[Via BoingBoing]

A couple of days ago, the tabloid ran the 'heartwarming' story of an impala caught by three cheetahs who, supposedly because they were tired and already full, played with it for a while before letting it go. Aah. How cute.

The slight problem is that the Mail only used part of the photoset and invented an entirely fictional outcome. Yes; surprise, surprise: the Daily Mail lied.
As those who have seen the final two images in the sequence published at Biosphoto will know, the cheetahs simply didn't release the impala, which was eaten.

Things like this make me genuinely wonder: what is the Mail for? Are there really people so blind as to accept it as anything even vaguely resembling a news source? I consider most mass media to be flawed, and routinely check for corroboration before accepting their interpretations, but at least they tend to be less blatent in cherrypicking evidence to manufacture falsehoods.

[Via BoingBoing.]

The hypothesis is intellectually attractive, which may explain its successful propagation (a good narrative demands less proof), but it seems to have been under-researched, and most evidence is merely anecdotal. That's not to say it's bogus, of course – the effect has genuinely been reported by numerous observers – but more research needs to be done to quantify the effect and explain why. I'm embarrassed to say I accepted the standard interpretation as 'fact' a little too readily.

A new (to me) factor mentioned in the article seems to be that the sense of dissonance is only significant when a simulation is viewed remotely: CGI and video footage of physical robots can trigger the effect, but those encountering robots in person find them far more acceptable. As a commenter at BoingBoing says, the distinction may (may...) be that in viewing a CG character one notices "... the imperfections in something we are expected to believe is human/alive. Speaking to a robot, with the knowledge that it is, in fact, a robot, puts a whole different spin on things."

It's very pretty, of course, but 61 million people are trying to live here....

[there's a 3Mb version of the image on Nasa's own website.]

My only regret is that the linked BBC article names the disorganisation in question; I wouldn't choose to give them any publicity.

And I wouldn't say they're that bad. The assessment must include some size or passenger-traffic threshold (sort-of; see below), as I'd rate other, smaller stations as in greater need of investment and renovation.

Then again, the very fact that these are the stations with which I'm most familiar probably defines my expectations – compared to, say, Manchester Piccadilly or London St. Pancras, I'd have to acknowledge that Preston's fine Victorian vault could do with a little work, and the facilities are a bit haphazard. Not bad, though.

Glancing through the
report by the 'Station Champions' (FFS...), it seems the emphasis was less on the physical environments and visual appeal of the stations (hence no mention of Birmingham New Street...) than functionality and passengers' expectations, particularly in terms of access, information and facilities. 'Extra retail potential' is one criterion, but not one which would remotely interest me.

The approach was to categorise stations and define minimum standards for each class; the 'National 'B' Interchange' group seemed weakest so received greater attention. Hence, other stations in categories 'C'-'F' might be 'worse' than those specified, but the report simply doesn't mention them. Perhaps understandably, press reports don't quite convey the right message (The Guardian: "UK's worst rail stations named").

Interesting claim from the report: London Victoria, Liverpool St, Waterloo and Euston handle more passengers daily than Heathrow Airport – each.

Like Mitchell, I'm annoyed by my mother's eagerness to project-manage 'improvements', and her inability to comprehend* that even if I permitted it, it would be entirely for her amusement, not mine: I would not be grateful.

There's probably a link to my disdain for the Mac aesthetic: I don't want a 'stylish' house any more than I want a 'gorgeous' PC. In both cases, I genuinely prefer a 'beige box'; an unobtrusive, entirely neutral setting defined by my actions and which in no way defines me.

*: That may be literal. She seems unable to process the idea that I genuinely don't care, instead believing that I'm merely being stubbornly contrary: that I would secretly like to have carpets, lampshades and a non-purple bedroom (blame the previous owner for the colour scheme; I have no interest in changing it) but can't bring myself to abandon an entrenched attitude. Really, truly and unambiguously: I WOULD NOT.

A generic image of the Union flag, superimposed with a couple lines of text, printed onto wood then cut into 30 convoluted shapes? Why?
Is it really likely that in forty years time someone will dig his/her graduation jigsaw out of the attic and take a few seconds to assemble the totally arbitrary image, hoping to trigger happy memories?

The same company does mugs. Exactly.

Today we were contacted by an advertising agency wanting us to amend the map, adding clients' premises as 'landmarks'.

I suppose I'd give them points for ingenuity, but penalise them far more for attempting to hijack and distort a purely functional document. How useful would it be to direct potential visitors to "... go straight on at the traffic lights; keep going straight on past the [insert pub name here] 10 m later...", particularly if that pub isn't visually distinct from neighbouring shopfronts?

Thankfully, we always reject all commercial advertising; it would have been challenging to rationalise why I consider the suggestion offensive whilst remaining professionally polite.

The Guardian had the opportunity to interview the Norwegian band 'A-ha', but rather than send a dedicated music journalist, they gave the story to someone who'd been a 'fan' of the A-ha act/cultural phenomenon (as opposed to the, y'know, music) in the 1980s, who had plainly lost interest in the intervening years and who had no idea that the band had reformed in 1998 and has been active for the past decade; she was expecting a tongue-in-cheek revival of Eighties kitsch but was surprised to encounter serious, philosophical musicians disinterested in pop culture.

The specifics are of limited relevance – I was barely aware of A-ha, too. My annoyance is with the fact that yet again a 'journalist' based an article on, even revelled in, her ignorance of its subject. How can fundamental incompetence be a selling-point?

And don't get me started on spoilt urbanites whinging about the inconvenience of gulls....

[Not that the Guardian's the worst for publishing vacuous commentary – far from it.]

However, it seems the artist and record company were surprisingly sensible, successfully monetising the unexpected exposure. Partly via a 'click-to-buy' link added to the page, the song has reached no.4 on the iTunes singles chart and no.3 on Amazon's 'bestselling mp3' chart, over a year after it was first released.

Many have questioned the suitability of a song by a musician guilty of domestic violence (I don't; it's simply a good accompaniment to a charming video, and the wedding party had no responsibility to choose something more 'worthy'), and the subsequent boost to his bank balance, but part of the married couple's response to the meme (over 13 million views at the time of writing) was to launch a website soliciting donations to domestic violence charity.

[Via BoingBoing, where a commenter offers a further link, to a CollegeHumor parody which transfers the dance to a divorce court.]

As he says in the blog entry which directed me to the EW interview, "you shouldn't be glutted with vampires: they should be a spice, not a food group."

I wonder whether this is why Silas' nature is never stated in 'The Graveyard Book'.

Thanks, BoingBoing. Truly a Wonderful Thing®.

Pity about the mean-spirited comments on the BB post, though.

It's not itself a remotely reliable source of information. Some 'facts' at Wikipedia may be accurate, but others definitely aren't (maliciously or otherwise – honest best-guesses aren't good enough); until one can discriminate between them with 100% confidence, it's all unusable.

Hence, it's alarming to discover that the Crown Prosecution Service is instructing police officers to use Wikipedia when preparing for court cases. I wonder whether that'll be disclosed to juries, or whether information will simply be submitted as 'police evidence', a status jurors might reasonably expect to be based on forensics or other hard data.

He couldn't have illustrated the laziness and silliness of his profession better if he'd deliberately tried; I can't comment on the alleged venality.

*: the person who happened to have claimed that "optical character recognition [is] the technology behind CDs".

Firstly, it's reported that 70% of patients with leukemia, lymphoma or other diseases do not have an eligible donor within their own families so depend on the registry of unrelated donors.

Secondly, in the USA donors have to pay to donate.
This literally challenges my ability to comprehend how their healthcare industry functions. How could a $52 fee be anything other than an obstruction to saving lives? How could a nation operating such a system claim to be civilised?
For key social groups such as low-income immigrants, who may be of particular value to the system (donor compatibility is often related to race), that fee might be prohibitive. Even for wealthier potential donors, it may be too-easily used as an excuse (including to oneself); a commenter on BoingBoing's report of a special 'free offer' mentions not being able to afford to be a donor whilst a student.

Please consider joining the British Bone Marrow Registry. It's free.

Okay, a little explanation might help. Rather than the aftermath of an ice cream fight in The Cavern, Liverpool, the photos show the bunker in which the Russian army tested a variety of napalm. The resulting high temperatures caused the brick walls & ceiling to melt then resolidify as an inverted forest of stalactites.

[Via BoingBoing.]

Really? I'm not a member of any of those organisations, but would, hypothetically, consider joining the first two in order to gain free/cheaper access to their properties and could imagine donating to the third*, but my giving them money certainly wouldn't mean they'd represent me. I really don't think it's reasonable for a journalist or pressure group to automatically equate 'membership' numbers with the size of a constituency – some members might support the organisations' campaigns, but many more might be, like me, simply buying products/services.

Evaluation of competing designs for tidal power schemes in the Severn estuary is important and contentious, so such logical flaws are unhelpful distractions.

*: Only after all medical charities had been wound-up, their work complete. Humans first.

[Title by H. Apparently, linguists will find it witty, but I'm afraid it eludes me.]

To restate one of my core principles: I will not pay to access content online, under any circumstances – I'll simply visit a free source of the same or comparible content elsewhere. It seems I'm not alone, as 88.4% of respondents to a Guardian poll say they wouldn't pay to read newspapers online, either.

I'm slightly surprised to hear of Murdoch's plan, as this has been tried before, unsuccessfully. For example, 'The New York Times' operated a paid-subscription model for two years, but dismantled it in 2007 citing diminished opportunities for displaying adverts to casual visitors. Is Murdoch suggesting that online advertising has declined to the point of relative insignificance, and that it's potentially less lucrative than selling content directly to a considerably smaller audience?

* That's 'The Times', of course, not 'The London Times' or 'The Times Of London' – worldwide, there's only one daily periodical simply called 'The Times', and it's not based in New York. Though a rather better newspaper is.

I know; BoingBoing's mistaken and these leg extenders plainly have the cloven hooves of a satyr, but still: WANT!

After following a narrow, steep track, plainly not a road despite the spurious assurances of his sat-nav unit, to the very brink of a cliff in Todmorden, W.Yorkshire, a driver has been charged with 'driving without due care and attention'.

I recommend reading it, whatever your personal beliefs, but I'll highlight the paragraph which had greatest resonance with me:

*: How's that for an example of reverse nominative determinism? An atheist writer called 'Greta Christina'?

The first paragraph of the main text is:

What was I saying?

*: The "leading neuroscientist" is Baroness Professor Susan Greenfield, about whom Ben Goldacre at Bad Science says:

This seems entirely reasonable and utterly uncontroversial to me, but the e-mail, leaked to newspapers, has triggered a deeply disappointing micro-scandal, in which a simple technique to accommodate a significant minority of the population – without even inconveniencing the sighted majority – has been condemned as 'political correctness gone mad'. I wouldn't have expected that even from sensationalist journalists*, but the comment threads on the newspapers' websites, and accompanying Horrocks' response, overwhelmingly agree.

