Batflower

The Pirate Solution

2008-12-04T11:47:00.000-08:00

Gaining Internet popularity for the last few years, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a religion presided over by a ridiculous bolognesey deity and followed by those who call themselves "Pastafarians". Perhaps you have heard of it. For the last few days, I have found myself thinking of one of the church's tenets, and its implications in the real world. The principle states that climate change is caused by a decline in pirate numbers, and is best illustrated with their official graph:

I'm sure most of you are aware of the story about the hijacked Saudi oil tanker that has been in the news recently. Could this "unprecedented" attack have more consequences and implications than one might initially think? The attack was said to be unusual, and the pirates operated out of an area far south to the known danger area. Given these facts, is it too much to assume this suggests an increase in piracy? If it does, His Noodliness be praised, I think we've got this global warming thing sorted out.*

BBC report on the incident

Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

* - If only because $100,000,000 of oil is currently out of commission.

Imperfection

2008-12-04T08:38:00.000-08:00

It's taken a while for me to face up to my blog and start writing again. Often people are afraid that since they cannot achieve perfection, it is better to achieve nothing than to achieve imperfection.

I have returned now and though my words may sometimes be laden heavily with blemishes, I am happy to wade towards perfect shores. In the style of that flamboyant, melodramatic artist-type, I felt nothing would allow me to begin better than to purge myself of the old, and so I have deleted fourteen of what I felt have been my weakest blog posts. Never has impoverishment felt so enriching.

There's still some chaff cluttering a corner here and there, to be sure, but I was happy to find that reviewing what I thought would be solely childish and badly-phrased works has actually been more like remembering old friends. Bizarrely, in my search I have found a nesting comment from a stranger, quite recent, complimenting my writing. My first, and it has made me smile a great deal. Thank you, Vevay.

Imperfect words are waiting to be written.

Whispered Words

2008-11-26T03:29:00.000-08:00

They must have suggested themselves to me in passing, like a stranger's perfume curling over my shoulder from down the street. I did not notice them at the time, for I did not know that I knew them, but one day they rose like a fish from the deep and spoke to me.

Those words. Clinging like smoke to my attention. Growing stronger. As the days passed I found that they wouldn't leave me alone, and I pondered for what special purpose they might be following me.

Curiosity and consciousness welling up in me, I gave in and Googled it.

Lembit Opik. What the hell?

The Theremin Project

2008-03-24T10:41:00.001-07:00

And now that the first coat of varnish is drying I will begin the tale of my theremin project.

A theremin is a completely unique musical instrument. It was the world's first fully electronic instrument (invented in 1919), and it's the only instrument contolled through empty space - played without being touched.* Its sound produces a rich, round tone (originally intended to imitate the violin), with inherent glissando (and sometimes tremalo)which has made it the champion instrument of "eerie sci-fi" soundtracks ever since the 1950s.

It is controlled via capacitive coupling between the body of the player and the aerial on the instrument. Most theremins have two aerials - one each to control pitch and volume - while some have only a pitch aerial. Capacitive coupling to the layman means that there's a difference in voltage between the instrument (connected to a mains electricity supply) and the player, who is grounded (0v). This means electrical charge is stored between the two, and how much of this can be stored (capacitance) is dependent on distance. So waving arms and other extremeties around the theremin creates changes in capacitance. Electronic wzardry detects the change in capacitance and creates the corresponding noises. The circuitry of the theremin is in fact nearly identical to that of a radio receiver. Under special circumstances I'm too lazy to look up, radios can act as theremins, emitting capacitance-dependent wails over the usual radio broadcasts.

These instruments can be bought and enjoyed by all, in preassembled and kit form. It just so happens I have recently been gifted the Moog** Etherwave theremin kit, and I have decided I shall be chronicling the progress of my work here.

* - I might make a note here about the thorn in the side of this grand proclamation that is the laser harp. The laser harp works via the interruption of laser beams to light sensors which approximates the plucking of a harp string. While it's true this doesn't require any physical contact with the instrument, I'm not sure it can be argued it's actually "space controlled" since playing the instrument involves blocking a discrete number of sensors rather than actually making use of the region around the instrument.

** - I've decided to save you all imminent ridicule by pointing out that the pronunciation of the word "Moog" is somewhat of an invitation to be sneered at by the elitists if you get it wrong. It rhymes with "vogue".

Buckingham Pi

2008-03-16T05:47:00.000-07:00

My university career, it seems, has come like the tail-biting snake to finish exactly on the topic it began.

It began with Physics Foundations, and an overview of dimensional analysis, and the Buckingham Pi theorem. The first lecture I ever went to. I could say I've learned a lot since then, and I have in some ways, although not as academically based as the idealist might think. I could also jest that I've learned nothing except loathing for my subject, but that would also not be entirely true.

The close of the course on Chaos and Complexity, on my last day of lectures, was on dimensional analysis and the Buckingham Pi theorem. Perhaps this provides a unique poetic closure. Perhaps this means it is time to go. Goodbye university.

Scylla and Charybdis

2008-03-10T01:41:00.000-07:00

I'm busy writing up the report on that final project of mine.

On reading the introduction to "Specific Heats at Low Temperatures" by E.S. Raja Gopal, I discovered the following claim:

"It has been a difficult task to steer between the Scylla of encyclopedic completeness and the Charybdis of shallow banality."

This is a fancy way of saying "I recognise that this book is not at all interesting. I'm trying to squeeze blood from a stone by injecting grandiloquent references to Greek mythology."

God. Even the professional physicists know their subject is boring.

The Soul in My Room

2008-02-09T09:33:00.000-08:00

Every so often I'm in the middle of doing something in my room when suddenly I stop and leave the room, and I come back in like a ghost. I pretend I'm a stranger and I'm not allowed to touch anything, but I'm afforded a rare glimpse of somebody else's life - I see a whole soul encoded in its material arrangement - the clothes on the floor, the books on the shelf, the posters on the wall, the clutter on the desk.

And I love it. I'm so happy for all the dust and the patterns and the possessions and the thoughtfulness and the thoughtlessness that is still me even beyond my flesh and bones.

There's lots of red and black and white. That's my favourite colour scheme. That's the colour of the poster and the DVDs and the bed, and three delightful new juggling clubs in the corner. They are still in their wrappers - to preserve their newborn status - but they have already been used, and already the red one has a scratch on it. I am sure it is the sign of much fruitful use to come. On the shelf above my desk is the Frederic Chopin boxset and book an grammar that form my attempt at intellectualism, and my Shaun of the Dead DVD and Guitar Hero games that don't.

The whole place is littered with important looking books that try to make me seem a brainbox on subjects from quantum mechanics to meteorology. Even so, here on my desk is an old report I did where I've said something misleading, if not just wrong, about the Brillouin function. There are quite a lot of chocolate wrappers here and there. I should probably tidy up. There's a guitar in the corner that excuses have forbidden me from touching. There are some old grapes in here too, that I've been trying not to admit to for a while.

Amongst the failures are also the successes. In a corner of the room sits another report I wrote, with the most stunningly amazing mark on it I have ever received. My juggling balls are looking pretty tattered. I can do some amazing tricks now I couldn't do a year ago. Shoes, worn and comfortable, are resting on the floor in wait until the next time they have to take me out. A big, heavy book on life, the universe and everything has had an impressive two thirds of it safely partitioned from the unseen part by a beautiful shiny bookmark.

The best part of being a ghost in my own room is the fresh perspective it brings. As I regard the things around me I realise I understand more about them than any stranger could. I realise I've extended my soul into the space around me. I like my room. It's pretty cool.

Japanese Game Show

2008-02-02T18:03:00.001-08:00

A bit of the ol' ultraviolence

2008-02-01T12:24:00.000-08:00

It was due to a combination of weariness at hearing “I’ll never hear that song in the same way again” and a £3 bargain that I purchased and watched a copy of Reservoir Dogs.

It was a good film.

I always find there is a particularly strange dichotomy in my attitude towards violence. On the one hand, my moral philosophy is to act with the biggest amount of kindness possible, which should afford the greatest peace, considering that violence is abhorrent. On the other hand, I have never necessarily shied away from a bloody film or a good first person shooter. From my point of view, for me as a singular, a bit of violence in the media is good. Not too much. Just enough to curb my own psychopathic tendencies, as it were, to let the bad blood. I’m by no means heartless, but to deny that any human being contains the full spectrum, sinner to saint, child to mother, is unhealthy. An understanding and acceptance of our dark sides allows our virtuous selves to flourish. And yes, I know, “it’s all very well to say that’s why violence in the media is okay, but what about the copycats?” What about the people who gorge themselves sick on this violence and let it spill into their own conduct? Well, all I can say is that they’re not approaching it in a balanced way. I can’t say that that’s the conclusion to the problem, only that I recognise the immense difficulties in this area.

However, for the sake of all the balanced people and considering the output from the skill of someone such as Quentin Tarantino, isn’t it beautiful? All the thought and the richness tied up in it has had me thinking about layer after layer of elements of the story. For me, the theme here has been fallibility: errors of judgement, loyalty and betrayal, mortality, stupidity, bad luck, suspicion.

I got invited to see Saw IV tonight, but I’m afraid I felt no urge to accept after this film. Reservoir Dogs is to a fine, ripe Brie de Meaux as Saw IV must be to that “squezee cheese” that comes in an aerosol can. And by the way, the scene in question with “that song” wasn’t as bad as I believe people have made it out to be. I probably will think of it in the same way because I always did like it. It is a good song.

Jokes for the MTV Generation

2008-01-25T12:34:00.000-08:00

Dear Youth-Of-Today,

I know how much you like things to be fast and straight to the point, so here are some jokes that are just that - cutting out that awful wordy middleman...

