Here’s my brother’s opinion of the film 2012.

Here’s what reviewers think of 2012.

Here’s Scienceblogs‘ Greg Laden’s comments on the scientific foundations 2012’s story.

From ScienceDaily:

Particle beams are once again zooming around the world’s most powerful particle accelerator — the Large Hadron Collider — located at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. On November 20 at 4:00 p.m. EST, a clockwise circulating beam was established in the LHC’s 17-mile ring.

From the BBC: pictures of the happy moment.

CERN’s Twitter feed shows that initial testing complete, and commissioning is now underway. Their tweets have links to info and animations.

The SMH says there’s been a lot of hype around a Sydney act called Cassette Kids. The article talks about them spending some time on the road with the Presets, adding some synths and electro sound, and taking plenty of time to record their first album.

I checked out some of their tracks and videos. It’s lightweight and fun, for sure. Maybe a bit too lightweight: the Ting Tings sound gets pretty old pretty fast. There’s interesting guitar work, though. You can tell they started as a guitar dance band, not a synth dance band. Singer Katrina Noorbergen has got the looks to be famous, too. She’s a better poser than singer but seems to have enough attitude to carry it off with confidence.

They feel more flash-in-the-pan than long-term legacy on initial listen, but who can tell? They’re a bit of fun while they last, anyway.

There’s been outrage and debate here in Australia in the wake of Britney Spears’s Circus tour shows. The outrage – and we know it exists because the newspapers tell us we’re outraged – is due to some folks finding out that Britney lip synchs most of her live performance.

As I think my tone – even in blog form – makes clear, I’m not sure there’s really that much outrage or debate. It feels like the papers have inflated a topic that involves one of their favourite celebs, is all. Most of the debate has been in response to the media reporting, not individual’s opinions, and has taken the form of, “We all know she mimes, we’re just going for the glitzy show.”

I hope that the stories about the government proposals for labeling concert posters and tickets for shows that will be mimed are true, though. That’s truth in advertising in action, and then no one can complain about what they’re getting.

"I hate it when my nipple tassels obscure my teleprompter." Photo from samlavi via Creative Commons license

Tests are going well, and it looks like CERN may fire up the Large Hardon Collider (LHC) again this weekend. They’ve shown that they can fire protons around the collider, and that the detectors are working. If things continue, they should soon be smashing particles.

You’ll remember that testing has been delayed because on 19 September 2008 a bad electrical connection caused a fault that damaged a bunch of the superconducting magnets. It’s taken over a year to repair that and put in safeguards in light of the fault. I’m sure CERN are anxious to move ahead (but to avoid further delays whilst doing so).

And if you’ve forgotten what they’re trying to prove with all this particle-smashing nonsense, let me remind you:

• to see if they can create quark-gluon plasma
• looking for speculated fundamental particles like the Higgs boson
• to figure out why the universe’s antimatter seems to have all but disappeared shortly after the Big Bang
• to understand some of the characteristics of proton-proton collisions

Cesare Bonizzi is an Italian monk who – years ago, after seeing a Metallica show – decided his calling was to do God’s work through singing heavy metal. He formed a band called Fratello Metallo (“Brother Metal”) and has been wowing audiences ever since.

From the SMH, however, we learn that the 62-year-old Capuchin headbanger now thinks that the Devil has made the ensuing fame go to his head, so he’s calling it quits.

Squeezing light is indeed something you need to do, sometimes. In fiberoptic transmission – where you transmit information via light going through glass fibers, which essentially all telephone carriers, and many smaller companies, do – the light bounces around inside the glass “tube” as it zooms along. The smallest effective size you could make this tube was a few hundred nanometers across: go any smaller, and the wavelengths don’t reflect back into the glass properly.

However some researchers at the University of Adelaide have figured out how to make light transmit through an optical fiber less than half that size. This might make possible smaller or more efficient fiberoptic applications, and aids our understanding of how light operates at nanoscales.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the Japanese government is moving towards a geostationary orbiting array that will beam power to earth by 2030. That’s a cool project. There’s lots of technology improvements needed, but there are plenty of years between now and then. And there’s a great deal more solar energy incoming outside the atmosphere than there is on land.

I’m still pretty busy with all the tasks of moving to a new country: banks, health care, housing, jobs. But I finally fit in some time to listen to the Them Crooked Vultures album that leaked earlier this week.

If you’ve forgotten, TCV are a supergroup of Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) on guitar, Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters, Nirvana) on drums, and John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin) on bass. It sprang into being, fully formed, at live shows earlier this year. Their self-titled album comes out in a couple of weeks (you can preorder it from their web page: click the album cover below). It has, unsurprisingly, leaked.

I think it’s pretty good. It’s very much the Josh Homme show. Luckily, Homme has a pretty good show. QOTSA have always had a pretty hefty chunk of Zeppelin crunch, much as Grohl’s always seemed to channel a bit of Bonzo. Every song here is a burly, riff-tastic stomp. Everyone’s given lots of time in the mix. It’s a special moment, though, when Jones’s synths come in, because it’s the closest we’re ever going to get to a new Zeppelin song.

The album suffers a bit, though, from that other aspect of The Ginger Giant’s touch: sameness. Too many of the stomps sound the same as too many of the other stomps, with Homme’s multi-tracked vocals weaving above it all, same-y as always. The songs have impact, and they’re polyrhythmic (another QOTSA/Zep characteristic), and there are a few different bits, but I would’ve liked more variety.

Still, Them Crooked Vultures have made a fun, confident, very bold, mostly interesting rock album. Fans of low-frills power-trio crunch will love it. I’ll see how it grows.

Them Crooked Vultures album cover. Click for the band website and pre-order link

The Royal Mail is always releasing new stamps with images of British life on them. I just heard – thanks to the Aussie – that they’re releasing a set featuring iconic rock album covers. They’ll even be shaped differently to show the image of a bit of vinyl album peeking out one side. Very cool.