Windmill:

Windmill, Venus, Jupiter and yours truly:

Nice overview, Orion to the left, Pleiades on top, Venus and Jupiter on the right: huge size

"How weak our mind is; how quickly it is terrified and unbalanced as soon as we are confronted with a small, incomprehensible fact. Instead of dismissing the problem with: "We do not understand because we cannot find the cause," we immediately imagine terrible mysteries and supernatural powers."

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant

(via The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe)

Internationally-renowned photojournalist Gerd Ludwig has spent years documenting the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. In 1986, an error at the plant in Ukraine led to an explosion that ultimately caused over a quarter of a million people to permanently evacuate to escape the radiation and radioactive fallout. Over the course of several trips to the site and the region, Ludwig has amassed a documentary record of a people and a place irreparably altered by a tragic accident. Now Ludwig has released an (iPad app)[http://itunes.apple.com/app/the-long-shadow-of-chernobyl/id484752718] with over 150 photographs, video, and interactive panoramas. Gathered here is a small selection of the work Ludwig has produced over the years of the still-unfolding tragedy. -- Lane Turner (23 photos total)On April 26, 1986, operators in this control room of reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant committed a fatal series of errors during a safety test, triggering a reactor meltdown that resulted in the world's largest nuclear accident to date. Today, the control room sits abandoned and deadly radioactive. Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Ukraine, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)

I have my doubts. Neuroscientists are novices at deception. Magicians have done controlled testing in human perception for thousands of years.

I've been at the Penn & Teller show in Las Vegas. That trick with the dancing ball is mind-boggling. And I recognise all the "secrets" we, the whole audience, fell for.

If you want to boil down Apple’s thought process on this whole thing, it’s really about feelings. Apple cares how its users feel when using its products. When a PC user who has purchased an iPhone or iPad falls in love with the experience of using it, Apple cares about making them feel the same way about the Mac. It would be stupid if it didn’t try to make the millions of people who have purchased iOS devices feel welcome on the Mac.

That’s not the same, however, as crassly transforming one operating system into another to cash in or exert more control. The ’10 ways that OS X is being turned into iOS’ headline is easy to write, and you can’t argue with the fact that both platforms are informing decisions made in the other, but there is a distinct difference between unification and absorption.

I agree, it's not about making OSX into iOS. However, I am 100% sure that within a few years the base will be the same and we'll only talk about one OS (probably not named "X" or "iOS"). Why keep two different branches when so much is unified, it's much easier to maintain a single base than two. But OSX will not become iOS, and neither will iOS become OSX. Both will merge into one single multi-platform OS.

• Piracy is a readily-fixable customer experience problem.
• Piracy happens because you’re fucking people (notably, via pricing).
• Piracy is your fault.

1. Work on one thing at a time until finished.
2. Start no more new books, add no more new material to "Black Spring."
3. Don't be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.
4. Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!
5. When you can't create you can work.
6. Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.
7. Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.
8. Don't be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.
9. Discard the Program when you feel like it—but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.
10. Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.
11. Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.