Colganology

Yet another NOT missing link

2012-03-04T23:18:00.005Z

One of Creationisms' most favoured cries is 'Where are all the missing links?' It's the oft-heard claim that evolution cannot be true because of the lack of transitory forms.

Well, firstly, the term 'missing link' is just wrong. Creationists present the evolution of a species as a simple chain of events e.g. fish to amphibian, and claim that if the link between the two is 'missing' then there's no evidence. That's nonsense. To begin with, there may have been hundreds of transitory forms between fish and amphibian. Plus, this simplified view pre-supposes that every species is preserved.

The truth is that fossilisation is a very unlikely and chance event. Therefore, the fossil record, no matter how big it eventually gets, will only ever be a snapshot of the countless millions of lifeforms that existed on this planet before humans evolved. At present we have only discovered about 700 species of dinosaur. Compare that to the fact that there are over 4000 living species of mammal, 10000 species of bird and an estimated 8,000,000 species overall. Fossilisation may not have preserved the majority of species that have ever existed. Therefore, the likelihood that we will find even one unbroken evolutionary timeline in which every single transitory form is preserved is next to zero.

For example, we may never find fossils of all of the forms that have existed between the bear-like animals that re-entered the sea and their descendants, the modern whales. But we do have some of those transitory forms and modern whales undeniably do have disarticulated, atrophied and utterly useless hip bones still embedded in their flesh. The question is ... why? The physical evidence is clearly there that the ancestral whale had a pelvis. And the only reason it would need a pelvis is if it once had legs. And why would God create an animal to live in the sea but give it lungs so that it can drown? Perhaps the commonsense reason that whales have lungs is that they didn't always live in the sea. You don't need every 'missing link' to see what's strikingly obvious.

Evolution is a blind process of chance mutation where an advantageous change may get carried over into future generations and become the norm throughout a species. Consequently, you have to look at fossils with the right mindset. Animals and plants aren't 'trying' to improve. Nor are living things aiming towards some perfect design. Consequently, there are blind alleys where a species doesn't make it. The path from ancestral horse to modern horse isn't a linear progression of species getting ever bigger as some older text books erroneously show, like here:

The true picture is rather more complicated. The evolution of the horse is a story of successes and failures. It isn't a simple linear progression towards an ideal and so the simplistic idea of a chain and missing links doesn't hold up. Here's a more accurate diagram:

Secondly, as I said, some of the 'missing links' have been found. It's just that the hardcore Creation lobby simply chooses to ignore them or they simply don't know about them because they don't read Evolutionist 'propaganda' i.e. properly researched scientific papers. If you want missing links, they are there in abundance. Take Tiktaalik roseae for example. Tiktaalik was something like a crocodile and something like a fish, having features of both. Tiktaalik represents a transitional form; although it had gills rather than lungs, the fossils show clearly that it had bony 'hands' that evolved to allow it to haul itself along on land. and, when compared with the fossils of creatures like Panderichthys and Acanthostega, we can see a clear development of form from fin to foot. Not every step - if you'll pardon the pun - is there yet but there's is evidence of a slow and steady change.

We also find transitional forms in terms of animal behaviour too. As you doubtless know, hermit crabs don't have shells of their own and, instead, inhabit the discarded shells of sea snails such as whelks and winkles etc.. The earliest identifiable crab fossils are found in the Jurassic Era, some 145-200 million years ago and, at that time, one of the most prolific kinds of mollusc in the sea were the ammonites; a now extinct order of animals related to modern day nautilus and octopus. And guess what? Hermit crabs used their shells too. We have the fossils.

I enjoy intelligent debate. So I address these questions to the Creationist movement: Why do fossils exist of crabs using the shells of extinct marine animals? Surely if the world is only 5000 years old then there would still be ammonites in the sea and hermit crabs wouldn't have needed to migrate to sea snail shells. And why would God create hundreds of species of ammonite and then wipe them all out? And how? Surely 'the flood' cannot be blamed as we still have many species of crab and fish. The ammonites couldn't have drowned could they? Not like whales can.

Source: Julia Whitty at Deep Blue Home. My thanks to the lovely Dr Helen Scales for making me aware of this.

An evolution film that evolves

2012-03-01T09:44:00.001Z

How do you make an authentic evolution animation? Quite simply: you allow it to evolve. Tyler Rhodes, a student in the animation program at Virginia Commonwealth University, wanted to create an animation that wasn’t simply linear, but instead represented the true ‘tree-like’ process of evolution. So he enlisted the help of elementary school students from William Fox Elementary School and the Patrick Henry School of Science & Art, and involved them in a type of game.

“Much like the whispered game “telephone” where one person whispers a message down the line until it’s very different by the end due to small “mutations” along the way, I would create a game of telephone using visual imagery,” he explained.

Tyler began the game by sketching a nondescript salamander-like creature:

He then had various groups of students make copies of this sketch, knowing that the copies would contain subtle differences. The natural variation in the ‘progeny’ created from the first salamander sketch was used to determine the survival of the fittest. Tyler would ‘kill off’ 98% of the organisms and start the process again, this time working from the sketches that ‘survived’. In subsequent iterations he would throw out curveballs like desertification or a volcanic explosion (subsequent to the sketching), which would help the group decide which animals were best suited to survive. They would then take these environmental changes into account when sketching their next creatures.

There was a total of 6 generations, after which time Tyler digitally cut out the images and animated them with his own music and sound effects from the children. The finished product is an evolution video that is completely unique, refreshing and altogether entertaining.

Story: Carin Bondar for Scientific American.

More irony than an iron made of iron ... if only it were true

2012-02-29T13:22:00.003Z

This story surfaced (again) this week:

'Drummond's Bar (Mount Vernon, Texas) began construction on an expansion of their building to increase their business. In response, the local Baptist Church started a campaign with petitions and prayers to block the bar from expanding. Work progressed right up until the week before the grand reopening when lightning struck the bar and it burned to the ground!

After it was burned to the ground by the lightning strike, the church folks were rather smug in their outlook, bragging about "the power of prayer", until the bar owner sued the church on the grounds that the church ... 'was ultimately responsible for the demise of his building, either through direct or indirect actions or means.'

In its reply to the court, the church vehemently denied all responsibility or any connection to the building's demise. The judge read through the plaintiff's complaint and the defendant's reply, and at the opening hearing he commented, 'I don't know how I'm going to decide this, but it appears from the paperwork that we have a bar owner who believes in the power of prayer, and an entire church congregation that now does not.'

It's a great little story ... but almost certainly untrue. It first appeared here in 2007 (unless you know an earlier version) as happening in a 'small, midwestern town' and has been doing the rounds ever since. Only the details have changed. It appears on at least 50 websites and blogs that I've looked at (including Richard Dawkins') and not a single one can quote the source. Some of those sites do, at least, say that the source is unknown and that the story is most likely untrue. Most don't.

It does raise an interesting issue though.

The basis of law is that a person be considered innocent until proven otherwise. If, however, a person fervently believes that the power of prayer will cause events to happen and, in the case of this 'midwestern bar', that they did indeed cause the fire ... could they be prosecuted for the offence? The intent was there. And they believed that their actions were just as responsible as if they'd doused the place in petrol and set it alight. Surely by not prosecuting in those circumstances, the law is saying that prayer does not have the power to cause physical effects. Or, at the very least, that prayer is, in every sense, unprovable or lacking in any evidence for its existence.

As I reported here, there used to be a major loophole in English law. Up until 1981, attempted crime fell under the heading of 'common law' and test cases had created the situation that a person could not be prosecuted for attempting to commit a crime if the crime was impossible to commit. To give you an everyday example, a person who attempted to pick your pocket could not be charged with attempted theft if the pocket was empty. The crime had to be capable of being committed before you could be guilty of attempting it. The Criminal Attempts Act 1981 changed all that by, quite rightly, placing the onus upon the offender's intent rather than the possibility of their success.

The clever thing about the Criminal Attempts Act was that it created the offence of 'attempt' and could be applied alongside other legislation to anything from theft to burglary to sexual assault to embezzlement. It worked because the definition of 'attempt' meant a person doing an act which was 'more than merely preparatory to the commission of the offence'. So thinking about murdering a banker wasn't an offence, but sitting in the car outside his luxurious home with a crossbow might be. In law, attempting to commit a crime is all about intent and some degree of preparation.

So, logically, a person could be prosecuted for attempted arson if they believed their prayers would work.

There's one for the philosophers.

Naked Cartoon Characters Part 3

2012-02-28T01:20:00.001Z

Some more bizarre cartoon (or otherwise fictional) character anatomy from the very talented Jason Freeny:

And he sculpts as good as he illustrates!

His Deviant Art site is here and his blog is here.

My thanks to my splendid chum Ken Plume for bringing them to my attention.

Naked Cartoon Characters Part 2

2012-02-28T00:42:00.001Z

Remember those wonderful sketches of cartoon charcater skeletons by Michael Paulus that I posted a while back (see here)? I can go one better now.

These extraordinary skeletons were created for a 2007 exhibition called Animatus by South Korean artist Hyung Koo Lee. We start with Bugs Bunny:

Donald Duck and Huey, Dewey and Louie:

Goofy:

Roadrunner and Wile E Coyote:

Here's a video of the show in Italy in 2007.

Sadly, I can't direct you to his website as it appears to have been taken down. His catalogue at the Arario Gallery in Seoul is here.

Age of Invention

2012-02-27T12:10:00.002Z

Some cool inventions from the 1920s and 30s. See more here.

Inner tubes used as bouyancy aids.

Radio in a straw hat.

Gas-resistant pram.

Face protection from snowstorms.

Thanks to Mo McFarland for finding these. They originally come from the always entertaining Bored Panda site.

The eerie car photography of Peter Lippmann

2012-02-27T11:57:00.001Z

There's something poetic and beautiful about these images of cars slowly becoming part of the planet from which their metals, glass and plastics originally came. It's from a series by Peter Lippmann called Paradise Parking. You can see them all, plus more of his photographs at his website here. The Women of History series is simply stunning.

A Brazilian for Jesus

2012-02-26T14:03:00.009Z

WARNING: SOME SEXUAL CONTENT

Some time ago, I wrote a fairly protracted essay on why I was an atheist and how it saddened me that some people of faith saw that as a threat. You can read it here if you wish. It crystalised how I felt at the time and attracted lots of comments including a couple from Dave Gorman and Stephen Fry. I will reiterate here what I said then; I am a sceptic and cannot prove or disprove the existence of a god or gods. However, I see no evidence for their existence and so my current standpoint is atheist. For me, belief is not enough.

However, I have no problem with other people believing. Why would I? Their strength of conviction is no less strong than my belief in a deity's non-existence. The only time that I come out fighting is when children are told lies so that they cannot make their own decisions about what to believe or when people are hurt, supposedly in the name of some god or other. I'm sorry, but every single religion, faith and philosophy has, at its heart, a version of the Golden Rule of Reciprocity, namely that we should all treat others as we'd like to be treated ourselves (you can see the various different versions here). It seems to me that if god(s) exist then he/she/they is/are actually pretty wonderful beings - it's the twisted interpreations of their teachings by humans that cause all the problems. After all, every religion, faith and philosophy also states that killing is bad and that a higher power is the only true judge.

One of the most extraordinary uses of this handy 'interpretation' lark is a site I found recently that uses the Bible to 'give permission' for various sex acts. Now, I'm aware that it may be a spoof site but, as is the case with so many sites of this kind, there are no clues to help me make that decision. It was registered through a company called Domains By Proxy from Scottsdale, Arizona, USA so the owner wished to remain anonymous. A more obvious spoof site would tend to go over the top with a Biblical 'okay' for things like bestiality, incest or paedophilia, for example. Nor does it have a central agenda such as 'proving' that God is okay with homosexuality. So, I don't know how real it is; all I do know is that I've seen stranger sites that turned out to be absolutely genuine. So, I won't assume either way. I'll just report what the site says. If you are of a gentle disposition or are embarrassed by sexual content, I suggest you go and look at a site with baby hedgehogs being cute for a bit.

Sex In Christ is, as I say, a website dedicated to finding mitigation in the Bible for various sexual acts. Among the headings on the site are: Oral Sex and God's Will, Viagra and God's Will, Threesomes Within a Christian Marriage, Masturbation - God's Great Gift to Us, A Proposal for a Christian Pornography, Bondage in Christ - BDSM in a Christian Marriage, Bare before God - Shaving and the Bible, A Philosophical Argument for Masturbation, Anal Sex according to the Word of God and the altogether disturbing Fisting and God's Will. Here's an example of the kind of content you'll find (voyeurs note: there are no photos or diagrams).

On the subject of anal sex:

'Anal sex is confusing to many Christians because of the attention paid to the Bible’s condemnation of homosexual acts. However, it’s important to realize that these often quoted scriptures refer only to sexual acts between two men. Nowhere does the Bible forbid anal sex between a male and female. In fact, many Biblical passages allude to the act of anal sex between men and women. Lamentations 2:10 describes how 'The virgins of Jerusalem have bowed their heads to the ground,' indicating how a virginal maidens should position themselves to receive anal sex. Another suggestive scripture tells of a woman’s pride in her 'valley' (referring to her buttocks and the cleft between them) and entices her lover to ejaculate against her backside: 'How boastful you are about the valleys! O backsliding daughter who trusts in her treasures, {saying,} ' Who will come against me?'' (Jeremiah 49:4) And in the Song of Songs, the lover urges his mate to allow him to enter her from behind: 'Draw me after you, let us make haste.' (Song of Solomon, 1:4)'

On the subject of intimate topiary:

'Many women already wax or trim their bikini line, but question whether they can or should remove more pubic hair than that. Fortunately, we can look to the Bible for guidance: 'For if a woman is not covered, let her also be shorn.' (1 Corinthians 11:6). The point of bikini waxing is to remove hair that is not concealed by a swimsuit or panties, and this is appropriate for public or semi-public situations like swimming pools and fitting rooms. But if you anticipate revealing more of your intimate parts - that is, if someone (like your husband) is going to see you uncovered (i.e., without underwear) -- your genital area should be shaved or at least trimmed closely.'

And on the tricky subject of masturbation - 'God's great gift':

'The Scripture tells us that our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit, and that everything that we do should glorify the Lord. While masturbation is not a sin, we must be careful to masturbate in a way that is respectful to our bodies, and respectful to God. Masturbation is a gift that we should not abuse. This means we should not masturbate to excess, or to the point where we injure ourselves. If you are masturbating until you are exhausted, or until your genitals are raw or bleeding, this is excessive, harmful, and not what God intended. If you masturbate compulsively to the point that it interferes with your work or your relationships with friends, family, and God, this is a problem. If you masturbate while indulging in impure thoughts (fantasizing about your neighbor’s wife, for example), this is also a misuse of God’s gift. Of course, this is not to say that masturbation in itself is wrong – simply that we must use masturbation in a way that is healthy and responsible.'

But what about the story of Onan and the origins of onanism? Yup, he (you can tell it's 'he' by the rampant sexism alone) has an answer for that too:

'Many people are under the impression that the Bible specifically forbids masturbation. In reality, the Bible does not even mention masturbation. The story of Onan (Genesis 38:7-10) is always cited as an example of how God will punish masturbators; this is where we get the term 'Onanism,' which refers to masturbation. However, the story of Onan has absolutely nothing to do with masturbating. After his brother died, Onan was commanded by God to impregnate his brother’s wife. Onan had sex with her, but defied God by pulling out before he ejaculated so she wouldn’t get pregnant. His seed spilled on the ground – due to coitus interruptus, not masturbation – but this detail became equated with masturbation by those who apparently had their own agenda.'

Their own agenda! The irony is so heavy it's crushing.

As I said, I don't know if this is a spoof or not. What I do know is that some people will use it as 'proof' that they can indulge in various sexual practices and God won't mind. It's also causing genuine debate on some Christian forums. Amid the fire and brimstone and demands that 'This evil site must be shut down!' you'll find comments like:

'When the Church was teaching me I was going to hell because I was gay while growing up in the late 70's/early 80's I knew these teachings didn't fit into the words of a loving God found in the Gospels. I read the Gospel of John and was startled to see the relationship between Jesus and John went beyond anything else Christ had with another human being. It was quite clear they were in love. I mean, come on, one of the most heart wrenching moments in history is when John leans back against the 'bosom'of Christ and asks who will be the one who betrays Christ and thus kills Him. It must have been so devistating (sic) for John especially since John must have had 'could it be me'playing in the back of his mind. It is one of the most intimate moments of any literature and for the Vatican to try to tell us being homosexual is wrong and evil, and hence Christ is evil according to their teachings, then you know institutional religion is the one which is nothing but evil. Love, IMO, is never wrong.'

'That is just hilarious! I am right now forwarding this to a few of my very Christian friends, want to see how they will react to it. I will just let them and some of my other friends know... hey, if you are dating a Christian women... print this out and show it to her :-)'

'It just goes to show how far people will go to twist the word of GOD, to fit their own agenda ,but the thing is by doing it they will only cause it to backfire on them.{GALATIONS 6:7} Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.'

'Who is to say the writers of the site do not utterly and wholeheartedly believe what they wrote, if you say they are wrong and they say they are right it just becomes a circular argument. If you think they are wrong, prove them wrong, don't just say they are wrong because you say so. Christians seem to believe they can bash anyone that doesn't agree with them (sic), but if someone gives it back they cry foul. If anything sites like that should strengthen your belief, no need to get into a hyperbolic argument where never the twain shall meet. If this site offends you, don't look at it, [and] if it makes you question your belief then the basis of your belief is not so solid.'

'I've had the 'hair on the back of the neck' kinds of conversations with religious people who quote the Bible, and you start to realize that their mind has taken a walk off the map. Once you remove from yourself the hindrance of reading the Bible in an honest manner, with the same rules of English that you would use to read a newspaper, then ALL SORTS of 'Biblical' possibilities are available.'

'I have studied this website thoroughly and feel confident that the authors behind it are Christian, know God and know what their (sic) talking about. Scriptually they have twisted nothing but come to their conclusion through thorough reading, and personally as a Christian I am very impressed with there site. It's great for Christians who have been wrongly painted, pointed at, laughed at, stereo typically thought of by many as boring and frigid as quite the opposite. It also gives people the opportunity to learn something about Christianity and reminds us all that the bible is as relevent today as it was back then.'

'Cool, I just bookmarked it.'

For me, as an ethical atheist humanist, such considerations don't matter. I don't need a website to cherry-pick quotes from a holy book to vindicate me. I make my choices based upon my personal ethics and respect for myself and the other person involved (if I get that lucky). I don't need to be told what I may or may not do by some book that was, let's face it, written by committee. As I wrote in my 2010 essay, one reason I find belief in god(s) so troublesome is that the guidance he/she/they gave us - in the form of holy books - is so wishy washy. If a supreme being could make something as extraordinarily complex as a dragonfly's wing or a human brain, why couldn't they have passed on instructions in a non-ambiguous form?

Sadly, it's left to us all-too fallible humans to figure out how he/she/they actually want us to live our lives.

But with every human 'given' free will, that was never going to work was it?

Happy to be Mr Gruff

2012-02-25T11:47:00.011Z

Have a look at this extraordinary leaflet that was doing the rounds of Twitter this week:

Naturally enough, it was soon attracting an appropriate amount of ire from atheists and religious people alike. But you can't always believe everything you see on the internet so I decided to find out a little more about it and I soon found the source. Here's another leaflet they produce, apparently aimed at Hindu children:

The source for these leaflets, and others, is a website apparently run by an organisation called Objective Ministries ... but it's a spoof. The first thing I will warn you about is NOT to visit the main page of Objective Ministries as it contains a virus. Most pages are okay, if you can load them, but there are lots of blind links and weird jump-offs. Here's a safe entry to the website via the Kids page where the leaflets are - look around at your own risk! If you do wade through the various pages (and have decent anti-virus software) you will eventually find this disclaimer:

'Biblical Artefacts and Studies (sic) does not necessarily agree with all the doctrines promoted by Answers In Genesis, but their scientific and Biblical information about Creation, the Flood, fossils and the family is very informative.'

I got a sense of it not being quite right when I read the opening paragraphs on the 'Just 4 Kidz' page which state:

'And for all He's done for us, all Jesus wants is for us to love Him back! He wants us to love Him soooo much that any other love would be like hate: "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." I love Jesus more than ANYTHING... how 'bout YOU?

My OBJECTIVE is JUST 4 KIDZ! The "Z" is for "ZEALOUSNESS," 'cause Jesus wants us to be hot for Him, not lukewarm. I read in the Bible that He said: "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent"... '

Hmmm. Hot for Jesus eh, kids?

Do have a read of Rational Wiki's dissection of the site here. It appears to be a very good 'Poe' (see below).

The first person to send it to me via Twitter simply tagged it, 'Is this true do you reckon?'. The second person said 'Have you seen this?'. But very soon, the tweets were saying things like 'A church in America is giving these out' or even 'This is what kids are being given in schools'. While not committing myself, I did make the comment, 'Imagine substituting Muslim or Christian for atheist. There would be uproar' but I now wish I hadn't. Inadvertently, I may have added fuel to the fire. Stories like this take on a life of their own and are often embellished before being passed on. Hopefully this blog sets the record straight. As a sceptic (or skeptic if you prefer) it's as important for me to debunk fake Creationist and fundamentalist sites as it is to hold real ones up to scrutiny. The hard part is telling which is real and which isn't. As Poe's Law states:

'Without the use of a winking smiley or other blatant display of humour, it is impossible to make a parody of Creationism that someone won't mistake for the real thing.'

Sadly, isn't this so true?

The real crime, of course, is the author's excessive use of Comic Sans.

P.s. Good news! Even though the site is riddled with viruses and blind links, you can still get the origami instructions for making Mr Gruff the Atheist Goat and his grumpy non-believing chums here. It's a safe clone of the original Objective Ministries 'Kidz Crafts' page. You can even make an origami nail like the one that was hammered into Christ. Praise be to Jo Potocki and her God Debate blog.

Sir Jeffrey Hudson - Short but Deadly

2012-02-25T10:33:00.007Z

A week or so ago, I happened to catch this photo being posted on Twitter (firstly by Gareth Aveyard and then by Sam Liu and Alex Andreou). It made me laugh and I grabbed the photo to keep.

It made me go off and track down the story. And what an extraordinary story it is.

Jeffrey Hudson - the marker in the photo appears to be misspelled - was born in Rutland in on the 14th June 1619. His father was keeper of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham's, baiting bulls. Bull-baiting was a ghastly sport in which a tethered bull was attacked by dogs. The British Bulldog was bred solely for this purpose. These were bleak times but for a child born with some special 'difference' there was opportunity to escape the grim realities of being a pauper.

It was immediately apparent that Jeffrey was much smaller than his siblings and yet, he was very proportionate. As a 'rarity of nature', he was presented to the Duchess of Buckingham on his seventh birthday, and she was so taken with him that she invited him to join the household. A few months later the Duke and Duchess entertained King Charles and his young French wife, Queen Henrietta Maria in London. The climax of the lavish banquet was the presentation of Jeffrey to the Queen, served in a large pie. When the pie was placed in front of the Queen, Jeffrey arose from the crust supposedly dressed in a miniature suit of armour. The Queen was delighted and the Duke and Duchess of Buckingham offered Hudson to her as an amusing gift.

