The Axion

What’s wrong with 3D films and TV?

What’s wrong with 3D films and TV? Hailed as the next big thing in entertainment, 3D films and TV will emerge over the next five years and result in most of us sitting in darkened rooms wearing strange glasses for fun. I visited a friend’s house this week and he proudly told me that he had been with his children to see Alice in Wonderland in 3D at the local cinema and how much he and his kids enjoyed it.  I promptly picked up the pair of the “Roy Orbison style glasses” he had been forced t...

Granny and Granddad Moron.

I am dismayed at the lack of progress at the Copenhagen climate change summit and at the chaotic demonstrations as well as the actions of the police in crowd control.  (more on policing in the 21st century in a later blog). It is showing up all that is bad about our understanding of the climate change threat and how much the world is divided. Unless we can all (and I mean the whole 7 billion of us) come to a common understanding on climate change and agreement on mutual support, there is littl...

TV Documentaries worth watching tonight

TV is often disappointing, full of soaps, game shows and repeats but tonight we have a treat.  Two documentaries deal with problems that every one of us will face and be impacted by.  The first is by the excellent Horizon team and hosted be the venerable Sir David Attenborough  - How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?  on Wednesday 9th december 2009 on BBC 2 at 9 pm. I have mentioned before about the potential crisis that over population will bring to our planet but there are ways to...

Copenhagen Climate Summit Begins

With the Copenhagen Climate Summit under way I will be following proceedings and commenting here. But already I feel that its is a waste of time.   The climate change deniers continue to put self interest or a misguided belief in some kind of conspiracy ahead of the future of human kind and without a global consensus it seems unlikely that any real and significant reduction in CO2 emissions will be made. For a moment imagine what daily life will be like in 2109 if the worst case scenarios ...

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.