Anyone who has spent a chilly half-hour waiting for a double-decker may already have doubted the existence of a deity. But for those who need further proof, a nationwide advertising campaign aimed at persuading more people to "come out" as atheists was launched today with the backing of some of Britain's most famous non-believers.The principal slogan - "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" - can already be seen on four London bus routes, and now 200 bendy buses in London and 600 across the country are to carry the advert after a fundraising drive raised more than £140,000, exceeding the original target of £5,500.The money will also pay for 1,000 advertisements on London Underground from next Monday and on a pair of giant LCD screens opposite Bond Street tube station, in Oxford Street. Organisers unveiled a set of quotes from public figures - including Albert Einstein, Douglas Adams and Katharine Hepburn - who have endorsed atheism, or at least expressed scepticism about a Creator. The words "That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet" are quoted from the poet Emily Dickinson.
Anyone who has spent a chilly half-hour waiting for a double-decker may already have doubted the existence of a deity. But for those who need further proof, a nationwide advertising campaign aimed at persuading more people to "come out" as atheists was launched today with the backing of some of Britain's most famous non-believers.
The principal slogan - "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" - can already be seen on four London bus routes, and now 200 bendy buses in London and 600 across the country are to carry the advert after a fundraising drive raised more than £140,000, exceeding the original target of £5,500.
The money will also pay for 1,000 advertisements on London Underground from next Monday and on a pair of giant LCD screens opposite Bond Street tube station, in Oxford Street. Organisers unveiled a set of quotes from public figures - including Albert Einstein, Douglas Adams and Katharine Hepburn - who have endorsed atheism, or at least expressed scepticism about a Creator. The words "That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet" are quoted from the poet Emily Dickinson.
Hap tip to nanne. Ad astra per aspera
I just hope that the Seven Eternal Wind Gods don't smote them, or the tires on the buses. Never underestimate their intelligence, always underestimate their knowledge.
Frank Delaney ~ Ireland
"It is an attack on all religions," said Javier Maria Perez-Roldan of the church's Tomas Moro centre, blaming the socialist government for the privately funded campaign. "The government has created an atmosphere of belligerence." (Guardian)
Poor mistreated Spanish Catholics.
The enormous pressure inside the gas pipeline grid that supplies UK homes is set to be harnessed to generate clean electricity.Work to place small turbines inside the gas network will start later this year at Beckton in east London. This first scheme will produce 20MW by 2010 from the natural gas that rushes through the pipes. Repeated across the country, the technology could generate up to 1GW - equivalent to the output of a conventional coal or nuclear power station.Andrew Mercer of company 2OC, which has developed the "geo-pressure" technology, said: "We're very lucky that somebody else has built this pipeline infrastructure. We can borrow it to produce renewable energy."When natural gas is drilled from underground reservoirs it is at far too high a pressure to be used safely in homes. "It would just blow up your gas cooker," Mercer said. Instead, the pressure must be released at hundreds of sites across the supply network known as letdown stations.
The enormous pressure inside the gas pipeline grid that supplies UK homes is set to be harnessed to generate clean electricity.
Work to place small turbines inside the gas network will start later this year at Beckton in east London. This first scheme will produce 20MW by 2010 from the natural gas that rushes through the pipes. Repeated across the country, the technology could generate up to 1GW - equivalent to the output of a conventional coal or nuclear power station.
Andrew Mercer of company 2OC, which has developed the "geo-pressure" technology, said: "We're very lucky that somebody else has built this pipeline infrastructure. We can borrow it to produce renewable energy."
When natural gas is drilled from underground reservoirs it is at far too high a pressure to be used safely in homes. "It would just blow up your gas cooker," Mercer said. Instead, the pressure must be released at hundreds of sites across the supply network known as letdown stations.
George Bush will designate nearly 200,000 square miles of the Pacific Ocean as conservation areas on Tuesday, recasting his record on the environment just two weeks before leaving the White House.Tuesday's formal announcement will establish Bush as the leader who has protected more of the oceans than anyone else in the world, environmentalists said. The three regions in the Pacific Ocean encompass some 195,280 square miles of remote and relatively uninhabited island chains.They include pristine coral reefs, vanishing marine species and the deepest place on Earth.