How many US presidents does it take to change a lightbulb?
1

How many emos does it take to change a lightbulb?
0

How many surrealists does it take to change a lightbulb?
3

How many DJ's does it take to change a lightbulb?
10

How many Irishmen does it take to change a lightbulb?
100

How many Italians does it take to change a lightbulb?
2

Bad Graph Day

2008-01-21T15:34:00.000-08:00

I believe I just had what is quite possibly the worst day for graphs I have ever had (or will ever have) in my whole scientific life. Check these beauties out.

Super-bonus points to anyone who can identify my area of research.

As it happens, while I was a-projecting today, creating the monstrosities before you, I was quite taken with the iPod Touch of a fellow research student. I spent an age fiddling with a particular game on it called Evolution RGB.

Now, it would almost be worth describing this game except that it is nothing more than the poor cousin of another game that predates it, which I came across one day on the Big Bad Internet.

The Falling Sand Game is really a series of Java applets, each containing a different set of tools and materials, such as (but definitely not limited to) sand, water, fire, plant, oil, wax, napalm and the enigmatic but annoying "???". There is no objective other than to create marvellous interactive sculptures - it is really just an advanced virtual sandbox. My favourite version even features little zombies, which you can bury in the ground and watch as they attempt to dig their way out.

Come to think of it, my graphs do kinda resemble zombie-battered shelves of wax.

The Falling Sand Game

The Anti-Jon Story

2008-01-16T12:18:00.000-08:00

It turns out, yet again, that happiness is a worthwhile pursuit. It has resulted in creativity!

Sctott and I were having a discussion a little earlier about a mutually disliked former acquaintance. His name is Jon, and for all his good looks, scientific prowess, grammatical flair and vast alcohol tolerance, he is an arrogant, disparaging, insensitive... person (RE my previous post: it's ok, I forgive him).

Jon likes to make known his written works, almost at the expense of others; he brazenly puts forward his efforts with the pretence of a self-deprecatingly modest genius ("Here's my submission to the magazine - I doubt it would make much sense out of the context of the book, but it's my best shot anyway. I'm afraid I can't come to the publication meeting.")

It so happens that Sctott saw Jon today, and within the context of literary creation too, as Jon was nosily trying to oversee Sctott's work on the aforementioned magazine, the society of which Sctott is the president. Neither Sctott nor I care much for Jon's work, reeking as it does of ostentatious self-assurance, since in the past he never cared to ever look at ours and pass any criticism, positive or negative. Thus it was decided that what we needed to produce was an anti-Jon story. This would be a story of Jon's made of antimatter, such that if he ever tried to get one of his stories near us again, especially in the context of a magazine submission, we would use the anti-Jon story to destroy it.

As everyone knows, when matter comes into contact with antimatter, both annihilate, resulting in a complete absence. As everyone also knows, antimatter has the property that it is exactly the same as matter except for a reversal of time symmetry. The effective result of this is that antimatter is regular matter travelling backwards in time. Obviously.

That's when we remembered that back in the first year Jon had had a sudden problem with one of his computer's hard drives and had lost a significant amount of his writing. And we realised that he lost it because our future selves had clearly written an anti-Jon story and sent it back in time. We had not written any such thing, however, creating the condition that unless we wrote an anti-Jon story there and then a time paradox would cause the universe to explode. So we decided to write one. The effort follows.

THE ANTI-JON STORY
by Me & Sctott, featuring the Housemate Third
All idiocies, grammatical or otherwise, are intentional (we promise).

Once abom a time (theabom was made of jelly and nitrogen and cumin and fire) there was a car-crash and it was really witty. The ombomniscient narrator died of StTurf maccarony. Therefore the story is therefore narrated in the 3rd person without a narrator. The story will be as deep as a ladies garter.

Won day, there wos a pirate whose name wos Won Jon Silver. He wos friends with a Jedi named Jobi Jon-Won Jon-Bon-Jovi Kenobi. I think we need speech marks now, "said the pirate." But not like that! Get them right, for Jedi's sake! "Ok, sorry" I'll stop now. "I should say so," said the pirate to me, "and stop speaking in the first person." Ok, the non-existent narrator will stop talking in the first person. And will stop mixing tenses.

Won Jon Silver and Jobi Jon-Won Jon-Bon-Jovi Kenobi were walking in a field when they saw a beautiful girl. She was cryin'. "What's the matter?" they asked.

"My dad is Bob Marley the Evil Rainbow, and he has forbidden me from being sarcastic and witty. I hope you like cryin' too."

"We don't," said the pirate and the Jedi, and so they left.

(Un)Happiness

2008-01-16T09:13:00.000-08:00

Today I have been thinking about what makes people unhappy.

I think the answer is insecurities.

People get unhappy when they are unsure about things. Most importantly, other people. I think any situation in which people experience a negative interaction is 99% likely to be based on a misunderstanding. After all, I guess it is impossible not to misunderstand someone to at least some extent when all we have is the slight, subjective slice out of some unknowable greater reality. That which we do perceive is cut down and coloured by our own experiences and capabilities: eyes see only the "visible" portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Furthermore, biased eyes refuse to see anything but yellow (to paraphrase a paraphrasing, very popular with one of the most influential people I know).

The other 1% of negative interactions are fuelled by previous experiences which were built on what was 99% likely to have been a misunderstanding.

Misunderstandings proliferate freely and can breed insecurities, which can breed further misunderstandings. There is probably no immediate prevention for either of them. But people would be happy if there was a cure.

Is there a cure? A way to learn to be happy? I think so. I've been trying for a long time to keep myself cured, and for the most part the cure is successful. It would be wholly successful if it was permanent but, like everyone, sometimes I get sad. I believe with practice the cure can become permanent, at which point it is also the prevention.

I think the cure is acceptance. I do not mean acceptance in a resignatory sense: one is not "doomed to fate" but one can accept and understand one's own lot along with the almost limitless possibilities for change. This is the start of being able to cherish it if it is good, or change it if it is bad. Not everyone is in acceptance, however, and these are the people prone to insecurities and misunderstandings.

It cannot be expected that other people will learn to accept. Therefore if they behave in a manner fuelled by insecurities they must be forgiven, that is, accepted. When receiving acceptance they may learn to become more accepting themselves.

I hope that one day I will become permanently accepting. When that happens I will be like Jesus or Buddha, or some shizzle like that. Then let's have a party and be happy.

Danger Danger, High Voltage

2007-12-03T16:05:00.000-08:00

"Are you busy?" calls Tim. He comes to me. "Because if you are, feel free to tell me to bugger off. I just need your help for a minute, if you could." Indeed, I have just finished what I was working on, so I go to help him out.

Tim is a lab technician. I see him every Monday and Thursday as I work in the labs on my final year project. He cusses and talks to himself. He grins at you madly when he catches your eye. He watches BBC news on the web at lunchtime, as he munches his way through an entire shopping bag of lunchtime goodies. He is enjoyable company.

I am not sure why Tim is where he is, exactly. He left school to work as a technician for the university. Work, that is, not study, but he soon decided he did want a degree after all, and is somehow now simultaneously a technician and a student of electrical engineering who doesn't really spend time around other students. It is his job to fix the magnetism department's machines and to build random electrical toys. Toys - I don't undertand either - like a ball bearing rail gun.

Or today's aluminium-disc-jumps-skyward-for-no-readily-discernable-
reason-or-purpose thing. He is adding more capactiors to it so that the disc can jump higher.

"Right," says Tim, handing me a stick of wood. "I just need you to be here in case anything goes wrong. It's highly unlikely, but it might, so I need you to be ready with that stick." I should point out that the stick is about 1 m long, 5 cm in diameter and completely solid. "Stand back in case anything blows up. If I electrocute myself you need to beat me with this stick until I let go of the electrics."

Sometimes I really love the occupational hazards of my subject.

Resolution #1

2007-10-27T10:42:00.000-07:00

I have no more room in my life for pens that do not work. I'll give 'em a Good Scribble, lick 'em, burn the nibs, and if they still do not work after that then they are going in the bin.

Now, if only I could convince my brain to work by threatening it with spittle and fire. After my pens and brain are working I can finally write.

Dog:

2007-10-26T10:12:00.001-07:00

Come, let us look at dog.

One Man's Junk

2007-09-05T15:47:00.000-07:00

I have been watching a program called "Dumped" in which a certain number of people agreed to take on an undefined ecological challenge which, laughably, many at first just assumed to involve lounging about on some tropical island. But that wouldn't be much of a challenge, now would it? Instead, they have been asked to live for three weeks on a landfill site, living off only what they salvage from the dump, a basic supply of fresh food, and hot water.

I would so much love to try out this challenge. As a child it's the sort of thing I always dreamed of. I don't mean the smell or the rats or the dust, which are just disadvantages where any situation would have its pros and cons. What I mean is the chance to live by one's wits, making big bits from little bits, scavenging with an eye shaped with ingenuity and adventure in mind. I don't mean I'd like to live in poverty either - I want a good bed to go back to at night. It's just, I was always the child making tents out of blankets and chairs, dry grass and palm fronds into cool garden lairs. There's something magical about the art of learning to use what is around you for more than what is immediately evident.

And so, the challenge attempts to transform these wasteful British brats into people aware of the cost, ecologically as well as quite literally financially, of what they simply throw away. As is the way with these things, a lot of them seem to be selfish whiners. There's a woman who is asserting her right to build abstract art sculptures, squandering resources in the process, instead of helping people to build their settlement. There's another who uses all his underpants and socks as disposables: use once, throw away. There's the bitch clique, who sit in the shade complaining of how they have been sidelined only to ignore a suggestion by another participant so they may continue to be the undervalued minority, bitching at leisure. Then there's this man:

Program Advisor: So, you've all been quite lucky so far, because you have a steady supply of hot water. We will not take that away, but I think it will be a good challenge to see if you are able to harness the power of the sun to heat your own water.

Participant: Why is that lucky?

Program Advisor: One billion people on this planet have no clean water at all.

