Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Dec 5, 2009, 3:09 pm
V and I went to Sydney’s The Basement last night to see Slowhand, an Eric Clapton tribute band. It was actually more of a revuew, as there were about 10 of them and they alternated singers and s...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Dec 3, 2009, 12:50 am
In circumstances that are sure to re-ignite the highly speculative “sabotage from the future” theories, the Large Hadron Collider hit another snag today when it suffered a power failure: ...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Dec 1, 2009, 2:45 pm
Last week the UK parliamentary health committee was looking into whether the NHS should continue to fund homeopathy (a ludicrous idea, since homeopathy is useless). Bad Science’s Ben Goldacre wr...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Nov 30, 2009, 2:02 pm
Trent Reznor made clear this year that he wants to give Nine Inch Nails a rest (maybe a permanent one?) from touring. To show he’s serious about that he’s doing what any regular person wou...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Nov 30, 2009, 4:25 am
From the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club mailing list, info about the upcoming album is quoted below. Check their website for more details, and info about the new live DVD. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club is...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Nov 29, 2009, 5:11 pm
It’s a bit odd being back in a land where country music is popular. I could probably count on one hand the number of times I heard country music on TV or radio in the nearly 10 years I spent in ...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Nov 27, 2009, 3:42 am
“Northern Lights”, the aurora borealis, don’t just happen on Earth; they happen on Saturn too. Posted in science Tagged: aurora, Saturn
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Nov 23, 2009, 12:37 am
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&#...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Nov 21, 2009, 6:46 pm
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 Gene...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Nov 19, 2009, 8:16 pm
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 sou...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Nov 18, 2009, 6:43 pm
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 ou...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Nov 18, 2009, 1:27 am
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 ...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Nov 14, 2009, 3:55 pm
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 Frate...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Nov 13, 2009, 10:10 pm
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 c...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Nov 13, 2009, 5:15 am
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 ...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Nov 11, 2009, 11:25 pm
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...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Nov 10, 2009, 2:28 pm
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 cove...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Nov 9, 2009, 2:06 pm
Psychobilly sleaze-rockers Nashville Pussy will be returning to Australia in March. There are a couple of festival dates; hopefully more will follow. Check them out for some hard-rockin’, trashy...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Nov 8, 2009, 2:55 pm
Hey, Brits. Remember when I wrote about Belgian band Sukilove? They’re playing some UK dates soon: check them out. 29th Nov – LONDON – The Macbeth, 70 Hoxton Street, N1 6LP (With GIN PA...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Nov 8, 2009, 1:44 am
Sydney’s Newtown has a community festival each year. Live music features heavily, so I went along to check it out. I was especially keen to see a couple of acts I’d read about in TimeOut r...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Nov 7, 2009, 2:55 pm
As reported on Wired.com: During two recent lightning storms, Fermi recorded gamma-ray emissions of a particular energy that could only have been produced by the decay of energetic positrons, the ant...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Nov 6, 2009, 2:40 pm
Looks like I left behind a storm of public policy on science in the UK. Professor David Nutt is the chairman of the government-sponsored Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. He’s been tryin...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Nov 5, 2009, 3:02 pm
Sydney radio station triple j is a well-known rock and indie radio station here. They claim to have done their part in breaking new artists. The whole month of November they’re focusing –...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Nov 4, 2009, 2:41 pm
In between looking for a job and a place to live, I’ve been trying to dip my toe into Australian music. If you look at my recent Blip.fm stream you’ll see some of the results of that dippi...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Nov 3, 2009, 2:39 pm
It seems Billy Gibbons, ZZ Top’s guitarist, likes being a tourist, and took the tube to Wembley before the band’s big gig last week. In true London fashion, the line he wanted to take was ...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Nov 3, 2009, 5:22 am
From ScienceDaily: Two University of Rhode Island associate professors, biophysicists Yana Reshetnyak and Oleg Andreev, have discovered a technology that can detect cancerous tumors and deliver treat...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Nov 1, 2009, 3:33 pm
Pioneering metal guitarist Tony Iommi owes at least part of the Black Sabbath sound to the fact that he lost two fingertips in an industrial accident when he was a teenager. Rather than give up playin...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Oct 31, 2009, 5:29 pm