George Bush will designate nearly 200,000 square miles of the Pacific Ocean as conservation areas on Tuesday, recasting his record on the environment just two weeks before leaving the White House.
Tuesday's formal announcement will establish Bush as the leader who has protected more of the oceans than anyone else in the world, environmentalists said.
The three regions in the Pacific Ocean encompass some 195,280 square miles of remote and relatively uninhabited island chains.
They include pristine coral reefs, vanishing marine species and the deepest place on Earth.
First time for everything, I suppose. Ad astra per aspera
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush will designate nearly 200,000 square miles (518,000 sq km) of the Pacific ocean on Tuesday as a protected region, White House officials said, making the areas hands-off for oil drilling or other extraction procedures. Bush, who often draws ire from activists for his record on environmental issues, will declare three areas in the central Pacific "marine national monuments," spokeswoman Dana Perino said. "The president's actions will prevent the destruction and extraction of natural resources from these beautiful and biologically diverse areas without conflicting with our military's activities and freedom of navigation, which are vital to our national security," she told a briefing. She said the new protected areas will comprise the largest area of ocean set aside as marine protected areas in the world, at 195,280 square miles (505,500 sq km).
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush will designate nearly 200,000 square miles (518,000 sq km) of the Pacific ocean on Tuesday as a protected region, White House officials said, making the areas hands-off for oil drilling or other extraction procedures.
Bush, who often draws ire from activists for his record on environmental issues, will declare three areas in the central Pacific "marine national monuments," spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
"The president's actions will prevent the destruction and extraction of natural resources from these beautiful and biologically diverse areas without conflicting with our military's activities and freedom of navigation, which are vital to our national security," she told a briefing.
She said the new protected areas will comprise the largest area of ocean set aside as marine protected areas in the world, at 195,280 square miles (505,500 sq km).
After just five years, the romance between the football club owner and the little dancer is over: a rare sculpture by Degas is up for sale again - this time with a £12m transfer fee on her head.The current owner, Sir John Madejski, was knighted in the New Year honours list for lavish philanthropy, such as donating millions of pounds to create a new courtyard garden at the V&A museum and to restore the Fine Rooms, now named in his honour, at the Royal Academy.The art collector is better known in football circles for steering his club, Reading, into the Premier League last year, and paying most of the £25m cost of its new stadium. The club was relegated last season.
After just five years, the romance between the football club owner and the little dancer is over: a rare sculpture by Degas is up for sale again - this time with a £12m transfer fee on her head.
The current owner, Sir John Madejski, was knighted in the New Year honours list for lavish philanthropy, such as donating millions of pounds to create a new courtyard garden at the V&A museum and to restore the Fine Rooms, now named in his honour, at the Royal Academy.
The art collector is better known in football circles for steering his club, Reading, into the Premier League last year, and paying most of the £25m cost of its new stadium. The club was relegated last season.
The coal ash pond that ruptured and sent a billion gallons of toxic sludge across 300 acres of East Tennessee last month was only one of more than 1,300 similar dumps across the United States -- most of them unregulated and unmonitored -- that contain billions more gallons of fly ash and other byproducts of burning coal. Like the one in Tennessee, most of these dumps, which reach up to 1,500 acres, contain heavy metals like arsenic, lead, mercury and selenium, which are considered by the Environmental Protection Agency to be a threat to water supplies and human health. Yet they are not subject to any federal regulation, which experts say could have prevented the spill, and there is little monitoring of their effects on the surrounding environment. In fact, coal ash is used throughout the country for construction fill, mine reclamation and other "beneficial uses." In 2007, according to a coal industry estimate, 50 tons of fly ash even went to agricultural uses, like improving soil's ability to hold water, despite a 1999 E.P.A. warning about high levels of arsenic. The industry has promoted the reuse of coal combustion products because of the growing amount of them being produced each year -- 131 million tons in 2007, up from less than 90 million tons in 1990.
