BBC sky at night: Pluto and New Horizons

The other night, I watched a very informative BBC Sky at Night documentary on Youtube about the flypast of the New Horizons probe on planet/dwarf planet Pluto last year.  I didn't realize that Pluto and its moon Charon can actually qualify as a binary pair because the barycentre that they both orbit is outside of Pluto itself.  Presenter Chris Lintott really knows his stuff and is a worthwhile successor to the late Patrick Moore.

Star Wars: the force awakens

I have just watched the DVD of 'Star Wars: the force awakens'. The story was basically a rehash of episode 4 "A new hope", but with new characters.  Only the burgeoning relationship between the force sensitive characters Rey and Finn add anything new to the storyline.  There was an excellent cameo by Harrison Ford as Han Solo as he confronts his son and antagonist - Kylo Ren.  Apart from that its a bit of a disappointment unless you are a serious hard core Star Wars fanatic.

Naz Shah

I just found this little upload from Youtube

Its about that nasty, smelly, anti-semitic Labour MP Naz Shah, who has resigned from being a parlimentary aide to shadow chancellor John McDonnell. Here Labour front bencher Lisa Nandy MP is taken to task for it, with Liam Fox MP adding a few titbits. A couple of telling comments.

1. Nandy says that the majority of Labour members are not antisemitic.  That's ok then, so it means a minority are.  So when will Labour do something about them?
2. Naz Shah said she did not agree with some of the racist images and posts that she shared.  So why did she share them then? She's either too thick or thinks the public is too thick.
3. Liam Fox makes a very telling point, its not only the images and posts that you share but also the underlying sentiment behind it.  This suggests that Shah strongly believed in antisemitism. 

So another Labour member has been rumbled for anti-semitism, in other news, scientists discover that doing push ups is good for your biceps.

finally finished 'In search of the Trojan war'

Last night I watched the final episode of 'In search of the Trojan war' on DVD. Despite being more than 30 years old, this is an excellent BBC documentary.  In the final episode, Michael Wood explores not only the fall of Troy but also the fall of Mycenae Greece which according to Homer, sacked Troy.  He then goes on to talk about the Bronze Age Collaspse, which plunged the Eastern Med into a 500 year long dark age.  A dark age where people stopped writing things down and went back to oral histories being passed down by mouth.

Steve Davis

The snooker legend, that is Steve Davis finally announced his retirement after 38 years of playing professionally. Whilst I was not a great fan of his, he came across as a true gentlemen and treated his sport with great dignity.  I will always remember this moment of his(jump to 13:40).

Quantum entanglement and large objects

If you have ever wondered why quantum physics don't apply to anything bigger than sub-atomic particles, astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson explains why.  Enjoy!

Israel/Palestine: An Arab Christian perspective

Last night I went to a talk given by Dr Munther Isaac at St Andrews Church in Tsim Sha Tsui on the problems faced by Palestinian Christians in both Israel and the so-called occupied territories. It was interesting and it was not what I expected. Dr Isaac was very open about the problems faced by Christians namely, persecution, violence and poverty but he put everything down to.... the Israelis, especially Israeli Jews.

He mentioned the security wall but failed to mentioned that Israelis built the wall to prevent suicide bombers from blowing innocent people up. Although he did acknowledge persecution from muslim fundamentalists, the cause of which was bizarrely down to the Israelis.  Somehow in Dr Isaac's world if the Israelis or zionists just vanished into thin air then all the problems faced by Christians in the Middle East would vanish.  He failed to mention some of the racist bits of sharia law which subjected non-muslims to dhimmi or second class status.  In contrast in Israel everyone has the same equal rights be they Jew, Christian, Muslim or anything.

In other words, Dr Isaac presented a very antizionist view of the conflict.  At the end I asked why during the 400 years of occupation by the Ottoman Turks did the Palestinians fail to even try gaining their own freedom.  He replied that nationalism like that was a recent phenomena which I found quite an unsatisfactory answer.

