I mentioned the launch of Nasa’s new GLAST telescope previously and they’ve now released the first light images. Oh, and they’ve renamed it the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope - a short history of telescopic observations here. There’s a dynamic image of the Vela pulsar too - which beams radiation every 89 milliseconds as it spins.
No mention, though, of the discovery of pulsars by Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell.. or her part in Pluto’s downfall.. [Image Credit: NASA/DOE/International LAT Team]...
In the Irish Times there’s a fairly comprehensive rebuttal of Cardinal Séan Brady’s “criticisms of the European Union’s approach to religion” - as previously noted here. Another blow in the Church v State [Lisbon] clash?A democracy has a duty to make laws in the interests of all. As an entity whose population is religiously diverse, the EU cannot legislate purely on the basis of the theological convictions of a single faith without violating this duty. Furthermore, in democratic public life, individuals must account for their beliefs and will inevitably be criticised for them.
The Cardinal has effectively characterised the imposition on religious bodies of the duties to accept criticism and provide justifications for their political demands...
Just as Brian reckons there’s trouble brewing between church and state, Will Crawley notes a Ted-ish tendency in the Italian clergy.. Expect “secret sects, satanic groups and New Age movements” to be invoked.. again.....
Anthony McIntyre had planned a book tour of the US to promote Good Friday, The Death of Irish Republicanism. In the Sunday Life his publishers relate the reasons given for the refusal of a visa.The publishers said it was unlikely Mcintyre would be given a visa as long as George Bush was in the White House. A spokesman said: “The refusal is based upon his felony conviction. As he is not a politician going to the US on ‘peace processing’ business, he does not get a waiver to entry despite his conviction, as other convicted IRA members have.
“He could apply again, but the likelihood of his being able to enter the States is slim to none, given both his record and the political climate. “We expect the status quo to remain in place.”...
Apparently the representative of Emperor Pope Benedict XVI in Ireland, Cardinal Séan Brady, “has suggested that EU hostility to religion may have prompted some Irish voters to reject the Lisbon Treaty. That wasn’t one of the options available in the Eurobarometer poll.. as noted previously by Mick. But the only option that was close only received 2% support. More from the RTÉ reportHe warned that ignoring this trend had inevitable political and social consequences, not least on levels of support for the European project itself. He said it may be important for the EU to review its prevailing pragmatism that results in Christians being denied the right to intervene in public debates, or at least having their contribution dismissed as an...
In the Irish Times, Miriam Lord turns TV reviewer on the occasion of former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern guest-presenting RTÉ’s The Road to Croker.The politician turned presenter stayed in his comfort zone throughout the show, with two stars of the great 1970s Dublin football team opening proceedings. You can’t go wrong with Paddy Cullen and Jimmy Keaveney - anecdotes at will.
“We’ll be asking two Dublin legends where it all went wrong,” said Bertie to the camera. We’re all wondering that.
“A trawl through the good old days might be just the tonic to lift the gloom.” Never a truer word, Bertie. Dublin Castle, September 15th, if the Mahon tribunal calendar is right....
Apparently Lá Nua broke this story on 11th July, and published a response from the Orange Order on 7th August. “Members of the Orange Order belong to the Institution because they are firmly committed to their Reformed Protestant Faith and in a world where secular values are changing the societies in which we live, our faith is important to us.”
A “senior member” of the Orange Order said to Lá Nua; “They might think they are being smart issuing that type of answer but it is showing that they are burying their heads in the sand. Many members have been very positive about the suggestion internally but nothing has happened at an official level yet”
A spokesman for the Order said that “we’re a pro-Protestant...
An Post have issued a new stamp to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the laying of the first Trans Atlantic Telegraph Cable by Cyrus West Field, a US paper merchant. The new stamp features the British battleship HMS Agamemnon and the US Navy’s Niagara. But the anniversary is not as straight-forward as it might appear.. For a start, the cable had failed by September that year due to a lack of understanding of the processes involved by the chief electrical engineer on the project, Edward Whitehouse - who ignored the advice of Belfast-born scientist William Thomson - later Lord Kelvin. The first official message, 99 words long, from Queen Victoria to James Buchanan, President of the United States, was sent on 16th August 1858 from Valentia Island and took over 16...
If you’re interested, BBC2 is about to broadcast, 11pm, a BBC4 Session with Van Morrison - sample clips here. Although, sadly, it won’t include The Philosopher’s Stone’s version of Wonderful Remark. Btw, George Ivan Morrison’s most reluctant session was previously noted here. Adds Not the version I mentioned, but a shortened live version - with an added extra....
Reading through the list of films by Guillermo del Toro I realised that I’ve seen, and enjoyed, most of his work as far back as Cronos - even Mimic. Although Pan’s Labyrinth has been sitting on my DVD to-watch pile for some time.. I might give it a spin this weekend. The Irish Times also has an interview with the director of Hellboy II : The Golden Army ahead of its release - next Friday in the Republic of Ireland apparently. And if Peter Bradshaw’s review in the Guardian is anything to go by, and it usually is, Hellboy II will be sitting on that to-watch pile before long. Of course, if I knew my Hellboy history [or read a newspaper - Ed] I would have found this line from Bradshaw’s review less surprising - “The battle against...
