(no subject)

For home reference:
The World Question Center: What is your dangerous idea?

It keeps being 15 degrees in the morning, and overcast, before clearing and warming to 27-28 degrees in the afternoon. Compared to the 38 degrees they had at New Years here (43 in Melbourne), I like this...

And in a followup to the previous rant...

Abortion researcher confounded by study
(NZ Herald 5.1.06)
( Article for future reference )

There are some interesting comments on the issue from http://capitalismbad.blogspot.com/2006/01/nothing-better-for-your-mental-health.html

It is also interesting to note some of the points raised in the Journal article ( from the discussion section: )

Congradulation to the authors for publishing their facts as they had gathered them, even though they knew that they could be used to argue against their own convictions.

Too much thermonuclear waste...

Insert rant here about theoretical papers which make predictions about 12C/14N ratios and isotopic ratios only but don't actually give you firm numbers you can test things against or use the not quite right case to illustrate, meaning you can't quite just plug the numbers in and play from there.
Insert loud swearing and abuse of the authors involved... except for one, whose thesis I am working off and I have met and think is quite a reasonable person... appart from the bits she left out of her thesis...
Insert minor headbutting of screen and watch astronomer chasing references with an electronic butterfly net. Coaxing them out of corners with inducements of citations and assaulting their graphs for what is needed.
Insert more swearing.
All I ask is for elemental CNO abundances, following second dredge up but prior to onset helium flashes and any hot bottom burning from third dredge up, for initial LMC starting abundances with a 5 solar mass model.
And if you are lucky, you will manage to remain confused by the above statement.
Though I can attempt to explain if you want.
Butterfly time again I think.

(no subject)

( Only cause they didn't have physics/astronomy... )

It has been a day of posting and procrastination, hasn't it.
Was doing well in that the number of weddings I have been to (2 + a civil union) had outnumbered the number of funerals (1), but about to catch up. Which is a pity. Memorial service for a work colleague. Nice guy who was unlucky enough to come down a nasty form of cancer where they never did track down the primary cancer. Will be missed around the place.