Warhammer 40,000 Squad Command

This week I started playing Warhammer 40,000: Squad Command on the Sony PSP.  It is turn based strategy from Games Workshop's Warhammer 40k series.  This was my first time at playing Warhammer 40k in any guise since I was not into the legendary 1980's strategy game which this is based on.  I find it extremely challenging and took me many attempts to get past the first level. In essence, you control a unit of super soldiers and you must achieve a certain goal to pass that level. This could be killing all the enemy units, killing a certain enemy, taking over a place or building, etc.

What is different about this game is that your characters each have a limited number of action points and this limits how far your character can move and how many shots it can fire. The further it moves, the less it can fire and vice versa.  This makes it different from the other PSP strategy game, Field Commander.

An interesting part is that units from both sides can shoot even though it is not its respective term, so your units can be killed when it is your turn.

I need to get pass a few more levels before I can give a clear rating on this game, but here is a sample from Youtube.

Battle of adrianople - decisive battles

As a history buff, rightwinger and fan of the Total War strategy game series, I love this episode. So a refugee crisis on the Roman  empire's borders led to war, which the Roman's lost and in turn led to the sacking of the Rome.

In praise of ..... practicing darts at home

I've had my current dartboard, Unicorn HD Eclipse, since November 2014. It has given me many hours of relaxation and enjoyment for many reassons, including -

1. Great way to relieve stress at the end of a working day.
2. Keeps me away from the smartphone.
3. Keeps me away from the PSP.
4. Gives me some limited exercise.
5. Gives me an objective, ie to get better at it every day, but without any pressure.
6. Its cheap and once setup does not require any preparation.
7. Green, in that you don't need to plug it in or charge it up. 

Labour party and anti-semitism

Last week the UK Labour party under Jez Corbyn re-admitted a self-hating anti-semite Jew Tony Greenstein back in its ranks.  Greenstein portrays himself as an 'anti-zionist' Jew and is indeed a son of a rabbi. In this article, he derides his critics as 'zionist scum' and once mentioned to a critic that if a group of White house staff or evangelical christians were vaporized, he would not lose any sleep, charming!  This comes in the wake of the Labour councillor Vicky Kirkby's Jews have big noses scandal.

For me this is nothing new, Hitler himself was partially jewish and the question to ask is, why do some Jews hate themselves for being Jews so much?  As for Labour and anti-semitism, I think this goes back to 1990's. When the USSR fell the left needed new holes to felch from, anti-semitism in the form of antizionism is one of these holes.

Nick Blackwell and the debate about boxing

The sport of boxing gave us a sad reminder of why it is such a dangerous yet compelling sport this week with the injuries to Nick Blackwell.  He was fighting Chris Eubank Jr, son of former world super middleweight champion Chris Eubank Sr, for the British middleweight title. As the clip below shows, Eubank Sr even climbed in the ring to ask his son not to continue with headshots on Blackwell, maybe he was thinking about the injuries he caused to Michael Watson back in the 1980s.

More importantly he was asking why the referee did not stop the bout when it was clear that Blackwell was not able to defend himself. Elsewhere, I read this article about the bout in the Spectator and came across this particular quote by the writer Simon Barnes -

But when deaths and serious injuries happen in sports like eventing, it’s because things have gone horribly wrong. When they happen in boxing it’s because things have gone horribly right. Two powerful and highly trained athletes are trying to hit each other’s brains.

What he said is true but what Barnes fails to mention is that boxers choose to take up the sport, either as a profession or pastime, voluntarily.  Of course, unfortunately, incident's like this will always happen, but that is part of the attraction of the sport to some.  Wrapping people up in cotton wool helps no one.

As someone who practices boxing as a hobby my thoughts are with Nick Blackwell, and I wish him a speedy recovery.

Ronnie Corbett - brass ears

This week saw the passing of one of my childhood heroes, Ronnie Corbett, whilst many remember him for the fork handles/four candles sketch, I remember him most for this little piece.

He and Ronnie Barker can now re-unite as the 'Two Ronnies' again in heaven.