Some sites to see

Leah Ceccarelli wrote an excellent piece on manufactroversy at Science Progress.

Over at Doc. Bushwell's Chimpanzee Refuge, there is disheartening news about the Texas State Board of Education. Those responsible can only say one thing.

Carnival of the Elitist Bastards most recently hosted by Submitted to a Candid World.

I'm not surprised who I turned out to be...

Which CSI character are you? Your Result: You are Gil Grissom   GRISSOM You are wise and knowledgeable. You are quietly passionate, but shy away from intimacy. You have a love for literature and obscure facts, and find humor in the little things. Many people find you strange, but you couldnt care less. There arent very many people who know you really well, and you like it better that way. You spend much of your time alone, doing the things you love rather than wasting it with people that dont understand you. You respect everyone, and can see people for who they are, without judging them. Overall, you are compassionate, introverted, extremely intelligent, and somewhat of an outcast.
You are Sara Sidle
You are Greg Sanders
You are Catherine Willows
You are Warrick Brown
You are Nick Stokes
Which CSI character are you? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

September 11th

Orac blogs about his experience of 9/11 as well as a video clip from that day.

Some thoughtful blogs

Maman Poulet points out A very thoughtful blog entry by Shane Hegarty. Particularly interesting is the discussion in the comments.

More Chrome issues

Google will drop part of the Chrome licence after concerns about the licence were aired.

The key issue is the licences section about intellectual property - not everyone wants to surrender their intellectual property rights - in fact some people can't due to the terms that they work under.

There are also concerns about how much memory is used. It uses more memory than Firefox 3.01, but roughly the same amount of processor time. Like Internext Explorer 8, Chrome's designed for upcoming hardware - not everybody has that or can afford it.

Is the Chrome falling off?

Google has released the Chrome browser this week with much hype.

One security flaw was noted because the browser uses Apple Safari WebKit, which has a known vulnerability.

TapTheHive is disturbed by the EULA

Cuiling off...

Roughly a month after its launch, Cuil isn't living up to the hype - Pluggd.in notes the falling share of searches performed using Cuil, which is not surprising, given problems present on the launchday of a search engine hyped as the "Google killer".

Another of their claims doesn't seem to stand up to scrutiny either!

It isn't even on Craggy Island...

Some things are so surreal as to not only be beyond parody, but reality itself.

Disgraceful scandal

Wednesday blogged a week ago on what should be a major scandal - a victim of trafficking for sexual exploitation has been charged with failing to produce a passport or other form of identification.

Firstly, this charge is unjust and an act of such incredible stupidity that it beggars belief.

Secondly, why the hell isn't this a major news item? Are the Olympics so important that this grotesque, bizarre travesty of justice doesn't get mentioned?

Yarr!!!!

Talk like a pirate day is on September 19th - yarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bank decides password is pants...

A LLoyds TSB customer had his telephone banking password unexpectedly changed.

Farewell, Ronnie

Ronnie Drew has died, leaving Barney McKenna as the sole surviving member of The Dubliners.

Fintan O'Toole has written a good piece about him. There's also an editorial.

Farewell, Ronnie!

Chiropractors versus Simon Singh

Simon Singh is being sued for libel over an article (with references added by gimpy) he wrote for the Guardian. (The original article has been removed from the Guardian website - a cached copy can be found here thanks to Svetlana. Unity at Ministry of Truth has provided even more annotation in Can you libel Woo?)

Jack of Kent is following it from a legal angle. Holford Watch has an incredibly comprehensive list article with links to bloggers covering it.

Hopefully the lawsuit will fail and Simon will be vindicated.

Ceremonies today and Sunday

A ceremony begins in a few minutes in Omagh, which has proved controversial. Some have objected to the wording of a new memorial, which reworded a reference in an earlier memorial to the dead who were 'murdered by a dissident republican terrorist car bomb'.

Two ceremonies are to be held, the second on Sunday at which some clergy who didn't originally plan to attend will now do so.

On dealing with the unspeakable

I have noticed online that supporters of the self-proclaimed 32 County Sovereignty Movement as well as supporters of Michael McKevitt have whined that the Real Irish Republican Army is being "framed" for the Omagh bombing. They blame everyone bar their "heroes". They nauseate me.

