(sound of nose blowing)

Oh yay, fall 2011's annoying cold is here! It's awesome.

(sound of nose blowing again)

I hate this. When we moved into the house 4.5 years ago I got sick all the time, but when we cleared out the mould that stopped and now I only get sick about twice a year. So I'm even more of a wimp about it.

In other news, I miss blogging. I need to find a way to get this page open in front of me more, because god knows I have a lot to say. Twitter is busy because it's open all day - just need some way to reduce that a smidgen and increase this a smidgen and maybe even do some real work too.

New job! Maybe I'll talk about the new job next time. Somebody remind me if I go quiet. :)

Gay YouTube Soldier Reveals Himself, Comes Out to Dad

For months, a gay US soldier has been anonymously posting videos on YouTube talking about his life, the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy, and the repeal of the policy on September 20th.

On the morning of the 20th, he posted a new video where he revealed his face and also came out to his father over the phone from his military base. God that was wrenching to watch.

This guy is willing to give his life for his country, but he was scared to death to tell his dad. Jesus.

Good work kid.

http://www.towleroad.com/2011/09/dadtdad.html

Faster-than-light travel might be possible? Well, not really.

So experiments at CERN appear to have shown subatomic particles traveling faster than the speed of light. This is exciting and annoying.

Exciting because it potentially blasts apart the theory of relativity and means a major rethink of physics is required -- this is a normal part of science and means we are getting better at knowing our universe. Don't panic.

CERN says a neutrino beam fired from a particle accelerator near Geneva to a lab 454 miles (730 kilometers) away in Italy traveled 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light. Scientists calculated the margin of error at just 10 nanoseconds, making the difference statistically significant. But given the enormity of the find, they still spent months checking and rechecking their results to make sure there was no flaws in the experiment.

The CERN researchers are now looking to the United States and Japan to confirm the results.
I've always found the speed-of-light barrier annoying. I understand the physics (short version: to go that fast you'd have to expend infinite energy) but I've always thought about it in the "just keep accelerating" way. They used to think the sound barrier was a big deal, and now you break that going to work. Not really.

One nice thing is that we already know the answer to all this. Since Arthur C Clarke is from the future, if faster-than-light travel were possible he'd have included it in his books. So no worries.