We're Going To The Moon For Christmas

Progressive space folk band Arbelos is offering its Christmas single for free on the band’s website. Song writer Mark Toner explains that, while the song is a typical fun Christmas song, it also draws attention to the fortieth anniversary of Apollo 8’s historic Moon mission and asks questions about what the world did with all the promise of better things that was raised in those days. The song is entitled “We’re Going To The Moon For Christmas” and carries a hopeful message in our troubled times.

Jane Chidwick, wife of keyboard player Noel Chidwick, suggested that a Christmas song would be a good opportunity to do some good in the world and the single is offered for a free download, but with an invitation to pay whatever the listener considers it is worth to UNICEF. The band hope that UNICEF will do very well out of this arrangement and that the musicians will build up some positive Christmas spirit for themselves in the process. More from the Arbelos website….

Universities in England and Wales are warning that a funding shortfall will mean a freeze on extra places. The statement came in response to a letter from the Higher Education Funding Council for England, saying “at this stage” there will be no allocations of extra places until 2011. More from the BBC…

However, there are no plans to limit access to courses offered by the NCS College and more are in the pipeline.

The Daily Sun (NASA Spaceweather.com)

Solar physicists are happily tracking a new group of sunspots called Active Region 1008. This is something of a relief as the Sun has exhibited a long period of inactivity recently. There is a cycle, lasting approximately eleven years, of solar activity which sees the Sun change from very low numbers of sunspots and little activity in the way of flares and ejections to large numbers of sunspots and many energetic flares. The current minimum of the cycle has continued for almost two years and scientists were beginning to speculate that the Sun was in another Maunder Minimum - the period during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries when the Sun produced almost no activity for seventy years. However, recent increases in activity, including Active Region 1008, have dispelled this idea. It seems that the current minimum, while a little longer than in recent cycles, is not unusual.

You can read more about Active Region 1008 at the NASA Spaceweather site. NASA also have an article addressing the worries about the recent long solar minimum.

REMEMBER: never look at the Sun directly and especially never look at it through any kind of optical instrument. For tips on safe solar observing see the Spacepod site or take a course with the NCS Astronomy Department.

Happy Halloween

It’s Hallowe’en and it looks like man’s own creations are out to get us. From the man-eating toilet to virus-carrying electronics, the news has been full of horror stories beyond the imaginings of hollywood.

A man travelling on a French train had a narrow escape this week, when the toilet tried to eat his arm. Rescue workers had to kill the toilet  bowl to free him but it was still clinging to his arm as they carried the man from the train. More in BBC News…

Researchers at the University of Virginia have found high levels of the cold virus on household taps, refrigerator doors and TV remotes. This hardy virus enters the home on a family member’s hands and quickly transfers itself to every available surface ready to infect the whole household. More from Reuters…

So for a healthy and happy Hallowe’en this year, keep away from trains and wear gloves at all times.

If you have feel you have life experiences that would interest a wider readership, then Joanna Howard’s course could provide you with the tools to create your own memoir or autobiography. Anyone can write down what happened to them, but there are approaches and techniques that make the writing more illuminating for the writer and more interesting for potential readers. This is what “Your Story - Writing A Life” is about.

Have you ever wondered whether you’d make a good psychologist, or just wanted to understand more about why people behave in the ways that they do? Zaynab D’Elia can help you out. “The Wonderful World Of Psychology” is an introduction to this interesting topic. All areas are covered the lesser known with the better known and anyone considering deeper study of Psychology would find this a good place to start.

So how well does it perform? I loaded the first paragraph from this post into it and scored well for clarity. The only change recommended was that the second last sentence should be rewritten as “We’re looking send to using it in the NCS College’s resources.” Oh, well, back to the drawing board, guys. For now I’d recommend not ticking the box marked “possible alternative words (from PEC A to Z).” It does very well in identifying good sentences, though.

Meteorologist Jacob Kuiper issued a warning to Air France KLM that some of its aircraft may be in the vicinity when the asteriod came down. The asteroid was expected to burn up safely forming a fireball as bright as the full moon. Sure enough, a KLM flight passing the impact area at a distance of 750 nautical miles reported a bright flash just before the expected impact time. The satellite image shows the plane (+) and the impact site (O).

More from Spaceweather.com

“New Economics” has been around for some time and its proponents have long warned us about the dangers of de-coupling finance from the real productive economy. Cloisters ran a series of articles by Margaret Legum, in 2006, which explains the problems well. You can catch up with them in our archive by following these links: What is ‘New’ Economics?, Bringing Capital Down to Earth, New Taxes, Creating New Money Debt Free, Passing Revenues Through Government, and The Global Dimension. Margaret Legum also published a book on the subject called It doe$n’t have to be £ike Thi$, published by Wild Goose Publications, 2003.

If we are to weather this current financial storm, we would do well to learn the lessons and only spend money which is backed by real resources. The message of New Economics and the shakiness of the old economics should remind us to pay for the world’s resources that we use with money that we have earned.

Understanding Journalism

The Guardian is producing a series of booklets this week all about writing. Today’s is about journalism,  and it contains a good few gems worth reading. This will interest anyone thinking of taking up our course, Understanding Journalism.

The Guardian: How to write Journalism

Well, it seems that most of the facilities of a college can be replicated at home, apart from one. Face to face contact with a tutor is still at the heart of learning. Only a real human tutor can take a student’s questions in the context of that student’s current state of knowledge and produce a meaningful answer at that moment in the student’s learning. Something that the New Curiosity Shop has always tried to promote, with a real tutor on every course.

Read more at Campus Technology.