Zephyrist's sunday night briefs - week 16, 2007

Well this week I have been google earth train-spotting. I cant remember much from the news except more bleak news from Iraq and concerns about rising UK inflation and interest rates.

Here are some of the things that have crossed my desk this week:

A hard rain's a-gonna fall (Guardian)

I was watching the film "The Day after tomorrow" where abrupt climate changes causes super cell ice storms and floods, freezing New York. It is an excellent disaster movie but it supposedly has science in it. So is the film based on accurate scientific theories or is it just Hollywood fiction. Find out in the Guardian article.

On a personal note I was hopping it would be more like the BBC drama 'Super Volcano' with science being central to the story. In "The Day after tomorrow" they didn't get the same balance and really should have skipped the bit where the dad was the scientist, it would be an easier plot if the dad was like a marine, fire or police officer. Then they could concentrate on the rescue as the main plot and the politics / science as a back drop.

Revolution, flashmobs, and brain chips. A grim vision of the future (Guardian)

Everyone looks to the future including governments and companies. The Ministry of Defence has looked 30 years into the future and this article reports what they see.

Here are some quick bullet points:

• electromagnetic weapons will be operational
• Neutron weapons will be in use
• Unmanned delivery / weapons platforms will be used
• Electronic brain implants hard wired to the brain
  
• flash mobs - rent a mob by internet
• Middle classes become revolutionaries against the super rich
• The terrorism threat will grow
• The threat from climate change will grow with potentially the start of a temperature drop in Northern Europe.

Russia threatening new cold war over missile defence (Guardian)

The cold war may have ended but no one seems to have told the Americans and Russians. The US continues to build super weapon technology in order to protect itself from countries such as Iran or North Korea. This method of building super defence technology just antagonises everyone and helps create the uncertain world we live in and suggests the Americans would prefer war to diplomacy.

Now they are planning to place a new missile defence system in Eastern Europe which could potentially start a new nuclear arms race.

'Smart dust' to explore planets (BBC)

This is just like one of those science fiction stories. Intelligent computer chips as small as dust particles get blown on the wind exploring an alien planet (earth in the science fiction plot version).

They are able to act over a local network with each other to distribute computing power.

I can see a horror movie script in this story.

Another week done, tune in next week for more of the same.