Participant: So? That's not lucky. I live in Britain. It's a developed country, so when you live there, there are certain things you expect, like hot water. I don't see why that makes me lucky.

Program Advisor: You really are a smarmy bastard, aren't you? I wish I could slap you, except that would get this pulled off air.

Participant: You're right, I'm sorry. "If you're not part of the solution..." eh? I vow to change my ways.

I may have made up either the first or last part of that dialogue, but not both.

Phone Photos

2007-08-30T13:30:00.000-07:00

I am preparing to get a new mobile phone, and it is only with a reluctant neccessity that I do. You see, I am very much in fear of the possibility that to get a new bells-and-whistles type means to spend time being owned rather than owning. There are many other reasons I could choke out through my spittle, declaring my waxing hatred of phones, such as friends with other friends who spend time texting yet more friends instead of just enjoying the company of those actually present, blah blah. I shall however, for my sake and yours, refrain. My brick has served me very well. It contains photos spanning five years, and the O.A.P. that it is, the only way I can get them off my phone is to text them (at the last minute and at great expense) to my email account. This means I was selective, and rescued only those that remind me of the fondest times.

Just like the time I met that rockstar (unnamed) I wasn't supposed to take a photo of, but did anyway.

Or that time I sat in the Notre Dame of tents with a good friend of mine, constructing a face out of used midnight picnic goods.

Or that time our cat jumped in a roll of my mother's unfixed pastel drawings, and we had to bath her for fear that she'd lick the pastel off her and get ill.

Or that time I painted a guy in UV paints in a car park in Bath for his band.

Beware of Skidding

2007-08-28T03:27:00.000-07:00

Some things will never cease to piss me off.

Coconut Verde

2007-08-24T14:45:00.000-07:00

When your Friday night has ground to a bit of a halt, what more a restorative thing can you do than to hack open a green coconut and attempt to consume the fluids it contains? Mine was from Costa Rica.

Yes, well, I'm told it makes a popular drink in coconut-rich regions, and I am always eager to experience new things. So, after about ten minutes of huffing and puffing and molestation with a bread knife, I was granted access to the centre of coconut water and sipped at it delicately. Imagine if feta cheese was actually some kind of nougat, but not so sweet and without the pink bits, and then you drank the watery bit it came in... that's what it tasted like. Or, more literally, like one part coconut milk to two parts water. Yes. It was educational for the fingers and brain too, enabling me to guess well at how coconuts grow inside their pods.

Two thirds of the length of the coconut drained, and I started to encounter a texture in the drink more akin to mucus, and decided my education would be more suited to understanding how the nut (which is not a nut) responded to impacts, and with that, dropped it from the second floor window* onto the concrete step in the garden below. When I approached it I found not so much as a single honourary dent in its stubborn hide. I hurled it with all my might at the steps, whereupon it ran, with all the indignant fervour it could manage, to the opposite side of the garden. Concealed by darkness and shrubbery, I cannot help but think it would be licking its wounds right now, had it a tongue. And so, I believe it has earned a place in the garden. I shall call it... Estonia.

In other news, I have long thought my geography of countries fairly comprehensive until today I sought to test myself with this internet quiz. While I am still a long way more enlightened than the sort who think of Africa as a country, it is quite sobering to be unable to locate dozens of proud nations, many with land mass enough to easily eclipse that of my own.

I remain rather proud, however, of my ability to name some more obscure countries (not wanting to insult my non-existent international audience, I just mean, let's say, those out of the public eye) such as:
East Timor (because part of Splinter Cell:Pandora Tomorrow takes place there)
Bolivia (because it's where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid go)
Swaziland (because I simply have no excuse not to know where it is)
Chad (because megalomania and a lack of good international policy led me to decide to bomb there when I was about six)

* - In this respect I agree utterly with Americans. To enter a house at ground level means you have just entered the first floor. How could the floor above that be the first when if you go to it, it is actually the second level you have come across?

Early Learning Centre

2007-08-23T03:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to the Early Learning Centre. I played with a "food set" where you have to use a plastic knife to cut wooden food (cleaved to with velcro) apart as some form of preparation. I made my friend a "sandwich". It was the most genuine fun I have had in ages.

Good Day Sunshine

2007-08-04T03:32:00.000-07:00

A while ago I turned on late night TV to find a quiz show airing, all about distinguishing truth from lies. In a particular section:

"Clouds were once removed from the sky so that Paul McCartney could perform Good Day Sunshine in concert."

Oh dear god, I have been so desperately hoping this was true. They said it was. I looked it up this morning, as far as the lethargy-encouraging power that is Google would allow and it came up with... nothing. I am sad. It would have been so, so awesome.

But nevermind, eh? And so I played Good Day Sunshine, watched that beautiful stuff streaming into the kitchen, and carried on.

Three Black, Two White

2007-07-23T08:18:00.000-07:00

A riddle for you:

A dying king decided to appoint his successor from one of three wise men, and to decide between them he placed them in a room, one each on three chairs, all facing the same direction such that the man on the chair at the back could see the two occupants before him, as the man in the middle could see the occupant before him and the man in the front could see nobody. No man could see the top of his own head.

The king brought out five hats - three black, two white. He randomly placed three of these on the heads of the wise men. He told them they had half an hour, without moving and in silence, to work out what colour hat they sported. At the end of the half hour if any man was able to identify their hat correctly, and with sound reason, he would be appointed the next king. If not, all three would be executed.

The king returned when the time had expired, and at last the man at the front stood up, saying "I have a black hat, and I refuse to explain my reasoning." All three were duly executed. So, the question is: What the hell did he do that for?

Oh, and also, I have decided I am highly amused, to the point of obsession, with the new Optimus Prime Voice Changer Helmet, available RRP £30 from all good stores. I intend, however, never to procure one.

Here, then, is another riddle:

A dying king, in choosing a successor of his three wisest men, places three chairs in a row, all facing one direction. He seats one wise man in each, and brings into the room five Optimus Prime Voice Changer Helmets, three functional, two broken. The helmets are assigned randomly, and each hat is "operated" once. But, the questions are: Who gets to be king? Who gets to be Optimus Prime? Are the broken helmets irreparable?

A Room of Pseudo-Venetian Tack

2007-07-20T09:18:00.000-07:00

Every so often, I like to take stock of what is in my head. My thoughts, opinions and ideas about the way the world works, let us say. I think of my head as a room full of objects (for some reason, these seem to me as those glass ball type mantlepiece decorations, with all the bubbles and ribbons of pigment in them).

I like to pick each one up, rotating it and gazing at it from every angle and evaluate: What does this mean? How did it come to be here, in my head? How did it come to be in this part of my head? Is it good? Is it useful? Is it entertaining? And if I find that the idea is not good (perhaps I came up with it while destructively depressed, maybe someone else put it there, perhaps I was just wrong at the time) then I throw it out the window.

Thus my head becomes progressively emptier.

Rabid Hippies Attack!

2007-07-16T14:34:00.000-07:00

Ok... I've been avoiding this one for a long time, mostly, to be honest, out of laziness.

"Foreword"

1. This post is about morals and ethics and stuff, particularly about vegetarianism. I give you this warning such that if you are not in the mood or not prepared to give proper thought to such things you can leave now and have not wasted too much of your time.

2. Veganism may or may not have some merits, but let's not go there. One step at a time.

3. I will try my darndest to be as brief as it is possible to be with such unresolvable topics.

4. If I quote anything that appears as fact, including statistics, I am not going to include a reference (I'm pretty sure we both can't be bothered). I promise I am not making it up or lying to you (i.e. not misquoting anything) and the idea is that if I kindle any spark of interest you will research things and see for yourself.

5. I have a theory (untested, but particularly fascinating in the context of a coffee shop or Douglas Adams bistro, as the theories of all laypeople are wont to be) about why people hate hippies. The "hippie type" is smelly, hopelessly left-wing, irrational and preachy, or so their popular image seems to declare. The norms (as I have decided I shall call them) hate the hippies for it. While they are getting on with their jobs, being clean, driving cars and eating whatever and not being at all radical, the hippies, according to the norms, try to undermine their entire lifestyle by being irresponsible, jobless, bridge-dwelling arseholes who have the temerity to preach to the norms why everything they do in their lives is wrong. And some of them are arseholes. Some of them decide to nag people into the ground in the most fruitless ways. They thrust vivisection leaflets at your face as you try to enjoy a pleasant day in town. They vandalise company buildings and sometimes even threaten or kill scientists if they have reason to believe that company was involved in animal testing. Whatever, the list goes on. And these people are the nutters. They are crazed people who besmirch whatever banner they choose to stand beneath, so don't judge the majority by what they do.

Putting that select group aside, I think people who are very ethically driven ("hippies") are hated, or at least regarded with disdain by most, more apathetically minded people("norms") because: a) They whine, try to convince too hard or try to take the moral high ground not because it is right, but because they get to be holier-than-thou. b) They're actually right, and the norms are busy stewing in repressed guilt, unwilling to hear the argument fairly, unwilling to think for themselves, because to do so just a little would be to realise they have built their houses on shifting sands. They are not evil people, but they are lazy, and they would rather ignore the truth than have to suffer a revelation at the hands of a "hippie".

The reason this last point ignores my pledge of brevity (and I haven't even gotten to the thing yet) is because I'm scared. What I'm about to say makes me feel like I am a whiny hippie with little grip on reality because I think that is what you will think of me. If you read past the first point that means at least some small part of you is not already decided. I will make a deal with you: I will try my very, very hardest not to be one of the nutters or hippies who fall into category a, if you try not to be one of the norms who falls into category b. You can hear me out, and if you agree, I invite you to change, to learn more or simply to think. If you do not agree with me, you can say, fairly, "what garbage!" and then get on with something else.

"The Thing, a.k.a, Go Veg!"

