In a surprise twist to the search to discover the origins of he universe Pope Benedict and the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams are to be fired at one another at the speed of light in the Large Hadron Collider at Cern.
James Gillies, Cern’s Director of Communications, told reporters that the two church leaders were almost ready to travel to the French-Swiss border. ‘They have been praying together and wishing each other a safe journey before they meet again head-on in the middle of the 27km-long circular tunnel.’
Cern’s director-general Rolf Heuer said ‘Both His Holiness and the Archbishop claim to know something of how our universe began, so by smashing their heads together at a tremendous speed we hope that we will at long last get a final answer.’
He said that the toss of a coin would decide which end of the tunnel each would be fired from. Steve Myers, Cern’s director of accelerators, said he was optimistic the two church leaders would reach the speed of light. ‘Although the two are rather bulky and not the idea shape for this, I hope that the 1.2 trillion electron volts and the 1,200 superconducting magnets will do the trick. We shall just hope and pray and increase the voltage until we get the required acceleration.’
Rolf Heuer said that though the two human projectiles would be smashed into billions of particles, he expected them to re-appear for services and mass the following day. ‘They have both spoken with certainty about the existence of God, and so we are giving them this chance to prove it scientifically. The experiment is in essence quite simple. We shall just be asking Dr Williams to remove his glasses.’
Water way at the very south end of Lake Simcoe.
Sunset on Lake Simcoe. I know some people think sunset shots are boring but I like them and it's my blog....
Taken just north of Roches Point on Lake Simcoe.
Graffiti under bridge on Concession #2 in East Gwillimbury.
Shot of Missionary school in Scarborough near the Bluffs.
Cooks Bay at night. This was taken at the end of my street looking south. I was playing with the settings on the camera experimenting with taking night photos.
East Gwillimbury lift locks. The Canadian government paid lots of money many, many years ago trying to set-up a water passage from Lake Simcoe in the north to Lake Ontario in the south. They went as far as building the locks before abandoning the project. The locks never saw a single boat pass through them.
Taken from the dashboard of my car driving north on Metro Rd. towards Sutton. Used a slow shutter speed to get the lighting & blurred effects. No Photoshopping.
Taken on railroad tracks by Concession #2 in East Gwillimbury. Looking north towards Bradford.
Wet stones between railroad ties on the same railroad tracks in East Gwillimbury.
Green moss growning on downed tree in East Gwillimbury.Police in Russia have arrested three homeless men suspected of killing a man, eating part of the body and selling other parts to a kebab shop.
They said the three men attacked their victim with knives and a hammer.
"After carrying out the attack, the corpse was dismembered. Part of it was eaten and part was also sold to a kebab and pie kiosk," their statement said.Full article available here.
It was not immediately clear if any customers had been served.
Photo taken by me.
From Rixstep.com's Life Without Windows page:As an avid Mac user I support this idea 100%. I long ago removed all Microsoft software shite from my MacBook.
There is a life without Windows. It's a life of freedom. Of freedom from malware attacks and false promises. A life of security. Of enjoying the Internet rather than being afraid of it. And it's ultimately kinder on your pocketbook as well.
There are so many alternatives to Windows today. So many it's not funny. You're bound to find something that exactly suits your tastes.
Whether it be Red Hat's Fedora, FreeBSD, any one of thousands of Linux releases, Apple's Mac OS X, the super-secure OpenBSD, Sun Microsystem's Solaris, or the increasingly popular Ubuntu, you're bound to find something perfect for you.
If you're already enjoying your Life Without Windows™ then consider putting this banner up on your website or blog. And link through to your favourite OS.
A small badge for Mac OS X is shown below. The banner and the individual badges for the seven platforms shown above are available from the Life Without Windows page.
Great reading. Highly recommended.Money quote:"Right now, if I woke up a billionaire, I wouldn't give Citi the time of day, unless it was "Eat Glass O'Clock".
Oxford, a hot summer's Day in 2002
I'm sitting on a wall having a can of coke, when a scruffy little Irish chappie comes and sits next to me.
He was obviously down and out and living on the streets, so I was a bit weary when he engaged me in conversation.
