End of the World

Kate and I split up yesterday. She was my love, my confidant, my every joy. I have no idea what I'm going to do without her.

Francis Crick Dies

Francis Crick, one of the duo who proved we are all digital beings, died today aged 88. Along with James Watson, Francis Crick discovered the double-helix structure of DNA. Before their pioneering research the method by which information was passed down from parent to child was completely unknown. Some thought it could have no physical structure, others that it would never be discovered by the human brain. The answer, as often happens, was remarkably simple. Different combinations of only four vitamins make us what we are. Four.

Adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine join up in the aforementioned double-helix in adenine-thymine and cytosine-guanine bonds. When duplication is needed, the helix unwinds and (although this is a simplification) one half journeys to a new cell. In the new host the necessary acids are floating around and they quickly join up with their complement acid, forming an identical copy. I don't know about you, but I find that pretty beautiful.

Unique strands of DNA, it was discovered, produce unique proteins and it is via these proteins that DNA affects the body. Furthermore, if you take a length of these acids and transplant them into any organism in the world, exactly the same protein will be made. The protein may have a different effect due to differing chemistries in the host body, but the original protein will not change (if you want a more convincing argument for life only having evolved once, I don't know of one.) This is the reason that 'glowing' animals have been so successfully created in recent times. The gene (strand of DNA) and associated protein(s) for 'glowing' achieve the same result in many different animals. It's like every computer in the world using the exact same AMD processor. We are digital beings, written in quadrenary.

Watson and Crick's work started a revolution in science. Their remarkably short original paper began with: "We wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid (DNA). This structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest." Something of an understatement. The discovery opened the door to new paths of scientific endeavour, and will probably, within our lifetimes, allow us all to grow replacement hearts or, more controversially, let you prevent your unborn child from suffering from genetic diseases. Today it affects our lives on a daily basis. Want to find the criminal who attacked / raped / robbed you? DNA is as conclusive as it gets. The entire biotechnology industry is based on that one, monumental, discovery.

I'm expecting Richard Dawkins (biologist and author of the only book I can honestly claim has changed my life - as well as the country's no.1 intellectual, incidentally) to publish a tribute of some kind. If he does, I'll point you towards it, as he writes somewhat better than I.

I don't believe in lingering over deaths, but when a person's legacy is so vast it does no harm to pay tribute. Professor Crick, as both an effect and a verb, you rocked.

Vote for Me!

Sure, there are other interesting political events going on atm, but there is a terribly important issue that requires your attention. You see, I want some cowboy boots, and fascist forces in this world are trying to stop me. Those forces being Kate and Nod. This time in two months I'm going to be in cowboy country, and I am planning to purchase some authentic (but spur-free) cowboy boots. I see nothing wrong with this desire, but others, it would seem, do. So I shall, providing it goes my way, embrace democracy.

Wardriving

Ben and I were playing with a wireless-enabled PDA yesterday. I had to admit defeat after trying for a long time to connect to my home wireless network. It just wouldn't log in - I never did figure out why. I then reset all the settings to their original values, but forgot to actually turn off the 'enable wireless' option.

Later in the day we were driving around, and as we passed the old folks home I heard a chirp. The PDA had found a wireless network and was wondering whether I wanted to connect! What a nerve! Later we drove past more company buildings and yet more networks were discovered. We could only think that the security was what was stopping my network being accessible, and therefore these networks were completely wide open!

This was my first experience of wardriving. I wanted to connect then go to some porn site just so it turned up in their logs. Didn't though

Episode 3 Title Revealed

1. The Phantom Menace
2. Attack of the Clones
3. Revenge of the Sith
4. A New Hope
5. The Empire Strikes Back
6. Return of the Jedi

It's official.

Humble Pie

Ok, so I'm not the brightest person in the world, it would seem. The World's Finest trailer is all there is - there is no short film it's based on. Bit disappointing, but apparently the whole thing was made for $12k, which is still quite impressive. Sorry about that! You'd think I'd have figured it out...but no.

Yesterday Was Friday!

Last week I saw that two stars of CSI had been sacked for breach of contract. George Eads and Jorja Fox (Nick and Sarah in the show) didn't turn up to the first day of filming and the story at the time was that they were demanding more money. This was a shame, as CSI's never been the type of show that could easily lose characters. The personal plotlines move very slowly. Seasons don't end with will-they-live-or-die cliffhangers. While the weekly stories are obviously greater than reality, the core characters themselves always seem pretty normal. Hence the reason they're not placed in life-threatening situations on a weekly basis, and if they ever are they tend to teact as 'real people' would and the repurcussions are felt for many more episodes. It's also been the same cast from day one through to the end of series four. So it was disappointing news.

Today, though, I see that both have been reinstated! I don't know whether the studio was using shock tactics, or whether, as other news stories stated, at least one of the actors simply overslept. I'm glad it's been resolved, though

World’s Finest Stories

I once read that everybody is either a farmer or a sailor at heart. That's perhaps a little old fashioned. I prefer to say that everyone is either Superman or Batman, deep down. One is the ultimate fantasy, the other the ultimate in human achievement. Which would you choose?

Sandy Collora is an amateur director who took the internet by storm last year with the release of his short film Batman: Dead End. I was very impressed by it - the essence of Batman was very well captured in my opinion, which isn't an easy thing to do. The trailer for his next project has just been released, and it looks seriously cool.

World's Finest is the title - it refers to the long running comic series which teamed up Batman and Superman. From the trailer it seems a fair bit more ambitious than B:DE. There are a large number of characters and effects, indeed the trailer has a Warner Bros. logo at the start which I'm guessing has funded the project. I'll be intrigued to see the final result. Superman's far more difficult to pull off on screen than Batman, I think. Batman can work as a character if you don't quite capture the spirit, but Superman won't. It's easy to make him too perfect and aloof, but if he's too fallible then he's not Superman. That's what a lot of people don't get about Superman, simply because the image they've been exposed to is one of perfection. In the world we live in it's far more difficult to do the right thing than to be an anti-hero, and the best Superman stories are about what happens when the best thing to do isn't necessarily the right thing to do. Guess which hero advocates the former position. The conflict between the attitudes of DC's greatest heros has produced, in my opinion, some of the best comics I've ever read (although the Justice League forms party of that), so this film could be great if well made. I'm not sure when it's out, but I'm looking forward to it.

Protection Or Lack Thereof

I just came across a program called 'ConfigSafe'. It popped up when I tried to install Ad-Aware, saying that this would change my system settings, and did I want to proceed. Thing is, I'd just installed Win2k Service Pack 4 on the computer without a warning of any kind. As long as it's a well written program

UKWP

I'm going to directly copy this from the BBC article - hopefully it won't matter providing I state the source:

A Euro MP for the UK Independence Party has sparked controversy hours into his first day in the Strasbourg parliament.

Godfrey Bloom was given a seat on the European Parliament's women's rights committee on Tuesday.

But he told the media: "No self-respecting small businessman with a brain in the right place would ever employ a lady of child-bearing age."

[...]

Mr Bloom, an investment fund manager from York, told journalists he wanted to deal with women's issues because: "I just don't think they clean behind the fridge enough".

Not a wanker at all, then.

He claimed (later) that his remarks were "said for fun" to illustrate a more serious point. Then proceeded not to make any point. I suppose if he's just after attention (diddums) then he's been successful. After all, everyone now thinks he's a neanderthal attention-seeking wanker