HLBS have reorganised their Dinosaur range, adding a Mammoth and Triffid 
but removing a whole bunch of the smaller dinosaurs. So I ordered a bunch of their dinos from North Star. Unfortunately they didn’t have any Velociraptors or Compies left but have everything else I wanted in stock. So that’s another £24.20.
Running total is now £162.29.
Bravidio are shite. Not been able to log into cPanel for a week now.
So I’m looking for another host. Need MySQL, PHP and Perl. Need to be able to run multiple sites (so a reseller account may be best). Prefer to be billed annually rather than monthly. Any suggestions?
£45 to resubscribe to Harbinger magazine.
Running total is now £138.09.
For Christmas I got given a copy of N.A.M. Rodger’s The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Britain, Vol 1: 660-1649 and whilst reading it last night I came across a single reference to King Eric the Lamb of Denmark.
Apart from the fact that he was King of Denmark in 1137 and sent a fleet to raid England I can’t find out anything about Eric the Lamb, most importantly I can’t find out why he was called that (’The Lamb’ that is, I’m sure that Eric was chosen by his parents and was a very respectable name for twelth century Danish royalty).
Highlight of the week is the landing of the Huygens probe on Titan and the amazing pictures it sent back. This is a world a billion kilometers from Earth with a surface temperature of -180°C; but whilst the wind and rain may be composed of ammonia and methane, the patterns of erosion and drainage are remarkably similar to those found here on Earth.
And back on Earth the discovery of dino-swallowing cretaceous mammals adds a new twist to our picture of the mesozoic. No longer were mammals timid creatures scurrying in the dinosaurs’ shadows. At the risk of sounding trite, that is the truly amazing thing about science, even the science of the distant past - we are always discovering new parts of the big picture.
Which is something that’s totally lost on the proponents of Intelligent Design. This, as Richard Dawkins once wrote, is how creationism has been “excitingly rebranded”. The rebranding is necessary in the USA because the first amendment prohibits using state funds to promote religion, so teaching creationism is banned in state schools. A judge in Georgia has ruled that the addition of stickers stating that evolution is ‘just a theory’ to biology textbooks is religiously motivated and hence illegal. The judge’s ruling is somewhat rambling and no doubt there will be interminable appeals, but this is a blow to the ID movements ‘wedge strategy’ of sneaking creationism into schools via the back door. Read more at The Panda’s Thumb.
Meanwhile in the UK we have the Vardy Foundation whose academies are funded by the state and have replaced comprehensives. In these creationism is taught alongside evolution (and if evolution wasn’t on the national curriculum I bet they wouldn’t teach it) and the government seems to see nothing wrong with that. In contrast with the US the issue has hardly registered with the press or public over here.
The US has separation of state and religion, is one of the most Christian countries in the world and has a very public battle between neo-creationists and science. The UK has the Church of England, is for all practical purposes a secular state and is allowing openly creationist organisations to run state schools. I don’t know which is worse.
Watched a couple of films on telly last night, neither of which were greeted ecstatically by the critics, or by the audiences for that matter. But as both featured highly attractive women kicking ass I watched them anyway…
The Avengers is full of good things - Sean Connery playing a Bond villain, Jim Broadbent as Mother, Uma Thurman in leather. Shame that it just doesn’t work. There are several reasons for this - the plot is complicated with extraneous elements (cloning, the treacherous Father) which don’t help the narrative at all; Ralph Fiennes was simply miscast as Steed and worst of all he and Thurman have no chemistry together at all. Steed and Peel are one of the great screen partnerships and if the actors playing them in a remake don’t spark then there’s simply no point.
Resident Evil has one good thing - Milla Jovovich kicking zombie ass.
The fucking Americans build a fucking military base on top of the remains of Babylon. In a few months they do more damage to one of the most important archaeological sites in the world than Saddam Hussein did in decades.
The mysterious number on the right (on down the bottom if you’re not getting the full stylesheet for whatever reason) is the number of days left until September 3rd 2005. This is the date we’ve got pencilled in for the wedding. With luck we’ll be able to confirm it soon.
And for the benefit of those who prefer the revolutionary calendar that’s Décade II, Septidi de Fructidor de l’Année CCXIII de la Revolution.
… when you spend more time replying to your fiancée’s blog posts and comments than you do talking to her face to face.
We’re not quite at that stage yet. Are we dear?
Found via The Virtual Stoa, the latest meme looks interesting, but all Chris’s choices are too high brow, obscure or specialised for me. So I’m starting two new lists here.
Rules: ‘You copy the list [of books] from the last person in the chain, delete the names of the authors you don’t have on your home library shelves and replace them with names of authors you do have. Bold the replacements.’
Hmm, on the subject of that last name, I wonder how many people still have copies of Eats, Shoots and Leaves? And how many people have sent one to the charity shop? Christmas 2003, my brother received two copies and I received one. Does this mean that twice as many people think that he’s a pedant?
