Tian Tian "raped" (aka artificially inseminated) to justify having pandas at Edinburgh Zoo

Call me old-fashioned but what is going on in Edinburgh, under the guise of furthering scientific knowledge and perhaps also of trying to justify the significant cost of keeping two Giant Pandas 'on loan' from the Chinese Government for a time-limited period in the Scottish capital, is nothing more nor less than rape.

We are told that whilst the male, Yang Guang, was "in the mood", his female semi-companion, Tian Tian, apparently is not, despite her hormone levels having been tested and found to have risen to a level appropriate for mating. Despite being "interested", Yang Guang has it seems behaved like whatever is the Giant Panda equivalent of a "perfect gentleman" and not attempted to force himself on Tian Tian and in any case she would probably have resisted his advances if he had tried - despite their cuddly appearance, pandas are apparently quite aggressive creatures.

We are vouchsafed the information that, apart from swapping the two around between their normal quarters, they were "able to interact with a grate keeping them apart" - but still Tian Tian has avoided giving Yang Guang any come hither signs. Like it or not, she seems simply not to be interested. However, the "scientists" (aka "torturers") in charge of this mixture of barbarity or so-called scientific endeavour, are in reality hauling these two unfortunate creatures from one side of the world to the other, courtesy of the tyrannical Chinese Government, thereby colluding in a political game with the two Giant Pandas being no more than pawns in Beijing's influence-peddling. If there was real interest in enhancing to the maximum the chances of these animals breeding then they would be left alone to their own devices in their natural habitat, or at least as close to their natural habitat as possible, not hauling them around the world to be gawped at by the public and forever probed by "scientists".

If these were two human creatures this would rightly be classed as slavery and gross mistreatment of both of them and rape of the female in particular. That is the truth, however much the scientific cloak surrounding this whole circus seeks to mask it.

Just another day in the life of the US President

President Obama attends the White House science fair:

Ain't 'science' wonderful? And Season's Greetings to you, too!

To continue the seasonal theme of my last post (and the kiddies have demolished an earlier snowman which they had built on the cricket pitch in front of me earlier and are currently in the process of rolling more 'components' presumably to make another), this is how some scientists at the National Physical Laboratory (romatntically located in, of all places, Teddington, for devotees of the BBC Radio 4 I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue programme) are choosing both to celebrate Christmas and to demonstrate their technical prowess:


- here is a short video-clip of how the above very small (microscopic in fact- 10 µm across - think "1/5th the width of a human hair") image was created:




(thru the US-based, but in many way still emotionally attached to the UK, blogger Andrew Sullivan)

Meteorite over south-Sulawesi early-October causes 50 kiloton blast

I've just come across this report on the NEO website, indicating that a small meteorite (estimated at about 10 metres diameter) exploded in the atmosphere over south-Sulawesi in Indonesia a couple of weeks ago, equivalent to about 50 kilotons of TNT. Local news reports from Indonesia in English are here and here. A local televised news report is here:



- although this happened in the early hours of 8th October it was reported on the NEO website only on Friday 23rd October - I suppose we must be grateful that on this occasion the object which collided with our atmosphere was relatively small. It is salutary to realise that still relatively-small objects only ten or so times larger than this recent object could cause at the very least regional devastation on Earth. Over the coming weekend I may well write about the recent appearance of Mr Nick Griffin, leader of the 'British National Party' (BNP) on BBC1 'Question Time' on Thursday evening, a topic which has hogged the limelight on the news (broadcast and print media) and the 'blogosphere' in the UK over the past several days, but I think it is useful to remember that there are other relevant news stories from other parts of the world which if they were only a little more serious would push the tawdry doings of a minority racist organisation in the UK into a well-deserved obscurity.

Japan news - the great and the embarrassing (if you're British!)

One of the blogs I've been following for a few years now is one written by an Englishman living in Tokyo as it gives an often whimsical insight into life there. Anyway his latest blog article covers two items which have made the headlines in Japan, but I expect have hardly been noticed elsewhere (specially the second story below).

The first story is entirely serious - basically the fact that this year's Nobel Prize for Physics has been won jointly by three Japanese scientists for:

... their groundbreaking theoretical work which investigated the hidden symmetries among sub-atomic particles. Judges praised them for their outstanding contribution to the scientific world regarding their exploration of the nature of matter, and for making significant progress towards answering questions about how the universe began.

- no doubt followers of the Nobel Prizes in the scientific community will have been well-aware of this, but I don't recall it having been mentioned in the UK in the non-scientific media. Congratulations to the three!

Now on to the real 'meat' of this article, Englishman's second theme, which is about a story about a westerner (thought to be British, although one of the commenters to his article wonders if he was Spanish) who took a dip, in the nude, in the moat surrounding the Imperial Palace in Tokyo - obviously people were bemused and the police not amused. I'm embedding the AP video news report below for your amusement, but I do urge you to visit Englishman's article too, as he has a lot more pictures with some of his trademark 'bubble' comments and they are quite funny:



(It so happens that this is the only part of Tokyo that I have even a passing acquaintance with as when in that city I always stayed at the Imperial Palace Hotel, just across the park from the moat outside the Palace, as the office was very close by.)