TAKE a professor of microbial genomics whose two passions are Darwin and dub reggae. Allow him to meet up by chance with a Jamaican scientist working at the same university. What do you get? The formation of the Genomic Dub Collective and their first CD, The Origin of Species in Dub.
鈥淢ek we celebrate Darwin in a Jamaican stylee!鈥� the first track proclaims, and the album proceeds to do just that, declaiming passages of Darwin鈥檚 great book over a roots reggae beat and taking in related issues such as the premature death of Darwin鈥檚 daughter Annie, human evolution in Africa and 鈥渁 Rastafarian view of Darwin鈥檚 achievements鈥�. The work closes on an international note, with scientist colleagues from more than a dozen countries declaiming the sonorous last words of On the Origin of Species in their own languages.
Advertisement
To find out more, to listen to samples from the album or to order a copy, go to . One Darwin. One love. Ire.
JAMES DIAMOND recently observed a notice in Dalston Kingsland station in north-east London that read: 鈥淐losed CCT TV.鈥� The riotous redundancy of this inspires us to pass on a note we discovered the other day when rifling through some old files. It was sent to us by Kim Summers last year when we were running items on redundant acronym syndrome, but somehow got lost in the system.
鈥淚n the 10 Downing Street Newsletter on 11 February, Tony Holkham spotted an item headed 鈥淧rotecting the environment鈥� that contains a surprising demand by the British transport secretary Alistair Darling: 鈥淎ll new cars should be green, says Darling鈥濃��
鈥淚 googled the common molecular-biology redundant acronym 鈥楶CR reaction鈥�,鈥� said the note, 鈥渁nd found so many examples that it filled up my RAM memory and gave me an RSI injury. I was forced to download the information to a CD disc. Oh dear, maybe I also have RAS syndrome.鈥�
Thanks, Kim. Hope you鈥檙e feeling better now.
GO TO the website of the International Astronomical Union鈥檚 Committee on Small Body Nomenclature at and you will find a perfectly sensible (if rather dull) home page describing the committee鈥檚 work, its members and its remit. There are also links to further pages on, for example, the 鈥渘ames of minor planets鈥� or 鈥渃omet names and designations鈥�.
At the bottom of this home page and all subsequent pages on the site is a section headed 鈥淚鈥檓 tired and I wanna go back to:鈥� This is followed by a series of options such as 鈥淚AU Division III鈥�, 鈥淚AU Commission 15鈥�, 鈥淒epartment of Astronomy鈥� and 鈥� wait a minute, what鈥檚 this? 鈥� 鈥淭he real world鈥�.
Naturally, we couldn鈥檛 resist. We clicked 鈥� and what we got was the page entitled 鈥淭he last page of the internet鈥�. It states, simply: 鈥淎ttention: you have reached the very last page of the internet. We hope you have enjoyed your browsing. Now turn off your computer and go outside and play.鈥�
Never say astronomers lack a sense of humour.
FEEDBACK confesses to having been one of those irritating children who turned in physics homework using a system of units based on the furlong, the hundredweight and the fortnight instead of the preferred metre, kilogram and second. And so were a considerable number of readers, judging by the letters we have received about the unit converter built into Google.
Sara Batts and Arthur Ross are both pleased to report that it will tell you 鈥渢he speed of light in furlongs per fortnight鈥�. Chris Bolton goes one further: it will make up new units on request, so long at they are based on the proper combinations of the fundamental units. For example, metricated readers may think of the fuel consumption of a car in litres per 100 kilometres. But that鈥檚 length-cubed divided by length, which is an area. With Google鈥檚 help Bolton calculated that the area achieved by his car is 0.05 square millimetres. Which, if you think about it, would be the cross-sectional area of the continuous thread of fuel required to feed the vehicle.
Ooops! In telling you this, we may have just wasted a minute of your time鈥� or should that be 0.06 kilojoules per watt worth of time?
A PRESS release from The Journal of the American Medical Association tells us: 鈥淜eeping a gun locked and unloaded, and storing ammunition in a locked and separate location, can lower the risk of unintentional injuries and suicide among youth.鈥� Whoever would have thought it?
WE ARE definitely going to stop this again soon 鈥� honestly, we are. But we can鈥檛 resist this contribution from Bob Rye, who noticed two projects at the University of Otago, New Zealand. One is titled 鈥淭he role of HCO3 in the secretory response of the human colon鈥� and is run by Dr Butt, while the other is titled 鈥淐ardiorespiratory and renal changes in acclimatization to high altitude鈥� and has among its supervisors Dr Cragg.