The World as it Should Be

There are very few names that spring to mind when the average Kiwi is asked to name a famous scientist from our little country in the middle of nowhere. People usually spring for Ernest Rutherford, a distant relation of mine (insert sounds of own trumpet blowing here), as the Nobel laureate and noted physicist is a name known to many as the one who "split the atom". Another name, however, although not very well known, does spring to my mind.

To follow on from a recent post regarding the end of the world, heres the man himself Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy schooling the un-schooled on TU24. Rock it Phil.

Unsubstantiated reports of TU24 death cults disbanding and UFO watchers going home and getting real jobs have been filtering in.

See vid after the jump.

I read an interesting article on Ben Goldacre's site Bad Science about a book called How to Lie With Statistics by Darrell Huff. This small but important tome discussed the ability of people to use statistics to make claims about various topics. Not long after reading this, I read a headline on Stuff.co.nz - "Kiwis prefer classic rock over pop". Now while this headline gladdens my heart, being an old school head banger myself, I immediately asked the question "How do they know?" Did they interview every single music listener in NZ and poll them on their music preferences?

LOL, LMAO, STFU. Examples of what is more commonly known as NetSpeak. I remember once upon a time where it was limited to a small subsection of the internet community, typically online gamers, but now it can be found on every site in every corner of the net.

I read and hear comments from people saying that its the death of the English language, and that it, along with TXT-speak will cause civilisation as we know it to slide into the abyss as our brains devolve into mush. Poppycock - as my old Form 2 teacher used to say. Language evolves every day and anywhere you listen or look, you can see it happening and its amazing to watch language morph and change.

In yet another show of some twit spreading FUD either just to get people to talk about him, or a moron with an inability to grasp rudimentary astrophysics, theres yet another hoaxer pumping video about TU24.



TU24 is an asteroid that will pass by us sometime on Jan 29th and the nuts have come out of the woodwork exclaiming End of the World scenario's. Specifically, but not limited to, an asshat called TU24dotORG who wants people to run screaming for the hills, and the people in the hills to run screaming for the coast.

In a spot of irony, the Astrological Magazine has shut down. Whats ironical about that you ask? Well, its been shut down for (wait for it)... unforseen circumstances.  Ha!

Was it not written in the stars? Did the mysteries of the universe not reveal to these schmucks that their lame mag would kark it? Obviously not.

Good riddance I say.

via badAstronomy

Looks like Pope Bendict the whatever has been given the big finger from the students and professors at the Roman University La Sapienza. He was due to give a speech there at the 2008 inaguration but after a petition was started by 67 of the professors, and signed by many students, the Vatican pulled the plug on the event. The petition organisers said the Pope was a backward theologian who put religion before science and should not be allowed to speak.