Cassini has been sending back close-up images of Enceladus after its fly-by [and the BBC reports are getting bloggy - Ed]. Saturn, pictured again, is still a planet, but it seems that some people still haven’t gotten over Pluto’s annus horribilis - and those plutoids didn’t help. There are those still honking for Pluto’s return to full planet status, or as the Professor puts it, “The Pluto planet controversy continues.” Alan Boyle of MSNBC reports here on the Great Planet Debate.. and his comments zone includes comments from chief honker, Alan Stern, of Nasa’s New Horizons mission.....
Peter Sheridan, the assistant chief constable noted previously, is also interviewed in agendaNI ahead of his taking on a new role as Chief Executive of Co-operation Ireland. And he’s identifying the problem with a top-down “indigenous” deal.“Co-operation Ireland has been very successful in a conflict situation for the last 30 years but the context has changed out there and the challenge will be to be as equally successful in the next 30 years of Co-operation Ireland in a different context,” he remarks.
“You’re in a peace-building context. People have this view that the peace is done and it’s all over. And to some extent that part of the conflict is over but it’s by no means stable yet. Yes, a lot of the engagement has...
It’s been easier to get a close-up view of Saturn’s moons than the Perseids this year. But then there is a telescope, of sorts, orbiting that particular gas giant. The Cassini-Huygens mission has already landed a probe on Titan, and snapped the spectacular image of Saturn eclipsing Sol, as well as providing evidence that Titan has liquid ethane on its surface. The Huygens probe took pictures too. But yesterday Cassini swept past Enceladus for a second time. Skimming through jets of icy water vapor and organic chemicals just 30 miles above the surface of the moon at a speed of 17.7 kilometers per second (40,000 miles per hour) relative to Enceladus, to send back more data and more images. There’s a fly-by update site and a blog too. Here’s...
Over in Letterkenny the local radio station has been playing host to a minor controversy we thought was the sole occupation of those of us on the other side of the border. When officials from 12 countries came to judge the town’s entry for the Entente Florale competition, some local people objected to the flying of the Union flag as part of a tribute to the visiting group. Gregory Campbell from the DUP was quick to seize on the story. Yet as one local wryly noted to Slugger: “We’re talking a handful of objectors. Indeed, there would be more people objecting to the flag flying in Gregory’s own constituency than out here”. Ah, the joys of the silly season!...
If you are fortunate enough to get clear skies over the next few nights don’t forget that it’s time for the Perseids meteor shower - it’s a regular event. Best viewing will be early on Tuesday morning but there should be plenty of meteors visible either side of that time. Astronomy.ie are running a Perseid Watch 2008 and the Royal Observatory is predicting a larger number of meteors than usual as the Earth ploughs through the dusty debris left behind by comet Swift-Tuttle. The comet last dropped by our neighbourhood in 1992, it’ll drop by again in 2126 - passing within 15 million miles of Earth - there’s an [java req] orbital diagram here. Fortunately we probably won’t be around in 3044 when it’s been estimated that it’ll...
With a spectacular opening ceremony underway in Beijing, and Sarah Brightman currently centre-stage singing in Mandarin, spare a thought for the hard-working scientists at Cern. They’ll be spending their weekend testing the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) accelerator to ensure it’s properly synchronised with the Large Hadron Collider ahead of the official ‘switch-on’ on September 10. And there is some fascinating speculation on what the LHC will find here. All of which is more or less an excuse to repost the particle physics rap.. in case anyone missed it.. Hey, it’s Friday!...
I recall some years ago now working for a day in the Kantonsschule at Heerbrugg in St Gallen, and being bowled over by the demi hero status I rapidly acquired amongst the staff there when I inadvertently revealed I’d been brought up and had lived so close to Bangor. I admit to having been completely confused. As it turns out the whole Swiss Canton is named after Gall, an Irish monk who travelled with Columbanus from Bangor to the shores of Lake Constance where he became a Hermit. Later when a monastic community was set up there, they took the name of the old Irish saint whose relics had been taken inside the church. Mairtin has news on the cultural links between Bangor and St Gallen which adhere to this day:
The Irish manuscripts at St Gallen are the oldest in the world...
Some snippets in the Irish Times from yesterday’s final panel discussion at John Hewitt Summer School, “Reflections on 1968”. Firstly from Paul Bew“I have never felt self-congratulatory in any way about my involvement because it did precipitate a conflict which eventually claimed 3,500 lives, and that is inescapable,” he said. “It would be very cruel to say that what we have ended up with is a twilight home in east Belfast for retired gunmen, but are relations today between the communities really that different?” Referring to the seeming possibility of a modest reform programme having been carried out by Terence O’Neill’s government, Prof Bew said: “I’m just not convinced that the outcome we do have is any...
I don’t know if WorldbyStorm managed to catch a glimpse of the partial solar eclipse over the archipelago this morning but if, like me, you didn’t, you can watch NASA’s online broadcast of the total version from China. There are other viewing options too. The image is the Aug. 11, 1999 solar eclipse as viewed from the Mir space station....
