The Red Moon

Heard that a cloudy sky spoiled the view of the lunar eclipse on Tuesday back in Singapore. We're luckier in Canberra - a clear day (as is most of the other days here) but just a little cold - and I caught this nice image of the moon getting swallowed up by the shadow.



Did not wait for the reappearance of the moon, however. Got essay to do...

The Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism

I think my essay is going in order. Still got a few things to be cleared, but in general it should be trouble-free... at least I won't be expecting major ones. Ah... one less worry for now.

The Theory of Oligarchical Collectivism

The reason why you are reading this post right now is because the author has lots of floating thoughts for his philosophy essay on the political lesson of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, but they're all nothing concrete. Admittedly, it reminds him of string theory: lots of interesting ideas but detached from the real world.

Maybe a walk in the chilling night will help clear up the mind.

The Possom Monster

Sorry for the recent inactivity. Has been rather busy with work. Meanwhile, here's a little spooky photo I've taken a few days back.



Quite amused, actually, at how the off-focus and red-eye flash combines to give a neat effect.

Hail the Hail

Yesterday night, shortly after I posted the previous entry, there was a brief moment of hail. It was pretty noisy - the ice striking on the roof of the buildings. Some car alarms went off as well.

But it lasted only about five minutes, before the hail turned into heavy rain. It was my first encounter of rain of such scale, but it wasn't those kind of heavy rain back in Singapore. It's more of large droplets of water but of a lower frequency.

Oh well. Glad I wasn't walking outside when the hail occurred... would've thought that I was attacked by some irritated cockatoos.

Physics' Worst Enemy: Hollywood

Some dudes in the University of Central Florida were so concerned about the misguidance of Hollywood on some basic physics principles that they decided to write a paper criticising some terrible physics flaws. The paper is available here.

Entitled Hollywood Blockbusters: Unlimited Fun but Limited Science Literacy, it dissects some movies that has impossible physics, starting with the classic Speed bus-jump-over-gap scene. Other movies analysed are Spiderman (ridiculous coefficient of friction on cable the Green Goblin was holding), Aeon Flux, The Core, Superman, X-Men III: The Last Stand (when Magneto lifted that bridge, his body "should be shining about 926 times stronger than a 60W light bulb!"), and Chronicles of Riddick.

This reminds me deeply of the Intuitor Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics, where they smashes many movies with poor physics (though updates are quite rare nowadays). Interestingly enough, Titanic got quite a good grade for accurate portrayal of the dynamics of the sinking.

To be frank, are these guys overreacting? I'm not so sure, but since I always begin watching a Hollywood movie with the premise that they lie outside the domain of physics laws, I can't really be bothered. But still, it's quite fun to read all these analyses!

Into the Heart of Australian Politics

Yesterday I extracted myself from the loads of work I have upon me and visited the New Parliament House in Canberra. It was a very windy day and I decided to cycle there, it took about half an hour, though it would've been faster if not for the strong wind. It was quite a nice ride, with bicycle lane at the leftmost of the road, but the wind kept encouraging me to switch to the right line.

The New Parliament House is situated at the apex of a triangle in the city plan (with the other two edges at the City Centre and the Defence building), and on top of a hill, so the final cycle was a little bit tough. Actually, the path up the hill was at one side of the circle road which surrounds the hill, but I didn't find it and just cut right through the field up a slope to the front of the building.



When I reached there, there was a protest going on. It was on some Aboriginal rights and stuff like that, but I wasn't really paying much attention. I did take note of one of the speakers though, because he reminds me so much of Morpheus.



The New Parliament House has two straight roads along the sides of the triangle, but bisecting this angle between them is a relatively unobstructed view from the New Parliament House, past the Old Parliament House, over the lake, through the red pebbled ANZAC Parade, to the Australia War Memorial. As I understood later, it has one more symbolic meaning behind it: from the war memorial to the parliament house, it is a line connecting from the past to the present to the future.



The spanking New Parliament House has quite an impressive look from outside.



It's interior is also rather neat and full of meaning (like with Aboriginal artwork incorporated into the architecture). The courtyard looks very refreshing as well, but it is restricted from the public. Admittedly, it reminds me of those nice small parks in hospitals.



There's this nice patchwork in the main hall, which I'm told is the second biggest patchwork in the world. It does look impressive. Just look at its size...