Jeffrey moved into Denmark House in London in late 1626, where the Queen maintained her royal household, with its many French attendants and Catholic priests. He was one of several natural curiosities and pets, among whom were a giant Welsh porter named William Evans, two disproportionate dwarfs, and a monkey called Pug. As he 'grew up' in years, if not in inches, Jeffrey learned to amuse and entertain with his wit and courtly behaviour as well as his appearance. Dwarfs were not rare in the courts of Europe but Jeffrey's fine proportions and tiny size made him uniquely famous. He is reported to have been no taller than 18 or 19 inches and to have grown little between sevenand 30 years of age. He was often cast in picturesque roles in the elaborate costumed masques which were staged by Inigo Jones for the amusement of the court. This is Van Dyk's portrait of him with the queen:

Hudson was knighted by the king and became known throughout the land as 'Lord Minimus'. And things went swimmingly until the 1640s when the tensions that would eventually lead to the Civil War started to affect courtly life. The queen headed for Oxford and the protection of Royalist forces, where she appointed Hudson a Captain of Horse. It is not known whether he commanded troops or saw combat in one of Prince Rupert's cavalry raids, but he considered the appointment an honour rather than a joke and later in life continued to style himself Captain Jeffrey Hudson. As the conflict spread and worsened the queen fled to her native France with a small group of courtiers and household staff, including Hudson.

At this time, Hudson appears to have become a much more serious character and let everyone know that he was no longer happy to be teased as a pet or a clown. However, a young officer called William Crofts continued to tease him and, after declaring that Hudson would 'lose a fight with a turkey cock', was challenged to a duel. Crofts thought this was a joke and turned up for the duel with a water pistol. Hudson demanded a real duel on horseback and shot Crofts through the head. Crofts' death was a disaster for Hudson. Duelling had been outlawed in France and his illegal act was seen as a transgression against French hospitality. Besides, William Crofts was the Queen's Master of Horse and head of her lifeguard. She asked permission of the French to administer justice and expelled Hudson from her court.

Jeffrey Hudson by Daniel Mytens and James Stow (after Mytens)

Exiled and without the protection of the royal court, Hudson mooched about for a short while before being unfortunately captured by Barbary Pirates and sold as a slave in North Africa. He was to spend the next 25 years labouring. The date and circumstances of his rescue or redemption are not known but several missions were sent from England to Algeria and Tunis in the 1660s to ransom English captives, and his first documented presence back in England was in 1669. It is said that during his captivity he had somehow doubled in height.

He returned to Oakham in his native Rutland for several years, where he was interviewed and a short record of his life made, by an antiquarian named James Wright. Then, in 1676, Hudson returned to London but had the misfortune of arriving at a time of turbulent anti-Catholic activity, which included the 'Popish Plot' of Titus Oates (also from Oakham). As he had been a well-known figure at the Catholic Queen Henrietta Maria, he was imprisoned at the Gatehouse prison. Being a 'Roman Catholick' was his only recorded offence, but he was not released until 1680. He died about two years later on an unknown date, in unknown circumstances.

Source: Page, N. (2002) Lord Minimus: The Extraordinary Life of Britain's Smallest Man. HarperCollins, London.

Footnote: Since posting this article, a couple of people have contacted me to tell me about statues of Sir Jeffrey. Mo McFarland found out that the first is at Longleat and accompanies the misspelled sign at the top of this post. Here's the statue:

It appears to have been bought for Longleat as a garden ornament and Hudson has no connection (that I can find) to the property. However, an almost identical statue (see this site) can be found in Scotland at Fyvie Castle in Aberdeenshire. Isobel Glenelg tells me that the castle was in the hands of Sir Alexander Seton in 1596 (made Lord Fyvie in 1597/8), who was given guardianship of James VI's 2nd son, Charles. So there is a connection as James VI of Scotland, of course, became James I of England and Scotland. At the end of the 19th century a great deal of James I related art was acquired by Alexander Forbes-Leith (Lord Leith of Fyvie). The statue suffered in the Scottish weather and now stands inside on the stairs by the Dining Room. What can be verified is in Treasures of Fyvie (1985) Scottish National Portrait Gallery, and Fyvie Castle (1928) by A.M.W. Stirling (London).

What I can tell you about the statue is that it's one of quite a few made by Austin and Seeley circa 1844. It's catalogued as 'modelled in the armour of the Holy Roman Emperor, with lead mounts to musset and spurs, losses, on a later associated stone pedestal with a wooden base. The figure - 44 in. (112 cm.) high; 78½ in. (199 cm.) high overall.' Felix Austin went into business making artificial stone in New Road, London in 1828, describing himself variously as an architect, statuary mason and sculptor as well as artificial stone maker. His material was not the same as the ceramic body used by Mrs. Coade, (although he is known to have copied old Coade designs), but made from Portland cement, broken stone, pounded marble and coarse sand (The Builder, 1868). However, like Mrs. Coade he encouraged leading architects and designers to work for him. Around 1840 he entered into partnership with John Seeley; Seeley had trained at the Royal Academy Schools and also made an artificial stone, which he called 'artificial limestone', before entering into partnership with Austin. In 1841 they published their first catalogue, Collection of Ornaments at Austin & Seeley's Artificial Stone Works for Gardens, Parks and Pleasure Grounds etc. The firm continued in production until about 1872. A drawing of Sir Jeffrey appears on page 10 of Austin & Seeley's 1844 catalogue. (Source: Christie's Auction house.)

My thanks to both of you!

Photo of the statue by Cyberslayer.

So THAT'S what happened #2

2012-02-24T10:53:00.000Z

More delicious nonsense from Fake Science.

Critical thinking is better than criminal drinking

2012-02-22T12:24:00.003Z

I assume that most professional chefs know that alcohol doesn't 'burn off' when cooking a dish that it has been added to. A significant proportion of the alcoholic content remains. Tests by various food laboratories has shown time and again that this is so. For example, the University of Idaho, Washington State University and the USDA’s Nutrition Data Lab have used gas-liquid chromatography to determine how much alcohol remains in food after various cooking scenarios. I can precis their results by saying that the quicker the food is cooked and served, the more alcohol remains: alcohol added to boiling liquid & removed from heat - 85% alcohol retained; flambé (alcohol flamed) - 75% alcohol retained; no heat, stored overnight - 70% alcohol retained; baked, 25 minutes, alcohol not stirred into mixture - 45% alcohol retained. Even food that is baked for two and half hours (150 mins with alcohol stirred in) will retain a minimum of 5% alcohol content (see the full table of data by clicking here).

So why do TV chefs persist in telling us that it burns off during cooking? It firstly raises some serious issues about their knowledge of food science. But, secondly, it's perpetuating the myth because they are seen as experts. It's something called False Authority Syndrome, where we believe something because someone 'expert' tells us it is so. I've written about this several times (see here and here and here) and the need to check facts before accepting them. There has never been a time in human history when being a critical thinker was more important.

But, even if we set aside lofty ideals about truth and accuracy ... don't you want to know just how much alcohol you've had when you leave that restaurant and drive home?

Ref: Augustin J, Augustin E, Cutrufelli RL, Hagen SR, Teitzel C (1992). "Alcohol Retention in Food Preparation". Journal of the American Dietetic Association 92 (4): 486–8. PMID 1556354.

Fake that

2012-02-22T11:59:00.008Z

I did my first talk for one of the regular Sceptics in the Pub meetings at The Monarch pub in Camden on Monday night. I was talking about crime science and how changing perceptions can be a powerful weapon in solving problems. During one part of the talk I mentioned products that are specifically designed to 'trick' people. Here's a great example. They're called 'seat savers' and they're cast in soft vinyl. The idea is that you leave them on your seat at an event and no one swipes your place.

I don't know how well they sold but I assume not so well as the New York-based company that made them, called Jeremy's Place, seems to have vanished from the Internet. However, I did find another company called Fake Food Online who still appear to be trading. Here's the site.

Meanwhile, here's a similar idea. This one not only fools our senses but plays with our emotions too, most notably disgust. These 'Anti-Theft Lunch Bags' are pre-printed with what looks like green mould. The idea was developed by Sherwood Forlee and Mikoko Ouchi of the the. Design Agency as a tongue-in-cheek method of preventing co-workers or fellow college students helping themselves to your food. Interestingly, I've read reports that some people, even when shown that it's nothing more than fake, printed mould, still won't eat the sandwich afterwards. The initial impression of yuckiness is so strong that it effectively puts some people off. I guess it's that 'First bite is with the eyes' thing that makes Japanese chefs so extraordinarily careful about presentation.

Nasty eh? I include it for a reason. I'm working on a new book at the moment and one part of it talks about perception. I've interviewed some fascinating people so far and was lucky enough to spend some time chatting to comedian and musician Tim Minchin who had some very interesting stuff to say about 'magical thinking' and superstitious notions of tempting fate. One spin-off of this chat was that Tim introduced me to an old friend of his from Australia called Rob Schutze who trained as a psychotherapist specialising in helping people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Rob has some great examples of when our mind seems to operate against us, like it's a separate entity. Did you know, for instance, that chewing gum doesn't lose a lot of flavour as we chew it? It loses some but what actually happens is that our minds get bored with it and effectively 'switch off' the taste. To prove it, try leaving a bit of 'tasteless' well-chewed gum (on the bedpost?) overnight and return to it in the morning; it will seem to have got quite a lot of its flavour back. You can get the same 'bored brain' effect by concentrating on another activity such as reading while eating. The food will 'lose' its flavour. But if you then stop reading, shut your eyes and concentrate on thinking about what you're tasting, the flavour will return. Chefs like Heston Blumenthal recognised this long ago and use sound and vision to do the opposite - to enhance the taste by making you concentrate more on the food. Famously, his 'Sound of the Sea' seafood dish looks like objects on a beach and you eat it while listening to a recording of crashing waves on a MP3 player concealed inside a seashell.

This brain/taste/perception thing is so powerful that if you melt a bar of chocolate in front of people, pour it into a mould shaped like a dog turd and then ask them to eat the resulting object many won't; the association is so strong. It's also why, here in the West, we don't eat insects even though many are very tasty; certainly no less tasty than the bugs we do eat like shellfish (I wrote about this at some length here). Fascinating stuff eh?

Do come along to one of my future talks (see top right of blog) or you can book me to speak at an event or a company training day. Just mail me at stevyncolgan@mac.com.

So THAT'S what happened

2012-02-21T09:05:00.001Z

Sadly, not real Creationist literature but a spoof by the always excellent Fake Science Tumblr Blog.

(Via Mo McFarland and Reece Shearsmith)

I will force spiders and badgers on the enemy

2012-02-19T13:56:00.000Z

Some of this week's favourite videos.

Kenneth Williams does 'Carry On Up The Empire' ...

Almost ANYTHING on the Bad Lip Reading site makes me squirt tea from my nose. But these recent posts about some of the contenders for the US election made my sides hurt.

IWOOT

2012-02-18T17:28:00.002Z

Bjork has one. I want one.

Today's Dose of Freaky

2012-02-18T13:46:00.000Z

Click on this link to be taken to a portfolio of photos taken inside a Chinese factory making sex toys and dolls. Strangely disturbing.

It might have been Catch-18

2012-02-18T13:14:00.002Z

I'm just going through the agony of coming up with a title for the new book. It's such an important part of the overall packaging and having the right title is crucial. Occasionally, I get it right after much deliberation. Other times the title jumps instantly to mind and fits the book immediately. I have an unpublished novel called The Dysfunctional Strippers Club and it's the perfect title for the story within. I wish this new book was as inspired.

As you may know, I don't believe we got it right with my first book, Joined-Up Thinking. When I wrote it, it was actually called The Six Degrees of Rick Wakeman, which nicely brought in the idea of 'six degrees of separation' and echoes the title of one of Rick's best-known solo albums, The Six Wives of Henry VIII. Why Rick Wakeman? Simply because he is the most connectible human on the planet (apart from Kevin Bacon) and he kept turning up with alarming regularity as I researched various topics. Quite apart from his digital virtuosity with bands like Yes and The Strawbs, he was a prolific session man and, famously, is the piano on many hit songs such as David Bowie's Life on Mars and Cat Stevens' Morning has broken. Plus he does TV and endless charity work, owns comedy clubs and was a notorious hellraiser before alcoholism and several heart-attacks set him on the path to a better lifestyle.

However, the marketing people - mostly in their 20s - felt that it was 'too obscure' a reference and would affect sales within the demographic that they were aiming at. Given that my cover quotes were by Stephen Fry and John Mitchinson - one of the creators and writers of QI - I was pretty sure my potential readership were smart-enough and well-informed enough to get the gag. But it all turned out to be academic anyway as Rick was launching the first volume of his memoirs around the same time as me and his management people wouldn't allow me to use it. And so, at the 11th hour and with no better title in the bag, we went with the wholly inaccurate Joined-Up Thinking.

I wrote a sequel last year and, once again, started going through the motions of finding the right title. I did consider using the original title and contacted Rick who was up for it and even agreed to write a foreword. But then his management people pointed out that the latest volume of his memoirs was due out ... and history repeated itself. Eventually, and after much deliberation, I settled on the title Thought Circuits: Circular strolls through a world of connectible trivia. I found a publisher, work began to prep the book for a Christmas 2011 release but then, extraordinarily, I was kind-of gazumped.

In November Icon Books released The Etymologicon by Mark Forsyth (also known as The Inky Fool) which went flying up the non-fiction book charts and was made BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. The Etymologicon's strapline was 'A circular stroll through the hidden connections of the English language' and the format was almost identical to that of Thought Circuits and 2008's Joined-Up Thinking; a chain of facts, each connected to the fact before and the fact after, and with the final fact looping around to connect to the first. It's just a coincidence of course but it kiboshed my release and we were forced back to the drawing board to think about re-packaging. So that's what's going on at the moment. We're hoping to get the book out in the next month or so.

But all this talk of book titles and how important they are did make me remember a list I saw once of the provisional titles for now famous books and I thought I'd share some of them with you.

H G Wells The Time Machine was originally titled The Chronic Argonauts and D H Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover might have been called Tenderness. John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men was once called Something that Happened and Gone with the Wind might have been called Tote the Weary Load had Margaret Mitchell not reconsidered. Peter Benchley's Jaws was first called The Terror of the Monster and The Summer of the Shark, and F Scott Fitzgerald had a flurry of ideas before settling on The Great Gatsby. They included Incident at West Egg, Among Ash Heaps and Millionaires, The High-Bounding Lover and Trimalchio in West Egg. Jane Austen's masterwork Pride and Prejudice is all the better for not being called First Impressions, and if Joseph Heller had stuck to his guns we'd now be using the phrase 'Catch-18 Situation' instead of Catch-22.

I'm pleased they all found their perfect title. I hope I can too.

Unemployable

2012-02-17T12:24:00.000Z

Like many authors, I'm finding times hard. The publishing industry has become very scared of anything that isn't a populist sure-fire hit (invariably celebrity-based or TV tie-in) and advances have shrunk so drastically that many writers simply can't make ends meet. While the likes of Pippa Middleton are landing advances in excess of £400,000 for writing a book on party planning, the pot for those of us with slightly less impressive buttocks and in-laws is getting ever-smaller. The average advance is currently something like £1000-£5000 and that simply isn't enough for an author to live on while they write the book.

But I'm better off than most; I at least have the safety net of a police pension which means that the mortgage is paid and so are most of the bills. Most, but not all. I've had to tighten my belt and lose some luxuries. I drive a beaten up old estate car instead of the nice BMWs I once had. There are no HD TVs or iPads to be seen and I'm seriously considering ditching Sky TV. I haven't had a holiday in a number of years and I have to think twice before going into London to see my friends. But there's food on the table and hot water in the pipes so I am thankful for what I have. So many are worse off than me. I mustn't grumble.

Tomorrow marks my 2nd anniversary as 'self-employed', which, in my case, actually means 'unemployed'. No book deals have been forthcoming and the art work completely dried up. So, about 18 months ago I thought I might try for a job; maybe something part-time, just to give me a little bit extra for when those unexpected car repairs come in or to cover the vet's bills when Farty Dog swallows something angular and indigestible. After all, I thought to myself ... I'm smart, I'm trustworthy, I'm a hard worker, I've written books and stuff. How hard can it be?

I can now officially reveal that the answer is 'Bloody'. I cannot get a job. I've applied to work in an art gallery, at a local theatre, at three different schools (and three different jobs at one of those schools), a museum, a farm shop and a butchers. I've talked to the local police and fire service, the library and the local university. About the only thing I haven't tried yet is stacking shelves in TESCO. But they'd say 'No' anyway as I have two prolapsed discs in my back that precludes a lot of lifting (and I could NEVER work for a company whose morals are so lacking). Am I really so unemployable? Apparently so. I don't even get to the interview stage.

The latest application came back yesterday as 'thanks but no thanks' because I didn't have the qualifications they required. That was the only reason given. It was a job archiving some books and film. The qualification they asked for was a non-specific degree. This is indicative of the whole 18 months experience. Let me tell you something about me:

I was, for some time, part of the Met Police's Training Design Team. I was joint lead of the project team that completely revamped police diversity training in the wake of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry. I helped to write training programmes for an organisation bigger than the Royal Navy. I wrote and directed training videos. I won awards. I taught officers and staff from the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, and many UK and overseas police forces. And I archived the entire organisation's training library and was one of the founder members of the first ever IT-based training system for police which has since grown to become the National Centre for Applied Learning Technologies. I sat on Home Office working parties and wrote speeches for people as diverse as Tony Blair and Fiona Bruce. I've lectured across the UK and USA and was a founding member of the Problem Solving Unit that retrained every single community policing team in London. I've made monsters for movies. I've made exhibits for the Natural History Museum. I've had two books published. I've written for the QI Annuals and had my artwork appear on the TV show and been abused for it by Jimmy Carr and Jack Dee. I am more than capable of archiving a few fecking books and films.

So, I went through their person spec and job description and, for each requirement, provided evidence of my competence. Oh, and my referees were the managing director of a very successful training company and the man who invented QI and Spitting Image and produced Blackadder and Not the Nine O'Clock News, my good friend John Lloyd. Oh, and he co-wrote parts of The Hitchhikers; Guide to the Galaxy too. But that didn't impress them enough to even bother giving me an interview. 'As we stated clearly in the advertisement and person specification, we are seeking someone with a degree' they reminded me. Even if it had been in something unrelated like Marine Biology or 17th Century architecture I would have stood a better chance than having 30 years experience doing the very work they wanted doing.

Sadly, one of the problems of having been part of the public services is that you might learn an extraordinarily wide range of skills but you don't get a nice piece of paper that says 'This bloke is good at X, Y and Z'. You can do external qualifications of course, but only in your own time, which is tough when you have a family and a demanding job that involves ever-changing shifts, including night duty. I managed to get a few small qualifications and my Certificate in Education but I could never find the time to do a degree. And now the chances of doing one are remote as, without a job, I simply can't afford to undertake it.

Experience also comes with age of course. I'm 50. But I'm not an old 50. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I have more energy and drive than most 20 year olds. But it's still a big number and, I'm sure, it has a bearing on some applications. They say that you can't discriminate these days and they can't ask your age on the application form. But every form - especially if it's a public sector job - comes with an equality monitoring form where I have to provide my ethnicity and my age. Call me an old cynic ...

However, I'm not down about it. As I said, I have a roof over my head and food on the table and most of the bills get paid. I can tighten my belt some more and there's already talk of downsizing. Meanwhile I've decided that there's simply no more point in applying for jobs I won't get. Instead, I'm going to attempt to plough my own furrow. There's a good chance I can get my next book out there using crowd-funding and, in the last few days, there's been a glimmer of interest in a kids' book I've written. I'm looking at venues to start running art classes locally and I'm approaching schools about coming in to talk about creativity. I'm also going back on the road doing a series of talks about creativity, critical thinking and crime science - the first few are coming up soon (see top right of blog page).

The past 18 months have been very humbling and, at times, genuinely depressing. They've made me realise that spending 30 years trying to help people and make the world a slightly safer place is worth precisely nothing. In fact, when being rejected for one of the school jobs, I was told that having been a cop meant the kids would never trust me. Great. It's also made me realise that my wealth of life experience is similarly worth feck all. But it's not all doom and gloom. I am reasonably smart, moderately healthy and have all my own teeth. If the world of work won't embrace me then to Hell with it. I'll employ myself.

Or become a 'bear' on the gay prostitute circuit.

Some spoof of a cover I used to know ...

2012-02-16T10:51:00.002Z

Fantastic!

Makes me proud to be a Geek

2012-02-15T16:38:00.003Z

My favourite 'experiment' from the most recent BBC series of James May's Man Lab. How to scatter the ashes of your beloved pet in space.

We are much smarter these days ... aren't we?

2012-02-14T13:55:00.002Z

Someone asked me the other day to suggest some good 'fact books' for kids as her son - though only 10 - is fascinated by such things. It's so nice to hear this but also terribly disheartening to find so few really good books or comics that make learning fun. There's the wonderful Horrible Histories series of course and some other very worthy titles. But the majority seem to be sensationalist in nature with exclamation marks at the end of every sentence and primarily focused on snot, poo or farts. The amount you actually learn from these books is next to nothing and, as I found by scanning through a few, not always correct either (Sorry, but humans are not descended from apes. Even apes aren't descended from apes. We are branches on the same tree and we all decended from primate ancestors who were not, at that time, either apes or humans).

Ah for the days when children's books and comics were fun and educational and accurate and didn't need to resort to potty humour!

On a shelf behind me there is a book I found in a charity shop and happily paid £3 for. It's called The Children's Book of Games, Puzzles and Pastimes and it was worth every penny. It's a gem.

Published by Odhams sometime not very long after 1952 (it doesn't have a date of publication but does mention 'young' Queen Elizabeth II as well as various Georges and Edwards), it's a guide for bored kids. It boasts fascinating features like Spot the cats, Nut Folk - How to make them yourself, Safety first, Stamps are interesting and the brilliantly titled The Game of Visiting Birds' Nests without Robbing Them. It explains how to take photographs and offers a handy comparison between popular 'modern' models like the folding bellows camera and the box camera. It also dispenses useful advice to butterfly collectors such as:

'Your local chemist will make you a proper killing bottle for insects at the cost of about half a crown. Make quite sure the insects' wings are quite dry before you kill them.'

If you're having a party, why not play some of the rippingly super games described? Like Fish Fanning Relay, Duster Hockey, Sir Walter Raleigh Relay, Driving the pig to market and the cracking good fun of Pass me the newspaper please. There's a guide to identifying trees, another on pond-life and a jolly description of catching crabs at the seaside. There's even a 'simple' guide to building your own radio ... though the final device looks suspiciously like something that Doctor Who would knock up to defeat the Daleks.

But my absolute favourite sections of the book are the quizzes and puzzles. And it is in these that an inconvenient truth can be seen. Right here in this old book, over 50 years old and aimed at kids between 10-15, are questions that I doubt many kids today could answer. Questions like:

1. Here is an object described in highfalutin language. Can you get it? An argentic truncated hollow cone, semi-perforated with symmetrical indentations.

2. Can you give the name of the object from the following description? Like one of the giants of mythology it leaves the portals of the North armed with huge blocks of stone. Proudly it sails on. The waves that dash in foam against its sides shake not the strength of its crystal walls nor tarnish the sheen of its emerald caves. Sleet and snow, storm and tempest are its congenial elements.

3. In what works do the following characters occur? (1) Man Friday (2) Sam Weller (3) The March Hare (4) Jeanie Deans (5) Caliban (6) Amyas Leigh, and (7) Worldly Wiseman.

4. Give the plural of the following: phalanx, sphinx, lemma, phenomenon, axis.

5. If a cow and a goat could eat all the grass on a field in 45 days, and a cow and a goose could eat all the grass of the same field in 60 days, and the goat and the goose could eat the grass in 90 days, how long would it take the goat, cow and goose to eat the grass when turned into it all together?

