Tuesday 27 October 2009

This is just too good!

Further to the fact that this is just hilariously false, it is also an apt demonstration that creationists must be lying to us, that is not passionately representing the wrong belief, but actually deliberately misinforming people to try and gain followers. The simple fact is that anyone who has even been in the same room as a book on evolution knows two things.
  1. Darwins theory of evolution does not attempt to explain the origin of life. It just discusses how diversity in living populations arises.
  2. The first organisms to form were single celled. You couldn't possibly spot newly formed life by just peering into a jar, instead needing a pretty powerful microscope.



Unless maybe they're onto something... Could the primordial soup possibly have been peanut butter?

I really wanted to slam the BNP...

But then I found out that Anton Vowl was doing it so much better than I ever could.
Go and check out The enemies of reason. It's frequently brilliant, and I could currently only hope to emulate

Monday 26 October 2009

Flash game of the week: Achievement unlocked



This week's flash game is a charming yet extremely pointless way to waste 15 minutes of so. Welcome achievement unlocked!
The premise is extremely simple and a nod to the achievement and trophy collectors of the Xbox 360 and PS3. You play a small blue elephant who has to run around the level collecting all the achievements that there are to offer. Incredibly simple, but the circus music and 8 bit graphics were charming enough to encourage me to find all 99 acheivements, have fun!  

Wednesday 14 October 2009

Overkill?

This little video clip has just been brought to my attention



I just had to share it with you all

Monday 12 October 2009

Flash Game of The Week: Desktop Tower Defense

Happy Monday everyone!

I thought I'd start a little item (not included in my previous labels post) called flash game of the week, bringing you the best casual games that I can find to while away your time.
First up is a classic in the flash gaming world, that I've only just found out has been updated and improved.
Ladies and gentlemen, Desktop tower defense.



The premise for the game is very simple; little critters try and scurry across your desk, and you have to stop them by laying weaponry along the way. I shan't go into more detail as all the information is on the website. What I will do is warn that this could easily sap hours and hours of your life without care, if you have somewhere to be, set an alarm!

Thursday 8 October 2009

The basics of: Evolution

Welcome to the first in this 'the basics of' series that I am planning to run as the informative side of this blog. In this post I am going to try and inform about evolution.

The ideas behind evolution, on the face of it, seem so implausible as to be ridiculous. Indeed only 51% of the UK population think that evidence for evolution exists (see this survey from the British Council/Ipsos-Mori). This clearly has a lot to do with the incredible lengths of time involved. It is very hard to mentally envisage periods of thousands of years, and yet evolution has taken place over a scale of billions of years (It's worth adding a side note at this point that evolution takes place over varying timescales depending on the type of organism and it's environment. It's not worth getting tied up in specifics for this brief overview. To learn more about this have a look at some of the suggested reading at the bottom of the page).

There is a second complication, and that is a kind of human bigotry. It is standard learning in human culture all around the world that homo sapiens is the dominant organism on this planet. Genesis 1:26 states:

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."  (biblegateway.com)

This is hardly the sort of background we need before learning that all living organisms are quite literally our distant cousins!

Tuesday 6 October 2009

My labels and what they mean

While working on that promised evolution post. I got to thinking, with a blog that aims to have as wide a scope as I hope, how will people be able to work out what they would like to read?
Well I imagine that this was the very thing that Blogger's labelling system was devised for! So here is a brief outline of the labels that I intend to use, and a description of what they mean.

'The basics of:' The title given to all those posts that detail processes and how to's. Expect this to be primarily based around the world of science. Alongside this will be post about real world skills, tutorials and other such things.
'Yesterday's games today:' A feature I hope to run quite regularly (I won't tie myself to any timeframe, it'll only annoy me if I fail). I need an excuse to return to my retro games collection. I'll write about my experiences of the classics (and not so classics) this time around.
'Personal' Posts that are about me in some way.
'Comment on:' I aim for this to be a sort of mini comment is free. If I see a news item somewhere that I feel the need to voice my opinion on, it will go here.
'Is it any good?' My own personal reviews column. Music, Games, Films and more will all feature here.
'Fun' Should I see or hear anything that tickles me I'll pass it along.
'Other' Because this very post doesn't fit into any of the above.

This list isn't intended to be exhaustive. I'm sure I'll add things as time goes on, and maybe lose areas I'm not so committed to.

Anything you'd like to see written about that fits in the above categories? Use the comment box below to get in touch.

Monday 5 October 2009

Excuses, excuses

Despite the fact that I probably have absolutely no readers yet for this blog. I feel it appropriate to make an apology. I did say last week that I would try to make two posts a week initially and see what happened. Well it's nearly the end of the first week and there is still only the one post.
In fairness I have not been slacking. I am currently working on an introduction to evolution in (hopefully) readable terms. However this is proving quite an undertaking for someone who doesn't have a huge amount of experience in popularising science.

Excuses out of the way, I think it's only fair to try and entertain you, so I've spent a few minutes trawling the internet looking for some funny excuses for a variety of latenesses.

Thursday 1 October 2009

First: Me

Welcome to hippomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, the name for my blog comes from the rather hilarious name for the fear of long words. I don't suffer from it, and may even occasionally become sesquipedalian myself! As the title bar suggests, this blog is one without a theme. Instead I'll just relay any thoughts that I feel are worthy of my typing time. These will include (but are not limited to) science, politics, video games, films, books, weather and more.

This first post is about me, but rather than defining myself in the usual boring multi paragraphed format, I thought it would be nice to give you an idea of who I am via the websites I most regularly visit (apart from the tediously ubiquitous Facebook and You Tube).