This isn't 'political correctness', which is usually defined as a petty-minded attempt to avoid giving offence where none exists. It's a straightforward means of providing information. Simple as that. What's the problem?

Bizarrely, some have dismissed the practical aspect as irrelevant, attacking the 'real reason' for the policy: that, allegedly, it's not about genuinely helping people, but merely a fear of litigation. I'm not sure how the commenters have access to Horrocks' 'true' thought process, nor why his inner motivation is relevant, but even if he was merely doing his job in protecting the BBC, that would have been entirely appropriate. Accessibility legislation does exist (DDA 1995 & SENDA 2001 in particular), and if a public-sector broadcaster willfully excluded a section of its customers it would, rightfully, be liable for prosecution.

The particularly disturbing aspect of the press/public response is that people want to deliberately avoid helping people, to avoid being seen to be helping people. I don't think that's hyperbole: commenters genuinely seem to want the vision-impaired to muddle-along rather than oblige sighted TV viewers to hear a URL being read aloud: a 3-4 second imposition into their busy, busy lives. Oh, the hardship.

*: Amusingly, one critic was Emma Hartley, the Daily Torygraph's style guide editor and author of 'Did David Hasselhoff End the Cold War?'. An experienced expert on disability and social policy, then. ****ing hack.

[If the Etsy link has expired by the time you follow it (I don't think it's permanent), try the BoingBoing article instead.]

I may be reading that in a way entirely different to the author's intended meaning....

[Via the Bad Science sideblog.]

... and how feature-film soundtracks are carried on 35 mm film.

Here are a few points to consider, though it's also worth considering that they're the arguments carefully selected by one person with a thesis to sell, some are irresponsibly ludicrous, and though 'lone voice challenging the establishment' is a romantic idea, it's usually wrong.
Before accepting any of Solomon's allegations, I'd need to see peer-reviewed, published data replicated by other researchers, rather than assertions: I'd be vastly more confident about meta-analysis of multiple studies than one or two anomalous, attention-grabbing studies which 'disprove' the rest. If "a study has shown..." that's not good enough for me.

If a majority of studies conclude that AGW exists, that doesn't mean it's a conspiracy, and I am predisposed to 'believe' them – on a balance-of-probability basis, not faith – but models are frequently revised as new factors are identified or their significances realised. Climate change is undeniable, but its causes are open to scrutiny. Let's avoid entrenching positions, on either side.

But in the mean time, it's only prudent to assume human activity is artificially affecting the climate, and act responsibly. We can't wait for 100% proof/disproof, and the 'proof' side currently carries a lot more weight.

So why can I readily interpret five? Okay, two are web-related ('3' as a Unicode entity, '11' in hexadecimal), but still: I'm surprised.

*: The link doesn't look permanent, so if you're reading this a long time after it was posted, you might like to try BoingBoing's coverage instead.

The researchers suggest that the scores* may be "the result of the development of a highly individualistic culture in the UK". Excellent, though Easton chooses to paraphrase that as "we are in danger of becoming the most selfish nation in Europe". How he can equate 'lack of trust' with 'selfishness' rather mystifies me (ah, yes; he's paid to sensationalise), but as an individual, can interpret it as he wishes whereas I, as an individual, can reject his opinions. That's kind of the point.

*: Visit the 'National Accounts of Well-Being' source website and look at the figures, rather than relying on the very misleading graphic accompanying the BBC article. In the image, the colour coding implies that the UK's score for the 'under 25' age group is in the region of <1 (out of ten) whereas the highest, Norway, scores around 10. Yet those scores are actually 4.23 and 5.78, respectively (where '5' is calibrated to be the European average), and for 'all ages', the UK scores 4.73, comparible to 4.76 and 4.81 for Poland and France. Hardly an extreme difference.

Ultimately, he says it is, but in a way which needlessly over-emphasises the contrary arguments and utilises bizarre fallacies (okay; maybe non-sequiturs rather than outright fallacies). The overall effect is of a sensationalist attempt to generate false controversy.

• He explicitly compares the 'per passenger' efficiency of half-full trains against full planes, a strange assumption which doesn't reflect my own experience. I don't know which section of the West Coast main line Pearce frequents, but across North West England I've had to stand more often than I've had plenty of room: a (perceived) average occupancy of nearer 110% than 50%. In contrast, I think I've only seen the 'commuter' Manchester-Brussels flight completely full once, and my mother & sister's favoured means of travelling from Manchester to Plymouth (a three-stage flight via Bristol & Newquay) is apparently under-used.
• He criticises Eurostar for being powered by electricity from French nuclear power stations. I'd regard that as the ideal power source and not remotely reason for corporate embarrassment.
• It's a bit disingenuous to simply compare carbon emissions on a like-for-like 'grammes of carbon dioxide per passenger per km' basis, as the nature and locations of the emissions are so different.

Disclaimer: I am not now, never have been and do not wish to be 'Green', and have no intention of avoiding air transport – when rail is impractical.

Via BoingBoing, which describes it as 'maggot cheese that tries to eat your eyes'.

[Via Bad Science's sideblog.]

1. Find a random Wikipedia article.
That's the name of your band.

2. Similarly obtain a Random Quotation.
The last four words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3. Go to Flickr's 'explore the last seven days'
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

Put it all together: that's your debut album.

Surprisingly, it works very well, making one wonder whether this is a common strategy, particularly amongst post-rock bands.

For example, the best album you've never heard of is 'Watching TV By Candlelight?', by Settlement Hierarchy. Excellent cover image, too. Pre-order the CD now!

[Via the Porcupine Tree Forum]

Er. That didn't come out quite right.

Seems not: according to the BBC (I know, I know; according to real researchers who a BBC journalist claims to have quoted accurately, if you prefer), the wind is responsible for thousands of nanoseconds per day of variation in the Earth's rotation rate. Not much, but enough to prevent rotation being useful in calibrating measurement of time; GPS needs consistent accuracy of within 16 ns.

Anomie is a sense of 'not belonging': isolation from a nominal social cohesiveness. I certainly feel anomie – I recoil from the very idea of 'belonging' to anything – and wholeheartedly welcome the social fragmentation alleged by the Sheffield report. I don't give a damn about my immediate neighbours. My friends and family, physically located across the entire planet, are of immense importance to me, but I feel absolutely no affinity with the total strangers who happen to reside in the same street as me. They're irrelevant.

Loneliness is a more loaded term, strongly implying discontent with unwelcome isolation. I don't experience loneliness.

Needless to say, the BBC pounced on the sensational interpretation, saying that the UK 'has become lonelier', as if it's a less happy place than it was; they even speak of 'the health of a community', producing maps and tables purporting to rank regions 'by their sense of loneliness or social fragmentation'. To repeat: loneliness and social fragmentation are entirely different concepts.

This is assuming the academics' alleged indicators are valid: they weren't assessing something as nebulous as 'cohesion' directly, but measurable surrogate factors such as the number of non-married households, one-person households, houses rented from private landlords and people who moved into their current homes within the last year. Do these really indicate decreased community cohesion? Home ownership is a peculiarly British obsession – does it follow that nations such as Germany, where rental is more common, have less 'healthy' communities? What's the relevance of marital status? Or, to follow the BBC's loaded argument, are non-married people lonely & bitter?

An associated article asks whether Britain's communities are 'dying'. I don't know; I don't find the data compelling. But I ****ing hope so.

That's the central thesis of a fascinating lecture recently given by Will Self as part of BBC Radio 3's 'Free Thinking' festival: 'Naturalism and Sanity: Is the Mind Really as it's Portrayed?'.

It's fascinating not because Self is 'right' but because of its subtext: don't seek the comfort of social homogeneity; think for yourself.

Of course, as a nurse established a more personal relationship with a patient, phrasing may evolve, but that can't be forced, and starting with over-familiarity causes avoidable problems. If the patient objects, it sets up an tension in the relationship, whereas if the patient doesn't object it reinforces an inappropriate power imbalance.

I have great respect for nurses, but fundamentally they're there to assist and administer, not to control; they're not authority figures and their relationship with elderly patients (or patients of any adult age) shouldn't automatically be that of a parent-surrogate and child.

It seems the football club is actually trying to register its specific rendition of the emblem (as a trademark – let's not confuse this with a copyright issue), rather than every graphical represention of the bird, but I'm not sure whether that'd be workable. Maybe if it's only in conjunction with the club's name or initials.

He doesn't mention the lack of oxygenated blood, though.

*: that's a museum of toys, not a tiny building one can play with.

When used to obfuscate or to inflate an impression of authority, perhaps artificial usage of 'impressive' terms should be avoided, but the examples in the BBC article are already as thoroughly embedded in standard English usage as loan words from Norse or Norman French – they seem entirely reasonable. There is an extent to which a listener has to take responsibility for comprehension, and language can't be dumbed-down to the level of the pathologically ignorant. If, as the Plain English Campaign claim (in praising the ban), certain people genuinely confuse the Latin abbreviation 'e.g.' with the word 'egg', they have greater problems than communicating with Council staff with 'crystal-clarity'.

Hence, they sent the English text ('No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only') by e-mail, and printed the response ('Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd. Anfonwch unrhyw waith i'w gyfieithu') on a road sign.

Unfortunately, that translates as 'I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated'....

A commenter on Boing Boing's republication of the story makes an excellent point, though: if the recipient is employed to translate text for those unable to read/write Welsh, why is his/her out-of-office reply in Welsh-only?

Eye-watering. Unfortunate name for a hamster, really....

[From the BBC.]

I used to wear an anorankh partly in mockery of over-serious goths, and I happen to be wearing a "Skulls! Skulls! Skulls!" t-shirt today, bought for much the same reason. I even own a 'Save The Trees' T-shirt to seriously **** with those who know my opinions on environmentalism. Hence, I'd certainly consider buying something to tease pseudo-hippies too.

[Via BoingBoing.]

Incidentally, I can confirm that the quality of Topatoco T-shirts is excellent, unlike the (attractively designed and marketed, but appallingly printed) disappointments from Red Bubble.

The weather is reported to have had 'a shower early this morning' (damned paparazzi...) and will buck-up to become 'Mostly sunny and nice' tomorrow. 'Nice'? Highly objective, eh?

It's easy to mock folksy reporting of everyday minutiae, but remember: this is an opinion-forming source of information for millions of people: if it dumbs the weather down to 'grumpy', how is it interpreting (as opposed to simply conveying) more complex issues?

[Via the BBC.]

Even the least critical admirers of 'Top Gear' tend to dismiss it as escapist TV, "just a bit of fun", but as Moran (and, indirectly, Barthes) say, its creation of a fantasy world where "speeding motorists [are able to] innocently enjoy the aesthetics of speed away from the prying eyes of government busybodies" is dangerously insidious. It's hard to deny that the actions of comedic TV presenters in controlled circumstances inform opinions about behaviour on public roads, with anyone who cares about road safety dismissed as 'joyless'.