How to deal with these despicable cranks if I encounter them in person, handing out leaflets on the street?

• Don't stoop to their level - if anger rises, stuff fists in pockets.
  
• Don't give them the satisfaction of listening to their conspiracies - walk on.
  
• Above all else, strive to be better than them - their "heroes" committed an atrocity in self-righteous anger, so avoid acting in self-righteous anger as much as humanly possible.
  

It's not easy, but it's something to aim for.

Consider a photograph

You've probably seen this photo many times before: in the foreground a father with his daughter perched on his shoulders, both looking at the camera.

The background is a street in a town - it stretches off into the distance with cars parked at the side of the road, a row of cars stopped at a junction. In the middle distance on the left can be seen a street, possibly Drumragh Avenue.

People can be seen walking down the street on the left hand side of the photo, while on the right some are about to cross the street while others walk along the pavement. Someone hurries across, partly obscured by a car, while a man in a flat cap also crosses the street.

The car on the right is a red Vauxhall Cavalier, its licence plate clearly visible. Minutes later, the car became shrapnel, the bomb it carried detonating at approximately 15:10.

Three telephone warnings were made:

• "There's a bomb, courthouse, Omagh, main street, 500 lb (230 kg), explosion 30 minutes." - to Ulster Television at 14:32.
  
• "Bomb, Omagh town, 15 minutes" - again to UTV, one minute later.
  
• The Coleraine office of the Samaritans was also rung, giving the location of the bomb as on "main street", 200 yards (180m) from the courthouse.
  

The bomb was, in fact, 400m from the courthouse - apparently the perpetrators couldn't park there, so they parked further away and gave vague, inaccurate, indeed contradictory warnings.

The courthouse is at the junction of High Street, Georges' Street and John Street - the bomb was placed on Market Street. The third of the warnings above place the bomb at the junction of High Street, Market Street and Scarffe's Entry. Even though it gave a location that was closer than the others, the actual location was about twice as far from the courthouse as claimed.

But the perpetrators's mistakes cost others their lives, many survivors their health and caused much heartbreak.

The criminal investigation into the bombing has foundered - the police in Northern Ireland have been criticised for ignoring intelligence that a bombing was imminent and other aspects of handling the case. The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garda_S%C3%ADoch%C3%A1na have managed to make an investigation that eventually led Michael McKevitt, leader of the organisation responsible for the bombing, being convicted of directing terrorism. That is something, at least.

A row has erupted over the wording on the memorial and there are two memorial services which there have been arguments over.

It's now half-an-hour to the tenth anniversarary of this atrocity. I hope that the relatives taking the civil case get some measure of justice - it'll be won't bring back those murdered, nor will it heal the scars, physical and mental, or the heartbreak of survivors. It will be something, no matter how small.

War, blood, oil

I don't claim to understand the current war between Georgia and Russia - I know that the area has been under Russian control since the 1860s, but I don't know what motives drive the current war or even who to believe about who started it.

Thousands are suffering, mainly civilians.

The war could force the price of natural gas up, along with the price of oil. Russia may come out stronger economically because of this.

How long will industries survive with the fuels that support them going up in price? I don't know. I don't know how far away peak oil is, but the rising cost of energy makes it more expensive to send raw materials to be processed to make what we live from.

I hope this doesn't cause a worldwide recession.

I have been assimilated!

I've wondered about twitter, then thought it wasn't of any interest. I looked at www.twit.ie and Twitter search and saw that a couple of friends were on twitter and that space news could be gotten from it. I eventually decided to sign up to see what it's like, if I can get something out of it.

Here's my link.

Some people have no sense of humour...

It's a few years old, but this proves that some have no sense of humour (or irony).

It's a bit Father Ted

From dochara.com:

It is interesting to note that while 90% of people stated
that they were Catholic in the 2006 census, a Europoll
conducted several months earlier found that just 72%
of people believe there is a God. Which appears to
suggest there are a good many Catholics in Ireland
who don't believe in God.

To quote a friend:

That would be an ecumenical matter!