Archive for February, 2013

Happy Darwin Day! To celebrate, why not attend a talk by Professor Steven French of the University of Leeds, entitled “Scientific Theory as Art”. Full details.

Recently, Bill Gates delivered the 2013 Richard Dimbleby Lecture, in which he discussed the struggle to eradicate polio from the world.

The good news is, that it is now only endemic in three countries – Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria.

This in itself is no small achievement – polio is a disease that takes weeks to diagnose, which means the percentage of the population you need to immunise is higher, in this case 95%.

Take a country like India, with over a billion people – 75,000 new babies are born every day, and each of them requires several rounds of immunisation. That means that you need 200,000 vaccines per day, that need to be taken to rural communities, while being refrigerated, often that need to be carried for miles on foot by health workers. No wonder it took a staggering 2,000,000 people working on the programme – but they did it!

Unfortunately, you can’t stop fighting it until it’s eradicated, but with only three countries to go, the plan is to read that milestone by 2018. But more than being about one single disease, Gates points out…

Polio eradication is a proving ground, a test. It will reveal what human beings are capable of, and suggest how ambitious we can be about the future.

Together, we can achieve great things.

As a child, I never had a chance. By the time I was 14, soon to discover what an amazing band The Smashing Pumpkins were, they had already split up. But, in 2006, front man Billy Corgan and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin reformed the band with a rotating cast of extras to bring out a new album, Zeitgeist.

Many people weren’t expecting good things, with only two of the original band members together. But this was nieve, as Billy Corgan is so much the heart and soul of the band – indeed, in the early days, Corgan would actually play all of the guitar and bass parts himself, putting Chamberlin’s drums over the top, and ignoring the contribution of the other band members so that the album fitted together the way he wanted.

When Zeitgiest was released in 2007, I wasn’t that impressed though. It was OK, but it didn’t really capture my ears – I’ve listened to it a couple of times since with no strong desire to keep going back to it.

Their new album, Oceania, released last year, is no such disappointment however. Bringing back musical memories of their most successful days, the album is everything you want from a Pumpkins record – dark, soulful, and with a hint of fun.

To install Imagick, you would normally do this via PECL.

sudo pecl install imagick

However, when trying this on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, you may get an error similar to the following.

checking ImageMagick MagickWand API configuration program...
configure: error: not found. Please provide a path to MagickWand-config or Wand-config program

You can resolve this by installing a few extra packages.

sudo apt-get install libmagickwand-dev libmagickcore-dev

Now try re-running the original command and it should be successful.

Chris Ward tweeted this picture.

Last week at Atheist Society, retired Religious Education teacher Margaret Bramham presented a talk on the Gospels. It was an interesting talk, though I couldn’t help thinking about this Mitchell & Webb sketch.

Last week, we headed down to the new steak house located on the Headrow, Miller & Carter.

Despite having just opened, it was actually relatively quiet. We are able to walk up without a reservation, and I would say only about 30% of the tables were occupied – though there were enough people in there to give it some atmosphere.

Was it the best steak I’ve had in Leeds? No. But George claimed that his was. My personal opinion was that it can’t match the top tier of Blackhouse and Gaucho, but it was still an excellent steak, and certainly not somewhere I would be adverse to going back to.

Last weekend, I had the parents over for dinner, which seemed a good excuse to do something other than meat and wedges, thrown in the oven for 20 minutes and then consumed. So we headed down to the market to pick up some fresh fish.

Langoustines, which are used in scampi, were dead easy to prepare. All I did was drop them in a pan of boiling water and leave them for four or five minutes until the flesh turned from a translucent colour to an opaque white.

We got a whole red snapper, that we had cleaned when we bought it (which means removing all the guts) and then rinsed it when we got home. I then stuffed it full of ginger cut up into small cubes, several slices of lime, dill and a block of butter.

We also got a whole trevally jack, which was probably the nicest one of the two, again had it cleaned, and then stuff it with lemon slices, parsley and another slab of butter. I then cut a few slits in the sides, rubbed a little salt in the wounds and wrapped them both in tin foil and stuck them in the oven for about thirty minutes. Seemed to work quite well.

The 49ers have a lot to be proud of from their performance at Super Bowl XLVII.

When they first started bringing a box of squirrels, who enjoyed gnawing through electrical cables, to games, everyone laughed. But clearly they aren’t laughing any more.

The 49ers almost managed the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history. The biggest deficit ever overturned was a mere 10 points, yet the 49ers found themselves having come back from a 22 point deficit with a first a goal. Clearly, they aren’t a team that is ever down and out.

The 49ers almost won – with only two minutes on the clock, we were 5 points behind with a first and goal. Unfortunately the Ravens defence held up, but statically, if the 49ers can put themselves in those situations, they are going to convert more often than not – especially now Ray Lewis isn’t around to coordinate the defence.

Colin Kaepernick is still only a second year, and this was still only his tenth NFL start. Most likely, he is only going to get better from here – he’ll stop wasting time outs, he may or may not throw less interceptions, and his game management will get better.

The 49ers have shown they have a great range of options – Frank Gore continues to run the ball brilliantly, Vernon Davis is back in the play calls and Michael Crabtree remains a strong target too. On the defence, players other than Aldon Smith showed they can sack a quarterback too.

And finally, David Akers managed a perfect record – sure, he wouldn’t have done if it hadn’t have come back for a roughing the passer flag, but hitting everything that counted at the Super Bowl, as well as making that NFL-record equalling 63 yard kick agains the Packers at the start of the season mean that Akers does at least have a few positives to take away from this season.

We did it! Long may my favourite team, the Baltimore Ravens, reign supreme!

Note to self: don’t forget to turn the other one of these off.