I won't rebut the usual arguments against speed cameras (that drivers should be able to decide sensible speeds for themselves, and that speed cameras aren't the panacea for all road safety issues) yet again but as always: think about your sources of information; recognise propaganda as propaganda.

*: Who, incidentally, was killed in a road accident.

Of course. These pseudo-scientific non-stories are nothing new, and generally best ignored, but this one actually debunks itself:

Yet the BBC still ran the story, on the website and TV. Partly in response to Bad Science's coverage, a number of people wrote to challenge the editorial decision, and were told that it doesn't matter; it was only a light-hearted piece.

That's fine: news reporting certainly doesn't always need to be deadly serious, but it does need to be true. There may well be a place for a little light-relief, but a world-renowned news broadcaster really shouldn't be blurring the boundary between fact and downright fiction.

[Update 24/10/08: A complaint to the BBC’s Head of Editorial Complaints has been upheld. The web-published article is to be amended, so if you read it now, it may seem rather innocuous; if you're interested, the original version is archived
here.]

However, I did, and this was the paragraph:

[Don't worry. I tend to avoid party-politics here, and don't plan to change that personal policy. In this instance I'm more interested in the psychology.]

Look; I wish the local tourist board well, and hope they're able to rehabilitate the area one day, but as recently as 2005 I found even the wide main streets genuinely scary at night, and H., a Warszawa resident, wouldn't even dream of visiting alone.

From a cosy office in Central London, it probably seems dreadfully exciting to direct the mildly adventurous to trendy, 'undiscovered' parts of Eastern Europe, and no doubt it sells newspapers, but it seems a little irresponsible to instill a false sense of security; Praga mightn't be as bad as its reputation, but nor is it 'theme park bohemian' – a bit edgy but ultimately safe. Some areas are little-known for a genuine reason.

(Click the image for an enlargement.)

Except when it's metamorphic.

[Via BoingBoing.]

I've visited orangeries, in Warszawa and Paris. They're huge pavilions in the grounds of royal palaces. They're not merely extensions to the semi-detached homes of middle-class little-Englanders. How pathetic.

For example, the lacquer protecting the inside of a soft-drink can from the corrosive sugar solution is no barrier to recycling the aluminium itself, and the furnace used to burn off the plastic is partially powered by the resulting gases.

Much the same happens with plastic- or aluminium-coated paper/cardboard packaging: the coatings partially fuel the processors. Unfortunately, the nearest such large-scale industrial plant is in Sweden, though a British equivalent is planned.
Few councils accept these coated cartons via doorstep collections, but many – 85%, apparently – do accept them via 'neighbourhood' recycling points. Tetrapak offers a map of such locations; there are five in the Lancaster area.

Fifty-two percent of all marriages in Scotland in 2007 were civil ceremonies, rather than religious weddings. The absolute number was 29,866, compared to ~40,000 pa in the 1970s.
Almost half of the 57,781 births in Scotland in 2007 were to unmarried parents.

The Colonel-in-Chief of the Norwegian King's Guard resides at Edinburgh Zoo, and is in fact a penguin.

I've been known to partially participate, including here, but if I do, it tends to be in the form of, say, 'an arbitrary number of musicians whose work I appreciate, in no particular order', not a ranked 'top ten favourite artists'. I simply don't see value in that: it'd only be of applicable to me, at the moment of compilation, and the ludicrous idea that I like Bass Communion 'twice as much as' Porcupine Tree or 'four bands ahead of' Pink Floyd is not something that interests me.

Starbucks mystifies me. Its publicity, and even third-party coverage such as the BBC article, speaks of the Starbucks 'experience':

I've visited Starbucks precisely twice, in Barcelona and Paris. On neither occasion was it my choice, and on neither occasion did I play the pathetic customisation game. Coffee. Black. One sugar. That's as complex as I need.

Besides, life's too short for mere 'hanging out'. Anyone who has time to kill needs more caffeine.

No, don't give up after a paragraph or so, thinking you see where it's going. Yes, Ben G. predictably demolishes a predictably bogus 'silly season' story from the mass media which purports to present a scientific equation for 'fame'. Keep reading to the end, though.

That's the most important point about these pseudo-science articles. Anyone who devotes a moment's thought to such topics as 'statistical determination of the happiest day of the year' understands they're just a bit of fun; no-one's seriously mislead, right?
Maybe, but such rubbish over-cultivates people's healthy scepticism, and a potential belief that genuine science is like that too: self-important boffins in white coats inventing spurious equations from arbitrary assumptions; mere conjecture imperfectly dressed-up in jargon. If that promotes the idea that evolution or global warming is a matter of opinion, and that anyone's opinion is a valuable as anyone else's, then yes, pseudo-science is actively harmful, and must be challenged.

Envirohippies might like to remember that heating an iron and releasing toxic fumes probably wouldn't suit their morals as much as reusing the unmodified carrier bags until they fall apart then simply throwing them away, but I see greater potential in making an attractive material than in 'doing the right thing': adding value rather than making something righteous. Commenters at Etsy suggest interweaving strips of different-coloured bags before fusing, or incorporating leaves, feathers, etc. between the layers.

[Via Lifehacker.]

1: That said, the ones I use occasionally² display the logos of Sainsbury's christmas season 2005.

2: I do my usual weekly shopping by bike and rucksack, but every 4-6 weeks A&A are kind enough to give me a lift so I can obtain bulkier er, bulk packs of, say, 18 toilet rolls or 48-72 cans of Coke in 2-3 boxes. I do that week's ordinary groceries shopping at the same time, obviously, so take carrier bags.

To summarise: the recommended quantity is arbitrary, dating from 1945 (hardly the result of cutting-edge research, then), and is frequently misinterpreted. Fluid consumed within food does count towards one's nominal liquid 'ration', as do such drinks as tea and coffee. It is not necessary to drink a certain amount of water as water.

So all you people who are never more than a metre from a silly little bottle of water are merely victims of packagers' marketing. Don't.

Yet if the output was to be used for something as important as your restaurant's sign, wouldn't you double check it? After all, it could be a mistranslation, or even a flaw in the software. You wouldn't want to end up with a restaurant called, say, 'Translate server error'.

Ah.

Oops.

Via BoingBoing.

In addition to a detailed overview, the article discusses both the impact on jewel cartels of cultured diamonds indistinguishable from mined stones and, perhaps more significantly, the industrial applications of large diamonds grown in specific shapes, even sheets.

[Via BoingBoing.]

A punchline of the webcomic strip is "What's the point of living if they only make you think about the alternative?"

I don't agree – to consider the possibility of death isn't morbid, it's invigorating, making one value now. And take reasonable care.

A survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers, reported by the Guardian (ordinarily a bastion of slacktivist propaganda, I'd have thought) found that:

• Almost half of 4,000 consumers questioned said they were unwilling or unable to pay more for environmentally sustainable food and consumer goods.
• On average, suckers shoppers paid 45% more for 'environmentally friendly' and fair trade goods.
• Shoppers said they are only willing to pay a premium of about 20% for greener products.
• Organic and fair trade products only have a 4% share of the total UK retail market.

I hope it's clear that I oppose two specific schemes (organic agriculture and Fairtrade) and self-satisfied Green rhetoric: more meaningful, more rational measures such as reduction of packaging do have my support.

Battery-operated, vibrating mascara (sorry; "TurboLash All Effects Motion Mascara™").
I can't deny wondering about the shape of the casing, which might permit, y'know, other uses.

As Worldman observes, the results tend to be austere, but this year's is a little different.
The image depicts about fifty people (I haven't counted), nominally representing the diversity of the population. Only eight people are looking directly at the camera: the Council members.

I can't decide whether this is contrived to the point of cynicism, but nor can I deny that I like the gesture.

The part which amused me wasn't the issue itself, but the comments thread on the local newspaper's article. Residents, councillors and teenagers had been gently bickering in an entirely predictable manner for a fortnight until the story reached the attention of BoingBoing's global audience today, at which point the quality of articulate argument suddenly went stratospheric, transferring to an entirely different league of discourse (and spelling). Hilarious.

Aw, ****....
Just before publishing this, I refreshed the paper's 'comments' page to read the latest wonderfully cutting contributions, and discovered that the most recent 11 comments have been deleted. Despite the page featuring the usual array of 'Share This' social networking links, it seems non-locals aren't allowed to play.

It was repeatedly made extremely clear to me, both in my web publishing and College tutor roles, that staff cannot confirm whether an individual is a member of the University, even to that person's parents, without express permission.

I frequently receive requests for individuals' e-mail addresses, and can only volunteer to "forward the enquiry to someone who may be able to help" – I certainly can't reveal an address, but nor can I say I'll pass the message on to the named person, as that'd reveal whether there is such a person.

Still; it must be an extremely slow news day if the Guardian feels able to promote their rehash of the THES story via their home page's news 'ticker'. I suppose the sensationalist effect they intended was 'regulations gone mad', but I fully agree with the rules.

The student is an adult, and as such the institution's responsibility is to him, not to his mother.
This instance may have been relatively trivial, but the principle is a valid one: what if the student had been at university against his parents' wishes, or was deliberately estranged from his parents and did not wish them to know his whereabouts?

[Update 29/05/08: I suppose I should have been more sceptical: the THES is the Times Higher Education Supplement, so it's to be expected that the 'journalists' exaggerated the true situation. The professor received a standard letter reminding him of "the need for regard to student confidentiality", but no disciplinary action was even considered.]

Look, I'm 36, but there are some things one just doesn't grow out of.

This brief article in the Guardian does look like pseudoscience: long-legged women and men with long arms may be less prone to Alzheimer's. That's an attractive suggestion, as I could certainly be described as 'gangly' and fear dementia more than death; H. could consider it reassuring, too. But is it true?

Quite possibly. Ian Sample (who holds a PhD in biomedical materials – I checked) seems to have interpreted the source paper's abstract reasonably (I can't get to the full text, and doubt I'd understand it), and the research does indeed relate limb length to risk of dementia: the former is considered an indicator of early life environment (nutrition at formative ages).

Excellent! <Waves considerable arms in the air.>

*: From Charles Darwin's Blog:

As a commenter on the Register article notes, they'd also need permission from the font designer to use that typeface. I wonder if they're applying the 'presumed consent' argument to that one too.

Not that it matters: "bad" Phorm will probably change its name to escape its bad reputation (again...) soon. Pity about the damage done to "good" Phorm's name and branding, though.

To oversummarise Shirky's hypothesis, progressive automation of labour-intensive tasks at the start of the Industrial Revolution and in the 1950s (introduction of technology to the home) generated a 'cognitive surplus': whole populations suddenly had free time in which to do things other than work. The temptation has been to relax; to do nothing.

