Who Dares to Dream Beyond the Paradigm?

The Large Hadron Collider is a gigantic particle accelerator beneath the ground, near Geneva. Very soon it may provide information that could throw light on the fundamental structure of matter.

The project aims to provide colliding particles with huge amounts of energy never before observed on earth. Information gathered may explain some of the unanswered questions surrounding the so-called Big Bang Theory of the origin and evolution of the Universe.

Fermi's paradox

Enrico Fermi was a famous Italian physicist who lived in the first half of the 20^th century. He built the first nuclear reactor. Known for his contribution to Quantum Theory, Nuclear and Particle Physics and Statistical Mechanics, he was awarded a Noble Prize in 1938.

At a luncheon in 1950, Fermi asked the question, "Where is everybody?" when considering the compelling evidence, available at that time, that intelligent life was likely to exist throughout the Universe.

Fermi had already deduced that millions of civilisations could be far in advance of those on Earth. Some of them could have found solutions to many problems we have not yet solved, such as intergalactic communication and intergalactic travel.

Despite the SETI projects, conceived in 1971, and pursued even to this day, the ubiquitous absence of evidence for civilization, other than those on our planet, remains a mystery. It posed a conundrum known as the Fermi Paradox, that is still being debated.

Technology Good Or Bad - Who Decides In Future?

Secondary Futures, New Zealand is writing a paper on how will we decide, in future, what technology is good or bad for kids. YOUR opinion is important.

Check out the video. Then go to the Secondary Futures Post to leave your opinion there in a comment.

Comments are turned off on this announcement post.
Click the Secondary Futures link to leave a comment.

Updated Comment Guidelines

I'm still new to blogging. Recently I’ve had a thing about comment guidelines. In my last post, I was lucky and grateful to receive some useful opinion from Britt Watwood and Sue Waters. So I’ve reviewed my set of guidelines again and given it a new look.

I’d be delighted if you’d check it out. My aim is to make the guidelines as inviting to commenters as possible. So your opinion is very valuable to me. Please let me know what you think. If there is anything that you feel I should change – pitch, use of words, issues listed etc – just put a comment beneath this post and let me know.

I really appreciate your opinion.

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What is it about comment policies?

When Michele Martin challenged bloggers to write a blog comment policy in May this year, I got the distinct impression I heard the squeals of a thousand mandrakes being wrenched from the ground. I had this virtual impression that in many parts of the blogosphere, little shelled creatures, that had popped out their soft and tender bloggling eyes, were retreating smartly into the protection of their hard dark shells - I swore I could hear the sound of a hundred vacuum cleaners all sucking at once. When it had passed, it was some time before my ears got used to the silence.

What is it about blog comment policy that people seem to detest? Is it a pomo reaction to something people feel should be relegated to the history books on the early 1900s?

Holocaustic emotion

I was reminded of these chilling, holocaustic emotions recently when I came across Peter Turney’s June post about a change he had made to his blog comment policy. As it happens, I didn’t totally agree with his point of view. That wasn’t entirely why I decided to leave a comment. His post had sat, without a comment, among his other popular posts, for two clear months. I just had to put it out of its misery!

But it was only on reflection that I recalled I’d left a comment, somewhere in the dim past, on another post on a related topic. I could only assume Alzheimer’s had set in, for I’d no idea where I’d left it.

Until . . . yes . . . I realised that it must have been on one of Peter’s earlier posts on the same topic! I flicked swiftly back to my RSS Reader to check it out. Sure enough, there it sat, and almost completely forgotten about. A solitary comment, congratulating Peter on his common sense blog comment policy - almost hilarious in parts.

What is it about comment policy that drives people away? In their droves!

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How do I manage my online time?

Michel Martin’s Web2.0Wednesday assignment this week is:

“How do you manage your online time”.

I’ve given this some 24 hours of my thought, both in careful inspection and in aimless reflection, and come up with, “It varies”.

Today, for instance, I did my usual morning at work, attending the bevy of meetings before I eventually ended up in front of my PC. I’d just been given a new laptop. But I didn’t have much time to play around with it, for I was already behind with much of my student study-assignments for today. But because I had been hassled over sorting out all the settings and defaults on the machine, I thought I might as well have a look at Google Chrome, since I hadn’t set up my browser the way I’d like it on the lap-top anyway. I then took the liberty to skite about using Chrome in a comment on Christy Tucker's post.

Chrome was really easy to download and install. Though I didn’t spend a lot of time looking at all the features, those that did show themselves indicated that this browser showed promise. All else that I can report at this stage is that I liked the ‘new tab’, how it put the most visited pages in a default display. Maybe it was just because it was the manila Chrome, but it gave me the impression of being uncluttered (BTW Chrome doesn't like Windows 2000).

Surprise visit

I didn’t spend much time online with students today, but I did get a surprise visit from Nancy White, almost immediately after I’d browsed to my blog on Chrome, as she’d left a comment - I’d met up with Nancy recently at the DEANZ Conference.

As you can tell, there is a lot of serendipity associated with what I do online at work – there certainly was today.

Nothing like a cup of tea

First thing in the morning, over a cup of tea, I check my email and if I have time I might check my blog for comments - then it's off to work in the City. Nearly all of the time I spend on blogs, including my own blog, is in the evening at home. Sometimes I do a bit more at weekends, though I’m weaning myself off that, as the better weather creeps in. Tonight, for instance, I checked my Reader for new posts on my favourite sites (there was one on Andrea Hernandez’s blog for instance) and responses to comments I’d left on older posts (one on Kate Foy’s). And I checked my blog (again) for comments.

I would usually spend about an hour reading what takes my interest from Reader and leaving comments where appropriate. If I feel a post coming on, or I’ve got one broiling in draft, I’ll set to and get it ready for publishing. Posts don’t usually take that long. This one has taken about 10 minutes so far, between the phone ringing and a new email arriving that I’ll re-read more carefully later. I’m just parking this as I got called for dinner . . .


. . . but time online? Most of the time I spend writing a post I’m not online. In fact, I tend to go offline to get the draft done, then go back on from time to time to check things, perhaps a previous post here, maybe another’s post or comment that I recalled there, or to do a Google for other required information.

I find being online is a distraction when I’m writing a post. Now that’s strange, since that doesn’t affect me when I’m writing a comment on another’s post, or replying to one on my own blog. When I write a post it’s usually in Word. When I’ve got the rough draft ready, I’ll copy it into Notepad and paste it from there into a draft post, and that’s when I go back online again, of course.

Stuffing a mushroom

I check the draft in preview, prepare an image in Photoshop if I need one, and bang the whole lot up on the Net once I’ve checked it as best I can. I will probably spend as much time pottering around with the look of the post online after it’s published as I spent writing the thing. I know! Stuffing a mushroom Shirley Conran would call it. Yes, I’m showing my age again!

Then I might do a bit more reading in Reader at the new posts that have arrived since the last time I checked (it’s amazing what time people publish their posts round the world!) I may also do a last check on email, have another cup of tea, and retire to sleep on it all.

Have you noticed that all the bloggers mentioned in this post, apart from me, are women? I assure you that it's sheer coincidence.

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