My problem with vegetarianism is that I believe it is in the natural order of things to destroy other living things for substenance. Vegetarians who have chosen their diet on the moral grounds of "oh, you are killing the poor animals" are naive. Life feeds on death. If they do not feast on animals they feast on plants, most of which have to die in the process, or at least suffer. There is evidence that plants respond to "painful" stimuli such as breaking or burning: galvanometers (sensitive voltmeters, "lie detector machnes") show wild fluctuations when a plant is injured. There is even evidence that plants are psychic, and galvanometers respond in the same way when somebody in the vicinity of a plant merely thinks about injuring it (see Lyall Watson's books, for example, and if you know of contrary evidence I'd appreciate being enlightened). Short of becoming a windfall fruitarian (one who eats only plant food which falls naturally from the plant in question, thus not inflicting any harm) or invoking the extremest form of Jainism (which I belive on a practical level involves vowing to cause no suffering through pledges to eat less food every day, take fewer steps and breaths each day, etc, until death), which I think are unhealthy, unproductive and stagnant ways of life, you just have to accept that your life depends on the death and suffering of other lives. I'll respect the plants and animals of which I eat, but eat nonetheless. If a situation called for it, as long as the animal in question was not "unhappy" (I'll clarify what I mean later) and I needed to kill it to eat it I would do so without complaint.

HOWEVER

Life is not a wonderful place where everyone is healthy and thoughtful about the Earth and about animals and about the animals they eat. If this was the case, I would have no problems at all. If suffering is caused to an animal at the moment of slaughter, but up until that point it was living a healthy, comfortable life, that must be accepted. If deliberate, prolonged suffering or neglect prior to slaughter is caused to an animal I believe that is never acceptable. (This is what I mean by "unhappy".) In an industrialised, Western world, sadly, most animals fall into the second category. For example, "broiler" chickens are kept in dark, crowded conditions where they often have their beaks sliced off, with no anaesthetic, to prevent them attacking other chickens out of frustration. They also scratch and cause injury and infection to each other, which is left untreated. Even if you care not a jot about their welfare, do these diseased animals sound like something you'd want to put inside yourself? The slaughter method for nearly all chickens is to shackle them upside down by their legs, often done incorrectly, which crushes bones. Next, an electric shock is intended to incapacitate them, but is often incorrectly administered, hurting the bird and leaving it concious anyway. This means they are conscious for the scalding tanks, intended to remove feathers, which instead boil the chickens alive. This probably doesn't always happen, but be wary of "free-range" claims, as that tends to mean dark, unhealthy, crammed barns with just a few "peepholes" to the outside, often guarded by the more aggressive chickens so that most never get to go outside anyway. And that's just the chickens! I could give examples of similar instances of cruelty (frustrated, crowded pigs have their tails sliced off, again without anaesthetic, because otherwise other frustrated pigs would bite them) or disease (foot and mouth in England caused by bad agricultrual practice, millions of animals culled and burned, just in case), but I shall move on (I am growing ever more concerned about my brevity, but at least, the main point has now been stated).

So, if animals were magically ethically treated from now on, would I eat them? Certainly, but probably not very often:

> Wealth
It's cheaper! It is!
> Health
If animals are diseased, unhappy and badly fed (an extreme case, but plausible) meat is poor quality. Full of antibiotics, chemicals to keep it fresh in the supermarket, beef packaging in particular is often lined with carcinogens for preservatives. Old supermarket meat is probably also just not as tasty as fresh and from as happy an animal as local butcher meat. Fruit and veg eaten instead of meat provide much more nutrients, and it's actually pretty easy to find protein in a non-meat diet. Even broccoli has protein in it. Fact: on average, vegetarian people are taller, leaner, less diseased and more energetic than meat-eaters.
> Environment
Global warming is a reality and needs to be addressed. Much beef comes from South America, where cows not only fart their way to a warmer world, but rainforest is cut down (preventing carbon dioxide reduction) and then burned (increasing carbon dioxide emission). Slurry causes eutrophication, a process in which water systems over-fertilised by run-offs of slurry from farms grow algae, which smothers all other life. Things become stagnant and die and rot. Slurry also contributes to acid rain. Meat also uses up much more (precious) water to produce than an equivalent amount of
plant produce, (50,000-100,000 litres of water for 1kg beef, about 900 for 1kg wheat, just 70 for 1kg soya).
> Poverty
Consider the water point above and also that meat takes similarly larger areas of land to cultivate compared to plants, meat just uses up too many resources (you have to grow all that wheat to raise the chickens when you could just eat it straight away). In total, 70% of the world's plant produce goes to livestock. It's been calculated that if everyone ate as vegetarians there would comfortably be enough food in the world to feed EVERYBODY.

I wonder what it is like to pray for rain?

2007-06-19T02:46:00.001-07:00

Yesterday it was You Tube for lunch. First I watched a video of people walking for a day in the desert to get water. I watched people crying because they have no homes, they have no food, and their parents are dead. I watched them being persecuted by their own leaders. Then I watched a video of a Japanese robot that pours beer and talks.

It was a very eye-opening experience.

Paranoia

2007-06-17T04:53:00.001-07:00

Did you hear about that guy who was certain the FBI was after him?

They got him last week.

Last FM

2007-06-16T15:26:00.000-07:00

Last FM. Do you know it? Do you use it? I am aware of its concept, though I doubt I shall ever install it for myself. For those who are unfamiliar: Last FM is a music website/”radio station”. You install it as a plug-in to your regular music player and it collects data about what you have been listening to. It uses this to assimilate a profile on your music tastes. It recommends you more artists that you might like and makes you a personal “radio station” to listen to. “Radio station”, however, is a mere technicality to overcome illegality, and it is really just streaming you music from the web.

Recently I have become quite interested in the thought that Last FM might be able to build a profile of IQ based on a listener’s choices in music. Ever since I saw a “Nation’s IQ” type Saturday night programme on TV in which it was asserted that listeners of classical or rock music were the most intelligent while listeners of dance were the least, I have been fascinated about the real or imagined correlation between certain music genres and intelligence of listeners.

The conclusions of this programme were based on doing an IQ test of the audience (and available for viewers, although they were obviously not included in the results) and then asking them what kind of music they listened to. There are several problems with this, for example, how do you take into account the bias in allowing people just one answer? I’m sure most people listen to more than one genre. For example, I am currently simultaneously experiencing an irreversible obsession with two diametrically opposed bands: Tally Hall (pleasant, melodic and light, very Beatles-esque) and Lightning Bolt (genre: noise. And when they say that they mean it. The aural equivalent of one of those scary optical illusions). Another problem with the programme’s results was that Anne Robinson was the host. (*Stop reading here for a mildly derogatory comedic effect*) At the beginning of every question she would read the whole thing out, very slowly, subtracting from the time people had to concentrate on the actual question instead of her. I am sure this made everyone seem more stupid than they actually were, but some people, depending on what kind of brain they have, would be distracted more than others, and should this factor itself have a correlation with taste in music, this too would introduce a bias. I could probably worm out more reasons why the programme was biased, but I am not a psychologist, so I will not try. They might be lies.

But what better way to work out IQ vs. taste in music than to use Last FM data along with the results of a clinically conducted IQ test? I am sure this must be the least biased method imaginable.

I would be extremely interested in these results based on my own thoughts and experience on the matter. For example, who is to say that a classical fan is more advanced than a rap fan? Generally speaking, classical music is the champion of the upper classes while rap is favoured by working class CHAVS. However, while it seems evident that classical music is almost infinitely more complex in melody and structure, it puts next to no emphasis on vocals and lyrics. Rap, on the other hand, is pretty much retarded musically, but (assuming you choose the right artist; some rap music is just retarded, full stop.) is so much more lyrics-orientated, knotted with poetic sensibilities, and far too rich to take in with just one listen. However, having said all of this I am most likely the wrong person to ask anyway – I generally hate rap. Perhaps it is because I listen for musical artistry long before good lyrics.

For a second example, take dance music and its variants (trance, trip, electro, house, drum and base, industrial). I have recently grown very bored of it, whereas a year ago I was to be found increasingly fascinated with a genre I assumed to be moronic, presumably because of watching that programme. Again, I think the “intelligence” of this genre varies heavily depending on artist. For example, I cannot tell where I am in a Tiga or Goose song because it is so severely lacking in development that were I to skip to any random point in a song it would sound just the same as any other. On the other hand, take Nine Inch Nails (industrial vanishing into metal vanishing into beautiful. And yes, I am so sorry for bringing them into this AGAIN). Often I find with their songs that there are so many layers of sound caught between the catchy beats that every time you listen to it a new face presents itself. There is development and forethought in all of Trent’s composition, and the richness of sound relies not on distortion of a single tone, but the weaving of many minutely fine musical ideas (please listen to “La Mer”, and you will understand what I mean).

Also, context influences preference in music. I adore Chopin and may listen to it, for example, quietly as I try to study. However, it’s rubbish for trying to join in with singing and dancing. When I want to bounce off the walls I listen to Soulwax, and I am quite sure it would make horrendous bedtime music.

To conclude my ramblings I might add that as interesting as these Last FM results would be to see, I am not even sure what IQ is. It is no measure of worth: some of the people I respect least on this planet are also some of the most intelligent. What does an IQ test measure, other than aptitude at IQ tests? Perhaps a human being can be more intelligent but appear less so than another because they are rash and easily distracted, while the other, through diligence, achieves far more. What of the ambiguous “emotional intelligence”? Attitude to life? Moral and religious views? If there were a way to measure these, I wonder what these too would reveal in comparison with Last FM profiles.

Ampersand©

2007-06-12T10:53:00.000-07:00

French mathematician, physicist, historian, poet and philosopher André-Marie Ampère was born in 1775, in an age of English smallpox and German loss of interest in burning witches.