Shirky isn't the first to suggest that this may have been the underlying reason for a generation of gin addicts in the 18th Century, and why the grander social-improvement projects of the Victorian era only occurred so much later, once people found more productive ways to manage their 'leisure' time.

The 'drug of choice' in the more recent phase of automation seems to have been television: passively consumption of TV programmes rather than actually doing something – anything – oneself. Only now, half a century later, are computer-mediated communications helping a majority of the population to become more mentally proactive. As Shirky says, even sitting in a basement pretending to be an elf (via a computer game) is better than merely letting the fictional activities of Eastenders stimulate nothing deeper than one's retinas. Better still to take photographs, write blogs, make rather than watch videos; whatever one chooses: participation rather than consumption.

To be fair, that may be slightly overstating Shirky's argument, and my own: the problem isn't TV as a whole, since a reasonable proportion of broadcast output is thought-provoking and can be inspiring. It's the sitcoms, in which the information is utterly trivial and requires absolutely no mental engagement from the audience: it's a one-way flow of pap; mere time-filler.
Shirky makes the startling observation that the entire Wikipedia project, "the cumulation of 100 million hours of human thought", could be repeated in the time US TV viewers spend watching adverts each weekend.

The thesis is also a powerful argument for collectivist concepts of user participation, wisdom-of-crowds, etc., from which I as an individualist recoil, but the central premise stands: switch off your TV occasionally and do something.

[Update 19/04/08: Here's Ben Goldacre's 'Bad Science' opinion, which cites a wonderfully illustrative quote from the Independent's coverage:

Unfortunately, it's a bittersweet discovery: there's no intention to save any of the attractive and presumably valuable artwork:

The key part is that though she acknowledges that the horror stories her critics threw at her could have happened and the consequences could have been awful, the chances of anything actually happening were infinitesimally small. One can't live according to improbable worst-case scenarios.

[Via BoingBoing.]

Doesn't that simply mean they're particularly efficient, leaving no witnesses?

Commenters at Bruce Schneier's blog, some of whom are professional chemists, have examined the credibility of assembling liquid explosives from the reported components, and of performing that task in-flight.

The conclusions seem to be that:

• In this instance the methodology was flawed, but it highlights a technique which others could use successfully. I'm sure there are people who'll mock this specific plot, and understandably so, but that's missing the point – the basic concept isn't ludicrous.
• That even the improved methodology would produce an explosive probably of insufficient potency to destroy a plane.
• That a minor but marginally credible risk has been massively overstated; that the handling of the risk is security theatre, more to do with authorities wanting to be seen to be doing something than about actually doing something worthwhile, but the risk itself isn't outright fantasy.

Ultimately, it seems to have been proved that the threat is possible. The core question is whether it's likely – whether it justifies a highly-visible worldwide 'war on moisture', or whether that policy is self-serving. That's still to be proven.

And no, I don't think "better safe than sorry" is adequate justification. By that argument, all passengers should be handcuffed and sedated for the duration of each trip.

[Via BoingBoing.]

I don't know about other people, but whenever I empty my washing machine, I invariably drop at least a sock on the floor directly in front of the door. If that location was occupied by a toilet bowl, I wouldn't be pleased.

A subsidiary water tank and pipes connecting a standard washing machine to a standard toilet mightn't thrill design students quite as much as a gleaming combined appliance, but it might teach them something about usability.

Admittedly, the 'Washup' is only a concept piece (and an ugly one at that), but my point stands, and I reject the designer's assertion that it's good use of limited space in small bathrooms – one could save space by mounting an electric fire over the bath, but that's inadvisable too.

Via BoingBoing.

However, the focus of the article is obviously his reaction to having been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. One paragraph jumped out at me:

My own view, as an atheist who's happy to accept that others choose to believe otherwise (so long as they don't impose those beliefs on me), is that the bible is just a good story, no more or less true than Classical Greek mythology. However, it's interesting that it mightn't be entirely fictional, instead being one group's interpretation of or projection onto historical facts.

[Via The Guardian, though that article is needlessly flippant.]

Who? True, his name doesn't deserve commemoration, but that's the German tourist recently caught in New Zealand in the process of tagging a glacier. Unbelievable.

[Via BoingBoing.]

[From ironicsans.corn, er, .com]

However, if public bodies are spending taxpayers' money on bottled water... that's different.

Could it be an evolutionary remnant? Neil Shubin, quoted in BoingBoing, notes that the electrical signals triggering human hiccups are similar to those controlling gill movement in amphibians.

This is one reason I've never been a member of a trade union, though the main one is my objection to collectivism. I specifically opted-out of the Students' Union, too, so I've obviously been opposed to unionism for at least half my life. No, longer; I remember the 1984 miners' strike.

However, one point I hadn't realised, and which Plaid have now publicised, is that one can send an exemption notice to one's union, instructing them not to forward the designated proportion of one's subscription to the Labour Party.

Yes, these suggestions are purported to be serious. For further explanation, try a websearch for 'Peter Belt'.

Yahoo! reports that biotechnologists in New Zealand, using Japanese research, claim to have produced a 'tear-free' onion. The chemical which causes the eye-watering response in anyone cutting into an unmodified onion is controlled by an enzyme; the researchers have identified the gene controlling production of that enzyme, and turned it off.

FFS – just change your onion-chopping technique, or ****ing live with the tears, as people have managed for centuries! I'm not inherently opposed to GM-foods (so long as consumers genuinely have complete choice about whether to eat them), but I really don't see frivolous comfort as a good enough reason to incur an unknown number of potential side-effects of unknown severity.

However, it has to be acknowledged (as Yahoo! does) that irrespective of the value of the project itself, it's a good consciousness-raising exercise educating the public about biotechnology. Just so long as the risks are explained alongside any breathless "food of the future" hype.

The final recipient has a choice: to keep the object (certified authentic & unique) and forego any knowledge of the story, or destroy the object to access the content. It's strictly either/or – one can't have both.

Which would you choose?
I don't think of myself as materialistic, and am only really concerned about the intellectual & emotional content of music, films & prose rather than CDs, DVDs & books as physical objects, but in this case... I'm not sure.

[Via BoingBoing.]

The part which startled and deeply disappointed me was the claim that producers are now specifically mixing/mastering albums for the mp3-listening experience, meaning that those albums sound as bad in uncompressed CD Audio format (i.e. Red Book PCM) as in lossy-compressed .mp3 format.
I'm not dogmatically opposed to .mp3 and use it daily (192kbps or above sounds fine to me under normal circumstances), but I certainly appreciate the opportunity to go back to a CD for 'high-fidelity' playback. Is that being lost?

It's not all bad news, though: a number of producers, musicians and recording engineers are promoting a fight-back campaign, Turn Me Up, whereby CDs mixed/mastered with proper dynamics (and hence ostensibly quieter than their competitors) will display a consciousness-raising logo.

[The RS link is to the print version of the article, as it omits adverts* and presents the six-page article on one page. Delete the trailing '/print' from the URL if you prefer.]

*: no, only in AdBlocked Firefox.

Naturally, Amazon doesn't volunteer the refund, but one can readily log in and view recent orders, checking the prices paid then clicking on item names to view their current listings.

A few clarifications:

• The policy is based on prices changing within 30 days of the despatch date, not the order date.
• This only applies to orders directly from Amazon, not third-party sellers.
• The 'Post-order Price Guarantee' policy is stated on the Amazon US site, but I can't find it on the UK site. Numerous commenters on the MSE.com article report that Amazon UK have honoured the policy, but one, 21 hours after the story broke yesterday, apparently received an e-mail denying that Amazon has a '30 day money back guarantee' (which is true – this could have just been a poorly-worded refund request).

It addresses the concept of the 'uncanny valley'.
Imagine a graph of photorealism against believability. As the first increases, so will the second, the line rising towards the 'peak' of perfect reproduction, but just before that point, believability will suddenly plummet. That's the 'valley', the point at which representation approaches actuality very closely but not quite. The human brain recoils, perversely finding the result less believable than something more obviously artificial; an audience can more readily suspend disbelief whilst watching 'The Simpsons' than whilst watching 'Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within'.

Motion-captured/animated animated films like 'Beowulf' are getting better (and setting themselves especially difficult targets by reproducing the likenesses of specific people – I hadn't thought of that complication), but as Plantec says, the next stages will need to focus on extremely subtle details such as saccadic (rapid, subconscious) eye movement.

[Via Neil G.]

We don't agree on every detail: I recommend reading the article, but don't condone Burchill's throwaway nastiness about farmers – though I wouldn't romanticise them either, there are rational reasons to consider they're mistreated by the retailers' cartel, unlike merely uncompetitive small shops.

Last week the local free newspaper reported (with a double-page feature, naturally) that Morecambe pubs have collaborated in a charity calendar depicting (near-)nude barmaids: not the, er, more mature ladies participating for a joke, nor male bar staff, but only nubile teens/twenties. There's a fine line between 'a bit of harmless fun' and offensive lechery – this instance seemed a little too close to tacky titilation.

Another was reported by the Guardian* : an airline has produced a calendar depicting air hostesses doing airline-y things (funny; I hadn't realised cabin staff wash or repair planes) whilst just happening to be wearing bikinis. For some reason, a Spanish consumer group has complained about sexualised stereotyping and objectification, attracting a spectacular rebuttal from the airline:

*: Actually Reuters, but I don't know whether their articles are permanently archived.

I've no idea whether this is really backed by valid science, but what's it for?
Amusement? Kind of pricey.
Diagnosis? It seems a bit spurious, really – even if it did identify a risk, what could one do about a genetic predisposition to, say, psoriasis? At best it could identify those in greatest need of clinical screening for, say, breast or prostate cancer, but that should happen anyway, and this just feels like exploitation of hypochondriacs.

Via User Friendly 'Link Of The Day'.

The Tate Modern.
According to the Guardian, anyway.

I think that's a pleasant surprise – if I'd thought to include an art gallery in the top five at all, I'd have guessed it'd be something more 'traditional', such as the National Gallery. However, presumably it means that when I get round to visiting, it'll be crowded.

I've rephrased that slightly, as "inferior people speak about people" is subtlely different, but I read it in a comment on a Guardian article (about boundaries in media mockery of celebrities). I don't know the original source.

Guess which is winning, with 72% of the vote. The next most popular option, 'Libertad', has 3%.

[Via BoingBoing.]

Unfortunately, the governing Centre des Monuments Nationaux was less than appreciative, taking legal action against the UnterGunther members. That action failed last week, and the story has emerged. You might like to read both of these articles (even if the latter is from The Times* ), as they cover more than just this action.

*: Not the 'London Times', as BoingBoing cites it, but 'The Times'.

