was presented very well by Alastair McIvor, B.Eng. who works at Chalk River for the NRC.
I came away from the lecture with a much firmer conviction that nuclear energy is a good solution to our energy needs. Alastair addressed all the commonly perceived problems and misconceptions about nuclear fission and offered all the advantages.
Here are some things I learned:
The annual McGill Centraide campaign is now well underway. As part of that, our friend, the Book Goddess, has organised the fourth Centraide Trivia Quiz. Teams of 2-4 people are invited to challenge the current champions, a team from the Department of Development and Alumni, who claim to be unbeatable!
Here are the all important details:
When: Wednesday November 9th at 6pm
Where: New Residence Ballroom, 3625 Avenue Du Parc
How much: $5 per person
There will of course be great prizes for the top teams, and all proceeds go to the campaign.
You really really don’t want to go to ratemypoo.com. Trust me on this. Don’t click it. Leave it alone. Back away.
The 2005 Formula One season ended with the crowning of a new champion driver and constructor. Good news for Alonso, good news for Renault and good news for the fans.
There were some really good races this year, but a lot of really boring ones too. The new rules coming in next year should liven things up a bit.
Back at the beginning of the season I made some predictions. Let’s see how well I did:
They sure did struggle, and there were signs of desperation from Michael at times. What happened at Indianapolis wasn’t exactly cheating but it was farcical.
Well maybe he would’ve done better without the bans and other distractions.
Surprisingly they seem to be getting on ok. Juan’s mistakes haven’t impacted Kimi too much, and when they affected the result Kimi was very gracious about it.
It turned out to be Webber who got most of the blame and the bad press. Nick was a surprise star.
At the start of the season it looked like he was going to. Lots of bad luck and unreliability put a stop to that though.
Yeah well I had to get an easy prediction in there.
He looked jittery to me a few times.
Maybe he signed a gag clause with Williams. He was still annoying though.
Yep. He did.
It will happen next year.
I was close! Considering how much Ferrari sucked this year, third was a good result for him. Of course, Indianapolis helped…
They were mostly reliable, they were just really really slow and the Renaults had equally good reliability.
OK so I’m in a memey mood this week. Another meme, this time from my wife.
I’m passing this meme on to Zach Braff, and anyone else who wants it.
I stole this meme from Orac, but the list of movies is Scalzi’s list of the most influential SF movies of all time. The ones I’ve seen are in bold.
Thirty two out of fifty, my geekhood is confirmed.
I don’t agree with this list entirely, some stuff is too crap to be on here or is not really sci-fi, and there are definitely some omissions. Here are a few I would add:
As it was raining when we pulled into Vendome train station today, I decided to get off there and take the metro.
I joined the crowd heading for the metro turnstiles and was just about to feed my pass through when there was a scream, followed by a loud bang and another scream. People in blue STM uniforms started running. I knew I wouldn’t be taking the metro today after all.
I walked up to Sherbrooke St and got to the bus stop while the line was still short. As I arrived an ambulance and police car went hurtling down towards the metro. Within minutes the line had grown to a silly size.
Three full buses went by before I finally gave up and started walking. I got as far as Atwater before another bus came along and I was able to squeeze onto it, accidentally treading on a very small japanese lady in the process.
I arrived at work at 9am, 45 minutes later than usual. I still haven’t found out exactly what happened at Vendome, but I’m trying to look on the bright side, it gave me some extra exercise and something to blog about.
The waste of everybody’s time happening down in Dover, PA where the school board is being sued by parents over wanting to teach intelligent design in science classrooms, is now being reported on by the BBC. The article is well written overall, but I take issue with the lead-in sentence:
A school board being sued in a US court for questioning the theory of evolution has begun presenting its case.
I don’t understand why they chose that wording. There is nothing inherently wrong with questioning the theory of evolution or any other scientific theory. If theories didn’t get questioned and analyzed their would be no advancement.
The school board are not being sued for questioning evolution, they are being sued for trying to push a non-scientific religious alternative into science classrooms. It’s important to report this accurately and clearly so people far removed from the problem (like Brits) understand how foolish and theocratic the school board are being.
To use up the rest of our organic veggies I made a big beef and veggie stew yesterday.
I cubed the beef and browned it really well, leaving lots of crispy bits in the bottom of the pan.
While the beef was browning in batches, I boiled some water to blanch the tomatoes in so they were easy to peel, then peeled them and whizzed them in the food processor.
By then the beef was done and resting. In the same pot I fried some chopped bacon, onion, carrots and cabbage, and added a bit of flour as a thickening agent later on. Once that was all fried up I added the beef back in along with some water and scraped all the crispy goodness off the bottom of the pan.
Then it was in with the whizzed tomatoes along with some garlic, dried thyme, marjoram and pepper. Brought that lot to a boil then covered it and put it in the oven at 300 for about 2 hours.
At the 2 hour point I threw in some cubed sweet potato, potato, and beet, along with some chopped courgette and beans. Then it was back in the oven for another hour, leaving the top off for the last little while.
The stew had a very satisfying deep red colour and a rich beefy taste. The beef was tender and juicy. The sauce was just the right thickness for mopping up with a few slices of fresh olive bread. Delicious!
After reading about it on a poster at Mac campus and then hearing about it from her, I decided we should give it a go.