His life as a polymath may be celebrated as one of the most influential not only in physics, but in many lesser appreciated fields. He is of course best known for his formulation of Ampère's law, which forms one of Maxwell's four equations, the cornerstones on which all of electromagnetism rests. May I remind you, electromagnetism is not just sparks and magnets, it's practically every force you ever experience (except gravity and power metal). It is all of biology, it is all of chemistry. It is all of so many things.

His second greatest achievement however, of which many people are unaware, was that of the invention of the Ampersand©, &©. The Ampersand© is a symbol strictly limited to use by physicists &© historians. Its function is remarkably similar to common addition, and indeed was originally coined by Ampère as a shorthand for mathematics involving summation, especially over indices, until a more concise notation was developed by Albert Einstein in the early twentieth century. It was only until the mid-nineteenth century after Ampère's death, that British snobbery against the French and "The Institute" led the Royal Institution of Great Britian, an influencial scientific establishment, to call for the replacement of the Ampersand© in scientific notation with the capital sigma, Σ, through a cleverly executed campaign of ridicule and bullying of many prominent scientists of the day. Although unverified, it is commonly believed that the term Ampersand© is derived from a corruption of the term "Ampère's And".

The Ampersand© would probably not have come to be so widely recognised had it not been for Ampère's admittance to "The Institute" in 1814. Originally reccommended by Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre, it is believed that "The Institute" was reluctant to grant Ampère membership until to sweeten the deal, Ampère sold them the copyright to the Ampersand©.

This was not to be the last of André-Marie Ampère's achievements, however. In later years, after the death of Ampère's wife Julie Carron in 1804, the man was said to become increasingly lonely. He adopted two cats, and, distressed at their lack of mobility and freedom, invented the cat flap.

The Man and the Thorn

2007-06-09T09:53:00.000-07:00

Once there was a man with a thorn in his brain. It was nestled in a part of his head where it did not move, so he could only barely feel it, but nevertheless it was there.

The man lived in a horrible city which was full of dirt and poor people. The man was lucky, because he had a nice house, but he didn't really like the surroundings. Every day he used to drive down to the seaside, where he would park his car and get out and take a walk. There he could walk along looking at the beautiful sparkling sea and picking up tiny, pink shells. Sometimes fish would swim near him, in the shallow parts of the water.

As the seasons changed the weather got windier at the beach. The man tried to enjoy himself, but whenever he was there the wind would blow against his head and the thorn would be driven deeper into his brain. He hadn't noticed it much at first, but every day as he walked next to the sea the thorn began to hurt him more and more.

One day as he was walking, the fish who swam near him in the shallows saw how much pain he was in, and so they said "Why don't you pull the thorn out? Pull it out, and then you will feel better!"

The man replied "I don't want to. Pulling the thorn out will hurt a lot, and I don't want to hurt a lot. If I leave it in then it will only hurt a little bit."

The next day as the man was walking the fish saw that he was in more pain than the previous day.

"Pull the thorn out," they said, "it may hurt a lot, but after that it will get better and you will be well again. If you leave it in it will continue to hurt you more and more each day."

But the man refused, because he was scared of the pain it would cause him. He kept walking at the beach each day until finally the wind blew so hard that it drove the thorn into a vital part of the man's brain. He died and fell into the sea, where the fish nibbled at his body until his flesh was all gone.

The Summer Holiday is a Fruit Tree

2007-06-04T06:51:00.000-07:00

In the spirit of anticipation of the end of term I have been trying to use up the food that has been lying around in my cupboard. This consists mainly of two-year-old cans of beans. I was most pleased with myself today when I was able to liberate no fewer than two cans and four bottles of spice. As the food depletes and the kitchen counters get reclaimed by the Crumbmaker and her entourage of mess, and as the sun shines and the calendar ticks down to Q-day*, I feel my involvement in this spit-encrusted hovel begin to lessen. I phoned the water company today to cancel the account.

I might even miss the Crumbmaker a bit. I'd miss her more, but I already started missing her when we moved in together - when she who was once one of my favourite people in the world began, inexplicably, withdrawing from me. Plus, she makes so much bloody mess! Perhaps the least considerant person in the kitchen I have ever met. Severus I am going to enjoy leaving behind. I have had to put up with a year of listening to him finishing everyone else's sentences and belittling everyone (including the Crumbmaker, when they are supposed to be the best of friends), shouting (as a standard vocal volume) and snorting back phlegm on the landing.

And another gorgeous holiday is approaching. A holiday that has not yet started is one of the best things about life. It is far better than a great holiday finished or a holiday in progress. It exists at the edge of time, waiting, calling with boundless promise. A holiday that has not yet started is an opportunity to do anything and everything, all at once. There can be no plan or there can be a thousand, and because it has not yet started, all plans are still valid. You are still at the trunk of a magnificently beautiful tree with fractally branching possibilities. You have not yet crawled along a single branch to the very end of a twig only to realise that you cannot reach for the piece of fruit on the other side. At the trunk you can eat every single piece in with your eyes and imagine savouring the taste of each one. I have so many plans for when the holiday arrives, and as much as I will delight in executing them, I delight most now as I shape and reshape them effortlessly in my head. Right now is when I enjoy the summer the most.

It's just as well, because in the mean time I have to contend with stoopid revision and exams. I feel like I will never fit it all in my head in time, and I'm in the air watching the rocks as they come rushing towards me. Right now I am treating science with the greatest amount of grace-saving contempt I can summon. Let's see:

Quantum mechanics - A theory of not knowing stuff, and pretending not to mind. Responsible for some of the worst in-jokes known to man.

Statistical mechanics - Science is a science, they tell us. It is based on careful observation and formulation of rules derived from hard fact. Why then is statistical mechanics' most crucial tenet, S=klnW, based on a guess? And then there's Gibbs' Paradox. After being guaranteed this was a genuine paradox and being lectured through the maths, we are told it is not a paradox.

Electromagnetic theory - Maxwell decides to fudge, adding a term called "displacement current" to Ampere's Law in order to force an incorrect theory into validity. He fails, but inadvertantly fixes a different problem he wasn't even aware of. Oh, and the displacement current is not a current.

* - The day of my demise, the quantum mechanics exam.

...And All We Ever Were, Just Zeros and Ones

2007-05-30T08:58:00.000-07:00

Also sprach Trent Reznor*, just one example of how the idea is perpetuated that the building blocks of binary which form our empires of information completely overlook the emotional reality of what it is to be human. How could a computer possibly conceive of love and hate, joy and despair, fear and boredom, when all it knows is on and off, definitely yes or definitely no?

Oh, these "arts types" enjoy their computer/science bashing. Take Chris Martin of Coldplay, for example. He says of the naming of Coldplay's album, "X&Y", that X and Y are the variables one wants to find in (the sloppily defined) "science". (Incidentally, that's not what you want to find. You want to find Ψ and θ. And γ, λ, α, β, ω, ρ, μ, ε. Practically anything that's not in the roman alphabet.) In the hopes of seeming sagely he expresses bewilderment at not knowing these answers, a sense that somehow, poetically, science doesn't provide the meaning of life, or indeed any degree of emotional or spiritual significance. Just 0's and 1's, X's and Y's to be found.**

But here's the thing. How did Trent tell us about the impersonality of electronics? He sang it, with searing compassion, into a microphone which broke every nuance of his voice into myriads of 0's and 1's. These were burned onto a CD which, when placed in a CD player, sent the 0's and 1's through metal tracks and junctions of silicone to produce minute fluctuations of a speaker cone. And when we heard it we were moved, because it was beautiful.

What of pictures? In a digital age pictures are stored and reproduced, just as with music, by lots and lots of switches, on or off. And for the image having been subjected to this process, the kittens are no less cute and fluffy, and it is no less horrifying to see victims of war.

Literature of any kind is even easier to explain. Instead of an approximation, the case here is simply one of translating the lettering system of a language into another. The ASCII code uses just seven bits and can with that represent not only the alphabet in upper and lower case, but also an extensive array of other goodies like punctuation, the copyright and trademark symbols and all those other weird marks you don't have a clue about. Seven switches on and off in different combinations - enough combinations reproduces anything you have ever read.

It follows that binary must have some power beyond the merely computational. What the mechanisms of this are, I have no idea. Somewhere between the source and the observer is an emotional vacuum, and yet, if the source is poignant enough, the observer will feel it. What the implications of this are I have no idea either.

Am I even making any sense? I'll shut up now.

xkcd

* - Yes, I know I've been mentioning Nine Inch Nails an awful lot in this blog. I am not an obsessive compulsive nut, this is mere coincidence.
** - In the course of trying to clarify my meaning I may have twisted Chris Martin's words a bit out of shape. Perhaps he means something else, but I think this is what he means. I have never payed attention to Coldplay for long enough to find out anything about them, except what I write here, and I'm pretty sure that was by accident.

Once Upon a Time (In a Dress)

2007-05-22T08:23:00.000-07:00

A very long time ago, my mother decided to get me into child modelling. She put me into a dress (which I hated) and took me over to Aunt's house and her beautiful, capacious garden, where Aunt took many photos of me. These photos were sent to the modelling agencies, and I was for a while called to do many auditions for television ads.

Around that time I loved nothing more than to enjoy the beautiful summer by swimming in the pool at my house. I used to collect Puppy in my Pocket, little plastic puppies frozen into various amusing or cute poses, which came with "fact cards" that stated, top trumps style, which puppies were the most intelligent, huggable, obedient, etc. How very marvellous of the manufacturers to discover a way to quantitatively measure huggability, and then relate this factor, scaled 1 to 10, to little lumps of plastic! But I digress... One of the things I enjoyed doing most with these puppies was to throw them into the pool and then go diving for them.

One day after I had become rather accomplished at diving to fetch puppies, I decided it was becoming too easy. I threw the puppies in the shallow end and decided that this time when I fetched them back to the surface I would have to do it with my teeth. It was suprisingly tricky. So it was that I dived over and over again to mash my face against the bottom of the swimming pool, mostly failing to collect puppies.

