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?

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 recently tourist 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.]