It's timely for me, as the demijohn jar I've been using as a repository for small change was finally filled a couple of months ago, and I've started to empty and bag its contents to pay the coins into my bank. I've accumulated £3 in coppers just as overspill onto my bedside table – I haven't even started on the jar itself.

I've never had much sympathy with the concept of childhood innocence being sacred and to be preserved against the real world. Conversely, I don't really like to see weapons as toys, and somehow I'm disappointed to see LEGO militarised. I don't think I'm merely being politically correct, but LEGO isn't about trivialising/glorifying killing.
A LEGO minifig displaying SS insignia feels particularly wrong, and I rather recoil from the heavily-armed jihadist* .

Having said all that, the accessories don't seem to be marketed towards children, and the custom minifig pages suggest that they're primarily intended for display rather than play, but still....

[Via Irregular Webcomic!.]

*: Oops. Not a MI5-approved term, for fairly good reasons.

Frankly, I don't know enough about the specifics to be able to comment authoritatively (nor judge the accuracy/balance of the article, for that matter), so I'll just refer you to the article.

That said, in principle I'm all for the dissolution of Belgium, in the same way as I'd quite like to see an independent Catalunya and actively want the break-up of the UK. All within a stronger EU, I mean – I'm talking about federalism between a larger number of independent nations, not balkanisation.

The objective was to find the lower temperature of two printed on the card; given the winter theme, this meant the more negative of two figures.

Some LOLcat photos are digitally manipulated, but I prefer the seemingly-genuine ones (after all, there are plenty of great cat photos to work with). I can't work out whether this is a real photo captured at a fortuitous moment or a composite image, but either way, I love it.

This sort of vacuous fluff really, really annoys me, as does the justification that "it's just a bit of fun". Life's too short for such complacency; I begrudge the effort of moving my eyes across the text, never mind the utterly wasted time.

And no, I don't begrudge the time taken to write this, if there's the vaguest chance that it might persuade newspapers to avoid commissioning and publishing such pap.

Well... not really. It also refers to a transition from one state to another, with connotations of 'moving to the next level' and 'setting a new threshold', so it does sort-of mean what people think.

But don't let that stop you. Next time you hear the phrase, make sure you loudly correct the speaker. Just think of the quantum leap in onlookers' admiration of you.

*: in April. It's taking me a while to catch up the 1,744 (and counting) episodes of his 'Irregular Webcomic!'.

Things like injecting an elephant with 3,000 times the human recreational dose of LSD, then watching it keel over, dead. Or grafting the front half of a puppy onto a dog's neck (alongside the existing head), then repeating the experiment 19 more times over the next 15 years.

BTW, I love the photo accompanying the Guardian article, depicting an elephant's eye.

*: Effectively reproducing the substance of a New Scientist article without the courtesy of a link back to NS. Naughty.

Apparently, the portrait did once include eyebrows and eyelashes, and the iconic enigmatic smile was different in da Vinci's original, underlying composition.

Academics have expressed doubts about some interpretations of the new data – Cotte found one brushstroke implying one hair on the brow and extrapolated, and I get the impression Cotte's suggested reconstruction of the 16th Century colouration attracts particular scepticism – but the raw evidence itself is interesting.

'Mona Lisa Revealed' may offer further (possibly one-sided) information, but at the time of writing, the site's down.

[Via BoingBoing.]

The presence of a user agreement at all on a publicly-accessible website is odd enough, but the text (to which, incidentally, I emphatically do not agree) wrongly alleges that:

One could suggest this opens them to a certain amount of ridicule. I couldn't possibly comment.

[Via BoingBoing. I'm entirely confident Cory et al. would have no objection to that link, but it's important to state that I did not require their permission for it.]

Continuing the 'surely-it's-cgi-actually-it's-not' trend, the advert was achieved using stop-motion animation and 2.5 tonnes of plasticine. Wonderful.

It may be worth mentioning that there's a plagiarism allegation: compare the advert to this image by Dan and Kozue Kitchens. Credit where it's due, eh?

*: Link is to the highest-res version of the ad that I've been able to find, on the client company's own website. However, that link is likely to be lost in future updates, so you might like to try this version at Gizmodo; I presume their permalink will be more stable.

There's an obvious question, which I was pleased to see had occurred to Glancey too: so has anyone actually papered their walls with Bubble Wrap?

I don't think it'll help with domestic post, as my understanding is that the Royal Mail still has a near-monopoly on 'final mile' delivery of post from local sorting offices to letterboxes (for now...), but it could help in some circumstances.

An Austrian court has refused to recognise a chimpanzee as 'a person', with the corresponding legal status. Rightfully. Non-human animals are not people, irrespective of animal-rights nutters' fantasies.

As a commenter on the USA Today article says, the definition of 'person' includes the term 'rational' – which rarely applies to animal-rights activists.

[Via BoingBoing.]

It's 'bl.uk'; not bl.co.uk (obviously), bl.gov.uk (it's not a branch of the UK government, though it is the single greatest recipient of funds from the DCMS) nor even bl.ac.uk (I thought it was part of the UK academic network; apparently not).

I don't know of any other UK domain name which omits a second-level domain; even the Queen uses the '.gov.uk' suffix.

It's the second part I find more disturbing: that she's bringing up children this way.

[Via BoingBoing.]

[Edit: 13:06: H's objection was one I missed: the idea that motherhood excuses closed-minded ignorance isn't exactly a feminist message.]

To repost the same quote as Sal highlighted:

I almost fell off my bike laughing, but it gets better: a few moments of research revealed that 'Wyldfyre One' (!) is "a community based, demand responsive, accessible transport service providing public transport links to medical facilities in a rural area" and not, as the name suggests, something from a testosterone-fueled rawk festival.

Cardinal Malaprop offers compelling arguments for the kittehs, but some of the rebuttals in the comments are impressive too.

[Via Calephetos.]

*: Oh. And did, three days ago.

Hence, Vale of Glamorgan Council has installed new signs; quite simply: 'ignore your sat-nav', portrayed as a pictogram to avoid foreign drivers misunderstanding. There'll be a 12-month trial period to establish whether drivers choose to re-engage their own spatial awareness and judgement – I'm yet to be convinced that a mildly cryptic icon will succeed where a couldn't-be-clearer textual sign failed.

I was particularly pleased that Cook rebuffed the attempt to characterise his activities as having an environmentalist agenda, but he stresses that it isn't 'just' about the photography either (though I do feel the purely aesthetic aspect is more than strong enough to stand alone – stunningly beautiful work).

He slightly criticises media coverage of urban exploration and, implicitly, links such as this blog entry, as articles tend to be lazily superficial, treating the subject as merely 'weird' without really engaging with it. Personally, I do find it genuinely interesting, both conceptually and visually. I think I've always had a fascination with unregarded yet often spectacular voids in the urban landscape, many of which were once hubs of major activity, even extremes of human existence. That was somewhat boosted by online conversations I had a couple of years ago, after my (exterior!) photos of Lancaster's disused Moor Hospital were picked up by an explorers' forum.

[Via BoingBoing.]

One point was 'just link; don't write a whole article merely paraphrasing', so I won't. However, I loved the phrase he coined to describe second-rate material which doesn't make the cut for inclusion in a printed newspaper, and which therefore probably shouldn't be considered good enough for a website either: 'Polly Filla'.

Non-Brits mightn't get the joke: Polyfilla is a paste used to fill minor cracks in interior walls, etc., whereas Polly Toynbee is an opinionated columnist who rarely actually says anything and 'filler' is, well, you get that bit.

The orthodox view is that the lack of human activity (farming, ranching, hunting and logging) outweighs the risks of low-level radiation, even that "the world's worst nuclear power plant disaster is not as destructive to wildlife populations as are normal human activities."

That's the narrative imperative; it makes a neat story, so people want to believe it, but according to research reported by the BBC, it's not supported by empirical evidence. The ecological effects have been "considerably greater than previously assumed".

As Tim Mousseau of the University of South Carolina says:

The article doesn't specify how they plan to stop 'em.

[Via Neil Gaiman.]

Has he? That's impressive.

(Sorry.)

This abstract (discovered via Bad Science, but let's not prejudge it) suggests a causal link between the first occurrence of schizophrenia and the invention of the heeled shoe ~1,000 years ago, and in the increased prevalence of schizophrenia at the introduction of mechanised shoe production.
Those sound like a non-sequiturs to me (Ben G. wonders whether it's important transcultural psychiatry research or a situationist spoof), but I'm no expert. It may be revealing that the hypothesis, which "finds support in all facts and is contradicted by none" is based on "a selective literature review and synthesis".

If it's right, Helen's really ****ed, though I'm alright: apparently "bicycle riding reduces depression in schizophrenia".

According to evidence presented in Phil Spector's murder trial and reported by the BBC, usable fingerprints are relatively unlikely to be left on the shiny metal or wooden grip on a handgun; a forensic specialist says that "We only get fingerprints off guns 8 to 10% of the time".

[Update 01/08/07: Now I've discovered that Dilbert.com only archives strips for a month, I'd better provide a transcript for the longer term:]

[Update 07/05/08: The revamped Dilbert.com has a bigger archive, so I've amended the link; you can see the strip itself again.]

A 1950s illuminated sign outside a 1920s car dealership in Los Angeles (a city which might be expected to acknowledge the role of the car in its evolution and everyday existence) has been designated as a 'historic-cultural monument', despite opposition to the proposal by the mayor and a councillor. Their objection was that preservation would limit redevelopment opportunities.

Compare that to the UK, where the preservation of historical buildings and even street furniture is routine and we have urban landscapes with a little more character than the average strip mall.
As I say, I'm only expressing my perception rather than anything verifiable, but I do have the impression that there's an urge amongst US planners to tear down and renew urban sites every 3-4 decades; 'new-and-improved' takes precedence over preservation of long-term heritage, and there's less of a sense of building for permanence than in the UK.

Of course 'landmark' status limits redevelopment opportunities – that's the whole point!

Actually, it isn't; apparently the designation isn't protection, but merely a guarantee that property owners, developers and city officials will have to consider the sign's role in local and national history before demolishing it anyway.

[Via Boing Boing.]

Last Sunday (15 July), a replica, covered with 6,522 Swarovski (glass) crystals by an artist named Laura, was dumped on a pile of rubbish outside the White Cube Gallery, London, where 'For The Love of God' is being exhibited.

I don't deny Hurst's work probably says something, but Laura's statement has a certain eloquence too.

What? Is that some sort of message?

Oh, and they're pleased to confirm that they do recruit tall people. So that's okay.

Although, as someone mentions in the accompanying comments, the article does read like a slightly sanitised PR statement, it's broadly encouraging.

[.buıoqbuıoq ɐıʌ]

In the process of hauling my old sofa out for collection by the Council, I happened to see inside it through a tiny gap in the upholstery. So many combinations of circumstances could have prevented that, but I was lucky: there was the missing knife, which had somehow passed through an unbroken sheet of fabric and lodged in the underlying frame.