Well we have water on Mars and, as James Randerson says, NASA have a cool video of the panoramic view from the Phoenix lander. I’ve added some related audio clips from Mars Phoenix lander lead scientist Peter Smith of the University of Arizona and from William Boynton, lead scientist for the TEGA instrument. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University Arizona/Texas A&M University. And as Charles Arthur asks, “So, water. Anyone for terraforming?”...
The strong indications have already been noted, but we now have confirmation from the latest samples taken by Nasa’s Phoenix lander“We have water,” said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. “We’ve seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by Phoenix last month, but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted.”...
If you haven’t heard of the Antikythera Mechanism before this will probably be more startling than the revealed seabed off Rathlin Island. The “technological marvel of antiquity” was discovered by sponge divers in 1901 near Antikythera, a small island off Greece’s south coast, and has perplexed and astonished researchers ever since. The complicated gearing mechanism is believed to have been constructed between 150-100BC. In 2005 a 8-tonne X-ray machine was transported to Greece to study the mechanism and the results, which have just been published in Nature, link the mechanism not just to scientific calculations, but to important cultural events. The report has also been picked up here and here. And there’s a fascinating video...
The Belfast Telegraph’s “Open Stormont” campaign continues. Six months after an initial FOI request to reveal the names of landlords of Assembly politicians’ constituency offices was made, and refused, the paper has successfully challenged that refusal. We already knew about one of those landlords. But, as David Gordon reports, as well as the number of politicians claiming rental expenses for party-owned premises, there are a number of otherwise anonymous Society’s named as landlords....
Northern Ireland Criminal Justice Minister Paul Goggins, MP, has announced a funding package of £600,000 over the next three years for accredited Community Based Restorative Justice (CBRJ) schemes. The funding will be jointly provided, on an equal basis, by the Criminal Justice Agencies and The Atlantic Philanthropies. That’s despite criticisms of the CJI report on those currently unaccredited schemes....
It isn’t exactly a return to the extraordinary repressiveness of the first 50 years but RTÉ are right to challenge a Broadcasting Complaints Commission ruling that the use of images of “rosary beads, a priest’s collar and a bible or breviary”, as a background to a factual report on the Ferns inquiry report, were “likely to cause offence contrary to taste and decency guidelines.” Apparently one viewer had complained about what he claimed was a ‘profane use of the sacramentals’. From the RTÉ reportOpening the case for RTÉ today, Paul O Higgins SC said it was an unusual case with a flavour of the 1950s. Mr O’Higgins said the BCC had adjudicated on a complaint made by one person out of possibly hundreds...
To be fair, as with a previous survey, the point of the report ‘Can Contact Promote Better Relations? Evidence from Mixed and Segregated Areas of Belfast’ - full report here and summary here [both pdf files] - is that it’s the first ”longitudinal study (tracking the same individuals over time) of whether (and if so, how) contact works.” The researchers sampled adults living in Andersonstown and Ballybeen [the two segregated communities used] and Fortwilliam and Rossetta [the mixed communities used]. They found, as you might expect, that “contact reduces bias.” But there are interesting points to note about the differences in attitudes. Some of those summary findings are below the fold.
There are some findings worth...
Some timely advice [*ahem* - Ed] from birthday boy Sir Mick Jagger. Happy Birthday, Mick! [That’s Mr Jagger to you - Ed]...
In an otherwise unrelated post, Máirtín passes on word that Oregon-based Ed Carpenter’s Trillian sculpture, selected in 2005 for the Broadway Junction Public Art Project, has been shelved. Apparently due to the escalating cost of steel and the current economic climate’s effect on increasing costs for all raw materials. Belfast City Council are promoting the re-run of the competition to select a new design as an “opportunity for local artists..”“This new landmark piece of public art will symbolise the cultural confidence of Belfast and we hope it will become a positive symbol for the city for years to come,” [Cllr Bernie Kelly] added.
Which is what they said about Trillian.. Last word to Máirtín[Apparently], the...
Officially, Emperor Pope Benedict XVI declined the invitation to address the European Parliament this year owing to other commitments and his age. Unofficially, according to sources in this Times report, it’s because of the church hierarchy’s “great disillusionment” with the European project as the EU “has become more and more secularist”. Besides concern with the Anglican church’s supernatural well-being, secularism was at the forefront of the thoughts of one of the three cardinals despatched to the Lambeth Conference. Cardinal Ivan Dias’ concern was reported in the Times.He described modern secularism as being engaged in “spiritual combat” with the Church. The Cardinal said: “This combat rages fiercely...
A fun and fascinating talk by physicist Freeman Dyson from 2003 begins with George Washington at Princeton, and grow-your-own-cat [or dog] biotechnology kits, before moving on to astronomy. Specifically the possibility of life on the Galilean moons of Jupiter, and further afield - such as the newly named plutoid dwarf planet Makemake with its surface of frozen methane - rather than say.. Mars.. Via TEDtv, via the Professor....