When I had finished swimming I had a huge graze spanning the length of my chin. It just so happened that I had a modelling audition the next day.

"Oh my goodness! What happened?" my mother cried when she saw me, to which I replied (rather inaccurately) that I didn't know. She pasted vast amounts of foundation over my chin the next day, until I looked like a child with a grazed chin covered in mother's make up.

I don't think I ever got to be in an ad either... I didn't act very well. One audition involved the director telling us to look really bored, because the parents have been fussing over some device that won't work for ages. One of the other children asked if we were allowed to roll our eyes. The director replied we could if we wanted to. Since I was very bored anyway, and it was the most interesting thing I could think of doing, I took this to be permission for me to stand there rolling my eyes back and forth, like they were on the end of a metronome. I didn't get picked.

Three Blind Men and an Elephant

2007-05-13T06:02:00.000-07:00

It's raining outside. Great big, fat, happy drops from the sky are plopping into every puddle on every roof I see, sending spires of water reaching back to the heavens. It's been raining a lot lately.

As a physicist I think "what a gorgeous demonstration of Newton's third law this is; the impulse of the falling drops makes the puddle jump up when they hit."

As a chemist I think "water has a pleasing viscosity. I see that it quivers when disturbed due to hydrogen bonding."

As a biologist I think "I wonder what bacteria is living in those puddles at the moment."

As a poet I think "this is very... uh... metaphorical." (OK, so I'm not feeling poetic today, deal with it.)

As an artist I think "the shimmer of light across the waves on the puddles is beautiful."

As a juggler I think "this is shit. It's been bad juggling weather for ages."

As a survivalist I think "proof! The end is nigh. It's global warming that's doing this and pretty soon we will all die from it!"

As a pragmatist I think "it may take a while for my clothes to dry now."

What you do in life affects the way you think. By the way, I am none of the above.

Meeting Father Christmas

2007-05-10T09:48:00.000-07:00

In a fit of boredom did I cry "But who will go out with me? This house is empty and dark. I am alone and lonely. I need a friend!"

Thus it was that my friend Alebanditos and I arranged at the very last minute and at great expense* to go to the pub. (Aunt, I promise it gets more interesting than that ;) )

It was there that we remembered the messages.

In our first year in university, Alebanditos and I (and others) lived together in an odd triangular arrangement which just about passed for accommodation. We were getting on with our lives** (possibly just trying to have a shower) when we discovered the first message clinging to a beam on the ceiling of the shower room.

"Harry is not the town," it said, "Gregory is the village."

And it was not the last. Behind a radiator, along the skirting, on the postbox, under a cupboard we found them. Up and down, left and right, in plain sight and yet hard to see. How we did stare and marvel at the sheer unlikeliness, and how very charmed we were by its romanticism! What an incredible victory it was to discover the next - just difficult enough to find that it was a most compelling scavenger hunt.

"Welcome to No Hope Disco."

I recounted with glee to Alebanditos the fun I had that someone should think so beautifully of life to hide us these broken poems, and what a sense of fulfilment I had as I found each one. I was like a disciple to some greater plan, where life was in every act and moment of being - boiling the kettle, getting the post, doing the washing up, going to the toilet, walking down the corridor - an adventure. And right there and then his stomach swelled to three times its original size. He grew old and grew a big white beard, and I noticed for the first time that he was wearing a hooded, bright red cloak and tough black boots.***

"Actually, that was me" he said with a shy smile. "It was my project. I was given a label maker as a parting gift from work, and I used it to hide messages around the house. I wanted to see how you would react." The second part of my reaction to his project is pending, as it has been ever since it first began. I wanted to leave behind a similar gift to those observant enough to see it and curious enough to appreciate it. Since going out with Alebanditos I have searched eBay for label makers.

"I found a gem on the dancefloor tonight."

I was going to write down all those precious scraps, but time has passed and I "never got round to it", so instead I remember just these three. It is a shame ( = something to be ashamed of). I never want to lose the gems I find on dancefloors ever again. I vow to write, and be happy.

The En- oh yeah, and then on the way back Alebanditos and I got stopped by the police. They informed us that he had just committed burglary.**** They then apologised for getting the wrong guy and drove off, and we proceeded on home.

* - Not actually true.
** - Not actually true.
*** - Not actually true.
**** - Not actually true.

The Crisp Dream

2007-05-07T05:45:00.000-07:00

Last night I believe I dreamed a number of things, all blindingly ordinary. Just like that one Calvin and Hobbes...

I dreamed of the act of replying to electronic messages.

I dreamed that the Scrabble game in the lounge downstairs had been cleared away, so when I came downstairs this morning to find it still there I was momentarily startled.

I dreamed I happened to overhear some people in a historical discussion about the Cooper Temple Clause. No, not the band, the historical event, just like it existed in my head but not in real life. Thus it was that I learned the origins of the band's name.

That's just like Franz Ferdinand actually, isn't it? Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria gets assassinated, and thus World War I is instigated. So, almost a century later, we get a pulpy indie band adopting the name. Instead of a generation of youngsters going "Oh, just like the Archduke, who became the catalyst* of WWI!" we have a generation of youngsters in secondary school history classes going "Oh, just like the band!". I wonder which, in our life and times now, is the more significant meaning of "Franz Ferdinand".

But I digress! I had a series of very ordinary dreams, I was telling you. These do not, however, even scrape the two heavyweights of my past:

In 2nd place, the Doom Metal Dream:

[In real life] : A friend recommends that I buy a doom metal album. Wishing to keep an open taste in music, I accept his suggestion and purchase "Capture & Release" by Khanate. I see there are just two songs on the album, so I suppose they must both be rather long.
[In the dream]: I look at the CD case as see, why yes, they are long. They are about 40 minutes each.

In 1st place, the Crisp Dream:

[In real life] : I come home after a night out feeling rather peckish. I go to the kitchen, which is dark, and connected openly to the lounge area, where some flatmates are watching a movie. There is a multi pack bag of crisps on the counter, but not wanting to disturb my flatmates, I try to find a suitable flavour in the dark. The multi pack "theme" is meaty, so I think to myself that that is a shame, as it will not contain any Salt & Vinegar.
[In the dream] : I look at the packet and see that although it is the meaty variety, it does indeed contain Salt & Vinegar crisps.
[In real life, the next morning] : It is light and the crisps are now plainly visible. The multi pack does indeed contain Salt & Vinegar crisps.

I'm not really sure what to make of these overly-literal dreams.

Link of the day: Calvin & Hobbes

* - I have no idea why historians use the term "catalyst" to describe that which instigates an event. That is not what a catalyst is; it is that which aids and speeds up what is already happening. In chemistry, a catalyst lowers the activation energy for a chemical reaction, ensuring less energy is required to get the reaction started, and when it does happen, it happens faster.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand - "Oh, just like the band!"

Procrastination

2007-05-05T05:33:00.000-07:00

It's rife. I may never work again.

Link of the day: Boomshine

Conversation

2007-05-02T07:56:00.000-07:00

So I went to the Arts Centre today to have my lunch, and as I sat on one end of a capacious but mostly unoccupied couch a man approached.

"Do you mind if I sit on the other end?"

So he sat down, pulled out a monstrous ring-bound A4 manuscript and began at once to verbalise.

"You have to walk so much in England, I can't believe it!"

He flung his jumper down , revealing the other one he was wearing underneath it.

"Where are you from?" I asked.

"Greece," he replied, "Greece, Athens. It is beautiful there, beautiful!"

I tell him I have never been.

"Oh, but you must, it's beautiful! At least once. When you go there you will want to go again."

He budged up a bit as his mother sat down next to him. A most random dialogue proceeded.

We talked about my degree, my subject and year of study, where I lived, his degree of study and where he lived. We talked about the huge manuscript he was consulting, his own thesis on Grecian politics and economics (as I remember roughly) and how it took him three and a half years to research it having to painstakingly arrange a series of personal interviews because it was not well documented. We talked about the weather, about how it was so much colder here than in Greece and the English were deluded to believe it was already hot. He asked about good restaurants. We talked about how the University had not changed much since he did his first degree here in 1998. Some nights in the Union now were the same as then, some are now different. We talked about how I love literature in spite of being a scientist, and how he can write about politics excellently but can't bear to read any of it because he is just so fed up after writing the thesis. We talked about certain futures and uncertain futures, and how both of us didn't know where we were going, but both knew it would be fine. His mother asked me a few of the same questions which he reiterated. When he fetched her a cappuccino and wandered off, she and I talked about how cappuccinos in the Arts Centre were not too good, and she laughed heartily about her over-sized spoon, declaring "This is only good for soup!!"

And then I left because I had to go to a lecture.

Nobody is nearly as open and honestly interested and nice to people around here, and indeed I think, in many parts of the world. The only person I know who can just do that so freely with people is my dad. I have been practising being able to converse with people in this manner, and I am indeed able to start many a random conversation with people on my course, but I can't do it completely freely anywhere with anyone yet.

I enjoyed my spontaneous conversation with these people. I think more of life's encounters should be like this. It's one way how ideas and friendships and futures are carved, and none of them can ever be completely inconsequential.

Japanese Underground

2007-04-30T10:59:00.000-07:00

Today I was most amused to learn that in Tokyo during rush hour, additional personnel must be employed on the underground train system for pushing people onto the trains. Nobody wants to be late by missing the current train, so they cram themselves on board worse even than cramming in London Underground, then somebody walks past each door of the train pushing at the bits that stick out so that the doors can close.

In other news, I recently bought a DVD of renowned randomist and Class One Funny Man Ross Noble, only to be met with the following blurb:

"...The result is this monstrously bumper 4 disc set packed with live shows and documentarys, as well as the ridiculous amount of extra's Ross Noble DVD's have become known for."