It's difficult to describe my quiet pleasure at its 'return'; this really matters to me.
However, as I said in that earlier entry, I don't think I'll carry it regularly again and risk its loss.

Oops. That's html, of course, or perhaps xml. Proper xhtml, separating content from formating, would be <div class="kittehs">mound of cuteness</div> with 'float:right' in the css, and an entirely different joke.

In reporting that, the Guardian mentions that the charity will also be taking 700 wedding dresses to sell on site.

Eh?

This article in the Guardian is the sort of journalism I particularly enjoy: informative and unexpected, on a topic many have probably idly considered (I certainly have).

I was already aware that British 'Indian' cuisine is dissimilar to that consumed in India, but not the obvious point that the same applies elsewhere; for example, 'Chinese' food served in India is adapted to local tastes and available ingredients too.

Unsurprisingly, few nations seem to have developed their own popular variant of British cuisine.

*: Not Sunderland (2001: 280,807), as the Guardian claims.

Scary stuff. There's already far too much faith-based pseudo-science in popular culture without building it into compulsory education (this is the syllabus followed by all 14-16 year-olds, leading to the standard school-leaving exams), and it's appalling preparation for those pupils progressing to 'A' Levels and university.

[Update 17/06/07: others agree.]

If that's all too depressing, have an appropriate LOLcat as antidote. Then get depressed again, as future generations won't know about Schrödinger's Cat.

That applies to my daily workload, too. Many tasks are individually small, but collectively they're overwhelming. I arrived at work this morning with a clear idea of how to progress with the essential projects, but over five hours on, I haven't even looked at them yet.
I don't think I'd be allowed to declare project bankruptcy....

[Via Boing Boing.]

That's fair enough: an entirely understandable mistake with a creditable response. However:

Remember, in the UK, those with nothing to hide have nothing to fear from surveillance and law-enforcement agencies. Right?

[Update 01/08/07: I've discovered that Dilbert.com only archives past strips for a month, rather than permanently – I suppose they want to sell books. Luckily, I found a transcript of this cartoon elsewhere, so the joke isn't lost forever:]

[Update 07/05/08: The revamped Dilbert.com has a bigger archive, so I've amended the link; you can see the strip itself again.]

More seriously: oncologists agree that sunscreen should be considered the last line of defence, not remotely a solution (except in the most literal sense).

I'm not a humble supplicant begging leave to visit the promised land, I'm a potential visitor (with money to spend) to a tourist destination no better or worse than any other. I don't expect an effusive welcome, merely common courtesy; if I'm actively made to feel unwelcome, it's absolutely no hardship to go elsewhere.

It seems I'm not alone, either: the reported poll rated the USA as "the world's most unfriendly destination for foreign travellers" by a 2:1 margin, and the US government's obstructiveness, even hostility, has cost 94 billion tourist dollars and 194,000 US jobs since 2001.

As the quote cited in Boing Boing says, "visiting the US [has] become a hassle and that [we will] take [our] holiday money elsewhere".

It doesn't actually evicerate rodents, as the name suggests. That's false advertising, that is.

A panacea: a remedy for all diseases. Excellent – I'll have some of that!

Hang on; you don't think she meant 'placebo', do you?

Oh; and for reasons explained elsewhere in that same entry at Mr. G's blog, I'm helping spread the word about the Twenty Worst Literary Agents (in the USA) list, as one of the named agents is being particularly litigious again in trying to suppress reasonable criticism. If that last link is dead, presume it's because of spurious legal action, and just try Google – someone else is bound to have mirrored it.

[Via Siobhan.]

Nowadays, that's not enough. Even something as ostensibly sedate as sand sculpting has to be 'extreme'. Take the annual 'Sand Blasters' competition:

[Via BoingBoing, which mentioned it in the context of an excellent video showing the explosions – in reverse.]

The study typically cited merely said that a greater proportion of patients admitted to hospital with DVT had been seated at work for long periods than had been occupied cramped airline seats. That's merely a reflection of the general population: a greater absolute number of people work in offices than fly long distances.

[I've tried to find an online example of the wrongly-interpreted story, but it seems some archived articles are being rewritten, and others might change between me offering links and you clicking through, which would make me look foolish rather than the true culprits.]

Imagine the developer calls your bluff.

After the initial amusement, I'm not sure how I feel about this. I don't like the idea of an individual being forced to sell for a commercial development (I might regard a government project differently), but it doesn't seem the owner was unwilling to sell on principle, merely greedy, so the response may have been deserved.

[Via BoingBoing.]

[Update: The story seems to have been misreported intitially, and it seems the owner was motivated by principle, not money, after all. Apologies for propagating the error. Further details.]

[Update 03/04/07: The 'nail house' has gone.]

However, the New York Times reports that genetic evidence contradicts that traditional view. It seems more likely that the entire archipelago was settled by a relatively homogeneous people migrating from Spain towards the end of the last Ice Age (during which Britain hadn't been habitable). Later incursions by the Celts, Anglo-Saxons and Norse would have provided ruling elites, and hence defined their cultures, but the number of immigrants would have been small. According to the data, no single group of invaders is responsible for more than 5% of the current gene pool.

Personally, I welcome this conclusion, as it eliminates somewhat repugnant ideas of 'racial purity' from Celtic nationalist politics, though as the article concludes, "Geneticists see little prospect that their findings will reduce cultural and political differences" – as if diversity is a bad thing.

[Via Neil Gaiman.]

However, the combination of arcane specifics with comically flowery prose is simply... bizarre. Take the metaphors at face-value and this could be a drug-induced stream of consciousness. Reading between the lines ('cos the lines themselves don't make much sense), I think this was a boring match, so maybe the despairing journalist did turn to artificial diversions.

If this was anyone but Boris, I'd think he was ostentatiously showing-off, but I suspect he was just being Boris.

Here's another, similar case.

I think the part which particularly annoys me isn't the refusal of Immigration officials to let these people into the USA – it is their country, after all, and they can act on any whim they choose, so long as they don't expect any respect from the rest of the world – but the subsequent criminalisation. Having established that the victims can't enter the country, the corollary must be that the USA has no further jurisdiction over them, so has no right to:

[Via BoingBoing.]

That's appalling. Presumably the ex-residents aren't regular campers, but if they're festival-goers surely they'd be able to use tents again. Even if not, the irresponsibility of just leaving entire tents behind staggers me – I literally find it an alien concept. This littering isn't dropping a sweet wrapper or cigarette butt; how could anyone even consider that it's okay to leave a tent for someone else to clear up?

I suppose some would consider public flogging using discarded tent poles a little extreme, so it's lucky that the Indy article mentions another solution: recyclable cardboard tents.

It's not a solution at all, of course. It's a capitulation to the convenience culture of disposability, and an encouragement to continue. Okay, the immediate problem has to be addressed, and the invention should help to minimise the consequences of littering, but a solution would be to tackle the abandonment itself.

Just give me five minutes and a tent peg....

[Via Spinneyhead.]

However, it seems those stalls may be deceiving the well-meaning-but-deluded, acting illegally to fund illegal activities. The Guardian reports that since October the Metropolitan Police have been arresting those operating stalls in London.

It seems, and it is just an accusation, that the public are drawn-in by being invited to sign petitions, then asked to make financial donations. The petitions are then discarded and the money sent to extremists for use in illegal activities. And with animal rights terrorists, that doesn't mean hanging banners, it's bomb-making, bodysnatching, intimidation, threats of personal violence and destruction of property. Even if I agreed with their cause – and I don't – their methods are utterly repugnant.

Of course, the anti-vivisectionists claim this is a dirty trick to discredit them – and they're certainly the experts on dirty tricks.

Despite their best efforts at public surveillance, the police can't be everywhere, so if you happen to pass one of those stalls, keep walking.

[Via BoingBoing.]

The current lease on the building expires in four months, but the owner, Bruntwood, has failed to state whether it'll be renewed. There's a bit of an impasse, as Bruntwood won't commit to anything without talking to tenants (about 100 traders) effectively 'off the record' about necessary renovation work and, presumably, considerable rent increases, yet the tenants won't enter into talks until Bruntwood provide a formal statement of intent (as is required by property law).

It'd be awful if Afflecks Palace closed or was replaced by 'mainstream' retail – especially if the name was retained. It's the very heart; no, soul of the 'creative' Northern Quarter, and the whole district would be diminished by its loss or corporate dilution.
More personally, I don't visit much more than annually, but I'd still miss it; Helen has shopped there since the late 1980s, so would would be particularly upset.

Comments on the Manchester Evening News report unanimously oppose the potential loss (which is only potential at this stage – let's not overreact to a mere lack of communication), particularly the obvious assumption that individual traders would be priced out of the building in favour of ubiquitous chain stores. For once, I agree.

To quote myself, I don't believe in supporting small retailers merely to support them. If corner shops and independent bookshops are out-competed by supermarkets and national chains, too bad; they represent obsolete market sectors which should be allowed to die if they're unwilling or unable to offer something unique. Yet the traders of Afflecks Palace do provide something unique and of value, and having them in one creative community does matter.
It somewhat goes against my nature to say it, but without the support and interdependence of the Afflecks Palace community, individual traders mightn't be able to continue at all. Stalls selling, say, handmade jewellery, wouldn't have the manufacturing output to meet the sales volumes required to, in turn, pay the rent on a high-street shop. Besides, could you imagine shops like 'V 2 F' being able to find high-street retail space?

[Via Spinneyhead.]

As the BBC reports, the vendors of a terrace house in Bristol were frustrated that prospective buyers stated intentions to destroy the Banksy artwork (and it is art) on the end wall, so have modified the sale: they're now specifically offering the mural, via a gallery rather than an estate agent, and the house is incidental.

Brooker:

'Abby Lee' is the pseudonym of someone who exercised her right to write about sexual topics anonymously in order to avoid embarrassment to herself and her family and to maintain professional credibility in her 'day job'.
The text of the odious blackmail by journalist Nicholas Hellen has been discussed at length, but Hellen's unapologetic response reveals a strange point of view:

Anyone who maintains a blog under anything but his/her full, true name should consider this a warning: at least one ethically-challenged journalist considers you fair game (in multiple senses of the word), and regards it as mere entertainment to find out who you really are then publish an 'aren't-I-clever?' exposé.

[Update 09/02/07: In BBC article about Banksy's anonymity, Fergus Colville similarly says:

Self-image is a right – not a sign of diminished intelligence and definitely not a betrayal of feminism. There are people who care (not obsess) about their appearences (I'm not especially one of them, but Helen definitely is) – as is their right as individuals. This is about personal self-image, not gender solidarity. No-one has a duty to be indifferent about him/herself.

Williams' argument is so fatuous I can't be bothered to articulate a full response myself, but I broadly agree with one of the published comments appended to the article. 'Manclad' said:

*: Or just a section, if you prefer, though I rather like the idea of having an excuse to paint an entire wall black.