The coal ash pond that ruptured and sent a billion gallons of toxic sludge across 300 acres of East Tennessee last month was only one of more than 1,300 similar dumps across the United States -- most of them unregulated and unmonitored -- that contain billions more gallons of fly ash and other byproducts of burning coal.
Like the one in Tennessee, most of these dumps, which reach up to 1,500 acres, contain heavy metals like arsenic, lead, mercury and selenium, which are considered by the Environmental Protection Agency to be a threat to water supplies and human health. Yet they are not subject to any federal regulation, which experts say could have prevented the spill, and there is little monitoring of their effects on the surrounding environment.
In fact, coal ash is used throughout the country for construction fill, mine reclamation and other "beneficial uses." In 2007, according to a coal industry estimate, 50 tons of fly ash even went to agricultural uses, like improving soil's ability to hold water, despite a 1999 E.P.A. warning about high levels of arsenic. The industry has promoted the reuse of coal combustion products because of the growing amount of them being produced each year -- 131 million tons in 2007, up from less than 90 million tons in 1990.
ScienceDaily (Jan. 6, 2009) -- Physicists at Indiana University have developed a promising new way to identify a possible abnormality in a fundamental building block of Einstein's theory of relativity known as "Lorentz invariance." If confirmed, the abnormality would disprove the basic tenet that the laws of physics remain the same for any two objects traveling at a constant speed or rotated relative to one another. IU distinguished physics professor Alan Kostelecky and graduate student Jay Tasson take on the long-held notion of the exact symmetry promulgated in Einstein's 1905 theory and show in a paper to be published in Physical Review Letters that there may be unexpected violations of Lorentz invariance that can be detected in specialized experiments. "It is surprising and delightful that comparatively large relativity violations could still be awaiting discovery despite a century of precision testing," said Kostelecky. "Discovering them would be like finding a camel in a haystack instead of a needle." If the findings help reveal the first evidence of Lorentz violations, it would prove relativity is not exact. Space-time would not look the same in all directions and there would be measurable relativity violations, however minuscule. [...] "No dedicated experiment has yet sought a seasonal variation of the rate of an object's fall in the Earth's gravity," said Kostelecky. "Since Newton's time over 300 years ago, apples have been assumed to fall at the same rate in the summer and the winter." Spotting these minute variances is another matter as the differences in rate of fall would be tiny because gravity is a weak force. The new paper catalogues possible experiments that could detect the effects. Among them are ones studying gravitational properties of matter on the Earth and in space.
ScienceDaily (Jan. 6, 2009) -- Physicists at Indiana University have developed a promising new way to identify a possible abnormality in a fundamental building block of Einstein's theory of relativity known as "Lorentz invariance." If confirmed, the abnormality would disprove the basic tenet that the laws of physics remain the same for any two objects traveling at a constant speed or rotated relative to one another.
IU distinguished physics professor Alan Kostelecky and graduate student Jay Tasson take on the long-held notion of the exact symmetry promulgated in Einstein's 1905 theory and show in a paper to be published in Physical Review Letters that there may be unexpected violations of Lorentz invariance that can be detected in specialized experiments.
"It is surprising and delightful that comparatively large relativity violations could still be awaiting discovery despite a century of precision testing," said Kostelecky. "Discovering them would be like finding a camel in a haystack instead of a needle."
If the findings help reveal the first evidence of Lorentz violations, it would prove relativity is not exact. Space-time would not look the same in all directions and there would be measurable relativity violations, however minuscule.
[...]
"No dedicated experiment has yet sought a seasonal variation of the rate of an object's fall in the Earth's gravity," said Kostelecky. "Since Newton's time over 300 years ago, apples have been assumed to fall at the same rate in the summer and the winter."
Spotting these minute variances is another matter as the differences in rate of fall would be tiny because gravity is a weak force. The new paper catalogues possible experiments that could detect the effects. Among them are ones studying gravitational properties of matter on the Earth and in space.