Does anyone else think it would be worth the time of the manufacturers to get someone to actually proofread the back? I quail in utter disgust.

Link of the day: Japanese commuters on Tokyo underground

...And All the Things They Learn They Cannot Do

2007-04-28T03:28:00.000-07:00

I was writing to old friends last night. The ones which help me come up with all the crazy ideas that keep my soul alive. I miss them.

And I said... I am going to get out of here, as soon as I can. I am going to go do and be everything that I can possibly be. I am going to see the sights and do all the things that people learn they cannot do when they go to university.

I've thought for a long time that university was a place where minds were fed, and they grew into beautiful things with more knowledge and inspiration and even more ambitions and ideas and dreams than they went in with. For a select few people I believe this to be true, but actually for the most part, it's not. It's like shovelling carbon down a big empty hole and expecting it to turn into diamonds. It doesn't. People learn to meet deadlines, get their placements with the big companies, so that with that work experience tucked under their belts they can get to work sooner, better, more, more, more. They get better jobs so that they can get better jobs.

When we were younger we all still wanted to be vets and rock stars and professional footballers and teachers. I wanted to be a vet for a long time. The people who asked and got this answer from me would express a silent sort of "yeah right", not knowing I could tell that's what they thought and that I made a silent mental reply "I can do it. You think that's a hollow dream of mine, but even if I change my mind for now that is what I want to do. I know it is hard work and a long way away, but if I want to do it then I will do it." We all wanted to be the things that interested and excited us. The last time I went to a careers councillor, at least four years ago, when asked I replied that I would like to be either a clown or a particle physicist (I think), and I wasn't being deliberately facetious, that is what I wanted to do.

I can't help feeling that now most people, at least in my subject area, just dive into the leaflet pile and be the investment banker who received the most bribery to get there. I once glanced at that pile and saw a leaflet from AWE (the Atomic Weapons Establishment). Come work for us, they said, we're important for protecting Britain. We build and test, we have the opportunities, we'll give you bonuses, we're a worthy cause, we provide the deterrent capabilities for our country. But is this really what we wanted to do when we were children? Help make things that kill people?

It always seems like the easy option. People think they cannot be what they always wanted to be, so they convince themselves it was for certain a foolish, unattainable idea, and they set their heads down on the career path. I don't want to do that, I want to do something different.

No, I'm not being naive. I know success depends on effort, and I try hard. But that goes for the path to becoming a rock star just the same as it goes for the path to becoming an investment banker. But not everyone can live with their head in the clouds, you might say, people need to keep the cogs turning. The bankers need to bank. AWE needs to make the weapons to protect us. These things need to be done. Maybe, but if more people thought how they did when they were children perhaps more people would be inventors, creating more effective solutions for the future. Perhaps people would put their minds to diplomacy instead of organised destruction.

And maybe it's just a childish Utopian idea that wouldn't work in a million years, but that's only because not in a million years would people change the way they think. Until everyone thinks that way there will always be an undercurrent of people doing the usual thing that people wanting to do the excellent things will have to surf. For me, surf's up.

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

The Prisoner

2007-04-18T15:48:00.000-07:00

"Where am I?"
"In the Village."
"What do you want?"
"Information."
"Whose side are you on?"
"That would be telling.... We want information. Information! INFORMATION!"
"You won't get it."
"By hook or by crook, we will."
"Who are you?"
"The new Number Two."
"Who is Number One?"
"You are Number Six."
"I am not a number — I am a free man!"

Thus begins "The Prisoner", an English television series of epic proportions I finished watching today. It stars Patrick McGoohan, who is well and truly a Dude.

Number Six, as he is known for the duration of the series, is an important government spy who unexpectedly resigns. Before he can escape to go into hiding he is abducted and wakes up in a gorgeous but isolated settlement known only as "The Village". It is a 1984 type dictatorship where everyone is constantly and secretly monitored, tricked and experimented upon. His captors want to know only one thing, and then they will release him: why did he resign?

But Number Six will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. In each episode a cunning plan is deployed to try to get Number Six to reveal the information, but he will never fall for it. He plans not only to escape, but to do so having revealed nothing, and to go back and destroy the Village afterwards.

It also features some giant, bouncing, screaming white balloons as the "police force", who subdue rebels by suffocating them in their terrifying latexiness. Fans of Muse might be interested to know this is exactly where the inspiration for the giant Hullabaloo balloons comes from.

Musical Modes and Eleanor Rigby

2007-04-17T06:29:00.000-07:00

I received a marvellous dictionary of music as a gift last Christmas, and it has been about one of the entries that I have been thinking today.

It relates to modes of music, musical scales, of which there are eight. These are named the Dorian, Hypodorian, Phygrian, Hypophygrian, Lydian, Hypolydian, Mixolydian and Hypomixolydian. In typically Western and modern systems the use of modes has been severely limited; we get by with just two of these, which we refer to simply as major and minor. These modes are respectively "happy" and "sad", however each of the other modes may be described by entire spectra of other emotions. Try descriptions such as "voluptuous", "vehement", "pious" and even "uniting pleasure and sadness". So broad a range of emotions is accomplished with just the two modes, so imagine how we'd be able to reinvent and expand the poignancy of much mainstream music if only we leaned to use the other modes! A far fetched but amusing extract from my book:

"Europe in the Middle Ages inherited, through Boethius, the idea that ethos and mode were associated, and also a number of illustrations of the supposed connection. A favourite tale was that of a young man so aroused by the Phygrian mode that he was on the point of breaking into a young woman's room, when a change to the Hypophygrian mode restored him to a proper frame of mind."

from "The Oxford Companion to Music" edited by Alison Latham

Think of "Eleanor Rigby" by the Beatles. It is a beautiful but tragic tale of loneliness and a wasted life. The music is sad, but it has an extra dimension of quietness, of unspoken tragedy. It has touched countless people, and inspired numerous covers (at least 61 as proper album releases) by artists from the weepy and lame Tony Bennett to the dark and Gothic Godhead. Think about Godhead for a second. Just one of an army of bands enjoying success because the music they create is rooted in feelings of depression, cynicism, misdirected lust, disillusionment (being cool because you're just so deep and dark and eternally tragic)... all that gothy stuff set to resonate with the disaffected alternative youth of today. Why pick a cover from such an old and seemly happy and innocent band unless it expressed some of that rare darkness that the band would wish to cultivate?

"Eleanor Rigby died in a church and was buried along with her name. Nobody came.
Father McKenzie, wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave. No one was saved."

"Eleanor Rigby" was written in the Dorian mode, beginning in E.

Incidentally, Eleanor Rigby was created as a fictional character by Paul McCartney for the song. It was originally supposed to be about somebody called Daisy Hawkins. However, there exists the gravestone of a real Eleanor Rigby in a certain churchyard, who lived and died in Liverpool, a mere few feet away from the place where Paul McCartney and John Lennon first met.

P.S. Check out the Godhead cover, it really is rather awesome.

St Peter's Parish Church in Woolton, Liverpool

The Spoiled Rattle

2007-04-14T13:33:00.000-07:00

"Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Agreed to have a battle;
For Tweedledum said Tweedledee
Had spoiled his nice new rattle.

Just then flew down a monstrous crow,
As black as a tar-barrel;
Which frightened both the heroes so,
They quite forgot their quarrel."

from "Alice Through the Looking Glass" by Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

For no readily discernible reason I started thinking about that rattle today. A thought popped into my head - not my own, somebody's somewhere, I forget who, lost in the mists, it may even have been Alice herself in the book - how on Earth do you "spoil" a rattle? I asked my mum this on our way to the shops, and she suggested lining the interior with Blu Tack, if it were a cage-like structure.

"Why not just dip it in cement?" I suggested. "Throw it on some rocks?"

I think we stopped thinking about ways to spoil a rattle soon after that. It did remind me of all the times I loved reading from my Lewis Carroll book. It was generously given to me by my Uncle Sean and his wife Laura a number of years ago. I have loved it and absorbed it ever since, and it still occupies a prime space on the bookshelf in my bedroom. (Ironically, I looked up the passages for this entry on the Internet because it actually was a lot faster and easier than consulting a book which at this moment is sitting less than three metres away from me in plain sight. Oh, the age in which we live.) I extensively pored over all the riddles and lingual delights collected in the back and learned Father William off by heart so well that I recited some verses of it tonight word for word even though it's been several years since I last looked at it. So I know it's supposed to be a parody of some old boring poem about a youth asking old Father William about his great life's achievements, but I don't care to follow up on it. To me, Carroll's version is perfection.

I am reminded of a story about Queen Victoria. She read "Alice in Wonderland" when it first came out and immediately decided she was a fan. She sent an express royal request to Carroll that she was to be sent a copy of his next book the instant it was published. Carroll was a mathematician by profession, however, and so he did indeed send her a copy straight away, but the topic of the book was unfortunately advanced calculus.

Father William

"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head--
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."

"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door--
Pray, what is the reason of that?"

"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his gray locks,
"I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment -- one shilling the box --
Allow me to sell you a couple?"

"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak--
Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw
Has lasted the rest of my life."

"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose--
What made you so awfully clever?"

"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
Said his father; "don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you down-stairs!"

from "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

By the way, how *is* a raven like a writing desk?

"If you think we're wax-works, you ought to pay, you know."

1000 Paper Cranes

2007-04-04T03:17:00.000-07:00

They say that if you fold one thousand paper cranes your wish will come true. And so, I set to work. I had much to wish for: world peace, riches, talent, more wishes, whatever. At any rate, call it a meditative experience, and a lesson in origami. I gathered around me one thousand and fifty beautiful squares of paper purchased from an art shop, the fifty spare as insurance for mistakes. I had every colour of the rainbow at my disposal and more. I had neon, metallic, gloss, fluorescent, striped, mottled, matt and holographic. I had big and small, stiff and flimsy, delicately transparent and robustly opaque. I folded, I botched and I triumphed and dreamed.