[Via Lifehacker.]

If only for my own interest, here's a photo of Amazon UK's warehouse in Milton Keynes on 17 November, showing a picker (presumably) fulfilling a customer order.

[Via BoingBoing.]

It seems currently-available turbines are inefficient and obtrusive, which could result in well-meaning individuals installing equipment of very little use, in inappropriate locations, and becoming disillusioned with the entire idea. That'd be a pity, as it's the technology and retailers' claims which seem to be at fault, not the central principle.

The suitably baffling result is that Neil Gaiman looks like Neil Gaiman – but only 66%. Apparently he has almost as great a resemblance (63%) to Johnny Depp (actually, the reference photo is from precisely the same angle, which might be significant) and 58% to... the Duchess of York?

Apparently, the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations (1999) state that penalty charges have to truly reflect the cost of administering them; they can't be punitive or profit-making. Understandably, the high street banks are unwilling to reveal the true costs of administration, but experts consulted by the BBC estimate a reasonable maximum of £4.50 per transaction – the banks are charging an average of £30.

The BBC explains the procedure, including how to file a claim with the Small Claims Court. There's a fee for that claim, but note that at the time of writing, the BBC was unaware of a single instance of a bank defending such a court action, and uncontesting defendants have to pay plaintiffs' fees.

I'm in the happy position of having fairly stable finances at present, and I haven't been charged any bank fees within the past six years (the legal maximum period in which money can be reclaimed in the UK), but others might be interested, and I'm partly posting this entry for my own future reference.

[Important update 19/01/07: do not pay for the assistance of a 'claims-handling agency', even on a 'no win, no fee' basis. One should never pay any intermediary to reclaim bank charges.]

I'd certainly support total public sector secularism, preventing state-funded agencies (including schools) from observing any religious festivals (laïcité), whilst leaving individuals to celebrate whatever they wish in private, but let's hear that again:

[12/12/06: Follow-up.]

However, that's not my point, which is that in rebutting the 'award', Prof. Greer explains the offending phrase, 'unsynthesised manifold' and its relevance to art. Somewhat interesting, though I'm not sure I entirely agree, particularly with the original article for which she received the nomination.

[Update 6/12/06: Heh. I beat BoingBoing to this one by almost a fortnight. ;) ]

[Via BoingBoing.]

But then the Home Secretary spoils it all:

Define 'other persistent antisocial activity'. How about political protest? Should the police be able to shut down a BNP meeting without a court order, using the pretext that the neighbours don't like the BNP? How about Greenpeace? How about Amnesty International? How about [your choice of minority interest group]?

The article goes on to say the police may be given powers to shut down an event immediately, so long as a court order is obtained within the following 48 hours. What happens if, say, a protest is shut down then a judge declines to issue a court order? Too late.

Disclaimer: I have no particular views on US party politics or the institution of the President, but Bush himself... that's different.

Two caveats:

• Rifkin seems to be primarily qualified as an economist, not a biologist. I couldn't say whether that affects the validity of his statements. Since he's been working in this field (no pun intended), I do expect he's acquired appropriate knowledge of the relevant science.
• His is a strikingly one-sided article. I'd be interested to read a counter-argument.

Logically, it seems improbable that K. acquired those expressions and behaviour patterns by observation, as she simply had few opportunities. I'd rationalised it as her having been disproportionately influenced in the brief periods that they were together (probably totalling a fortnight per year until she was about twenty), and that the father-daughter link was more intense than she'd ever admit. I know I've occasionally picked up influences from a similar level of 'exposure', though I suspect I've assimilated them and they're less recognisable.

To an extent, I think I'm right, as there can't be a genetic basis for specific word usage (K. definitely acquired "fair dos" from our father). However, research reported by the Guardian suggests that facial expressions may be physically inherited. Children born blind, who therefore can't mimic observed expressions, do display 'the family frown' (negative reactions are particularly apparent, for reasons explained in the article).
I'd considered that counter-intuitive, though it could be (and has been) argued that expression of certain emotions could be critical for survival, so has been 'preloaded' into newborns by evolution.

The starting point seems to be artificially low, with unflattering lighting, and the end point is distorted slightly further than would be normal (also note that the camera lingers on the former whilst the latter is moved away before one can study it, except with freeze-frame), but still, it's a reasonable illustration of the general point.

I'm not sure how I feel about this manipulation (of the image and the viewer. The digital work plainly goes too far, rendering the subject inhuman, but I can't honestly say I object to the results achieved using 'real world' cosmetics and techniques. Perhaps it would be ideologically correct to prefer the unmodified appearence of the natural woman* but, frankly, I don't.

[If the direct link doesn't work, try this, or this Flash version.]

*: no, that's unfair; Dove's 'Campaign for Real Beauty' isn't about rejecting cosmetics.

[Via BoingBoing]

In an article entitled 'Higher pay for long service ruled illegal', The Guardian reports that:

One rather conspicuous comparison: in the 11-year period 1995-2005 (i.e. including the WTC/Pentagon attacks), 3,147 people were killed by terrorism, whilst 3,949 were fatally shot by law enforcement officers.

[Via Boing Boing.]

From the associated blog entry (otherwise about secret rooms):

Seriously; I'd welcome the idea of a space to socialise without alcohol being an integral part of the experience.
Heavy drinkers would loathe the idea, but that suits me too.

Allegedly. I can't deny a sense of déjà vu in this BBC article, which reads a little like a 1920s newspaper report on the health benefits of smoking. However, it does make sense and fits my own circumstances – it's comforting to have preconceptions supported.

I won't bother to paraphrase the article; read it for yourself, over a nice cup of tea.

A censored version has been permitted, which obscures everything below her elbow. So bare breasts (covered by her hands) are fine, but a moderately distended abdomen isn't? Titillating good, maternal bad? Interesting.

[Via Spinneyhead.]

The new US TSA 'Prohibited Items' list (updated since this entry was first posted) states stated:

[Update 25/8/06: Great news! Winning the War On Moisture, the TSA has decided gel bras are no longer explosive. Oh well; pack one anyway.]

A training exercise, perhaps? Dunno why the BBC actually published it.

This Financial Times article is a little more substantial, discussing the role of architects in aesthetic shoe design.

I won't bother to paraphrase the article, but this is a matter of one sentence in a contract:

[Via Neil Gaiman.]

Obviously, it's transparent, so would offer wonderful views of approaching rocks, shopping trolleys in the Lancaster Canal, etc. I suppose it could be used in more picturesque locations, perhaps to watch wildlife.

[Via Spinneyhead.]

*: Plus postage, of course.

Forty-four percent is accounted-for by my toilet; if I added a brick to the cistern I'd be able to reduce that. Showering accounts for a further 35%, running a tap for toothbrushing 7%, manually washing dishes 8% and my washing machine consumes 6%. I don't have a dishwasher, a car to wash nor a garden to water, and none of my taps drip.

I ought to get a water meter. On the basic 'rateable value' billing system, I must be seriously overpaying for my domestic water supply.

As the Guardian reports, a 'recycling assistant' accompanies the door-to-door collection team, observing the contents (or lack of them) of recycling bins and contacting residents, initially to persuade, though persistent failure to recycle could lead to a £1,000 fine. That's under section 46 of the Environmental Protection Act, 1990 – I hadn't realised that enforceable legislation on recycling of waste had existed for so long.

Big brother? Nanny state? I don't think so. I believe this remains within the reasonable range of state intervention for collective benefit, without unduly restricting individual rights.

[Via Sal.]

Charlie Brooker, author of the blog post about which I commented a couple of minutes ago wrote the (mothballed) 'TV Go Home' website, which was published by Zeppotron, the production company behind the TV series 'FAQ U', briefly presented by Karen Taylor, the no.2 result in a Google search for her name, whilst the no.4 result is an Interspecies Telepathic Communicator.

Just thought I'd use this blog as a proper web log, for once.

Self evidently, I have some presence on MySpace, but it's primarily just a marketing tool directing 'young people' to the main Ministry site.

[Update 12:22: That was mildly alarming. I posted this entry at 10:42, and at 12:10 received a request to add Fish as a 'friend' i.e. establish a reciprocal link to his MySpace site. Coincidence, or did someone in his team visit the Ministry? Either way, sorry they (you?) had to ask – I wasn't aware Fish was on MySpace.]

The obvious question is whether a new body in new preservative in the original tank constitutes the same item. I'd be inclined to say it does.

[Via Spinneyhead.]

Plus they look ****ing stupid.

[Via Spinneyhead.]

*: What's the time interval? Per annum, pro rata? Per tournament? There's a big difference between the two, but the central point remains: each vehicle will be emitting one metric shedload of CO₂ unnecessarily.

The logical argument is that the very first member of the species was produced from the genetic combination of two non-members of the species (i.e. the first chicken egg wasn't laid by a chicken), and that the egg in which it developed contained its unique DNA, not the unique sequences of its parents. Hence, the first chicken came from a chicken egg, though that egg didn't come from chickens.

That's a weight off my mind.

It's an interesting suggestion which, incidentally, isn't inherently anti-religious: the idea is for churches with dwindling congregations (most of them, it seems) to merge where practical. If a reduced number of churches could draw respectable combined attendences from larger catchment areas, it would seem to be a better use of resources than heating, lighting and maintaining huge buildings for the sake of less than a dozen people per service.

I'm not remotely gloating in acknowledging that the UK now has far greater, er, pew-space than christians choosing to fill it. Might a little rationalisation make sense, if only for the sake of preserving the buildings themselves in alternative uses?

The article goes on to discuss an alternative* to cement. This, a byproduct of oil refining, seems to promise a two-fold saving: using one tonne of carbon concrete instead of the traditional variety could save 3½ t of carbon dioxide (see the text for the slightly debatable reasoning).

*: A supplement or partial replacement, perhaps, but not really an alternative, as oil refineries don't produce enough byproducts to fulfil global demand. Increasing petrochemical output isn't a (rational) option.

*: Not deliberately, of course; I simply forget who I've already told.

That's from a bizarre opinion piece by Melanie Reid in the The Herald. Ordinarily I'd ignore such sensationalist rubbish, but what planet (and century) is she from?

Incidentally, '20%' in the article's first paragraph becomes '1-in-4' three paragraphs later. Inflation?

[Via the tattooed & scarified Jack at Pandemian, whose comments on the article are far more eloquent than mine.]

There's a mock-up of a 27b/6 here (.pdf format), but frankly the author missed the point and an opportunity: the form is supposed to be far, far more convoluted and onerous to complete properly.

It's also disappointing to see from Google that several people have the wrong form altogether. It's 27b/6, not 27b-6. 'Stroke', not 'dash'.
I'm sorry, but a member of Ministry personnel has to be a bit of a stickler for paper work. Where would we be if we didn't follow the correct procedures?

