Always take your hippy with you

I recently watched a SF/F film, The Last Mimsy, which was rather sweet and very enjoyable, and managed to bring together Alice in Wonderland, mandalas, genes and nanotechnology. At the crucial moment in the film, the hippy character (who has been to Nepal and knows about Tibetan Buddhism and mandalas) knows exactly what to do and how to react, whereas the rather square and non-hippy parents have no idea how to react.

This suggests to me a new principle in life:

"Everywhere you go
Always take your hippy with you."

This insight was borne out by an article on my employer's website announcing that growing hemp is carbon neutral, and you can build houses with it.

Hemp could be key to zero-carbon houses
08 April 2009
Researchers from the Department of Architecture & Civil Engineering are investigating using hemp to build carbon-neutral homes. Using this renewable building material would not only help combat climate change but could also boost the rural economy.

Quantum rap

Just been sent the Large Hadron Collider Rap, which as well as being funny, explains the physics rather well (at least I assume it does, since I'm not an expert on particle physics). There's a Wikipedia page about the LHC, which incidentally records that the rap has been listened to by a million YouTube viewers. It also has a guest appearance from Stephen Hawking (or possibly a simulation of his voice).

I'm currently reading Keeping it real (part 1 of Quantum Gravity) by Justina Robson, which has as its starting point the rearrangement of the multiverse by a device similar to the Large Hadron Collider. As a result, gateways were opened to Alfheim, Zoomenon, Thanatopia and the realm of demons. It's good because there's a lot of detail about the world and the characters, and some interesting ideas, like Games (like head-games but there's more at stake). Also the main character is a cyborg called Lila, who is having an identity crisis about being a cyborg. The elves are pretty cool, too, though definitely not nice. There's also an elvish rock star.