'Hullo there - are ye a student?'
'Yes, I am'
'Ah, right. Lucky lad - it's a very good university, so it is'
'Yep.'
'I was student meself, y'know?'
'Really?'
'Aye - University of London and then Cambridge.'
'Really?'
'Oh yeah - was doing my doctorate and everything, but they got rid of me, the bastards.'
'Why's that?'
'Well... I solved physics, and y'know, well...they didn't like that one bit.'
'You SOLVED physics?'
'Yes. But they got rid of me. Think about it: If someone solves the whole bloody thing - there's no jobs for all the scientists any more, are there?'
'Suppose not.'
'Aye, well... I've come here to try and find a physics student so I can get my ideas to the Faculty. Maybe if there's someone more trustworthy here, I can get it all published.'
'Right'
'You're not a physics student, I suppose?'
'Afraid not.'
'Ah, never mind.... have you got £1 for the bus?'
And, reader, I gave him a pound, because either he was a very good beggar, a nutcase, or a physics genius driven out of the academic establishment by a cabal of self-interested scientists worried they could be out of a job.
(, Thu 27 Aug 2009, 14:40, closed)
According to a BBC article Canadian scientists carrying out a "mathematical exercise" concluded that if zombies really existed and attacked we'd be damn near toast if we didn't kill 'em all real quick.If zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilisation unless dealt with quickly and aggressively.The professor running the study sounds like a hoot. It would be interesting to take one of his classes....
In their scientific paper, the authors conclude that humanity's only hope is to "hit them [the undead] hard and hit them often".
"It's imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly or else... we are all in a great deal of trouble."
"My understanding of zombie biology is that if you manage to decapitate a zombie then it's dead forever...."
Cocaine on 85% of Canadian banknotes in studyI can just picture all the cokeheads out there licking every $ bill they get their hands on now.
Aug 17, 2009 07:31 PM
TREVOR PRITCHARD
THE CANADIAN PRESS
Nearly nine out of 10 Canadian banknotes examined by a team of U.S. researchers contained trace amounts of cocaine.
In a study presented Sunday at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, researchers looked at banknotes from more than 30 cities in Canada, the U.S., Brazil, China, and Japan.
Twenty-seven Canadian bills, taken mostly from Toronto and the Sarnia, Ont., area, were analyzed, said lead researcher Yuegang Zuo, a chemistry and biochemistry professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
Of the Canadian bills, 85 per cent were laced with cocaine. The amount of coke found on the banknotes ranged from 2.4 micrograms to upwards of 2,530 micrograms – approximately 100 grains of sand.
The results in the U.S. were similar. The researchers examined 234 bills from 17 U.S. cities and found that nearly 90 per cent of the notes contained trace amounts of cocaine.
Scientists have long known that money can become contaminated with cocaine during drug deals or by snorting the drug through rolled bills.
Bills that are not involved in drug deals can also be contaminated as they are processed by banks.
Such studies can be useful for police, said Zuo, because they can help identify drug traffic patterns in a particular community.
But he also said an analysis of 27 Canadian banknotes is not enough to make sweeping generalizations about cocaine use in the country.
"It doesn't really represent the whole of Canadian currency," said Zuo.
"The number is too small. More substantive research is needed."
Law enforcement agencies might look to research like Zuo's to help boost the number of drug-related arrests, but that alone won't lower addiction rates, said University of Ottawa criminology professor Irvin Waller.
"The real issue is how much money you're putting into prevention," said Waller.
"Even if you know where (the cocaine) is flowing, this isn't a lot of help unless you're going to be putting money into reducing demand for it in that area."
The rates of North American bills laced with cocaine was significantly higher in Zuo's research than banknotes from China and Japan.
Of the 112 Chinese banknotes researchers analyzed, only one in five contained any sign of the drug. Only two of the 16 Japanese banknotes were contaminated with cocaine.
Despite the study's findings, Zuo said people shouldn't have any health or legal concerns about handling drug-tainted paper money.
In most of the notes examined, the amount of cocaine found was too small to interfere with drug tests or cause any health problems, he said.
““....Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.”