Okay; much of the foregoing entry is incomprehensible unless you get the references. A 27b/6 is a form required by duct repairmen in Terry Gilliam's film 'Brazil'; it's the ultimate bureaucratic 'paperwork gone mad', and an apt name for a blog about governmental intrusion into the lives of private individuals. The primary government department in the film is the Ministry of Information, after which this website is named.

If you agree that:

• Medical research is essential for developing safe and effective medical and veterinary treatments, requiring some studies using animals.
• Where there is no alternative available, medical research using animals should continue in the UK.
• People involved in medical research using animals have a right to work and live without fear of intimidation or attack.

Note that this refers to minimal, essential, medical research, not for consumer products such as cosmetics – that's a different issue, which I don't endorse.

More info from the BBC.

I already knew the central fact, but it still seems a bit odd: the UK's 'copper' coins (1p & 2p) are steel merely electroplated with copper, whereas our 'silver' coins (5p, 10p, 20p & 50p) are 75%, er, copper.

Incidentally, 'mettle', meaning 'inherent quality' really is a verbal coinage derived from 'metal'. Just because it's a pun doesn't mean it's inaccurate....

[Update 17/12/06: Earlier in the week, I read that it's now a Federal offence (offense, even) to melt down US coins for the scrap value, so it must be a genuine problem.]

The Guardian reports that according to the navigation systems, the tiny road across Askrigg Common in N.Yorkshire is a shortcut between Swaledale and Wensleydale. Cracking.
The 'No Through Road' sign, five-bar gate, lack of surfaced road and 30 m (100') drop on one side don't seem to be the slightest deterrents – the computer knows best, right?

It may mask cobalamin (vitamin B12) deficiency, and hence put the elderly at risk, but that doesn't seem to be considered so important. Likewise, there's an (unsubstantiated) possibility that folic acid may be carcinogenic, but that doesn't appear to matter either, as the FSA has come up with a high-profile way of being seen to be Doing Something about foetal neural tube defects. And that's what matters - being seen to be acting.

Apparently, 500-600 babies are born with neural tube defects each year in the UK, and it's almost certain that if pregnant women (or those planning to become pregnant) were to take 400 µg of folic acid per day, there would be a positive effect; perhaps a halving of the statistics.
However, up to 10% of the over-65 population have borderline B12 levels, which could become deficiency, and anaemia. I don't know the absolute numbers, but it's safe to assume that'd affect more than 600 people. In extreme cases, it could cause permanent nerve damage to the spine – mirroring precisely the problem that it's supposed to prevent in babies. Personally, I don't regard babies as so overwhelmingly important as to make the elderly expendable.
That's not counting the vast majority of people who are simply unaffected by the core purpose: the non-pregnant, including the male near-50% of us who, by definition, can't give birth.

All this seems to be an excellent reason to publicise and promote the use of folic acid supplements, in the form of tablets/capsules, for those who need them, and, as importantly, consciously choose to take them, but it's a ludicrous justification for medicating the entire population.

The article does mention that folic acid may also be advantageous to those at risk of cardiovascular disease, so there may be a wider benefit, but again, that's a reason to promote use of supplements by individuals, not to engage in compulsory mass-medication.

I don't like the cliché 'nanny state', but for once I do think it's applicable.

Unfortunately, the article is slightly diminished by Dave Simpson's perception of 'goth' as the 1980s variety, dominated by the look and music of that time, not now (I suppose he can only comment on his own experience, but it's a significant omission), and his suggestion that goth is solely a teenage subculture. To his credit, though, he makes a point of distancing contemporary goths from Marilyn Manson (Brill mentions an academic paper which 'proves' that) and Satanism.

Ciar Byrne, in The Independent takes a less nostalgic approach, quoting Brill's points that Goth is a contemporary lifestyle, that it's not merely for teenagers and that it's more individualistic than communal, all of which match my own perception.

Fair enough, but why tattoos of designer chairs?

[Via Boing Boing, which seems to admire the idea.]

Jersey-based businesses that buy stock in Jersey and store it there before selling it, such as Play.com, will still be able to operate. Last year, I noticed that Amazon Jersey was trading as an independent affiliate of Amazon.co.uk, which presumably also avoids the latest restriction. I don't know (or care) about HMV.

Not that I've tried the Amazon service myself; when I investigated it last time, it didn't seem to be significantly worthwhile.

Look at the cat on the far right.

[Via BoingBoing]

The associated tip about 'how to cool your cat down in the summer' similarly fails to understand cats:

[Via Lifehacker, which unaccountably seems to think furry handshakes are a great idea.]

I don't think it works in all the examples provided at Truth and Beauty Bombs (especially not the first six, which were chosen to demonstrate a different point), but those in which Garfield doesn't react visibly either, in which it seems Jon is talking to a normal cat, are excellent.
To paraphrase a comment at T&BB, sharing conversations with a sentient, witty person who happens to occupy a feline body is one thing, and a comic strip that's rather too bland for my taste. However, if it's just an ordinary cat, there's a whole new level of pathos, and a bleaker atmosphere. Many of Jon's comments become rhetorical and self-reflexive, even despairing.

The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement treats the Red Crystal as a third emblem, rather than a replacement for their existing ones, but I hope that it does replace them in the long term.
In the mean time, the two earlier official symbols can still be used alone, or can be displayed within the hollow centre of the Red Crystal. This also offers a useful 'loophole' whereby national aid groups, whose culture-specific logos aren't recognised by the Geneva Conventions (such as Israel's 'Red Star of David'), can subsume their emblems into the Red Crystal for wider applicability, without the Geneva Conventions endorsing their individual legitimacy.

Hence, 'Bureau de Change' will become 'Travel Money' and 'ATMs' will become 'Holes In The Wall'. What's wrong with 'Foreign Currency' and 'Cashtills'? It's a reasonable objective to make banks a little less formal and forbidding, but it's essential to retain a sense of sense of professionalism, implying efficiency and financial probity. That's compromised by hideously patronising signage which suggests the bank is run by and for obsequious children.

It's an interesting dilemma. I can see the objectors' point, but if migration is going to happen anyway – and I think one can assume it will, irrespective of 'assistance' – isn't it a good idea to make it as safe as possible?

This is directly comparible to making contraception available to teenagers – does it encourage underage sex, or address the consequences of something that'd happen anyway?

[Via Cartography.]

[Update: 22:18: Again via Cartography, it's reported that distribution of the maps has been put 'on hold' by the Mexican government, not due to pressure from US authorities but because the maps could help violent anti-immigration groups to locate the likely migration routes.]

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn....

[via Tim.]

Though those accustomed to 3D digital art are unlikely to be fooled, the immediate visual impression could almost convince one that his images are paintings. I love his attention to detail and the consequent richness of his images: slight freckling in skintones, intricate patterns and even surface texture in silk brocade, and tiny quirky details in odd corners.
The subject matter is wonderful, too: fragile, doll-like figures rendered deeply sinister by a combination of surreality and subtle eroticism (though there's no sense of sexualising children!).

I forget where I read it, but a fellow admirer once said the images are so tactile one wants to touch everything, but with a constant fear that one might be about to lose a finger.

There's an immediate similarity to Mark Ryden's work, but it's somehow distinct: more delicate and precise, and much darker, with less kitsch humour. Ryden's images are 'real' paintings, too.
Incidentally, by 'real' I mean analogue, 'brush-on-paper'; I don't regard digital art as inferior.

[Via BoingBoing.]

Note: 'intelligent design' itself is wrong: creationism claiming fake respectability through bogus pseudo-scientific theories.
You may believe I'm wrong, and 'ID' is correct. That's entirely your right.
However, don't bother telling me via my Comments form – I will not give 'ID' cultists screen space. That's entirely my right.

[I just found it amusing, okay? I'm not really mocking decaf drinkers.]

I'm kind of disappointed, but still, challenging assumptions is good, so I'm glad I read the article.

Via Boing Boing, I've just discovered that they did it for real – 250,000 coloured balls really were released (by air cannon and earth-moving equipment) down a closed block (and I mean closed – the storm drains were covered and nets caught the balls) of Leavenworth St., San Francisco.

A real-world stunt? That's cheating!

Likewise, I presume 'Brewed Imported Tea' is standard UK tea (a little milk, one sugar), of which I could apparently consume 183.07 cups before expiring. Define 'a cup'. The same job would be done by 95.51 cups of instant coffee. Good thing I rarely drink it.

If you'd be fascinated to know the caffeine content of a startling number of beverages, this chart will blow you away.

I can appreciate Ms Campbell's unique attachment to the vessel in which her father lost his life, but her threatened response to public funding being withheld seems rather petulant:

Incidentally, some might like to visit the website of the Bluebird Project, which documents ongoing work. The 'Retro Diary' page provides a very... technical account of the recovery of Donald himself.

My father did teach me to tie a basic knot when I started secondary school and hence wore a tie for the first time. However, it was very basic, suitable for an eleven-year-old, and asymmetrical, so it's not great that I still use it now (more or less annually), over two decades later. I'll have to try that website's Windsor knot.

Of course, it could just be that ties aren't so universally-expected as they once were.

[Via Lifehacker.]

It really mystifies me that people make these mistakes. If a web search accidentally brought someone here, a moment's glance would reveal that it was an error. Plainly, people simply can't be bothered to look at even a single page of the site before blindly sending an e-mail: "There's an e-mail address – any e-mail address; that'll do." It's rather depressing.

However, the UK did have a Ministry of Information (presumably a propagandist's euphemism for 'Ministry of Propaganda') until 1946, when it was rationalised into the Central Office of Information (COI). Its most obvious role was (is) in producing public information films on health, safety or welfare issues.

The BBC recalls those films, though there's at least one error in the article ('Rhubarb & Custard' was a wobbly hand-drawn animation, not cut-out), and I really disagree with one point:

*: I also receive occasional messages from US christian pseudo-spammers who read 'Ministry' as a religious reference. Those e-mails are fun....

Sounds good and, paradoxically, more natural, as cows are milked up to six times per day rather than twice. Unfortunately, it's being marketed by hippies:

Then again, maybe they're hard-nosed industrialists only masquerading as fluffy hippies:

[Via the Guardian Technology blog.]

In September, the Daily Telegraph sold 904,283 copies (33% of the total), compared to:
The Times: 699,425 (26%)
The Financial Times: 438,538 (16%)
The Guardian: 404,187 (15%)
The Independent: 262,552 (10%).

Kind of scary, considering the degree of political bias (in either direction – left-wing is as bad as right-wing, to me) exhibited by some of these papers.
A total of 2.7 million is pretty low anyway, considering a tabloid like the Sun sells 3.3 million per day (tabloid sales figures).

*: i.e. I'm not old enough to remember the first time it was broadcast, in the mid-Sixties.