Not easy are they? You'll note that I've only included one maths question. That's because the ones in the book mostly deal in Imperial measurements (hurrah!) and 'old money' i.e. Pounds, Shillings and Pence (and if you don't understand how 'old money' worked, read this). Still, I'll leave you with one of them, just for a giggle.

6. If one toy, three balls and seven wheels cost 2s. 6d., and one toy, four balls and ten wheels cost 3s. 5d., find the cost of a toy, a ball and a wheel. Note, we do not ask you to find the cost of each.

Now, I realise that kids today have other stuff to learn and that the eating habits of farm animals and identifying characters from English literature sadly may not have much relevance for them any more. But these kinds of questions are still valid even in today's society. They exercise the brain. They provoke analytical skills. They encourage problem solving. Maths skills are still useful and communication skills - speaking, writing, spelling, grammar - have never been more important. They should be at the forefront of a child's skill set.

Oh, and the answers can be found at the very bottom of this post. Not that you'll need them of course. You knew all the answers ... didn't you?

I also have lots of old comics from my childhood including copies of Countdown comic from 1971 onwards. This was a comic aimed at boys like me (I was 10 in 1971) and featured cartoon strips of Doctor Who, Thunderbirds, My Favourite Martian etc. It also had features on the future of space exploration and a letters page where you could ask questions. Look at this example from Issue 2. (Click on the pictures for a larger image.)

I love the fact that 10 year old boys were asking about parsecs and Saturn's rings. Even if (as I suspect) the questions were actually set by the editors, isn't it extraordinary that a comic was taking the time to explain parallax shift in understandable English?

I'm a bit out of touch with kid's comics these days. So what is the modern equivalent? Or is it all just TV tie-ins and magazines designed to make them collect stuff like Pokemons and football stickers?

Do let me know.

The answers:

1. A thimble.
2. An iceberg.
3. (1) Robinson Crusoe, (2) Pickwick Papers, (3) Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, (4) The Heart of Midlothian, (5) The Tempest, (6) Westward Ho!, (7) The Pilgrim's Progress.
4. Phalanges or phalanxes, sphinxes, lemmata, phenomena, axes.
5. 40 days
6. If we say that T means Toy, B is Ball and W is Wheel, then: (1) T + 3B + 7W = 30d and (2)T + 4B + 10W = 41d. Subtract and (3) B + 3W = 11d. Multiply by two and (4) 2B + 6W =22d. Taking (4) from (1) we get T + B + W = 8d.

Child's play!

(Questions and answers reprinted word for word from the book)

Social Networking is not Social

2012-02-14T13:07:00.001Z

On this day of celebration for the most deep and joyous of all human relationships, a few words about social media. I wrote this in 2008 and it appeared on my old blog here. Nothing has changed, other than even more infringements of privacy. I'm tired of the whole business. I'm even in two minds about staying on Twitter now.

You all know my views on so-called social networking sites like Facebook, Bebo and MySpace. I'm not a fan. I think that they encourage people to provide far too much information about themselves, including personal data that could be used against them. What is the fascination? I don't want to be poked or have a virtual vampire bite me. I don't want to share photos of my friends and family with the world. I could maybe understand it if the photos illustrated a story or provided a snapshot of an event (as often found on blogs and websites). But social networking sites aren't about producing anything worthwhile. They're just about timewasting. And, sadly, they are all about selling you crap. By joining Facebook et al, you are saying that you are happy to give them details about yourself and your friends which they can use to target you for advertising and marketing. Expect a torrent of spam, pop-ups and junk mail.

And there may be a more sinister side to the whole business ...

Stephen Waddington at Rainier PR understands social networking sites. But, as he pointed out on a recent blog post, 'I’m starting to think that social networking sites aren’t a bit social. They’re elitist, where the metrics of success are your number of friends, happy go lucky photos, Funwall postings, backlinks and blog comments.'
He's right. Most kids I know who use Facebook count the number of friends they have on-line (even if they're people they've never even heard of, let alone met) as a measure of their own popularity and self-worth. That's no measure of success. I get a lot of hits on my blog but what do those hits really tell me about the people who've popped by? Nothing at all. Even Grazia magazine, which many would see as a guide to the shallower end of lifestyle choices, has declared Facebook as 'bankrupt'. 'I can't keep up with the friend requests, the requests to confirm how we know each other, the requests to tell you I like you, the requests to tell you I want you to tell me what movies you want to tell me about, etc.', they concede. 'I just find it crazy and the pace is so fast that very little of substance is being done. Folks have just opted in to another out of control inbox... I'm opting out.'

Paul Tero, at marketing company Nixon McInnes, believes that social networking is only social if people use it to meet people and get out and socialise. He goes on to point out that, 'Any interaction (on-line) is usually via words only. And according to a 1971 study by Albert Mehrabian, the words we use in a conversation only account for 7% of our decision as to whether or not we like the other person. 38% is from tone of voice and 55% from body language. So if we interact only via words, we are squandering a large part of our natural gift for communication.' Social networking is actually denuding our communication skills. And it allows deceit, lies and downright nastiness to hide behind a happy, smiling profile.
But is it worth getting all steamed up about? Surely it's all just a bit of fun, isn't it? Ah, would that it were, would that it were (said in my best Robert Robinson voice). Tom Hodgkinson (of How to be Idle fame) has written an excellent little booklet called We want everyone - Facebook and the new American Right (Parts of it were published in The Guardian in January). In the booklet, he explains that Facebook is nothing more than cynical, information-gathering and advertising-targeting software wrapped up in the guise of 'How to share your life with the world and appear to have more friends'. It's no secret. Tom hasn't spent years in deep cover to get this information. It's all freely available - but people just don't bother to go and look for it. They just blindly sign up to these sites because their mates have all signed up. The people behind Facebook are not the fun-loving hippy geeks you'd imagine them to be and they know a bit about what makes you tick:

'Although the project was initially conceived by media cover star Mark Zuckerberg, the real face behind Facebook is the 40-year-old Silicon Valley venture capitalist and futurist philosopher Peter Thiel. There are only three board members on Facebook, and they are Thiel, Zuckerberg and a third investor called Jim Breyer from a venture capital firm called Accel Partners (more on him later). Thiel invested $500,000 in Facebook when Harvard students Zuckerberg, Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskowitz went to meet him in San Francisco in June 2004, soon after they had launched the site. Thiel now reportedly owns 7% of Facebook, which, at Facebook's current valuation of $15bn, would be worth more than $1bn.'

So, some people are making big bucks out of you having lots of pseudo friends, eh? The plot thickens ...

'Thiel's philosophical mentor is one René Girard of Stanford University, proponent of a theory of human behaviour called mimetic desire. Girard reckons that people are essentially sheep-like and will copy one another without much reflection. The theory would also seem to be proved correct in the case of Thiel's virtual worlds: the desired object is irrelevant; all you need to know is that human beings will tend to move in flocks. Hence financial bubbles. Hence the enormous popularity of Facebook. Girard is a regular at Thiel's intellectual soirees. What you don't hear about in Thiel's philosophy, by the way, are old-fashioned real-world concepts such as art, beauty, love, pleasure and truth. The internet is immensely appealing to neocons such as Thiel because it promises a certain sort of freedom in human relations and in business, freedom from pesky national laws, national boundaries and suchlike. The internet opens up a world of free trade and laissez-faire expansion. Thiel also seems to approve of offshore tax havens, and claims that 40% of the world's wealth resides in places such as Vanuatu, the Cayman Islands, Monaco and Barbados. I think it's fair to say that Thiel, like Rupert Murdoch, is against tax. He also likes the globalisation of digital culture because it makes the banking overlords hard to attack: "You can't have a workers' revolution to take over a bank if the bank is in Vanuatu".'

(Read the whole feature here).

Thiel and his ilk are outright unashamed capitalists who believe that work and the acquisition of wealth are the most important things in life. They are nearly all neo-conservative Right wingers (remember the debacle about 'No gays allowed on Facebook' a few months ago? Guess where that originated?) These are not the sorts of people I want to associate with, let alone give my money to. But millions of you do by answering the ads that pop up on Facebook. Your beautifully crafted on-line profile provides their marketing people with the sort of data that allows them to target you (and your friends) unmercifully with stuff that will appeal. By January 2009, Facebook will have over 200 million active members. If even a tiny percentage respond to the adverts and pop-ups, the men behind Facebook make even more millions. And with their views on tax, you can be sure that only a tiny proportion of your money will ever be recycled back into the economy or social welfare systems.

I guess it could be argued that my blog is a form of social networking - but I don't use it that way. I use it as a showcase for my writing and my art. It performs the same role as a website - but with more frequent updates. It's got me some work and, more importantly, I've made new friends who I have gone on to meet for real in FleshSpace.

FleshSpace ... I may have to trademark that.

And, as a final warning klaxon, just remember that the recent glut of connected suicides in Bridgend, Wales is possibly connected to a social networking pact. Certainly, it's an avenue that the police are investigating. Isn't that a worrying development? As Stephen Waddington says, 'Is this real life moving into a digital sphere? Or something more sinister ...' All I know is that the term 'private life' includes the word 'private' for a good reason.

I'll leave you in the capable hands of Tom Hodgkinson again:

'For my own part, I am going to retreat from the whole thing, remain as unplugged as possible, and spend the time I save by not going on Facebook doing something useful, such as reading books. [...] I don't want to retreat from nature, I want to reconnect with it. Damn air-conditioning! And if I want to connect with the people around me, I will revert to an old piece of technology. It's free, it's easy and it delivers a uniquely individual experience in sharing information: it's called talking.'

Hello? Oh! Ooooooh!

2012-02-14T11:14:00.001Z

Some splendid video cleverness by Dutch smarty-pants Matthijs Vlot.

Caution: Laughs Ahead

2012-02-12T11:19:00.001Z

I'm taking a break from Twitter at the moment as I was aware that I was becoming something of a grump. I've always viewed it as the brightest spark among the social networks but, just recently, the number of trolls and tossers seems to have multiplied. I checked in today just to catch up with what's been happening and, within just a couple of minutes, five people had cracked Whitney Houston gags. Quite apart from them being piss-poor jokes anyway, she's barely cold. Have some respect for those she leaves behind, people. Or let us all know when you lose a loved one so we can crack some jokes, eh? Fair's fair. She was someone's daughter, someone's mother. Even Gary Lineker - Mr Nice Guy - is 'fed up with the bile' and has today decided to get off Twitter for a bit. Like him, I won't be back any time soon.

However, the fun continues elsewhere and here are some corking websites to warm away those Winter blues. First up we have Brilliantly Sarcastic Responses to Well-Meaning Signs. Great title. Great content. Makes me laugh every time.

Then there's the website of Crap Graffiti. If you follow the link, much of it is NSFW so beware. Some is genuinely crap graffiti but some of it is very funny, in a puerile kind of a way, and some is actually pretty damn clever. The giant anamorphic cock is genius!

Last one today is Damn You Autocorrect! which is exactly what it sounds like:

Family records

2012-02-12T09:53:00.003Z

There's a musical streak that runs through the Colgan tribe. My late grandafathers were both male voice choristers and my father was an excellent guitarist and drummer who played in skiffle bands in the 1950s, including Wally Whyton's band. As a child I was one of the UK's top competition choir boys (it's true!) and I also play guitar, drums and few other instruments. I played in a band all through my teens. That's me on the left with the mandolin in this publicity photo from 1979.

I only do the occasional live performance these days but I have been writing songs for more than 30 years. You can hear a few rough recordings here (with my good friend and co-writer Huw Williams on keyboards and bass). Also, in my generation, my brother Si plays guitar and sings better than me but, sadly, I have no video to show you.

But I'm delighted to report that the next generation of Colgans has picked up the gauntlet. My daughter Kerys has a wonderful singing voice and my son Liam was guitarist in a metal band called This Dying Hour during his teens. The band were signed to a label and I was very proud seeing their first four track EP in record shops in London. Sadly, the lads all went their separate ways but Liam is still writing songs and there is talk of a new band coming together. Meanwhile, here's the title track from their EP:

And now his younger cousin (my nephew) Jacob has picked up the axe and started performing:

My grandchildren both love to sing so maybe it'll carry on still further? I hope so. It doesn't matter whether any of us ever got famous or made money from it; like art, music is all about self-expression and the sheer joy of participation.

Backing up three ways

2012-02-11T13:31:00.001Z

I'm a big fan of the band Walk Off The Earth who, you may recall a short while ago, did this amazing cover of Gotye's Somebody I used to know with all five members playing one guitar. well, here's another small snippet of genius with their version of the Gregory Brothers' song I'm backin' up:

Here's the Gregory Brother's original 'songified' news report:

And here's their extraordinary Barbershop version with instructions of how to perform it!

The biggest joke is the court case itself

2012-02-11T12:05:00.002Z

During my three decades as a London cop, there were few instances when new legislation made me smile. For the most part, it was created willy-nilly by politicians desperate for the popular vote and 99% of new laws turned out to be ill-considered and occasionally unworkable. At times there was so much knee-jerking in Parliament that you'd be forgiven thinking that they were performing the hokey-cokey. Take 'driving while using a mobile phone' as an example. Perfectly good legislation existed already. Police had powers to report someone for driving without due care and attention and/or dangerous driving. So why single out mobile phones? We now have the situation where, if you're crawling along in a car in a traffic jam at 2mph, you can't phone home and say that you're late because, just by using the phone, you commit the offence. Meanwhile, the guy who's reading a map on his steering wheel, or the woman applying her make-up in the rear view mirror or the couple who are having a blazing row could only be prosecuted if you could prove that they were a danger to others or not controlling their car. Oh, and when the law was brought in, police officers wondered whether they'd be committing the offence because the radios we had at the time had to be held to the ear, leaving one hand on the steering wheel. Utter madness. And don't get me started on the idiotic Dangerous Dogs Act ...

But one piece of new legislation did make me smile and it was called the Criminal Attempts Act. It came into force in 1981 and it plugged a major loophole in English law. Up until that time, attempted crime fell under the heading of 'common law' and test cases had created the situation that a person could not be prosecuted for attempting to commit a crime if the crime was impossible to commit. To give you an everyday example, a person who attempted to pick your pocket could not be charged with attempted theft if the pocket was empty. The crime had to be capable of being committed before you could be guilty of attempting it. The Criminal Attempts Act changed all that by, quite rightly, placing the onus upon the offender's intent rather than the possibility of their success.

The clever thing about the Criminal Attempts Act was that it created the offence of 'attempt' and could be applied alongside other legislation to anything from theft to burglary to sexual assault to embezzlement. It worked because the definition of 'attempt' meant a person doing an act which was 'more than merely preparatory to the commission of the offence'. So thinking about murdering a banker wasn't an offence, but sitting in the car outside his luxurious home with a crossbow might be. In law, attempting to commit a crime is all about intent and some degree of preparation.

So why then is a man currently at court going through a second appeal against a conviction for simply typing the words 'Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!'? You can read all about the Paul Chambers 'Twitter Joke Trial' trial on hundreds of websites and blogs (including my own angry blog here) so I won't bore you with the details. However, I do wonder what kind of country we are turning into when a simple and clearly jokey comment on Twitter can result in an otherwise decent, law-abiding Brit getting himself a criminal record under anti-terrorism laws? Have we lost all common sense and proportion? Surely even the meanest of intelligences could see that this was a joke? And, even if there were any doubt, ten minutes of background checking and interview would have clearly shown that this was really not something worth bothering the judicial system with. To return to my original point, where's the intent? Paul Chambers isn't a terrorist; there were no 'preparatory' actions taken to blow up an airport. He isn't even an attempted terrorist. Did he cause alarm and distress? I very much doubt it and I've yet to hear any testimony from anyone who believed that their life was in any danger. Did he attempt to cause alarm and distress? I have yet to see any evidence of even the slightest intent.

The sheer ridiculousness of this trial and subsequent appeals is clearly demonstrated by the fact that 1000s of Twitter users have since re-typed his original tweet without repercussions. I've done it myself. I no more intend to cause harm and distress than he did, so why haven't the police knocked at my door? All Paul Chambers did was what I see people doing every day - venting their spleens. Just this week I've seen people 'threaten' to kill several celebrities on Twitter, I've read comments on YouTube videos where the owners of the videos are abused, told to die or invited to commit suicide (just look at the Rebecca Black 'Friday' episode). I've heard people express inflammatory opinions in pubs and shops. We all do it. And, for most of us, a slap on the wrist and a few words of caution would be more than enough to remind us that, sometimes, we can be unaware of the effects that our words have on others.

There are times when I am almost ashamed to have once been part of 'the system'. Paul Chambers may have been naive and ill-advised but was it really worth ruining the man's life to hammer that message home? Of course not.

I wish him every success with his appeal.

Go figure

2012-02-10T13:58:00.000Z

I have no idea how they calculated these figures but they made me laugh. This is a list of activities and the calories you'll burn off while engaged in them:

Making mountains out of molehills (500)
Running around in circles (350)
Pushing your luck (250)
Flying off the handle (225)
Jumping on the bandwagon (200)
Adding fuel to the fire (175)
Beating your head against the wall (150)
Jogging your memory (150)
Dragging your heels (100)
Jumping to conclusions (100)
Beating around the bush (100)
Bending over backwards (75)
Grasping at straws (75)
Turning the other cheek (75)
Hitting the nail on the head (75)
Swallowing your pride (50)
Passing the buck (25)
Balancing the books (23)
Wrapping it up at the end of the day (12)

Source: Bulletin,Columbus Industrial Association, July 1977.

This is the future for books - and isn't it bright?

2012-02-10T00:58:00.001Z

As you all know, I'm a great lover of books and I can't imagine that there will ever be a day when the paper book disappears. But is that just nostalgia? After all, I am 50 years old and for 4/5ths of my life there wasn't really any viable alternative to books. But now there is.

When I see things like this and think about my young grandchildren who are growing up in a world where everyone has a mobile phone and where e-books are commonplace, I wonder which encyclopaedia will they be drawn to? The flat boring papery thing? Or the shiny plastic and metal thing that has sound and movies and interactivity? I'm pretty sure I know the answer.

They will decide the future of books, not people like me.

Nothing sounds good on a melodica

2012-02-09T16:26:00.001Z

Upcoming appearances

2012-02-07T09:50:00.001Z

I'm going to be appearing at quite a lot of events this year and the first few are coming up soon. Do come along if you can.

The first is on February 20th at The Monarch Bar, Camden, North London when I'm speaking at a Sceptics in the Pub event.

Then, on the 9th and 10th of March, I'll be speaking at Imperial College, London and at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, Middlesex for this year's Ig Nobel Awards UK Tour.

More dates soon once they are confirmed.

The Ig Nobel Awards

2012-02-07T09:02:00.002Z

The entire 2010 Ig Nobel Awards ceremony is on YouTube. Wonderful! The awards are coming to London in March and I will be speaking at the event this year.

Happy Birthday Tharg

2012-02-05T15:00:00.000Z

I can remember buying the first edition of 2000AD, which is currently celebrating its 35th birthday. It was such a revelation. Not many US comics got to us in rural Cornwall and, until 1977, all I bought regularly were the Marvel UK reprint comics like Planet of the Apes and Savage Sword of Conan. I can't moan about those publications; they were larger format than US comics and printed in black and white which meant that it was easier to see (and copy) the wonderfully clean lines and dramatic pen work of my comicbook heroes: Gil Kane, Alfredo Alcala, Neal Adams, Barry Windsor-Smith, Jack Kirby et al. (click to see larger pictures)

The solid pencils of John Buscema and the beautiful inking of Alfredo Alcala for Conan.

From the very start, I realised that 2000AD was something special. The format of just 5-6 pages of story per issue kept us all in a permanent state of cliff-hanging. The artwork was staggeringly original and unlike anything being produced in the USA. Just look at this page from Peter Milligan's The Dead strip illustrated by the late Massimo Belardinelli to see what I mean:

A re-born and re-energised Dan Dare was the main character featured in the early issues but he was very quickly overtaken in popularity by Judge Dredd who appeared for the first time in issue (prog) two. And, as time went on, other wonderful characters appeared: Strontium Dog, Robo Hunter, Halo Jones, the ABC Warriors, Slaine, Hewligan, Rogue Trooper, DR and Quinch, Harry Twenty ... the list goes on and on. I won't bore you with any more 2000AD history as other sites will do it bigger and better than I can. What I will say is that 2000AD added hugely to my pantheon of art gods, among them Brian Bolland, Mick McMahon, Simon Bisley, Ian Gibson, Carlos Ezquerra, Dave Gibbons, Glenn Fabry, Steve Dillon, Bryan Talbot, Frank Quitely and so many more.

Brian Bolland's outstanding work on Judge Dredd

But, more importantly, 2000AD taught me that comics could be brilliantly written. When I'd bought comics in the past, the words had almost gone unnoticed; they were merely the vehicles that brought great artwork into my home. Now I was exposed to the wit, charm, drama, passion, melancholy and sheer brilliance of John Wagner, Alan Grant, Pat Mills, Garth Ennis, Pete Milligan and Alan Moore. Comics were now art on every level.

Mick McMahon's inspired work on Slaine

Of course, I tried out for the comic and one of my greatest treasures is a rejection letter from the editor telling me that 'extreme violence and half-naked women are not suitable material for a children's comic' just months before Simon Bisley's extraordinary interpretation of Slaine burst onto the scene with its visceral gouts of blood, savage muscle-bound Celtic barbarians and huge breasted semi-naked Amazons!

Simon Bisley doing what he does best - Slaine

The rejection spurred me on to start my own comics imprint (see the full story here and here) and, within a year, I found myself working alongside many of my 2000AD heroes in the comics industry.

Paul 'Captain Britain' and 'Doctor Who' Cornell looking like he's detected a bad smell.

Sean Hughes, Brian Bolland and Dave Gibbons wondering where the tea is.

Simon Bisley playing with my moobs

Steve Dillon (seated) and comics dealer Andy Colman making that same face Paul Cornell made. Perhaps it's me?

Frank Quitely signing Issue 1 of our new comic. Murphy looking ginger. Me looking like a panda.

I kind of lost interest in 2000AD when it started to introduce Photoshop colouring. Suddenly every strip seemed to look the same and the work of one artist seemed to blend into another. It felt like being colourful and funky was more important than the stories and the underlying drawing. But that's okay - I'm happy to pass it on to a new generation of fans. I'll sit here and read and re-read my volumes of reprints from the comic; glorious fun, endlessly inventive, wonderfully funny.

Happy Birthday 2000AD and thank you. You've been a huge influence on my life.

And reprint The Dead as a book will you? Like most foolish blokes, I sold my collection a few years back and wrongly assumed that there would be more reprints than there have been. I so want to read it all again!

Snow - the other four letter word

2012-02-05T01:22:00.002Z

I didn't grow up with snow. It just didn't happen in Cornwall. Too mild. We had frosts and an occasional light dusting on the palm trees growing in our garden but that was it. The first snow I ever remember seeing was in 1976 or 1977 - I forget which - and it was cold and white and slippery and pretty annoying as it stopped me from going anywhere. My childhood was 'joy of snow' free. But we still enjoyed yomping on the beach with the Winter sun glaring in our eyes and an icy wind coming in off the sea that made my teeth ache.

Then in 1980, when I was 18, I moved to London and became a cop. It snowed every Winter in London. Trust me, being a cop in snow is no fun. Firstly, you have to get to work no matter how bad it is. What I'd end up doing is getting my uniform on at home and trudging the three miles to the station. Along the way I'd be reporting car accidents, helping people stuck in drifts, calling ambulances for people who'd slipped and fallen ... and all the time I'd be getting colder and wetter and more fed up.

