The Lay Scientist

Hollywood have announced a new film version of the popular Microsoft game Minesweeper, and released the following epic trailer. I think you'll agree, this could be the film event of the century.

Holy crap, it's 2009! Only one year left of the decade, and what a decade it's been for me... but more on that in 12 months time. For now, I just want to wish all of you a Happy New Year, and stay tuned because I plan to do big things in 2009.

But first, I'm going to make some random predictions for this year. They range from science to politics and come in no particular order. If I do well, I might even repost this next year and see how right I was.

Predictions:

Afghanistan will become the big foreign issue.

[bpsdb] Mike Adams came to my attention recently, when I decided to subscribe to a couple of the nuttier alternative medicine websites out there to help provide raw material to feed by blogging habit. He is... let's say passionate, about the wonders of alternal medicine, and the giant conspiracy that is the medical establishment, and his rants are an endless source of amusement to me.

[bpsdb] Australian comedian Tim Minchin delivers an inspired piece of poetry about the alternative-medicine-loving girl he once met at a dinner party. Recorded at the London Apollo, apologies for the poor sound quality.

I've seen this question touted around the internet a few times recently, in response to an advert for a car safety campaign that's currently being shown in the UK. The advert suggests that wearing a seat belt protects your internal organs from impact, by depicting an unrestrained man who dies due to his organs being turned into something you'd use in gravy after smashing up against his rib cage. What people have been asking is, how on Earth does a seatbelt restrain your internal organs? Surely by restraining your rib cage in place it just makes the impact even worse?

Christmas: A day when rich Westerners celebrate irrational beliefs while the rest of the planet are subjected to famine, war, disease and torture as a result of them. And with that merry thought, here's John Lennon:

It was Christmas Eve, 1968, and the space race was in full flow. As people travelled to celebrate Christmas with their families on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 - Jim Lovell, William Anders and Frank Borman - circled the moon in their lonely capsule, and became the first human beings to witness the rising of the Earth over the horizon of an alien world. Apollo 8 will be remembered for countless generations to come for those first images of our fragile planet seen from space, but less well remembered is the atheist controversy that the astronauts triggered with a live television broadcast that momentous Christmas Eve, forty years ago today.

Earthrise, seen from Apollo 8, December 24th 1968

[BPSDB] As we come towards the end of 2008, North Korea's inimitable national news outlet / propaganda machine brings us news of two amazing new medical breakthroughs that will surely keep the not-at-all brutally oppressed people - the ones that aren't being slaughtered in concentration camps while the world turns a blind eye - in good health and spirits.