Wherever there is fun there's always... SCIENCE!

Scientists say Coke kills sperm and was one of those furphy spermacides during the second world war it's the Coke Side of Pro Life.

Thanks to TheImaginator: Digg.com, Asianplumb: blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au, candafilm: Digg.com.

As I predicted, the the IG Nobel prizes have provided a veritable minefield of fodder for a Hodgeblodge entry or two, you can read the real story here: The prize was awarded to two teams of doctors—one team discovered that Coke is an effective spermacide; the other team discovered that it is not.
(improbable.com)

Review of Ben Elton's Blind Faith - Social Media has yet to convince everyone!!

Whilst it is true that as I read it I was reminded of Nineteen Eighty Four by the totalitarian nature of the public rule; It's a completely different style of novel with a completely different message. Privacy is illegal, everyone shares everything, people are constantly watched big brother style in their own homes and group hugs are compulsory. Silence is an expensive commodity. Read this book, laugh at it, then go and watch tv or speak to a teenager or work in a certain office I may or may not work in and be very, very scared.

This is 1984 for the MySpace generation. Ben Elton is a shadow of himself.If we want pontification, we can plug into Gordon Brown. Is it a reworking of 1984? Is it an allegory of our CCTV society? Is it a swipe at fundamentalism? To be honest I do not know

With thanks to
M. Stapleton "Mel Stapleton" Queenie91 "Queenie" Helenbookworm M. van Beek "Noldor" M. D. Colebourne "Blackblade" Careless Heart Roger Boyle

Ms. K. Phillips can have the final word

Sorry for writing a review Ben, Amazon likes us to "share"

Of course all these reviews are from Amazon.co.uk (I got lazy on this entry)

Hot air about the LHC at CERN - the hot circular lack of air

As the dust (that would be there if the CERN place wasn't really clean) settles on the bing bang story I would like to ask: Will they be able to generate this level of conversation when the high energy experiments kick off next year?

In the case of space missions, launches have become commonplace and no longer remarkable. From that moment on though, we have a definite time of arrival to look forward to. NASA also uses analogy well and underplays expectations. For example: even though previous missions had "found good evidence" of water on Mars, the lastest probe "touched" it. Most of the probes "last longer than expected"as well. I particularly enjoyed a workshop I went to at last year Piers Sellers (Britain's current Astronaut). Those guys are certainly half decent science communicators.

In the case of the LHC at CERN, the beauty of the engineering is now old news. Next spring there will probably be some new strangeness numbers for bosons. It will be interesting to see how the CERN marketing guys spread the word. As we tire of being told that the world might end, maybe they'll have to resort to calling particles mythical.