So maybe it's no surprise that I'm the Scrooge of snow, the curmudgeon of white powder. I detest the stuff. And things haven't got any better since I moved to South Buckinghamshire on the Chiltern Hills. I'm up high on one such hill and, every year, that means several days when the world comes to a complete standstill. There's no way of getting my car out of my road or anywhere near a main road where they might have gritted. I'm snowed in. Today is just such a day.

It would actually be quite a nice thing to be snowed in if it wasn't for other people. I walked down to the village shops earlier today, before the snow, because I fancied some Dundee cake and some fresh air. The little Co-Op store looked like it was under siege. People were piling up their baskets with milk and bread and eggs. The vegetable shelves were nearly bare. The queues for the checkouts were Disneyland long. What is wrong with people? You'd think a Zombie Apocalypse had been announced on Breakfast Time. Of course, the TV news people had ramped up the 'oncoming chaos' nicely as they always do. But, let's face it, all we're looking at here is maybe 3-4 days of disruption? How much bread can you possibly eat in that time?

As for the disruption itself, yes it's a pain for people who have to get to work or for parents who have to make provisions for kids sent home from school. So, almost immediately, out come the trolls to whine about the lack of snowploughs and gritted roads. But, invariably, these are the very same people who'd rage and rant if the local council spent half a million on two snowploughs that were only used for three days a year. Even worse are the 'Call that snow? You should live in Canada!' types who, in the grand tradition of Monty Python's Yorkshiremen belittle our feeble snowfall. Well, you're right, Smartarses. Our snow is crap compared to Canada and Scandinavia and Russia and fecking Pluto but places that have lots of snow are prepared for it. Everyone owns a giant shovel and a 4x4 and snow tyres and chains and a lumberjack hat. Snow is so infrequent here - especially in the South - that most of us don't bother investing in kit that will simply rot in our garages and sheds for 360 days of the year or, as in the case of my Wellies, be eaten by mice.

So enjoy your snow, those of you who like it. It's very pretty. As for the rest of you, stop moaning about our lack of preparedness - we're never going to change - and go make a snowman instead. I hate snow but I can wait the bastard out. And as I do, I'll stay in the warm and dry and watch my neighbours falling over and slippy-sliding outside. I'll have a real fire blazing in the hearth, roast pork in the oven and a hot cup of tea in my hand.

I may be an old misery when it comes to snow but I won't be miserable I assure you.

Five terrible films you should all see before you die ... if you survive them

2012-02-04T10:56:00.001Z

I love bad music. I love bad poetry. I love bad films. I've featured them all at some time or other on this blog. But let me just qualify what I mean by bad; I mean something made in all seriousness by earnest and genuine people who believed that they were creating something of worth but which turned out to be gut-achingly hilarious. I'm talking about people like Theophile Marzials whose appalling poem 'A Tragedy' appeared on these pages just a few days ago. Or the execrable Mrs Miller who I wrote about back in 2007 (see here and more bad music here, here and here). If it's deliberately tongue-in-cheek, I have no interest.

So, what do I regard as the worst films ever made? That's a toughie. There are some truly terrible films. But if I stick with my original definition of 'bad' I can easily pick five films, all intended to be taken completely seriously, that are so bad they make laugh me so hard that a little bit of wee sometimes comes out. Here they are, in no particular order.

Plan 9 from Outer Space - the grandaddy of all bad films and Ed D Wood's enduring masterpiece. I probably don't need to tell you about star Bela Lugosi dying halfway through filming and all of the interior shots being done using Wood's wife's doctor with a cape over his face. Nor do I need to mention the hubcap flying saucers or the curious shifts between pitch-black night and sunny day. And I certainly won't labour the genius of lines like 'Saucers? You mean the kind from up there?' and 'One thing's for sure, Inspector Clay is dead, murdered, and somebody's responsible'. It's genius from start to finish. Watch it. Watch it now.

The Room - What can I say about Tommy Wiseau's film that hasn't already been said? It's a glorious assemblage of oddly-played scenes, bizarre line deliveries and over-the-top acting that wouldn't look out of place in a Primary School Nativity during a gas leak. Wiseau does everything in this film except write the music. And that's crap. You're tearing me apart Lisa!!!

The Giant Claw - I had to include this as the ambassador for every 1950s ridiculous monster. This giant rubber chicken with its ping-pong ball eyes, variable size and annoying screech is just ahead of the creatures in Robot Monster (ape suit with diving helmet), Creature from the Haunted Sea (Torn bin bags and more ping-pong balls), From Hell it Came (rubbish walking tree costume) and The Creeping Terror (basically three men and a carpet) in the race for crappiest beastie. Everything about this film is perfect. Perfectly bad.

Can't Stop the Music - What were the Village People (and Steve Guttenberg) thinking of when they made this horrible, horrible film? It's a disco-based film released in 1980 just as disco was dead and boasting the campest performances by straight actors since Duncan Norvelle first shouted 'Chase me!' The story is a mess throughout and most of the Village People's hits don't appear - despite the trailer suggesting they do. One high spot of the film is this bizarre performance by the late Glenn 'Leather Man' Hughes. Glorious.

What to choose for my fifth and final bad film? I can't choose modern straight-to-video stuff like Sharktopus or Mega Piranha as they're all a bit too knowing and obvious. Meanwhile there are endless 1950s B movies like They saved Hitler's Brain, Queen of Outer Space, Bride of the Monster, Cat Women of the Moon, It Conquered the World, Donovan's Brain, Nude on the Moon, Santa Claus versus The Martians and Arnold Swarzenegger's mumbling genre debut in Hercules in New York. But in the end I plumped for some 1980s ghastliness with The Ice Pirates.

The Ice Pirates is representative of a whole swathe of terrible 1980s post-Star Wars cash-in films such as Battle Beyond the Stars, Riders to the Stars, America 3000, Forbidden World, Galaxy of Terror and Space Rage. They appear to have been made on a budget of 47p each and some even recycled the same special effects sequences, costumes and spaceships and presumably thought that we wouldn't notice. What sets The Ice Pirates apart is that it's billed as a comedy and yet it's no more funny or awful than all of those other films I just mentioned. I suspect they decided on the comedy angle after seeing the audience reaction to the rushes. It was a toss-up between this and The Humanoid, which is deserving of special mention if only for Richard 'Jaws' Kiel's extraordinarily dull performance, Mrs Ringo Starr's topiary hairstyle, the Darth Vader look-alike made out of an old Samurai costume sprayed black (best line - 'My brother has made his army bloated with peace') and the heroine who, among the Zargons, Gorts and Xebots is reassuringly named Barbara Gibson.

Do check them all out if you ever get the chance. So bad they're good.

Recycled Into Art - Part 4

2012-02-02T23:02:00.000Z

Another day and some more art made by recycling waste materials or using inexpensive everyday materials in a new way.

I've been a big fan of Mark Jenkins' street art for some time; his creepily realistic human figures are wonderful. Do have a look at his website and gallery here. But, recently, he's made some pieces by a process of 'guerilla moulding' using nothing more than sticky tape. The results include these curious animals (see below). Want to see how it's done, step by step? Click here.

I saw some art by Dean Patman at the Medici Gallery in London today. He's another artist that cleverly uses household objects to make animal sculptures:

And last, but not least, for today we have Jason Mecier who creates poignant collages and portraits from garbage.

More tomorrow!

Recycled Into Art - Part 3

2012-02-01T11:46:00.000Z

Giant cows made from dead cars!

Finnish artist Miina Akkijyrkka has been creating these incredible sculptures out of recycled car parts for more than 30 years. Aren't they amazing? (Thanks to my brother Simon for alerting me to them.) Click on the pictures to enlarge them.

Next we have Tom Hardwidge's Steampunk 'Arthrobots' made from nuts and bolts and mechanical components:

And Taiwanese food carving artist Huang Mingbo creates extraordinary sculptures like these lobster shell motorcycles:

More tomorrow!

Recycled Into Art - Part 2

2012-01-31T09:26:00.000Z

Some more artist 'Wombles' - people who create things from found materials and the rubbish that most of us discard. We kick off with the sculptures of Heather Jansch, whose work I saw recently at the Eden Project:

Jean Shin does amazing things with vinyl records, umbrellas and other objects:

Robert Bradford uses thrown away children's toys, clothes pegs, buttons ... anything plastic:

And Subodh Gupta uses scrapped kitchen utensils:

More tomorrow!

Happy Birthdays they'll never see

2012-01-30T12:05:00.003Z

I was running through David Wallechinsky's and Amy Wallace's excellent Book of Lists this morning and came across an interesting section on what ages people would be if they were still alive today. As mine is the 2005 edition, I thought it might be interesting to update the list. So, if they were still alive today ...

Dylan Thomas would be 98, JFK would be 92, Malcolm X would be 86 and Marilyn Monroe would be 85. Anne Frank would be 82, Elvis would be 76, and John Lennon and Bruce Lee would both be 71.

James Dean would be 80, Jimi Hendrix would be 69, Jim Morrison and Bob Marley would both be 68, and Marc Bolan would be 64. John Belushi would be 62, Douglas Adams would be 59, Kurt Cobain would be 44 and Princess Diana would be 50.

You can't help wondering if they would be the icons they are now if they had lived to be older.

Images by Andrzej Dragan.

Recycled Into Art - Part 1

2012-01-30T11:27:00.002Z

I've always been a lover of sculpture. And I'm very much a sustainable living/save the planet kind of a guy. By combining these two passions you'll find my favourite kind of art; where things that might once have been landfill are given new life. In the past I've featured artists like Stephane Halleux, Peter Rush, David Kemp, Jessica Harrison, Ivan Lovatt, Jennifer Maestre, Junior Fritz Jacquet, James Corbett, Stuart Haygarth, Mike Rivamonte, Wim Delvoye, Yong Ho Ji, Jim and Tori Mullen, Click Mort, Alex Gross and my good friends Sophie Thompson and Ptolemy Elrington (also look here and here). I've also featured some of my own humble recycled work, such as my Art Critics painting and my Junk Owls and Cobblepot sculptures.

I've found a few more recycling artists recently and so here's a quick round up. First off the blocks is Scottish artist David Mach who makes the most amazing installations and sculptures from materials like coat hangers and match heads (as always, click on the pictures to see a larger version).

The curiously spelled Kate MccGwire uses feathers:

While Anastassia Elias uses carboard toilet roll tubes to wonderful effect:

More tomorrow!

Creating nothing but fudge

2012-01-29T10:58:00.009Z

As you'll know if you read this blogpost a while back, or this or, indeed, this or this, I have little truck with Creationists. I have no isssue with faith. I have no problem with religion. I have friends who are religious. And I consider myself a warm, caring, ethical, but atheist human being. As far as I am concerned, we're all free to believe what we want to believe. Or not believe, as the case may be. However, when people deliberately falsify the facts to suit their version of events and then use that to persuade free-thinking and easily-misguided children to share their viewpoint, I do take umbrage.

A couple of days ago I came across a website called Creation Liberty that purports to present evidence that the story of creation, as recorded in the Bible, is the absolute truth word-for-word. However, the whole website consists of nothing more than attacks on evolutionary theory and accepted science. Meanwhile, there is almost no attempt to provide any concrete evidence for the Creationist version of events. The 'proof' it provides is largely inaccurate and woefully misleading. Let me show you some examples:

One page, all about dinosaurs, starts:

'How did the dinosaurs become extinct? This question is not designed to help students to think, but rather is designed to tell them what to think. This question assumes that dinosaurs went extinct. For example, there are panthers still living wild in Florida. Many people have lived their entire lives in Florida, and have never seen a panther. Because they have not seen one, does that mean panthers do not exist in Florida? No, it simply means they are hard to find. No one could prove the extinction of anything unless they were at all places at all times at the same time. So the real question here is not, 'How did the dinosaurs go extinct,' but rather, 'Did they go extinct?'

This is a hugely lazy argument. What the author, Christopher J E Johnson, utterly fails to point out is that, while many people have never seen a panther, some people have. There are eyewitness accounts. There is physical evidence in the form of corpses, bones and panther poo. And there are photographs - lots of photographs. Johnson uses a few grainy pics and dodgy accounts of creatures such as 'The Lockness (sic) Monster' as his evidence that dinosaurs still exist. He doesn't comment on the fact that photos of Nessie have completely dried up since the advent of decent quality digital cameras, Google Earth and mobile phones. Nor does he address the fact that not all the dinosaurs did become extinct. There is compelling evidence that some species evolved into birds. As for 'No one could prove the extinction of anything unless they were at all places at all times at the same time', that statement applies to everything, surely? You can't definitively say that there are no fairies or goblins unless you were in all places at all times. But you can make the reasoned assumption that, as there is absolutely no evidence of their existence, they most likely don't.

He then goes on to explain that: 'All throughout history, dinosaurs have been known as 'dragons.' Many evolutionists make complaint that dinosaurs are not mentioned in the Bible, but that is simply not true. Dragons are mentioned in the Bible 34 times.' Is this true? Do 'many evolutions' complain about this? Have we called dinosaurs dragons 'all throughout history'? As I recall, they were only named and described for the first time in the 1840s. I wouldn't call under 200 years 'all throughout history'. And while it's quite feasible that ancient dinosaur skeletons might once have been seen as the bones of mythical dragons, it's a tenuous argument at best to suggest that the dragons mentioned in the Bible are therefore sightings of dinosaurs. For a start, many dinosaurs were small and not exactly fearsome. These are surely the most likely candidates for prolonged survival rather than the huge charismatic specialist dinosaurs? Rats will outlive lions, trust me. No dinosaur had wings - as most mythical dragons invariably do. There were once pterosaurs, of course, but they probably didn't breathe fire (if that were even possible) and they weren't dinosaurs. They were as closely related to dinosaurs as a blue whale is to a platypus. Oh, and the website's 'evidence' that dinosaurs and dragons are one and the same includes scans of older text books, the largest of which uses the description of the species dinotherium as an example.

This is a dinotherium. It's a mammal.

This is the kind of shoddy, badly-researched material that is purporting to be a more accurate account of the story of life on this planet than evolutionary theory.

I must stress again that I'm not on the attack here. I'm really not. I would never launch a website decrying faith in God and pulling the Bible to pieces. I am happy to read and discuss Creationist literature and the content of their websites. I do so often. I'm a curious and enquiring guy. What I'm looking for, as a reasoned and critical thinker, is evidence that supports their claims. I'm looking for any argument that is stronger than the evidence provided by the fossil record and the very clear evidence all around us that plants and animals can and do change form over time. What most Creationism material - including the website under discussion - usually provides me with is unsupported assertions or, most commonly I'm afraid, ill-researched attacks on evolutionary theory. I've lost count of the times I've read that there are 'no missing links between modern species and so-called extinct species'. Yes there are! Lots! Look at the dizzying variety of trilobite fossils! There are so many that you can actually see, as clear as the nose on your face, the slow and steady development of the eye over time. Then there are larger missing links like the recently discovered tiktaalik (see below). If the Creationist lobby would be as open to new information as most of us Evolutionists are, they'd read more widely and see that missing links exist all over the place.

Let's return to the website and just look at a couple more pieces of 'evidence'. Johnson provides images of an Egyptian pot which he claims clearly shows long-necked dinosaurs. Ten minutes of research will show that this is a fairly common stylistic representation of giraffes. Just looking at the shapes of the heads, legs and tails is enough. And, let's be honest, the Egyptians would be quite au fait with giraffes as Egypt is on the African continent. A supposed stegosaurus turns up on a 12th century Cambodian temple. But had the author cared to do even a simple Google search of that same temple, he'd have found all kinds of other animal images including monkeys and peacocks that also lie inside decorative lotus leaf borders that kind-of look like the plates on a stegosaurus's back. Presenting a few highly-seective images as 'evidence' is invalid and doesn't take into account Mankind's wonderful propensity for creativity in art. It's like selecting a few images by Picasso, Tretchikoff and even Peyo and making the conclusion that blue-skinned humans once existed. I could also mention the many thousands of images of God and Jesus, most of which are wildly different to each other, and none of which were painted by anyone who'd actually met either of them. Art is not proof of form or even existence.

I could go on and on but that would support the idea that this is an attack on Mr Johnson who is very probably a lovely human being. I want this to be read as a friendly challenge to the author to exhibit some proper evidence to support his claims, rather than the fuzzy logic and mishmash of inaccuracies he has provided. And also to not base his entire argument on attacking evolutionary theory, all of which can be supported with evidence.

I will, however, make a few final observations on Johnson's assertion that the story of Noah's ark is true. He states that:

'(1) The boat was 2/3rds the size of the Titanic. (300x50x30 egyptian cubits = 1.54 million cubic feet) Also taking into consideration that there were no lavish ballroom, dining halls, 1st-class accomodations (sic), engine rooms, etc. huge numbers of animals could be stored in a boat that size.'

(2) The Bible does not say Noah had to get two of every species. The evolutionists use the word species, and then illogically apply their modern definition back in time to the Bible, and call the Bible wrong. The Bible says bring two of every 'kind' so the question is how many kinds of animals did Noah take on the ark? God told Noah to take two of each kind, and seven of some kinds (Genesis 7:2-3), and we can also determine that this did not include insects or fish. (Genesis 7:22) Where exactly is the line between each kind? Scientists have not yet determined the kind barriers for many creatures, but some have estimated there are around 8,000-10,000 basic kinds of animals on the planet, which is much more reasonable for Noah and his family to accomplish.'

Let's take these two points together to begin with. The website states that 'scientists have not yet determined the kind barriers (sic) for many creatures'. Actually, yes they have. We've had a very sophisticated form of taxonomic classification and scientific nomenclature for over 200 years (see here). Saying that there may be as few as 8000 -10,000 'basic kinds of animals' without qualifying where that figure comes from or how those classes are decided is meaningless. But even if we accept it, could a boat - even one 2/3rds the size of the Titanic - fit them all in? Yes, he does suggest that baby animals were taken on board to save space (although the Bible fails to mention this) and, handily, that they were all vegetarians prior to the flood. But even if that were true, how would you sort out the vast range of environments from polar to equatorial that some 'kinds' need in order to survive (Presumably, Noah and his unnamed wife travelled all over the globe to collect them too)? What about the vast quantities of food they'd all need? What about the poo and the pee? And, while the fish and the insects may have been excluded for some reason, what about the whales? What about the sea urchins and turtles and prawns and scallops and squid? Meanwhile, all of the sea fish would have died due to the oceans being made fresh by enough rain to cover the Earth to the tops of the highest mountains; salt water fish cannot survive in fresh and vice versa. So where did all the cod come from? There are no answers to be found here.

But the biggest fudging of the facts is the argument that God didn't mean species but 'kind'. Where is that line drawn? Does that mean two tigers, two lions, panthers, ocelots, cheetahs, lynxes, pumas, wildcats, jaguars, caracals, bobcats, margays, leopards, servals and domestic cats? And, I guess, because we can't prove that they're extinct, all of the prehistoric cats like the sabre-toothed smilodon too? Or does it mean two generic cats that were the progenitors of all of the different species of cat that exist now? How would this happen? Not by genetics, natural selection and evolution surely? If Creationist theory allows such variation on a theme within a family of animals such as felidae (cats), then why not within the order of Carnivora? Or the phylum Chordata? Is it really so hard to imagine that, over tens of millions of years, whales and bears could have evolved from a common ancestor? Creationists spend all their time focusing on the outward appearances of animals and handily overlook the fact that animals as diffferent as bears and whales have more physical similarities than differences. Whales once walked on four legs; they have the atrophied remnants of a pelvis and leg bones embedded in their flesh. They're not just there by random chance. They serve no purpose. That's hardly intelligent design is it?

The point to make here is that if you're going to present a valid argument to an accepted theory, do so with facts, figures and physical evidence, not cherry-picked images, innacurate reporting (Sir Peter Scott was never a member of parliament - he stood as a Conservative candidate in 1945 and lost - Nor did he or his wife ever see Nessie or claim to have done so), and lazy assumptions. The theory of evolution is what all theories are - the most likely answer to a question based upon the evidence currently available. Like any theory, it can change and adapt if new evidence comes to light. It can also be proven to be downright wrong. But you need convincing arguments to do that. If there ever comes a day when the Creationist movement finds the evidence to support their argument, I will gladly accept it and so will every right-thinking scientist on the planet. Evolution is not a religion as Johnson so absurdly claims. It is a belief based upon facts. Creationism is a belief based solely upon faith.

To put it another way, I'd rather have proof - rather than blind faith - that there's a parachute in my back pack before jumping from the plane. I'd also argue that making others jump blindly because you say that they must is wrong on every level. You must give them the option to look for themselves oif they want to.

So, by all means teach children that there are two versions of events, the scientific view and the Biblical view. Throw in some other theories too such as panspermia or alien intervention. It's good to explore different possibilities; it creates enquiring minds and intelligent discussion. But let the children decide what they want to believe. Let them examine the evidence and make a choice. If they choose to believe that every word in the Bible is true, that's their right. But don't force them to that view with lies and misleading nonsense. My children were brought up with all the facts to hand and with no bias from me. One believes that there is a god or higher being, the other two don't. I respect their beliefs. I have religious friends - one is a vicar - who can quite happily square evolution with belief in God. They don't have to be polarised opposites or mutually exclusive. They can co-exist. Many scientists have faith. And, anyway, the Reverend Dave has the ultimate trump card as I can never prove that God didn't invented the elegant, sophisticated and beautiful (his words) process of natural selection.

Evolutionary theory isn't evil. It has no agenda. It's not a religion. It's open to new ideas. It's not out to prove the non-existence of God. Creationism, by comparison, is blinkered and often aggressively defensive. It's a viewpoint that allows for no flexibility of thinking. If you don't agree with the precise description in the Bible, you're wrong. End of argument. Sites like Creation Liberty do not expand intelligent discourse and do nothing for the Creationist movement except to expose some of them as ill-informed and ignorant (in the true sense of the word).

According to the Bible itself, faith is 'being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see' (Hebrews 11:1). Faith should be enough for you Mr Johnson; believe what you want to believe. But use your energies for good deeds and kindness. Help to create the next generation of good, ethical men and women. Help to create the next generation of scientists and philanthropists who will cure diseases, ease suffering and expand our knowledge of this amazing universe. Don't put all of your passion into raging against a theory you don't subscribe to, clearly don't understand and, from the evidence of your own website, refuse to even consider as a possibility.

No News is Good News

2012-01-28T14:17:00.003Z

The beginning of February will mark my six month anniversary without newspapers (see here). As you may recall, I gave up reading them as they were becoming increasingly annoying, scaremongering, sensationalist and obsessed with vapid 'celebrities'. It started as just a week of easily-swallowed cold turkey but felt so good that I carried on. I soon included the TV news as well. The daily barrage of bad news, misery, greed and tragedy - and most of it unlikely to ever have a direct effect on my life - has gone. Ignorance truly is bliss.

That said, I do occasionally catch snippets of TV news; it's unavoidable unless I completely stay away from television or the internet. And every little piece I catch reminds me of why I made the right decision. Firstly, there's the quality of the news reporting. There was a time when it restricted itself to facts. Now, every report seems fudged and opinionated. For example, during the recent sinking of the Costa Concordia cruise ship (it's not a liner as many news reports said it was) I found myself watching an early evening BBC report in which the reporter stated that 'some people' had suggested that the ship was too tall. What people? Who are they? How many of them? Where did they voice this opinion and to whom? Are they engineers or experts of some kind? Why are we paying 'some people' sufficient attention to warrant their mention on the national news? Of course, none of those questions were ever answered. Instead, as if to add insult to inanity, the reporter then visited an expert on ship design in a lab with a big water tank and a model boat where he explained that no, the ship wasn't top-heavy at all. The whole five minute segment was utterly pointless filler. There's far too much use made of these waffling unqualified 'some people say' and 'people have suggested' statements in the media. They muddy the issue for the sake of padding and sensationalism.

