Jason Mark Roehrig My Web Home

UK Brights Campaign

The UK has a bright campaign supported by the "mighty", or rather outspoken, Dawkins. The goal was to get secular advertisements published on public transport to combat the attempted brain washing of fundamentalists. Their initial goal has been met more than by just as satisfying margin.

H+ Cover of First Release

I'd like to share with my readers the announcement of the first edition of H+, an emag on transhumanism. Human Plus are really doing a service to humanity, by regularly wanting to publish the ideas and outcomes of our adventure into self-organizing our future development, or rather human-auto-evolution.

By their nature, humans developed according to the rules provided by evolution. Thanks to this development human kind has developed an intellect allowing for taking control over their evolution. No longer are we subject to chance, but rather intelligent design. No God is in charge, but the species affected.

This new emag covers a diversity of topics, just as a diversity of depths. Some subjects are covered in brief, highlighting current ideas. Other subjects are covered in a broader sense, allowing for an introduction to the subject by people who haven't closely been following the object of desire - a better human being. Where "better" is rather subjective. Or objective, as subjectivity deals with objectives.

The objectives of transhumanists is that of becoming independent of our nature, the outcome of natural evolution. We are all glad to by now not die of a common cold. At the same time we are very happy to live with the results of modern medicine, and other sciences. Maybe this development has been rather unconscious in nature, but undeniable is it a product of intelligent design. Processes, procedures, objects, and subjects, all become the subject of human manipulation.

The content is very promising and I hope they will be able to keep it up.

A380, Sunday 21/09/2008 15:56
A crappy photo, but the thought and intent counts. Spotted today around 15:56.

I dream of flying first class in this one.

Proton Beam Position

This is exiting news. And not because some idiots, cranks, or what ever you want to call 'em, are suggesting imminent doom, but rather for the new frontier experimental physicists are breaching. For a geek it's like Xmas: you can rattle the box, but can only guess what might be inside.

... more to follow soon!

OK, I've made a Lemon Cheese Cake and it's currently backing in my oven, so I'm not sure if it will turn out right. Never the less, here is my recipe (more or less in accordance with):

Ingredients

• 250g chocolate cookies
• 75g butter (melted)
• 500g cottage cheese
• 250g Philadelphia Creame Cheese
• 115g caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• from 3 lemons the zest
• 60ml lemon juice

Preparation

1. crunch biscuits into pulp, and then mix with butter
2. press pulp evenly in 20cm cake form; chill at least for 20min
3. pre-heat oven to 160 deg C
4. mix sugar, cottage cheese, cream cheese
5. add one egg after the other and mix
6. add lemon zest and juice, mix
7. add mix into cake form, bake for ~50min

Today I harvested a good 6 kilos of lemons from the tree in my backyard. And there are still more to come. A few green ones are already hanging there, and there is still some flowering going on. I've already harvested a few last week, so there will most likely still be a couple of kilos I'll get my hands on.

Lemon Tree [1]

This was great compared to last year, which only offered a meager harvest, as the tree was hit with an illness.

Now I face the obvious question "what to do with all these lemons?" A question I never had to ask myself prior.

Preserved Lemons

For one I decided to preserve a couple. This is easily achieved. Just fill the bottom of a jar with ~2cm of salt, chop lemons (sufficient to fit into the jar) into quarters, spread salt on quarters, put them in jar, and finally fill the jar with olive oil. Done!

I also extracted some lemon juice from around half of the harvest, which I've frozen for later consumption.

Today I will make an attempt at backing a lemon cheesecake, where I'll be following roughly this recipe. "Roughly" as I always change something, I only use recipes as a guide, not an instruction.

Now, I have found a few interesting recipes, as listed below, but feel free to leave your suggestions as a comment.

I'm definitely going to try the lemon sorbet.

More Lemon Recipes

The following are a collection of links to recipes involving lemons.

• Lemon Butter
• Lemon Syllabus
• White Chocolate Lemon Napoleon
• Lemon Sorbet
• Lemon With A Twist

A week ago, me and my friendly neighbour had friends over for raclette. One of the friends was Robert, who as a hobby builds plastic ship models. I told him how I had been thinking of taking up again my childhood hobby, and putting a couple of plastic model planes together myself. In dedication to his passion, Robert was all empathetic to the idea of gluing together plastic pieces, and offered me a model kit he had of a Constellation as a gift, to get me going. The following Thursday I received the kit.

Airfix - Super Constallation - Box

Now, a week later, I got started. I still have to buy the paints required, but a couple of pieces can already be glued together, which is what I've done. At least as far as I could get.

The kit is produced by Airfix, and assembling pieces of my kit took me back to my childhood days. Reminding me, as to why I back then avoided Airfix kits. Their molds are crappy. For one, pieces don't always align as they should, the extrusions are at unsuited places, and there's just too much plastic overflow with most parts. The only good part about this, is the challenge.

Putting together a ready-made set is easy. I'd actually prefer to create models from scratch. But who has the time? Leaving me quite happy to put together a ready-made Super Constellation.

Thanks to Robert I've got a kit to get me back into a realm of a prime passion (aircraft), I've been ignoring for far to long. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Some council gestapo officer thought it appropriate to fine a painter and home decorator for smoking in his van. Now obviously smoking is harmful, and smokers should be considerate, but smoking in a confined spaced, occupied only by oneself, should certainly be regarded as a private action of no concern to the government and subordinate agencies.

What's next? Will they come knocking on the doors of home-offices, to make sure you're not smoking in your own home?

As the SMH has recently reported, the plastic bag producer Valpak likes to claim ...Bio Bags: Deceptive brand and logo created by Valpak.

.. aware of the environmental limitations of plastic bags and we are focussing our business into the use of sustainable resources as well as offering degradable and compostable Cellophane bags where appropriate.

Quoted from Valpaks' About page.

What is so appauling about Valpak?

"We have never claimed bio-bags are biodegradable," Valpak's managing director, Alan Reid, said. "We registered the trademark six or seven years ago. It was never intended to make people think the bags are biodegradable."

Talk about cynicism. So Valpak unapologeticaly declares the bio-label as nothing but a legal misleading of consumers. Obviously they are not the only offenders, but an example that should serve as a lesson to all consumers: a green lable means nothing. If you want to follow your conscience and moral norms, make sure to research all your consumer choices.