I bent and I scored and appraised and completed.

I bent and I scored and yawned and saw a plethora of faces that would have stared at me blankly if only they had not been so blank they weren’t actually there.

I yawned and I ached but I did not give up. I wanted to complete the task. I wanted the experience under my belt. My eyes seared and my hands ached dully from many tiny bird bites (paper cuts).

I woke up with a crane stuck to my face, peeled it off and resumed.

The quality was slipping but I hardly noticed through the lethargy-smeared stain of my vision. I suspect that if I had noticed at the time I would not have cared anyway.

A few days later I was finished, and finished. One thousand and twenty nine and a half pieces of not-so-artfully crumpled tree pulp littered the room.

I wished I had not folded one thousand paper cranes.

Link of the Day: Free Zmister Dashkevich They want 10 wishes.

They look more like swans to me.

Welcome Back, Imagination

2007-03-15T16:56:00.000-07:00

Holiday time is upon all the physicists, and you can really tell. Scan down my list of physics contacts and you would find that each name sports a tag line:

Only Two Left!! Fighting!!
2 down 1 to go
C will die
Finished my formal report!

And then, there are those tag lines that come after the last of the deadlines are met. We are like wild animals captured and then set loose, blinking at the sunshine as we hesitate on the thresholds of our cages:

wow, what to do now, we have free time for the first time in ages
Look at the sky!

We have all been so brutally overworked that now that we have even a few minutes of free time we have no idea what to do with ourselves. I have been working pretty much solidly for the last week to meet all requirements to such an intensity that I do not eat and I do not sleep. This is the case for me, and I do not doubt for a second that I form a completely representative indication of the rest on my course. Of course, there are some people who do not take stress too well.

"Oh my goodness!" I manage, coming down the stairs, simultaneously wilting and chuckling, "worst day of my life ever!"

"Why?" demands Steve sharply.

"Only just finished my final C project. It was crazy!"

"Well, I've been working two days solid on my essay," he retorts.

I give up. It is not worth pointing out to him I've been working at least three times as long, even missing meals, while he says this to me having just finished dinner tucked away watching South Park. Some people, eh? Never mind him though, I am now on holiday. To misquote my mother's recent misquotation, the only people who truly appreciate laziness are the hardest workers. And I can say this to you with the fullest understanding: maaaaaan, it is good to be lazy!

My time will once again be devoted to the things I love. I will juggle, I will dance, I will laugh and write and play my piano. I will start to notice the small things in life again, like the way being clean after getting out of the shower feels so good, or the shape of the clouds, or the way the last sip of a hot cup of tea made from a limescaly kettle is decidedly crunchy.

Nine Inch Nails O'Clock

2007-03-06T17:21:00.000-08:00

Sunday was a day of grey rain, a day of technicolour heat. A day of euphoria and nerves. A day of friends and enemies. A day of idols and rabble. A day of really, really cool stuff... and, um... underwear.

Sctott and I, off we went to Birmingham, for one of the greatest days of our lives (of mine, anyway). We were off to see Nine Inch Nails in Carling Academy that night, and oh if we are but two nutty fans! Sctott moreso than I, he never misses a hint nor a lyric nor an opportunity in the slightest. In fact, due to Sctott's obsessive vigilance he had won a Meet and Greet session with the band.

Out of over preparation we made sure to arrive in Birmingham several hours before the Meet and Greet, scheduled at 4:15pm. When it was then postponed to 7:00pm, the time of the start of the gig, we had a whole day to ourselves. It consisted mostly of hanging around coffee shops and restaurants, failing to ingest properly out of anticipation. We shopped for clothes. Where I bought a rather fetching hood, the boy insisted on buying some green boxer shorts and arguing their worth and stylishness at length. I assure you, no male underwear is ever stylish. This is a fact of life, and no amount of green dye is about to change this. His cause was not furthered by getting them out to show his friend Aaron (with dibs on a spare ticket), as we sat in a pub waiting for time to pass.

So, at 7ish we are to be found waiting with various record label people in the main lobby of the academy. Eventually we are whisked single file through a windy corridor, a room where white towels are being washed, a room where white towels are hanging out to dry, and into the boiler room, housing three seriously Victorian style boiler units, and there we wait. And arrives the band! Trent in all his amazing loveliness, smiling and chatting, trailed by the other members of the band, Aaron, Jeordy, Josh and Allessandro. As Sctott holds out his copy of the Downward Spiral to be signed by Trent the following dialogue occurs:

Trent: What's this?
Sctott: It's the Downward Spiral.
Trent: Oh.

But Sctott, oh Sctott, what on Earth are you doing? He is offering wine gums to all the band, with an excitedly slurred "Would you like a wine gum?" and an obsessive clawing at the packet, and receiving mostly bemused refusals. I would have warned him not to scare them like that, but the band was in earshot all the while. The only exception was Josh, the drummer. "Ah, Maynard's," he notes as he places a green sweet in his mouth. (Before NIN he was to be found in A Perfect Circle, performing alongside one Maynard James Keenan, now of Tool.)

And then, there was just enough time for us to be ejected to the public area, dump bags and coats in the cloakroom, and get to the stage for Ladytron. When they'd done their bit it was not too long at all to wait...

And the band began at Nine Inch Nails O'Clock, and all was excellent. But who in my story shall play the role of the enemy? It turned out to be two girls behind me, who spent their entire gig experience trying to push in front of me, getting pissed when I wouldn't let them, and not even grabbing and pulling would work, and eventually screaming profanities at me when Sctott stopped them from performing some serious manoeuvre on me. And I don't know why, but I just found them funny, and kept to my spot in the crowd and had the best gig of my entire LIFE.

Sctott and I got home at some late hour with much merchandise, an autographed album each, and a sense of euphoria so strong it lasted the whole of the next day too. To finish the evening I had a shower, we sipped wine together and chatted, and I fell into bed shattered, clean, slightly tipsy, warm, and unbelievably happy.

My Fantasy

2007-03-02T04:16:00.000-08:00

I had a fantasy a minute or so ago:

I'm walking up to where my physics classes are held, and suddenly the guy I've decided I like runs up to me and kisses me. "Oh," I say, "you shouldn't have done that, because I just ate a tuna and onion panini" (which was true, I had just finished having a brunch at the Arts Centre). "Oh," he says. He can taste it. And he walks off with the air of one who has just made an embarrassing error.

How very half-arsed. I continue to believe that my imagination is currently suffering due to the stress of overworking in the scientific mindset.

La Mer

2007-02-25T17:09:00.000-08:00

The blog is not dead.

Merely drowning. Or I am drowning, under a wave of terrible, terrible science. That wretched sea!

Et quand le jour arrive
Je deviendra le ciel
Et je deviendrai la mer

Et la mer viendra pour m'embrasser pour moi
Vais a la maison
Rien peut m'arreter maintenant

(NIN)

Link of the day: Sea for yourselves...*

* - Please do not shoot me for this. My degree finds me increasingly unable to tell wit from lingual atrocity. I promise I'll get better.

A Tale of Woe

2007-01-31T11:07:00.000-08:00

The buses in this place are a joke. Always late, wait around for ages, blah blah blah rhubarb boring blah. Nobody enjoys public transport rants. But let me share with you just one tale of woe, occurring one crisp morning of 31st January 2007:

We get on our bus, it refuses to drive. This is normal. In this place you can wait for up to half an hour for a bus to decide to drive away from the stop at which it is nestled. The engine was running for a long time. Then it stopped. Then it started up again. Then it stopped. Then it started up again again. Then it stopped. These were not because the bus was stalling, mind you, it started up completely normally each time, only to decide it was not going to go anywhere. People start getting off the bus.

"I'm really sorry," says the bus driver, "but the bus is broken, so you will all have to get off." At least she has a nice smile and a friendly voice. As soon as the last person has stepped back down onto the pavement, the bus starts up again and drives away. Laughing maniacally, I imagine.

Error Analysis Saves Lives

2007-01-28T11:58:00.000-08:00

So, here it is. Another night-before-lab-book-gets-handed-in, and I am scrawling away, overlooking the criminal nature of my layout, accuracy, maths, logical flaws and so forth (but never my English), in a half-hearted attempt not to fail as badly as last time. It's a small mercy that this particular experiment hasn't had too much in the way of errors, however what it has had has been as excruciatingly painful as usual.

When I run into a tight corner with my write-up, as I nearly always do, I plead to my University Godparents for guidance - Wikipedia and Google. They have been of little help to me tonight, however through them I have apparently learned the importance of error analysis. Columbia University, New York assures me that "bad things can happen if error analysis is ignored". To back up their claim, which in this context is shamefully less than scientific, they have provided the following picture of the derailment at Gare Montparnasse, Paris, 1895:

There you have it. I must press on to avoid causing any such disasters. I'm a little disappointed I was not warned about this in my lab script.

Links of the day: Columbia University's Error Analysis Tutorial

The Wizard and the Spooks

2007-01-18T14:54:00.000-08:00

A while ago my tutor (the legendary Wizard), in spite of being a stone-sure atheist put forward the most eloquent argument for why there may exist something beyond everyday experience. This was not his intention, of course; he included it as a speech meant to illustrate the importance of scientific thinking.

Consider the following:

You are trapped inside a bell jar. The bell jar in turn is enclosed by another, larger bell jar, and there is a vacuum in the layer between the two jars. Sound, of course, cannot propagate in a vacuum. There is lots of stuff happening outside the bell jars. You can see plenty of things, because the light can reach you through the jars, but you cannot hear anything. Is that to say that no sound is being made? Perhaps we just do not have the correct tools at our disposal in order to detect the supernatural.

A bishop talks beside a rook.

2007-01-17T16:03:00.000-08:00

*EVASIVE ACTION RECOMMENDED*