Even worse are so-called 'vox pops'; those short snappy interviews with people in the street. In the same broadcast, a reporter covering the story of Dr Theodora Dallas - the juror jailed for prejudicing a case by researching a defendant's background and previous convictions - decided to ask people what their views were on events. One person said that Dallas should have got more than six months for contempt of court. Another said that they thought the penalty was too harsh. A third said that he didn't see what the fuss was about and that he'd do the same if he's ever picked for jury service. So what did those vox pops add to the story? Three contrasting opinions, none of which have any relevance or authority. So why include them at at all in a supposedly factual news broadcast? As Martin Robbins wrote in The Guardian on Thursday; 'The BBC's drive to avoid bias is admirable, but - whether through laziness or fear - journalists have fallen into the trap of believing that avoiding bias means avoiding any kind of judgement. The idea that a policy or political statement might actually be objectively, empirically, scientifically just wrong is alien to such people. Instead we live in a bizarre place where it seems almost every half-baked opinion – no matter how stupid or irresponsible – must be broadcast to the world as valid and equal. In this polluted environment, attitudes to things like 'facts', 'evidence' and 'science' range from indifference to open hostility.'

Mitchell and Webb caught what I'm saying perfectly in this sketch:

And when reporters aren't presenting us with pointless diversions or vox popping, they're standing in the street outside a building where something is going on that we, and they, aren't allowed to go inside and watch. Why? The news anchor could provide exactly the same information (which is usually 'we don't know what's happening yet') without the additional cost of an outside broadcast unit and a wet reporter standing in a thunderstorm.

Oh, and I'm sorry but since when was the fact that a pop singer is getting divorced 'news'? It really, really isn't. Nor is it news that a footballer has cheated on his wife or that someone famous has opened a shop. News, people, not gossip. News!

But I reserve my biggest dollops of ire for the interviews. I've genuinely come close to screaming when I hear reporters asking people who've been through Hell: 'Are you glad it's all over?' I've felt my blood pressure rise every time a reporter asks 'What does it feel like to be free after your months of incarceration?' or 'What do you plan to do now that you're home from Iraq and reunited with loved ones?' Of course they're glad, unless they're some kind of sado-masochist in which case they'd have told their rescuers to leave them handcuffed to the radiator. And I think we can all probably guess what those soldiers are going to be doing with their partners after being separated and celibate for so long. Several times, I suspect, and in a variety of positions too.

Things get even worse in the studio and many interviews seem overly provocative and aimed at getting a reaction rather than facts. As you may know, Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan was very vocal about a recent appearance on Radio 4's Today show - a programme supposedly about current affairs. Instead of being asked about the technical difficulties of translating a much-loved film to the West End stage, Linehan was bombarded with barbed accusatory questions aimed at forcing him to defend what he'd done. As he put it: 'The style of debate practised by the Today programme poisons discourse in this country. It is an arena where there are no positions possible except for diametrically opposed ones, where nuance is not permitted and where politicians are forced into defensive positions of utter banality. None of it is any good for the national conversation.' Martin Robbins again: 'The Today programme claims to be serious, but seems to work on the basis that the best way to enlighten viewers is to take two people and force them into a sort of intellectual-masturbation death match. Graham Linehan appeared on the show last year to discuss his adaptation of The Ladykillers and found himself ambushed by questions that weren't just hostile, but sometimes completely bizarre.'

I don't want to hear shows where the reporter has already made up his/her mind and then invites a guest in to defend themselves. That's not reportage. That's interrogation. That's not what I want from my news reports and current affairs programming. I want facts and figures, and interviews with experts who can add detail and explanation to why events have happened the way they have. I want eyewitness accounts where people tell me how an event affected them, not assumptions by newsreaders that 'the mood' is this or that 'there's a growing sense' of that. I have no fucking interest whatsoever in the marital shenanigans of Premiership Footballers or reality TV stars.

I deliberately watched the BBC News - which I still consider to be the best - at Six O'Clock yesterday and counted the number of times a reporter or newsreader voiced unsupported opinion. I counted eight instances in the first three minutes. I also looked for subtle bias in the words used by reporters; in particular adjectives such as 'horrific', 'worrying', 'terrifying' etc. that are perfectly acceptable tumbling from the lips of traumatised eye-witnesses and victims but have no place in a news report (unless repeating what others have said). I heard two in the same three minute period. I also heard phrases such as 'their resolve crumbled' rather than 'they no longer opposed' and 'dogged by rumours' rather than 'continuing rumours'. The use of emotive words like 'crumbled' and 'dogged by' create a very different picture to the more factual alternatives. It's as if the people who write the news feel the need to 'sex' the reports up. You really don't have to guys.

The news is not an entertainment show. When it stops acting like one, I will return to watching it. In the meantime, I'll get my information from other sources.

The postcardy weirdness of Alex Gross

2012-01-28T00:30:00.002Z

Alex Gross collects old postcards and photos and then turns them into something quite odd by adding painted clothes, makeup and backgrounds.

As I say, odd but strangely compelling. Visit his site here.

Teaser Trailer

2012-01-27T19:33:00.001Z

As you may know, I'm doing my first public speaking gig for over a year very soon. It's at the Sceptics in the Pub event in North London on February 20th (see here) and is the first of quite a few that I'll be doing this year.

The theme will be critical thinking; particularly how the idea of 'question everything' caused me no end of hassle during my 30 year police career. However, there is a happy ending; I did eventually see many of my ideas vindicated and I even became something of an expert in applying new ways of thinking to tackle persistent problems of crime and disorder. The talk will explain the highs and the lows, where things went right and when they didn't, and there will be lots of laughs. You'll learn all about what scares elephants, the best way to make fake vomit, why Tim Minchin and I ended up discussing plastic dog poo and how to stop knife crime by holding a dog show.

If you come along, I can promise you some funny stories, some extraordinary stories and some pretty pictures. You'll be seeing some Powerpoint slides like these:

That's the teaser trailer done.

Do come along if you can. But if you can't, keep an eye out for announcements of other talks on Twitter and on this blog.

It would be lovely to meet you!

Click Mort's Curious Curios

2012-01-27T16:52:00.000Z

Remember the work of Jessica Harrison who takes charity shop-bought porcelain figures and re-sculpts them into horror figurines (remind yourself here)? Well, thanks to the ever-brilliant Hi-Fructose magazine, I've now discovered the oddly named Click Mort who buys the same kinds of figurines but who then chops and swaps the parts to make bizarre sculptures like these:

Aren't they ... weirdly wonderful? Do visit his website here to see more.

You'd be better off with a sinister hairdryer

2012-01-27T16:14:00.001Z

I've blogged before (see here) about dominant handedness and some of the myths that surround left-handedness (more creative, sinister etc.). I've also argued that we should spend more time looking for the similarities between people rather than differences. Whichever hand is dominant really should not be an issue in the 21st century. However, I still find that manufacturers often don't take left-handedness into consideration when designing a new product. I'm a Righty but one of my daughters is a Lefty and she has endless problems with everyday products because people haven't been courteous enough to think about her needs (and the 7-10% of the population who share them). It's a Righty dominated world. Yes, some companies do produce left-handed versions of things - Virgin even make a left-handed mobile phone - but these products are invariably more expensive than the right-handed versions. With all of the brilliance and inventiveness we have as a species isn't it possible to design products that can be used equally well by both?

I mention this today because of a tweet I read earlier. Artist Joe Rogers - known by his Twitter name of @colourboxonline - made the comment: 'Is there a rule that says in pictures hair dryers have to be pointing to the left?' and he linked it to a Google image search. Here's the link. But if you can't click on that right now, here's what comes up:

Pages and pages of hairdryers and nearly all of them pointing left. And you know why don't you? I assume most of you reading this are right-handed. If you had to lay a hairdryer down in order to photograph it, you would lay it down facing left. A left-handed person would lay it down facing right. I would therefore suggest, Mr or Mrs Hairdryer salesperson that you present your photographs with the hairdryers facing right. You'll stand out from the crowd on the Google image search. There you - free marketing advice.

After all, it's often the product that breaks all the rules that captures the most readers. Nothing else would explain why the Daily Mail website is now the most visited newspaper site on the planet (It's true! See the BBC news item here). Their site breaks every rule of website design ... but maybe that's the point. It''s the peacock that gets noticed, not the hundreds of starlings around it.

When is a protest not a protest?

2012-01-27T08:58:00.002Z

Russian police don't take kindly to opposition protesters – even if they're 5cm high and made of plastic.

Police in the Siberian city of Barnaul have asked prosecutors to investigate the legality of a recent protest that saw dozens of small dolls – teddy bears, Lego men, South Park figurines – arranged to mimic a protest, complete with signs reading: "I'm for clean elections" and "A thief should sit in jail, not in the Kremlin".

"Political opposition forces are using new technologies to carry out public events – using toys with placards at mini-protests," Andrei Mulintsev, the city's deputy police chief, said at a press conference this week, according to local media. "In our opinion, this is still an unsanctioned public event."

Activists set up the display after authorities repeatedly rejected their request to hold a sanctioned demonstration of the kind held in Moscow to protest disputed parliamentary elections results and Vladimir Putin's expected return to the presidency in a March vote.

Passersby admired the display with giggles, but police took it more seriously, examining its details and writing down each placard.

"The authorities' attempt to limit citizens' rights to express their position has become absurd," said Lyudmila Alexandrova, a 26-year-old graduate student and protest organiser. "We wanted to hyperbolise this attempt and show the absurdity and farce of officials' struggle with their own people."

They are not the first. Russia's Blue Buckets group, formed to protest officials' wanton flouting of traffic rules, have run across government cars while wearing buckets on their heads, drawing the state's ire.

Voina, the rebellious art collective, won worldwide fame after painting a 65-metre-long phallus on a drawbridge in St Petersburg that, when erected, faced the city's Federal Security Service (FSB) headquarters. Its members have been repeatedly detained.

The activists in Barnaul say they have no choice but to adopt creative measures. Local authorities have refused to issue approval for opposition protests since 10 December, the first nationwide day of protest in Russia. Around 2,000 people turned out in Barnaul that day, an unprecedented number for the small city.

Police have tried to pressure them into shutting down the doll protests, organisers said. "They tried to tell us our event was illegal – they even said that to put toys in the snow, we had to rent it from the city authorities," Alexandrova said.

All authorities appear to be on high alert, as Russia prepares for its next day of protest on 4 February, one month before a presidential vote that Putin hopes will sweep him back into the Kremlin. On Thursday, the Moscow mayor's office approved the opposition's request to gather up to 50,000 people for a march through part of the city centre.

The jumpiest police were found this week in Kaliningrad, Russia's Baltic exclave. As two dozen nationalist youth took to the streets for a jog designed to promote a healthy lifestyle, carrying their traditional black, yellow and white flag, police descended upon the rally, having confused it for a gay pride parade. Gay rights remain largely unrecognised in Russia, and gay rights rallies are regularly banned. Police questioned the activists before releasing them, local media reported.

Source: Miriam Elder in The Guardian. Photograph: Sergey Teplyakov/vkontakte

The Worst Poem of All Time?

2012-01-26T17:01:00.001Z

What is the worst poem ever written?

There are many serious contenders for the title. The all-time greats - people like Julia Moore and William Topaz McGonagall - produced gloriously crappy epics. But even the big guns occasionally dropped a bollock. Can you believe that William Wordsworth could produce lines like:

'I've measured it from side to side;
'Tis three feet long and two feet wide...'

(describing a pond in The Thorn)

For a while, I considering nailing my colours to The Stuttering Lover (not to be confused with the traditional Irish song of the same name - see here) by Fred Emerson Brooks (1850-1923). It's astoundingly bad. Read it out aloud in all of its insensitive glory (I hear it in my head as read by Forrest Gump for some reason):

The Stuttering Lover

I luh-love you very well,
Much mu-more than I can tell.
With a lu-lu-lu-lu-lu-love I cannot utter;
I kn-know just what to say
But my tongue gets in the way,
And af-fe-fe-fe-fe-fection’s bound to stutter!

When a wooer wu-wu-woos,
And a cooer cu-cu-coos,
Till his face is re-re-red as a tomato,
Take his heart in bi-bi-bits,
Every portion fi-fi-fits,
Though his love song su-su-seem, somewhat staccato!

I'll wu-worship you, of course,
And nuh-never get divorce,
Though you stu-stu-stu-stu-storm in angry weather;
For whu-when you're in a pique,
So muh-mad you cannot speak,
We'll be du-du-du-du-dumb then both together.

However, this looks like the finest prose when compared to the outlandish poesy of Theophile Marzials (1850-1920). His greatest work (in my humble opinion) is A Tragedy, first published in 1874 in an anthology of his work called The Gallery of Pigeons (I've often thought that would be a great name for a band).

The poem inflamed people's passions - although maybe not in the way Marzials would have liked. Dante Gabriel Rossetti hated it, saying that, 'I could scarcely believe it wasn't a spoof, so I checked the first edition, and sure enough, this text is accurate and the book clearly had pretensions to be taken seriously.'

So here it is in all of its bizarre onomatopoeic glory ...

A Tragedy

Death! Plop.
The barges down in the river flop.
Flop, plop.
Above, beneath.
From the slimy branches the grey drips drop,
As they scraggle black on the thin grey sky,
Where the black cloud rack-hackles drizzle and fly
To the oozy waters, that lounge and flop
On the black scrag piles, where the loose cords plop,
As the raw wind whines in the thin tree-top.
Plop, plop.
And scudding by
The boatmen call out hoy! and hey!
All is running water and sky,
And my head shrieks -- "Stop,"
And my heart shrieks -- "Die."

My thought is running out of my head;
My love is running out of my heart,
My soul runs after, and leaves me as dead,
For my life runs after to catch them -- and fled
They all are every one!
-- and I stand, and start,
At the water that oozes up, plop and plop,
On the barges that flop
And dizzy me dead.
I might reel and drop.
Plop.
Dead.
And the shrill wind whines in the thin tree-top
Flop, plop.

A curse on him.
Ugh! yet I knew --
I knew --
If a woman is false can a friend be true?
It was only a lie from beginning to end --
My Devil --
My "Friend"
I had trusted the whole of my living to!
Ugh; and I knew!
Ugh!
So what do I care,
And my head is empty as air --
I can do,
I can dare,
(Plop, plop
The barges flop
Drip drop.)
I can dare! I can dare!
And let myself all run away with my head
And stop.
Drop.
Dead.
Plop, flop.

Plop.

'And let myself all run away with my head?' Genius.

Want to read more bad poetry? I can recommend three books - The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse by D B Wyndham Lewis and Charles Lee, Very Bad Poetry by Kathryn and Ross Petras, and Pegasus Descending: A Treasury of the Best Bad Poems in English by James Camp, X J Kennedy and Keith Waldrop. All three are crammed full of delicious dross and doeful waffle.

The first tiny hint of Spring

2012-01-26T15:27:00.000Z

I imagine that a seasoned twitcher would enjoy living around where I live in South Buckinghamshire. We are blessed with some stunning wild birdlife. Easily most obvious are the enormous red kites that are as common here as pigeons are in the city and seagulls at the beach. You might recall some photos I got of a few individuals in my garden last year (see here). But, because this is a county of woodlands (hence why nearby High Wycombe was once the centre of the UK furniture industry), we're also quite accustomed to seeing wood pigeons, collared doves, jays, cuckoos and woodpeckers. In fact, the first sighting of the green woodpeckers is usually an indication that Spring is on the way. So you can imagine how excited I was just ten minutes ago when this lovely creature landed on my lawn and began probing for worms brought near the surface by heavy rain this morning. I grabbed my camera and took the best shots I could through double-glazing (click for larger pics).

Glorious aren't they?

Building Bridges

2012-01-26T12:36:00.004Z

This is an extraordinary story from last November ... never before seen pictures of Tower Bridge - one of the world's most iconic structures - have been unveiled after a stash of 50 prints were found in a skip (Click on the photos to see larger versions).

The pictures date back to 1892 and the bridge's steel frame can be seen, looking much like it does in the finale of the first Robert Downey Jnr Sherlock Holmes film.

The caretaker of a Westminster office block - who wishes to remain annymous - found the photos in a skip along with other papers relating to the bridge's construction. 'I didn't know what to do with them', he told reporters, 'So I wrapped them in some brown paper and put them in a bag under the bed.’ However, when he mentioned them to his neighbour, City of Westminster tour guide Peter Berthoud, the significance of the find started to emerge. ‘When my neighbour gave me a disk with the images on I just couldn't believe it', said Berthoud. ‘I spent hours going through my books to see if these pictures were already around, but I couldn't see them anywhere - they are totally unique.'

The bridge took eight years to build and, at the time, was a landmark feat of engineering. And it nearly looked very different; the bridge's original architect, Horace Jones, wanted to clad the bridge in brick. However, following his death, he was succeeded as architect by John Wolfe-Barry who decreed that the bridge should be clad in stone

'People are so used to seeing images of the Empire State Building being built' says Berthoud, 'But this is part of British history being created 50 years earlier.’

Thanks to my friend Mark Page for bringing these to my attention.

Best Headline of the Year 2011?

2012-01-26T12:01:00.001Z

Uncle and the Battle for Recognition

2012-01-25T11:20:00.000Z

This post first appeared in December 2007. I've decided to reprint it because there is STILL no movement on getting these magnificent books republished. It's very short-sighted of the copyright owners as (a) the books have a big fan base and (b) copies are circulating all over the place as e-books. I found no difficulty in finding copies of all six Uncle books as PDFs that I can read on my Kindle. Frankly, however, I'd rather people could buy the books. Now, read on ...

I am delighted to be able to tell you that the second book in the Uncle series by J P Martin – Uncle Cleans Up – is at long last being reprinted next year (Note: 2008 - but no others have since been reprinted). It follows the reprinting of Book 1 – Uncle – earlier this year. And why am I so delighted? Because the Uncle books are, in my humble opinion, some of the funniest and most inventive children’s books ever written.

I bought the very first Uncle book back when I was in short trousers. Published in 1964, Uncle told the story of an immensely rich elephant – the Uncle of the stories – and his adventures. Aided by The Old Monkey, his man-servant (simian-servant?) and cast of bizarre characters with even more bizarre names, Uncle strives to keep the peace and to protect his many friends and residents. His home, a strange place called Homeward, is described wonderfully by writer David Langford as ‘… half Gormenghast and half Disneyland. Scenic railways abound; there are museums with entire floors devoted to flamingo bird-baths or treacle bowls through the ages. Most of Homeward's inhabitants are alarmingly eccentric, and would pass unnoticed in the Goon Show. An epic pitch of fear is reached during an overnight stay in the Haunted Tower, where ‘The White Terror’ proves to be a small ghost about a foot high, which stands disagreeably on the bedside table muttering, “I did it! I took the strawberry jam!" But facing the hundred-towered glory of Homeward is the dark side of the farce: the filthy stronghold Badfort, ruled by Uncle's arch-enemy Beaver Hateman. The Badfort crowd spend their days lounging around dressed in unclean sacking, swilling Black Tom and Leper Gin, writing down bad thoughts in their Hating Books, and hatching terrible schemes to entrap Uncle.’

Uncle appeared in just six books: Uncle (1964), Uncle Cleans Up (1965), Uncle and His Detective (1966), Uncle and the Treacle Trouble (1967), Uncle and Claudius the Camel (1969) and Uncle and the Battle for Badgertown (1973). All were riotously illustrated by the then pretty much unknown Quentin Blake and all are now horribly collectible. The books were published in hardback in the UK by Jonathan Cape and regularly sell on e-bay and rare book sites in excess of £150-£600 per book. The fact that the entire series has never been republished has forced the prices ever higher. It’s also meant that J P Martin has not enjoyed the success and recognition given to other children’s ‘nonsense’ authors like Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll and Roald Dahl. And this is a crime, it truly is. Martin’s books are hilarious, touching, almost Pythonesque in their surreal humour and feature the best names for characters ever. Flabskin. Noddy Ninety. Jellytussle. Isadore Hitmouse. Butterskin Mute. Firlon Hootman. Abdullah the Clothes Peg Merchant. Genius.

To understand why the Uncle books have been so hard done by, we need look no further than the deeply misused and misunderstood cult of Political Correctness. It was the PC Police who drove Uncle away - not because of racism (the books are uncommonly cosmopolitan for the times they were written in), nor sexism nor ageism. It was Classism. Because Uncle is rich and often pompous, some claimed that the books championed the elitism of the Upper Classes. Well, all I can say to these people is ‘try reading the books instead of making assumptions’. Uncle is constantly sent up by his friends and enemies and frequently suffers for his pomposity. David Langford again: ‘The hilarious libels they print about him in the Badfort News all have a regrettable element of truth. It's not only the Badfort mob who are sick to death of hearing about his great deeds of benevolence, like the Opening of the Dwarfs' Drinking Fountains. Also, ever-guzzling Uncle isn't terribly bright: the third novel features a hunt for buried treasure described by the enigmatic code-word dlog, the gag being that everyone except our hero cracks this cipher at first glance.’ Uncle's pomposity is funny. It is certainly not a trait that is celebrated nor valued. Except maybe by author Will Self, a long-time fan of the series who says: ‘I think Uncle stuck with me because of its combination of excess, gadgetry and eccentricity – all of which are modes of being I have attempted to emulate in my adult life. I blame J P Martin.’

Ultimately, it is Uncle’s philanthropy and kindness of heart that win the day, not his money or his class. Oh, and there are some mighty battles too which has led to further anti-Uncle protests that the books are ‘over-violent’. This is also nonsense. Yes, Uncle may ‘lay about himself' with a stone club or two and kick the bad guys 50 feet into the air, but this is cartoon violence of a kind far exceeded by Itchy and Scratchy or even Tom and Jerry. There’s no blood or gore or death in Uncle’s world. It’s madness that the books are held in some kind of republishing Hell because of these silly allegations. I wonder what J P himself would have made of the all the fuss?

John Percival Martin (1880-1966) was not a soldier of the class war at all. He was neither a rabid Socialist nor a member of the landed gentry. He was born in Scarborough, Yorkshire and became a Methodist minister in 1902 before serving as a missionary in South Africa and as an army chaplain in Palestine during the First World War. After the Second World War he lived in the village of Timberscombe in Somerset until his death in 1966. He made up the Uncle stories for his children and was persuaded to write them down in his final years. The latter three books were completed by his daughter from notes he left after his death … but, sadly, most people have never read them as they are so hard to find.

I am lucky I guess. I recognised the genius of J P Martin early and got myself copies of the books. Consequently I have read them all several times over. Now I’d like you all to have the same chance. The first book is back in print and the second is on its way (Sadly, they're being reprinted in America rather than their native UK but heigh ho ... let's make the most of the weak dollar, eh?). I’d love to do my small part to ensure that the others follow suit. We should start an official campaign to get the Uncle books recognised for the children’s classics they are. J P Martin has legions of fans including Neil Gaiman, Terry pratchett and the aforementioned David Langford and Will Self. Quentin Blake has said that he’d love to see the books re-issued. In June this year, Guardian columnist Imogen Russell Williams wrote that ‘we should fight to keep it in print, and campaign for the re-emergence of the later books too - I'm desperate to know what happens in Uncle and the Treacle Trouble.’ And designer Tony Bannister – who has long had first dibs on the film rights to the Uncle books – has been campaigning for years to make the books into an animated TV series. The time is right for Uncle to take his place among the giants of quality children’s imaginative fiction.

