I wonder if this will be any good. It's worth going past the first few minutes, anyway.

My prediction: if it is good - and we're talking Joss Whedon here - then just when you get hooked, you'll have to pay to get more.

H/t The Martian Chronicles.

I have seen this a few times now, and it doesn't get old.

Bill Gates thinks he is Spiderman.

according to Mr Gates, great wealth brings great responsibility and his future work will include finding new vaccines and financing projects in the developing world.

Something that organises information, and it isn't Google.

This is why the GOP is going to lose.

H/t Justin Webb.

They're at it again.

I don't know if anyone's interested but I have been commenting over at Justin Webb's blog, on Clinton and sexism. I'm vagueofgodalming, of course, the monicker I usually use on public blogs. I'd be interested to know what people think.

Meanwhile, this is kind of silly (basically it's just two webcams) but it's also kind of cool.

Clinton hammers the nail into her own coffin...

I really ought to mention I'm in San Antonio. Here for just over another week.

I've a feeling I might have mentioned this before, but apparently Princess Diana is dead.

Since they didn't have Buffy the Vampire Slayer on the jury, it's probably not the last time.

Senator Clinton: "occasionally I am a human being like everybody else."

And the rest of the time?

The fact that she also claims to be awake and fully dressed at three in the morning in case someone (perhaps Professor Snape, another insomniac) calls, is suggestive.

Has anyone actually seen her in the sunlight?

Who is this aimed at, exactly?

The implication of this story is that even in normal times, a sufficiently credible rumour is able to bring the whole system crashing down.

Makes you think that Osama Bin Laden - or for that matter, the people who go to G8 and WTO summits to shout on the streets - lacks imagination. Either that or their complaint is not injustice but that they don't have a piece of it.

Poor old Heather Mills - only £24M. To put things in perspective, that's roughly equivalent to a couple of Wall St banks, or about 5 Euro.

Feel free to recycle old jokes about not costing Paul an arm and a leg, HM not having a leg to stand on, worst loss of face since Michael Jackson, etc.

Bloody hell!

http://www.alzheimers-research.org.uk/assets/docs/20080311130911Speech_at_Alzheimers_Research_Trust_Conference.pdf

(Note - pdf)

OK, I can't be arsed to do this properly (I mean, with my own list, and links, and everything), but there's a definite meme here.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/mar/09/blogs

So. How many of these have you heard of?
How many do you follow regularly?
You wouldn't be seen dead reading?
You didn't but are now going to read?
What's missing that should have been there?

The memetically correct way to do it is to type out the list of 50, and then "bold the ones you read, italics for blablabla..." but as I say, that's too much like work so just answer the damn questions.

I'll try and do my own answers, maybe at the weekend.

This is cool. Interesting ideas for Christmas trees etc.

I wonder, how easy is it to make the template - surely there must be applicability to more than just asteroids and the like - animals, plants, artefacts...

I'll see if I can find out.

I don't usually link to Astronomy Picture of the Day and similar sites because I reckon that if you're interested in that kind of thing they are sufficiently well-publicised that you already know. However, I think Saturday's apod is worth a second look (click on the picture itself for a full-screen view).

It shows a rising partially-eclipsed Moon in the shadow of Mauna Kea in Hawai'i. What intrigues me about this picture is the unusual way it links us to the larger universe. The shadow that obscures most of the Moon is the same shadow that falls across the clouds at the viewer's feet. The Earth's shadow stretches away into the distance, and lands on the Moon.

What's more, you can verify this as follows. The point of the upside-down V of shadow is directly opposite the Sun in the sky, and so it should be at the centre of the circular shadow of the Earth which we see a little bit of on the Moon. At the Moon's distance, the Earth's umbra (the dark part of the shadow, where eclipse is total) has about three times the diameter of the Moon. That means the top of the V should be about one and a half Moon diameters from the edge of the shadow. Which it more or less is.

In fact, the picture is a still from a movie (for once, the movie will bear going to full screen), and you can see that the Moon and the tip of the shadow - our shadow - move together. Fantastic.

Hat tip to the Spacewriter.

I was hunting around to see what I could find about the process for the Texas primary-cum-caucus (yeah, eyeroll, don't mess with...) when I came across this exquisite FAQ:

" Q: I am reviewing this page and nothing makes sense to me. These are not the rules I have heard. I'm in Connecticut -- does that matter?"

One does wonder if the Texas Secretary of State has fully grasped the meaning of the word 'frequently', or if it's just a campaign by the residents of Connecticut to win some kind of obscure award.

New Yorkers, how would you answer this question if applied to NY elections?