Updates from April, 2007 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Jonathan Dann 20:33 on April 18, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Google – Advice to Reduce Carbon Footprint 

    Google Directions

    In keeping with the focus on cutting one’s carbon emissions, and lowering one’s carbon footprint, our well loved search engine is going to far.

    When searching for the best way to travel from New York to London, go to Google’s maps (click the image above) and read their directions, especially number 23. Although driving is recommended while on terra firma, they recommend swimming across the Atlantic! Presumably this will make up for all those nasty emissions we put out during the rest of the year.

    The final kick in the teeth? After swimming for 3,462 miles, you’re fatigued, delerious, dehydrated and hungry, and what do you hear…

    “Bonjour!”
    Ahh, if Google ruled the world.

     

  • Jonathan Dann 20:28 on March 4, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Chinese Paintings 

    I thought I’d like to share this with the outside world. I haven’t blogged for a while, much work has kept me busy and I hate being in front of my computer at the moment, even though its a pretty Mac. It’s a bad sign when you’ve sat in the same place typing for so long (feels like weeks) that when you stop you don’t know what to do with yourself.

    Well the Chinese Government in their infinite wisdom have decided that the appropriate re-distribution of the people’s money is to paint a mountain green! I invite you to read this. My favourite part is the bewildered local forestry official saying:

    “This is an order from above,” she said. “You should ask the leader from above. I don’t have any information on this.”

    They just did their job. Maybe the Chinese want the American satellites operators to think they are off-setting their carbon emissions.

     

  • Jonathan Dann 18:27 on January 17, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Global Warming Fiasco in US School 

    School Board Folds After One Idiot Parent Objects to Global Warming Video

    Please read the above. This incensed me so much that I had to write my own commentary on the subject below:

    Let me make something clear from the outset, I’m a Christian. Now thats out of the way, I’m also a Physicist in academia. Do I have any porblems reconciling the two? Not really, I believe that God has given me an equiring mind and senses that are the only Earthly things I can trust. As a result, when I’m experimenting I must trust my senses, which tell me that a raidoactive isotope has the half-life it does. The amount of the isotope in my possesion now easily inferrs the amount there was in previous time; now if this isotope happens to be carbon-14, it is simple to find out how long ago my coal sample was formed. This coal used to be a tree and would have had died with a relatively standard amount of carbon-14 in it, so the amount there is now tells me how old it is, if that is greater that 14,000 years, then the world is older. It’s very simple.

    Global warming is a scientifically corraborated and accepted fact, our senses show that it’s happening, and will get worse if left unchecked. When Christians argue that global warming is the manifestation of the predictions in Revelation that, as put by Frosty Hardison, ‘everything will burn up’, and therefore should be ignored, irritates me greatly. Should Christians disregard looking after our planet because we’re living in the end times? I heartily diagree for two reasons: firstly, we have no proof that we are living in the ‘end times’ as described in the Bible, Christians have continually pointed to world events as indications of this, and we are still here; secondly, I cannot believe that God, who created this Universe (in seven days or over billions of years) would want us to disregard our responsibilty to look ofter the gift he has given us. Who can possibly be so sure that we are living in the end times that they are so prepared to risk leaving a broken world for their children? The movement of Evangelical Chritians in the US, and somewhat in the UK too, would appear to show that members of the Church are so self-confident that this is a risk they are willing to take. It’s embarrasing that I may inadvertantly be lumped in with thaat crowd of small-minded, unquestioning people.

     

    • DaveK 18:59 on January 17, 2007 Permalink | Reply

      Well said, thank you

    • Jonathan Dann 19:08 on January 17, 2007 Permalink | Reply

      You’re welcome DaveK.

    • outolumo 22:33 on January 17, 2007 Permalink | Reply

      Not going into quiet presumptions in your C-14 logic I personally think that a look in the night sky (with some information of elementary astronomy) gives a way less denied idence of the old age of the Earth.

      I too agree, that counting that these are the end times is just about the greatest folly of all – we might have a reason to HOPE that. But our standing orders are to take care of the Earth, not destroy it.

      Having said that, I also doubt that whatever we do there might be little left of the world as we know it when all this mess is over. Let’s hope there still are future generations.

    • Jonathan Dann 22:36 on January 17, 2007 Permalink | Reply

      I know carbon dating is more involved than the way I’ve decribed it, but it was just to give an example, and not everyone would be able to grasp a full explanation. My minor at uni was in Cosmology, so I’m not sure why I didn’t think of that! Thanks for your thoughts.

    • (((Billy))) 23:18 on May 12, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Well said. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly elected officials will knuckle under to right-wing ‘crusaders.’ But if a liberal has an objection, they are vilified in many different ways.

      And for the earth’s age, I believe comparing potassium/argon ratios, or lead isotope ratios work’s quite well for the older dates.

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