So come on, Jonathan Cape! Forget the spectre of dodgy 1980s PC politics and enjoy the books for what they are. Let’s get Uncle where he belongs – in the hands and hearts of imaginative children.

If you're the petitioning type, write to Jonathan Cape Ltd, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA and give them a damn good pen lashing.

If you want to read the Uncle books, start here at Amazon with the Red Fox reprint of Uncle and Uncle Cleans Up, published together as Uncle Stories. Or you can buy the new American edition of Uncle here.

Tony Bannister's Tales from Homeward blog is always a good read as is his Uncle website. And there is a Lion Tower newsgroup on Yahoo where fans discuss the books.

All illustrations are Copyright (c) Quentin Blake and the estate of J P Martin. Colouring by Tony Bannister.

Insert terrible pun about eggs here (eggcellent?)

2012-01-25T10:22:00.003Z

As my blog is now in its sixth year (You can read all of 2006-2011's posts on my old blog here), I thought it might be fun to re-print some of the older entries and bring them up to date. I'll start with this post from 2006 and an odd little fact; you can balance an egg on its end.

What you do is this; position the egg on one of its ends - pointy or rounded it doesn't matter - and just hold it there lightly with your fingertips. Then - be patient. It takes about 10 minutes but suddenly you'll feel the egg 'settle'; the heavy yolk works its way down to the lowest point and falls through the white and you'll feel something like a tiny 'clunk' when it happens. You can then carefully take your fingers away. And voila! One strangely balancing egg apparently in defiance of gravity and all reason.

And here's the proof. No Photoshop. No wires, superglue or blu-tack. Just an egg and a work surface.

As I was doing this, my brother-in-law (a very pragmatic and not easily impressed heating engineer) turned up. I showed him my egg. He looked for the trick. He scratched his head. Then he snorted, grabbed an egg from the basket and, in an 'anything you can do ...' fashion, attempted to balance it on its pointy end.

And it also worked. He was amazed.

So try it for yourselves. And send your egg balancing pics to me at stevyncolgan@mac.com or via Twitter - I'm @stevyncolgan.

Laurel and Sweary

2012-01-21T14:32:00.000Z

Have a look at this wonderful sketch from the cruelly underrated BBC series The Peter Serafinowicz Show featuring Peter and Paul Putner as Laurel and Hardy (Warning - swearing!)

It's great isn't it? But it set me to wondering if there are any genuine Laurel and Hardy outtakes. After all, their films were made in the 1920s and 30s before editing suites had really become established and everything was shot live, in one take and on one camera. Surely there should have been hundreds of goofs and bloopers? And not just Laurel and Hardy ... think about all those Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton stunts, those Charlie Chaplin and Keystone Kops manic chases, the opportunities for Fatty Arbuckle, Ben Turpin, Harry Langdon, Charlie Chase and James Finlayson to trip, fall, corpse or curse. Wouldn't it be great if we could find enough silent and early talkie footage bloopers to put together an early 20th century version of It'll be Alright on the Night?

I would love to hear Faye Busch shout 'Bugger!'

Words you didn't know you didn't know 3

2012-01-21T11:20:00.002Z

Following on from Words you didn't know you didn't know, Words you didn't know you didn't know 2, German words you didn't know you didn't know, Words you didn't know you didn't know that start with A and Anglo-Saxon words you didn't know you didn't know, here's another selection of words for everyday objects that may skipped under your radar.

Achenes - (pronounced ah-keens) The little yellow seeds on the outside of a strawberry.
Arcuate Vanes - The raised ridges on the top surface of a Frisbee.
Baisemain - That slightly creepy kiss on the female hand beloved of cads and bounders.
Bobèche - The widened ring at the top of a candlestick that catches the first of the melted wax.
Calamus - The tubey bit at the base of a feather that is cut for use as a quill pen.
Caruncula - That pink blob in the inside corner of your eye where all the sleepy grit forms.
Dragées - (pronounced drah-zhay) The proper name for those edible silver balls you put on top of cakes.
Eyes - The correct and somewhat macabre official term for the holes in Swiss cheeses.
Fines - The dusty remnants in the bottom of packets of cereal.
Frog - That hollow in the top and bottom of a housebrick that you slap the cement into.
Gari - The pickled pink ginger slices served with sushi.
Glassine - The thin shiny paper that you get inside boxes of chocolates or from which the chocolate cups are made.
Gluteal Crease - Where your arse meets the top of your thighs.
Grawlix - A series of typographic symbols used to replace a swear word e.g. 'I've cut my &%£! finger off!'
Keeper - The loop on a belt that you tuck the excess into so that it doesn't flap about.
Muselets - The wire cage around a champagne cork.
Pediddle - A car with one headlight out.
Pips - The dots on dice.
Rowels - The spiked wheels on a pair of spurs.
Samaras - The correct name for 'helicopter' seeds shed by sycamore, ash, maple and elm trees.
Splat - The flat piece of wood in the centre of a chair back.
Tang - The part of the knife blade that extends into the handle.
Toorie - The little bobble on top of a tam o'shanter.
Ullage - The air space in the top of a bottle of wine.
Zarf - The metal holder and handle into which a glass teacup fits. Also used for the cardboard sleeve around paper cups in coffee shops although that should be called a clutch.

A Weekend Miscellany (NSFW - Some rude words!)

2012-01-21T00:36:00.004Z

A few little snippets collected together in one blogpost. To start, here are two interesting features that every creative should read.

The first is this excellent blogpost by Peter James Field which discusses the tricky issue of whether we should ever do work for free.

The second is this article by Ian Rankin who is quite rightly concerned about the terrible financial situation that exists for many writers.

And now for some pictures that amused me this week (click to enlarge):

Duck Ahoy!

2012-01-20T23:43:00.000Z

Here's a curious tale in which your average bathtub yellow duckie - or several thousand of them - helped oceanographers to work out how the seas' currents work.

In 1992, a consignment of 'Friendly Floatees' was washed into the Pacific Ocean after twelve 40-foot (13.3 m) containers were lost overboard from a ship caught in a heavy storm. One of these contained 29,000 Friendly Floatees, a child's bath toy which came in a number of forms: red beavers, green frogs, blue turtles and yellow ducks. At some point the container opened (possibly due to collision with other containers or the ship itself) and the Floatees were released. Although mounted in a plastic housing attached to a backing card, subsequent tests showed that the cardboard quickly degraded in sea water allowing the Floatees to escape. Unlike many bath toys, Friendly Floatees have no holes in them so they do not take on water.

Seattle oceanographers Curtis Ebbesmeyer and James Ingraham, who were working on an ocean surface current model, began to track their progress. The mass release of 29,000 objects into the ocean at one time offered significant advantages over the standard method of releasing 500–1000 drift bottles. The recovery rate of objects from the Pacific Ocean is typically around 2%, so rather than the 10 to 20 recoveries typically seen with a drift bottle release, the two scientists expected numbers closer to 600. They were already tracking various other spills of flotsam, including 61,000 Nike running shoes which had been lost overboard in 1990.

Ten months after the incident the first Floatees began to wash up along the Alaskan coast. The first discovery consisted of ten toys found by a beachcomber near Sitka, Alaska on 16 November 1992, about 2,000 miles (3,200 km) from their starting point. Ebbesmeyer and Ingraham contacted beachcombers, coastal workers, and local residents to locate hundreds of the beached Floatees over a 530 mile (850 km) shoreline. Another beachcomber discovered twenty of the toys on 28 November, and in total 400 were found along the Eastern coast of the Gulf of Alaska in the period up to August 1993. This represented a 1.4% recovery rate. The landfalls were logged in Ingraham's computer model OSCUR (Ocean Surface Currents Simulation), which uses measurements of air pressure from 1967 onwards to calculate the direction of and speed of wind across the oceans, and the consequent surface currents. Ingraham's model was built to help fisheries but it is also used to predict flotsam movements or the likely locations of those lost at sea.

Using the models they had developed, the oceanographers correctly predicted further landfalls of the toys in Washington state in 1996 and theorized that many of the remaining Floatees would have travelled to Alaska, westward to Japan, back to Alaska, and then drifted northwards through the Bering Strait and become trapped in the Arctic pack ice. Moving slowly with the ice across the Pole, they predicted it would take five or six years for the toys to reach the North Atlantic where the ice would thaw and release them. Between July and December 2003, The First Years Inc. offered a $100 US savings bond reward to anybody who recovered a Floatee in New England, Canada or Iceland. More of the toys were recovered in 2004 than in any of the preceding three years. However, still more of these toys are predicted to have headed eastward past Greenland and make landfall on the southwestern shores of the United Kingdom in 2007.

Bleached by sun and seawater, the ducks and beavers had faded to white, but the turtles and frogs had kept their original colours.

Two children's books have been written about the ducks, and the toys themselves have become collector's items, fetching prices as high as $1,000.

Quacking story eh?

Oh, and the giant rubber duck is an art piece by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman (see Anne Haight's blog about it here).

Why I had a Glitter Cull

2012-01-20T23:06:00.008Z

STOP PRESS - Since writing this blogpost and taking the action I describe below, it has been announced that the Gary Glitter Twitter account was a fake, set up as 'a social experiment to highlight the dangers and safety of children using the social networking sites and to discover and question public morality.' You can read the author's explanation here. I'm not convinced that they've achieved what they set out to do. Also, Twitter wasn't the right platform. However, it was interesting to see what it brought to the surface and, for me, it was genuinely disturbing to see so many people following the account. The validity of the account was not the issue for me. The issue was public morality and the cult of celebrity that, apparently, caused mass selective amnesia for at least 18,000 people.

I'm pretty liberal. I champion free speech. Had the Glitter account been real, he was quite within his rights to use social media to re-join society and plug his album. Whether or not you believe in 'second chances' or fresh starts, it was legal and lawful for him to do so. The experiment was supposedly a wake-up call to us all that some social media sites have no restrictions on who may join. The inference is that there should be a blanket internet ban on convicted offenders. Personally, I'm not entirely comfortable with that. I have worked with genuinely rehabilitated offenders who used their experience to stop others going along the same route. Would their access be restricted or cut off too? Most use of the internet is for lawful and suitable purposes. Why would I object to a paedophile ordering their shopping online? The other fact, of course, is that paedophiles with any brains don't use large and very public platforms like Twitter. They hide in the shadows on password-protected forums and chat groups. However, I would argue that some - a very few - offenders should have restrictions placed upon their use of the internet as a preventative measure to stop them from harming or distressing others. I am talking about a small population of proven serial offenders; paedophiles, racists, sexists, homophobic and religious haters. I'm not talking 'Nanny state' erosion of our rights. The only rights that would be infringed are those of people who have abused those freedoms. I see this as no different to the way we use restraining orders for domestic abusers and stalkers. Or should they be allowed to wander up and down in the street outside their terrified victims' houses because it's their right? We are all entitled to free speech but shouldn't that right be, at the very least, closely controlled or monitored if a person abuses it? We deprive people of their liberty when they commit crimes against society and individuals. What's the difference? Discuss.

All of that aside, the big issue for me was WHY people chose to follow the account, fake or not. I did what I did because I wanted people to ask themselves why they did it. I don't have the answers. Of course I don't. But please have a read and let me know if you agree or disagree with my small protest.

------------------------------------------------------------------

In this past couple of hours I have, with no small degree of sadness, stopped following 74 people on Twitter. The reason I did so is that they made the decision to follow an account that purports to be the official Twitter account of disgraced rocker Gary Glitter. I'll say sorry to those people now but I am not sorry for taking this action. I felt that the situation absolutely demanded it.

The account named 'OfficialGlitter' appeared back in November and, from what I can discern, ticked along slowly for several months. Then, on the 16th January, the counter number for followers suddenly started rising at a meteoric rate. In less than 24 hours it had topped the 10,000 mark. As I write this, the counter stands at over 18,000. As this is a man whose career was pretty much confined to the Glam Rock 1970s, one can only assume that the majority of followers are people who know him best as a convicted paedophile.

Now, it may be that he has reformed, repented and may never commit another such offence. If so, good for him. It is also true that he has served his time, done his penance and should be allowed the freedom to make a new life for himself. I have no issue with that either. If the account is genuine, he's even planning a comeback album called Still Shining.

However, what I have a huge problem with is 18,000+ people following him on Twitter. To put that into some perspective, actor Brian Blessed has 7,644 and comedian Graeme Garden has 11,418. I single these two out because they are also both relative newcomers to Twitter and both are hugely popular. And yet it's taken them a few weeks to reach these figures while more than 18,000 people made a conscious decision to click on the follow button for the Glitter account. I had to ask myself why and, if the account is genuine, what is the message that this sends?

I suspect that the lure of celebrity coupled with the kind of rubber-necking we see at road accidents has made people push the follow button. Here is a man who, even though he may be completely rehabilitated, was guilty of crimes involving innocents. It's the most horrible of crimes; it preys upon the weak and the gullible and the easily-led. Paedophiles are clever, resourceful. They commit their crimes behind locked doors often relying on the child itself to cover their tracks. Sometimes the children don't really understand what's happened to them. Very often they are sworn to secrecy with abhorrent threats of 'Mummy and Daddy won't want you any more'. Now, I'm not saying that this particular individual did any of that. We all know what he was convicted of. What I am saying is that I've had to interview the victims of child abuse. And it broke my heart every time. We can never ever allow ourselves to see these kinds of crimes as anything but the most vile attacks upon the weakest and most helpless members of our society.

However, by taking someone who has been convicted of paedophilia and putting them up on a platform, bolstered by a wave of apparent public support, we are saying, 'It's okay son. All forgotten now.' Every click on the follow button - unless the follower is a GENUINE fan - validates this person. Just how many of those follows have even heard his music?

All the excuses about 'I just want to see what he tweets' smack of corpse in the road voyeurism. And do you really think that he would ever use such a public platform for grooming or contacting young people? Of course not. Every person who says 'I only follow him so I can reply to his tweets' is handily ignoring the fact that you can look at his tweets without following. And as for the argument 'It's just a bit of fun ...' Well, I'll let make your own conclusions about how that makes me feel.

I'm sorry if you are one of the people I've unfollowed today but my conscience cannot deal with the fact that someone who follows that account also wants to follow me. I don't want to be included in that demographic. I can't say I wish the man well but, as I said, he's done his time and can move on. He can reboot his career as a musician and re-enter society. But I will not be party to anything that glorifies him or which helps make him into the kind of 'bad boy ' celebrity we see so often these days. We now live in a society where being famous is somehow more important than being good. Our TVs and magazines are full of celebs who are thieves, adulterers, racists, drug-users, gold-diggers, spouse abusers, bullies and rapists and we forgive and forget them because they show us their cribs in OK! magazine, whip their bangers out for FHM or take part in a reality show on Channel 5. Public adulation fills their bank accounts and elevates them to unlikely and unsuitable role models for our kids. Judging by what's happened in the past five years, expect Gary to have his own chat show by Christmas. And, let's not be naive; the more money you have, the easier it is to indulge your worst excesses and get away with it.

I won't be part of that. If you choose to follow the account, then please carry on. It's a free country and I won't dislike you for it. But I will wish you well and unfollow you. I'm a very small cog in the giant machine that is Twitter and my little protest will make no difference at all. I'm nothing special. But my conscience will be clear. If you feel I've treated you harshly, then tak to me. It could be that I'm reading this all wrong and you have a perfectly valid reason for following the account. If so, I will be happy to apologise to you and follow you again.

Even if it turns out (as I strongly suspect) that it's a fake account, I feel justified in taking this stand. People followed it because they believed that it's real. In my eyes, that's no different to following the real thing.

It's all too bloody easy these days ... is that a good thing?

2012-01-18T18:45:00.009Z

You've undoubtedly seen the big black screen of nothingness on Wikipedia's homepage today.

I completely respect and support their stand. But I also hope that losing Wikipedia for the day is enough of a shock to the system to encourage people to look further afield when doing research. It's a subject that I've blogged about on more than one occasion (see here or here or here for example). Wikipedia is a wonderful tool but the very nature of its open-source, democratic platform means that it can be updated by anyone, not just by subject matter experts. Therefore, as I've found time and time again, the facts aren't always factual. I should point out, before I go any further, that I'm not singling out Wikipedia for a thrashing. I think Wikipedia is a wonderful thing and there are many many other websites that are more inaccurate. However, Wikipedia is the largest such website on the net and the one that most people visit at first choice.

Just this week I've discovered that two oft-repeated stories are untrue. The first is that Chevrolet made a huge mistake in calling one of their models the Nova because 'no va' means 'won't go' in Spanish. The other story is that Toyota lost millions in sales because their MR2 model, when pronounced in French, is very similar to the word 'merdeux' meaning 'shitty'. The truth is that the Chevrolet Nova did very well in Spanish speaking countries and even exceeded sales predictions in Venezuela. Why would people break 'nova' into 'no va'? By that thinking, we wouldn't buy anything in the UK that includes the word 'notable', especially dining room furniture. And as for the MR2, Toyota anticipated this issue (unsurprisingly) and badged the MR2 as the MR in France and Belgium. Both stories are untrue, yet I've found both on hundreds of websites, including supposedly 'expert' sites on marketing and branding. I was even told by a lady advertiser on Twitter that the Chevrolet example was used on her degree course at university. Ten to 15 minutes of proper research would have shown that both stories are bunkum.

Wikipedia and its ilk are brilliant starting points for any investigation. However, they should never be the finishing point. Any research should always end as close to the original source of a fact as is possible. Wikipedia etc. should be used like a compass putting you on the right track. You should then find your own way to the correct destination.

Wikipedia makes research easy. And easy can so often slide into lazy. I was pondering upon this yesterday and it set me to thinking about other ways in which technology is making us lazier by making life easier. It's a trend that slightly worries me. Maybe it shouldn't. Maybe I'm just a bit of an old dinosaur. But let me explain ...

There was a time, not so very long ago, when I knew all of my friends' telephone numbers and addresses. Of course, there were fewer phones back then and people didn't change numbers quite so often. However, we now rely on our phones to remember them for us and many people don't even know their own phone number. I have a curious sense of disquiet about this. I'm not a control freak by any means and I am happily reliant on technology; I trust my car and my television to do what they are supposed to do without me understanding how they work and I rely on my computer to store my writing because I simply can't remember a whole book word perfect. But as we become more and more dependent upon the technology, I wonder if we're losing something important. Just as cars have made us flabbier, is technology robbing us of mental exercise? There are many who would say that this is already happening, that society is 'dumbing down'. Despite (or maybe because of) the fact that more information is available than ever before, people seem to know less. I experienced this first hand over Christmas when playing board games with a group of friends and family. A question came up that involved naming the planets of the solar system. All the people my age (40s-50s) could do so. And most could list them in order of proximity to the Sun as well. Most of the people under 30 could name the planets although some struggled. Only one knew the correct order. And these are all bright people. Now, I realise that having a mental map of our solar system isn't going to have much of an impact on everyday life. There's no shame in not knowing it. But it is indicative of a greater malaise, crystallised clearly when one of the group, a 26 year old said, 'Why do I need to know that? I can just look it up.' By that logic, there's surely no point in learning anything except the stuff we need to get through the day. It means that knowledge no longer has value unless it has a practical application. But if that were the case, how then would we advance? How would we develop new ideas and new science? It's people asking questions about things beyond their every day experience that gave us flight, electricity, electronics, antibiotics. In this new world where 'we don't need to know stuff', were do innovation and expertise fit?

I then found myself thinking about other things that make life 'easy'. And not just the gadgets and gizmos that blend our food, record our TV shows and print our documents. What about the technology that, even now, is starting to have an impact on the arts?

There was a time when a musician learned his/her craft. They learned an instrument and trained their voice. They went out on the road and gigged. They interacted with audiences. They wrote from the heart. Some of those songs have survived six decades of radio airplay. But now, technology is allowing anyone to make music. This isn't a bad thing, it really isn't. It's wonderful. But there's money in popular music and the fecking accountants and money men are now starting to use that technology to force music into generic formats with which to fill the airwaves. They want easy, lazy pop.

There's a recent TV series made by Channel 4 called What makes a Masterpiece? hosted by the channel's culture editor, Matt Cain. In the second episode of the series, he visits a number of tech companies where software is regularly used to analyse what makes a song popular. It then advises the appropriate tweaks to make a recording more profitable. Not better or more beautiful. Just profitable. Cain - who has no musical background or experience at all - uses the software and industry know-how to write a song for the show. The result sounds like much of the music being pumped out of the larger music companies; homogenous and instantly forgettable but good to dance to. It ticks all the boxes. People like it, people buy it. Then they forget it. It's throwaway art, fast-food music, ear candy to be enjoyed in the moment and that's it. Technology has made it easy to write a hit song and it's hugely lucrative.

Well, call me old fashioned but I want music made by musicians, not computer programmers and accountants.

What this new model of music doesn't do is reward the artists. A session singer is brought in for a fixed fee, sings on a song that sells thousands of copies and we often don't know who they are. The current Top 40 features songs with vocals by Sia, Sian Evans, Sirah, Etta Bond, Karen O ... can you picture any of them? Even you youngsters? There are any number of talented young singers queueing up to sing on a hit single and hopefully get a break in the industry. Very few do. Meanwhile, because money is slowly becoming the primary factor in deciding what singles get released, artists who don't fit the demographic are being slowly pushed onto the sidelines.

No amount of algorithms could have predicted that K T Tunstall would be so popular. It was a chance event, a cancellation by a booked artist, that gave K T her chance to appear on Later ... with Jools Holland. And it was her electrifying live performance of a song called Black horse and the Cherry Tree that had people downloading her album in their thousands. the song is nothing like anything else that was in the charts at the time.

Oh, and lest you think this is just me turning into my dad, I will counter it by pointing out that I buy more new music than old. Just recently I've bought new LPs by St Vincent, Three Trapped Tigers, Bjork, Gotye, Battles, Emmy the Great, Jim Moray ... many of whom have had to release their work through crowd-funding sites. Imaginative, well-written and lyrical as their work is, the money hungry big labels won't touch them with a bargepole.

For every great song there are a hundred others in which the quirkiness factor, the originality, the humanity, the soul of the music has been surgically removed solely for the sake of a quick profit. And in these ghastly, money-obsessed times, the investors will always flock in the direction of guaranteed sales. That's bad news because, as has been frequently pointed out, many unique performers like Kate Bush and Pink Floyd would probably not get signed today and, if they did, they'd be consigned to the indie fringe as being too un-commercial. Meanwhile, if a singer-songwriter can't actually make a living from their music then they're simply going to stop making it.

I find the same process going on in publishing. I am hugely saddened by the sheer number of bland, pointless celebrity-based books that dominate the shelves in those bookstores we have left. Just like music, publishers are plumping for the easy dead certs rather than embracing innovative new talent, new and different voices. While Pippa Middleton is offered £400,000 to write a book on posh party planning, Ian Rankin is asking for tax concessions for writers. As reported in The Guardian, Kate Pool of the Society of Authors has confirmed that new writers could expect an average advance of £10,000 around 20 years ago: 'Now they're lucky to get between £1,000 and £3,000' she says. Research by the society shows that 75% of writers earn less than £20,000 a year and 46% less than £5,000. Celebs and their agents demand huge advances and that shrinks the pot for other writers. An author cannot live on that kind of money. And it takes time to research and write a book. I can see many simply giving up. Imagine if people like J K Rowling or Steig Larssen were writing now. Their advances wouldn't have given them the freedom to write the books they are now famous for. And who is going to write the books that become the TV series and films? How many more re-makes and prquels can you stand? Those new authors who do persevere and who are getting no joy from traditional publishers are publishing themselves in the form of e-books. That means trying to make money from a book with no advertising budget, no PR, no promotion. What are the chances of earning a living like that? It's surely not good for the industry either. It certainly must be putting the fear of god into the world of the literary agent.