I’m talking about the McGill Organic Food Co-operative. They have a room next to Gert’s in the Shatner building where they take orders on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and hand out the goods on Tuesdays. I ordered the $15 “basic basket” which turned out to be two grocery bags full of veggie goodness. Here’s what we got:
So far I made:
One of Alton Brown’s recent Good Eats shows was all about slaw, so I’m probably going to make slaw with the beets and cabbage at the weekend.
I did have to buy some beef last night though, to reassert my carnivorous nature.
The big announcement from Apple yesterday was the new iPod which has a bigger screen and can play video. My first thoughts when I saw it: mmmm Gadget. Shiny. Want one.
But I didn’t go out and buy one, partly because my wife would kill me, but mostly because I thought about it some more. Do I really want this? Is this what us gadget consumers really want? Or is it just what the DAP manufacturers are telling us we want?
There is a fundamental difference between portable audio and portable video. I can listen to music while doing most things. I can be driving, walking, running, biking, climbing, working, mowing the lawn, reading or just sitting and be listening to music at the same time. Out of all those, sitting is the only one I can really do while watching video.
If I’m sitting at home, I can watch video on my big screen TV. If I’m sitting on the train or plane, I can get out my laptop and watch video on there. The quality of any video watching experience is directly related to the size of the screen and the resolution of the image. Why would I want to sit and watch an episode of Lost (and pay for the privilege) on a screen smaller than my hand with a poor resolution when I can watch it in high definition on a big screen tv? Watching a movie on my laptop is acceptable thanks to its 17″ widescreen display, but I wouldn’t want to go much smaller than that. Even the first TV I ever had was 14″.
So why are all the DAP makers forcing portable video on us? It’s not all that innovative, and it’s not very useful. Concentrate on making portable audio better (like making iPods play OGG files!) instead.
Prince Charles should stick to talking to his plants and keep his kooky ideas to himself. A report was released yesterday, commissioned by the Prince, of all things woo woo and written by an economist (because we all know economists are experts in medicine). The report is supposed to investigate the role of complementary medicines in the NHS (the National Health Service in the UK). I’m not going to reproduce much of it here, but if you want to read it, it’s here.
I’ll just reproduce part of the disclaimer though:
The contents of this publication constitute research, the results of which have not undergone clinical trials or any other form of testing or validation for the purposes of any kind of medical treatment, diagnosis, therapy or advice.
Meaning it’s pretty much useless as a scientific document, but no doubt the NHS will act on it to make the Prince happy.
The conclusions are weak. The report claims effectiveness of the “top 5″ complementary medicines; acupuncture, homeopathy, herbal medicine and manipulation therapies, but most of the benefits seem to be in cost. The report seems to be suggesting that the NHS could save money if they used complementary medicines instead of conventional medicines. Whether or not the patient benefits seems to be secondary.
Here are some of the conclusions of the report:
Despite the fragmentary nature of the evidence, there seems good reason to believe that a number of CAM treatments offer the possibility of significant savings in direct health costs, while others perhaps just as expensive as their conventional counterparts can nonetheless deliver additional benefits to patients in a cost-effective way. In addition, the benefits to the economy of a wider application of successful complementary therapies in the key areas could run into hundreds of millions of pounds.
Even though they admit that the evidence is fragmentary (and that’s an optimistic definition), it still comes down to the money. Prescribing alternative treatments is cheaper, who cares if it works or not? If the patient is happy with the placebo he’s received then the NHS has made a saving; who cares about the science?
Funds available for research into the cost-effectiveness of CAM treatments should be increased.
Cost-effectiveness? How about effectiveness? Research should be done to show if any of it works at all, and if it does, how it works. GPs should not be prescribing something which is supposed to work on mythical lines of Chi or molecular memory or some other faith based concept.
…generally speaking CAM appears relatively safe compared to conventional drugs.
Safe because it doesn’t do anything, good or bad? Maybe the money would be better spent researching conventional drugs to make them safer and more effective than they already are?
The legal position of doctors making referrals to complementary practitioners needs to be safeguarded.
Because we can’t trust any of the alternative therapies thanks to the “fragmentary” evidence, so expect to have to sign a release so you can’t sue the GP.
The report trots out all the usual excuses for why CAM can’t be tested and validated in the same way as conventional medicines. Some are valid (the inability to do double-blind for something like acupuncture), some are not (CAM being different for every patient).
I’m sure Charlie means well in his own kooky way, but this kind of report just muddies the water and potentially diverts funding away from good, effective science based medicine into the pockets of charlatans and quacks.
Last Wednesday after work I went to see Serenity, the movie spin-off of the sadly cancelled tv show Firefly. It made me laugh (and made a guy sitting near the front laugh a little too hysterically). It almost made me cry. It kept me engrossed for the duration. I was happy to see that all the old characters were the same, and the few new characters fit well into the Firefly universe.
And I knew River would kick some serious ass at some point.
What happens if they don’t press the button?
Why 108 minutes?
Who are the Others (and why is Adebesi with them?)?
What do the numbers mean?
Why did the shark have the Dharma symbol branded on its tail?
What have they done with Walt?
Why is there a massive magnet in the bunker?
Where are the other five stations?
Why does it say Quarantine on the inside of the hatch?
What tried to grab Locke?
Why is there a pirate ship in the middle of the forest?
And the trickiest question of all:
How did they fix a motherboard that got hit by a bullet?