"How can I be silent? How can I rest?"

"When Enkidu whom I love is dust and I too shall die and be laid in the earth for ever?"

Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet 10

RIP, Enkidu. But what a beautiful obituary, and I think he was a very lucky cat to be loved so much.

SET for Britian

Away day at the House of Commons?

Via my big sister, poster competition at HoC, being run by SET for Britain. I'm out the country, but it looks like a lot of fun. Happily, they've divided the competition into physical sciences, engineering, and bio-stuff. Deadline for abstracts is Monday 21st.

These things are sent to try us

Or possibly just me

There is quite a lot of special in the comment threads at LibCon, but I think this is my favourite:

"To continue… physicists can’t agree whether energy travels in “waves” or “packets” (google qualtum mechanics if you are interested), so there are competing theories, and the technology doesn’t yet exists to falsify (or not) the theory of relativity, so it remains a theory until/unless falsified.

I make my point again – you cant’ have empirical “consensus”, 2+2 either = 4 or it does not. If someone could prove that it equalled 5, then it would equal 5, not by consenus but by empirical evidence"

More seriously, an excellent article by John B taking the fight to the people-who-self-identify-as-climate-sceptics own turf, by considering two opposing conspiracy theories. (If only the editors would restore the sarcastic footnotes, my joy would be complete...)

Would write more about this, but I'm off to disagree with a colleague about wave-particle duality, and must google "qualtum mechanics" first.