Chile quake moves city more than 10 feet

When I read this article on CNN.com, I was really amazed!

Conception moved ... at least 10 feet to the west and the capital, Santiago, about 11 inches to the west-southwest

What is even astounding is the following:

NASA scientists have also credited the quake with shifting the Earth's axis enough to create shorter day ... 1.26 microseconds shorter

Not much, but still ... wow!!!

Avatar: What an Experience!

I finally watched it. Wow! Amazing! Brilliant!

I am sure a few people left the cinema soul searching, following what is seen as the destruction of an idyllic place, a heaven. Destruction, that is what our race is very good at, amongst other more positive things. And when phrases during the film ring some memory bells, such as: "Let's fight terror with terror", well you get an idea that this film is not only about tree hugging; it is also about respect of other people's lives and beliefs.

People are known to have left watching the film depressed and even suicidal, and no wonder. Pandora can be described as a place where all elements of nature live in balance. One can call it heaven, the heaven most of us believe we will end in, after living a hellish life.  If angels are Na'vis and heaven is Pandora, I guess there is something to look forward to.

If you still have not watched the film, make sure you watch it in 3D (only at Empire Cinemas, Bugibba).  Watching a spectacular 3D film such as Avatar in 2D greatly diminishes the viewer experience.

Off to a ski holiday

Today, I am off for a long-awaited ski holiday in the Austrian Alps, specifically the Arlber, partly sponsored by my aunt to reward my efforts in achieving my Masters degree last year.
I will be joined by my sister and my better half too.
It will be freezing up there, as seen by the following screen dump from http://www.lech-zuers.at



While there, I shall be hoping for a deal at Copenhagen...

I hope I will hear good news from there.

Until then! Auf wiedersehen!

Ordnance Survey maps to go free online

Ordnance Survey maps to go free online

This will include:

'all legislation, as well as road-traffic counts over the past eight years, property prices listed with the stamp-duty yield, motoring offences with types of offence and the numbers, by county, for the top six offences.'

Amazing!

I doubt we will every be there in secret society Malta. And yes, the UK has a Data Protection Act.

Article on The Guardian

Interesting ... softer food make you heavier

In a study published in 2003, a team led by Kyoko Oka at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan, investigated the effect of food texture on weight gain. They fed one group of rats their usual hard food pellets, while a second group received a softer version. Both pellets had exactly the same calorie content and flavour. The only difference was that softer ones were easier to chew. After 22 weeks, the rats on the soft food diet were obese and had more abdominal fat. "Food texture might be as important a factor for preventing obesity as taste or food nutrients," Oka and his colleagues concluded.

...

A similar study in people had comparable results. Kentaro Murakami and Satoshi Sasaki, both at the University of Tokyo in Japan, surveyed 450 female students about their eating habits and then classified the food they ate according to how difficult it was to chew. They found that women who ate the hardest foods had significantly slimmer waistlines than those who ate the softest foods.

Source: New Scientist