Edgars grammar #fail

Voting feels good :-)

Susan’s and my fingers after voting!

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | ‘Quiet Sun’ baffling astronomers

via news.bbc.co.uk

Sunspots could be seen by the Soho telescope in 2001 (l), but not this year (r)

There are no sunspots, very few solar flares – and our nearest star is the quietest it has been for a very long time.

The observations are baffling astronomers, who are due to study new pictures of the Sun, taken from space, at the UK National Astronomy Meeting.

The Sun normally undergoes an 11-year cycle of activity. At its peak, it has a tumultuous boiling atmosphere that spits out flares and planet-sized chunks of super-hot gas. This is followed by a calmer period.

Last year, it was expected that it would have been hotting up after a quiet spell. But instead it hit a 50-year year low in solar wind pressure, a 55-year low in radio emissions, and a 100-year low in sunspot activity.

According to Prof Louise Hara of University College London, it is unclear why this is happening or when the Sun is likely to become more active again.

“There’s no sign of us coming out of it yet,” she told BBC News.

“At the moment, there are scientific papers coming out suggesting that we’ll be going into a normal period of activity soon.

“Others are suggesting we’ll be going into another minimum period – this is a big scientific debate at the moment.”
Images from Soho taken in 2001 (left) and 2007 (right)
Sunspots could be seen by the Soho telescope in 2001 (l), but not this year (r)

In the mid-17th Century, a quiet spell – known as the Maunder Minimum – lasted 70 years, and led to a “mini ice-age”.

This has resulted in some people suggesting that a similar cooling might offset the impact of climate change.

According to Prof Mike Lockwood of Southampton University, this view is too simplistic.

“I wish the Sun was coming to our aid but, unfortunately, the data shows that is not the case,” he said.

Prof Lockwood was one of the first researchers to show that the Sun’s activity has been gradually decreasing since 1985, yet overall global temperatures have continued to rise.

“If you look carefully at the observations, it’s pretty clear that the underlying level of the Sun peaked at about 1985 and what we are seeing is a continuation of a downward trend (in solar activity) that’s been going on for a couple of decades.

“If the Sun’s dimming were to have a cooling effect, we’d have seen it by now.”

‘Middle ground’

Evidence from tree trunks and ice cores suggest that the Sun is calming down after an unusually high point in its activity.

Professor Lockwood believes that as well as the Sun’s 11-year cycle, there is an underlying solar oscillation lasting hundreds of years.

He suggests that 1985 marked the “grand maximum” in this long-term cycle and the Maunder Minimum marked its low point.

“We are re-entering the middle ground after a period which has seen the Sun in its top 10% of activity,” said Professor Lockwood.

“We would expect it to be more than a hundred years before we get down to the levels of the Maunder Minimum.”

He added that the current slight dimming of the Sun is not going to reverse the rise in global temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

“What we are seeing is consistent with a global temperature rise, not that the Sun is coming to our aid.”

Data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows global average temperatures have risen by about 0.7C since the beginning of the 20th Century.

And the IPCC projects that the world will continue to warm, with temperatures expected to rise between 1.8C and 4C by the end of the century.

No-one knows how the centuries-long waxing and waning of the Sun works. However, astronomers now have space telescopes studying the Sun in detail.

According to Prof Richard Harrison of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Oxfordshire, this current quiet period gives astronomers a unique opportunity.

“This is very exciting because as astronomers we’ve never seen anything like this before in our lifetimes,” he said.

“We have spacecraft up there to study the Sun in phenomenal detail. With these telescopes we can study this minimum of activity in a way that we could not have done so in the past.”

The NP back and contesting the elections?

via 10and5.com

Okay, so, this took me by total surprise.

Looking through the interesting election posters and laughing at all the little parties I’ve never heard of, I came across the NP and I was like “WTF?”

Can you believe it? “Yes…we’re back” is their tagline but it looks like a new set of monkeys is at the helm of this “revival”.

After the initial failure of the National Party and the subsiquent failue or the New National Party (NNP) after it sold out to the ANC, I would imagine that FW and his cronies must be reeling at his so-called revival.

There’s even a website: http://www.nationalparty.co.za and it looks like the party is positioning itself as quite a cross-cultural conservative party, with a focus on the Western Cape – judging by the sheer number of people it has allocated to different regions of the province as opposed to Gauteng, for example.

WIth 40 parties contesting the elections this year, it’s set to be a duzi, and there are certainly some pearlers on this year’s ballots including:
- Al Jammah Ah
- Keep it Straight and SImple Party
- Woman Forward
- Great Kongress (with a ‘K’) of South Africa
- Africa Muslim Party
- …and about 5 Christian-related parties

Check some of them out here: http://www.10and5.com/2009/04/election-time-all-the-party-posters/#

Grammar #fail

Apostrophe abuse at its best…..

Disastrous drivers

As someone who commutes regularly on my motorcycle between Roodepoort and Rivonia, I spend a fair amount of time in traffic along the same route.  And, given the nature of riding a motorcycle on South African roads, you find yourself being so much more observant to ensure that you make it from home to work and back in one piece.

Now, in the five-or-so months that I’ve been commuting on my motorcycle, I’ve managed to develop a list of the best and worst drivers – based on the common courtesy shown to motorcyclists.