Alright, I’m here in Sydney, and getting close to normal again. What better way to regain normality than regular blogging again? The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Oct 29, 2009, 2:23 am
From the BBC: the European Parliament has dropped an amendment to its package of telecom legislation that would have required that countries get court approval to take steps like cutting off internet ...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Oct 28, 2009, 3:16 am
Here’s a good article from the Guardian about Michael Green, a pioneer of string theory and the new Lucasian chair of mathematics – taking over from Stephen Hawking – at Cambridge. I...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Oct 27, 2009, 2:13 am
The new Homme/Grohl/Jones supergroup Them Crooked Vultures will follow their string of live performances with a self-titled album on 17 November 2009. Posted in music Tagged: Them Crooked Vultures, T...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Oct 26, 2009, 4:05 am
From ScienceDaily: Music serves as a natural and non-invasive intervention for patients with severe neurological disorders to promote long-term memory, social interaction and communication. However, ...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Oct 25, 2009, 2:09 am
“Emily Howell” is a computer programme created by David Cope, a professor of the University of California – Santa Cruz. Emily – named after Experiments in Musical Intelligence ...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Oct 25, 2009, 1:43 am
I leave London in a couple of hours; my wife and I are emigrating to Australia. Blog posts for the next few days will be scheduled ones I’ve recently written. I don’t know how quickly I...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Oct 24, 2009, 1:06 am
The BBC has announced that it will add another regular radio slot with someone from a musical background in the new year: Jarvis Cocker will be given a Sunday afternoon slot on 6 Music. Nice. Posted ...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Oct 23, 2009, 2:23 am
What? From the Guardian: Next month sees the release of a CD entitled Bill Cosby Presents the Cosnarati: State of Emergency, a hip-hop concept album that sets out to “tackle such social issues...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Oct 22, 2009, 11:17 am
Cool, a bionic eye!  From ScienceDaily: A new artificial retina, an array of electrodes implanted on the back of the eye, has been found to restore partial vision to totally blind people. In a study...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Oct 21, 2009, 5:50 am
In 2007, East Carolina University biologist Jason Bond discovered a new species of trapdoor spider. Since he was the first to identify the species he got to name it. While there are rules about how yo...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Oct 18, 2009, 3:52 pm
On 2 November (27 October in the US) the new album from Sting, If On A Winter’s Night, will be released. Someone suggested that he do a Christmas album; the former Police frontman decided instea...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Oct 15, 2009, 1:09 am
In the last couple of weeks I’ve noticed several mentions of Skeptics In The Pub, a collection of UK pub gatherings of, well, skeptics. They seem interesting. I’m especially intrigued by t...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Oct 14, 2009, 7:57 am
Christmas in the Heart is, indeed, a Christmas album from Bob Dylan. None of the 15 songs on it are written by him. They’re well-known standards from the ’40s and ’50s, including ...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Oct 14, 2009, 3:55 am
Al Martino was an Italian-American crooner back in the ’50s. His song “Here In My Heart” was the first number 1 song in the first UK pop charts in 1952. He’s passed away. Some...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Oct 13, 2009, 10:46 am
Bill O’Reilly has Richard Dawkins – who has a new book – on his show the other day. The two words are now so loaded they are their own punchline: Bill O’Reilly. And you could s...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Oct 12, 2009, 5:04 pm
The Times – and lots of other places – are reporting on the unique spider Bagheera kiplingi. It’s unique because it’s the only spider out of 40,000 species that isn’t car...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Oct 11, 2009, 1:46 pm
It seems that the LCROSS mission that slammed a spacecraft into the moon the other day wasn’t as successful as initially hoped. The impact spot might have been harder than they thought, as there...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Oct 11, 2009, 2:18 am
If you’re in America then not only do you have a president who’s winning awards for peace, but you can also – for the next three weeks – download all of psychobilly star Mojo N...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Oct 10, 2009, 4:54 pm
Head over to music blog Puritan Blister for some scary Halloween mixes. The Puritan Blister Old Timey Live Internet Radio Show’s Inaugural Horror Jamboree. Their regular serving of covers and m...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Oct 9, 2009, 12:08 pm
For the last 113 days Nasa’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) spacecraft has been traveling towards the moon. Its mission is to find out whether there might be some traces...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Oct 8, 2009, 5:41 pm
From the Guardian: Marine campaign group Oceana has used an underwater robot to capture, for the first time, images of Sahara seamounts during their Ranger expedition to the Canary islands. The seam...
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Tim D. posted an article on The Plummet Onions - Oct 6, 2009, 1:52 am
One of the exciting things about London when I moved here was the chance to see bands play live: awesome bands, and lots of ‘em. Everyone plays London. Now that I’m leaving in a few weeks ...
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