The Axion

Avatar the Movie

I thought I would share this trailer for the new film Avatar which will be released in December 2009.   Even from the trailer the theme of the film is clear, the bad guys - that's us - invade a planet with an indigenous population which we intend to plunder for a rare natural resource and end up going to war.  Sound familiar? I guess in the future we will still be acting in the same selfish ways, after all a leaopard doesn't change its spots. Sounds like a great film and I can't wait to se...

Blog posts to come

I have been tied up recently but I hope to be blogging regularly again shortly. I have some blog topics that I am particularly keen to write about: Policing in the 21st Century Future housing, design and supply The next financial crash 2012 and all that "end of the world" stuff Make your own products Micro energy generation and storage for all Open source everything Democracy dilution More comments on topical science from the popular journals So please come back regular...

Short Term Brains Causes Global Warming

More on the climate change debate and the myth that predictions of a short period of global cooling by some scientists undermines the whole weight of evidence for long term global warming trends. Are we just victims of our evolved short term brains? That many "just don't get it" seems to prove it. This New Scientist http://bit.ly/NZLTb article explains the myth and my take on it is bellow. We seek constant reassurances about our personal safety and we look around for information, hints an...

Does Crowd Prediction Work?

On Friday Derren Brown claimed that he used a "crowd" of 24 people to help him select the Wednesday UK Lottery draw numbers. He presented them with a sequence of past numbers and then he asked them to close their eyes and doodle on a piece of paper, a process called automatic writing. He collected the papers, some had written numbers, and he averaged them to derive a set of 6 numbers. He did not show the 24 people in the room what the numbers were and he sealed them in a container and took th...

Derren Brown Did iT ! But How?

Derren Brown correctly predicted last Wednesdays national lottery numbers and there are many theory's on his blog site (even one from me). Tonight he will tell us how he did it. Was it a trick, a slight of hand? A camera trick using freeze frame of half the televised image? A mathematical calculation? A psychic ability? Or something more sinister? Watch his show on UK channel 4 at 9 pm. http://bit.ly/10QA88 Watch Derren predict the numbers here on YouTube [youtube JS8AK3F8_sY]

Derren Brown Lottery Prediction Link

Here is the link to Derren Brown's C4 website http://derrenbrown.channel4.com/?intcmp=homepage_main_derren-brown Catch his show on UK Channel 4 tonight at 10:30 pm and his specials "Events" on Friday night.

Derren Brown to Predict the UK Lottery Numbers

Tonight Derren Brown, well known entertainer and the ultimate dinner party guest (I guess he never has to buy his own food), will tonight attempt to predict the UK's Wednesday Lottery draw numbers on a special Channel 4 (C4) programme. This should be interesting and I think it is possible for him to do it particularly since reading his book "Tricks of the Mind". He may not actually predict the numbers but it is well within his capabilities to convince us that he has. That said we know that th...

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There Will Be Zero Permafrost by 2100

From New Scientist Magazine Online at http://www.newscientist.com While we argue about the virtues of modelling of climate change, the ice is melting and we are running close to a tipping point where thawing permafrost releases vast amounts of trapped Co2 and Methane which could accelerate Global Warming. But even if we could agree this is going to happen, what could we do about it? This also comes at a time when the UN has been warned that it has underestimated the cost of the impact of G...

Scientists Predict the Future

This article in New Scientist http://www.newscientist.com really interested me. There have been many attempts to predict future events using all manner of means including crowd modelling and computer simulations. This is one system that seems to work, at least for financial markets, which is modelled on the very complex physics of atomic systems. I was wondering if the same principles and techniques could be applied to other areas of every day life and perhaps combined with crowd behaviour to...