Then there's art itself. I blogged recently about my disappointment with the Olympics Committee for choosing the same old bunch of highly commercial celeb artists to create the Olympics and Paralympic posters, rather than encouraging and promoting new talent. Guaranteed sales you see. It's the easy option. Maximum profit. That's all that matters.

My brother told me an interesting story the other day. He's a photographer who's gone back to university as a 40-something mature student to do a degree in photography. Almost everyone else on the course is in their late teens or early twenties. In their world, digital photography and Photoshop have always existed. So when their tutor made them use film cameras, they panicked. Suddenly, they had only 12 or 24 shots on their rolls of film to lay with. Suddenly they had to really think about composition and light and focus as there would be no Photoshop to correct it. Their normal approach was to take 50 shots, select the best one (usually obtained by sheer fluke) and then tweak it with software. To a man and women, they all agreed that making photography harder had made them all better photographers.

The universe is a complex and mysterious place. The aim of science is to make sense of it all. Yes, all art can ultimately be reduced to pure mathematical formulae. But is that what we want? Do we want art tailored for maximum profitability and success? Or do we want passion, talent and originality?

I'll stop here. I don't want to look any more curmudgeonly than I already do. That's not my intention at all. I'm just concerned that by making everything too easy, we're losing something that makes us human. It's good to strive. It's character building to fail. It's so rewarding to feel the glow that comes with achievement and discovery. You don't get that passion when the machines do all the work for you.

I have this awful dystopian vision of a future where no one knows anything any more because something is doing all of the remembering for them. It's a world where people's dumb answers on quiz shows get ever dumber. It's a world where the only important aim is the acquisition of wealth; a place where music is designed by software to please the largest demographic of people; a world where the only books published by the larger publishing houses are aimed at the mass market; a world where art is designed to match the interior of people's houses rather than driven by the passions of the artists.

It's a world where the most creative people can no longer earn a living from what they do; where unprofitable 'non-formula' singer-songwriters can't get recording contracts or afford to work as musicians; a world where the most amazing new literature only exists in small vanity imprints that earn their writers a pittance. In short, it's a world where the rich get richer, where innovation is shunned as noncommercial and where originality is another word for 'unsaleable'. That's not the world I want.

I want quirky and inefficient. I want artistry and Bohemian eccentricity. I want experts and smartarses. I'd rather know things than not know things. I want to 'walk the walk' in learning a skill or craft. I want to put in the hours to earn the right to call myself a writer, a musician, an artist. I don't want software to be making artistic decisions for me. I don't want to be so reliant on technology that I no longer bother to learn anything.

I will choose passion over efficiency any day. It's the difference between having a lover and having a hooker. Which, in the end, is the most rewarding and satisfying?

Prog Rock(ets)

2012-01-16T16:54:00.002Z

Astronaut Cady Coleman and Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson perform the first ever Earth/space duet.

Inspirational!

Grow your own furniture

2012-01-16T01:39:00.001Z

That's what Jólan van der Wiel does using ferrous liquids and super magnets.

I love the way his 'gravity furniture' actually subverts the rules of nature but looks so organic and naturally formed.

Visit his website here.

Let's talk apostrophes

2012-01-15T13:30:00.004Z

You may or may not know this but I used to teach grammar and punctuation for Plain English Campaign. Despite this, I'm not some rabid grammar-fascist who runs around supermarkets demanding that they change the signs to 'Five items or fewer' instead of the incorrect less. Nor do I cringe quite so often these days when I hear presenters on children's TV shows - the people who influence our kids' future language skills - using words and phrases that are simply wrong. I'm pretty mellow about it. Language constantly evolves and changes. Half a century ago, we were writing today as to-day. Now we don't. So the fact that people are using 'everyday' more and more is a sign that it will soon be the norm. Let me clarify that; everyday means common or humdrum as in 'everyday clothes'. It is different to every day, which means exactly what you'd imagine it does. The distinction is being quickly lost, just as uninterested and disinterested have become interchangeable despite the fact that they mean quite different things. But that's what happens with language; there's no point fighting inevitable change.

All of that aside, I do have a problem with bad use of punctuation. And it's not just because of arbitrary rules about right and wrong usage. It's about clarity. Punctuation exists to make our sentences clear and unambiguous. The written word enables us to pass on messages to people that we are not face-to-face with. The purpose of punctuation is to replace all of the little nuances - the inflections, the pauses, the emphases - that you'd get in real speech. For example, a single comma can completely change a message: 'It cost me £100 more than I expected' is a very different sentence to 'It cost me £100, more than I expected.' A hyphen will make clear the difference between re-sign and resign and re-cover and recover.

The apostrophe is the most abused of all the punctuation marks but that's because its use is taught so poorly. And, for many people growing up in the experimental 70s, punctuation and grammar was barely taught at all in schools. I'm also mindful that those of you with reading difficulties such as dyslexia or dyspraxia cannot always make the distinction between correct and incorrect usage. However, as it's International Apostrophe Day, I thought I'd take the time to try to explain their use. If you already know all of this, please leave now or you'll spend the day with the taste of egg in your mouth. But, if you're unsure, here's a simple guide to correct usage.

Apostrophes have two uses: Contraction and Possession.

1. Contraction. Apostrophes are used to replace letters that are removed when two words are welded together. So pushing 'you' and 'are' together results in the word you're. The apostrophe replaces the missing letter 'a'. It's a very common mistake to see people writing your (belongs to you) instead of you're (you are). There is a big difference between your coat and you're freezing or your nuts (nuts belonging to you) and You're nuts (I fear for your mental stability).

Common contractions include they're (they are), we're (we are), I'm (I am) etc. But the most common is also the most troublesome. Let me make it clear that the ONLY time you ever use an apostrophe in the word it's is when it's short for 'It is'. So unless you can read it out loud as 'it is', the word should be spelled its.

2. Possession. In the olden days, it wasn't (was not) unusual to say sentences like Peter, his jacket to refer to a jacket belonging to Peter. And so, over time, contraction turned that into Peter's jacket and the same rule was used, irrespective of gender (I appreciate that that's a very simplified explanation and grammar historians will be wobbling in their boots. But I'm trying to keep this simple). We therefore use an apostrophe to show possession: Susan's husband, the dog's ball, the nation's grief. Even words that end in the letter 's' still get this treatment: the hippopotamus's tail, St James's Park, Venus Williams's tennis racket. Say them out loud and they sound right.

However, in one of those quirks of English grammar that proves that every rule has its exceptions, we don't use possessive apostrophes for impersonal possession. Let me make that clearer; it may be Peter's jacket but if he picks up his jacket (no use of proper name), it doesn't need an apostrophe. Similarly, we don't use apostrophes for the impersonal her, them, us or it. So we wouldn't use an apostrophe here: 'Etta dropped her ice cream while the cat licked its fur. Remember - unless the word you're writing is a contraction of 'it is' then it's spelled its.

Now we come to the most often confused use of apostrophes (no one said apostrophes were a piece of cake) when you get possession by more than one person or thing. Basically, we do the same for plural possession as we do for single possession; we add an apostrophe and an 's' e.g. the children's playground, the men's room. However, most plurals end with the letter 's' e.g. cats, dogs, windscreen wipers, cones etc. (It's worth stressing here that we don't use apostrophes in plurals and my mind grates when I see horrors like apple's, cat's or table's. Eek.). That means that adding an apostrophe and an extra 's' can make a word seem clumsy and overlong. The bedrooms of the royal princes now become the princes's rooms. The tiaras belonging to the princesses are even clumsier: the princesses's tiaras. Say them out loud and they don't sound right at all. So people tend to remove the final 's' when saying it. So that's what we do in writing too; we keep the apostrophe but lose the additional 's' so that it becomes the princes' rooms and the princesses' tiaras. Mother's love is the love of a single mother; mothers' love is the love of all mothers.

So there you have it. here's a quick recap:

1. An apostrophe is used to replace missing letters when two words have been pushed together e.g. can't (can not), they're (they are), isn't (is not).

2. The only time you ever use an apostrophe in the word it's is when it is a contraction of it is. e.g. It's (it is) okay to say that the dog wagged its tail. It's not right to say that the wombat jugged it's (it is??) favourite toys.

3. You show possession of something by adding an apostrophe and a letter 's' to the end of the name of the person or object doing the possessing e.g. the elephant's memory, Tom Jones's voice, Friday's meeting.

4. You show possession by more than one person or thing by doing the same e.g. the women's group, the mice's feet. However, because so many plurals end in 's', it can make the possessive plural sound clumsy so we add the apostrophe but leave off the additional 's' e.g. the bikers' foundation, the elephants' enclosure, the police officers' ball.

5. We DO NOT use apostrophes in plurals. EVER. So no more banana's, gerbil's or tree's please!

However ... I have noticed in the past few years that people are increasingly using apostrophes in plurals when the name of an object is an abbreviation made of letters and numbers e.g. DVD's, CD's, MP3's. etc. This is wrong as, abbreviations or not, they are still simple plurals so it should be DVDs CDs and MP3s. That said, certain phrases like Ps and Qs are easier to read when written as P's and Q's. As punctuation is all about clarity, maybe this will evolve to become correct usage?

That's the joy of language.

Bring back, bring back, oh bring back my mammoth to me, to me

2012-01-15T10:52:00.000Z

It's been claimed in the last few weeks that scientists are just a short stone's throw away from having the ability to bring back the woolly mammoth. For a number of years it's been suggested that this could be possible because we have a number of well-preserved frozen mammoths. Although any sperm they may have been storing at the time of death is long dead, the genetic material might be viable; just as deep frozen human sperm can be stored and used at a later date. The problem has been having enough male animals to act as donors. The idea is that a modern female elephant would be fertilised with mammoth DNA and the calf engineered to be female. Meanwhile, another elephant would be impregnated with the DNA of a different male to produce a male hybrid. The two hybrids could then mate to produce a more mammoth-like mammoth. Then that calf could then be impregnated by the sperm of a different male mammoth to create an animal with even stronger mammoth traits. Within three to four generations, scientists could create a breeding pool of mammoths. But, in order to avoid in-breeding, you would need more male donors that we currently have. Also, there is no guarantee that some of the hybrids wouldn't be sterile - as often hybrids are. And anyway, as an elephant's gestation period is around 645 days, we'd still be several decades away from a viable population.

However, there may now be a way to shortcut all of that. Russian scientists have discovered a thigh bone frozen in Siberian that looks to contain bone marow with genetic material suitable to use in cloning. Semyon Grigoriev, acting director of the Sakha Republic's mammoth museum, and his colleagues are now analysing the marrow and have announced a joint project with Japan's excellently named Kinki University to clone a mammoth within five years. The key to successful cloning is to replace the nuclei of egg cells from an elephant with those extracted from the mammoth's bone marrow cells. Doing this, according to the researchers, can result in embryos with mammoth DNA. What's been missing until now is woolly mammoth nuclei with undamaged genes. Scientists have been on a 'Holy Grail'-type search for such pristine nuclei since the late 1990s. Now it sounds like the missing genes may have been found.

But why bring them back at all? Isn't this all a little too Jurassic Park? The argument is that these animals shouldn't be extinct; that it was Man that killed them off and that the environment they lived in - the frozen tundra - is still available to them. All we'd be doing is 'making things right'. It wouldn't be like bringing back a Tyrannosaurus Rex and introducing it to an alien ecosystem. The last dinosaur (other then those that evolved into birds) disappeared 65,000,000 years ago while mammoths were still around only 10,000 years ago.

Similar procedures have been done before with mixed results. In 2009 it was reported that the recently extinct Pyrenean ibex was brought back to life briefly using 10-year-old DNA from the animal's skin. However, the cloned ibex died within minutes of being born, due to breathing difficulties. And the Roslin Institute who famously cloned Dolly the Sheep, have published a paper pointing out some of the difficulties involved. 'First, a suitable surrogate mother animal is required. For the mammoth this would need to be a cow (as best biological fit) but even here the size difference may preclude gestation to term," it said.'The success rate for such an experiment would be in the range of 1-5%. The second issue would be the need for viable whole cells. If there are intact cells in this tissue they have been 'stored' frozen. However, if we think back to what actually happened to the animal - it died, even if from the cold, the cells in the body would have taken some time to freeze. This time lag would allow for breakdown of the cells, which normally happens when any animal dies. Then the carcass would freeze. So it is unlikely that the cells would be viable. But let's say that one in a thousand cells were nevertheless viable. Then practical issues come into play. Given that we have an efficiency of 1% cloning for livestock species and if only one in a thousand cells are viable then around 100,000 cells would need to be transferred to stand any chance of success.'

All that aside, if the Russian/Japanese project works and we can bring back the mammoth, it does raise the possibility of resurrecting other species made extinct by Man. These could include the great auk, the quagga, the passenger pigeon, the golden frog, the Javan tiger and the Baiji river dolphin.

Personally, I'd love to see Mauritius once again populated with dodos, the sea full of Steller's sea cows (a kind of giant manatee hunted to extinction within 27 years of discovery in 1741) and thylacines (also known as marsupial wolves or Tasmanian tigers) once more prowling the forests.

The thylacine only became officially extinct in 1936, so there is footage of some of the last animals ever seen by humans. I can't help thinking that it would be wonderful to see them again for real.

Sources: Discovery News, Roslin Institute, BBC News.

Away from it all

2012-01-14T00:08:00.000Z

In 1979, I was a pissed-off 18 year old living in South-West Cornwall. And what had pissed me off was Monty Python's Life of Brian or, rather, the fact that every council in Cornwall had banned the film from cinemas. Which was why myself and a bunch of friends crammed ourselves into a rubbish old Hillman Minx estate and drove through 80 miles of A and B roads to another county to see the film in Plymouth.

It was worth every mile and every penny. The film was brilliantly funny and, even as an 18 year old, I realised that the film was destined to be a classic. Those silly, silly councillors hadn't even seen it.

But I digress. Another thing that made that trip so worthwhile was the film that they showed before Life of Brian. It was 'Away from it all' a brilliant spoof of the kind of semi-educational travel films that they'd foist on us at the cinema - just like those Telly Savalas movies in the previous blogspot. So I looked on YouTube ... and there it was!

Enjoy! In 1979 it made me squirt Coke out of my nostrils.

Telly Vision

2012-01-13T16:41:00.000Z

My new favourite thing. Telly Savalas looks at ...

My thanks to Jonathan Edwards (@jontofski) for finding these!

Unlucky for some - but only if you pay it any attention

2012-01-13T11:00:00.001Z

Welcome to Friday the 13th. But, really, don’t worry about it.

Superstitions about both Friday and the number 13 are quite old and quite Western. There are reasons - mostly relating to the Catholic church - why this is so. But really, in the enlightened 21st century, it's a nonsense to be in the thrall of such things. Friday is just a day. Thirteen is just a number. If bad luck was a real and tangible force like gravity or radiation then it would be universal. But it isn't. In Spain, it's Tuesday the 13th that's unlucky. And in China, one of the most populated countries on the planet, it's the number 4 that's unlucky. Luck is nothing to do with days and numbers and everything to do with our attitudes (if you want a really good read on the subject, do get hold of a copy of Professor Richard Wiseman's book The Luck Factor).

Besides which, considering the age of the superstitions surrounding Fridays and the number 13 they only seem to have come together relatively recently. It seems that that the idea of Friday the 13th being mega-unlucky appears to be a 19th century invention at best. ‘Ah! But!’ I hear you nerdishly cry' ‘I 'have a friend' who, for some odd reason, thought that The Da Vinci Code was something new and groundbreaking. Didn’t I ... I mean he ... read somewhere that Friday the 13th was the date when the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Jacques Demolay, was arrested?’

Unlikely, I'm afraid. According to most scholars, this is another scrambling of history to make it fit some dark and sinister pseudo-history involving the sexy, flavour-of-the-month Knights Templar. While it’s possible that Friday October 13th 1307 was the date of Demolay’s arrest, it’s a very obscure historical event that only really became common knowledge with the publication of Katharine Kurtz’s 1995 book Tales of the Knights Templar. So the two questions I’d ask are:

(1) As historical events were not terribly well documented before the 18th century, is such a precise date likely to be accurate? And (2) Why would such an obscure event have provoked world-wide associations with bad luck?

Going back just a century (and a bit) to 1898, Friday the 13th doesn't even get mentioned in E. Cobham Brewer's encyclopaedic Dictionary of Phrase and Fable though ‘Friday, an Unlucky Day’ and ‘Thirteen, Unlucky’ do. The oldest reference for Friday the 13th that I’ve personally found is from Notes and Queries (11th Series, VIII 434) from 1913 where the author describes meeting a coach who ‘dreaded the evil luck of Friday the 13th.’ The urban myth debunking website Snopes couldn't find a Friday the 13th reference prior to 1903. Wikipedia can't get any older than a mention in Henry Sutherland Edwards' 1869 biography of Gioachino Rossini. So, even allowing for the superstition to have been around for a while before being committed to print, it's unlikely to be a very old superstition. The inescapable fact is that Friday the 13th appears to be nothing more sinister or supernatural than a natural welding together of two existing bad luck superstitions.

The technical name for fear of Friday the 13th is the marvellously tongue-twisting Paraskevidekatriaphobia. The man who coined the term, psychotherapist Dr Donald Dossey, reckons that in America alone, there may be as many as 21 million Paraskevidekatriaphobics (Isn’t that a great word?). That’s a staggering 8% of the most powerful nation on Earth who are letting a very old and irrational superstition affect their lives. Mind you, this is a country where, according to a recent poll, nearly four million Americans believe that they’ve been abducted by aliens (Figures based on a Roper Poll conducted between July and September 1991 and published in 1992 by Hopkins, Jacobs, and Westrum).

Dossey, founder of the Stress Management Centre and Phobia Institute in Asheville, North Carolina, states that: ‘It's been estimated that $800 or $900 million is lost in business on this day because people will not fly or do business they would normally do.’* Symptoms range from mild anxiety to full-blown panic attacks. The latter may cause people to reshuffle schedules or miss an entire day's work.

But, if you’re a Brit, don’t get all ‘Holier than thou’ on me. We may not be quite as bad, but we are still prone to a bit of paraskevidekatriaphobic (I just love writing that word) behaviour ourselves. In 1993, the respected British Medical Journal published a report called ‘Is Friday the 13th Bad for Your Health?’ It examined the relationship between traffic volume and the number of vehicle collisions on two different days: Friday the 6th and Friday the 13th. The results showed clearly that although there was less traffic on Friday 13th (fewer people chose to drive their cars), there were significantly more hospitalisations. The report’s conclusion was that: ‘Friday 13th is unlucky for some. The risk of hospital admission as a result of a transport accident may be increased by as much as 52 percent. Staying at home is recommended.’ The conclusions of the report (based on interviews) suggested that people had either driven over-cautiously or with additional bravado to 'prove the superstition wrong'. Either way, if people had driven the same way as they do every other day, there would most likely have been fewer accidents.

The evidence that links the number 13, Friday, and the combination Friday the 13th to bad luck is spurious at best. Many websites, for example, use the age-old story of Apollo 13's exploding oxygen tank on April the 13th 1970 (a Monday incidentally). No one would have paid any notice if the same thing had happened to Apollo 12 on April the 12th. And let’s not forget that the Apollo 13 astronauts got home safely. Apollo 1, meanwhile, was destroyed by fire on the 27th January 1967, killing all three astronauts aboard. So which was more unlucky? Apollo 1 or Apollo 13?

Sadly, people tend to bend the facts to suit their pretty fables. One I found this morning stated that the Columbia Space Shuttle was unlucky because it launched on 16-01-2003. These numbers added together make … 13. But, of course, that only works if you write the full year. Apply the same rules to the ill-fated Challenger shuttle and the results are quite different i.e. 28-01-1986 = 35.

Oh, and just to amuse you fact collectors out there, and the worrying number of Paraskevidekatriaphobics (Sorry. Last time.), before the introduction of a formalised 24-hour day, people divided their daily lives into thirteen parts:

1. After midnight.
2. Cock-crow.
3. Between the first cock-crow and daybreak.
4. The Dawn.
5. Morning.
6. Noon.
7. Afternoon.
8. Sunset.
9. Twilight.
10. Evening.
11. Candle-time.
12. Bed-time.
13. Dead of night.

So, every day has a 13 in it. You’d better just stay in bed …

*‘Friday the 13th Phobia Rooted in Ancient History’ by John Roach. National Geographic. 12th August 2004.

You’re on in five, Mr Mudchute

2012-01-11T17:28:00.000Z

I first wrote this blogpost back in 2007 (here) but I quite fancied reprinting it here as it has some resonance with the previous post about 'the names we might have had'.

I was travelling on the London Underground yesterday when I remembered a story I was once told about Charlton Heston. The story – completely untrue of course – was that he chose his stage name by randomly stabbing a map of London with a pin. Charlton. Heston. Perfect. But what if he’d been distracted by an errant fly? What if a capricious gust of wind had moved the map a little? El Cid starring Wapping Penge? Planet of the Apes starring Morden Oval? Or how about Soylent Green starring Croxley Blackfriars?

What a great name Croxley Blackfriars is. I may change my name by deed poll.

After amusing myself with these thoughts for a while, it suddenly dawned on me that I was travelling on the Bakerloo Line; a line that took its name from Baker Street and Waterloo, the original start and end of the line. But what if the tunnel had begun at Piccadilly and ended at Marylebone? Would it now be called the Piccabone Line? Would a line from Paddington to Elephant & Castle be the Elton Line? Or the Paddiphant Line?

Elton Paddiphant. Another fine name. Maybe I'll call myself that instead ...

I mentioned this to my travelling companion and he said, “Piccabone? They’d never have called it that. It doesn’t sound right, does it?”
“But does it sound any less right than Bakerloo?” I argued, “Or does ‘Bakerloo’ sound right simply because it’s familiar?”
“You’re weird,” he said.
Weird I might be but I was on to something here, I realised.

Imagine for a moment that the Duke of Wellington was the person who asked for a piece of beef between two slices of bread; or that Lord Cardigan demanded rubber boots for his troops; or that the Earl of Sandwich felt chilly enough to request a front-buttoning pullover? We’d all now wear sandwiches when we’re cold, cardigans on our feet and enjoy a packed lunch of cheese and pickle wellies.

Or imagine if Columbus had arrived in America believing that he’d arrived in Belgium rather than India. Then we would have spent our childhoods playing Cowboys and Belgians. It may sound daft to you but if things had happened differently it would be the accepted norm. Familiarity breeds acceptance.

I recall a mate of mine once saying that the aim of marketing is to turn ‘prototype into stereotype’. In other words, to turn something new and different into something familiar, cosy and acceptable. When satellite dishes and ‘squarials’ (remember them?) first started sprouting from house fronts, a lot of people groaned about how ugly they were. Do we even notice them any more? The same thing happened with the first TV aerials in the 1950s. By the time the first dish came along, familiarity had made those aerials invisible for most of us. And now I come to think about it, it’s amazing the things we take for granted – that we accept – simply because we’re used to them. Noise, for example.

