Went to see 10,000 BC this afternoon. Oh boy, history, biology, geography, astronomy - they all get a hammering in this film. I can’t be bothered to even start listing everything that was goofy here.

It was one of the most by-the-numbers renditions of (the easy to understand bits of) Joseph Campbell’s monomyth that I’d seen in a while. I smiled at the bemusement when hunter-gatherers first came across the evidence of agriculture, but of course in Campbell’s scheme there has to be a ‘boon’ to take back home at the end (sorry, that was a spoiler). There were also bits lifted from the Bible, Stargate, Conan and 300, just in case the mention of Campbell misled you into thinking there were highbrow sources being used.

The action and CGI were very good, the actors managed to keep straight face. It’s not a bad movie in the sense that it’s exciting and visual, but it’s certainly one to watch with the brain switched off.

Oh, by the way, the Doctor Who and Star Trek trailers look amazing on the big screen.

Very True Mood: sleepy

About half the moon is in shadow now. South London isn’t the best place for sky watching, especially with the moon right over the floodlights of the bus garage, (so no chance of photos from here) but at least the sky is clear so I’m getting the best view I can.

[Update 22:47] - Nearly totally in shadow now, I can see the the reddish hue on the shadowed parts quite clearly. I tried to take some pictures anyway but the camera just whirred as if to say “there’s nothing there mate” and refused to do anything.

Very True Mood: impressed

Quick post before I dash off the work Christmas party.

Today there’s a blogathon marking the tenth anniversary of the death of Carl Sagan.

My parents had the large colourful hadcover of Cosmos and it was one of those books that I was always taking off the shelf and reading, understanding more and more of it as I got older. Probably one of the formative influences that led me to read physics at university. Very simply, he was one of the greatest communicators and popularizer of science that there has ever been.

“… reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.”

— Richard Feynman

If you thought that biological evolution was the only science being attacked by the religious nutjobs in the US, think again. A Bush appointed fuckwit in the NASA press office is trying his best to wedge religion into astronomy: [via Bad Astronomy]

The Big Bang is “not proven fact; it is opinion,” Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, “It is not NASA’s place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator.”

Makes me want to hit something.

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe….”

— Albert Einstein

Today, I learnt that the moon is called Cynthia.

The rest of this post makes so little sense out of context that only people who read the Live Journal version of this blog will understand it. So I’ll leave you with this:

The poster ads in the gents’ loos in gay bars are more amusing than those in straight bars. Though maybe only because one of the men in the “feeling ready to move on to a relationship?” poster looked like Apothis Baal from Stargate SG1.

[Update 21 July 2005 08:12 am] Whoops wrong Goa’uld.

Todays’ Astronomy Picture of the Day looks a bit familiar. Didn’t we see that getting blow up on Doctor Who two weeks back?

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.