I have to point out that this research is in no way exhaustive and there’s no scientific methodology to how I came to the results so it’s filled with generalisations, but they are, nonetheless, generalisations that are based on common observations.

My route from home to work starts in Christiaan De Wet Drive in Roodepoort, goes through Randpark Ridge, Northumberland Road in Northgate and eventually onto Witkoppen Road in Fourways where it’s a short distance to Rivonia where my offices are – It’s a 28km trip that can take anywhere between 35 and 50 minutes depending on traffic volumes.

I’ve found that the worst drivers by far are small and medium delivery truck drivers, Telkom technicians and large SUV drivers – particularly Audi Q7 drivers.  I couldn’t agree with Jeremy Clarkson from TV’s Top Gear more when he says that cocks don’t drive BMWs anymore.  Cocks drive Audis Q7s.

It’s not bad enough that large SUV drivers straddle lanes, talk endlessly on their cellphones and can’t see further than the dashboard of their yuppie-mobiles, they also ignore blind spots.  And anyone behind the wheel of an ocean liner-class sedan (Mercedes S-Class and BMW 7 Series) is equally disastrous on Johannesburg’s roads.

Now, I hear you asking: “What about taxi drivers?”.  Yes, well, here comes another surprise.  We all know that taxis generally sow their own brand of chaos and anarchy on South African roads on a daily but, as it turns out, they are amongst the most courteous drivers when it comes to motorcyclists.

On average (again, not a scientific measurement), on my route to and from work, 4/5 taxis will pull over and give a motorcyclists space to ride past if traffic is slow – compared to a measly 1/5 of large SUV drivers and 2/5 luxury German sedan drivers.  Surprisingly, small hatchback drivers are also quite aware of motorcyclists and 3/5 of them will pull over and let bikers ride by.

Also interesting to note is that the quality of driving decreases gradually between Roodepoort and Fourways – based on traffic volumes, levels of road rage and the number of large SUVs in any given area.  On the whole, Fourways has the worst drivers while the best drivers are usually found in the Clearwater Mall area.

It’s bizarre, I know.

What can we learn from this?  Well, for one thing, we’re all very happy to shout at and show taxi drivers toffees, but honestly, they’ve wiggled their way into my good books based purely on the courtesy that they have shown me and other motorcyclists on the roads (from my observations at least).  But I think it’s a great time more people to get involved with  the great work that the guys at Think Bike are doing because far too many motorcyclists are knocked down by dyslexic retards behind the wheels of vehicles in South Africa’s roads.

My new OS – Eeebuntu Netbook Remix

via eeebuntu.org

So this is the new OS that I’m going to get on my Eee-PC next week – Eeebuntu Netbook Remix.

I have a good frind that is well-versed in Linux who’s going to be helping me. It’s a good thing becuase I’m a total Linux n00b but apparently Ubuntu is quite easy to use.

Honestly, the Linux OS on the Eee-PC – as standard – is pretty OK. It has everything you could want and it’s super easy to set up and use but I want a little more flexibility and Eeebuntu looks like the OS to get.

Eeebuntu Netbook Remix is similar to Standard, except it uses the Netbook Launcher, customised for the small screen of the EeePC and over 41,000 downloaders to date have chosen it for their installation!

Instead of the usual Eeebuntu desktop, the main launcher provides a tabbed environment with easy to access icons for all the applications and documents you use day to day. It’s easy to customise and much quicker to navigate through when you’re on the move.

As with Standard, the Netbook Remix comes with a complete set of applications so you can start working and playing on your EeePC straight away.

And thanks to the Array kernel, wifi, networking, function keys and sound work out of the box – no need to compile or configure anything!

If you mainly use your EeePC on the move and want quick access to your applications, try Eeebuntu NBR.

Excited and nervous but, hey, I felt the same the first time my dad introduced me to MS-DOS 3.0 back in the 80s.

Just because it’s trendy….

Just over a year ago I bought myself one of these Arab head scarfs (called a shelmegh) for paintball and now I see that every little teenager and her dog is wearing them in a multitude of colours as the latest fashion accessory.

Funny how something so feared and what has become an international symbol for terrorism is now the latest “must have” from shops like ACA Joe and Hilton Weiner.

Does this mean that terrorists will be able to walk around in public more easily? LOL – perhaps.

Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the world yet?

Check out this website I found at hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com

LOL

My new Asus Eee-PC

So a few days ago I came accross a fantastic deal on Kalahari.net (http://www.kalahari.net). The okes were selling Asus Eee-PCs for R1,899 for the 700-W model (aka the 2G Surf) – a bargain to say the least.

After lots of “humming and harring” I decided that the money was best spent on something else.

But tonight my wife sprung a huge surprise on me. She ordered one and had it delivered today as a belated birthday gift for me. )))

Yayness! Now the real question is about the OS. I’m sure the stock-standard Linux OS is fine but a good friend of mine suggested Eee-Ubuntu (http://www.eeeubuntu.org) but I’m also keen to see what Windows 7 may be like on the Eee-PC.

It only has a 2GB SSD so footprint is a key consideration to take into account (the average download for Eee-Ubuntu is around 850MB).

Or maybe just keeping the standard OS in-tact is the best option? I’m always open to good advice…

In any event, my new little netbook is going to rock and I’m very much looking forward to using it.