Since it was a Saturday, there is no sitting in the parliament, though there were during that weekdays and the coming week.



The most prominent feature of the New Parliament House is the flag on top of it, which is visible from almost everywhere in the city. The flag is, as the description says, the approximate size of the side of a double decker bus. Considering how strong the wind can get up there, the force on the poles must be astounding.



If you want to have an idea of how strong the wind is, just look at the scattering of the water from the Captain Cook Memorial Jet.



Just before I left and head back ANU, I took a glance at its general direction and... well... homework's waiting.

Blowing a Warm Day

The temperature is turning up a gear these days. It's turning warm during the days and though it is still cold at night it is at least not freezing. Day temperatures can reach more than 10°C, which means I can walk around in a T-shirt so long as it's for a short while.

However, the wind is formidable today. Even right now, it's quite a gale out there and, with those tall fir trees around my hall, there is a ghastly howl stretching through the entire day. The wind cancels out the increase in warmth, but at least it won't be everyday that's so windy.

Ah well, when winter goes and spring comes, I think there'll be more activities for me to do. That is, if I don't get piled under the weight of my assignments.

Essays and Assignments

While it is true that ANU, or Australia for that matter, has in general for more relaxed lifestyle than in NUS, that, I suppose, is a result of perspective of the people there. The workload is the same; it's just that people are less bothered with it.

I supposed I can't kick off my Singaporean mentality altogether. Right now I'm crumbling under the weight of assignments and essays. And the Singaporean mentality rears its head even higher when the fact that these assessments do comprise a significant proportion of the grade (usually at least 20%) is taken into account.

And I'm probably the few who are doing so diverse a set of courses: two physics, one astrophysics and one philosophy. Here at ANU, there is absolutely no restrictions to what courses one must take (with the exception of those required by one's major). No breadths, no faculty requirements, no GEM, no SS... no wonder so many students here are double majors - it's so easy to be one!

Enough from chatting... back to my two incomplete assignments due tomorrow. ARGGGHHHH!!!!

Lovely Spam! Wonderful Spam!

Of recent months I have noted an increase in spam into my NUS mail inbox. Usually, the spam filter by the NUS network will sift them out into the spam folder, but for some odd reason, it appears that my email has been receiving an extraordinary amount of spam than before, since the spam folder has more messages in them as well (yeah, I check the spam folder, but only glance at the titles).

Disturbingly, nearly all of the spam has something to do with the improvement of my (non-existent) sex life. From erectile dysfunction tablets to online pharmacies (no points for guessing correctly what they're selling), I think if they do really work and if I bought from every single one of them, I would've turned into a tripod.

This leads to two points. First, it is really hilarious someone would think that an email from an unknown sender selling some products is not a scam. What's more, the style of many of the emails are exact replicas, just that the senders vary. Second, even if the emails are credible, why on earth would I buy their product? Surely, a more reliable source of drugs would be from a doctor or, if privacy is valued, a reputable online pharmacy. The only time that I would probably be desperate enough to buy from them is when my He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named mutates into a broccoli.

The only likely possibility of the spammers getting any hits is when some curious Internet newbie clicks on it, or when someone accidentally clicking on some links in the email. Otherwise, I think the spammers can really do better than that. Come to think of it, I think if some spammers were to send a scam email promoting a new online scientific article website, it is of a higher chance that they can catch me. In any case, they could have written a more plausible ad for a scam.

This brings me to my last point. While I do not fanatically hide my email, I do not throw them into every email subscription box I come across. It does make me wonder, though I believe it far beyond my means to find out, how the spammers got hold of my email address in the first place.

P.S.: I'm glad I do not have Google Ads. Since they scan the post for keywords and publish related ads, I can hardly fathom what will surface...

P.P.S.: SPAM (the meat) is quite common here in Canberra. It's very much like luncheon meat but it's so salty that it could have been collected from the Dead Sea.

Emerging from Madness

Phew... the past few days has been quite crazy for me. Since last Saturday, I've been cracking my head over tutorials and essays, hence the silence in this blog. After handing in my astro essay, I can feel a great weight lifted off my shoulders. Even so, the kind of stress is slightly different and, I might say, lighter than that in NUS.

Maybe it's not time yet...