During the Millennium celebrations, Radio 4 ran a series of interviews with people who were alive in 1900 and asked for their impressions of the past century. One man mentioned that, in his lifetime, he’d seen technology advance at an extraordinary rate. The Wright Brothers first flight in 1910 was shorter in distance than the wingspan of a Jumbo Jet. Yet by 1969, men were walking on the Moon. Another interviewee mentioned noise. He recalled that, as a boy, there was only one car in his home town. It belonged to rich friends of his parents and they lived 3 miles away on the other side of town. When invited for a meal, they would toot the horn upon leaving home so that the hostess could put the veg on to boil (the cross-town journey took twenty minutes). How much chance would you have today of standing one side of a town and hearing a solitary car horn three miles away on the other? Noise is everywhere. Even the remotest places on Earth have jets flying overhead. We are surrounded and swamped by a cacophony of traffic noise, screaming jet engines, rattling trains, blaring radios and squawking television sets. Add to that the ubiquitous trilling of mobile phones, the repetitive hissing beat from over-cranked i-pods and the raucous voices of several million commuters and you get some idea of what my trip to work is like. Yet I don’t even notice it most of the time.

So there you have it. I don’t notice the dissonance around me because it’s familiar dissonance. Familiarity breeds acceptance. I no longer bat an eyelid at stage names like Jasper Carrot, Alvin Stardust or Johnny Vegas - ridiculous though they are - because they’re familiar stage names (Surely the best ever was comedian Craig Ferguson’s alter-ego Bing Hitler?). Familiarity breeds acceptance is also the reason why well-known celebrities become strangely unfamiliar when you muck about with their names. Bradley Pitt. Jimmy T Kirk. Robert Williams. Richard Gervais. The names we find so recognisable could have been very different but for the quirkiness of fate. And we would have been none the wiser because they would have sounded normal to us.

Which is why, in some alternative universe, I am currently travelling to work on the St Plop Line (St Pauls to Fairlop) and musing on what other names the famous actor Leyton Mudchute could have chosen.

Charlton Heston?

Ha! That’s a good one.

Mum's the Word

2012-01-11T10:51:00.002Z

The passing on of family names is a very interesting subject. The most common practice is that children inherit the surname of their father (patronymic). So Barack Obama's kids are named Malia and Natasha Obama and Kim Jong-il passed his name onto his sons Kim Jong-un, Kim Jon-chul and Kim Jong-nam. This still seems to be the most common practice even when the parents are not married and Mum has retained her birth name (probably inherited from her dad). In some instances the child is given a double-barreled surname to reflect both parents.

Of course, there are exceptions to this rule. The Icelandic naming convention is quite unique in that there are no surnames as we know them and sons and daughters inherit the forename of their father. It is quite common for every member of an Icelandic family to have a different 'surname'. For example, let's imagine an unmarried couple called Robert and Karen. Robert is called Petersson because he is 'Peter's son'. His father was not called Petersson. Meanwhile, Karen's surname is her father's forename followed by the suffix dottir (daughter). If her dad was called Magnus, then she's Karen Magnussdottir. Robert and Karen's son is called Terry Robertsson because he's the son of Robert. And their daughter Alice is Alice Robertsdottir. If Terry ever has a son, he'll be called 'something' Terrysson and a daughter would be called Terrysdottir. Icelandic telephone directories are alphabetised by first name rather than surname and, to reduce ambiguity, also lists people's professions.

In recent years, there's been a rise in kids taking Mum's name, especially among single parents. If my circumstances had been different I might be known as Stevyn Dawe instead of Colgan. It was thinking about this that reminded me of an entry in David Wallechinsky's and Amy Wallace's excellent Book of Lists (Canongate 2004). They catalogue a list of famous people and what they would have been called if they'd taken their mother's name.

So, for instance, William Shakespeare would have been William Arden and we'd have a Royal Arden Company. Isaac Newton would have produced Ayscough's Laws of Motion and we'd be listening to Johann Sebastian Lämmerhirt’s Brandenburgh Concertos. The capital city of the USA would be Ball DC and we'd all be making Nathansonian Slips instead of Freudian. We'd have Albert Koch's Theory of Special Relativity and the communist manifesto would have been supported by Pressburgism instead of Marxism.

In popular culture, 'Old Blue Eyes' would have been Frank Garaventi and the lead singer of the Rolling Stones would be Mick Scutts. The Scruse Five would still be mourning the loss of their youngest brother, Michael, and Sylvester Labofish would be the star of the Rocky films. One of the world's finest golfers would be Tiger Punsawad and we'd be celebrating the 200th birthday of the author of Great Expectations, Charles Barrow. Meanwhile, the creationist movement would be railing against the theory of evolution as espoused by Charles Wedgewood.

Fun isn't it? This morning I've discovered that if Stephen and Hugh had used their mother's names, their iconic comedy show would have been called A Bit of Newman and Laidlaw. And my good chum Mo McFarland just informed me that, had Mum been the word, we'd all be eating Stanley’s Cornflakes and scientists at CERN would be searching for the elusive Coghill Boson.

Have a go for yourselves and let me know what you discover.

An Effing Round

2012-01-10T16:46:00.063Z

Around the time that the QI F Annual was being put together, I was asked to produce a promotional 'round' themed to the letter F. This was it. Some of the material appeared in Joined-Up Thinking and some will appear in the sequel, due in 2012. Enjoy!

Diana Dors (1931-1984) was Britain’s answer to the ‘blonde bombshells’ of Hollywood – Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and Mamie Van Doren – also known as The Three Ms. Born in Swindon, Wiltshire, Dors was christened Diana Mary Fluck. Upon entering showbusiness she was asked to change her name because (in Dors’s own words), 'I suppose they were afraid that if my real name, Diana Fluck, was in lights, and one of the lights blew ...’

Her surname is also the focus of a story, recounted in her autobiography, of when she was asked to open a fête in her home town of Swindon. Before proceedings began, she had lunch with the local Vicar who was due to introduce her. During the course of the conversation she revealed her birth name and asked that it be used. The Vicar became worried that he would mispronounce her name and cause embarrassment so spent an hour or so fretting and rehearsing what he would say. He then marched out onto the stage and introduced Dors with the immortal words:

'Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great pleasure that I introduce to you our star guest. We all love her, especially as she is our local girl. I therefore feel it right to introduce her by her real name; Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome the very lovely Miss Diana Clunt.’

Dors’ untimely death in 1984 left behind a mystery worthy of any Hollywood blockbuster. Dors claimed that she’d hidden two million pounds in banks across Europe and, learning that she had ovarian cancer, she gave her son Mark a piece of paper upon which was a code that would lead him to the money after her death. Diana was an avid crossword fan and delighted in codes and ciphers and she had lodged the key to translating the coded message with her husband, Alan Lake. However, when Lake committed suicide without revealing the key, five months after Diana died, son Alan Jr was left with nothing but a page of apparently meaningless letters and numbers. He contacted cryptographers to solve the mystery and the code was eventually Vigenère cipher. Using a decryption key based on a ten letter code (in this case it turned out to be DMARYFLUCK), they decoded a list of names and locations across the UK. The first name led them to a bank statement found among the late Alan Lake’s papers but there was insufficient detail to trace the money any further. It has been suggested that there may have been another sheet of paper that may have given bank details to match the names and locations but nobody knows. The money is still lost.

Fantastic, fascinating, foxy, full-figured and frustrating. That was Diana Fluck.

Peter Fluck (b. 1941), and his working partner Roger Law (b.1941) were the caricaturists behind the popular satirical British TV series Spitting Image that ran from 1984 to 1996. The series, created by QI founder John Lloyd, used 3D puppets of celebrities, politicians, the Royal Family and other newsworthy individuals to perform sketches based upon current events. Several of the caricatures started to develop their own curious idiosyncracies: Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was always seen in a gents’ pin-striped suit; Liberal leader David Steel appeared as a mouse-sized figure in the pocket of SDP leader Dr David Owen (a fact that Steel later claimed seriously affected his political credibility); Pope John Paul II played the banjo; and anti-immigration politician Enoch Powell was shown as black. The show featured many of the UK’s top writers and impressionists, many of whom went on to fame in their own right such as Steve Coogan, Chris Barrie, Rory Bremner, John Sessions, Ben Elton, Jon Culshaw, Jan Ravens, Harry Enfield and Alistair McGowan.

Fiercely satirical, famously acerbic, fault-finding, famicidal, fleering, factious but always funny Spitting Image.

The term ‘Spitting Image’ is a corrupted and condensed version of the phrase ‘Spirit and Image’. A good portraitist should capture both. Its use as a title for the show was based upon the idea that people who verbally attack others are often said to be spitting venom or acid. Formic acid (also called methanoic acid) is ‘spat’ by certain formidable species of ants as a defence mechanism. The acid was named after the insects’ family name: Formicidae. The Formicidae are the most numerous creatures on the planet and it has been estimated that ants account for somewhere between fifteen and twenty per cent of the entire animal biomass of this planet. All ants can deliver formic acid by biting, but some species, such as the British Red Wood Ant (Formica Rufa), can also squirt or spit it from their abdomens. All such ants are of the species Formica.

Formica has nothing to do with either ants or acids. It is a plastic laminate invented in 1912 by Daniel J. O'Conor and Herbert A. Faber, who, at the time, were developing it as an electrical insulator for the Westinghouse Corporation. The idea was to develop a cheaper substitute 'for mica’ hence the name they gave to their new plastic. Mica is a heat resistant silicate mineral that can be split into flat sheets. Because of its colour and semi-transparency, it has been used throughout history as a substitute for glass. The Padmanabhapuram palace in India, built around 1601, has beautiful windows made from thin sheets of mica.

The Latin for ‘window’ is ‘Fenestra’ (meaning ‘little opening’), from which we get the term autocide-defenestration – the act of committing suicide by leaping from a high window. It is often shortened to the shorter ‘defenestration’ although, technically, this just means ‘to throw out of a window’ and could be applied to any object or person. It seems to have been quite a popular activity in Czechoslovakia at one time. In 1419 a group of Hussites (i) showed their disdain for the way that they were being persecuted by the Catholic church by throwing several members of the Prague Council out of the window of the town hall onto some spikes below. Then in 1618, just before the 30 Years War, rebels opposed to the ruling Habsburgs threw two of the King’s vice-regents out of the window of Prague Castle. Thankfully, on this occasion, their fall was broken by piles of garbage. Then in 1948, Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk was found dead below a high window. It is not known whether he committed autocide-defenestration or if he was given a hand by Communist agents. Incidentally, a more common form of execution is death by firing squad, which is another F word Fusillation.

There is a notable defenestration to be found in the Book of Kings in the Bible. Queen Jezebel of Israel, widow of Ahab and mother of Ahaziah and Jehoram, had turned her people from the God of the Israelites towards pagan gods like Baal. God was furious and instructed Jehu to deal with her. Consequently, he ordered her to be thrown out of the window by her servants where she was eaten by feral dogs. Jezebel’s name is forever asociated with naughtiness of a sexual nature because she encouraged lewdness and impropriety.

Filthy, fornicating, facinorous, faithless Jezebel!

Which nicely segues into the F word. So much has already been written about it elsewhere that I wondered what to tell you about Fuck. And then I found myself listening to the radio adaptation of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide the Galaxy: Tertiary Phase, which corresponds to book three in the series: Life, the Universe and Everything. In this phase of Arthur Dent’s story, the robot warriors of Krikkit have to assemble a key to free their world from imprisonment. One of the component pieces turns out to be a silver rod that is used as the Rory Award For The Most Gratuitous Use Of The Word ‘Fuck’ In A Serious Screenplay (ii). It made me wonder what the winner would be if such an award was held on Earth.

At Number One, with 824 incidences of the word in a 93 minute film is Fuck (2005); a documentary about the use of the word (which appears on average once every 8.8 minutes). Maybe this isn’t a fair inclusion in the list (iii) but the point the film makes is that Fuck has had a bad press. Why should such a flexible word be considered a bad word? Why is this particular arbitrary group of four letters any worse than flan, fork, from, feel, funk, form, food, fuel, fain, farm or fool? As QI presenter Stephen Fry once wrote in his book Paperweight:

'If school teachers describing animals talked about the way in which they fucked rather than 'the mating process', if barristers and judges used 'fuck' in court cases where penetration is an issue, instead of relying on those strange forensic phrases 'intimate contact' and 'physical relationship', if parents used it when explaining reproduction to their children, then a generation would grow up for whom the word held no more mysterious guilty terrors and strange dirty thrills than the word 'omelette'. What would that do to the sex crime statistics? Were we to have taboos about the word 'kill' or the words 'maim' and 'torture', however, it might perhaps be healthy: cruelty and homicide are things we really should be ashamed of.'

Such is the taboo surrounding the word that people use curious variants instead like freck, frag, fook, frick and the much beloved Irish feck. There are quite a few other F words that sound rude but aren’t. They include Futtock, which is the name given to the rib of a ship, Farctate (full, stuffed to capacity), Fipple (a plug used in the mouthpiece of woodwind instruments), Flench (to cut up blubber), Fossick (to turn over earth in search of something) and Furcula, which is the correct name for a wishbone. It is V-shaped and is made from the fused clavicles (collar-bones) found in birds. It used to be believed that only birds have them but a study of fossils has shown that some theropod dinosaurs also had them – thus strengthening further the assertion that birds developed from dinosaurs.

The custom of breaking a wishbone can apparently be traced back to the Etruscans of pre-Roman Italy who fervently believed in the soothsaying power of chickens. After all, a cockerel could predict the dawn and hens squawked before the miraculous appearance of an egg. Therefore, the science of Alectryomancy was born - Chicken Fortune-telling. It worked like this: A circle was drawn on the ground. This was then sectioned off into 20 segments – one for each letter of the Etruscan alphabet. Then, some food was placed in each segment and the chicken was loosed. Her chosen route would take her through a sequence of letters – like a living, clucking Ouija board – and a priest of some kind would interpret the message. Then, when the chicken was eventually killed, its wishbone was saved and dried. After all, it was special; no other animal had a V-shaped bone. And the V-shape symbolised the crotch and the crucible of life. Any Etruscan wanting to extract some post-mortem prognostication would rub the bone and make a wish

It was several hundred years later, when the Etruscan civilisation had been fully absorbed into Roman culture, that people started to break the wishbones for luck. It may be that the expression ‘lucky break’ came from the tradition. The Romans brought the superstition to the UK where the wishbone became known as a ‘merrythought’. And the Pilgrim Fathers took the tradition to the USA where it quickly became established as an integral part of Christmas and Thanksgiving.

Curiously, ostriches do not have a wish bone. Being a ‘primitive’ form of avian, they have a flat breastbone and lack the characteristic ‘keel’ found in most birds. Ostriches are extraordinarily useful birds. Their meat is delicious, they can be ridden like horses (Cleopatra is said to have enjoyed riding one), and their eggs are delicious – although it does take at least 40 minutes to boil one. Ostrich feathers are used in the top end of the automotive industry on special rollers used to remove dust before paint is applied to the metal of the bodywork. Interestingly, there are wishbones on cars too. The wishbone joints form part of the suspension system and posher cars – of the kind that would get feather dusted – have double wishbone suspension.

The credit for us being able to afford a car lies with Henry Ford (1863-1947). Ford may not have invented the motor car but he was the first to mass-produce them and bring the cost of ownership down.

Ford began producing his Model T in 1908 and by the time the model was discontinued in 1927, over 18 million had rolled off the assembly line. Ford was a brilliant businessman; he invented the modern system of manufacture using assembly lines, he offered good wages and working packages for his staff – so-called ‘Welfare capitalism’ – as long as they worked hard and kept production running high. He is credited with creating the concepts of the 40 hour working week and minimum wage.

There are rumours of a darker side to Henry Ford. He had bought a newspaper called The Dearborn Independent that held extremely anti-semitic views. Ford never directly contributed to the newspaper’s articles. Nor did he ever publicly espouse any anti-Jewish sentiment. However, his association with the inflammatory paper and his failure to sanction it made him appear to be of extreme right-wing views. Despite this, he is remembered as great philanthropist, a donator to various charities, and he set up the Ford Foundation to fund programs that promote democracy, reduce poverty, promote international understanding, and advance human achievement. He was also involved in aviation design and improving the railroads. And he invented the charcoal briquette.

Another innovative car manufacturer who also responsible for inventing some everyday household items was Frederick Henry Royce (1863-1933). He started his working life as a newspaper and telegram delivery boy but, following an apprenticeship with the Great Northern Railway Works in Peterborough, developed an interest in electrics. After working for the Electric Light and Power Company, he set up his own firm with his friend Ernest Claremont making small electrical components. But the company soon showed itself to be more than just a manufacturer. In just a few short years, Royce Ltd had created and patented the three wire electrical wiring system and plug, and the bayonet fitting light bulb – both still in use to this day.

Royce had bought himself a series of cars but had been hugely dissatisfied with their shoddy performance and unreliable electrics. So, being the kind of man he was, he designed and built his own. Among his innovations were a new type of smoother clutch, a three-speed gearbox driving a live rear axle, a rear footbrake and a handbrake. Word soon got around and eventually reached Charles Stewart Rolls (1877-1910), an importer of foreign cars based in Fulham, London. Rolls had been frustrated by the lack of innovative and well-built British cars on the market and was fascinated by Royce’s designs. The two met in the dining room of Manchester’s Midland Hotel in 1904 and decided to go into business together. The Rolls-Royce Motor Car company was born. Rolls agreed to sell as many cars as Royce could build but Royce was determined not to follow the Henry Ford path of mass production. His mission, in his own words, was to ‘to turn out the best car in the world regardless of cost, and to sell it to those people who could appreciate a good article, and were able and willing to pay for it.’ No one could argue that Rolls-Royce achieved their aim.

Many celebrities have owned Rolls-Royce cars as they are an obvious symbol of wealth and success. The 1960s was the car’s height of popularity. John Lennon had his 1965 Rolls-Royce Phantom V controversially painted with psychedelic patterns by a group of travellers and river people. This enraged many people including one old lady who attacked the car with an umbrella while Lennon drove it through London. The car is now kept on display in the Henry Ford Museum.

A 1937 Rolls-Royce Phantom III was one of the stars of the James Bond film Goldfinger. Auric Goldfinger and his henchman Odd Job used the car to smuggle gold between the UK and Switzerland by having solid gold car parts made and fitted.

During this heyday of the Rolls-Royce, the youngest registered keeper in the UK, at just 20 years old, was a successful young actress called Diana Dors.

Diana Dors (1931-1984) was Britain’s answer to the ‘blonde bombshells’...

Footnotes:

(1) A Christian movement that became one of the forerunners of the Protestant Reformation. It followed the teachings of John Huss (circa 1369–1415).

(2) When the book was published in the USA, the word ‘Belgium’ was substituted for ‘Fuck’. I’m sure the Belgian people felt honoured by this.

(3)The top five (barring Fuck itself) are Nil by mouth (1997) with 428, Casino (1995) with 398, Alpha Dog (2007) with 367, Twin Town (1997) with 318, and Running Scared (2006) with 315.

The Joy of Books

2012-01-10T10:52:00.000Z

A lovely stop-motion animation by the owners of Type Books in Toronto, Canada. What happens in a bookshop at night when the humans have all gone home?

This follows on from their previous animation, Organising the Bookcase. Enjoy!

Tea or Coffee - Come out fighting

2012-01-09T22:58:00.001Z

So ... which beverage has the most caffeine? Tea or coffee?

Whatever answer you give, you're right ... depending on the circumstances.

It's absolutely correct that tea has more caffeine than coffee if you're measuring the levels using dry weight; in other words there is more caffeine in a pound of tea than a pound of coffee. But a pound of tea has a much greater volume than a pound of coffee because tea is lighter and people generally use far less tea to make a brew than they do coffee. Consequently, the average amount of caffeine in a 5oz cup of tea is less than 60mg while the caffeine in the same sized cup of coffee is around 65mg (instant) or 80-115mg (fresh). So tea does have more caffeine than coffee but a cup of tea has substantially less than a cup of coffee. As I say, you're both right!

The world’s most expensive coffee comes from the Philippines and is called Kopi Luwak. It sells for over £300 per pound; all the more extraordinary when you realise that it goes through the digestive system of an animal before it gets to you.

The Asian Palm Civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus) eats coffee cherries from the coffee plant and the enzymes in its stomach digest the outer fruit. They then break down the protein in the seed (the coffee bean), which reduces the bitterness of the flavour. The civet then excretes the beans and they are harvested from the animal’s droppings.

Absolutely true. However, before you go to rush out and try it, it's worth talking to people who already have. Just because something costs a lot, it doesn't mean it tastes better. Lobster costs a lot more than crab but I'd take the far tastier crab any day. Do have a read of this - there is a dark side to Kopi Luwak, especially in respect of animal rights.

Ghosts of places past

2012-01-08T22:57:00.003Z

I read a fascinating Reuters article today about an unfinished and abandoned fake 'Disneyland' that still exists in China. The article is here.

There is something very spooky about places that have been simply abandoned. And it reminded me of late last year when I found, quite by accident, a deserted and dead garden centre while walking the dog. It was a very curious feeling walking around the site. All it needed to complete the atmosphere was a few wandering zombies. Click on the images to see a larger picture.

Ian Dryland reminded me of this great site of abandoned theme parks. Just the sort of places the Scooby Gang would like. And Steve Hills sent me this link to the blog of a young Russian woman called Lana Sator who managed to get onto the site of a largely abandoned missile factory. Her photographs are astonishing. Do have a look.

Looking for love? May as well use a telescope

2012-01-08T01:20:00.000Z

I've previously discussed the subject of life elsewhere in the universe, at some great length, on this blog. For a quick re-cap, here's a piece I did on the Drake Equation and the Fermi Paradox. Here's an article on why we shouldn't be looking for life as we know it, and here's a an essay on the unlikelihood that any aliens we meet will be humanoid.

Looking through my folders of notes and articles today I found this story:

Love in London is as rare as finding aliens

by Rebekah Curtis (editing by Paul Casciato) January 19th 2010 (Reuters)

'Peter Backus, a teaching fellow of economics at the University of Warwick, has calculated that he has a 0.00034 percent chance of finding love in the British capital using the same Drake Equation scientists use to determine the potential number of extra-terrestrials in our galaxy.
American astronomer and astrophysicist Frank Drake devised his namesake equation in the early 1960s.

The 31-year-old Backus -- who lives on a narrow boat in central London - is not even that particular about his ideal match, requiring only that she be a London-based female, aged 24-34, with a university education. 'I am not trying to be an elitist or anything, he said about his educational requirements. 'Everyone has preferences. I just think we would have more in common.' Further reducing his chances, he has estimated he would be physically attracted to just five percent of the women meeting all these criteria. This means there are about 10,500 women in Britain who tick all the boxes for Backus, he said - just above the 10,000 potential communicative civilizations that could exist in the Milky Way according to the Drake equation. So just 0.14 percent of Londoners and 0.017 percent of the British population meet Backus's own requirements, he said.

However, you also have to factor in the personal tastes of the eligible women too - a relationship takes two. If Backus's dream women are equally as fussy as he is, his chances of finding someone who will return his affections plummets to just 0.00034 percent. 'There are 26 women in the UK with whom I might have a wonderful relationship. So, on a given night out in London there is a 0.00034 percent chance of meeting one of these special people,' he said. 'That's a 1 in 285,000 chance. Not great'.

But love can still defy the odds right on your doorstep. Since writing his paper on the equations of finding love, Backus has started dating his neighbour, Rose. She meets his age requirement, has a university degree and also lives on a boat.'

Which means, I guess, that the universe is capricious and doesn't bow to mathematical probabilities. Against all the odds people do find love, people do win the lottery and maybe, just maybe, the universe is teeming with life.

Cartoon by me, circa 1992.

New flavour, new pleasure

2012-01-08T00:31:00.001Z

I love this track. It's 'Somebody that I used to know' by Gotye (from the album Making Mirrors):

... and was therefore delighted when my son pointed me in the direction of this clever cover of it by Walk off the Earth.

Cover versions don't have to be poor imitations do they?