The need is growing for data centres and server farms to feed data-intensive operations. For the last two years, Iceland has been planning to attract those installations, where electric generation is carbon-free and the climate offers energy-free cooling. They’ve been adding data communications capacity that let them reach England in 17 milliseconds.

Banks have hundreds of thousands of servers. Their requirements generate as much carbon dioxide as the airline industry. I had no idea! One major investment bank has signed an agreement to move their servers to Iceland.

Hat tip to “Spark” on the BBC World News.

Today is the unofficial International Blasphemy Day, with provocative folks urging each other to show the religious that one can be a Good Blasphemer or simply blasphemous without being struck down by a god.

However, I did my bit earlier this month by reposting for posterity the Danish cartoons that were the cause of the original blasphemy uproar on this date a few years ago. You can find them here: Those Mohammed cartoons.

And here’s a reminder: You can’t offend someone who doesn’t exist.

Did I hurt the feelings of your imaginary friend?

Research blogging from Not Exactly Rocket science:

In the time since the words “swine flu” first dominated the headlines, a group of scientists from three continents have been working to understand the origins of the new virus and to chart its evolutionary course. Today, they have published their timely results just as the World Health Organisation finally moved to phase six in its six-tier system, confirming what most of us already suspected – the world is facing the first global flu pandemic of the 21^st century.The team, led by Gavin Smith at the University of Hong Kong, compared over 800 viral genomes representing a broad spectrum of influenza A diversity. The viral menagerie included two samples of the current pandemic strain (the virus formerly known as swine flu and now referred to as swine-origin influenza virus (S-OIV)). Also in the mix were 15 newly sequenced swine strains from Hong Kong, 100 older swine strains, 411 from birds and 285 from humans.

The team used these genomes to build a viral family tree that shows the relationships between the strains and dates their origins. They found that S-OIV was borne of several viruses that circulate in pigs, with contributions from avian and human strains. The virus made the leap to humans several months before we twigged to its presence. It was spreading right under our noses, undetected because of our lack of surveillance of flu viruses in pigs.

Read more.

Michael Coulter writes in The Age,

…What I see is a world slowly tearing itself apart for the sake of one faith or another. A world where an extreme faction of Islam wishes to put me and mine to the sword for my unbelief, and to shackle half the world for the crime of being born female. A world where an extreme faction of Christianity wants to throw away science for the sake of millenniums-old superstitions, and is prepared to kill in the name of life. A world where an extreme faction of Hinduism wishes to religiously purify India. A world where people are unashamedly trying to fulfil the biblical conditions for Armageddon.

Moderates say that these factions are perversions of faith…

Read more of “God delusions cloud a world of wonders.”

National Geographic reported in April that fishermen in the Philippines caught a megamouth shark. It died as they were capturing it, so they ate it in spite of urgings from a naturalist to save it for science. Megamouth sharks were discovered in 1976. They are a filter-feeder in their own family and genus.

This was only the 41st one ever seen. So little is known of them that conservation authorities can’t assess their status.

image from Natural Geographic