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March 17, 2005
Delphi 2005 Update 2
Delphi 2005 Update 2 now available ...
Posted by daen at 11:28 PM
Periodic tables
This website shows the periodic table in a number of forms (the elements that are superconducting, their state at 700 celsius etc) as well periodic tables in novel forms (such as the chemical galaxy).
Posted by daen at 01:02 AM
March 16, 2005
Spoiled Ink
Short stories @ Spoiled Ink @ Spoiled Ink
Posted by daen at 01:31 AM
March 15, 2005
Unintentional irony from the Roman Catholic Church
"The book is everywhere. There is a very real risk that many people who read it will believe that the fables it contains are true."
Thus spake the representative of the Roman Catholic Church about the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.
Surely I am not the only one to find deep irony in the Vatican's dismissal of a widspread and popular tome as a dangerous fiction ... I was briefly tempted to pen a scathingly satirical article for the Rockall Times, but really, what's the point?
Posted by daen at 08:33 PM
March 13, 2005
"Yes, Madam President"
Do You Think the United States is Ready for a Woman President in 2008? - 62% say 'Yes' (The Hearst Newspapers / Siena College National Poll).
More remarkable, out of 1,125 registered voters across 50 states and DC in the survey, around 11 did not know who Hilary Clinton is, and nearly 80 of them had never heard of Condoleezza Rice. You know, wife of the former President and junior Senator from New York, and the current Secretary of State - the highest ranking member of the US cabinet - respectively? These ignoramuses are registered voters, saints forfend us. Can you imagine them on election day (if they bothered to turn out) - "Bush ... yeah, definitely rings a bell ... isn't he a golfer?".
Posted by daen at 10:06 PM
What a peevish fool was that of Crete/That taught his son the office of a fowl!
Cheminformatician Peter Murray-Rust directly quotes Edward Tufte's Wired essay from September 2003 when he starts one of his presentations with the warning that Power Corrupts; Powerpoint corrupts absolutely.
Tufte himself is of course paraphrasing - who? Marx? "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely". But no - to my surprise it turns out to be historian Lord Acton (1834-1902). The full quotation is rather wise and is relevant today:
"Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end...liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition...The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to to govern. Every class is unfit to govern...Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
And the title of this entry (a spurious attempt to link hubris to Office ...) is of course from Henry VI, Part 3: Act V, Scene vi, referring itself to the legend of Dædalus and Icarus.
Posted by daen at 03:58 AM
Arty Hotels
There's been a lot of coverage of Project Fox recently, one of whose aspects is the conversion of a dowdy 3 star hotel into Hotel Fox.
The Hotel FOX is a completely new type of hotel, unparalleled in the world says the blurb. Maybe. But there are a number of similar concept hotels in the World, one of which is the Sorat Art'otel on Joachimstaler Strasse in Berlin, where I had the pleasure of staying on and off between '92 to '95.
Admittedly, Hotel Fox has well and truly focussed on getting art into each of its 61 rooms, whereas most of the art in the Sorat is in the public spaces, like the dining room ...
... and the lobby, for example.
Posted by daen at 02:59 AM
Registering stereochemistry
Abstract: A new effective algorithm for handling of geometry at chiral centres for the processing of stereochemical structures during their unambiguous registration in databases was designed, programmed and implemented. The chemical and mathematical reasoning behind the algorithm are discussed in detail. Its advantages- in comparison to the methods used so far - are illustrated for the manual as well as for the computer-assisted assignment of stereodescriptors based on the CIP ranking procedure
Molecules 2001, 6, 915-926
Starts off with a review of the history of representing 3D chemical structures in 2D (ie stereochemistry), and an explanation of why chemists do this, followed by the inevitable discussion of the challenges and pitfalls of doing it in software.
Posted by daen at 02:19 AM
March 03, 2005
Steve Fossett sets solo flight record
Steve Fossett has set the solo flight record less than a month after Ellen MacArthur broke the round the world solo sailing record. Well done Steve, Scaled Composites and the Virgin Global Flyer team.
Posted by daen at 09:11 PM