Logbook

Stop trying to change me to convert to the same bloody energy supplier that I am already on when you cannot guarantee that any discounts I am currently signed up on will still apply given it is 12 months from signing up and I am fecking off into the middle distance in about 6 months time anyway. I am not signing off on anything unless you can give me that info. Yes, you are probably earning via commission - sorry, sucks to be you, get a real job that is actually of benefit to you and the rest of the world rather than pestering people. And yes, that is a lovely book of discount vouchers for places I never go in the first place. And your selection of free magazines sucks arse big time. Gosh it would help if they listened in the first place.

Yes I was good and politer in person.

Did I mention that lunar phasing, pissed off at the planet thing as well?

If anyone wants me, I will be decapitating innocent blades of grass by hand.

Edit: And on the subject of grass... It isn't grass, it's twitch - sodding noxious weed that suffocates out other plants and needs a nuclear strike from orbit to kill off. Yes, it may actually stay green in this climate and look grass like for a not bad pseudo lawn but it is an abolute bastard when it gets into the rest of the garden. Burn it. Plant cacti.

But the front garden is now done and I am going to relax a bit and wait for the itchy scratches on the arms to calm down.

Outrage at attacks on NASA science Bad Astronomy Blog run by Phil Plait, an astronomer and sceptic who runs the Bad Astronomy website. Found via vonstrassburg's Slashdot feed.

Quoting from bits of the NYT article

The Big Bang is “not proven fact; it is opinion,” Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, “It is not NASA’s place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator.”
[snip]
The Deutsch memo was provided by an official at NASA headquarters who said he was upset with the effort to justify changes to descriptions of science by referring to politically charged issues like intelligent design. Senior NASA officials did not dispute the message's authenticity.

Mr. Wild declined to be interviewed; Mr. Deutsch did not respond to e-mail or phone messages. On Friday evening, repeated queries were made to the White House about how a young presidential appointee with no science background came to be supervising Web presentations on cosmology and interview requests to senior NASA scientists.

The only response came from Donald Tighe of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. "Science is respected and protected and highly valued by the administration," he said.

The censorship of climate research results (what two thirds of the NYT article is discussing), whatever conclusion they support, is also verging on the criminal.