In At The Deep End

If you’ve read enough of this blog you’ll probably know I’m not the biggest fan of George. W. Bush – here’s something that will rant on my behalf: law breaking, weirdness, paranoia and the defying of logic in the name of national security. It’s a well-written article by someone involved in a depressing law suit.

I ought to be in bed as it’s an hour ahead here, but I’m catching up on RSS feeds from our week away and came across these via TED.

• I shan’t introduce this video, just watch it.
• Probably out of date by now (it’s from 2002) but an amazing look at how humans and other animals walk, and how that can lead to incredibly simple robots that can walk very well.
• A blog about African ingenuity.
• To show I’m not a snob at least some of the time, a Daily Mail article by Brian Cox on the Large Hadron Collider and the science around it. An excellent quote from it:
  

  Your hand is nothing more than a complex, temporary arrangement of these three particles. The particles themselves have been around for the entire life of the universe. They are spending the blink of a cosmic eye in the pattern known as ‘you’.

Tomorrow night, after I’ve had another struggle to find veggie food in the Land of Meat, I’ll do the Kentwell stuff. In the photos of the Green Man in Katy’s post you can see Katy + A dancing, and Dave H’s friend Sam on his hurdy-gurdy.

Compare and contrast – the original track (with boring video) and a remix (slightly less boring video).

How to cope with rising fuel costs.

A small article on nanobots tickled me. As well as the title, it included this quote:

Among the nanosoccer drills that will be demonstrated in Pittsburgh are the two-millimeter dash in which nanobots seek fast times for a goal-to-goal sprint across the playing field

An excellent TED video about the biggest geological feature on the planet (and other things), plus the Jason Project (looks like lots of stuff for free).

Typhoons looking like galaxies.
Flying over another planet.
Circular rainbows caused by ice crystals.

Just tell yourself they’re being Elizabethan. Rather fluid and weird spelling is in evidence in e.g. the letters of William Herle, passing intelligence back to Elizabeth’s court.

A Tudor remark that Katy passed on after the Kentwell open day (something like): Unfortunate the man who can only spell his name one way. Bob. Bobb. Bobbe (not pronounced Bobby, thank you). Qkbob (silent Q and k).