Proven By Science

Self-Organizing Systems In The London Bridge Pret A Manger

I have been re-reading Philip Ball’s Critical Mass, his book about “social physics”, how the study of physics can lead us to understand aggregate human behaviour better. It’s very wide-ranging and interesting, with pretty obvious implications for my day job. One of Ball’s early chapters is about path-formation and “flocking” (eg. how a mass of people can most efficiently leave a room - vital to understand this when planning fire exits etc.). He doesn’t actually mention queue formation but it’s the same sort of thing, and it’s a problem that strikes me when I go into Pret A Manger for the occasional breakfast bacon and egg baguette of a morning (om nom nom). … read on …

Transhuman Express – A Lollards antici-post

Ed Regis’s “Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition” [Amazon] is a wonderful and funny collection of science writing. The tone is set in a great prologue about ‘bezoar stones’, but the focus of the book is on the big names in late 80s ‘extropianism’. The author spends a lot of time with them, talking to them, finding them to be both calm and engaging people, who just happen to have really wild, really really wild, ideas about the future.

Fifteen years after first reading that book, and catching up with what has been going on with the extropian/transhumanist movement, I was surprised and slightly saddened (at first) to find it being tainted with a small dose of mainstream acceptance. Stanford University hosted a ‘Singularity Summit’ in 2006, and they even managed to pull in Douglas Hofstadter to give a talk. You can watch videos of speeches from last year’s Singularity Summit including Hofstadter’s diplomatic and slightly shambling appearance. Love him or hate him, his presence should be a reliable indicator that something interesting, and not 100% whacked out, is going on here. … read on …

Food Science Links – neverbashfulwithbutter

Delicious, usually sweet and well photographed foods can be found on this US bakinblog. They earn a link to food science for their Experiments in deliciousness: Bacon chocolate chip cookies with maple cinnamon glaze. OH YES

modern finance: the subprime debacle as a failed heath-robinson* contraption

<—- clearly this contraption will work
click to see why this one won’t —->bucketworld

key:
RSMB = residential mortgage-backed securities
CDO = collateralised debt obligations
transparency = the contraption has it (you can see why the system failed); the alphabet soup of acronyms precisely doesn’t <— just because you mastered the shorthand doesn’t mean you see where it’s going to crack
tranche = i love this word so much, it basically just means “slice”, but if you asked for a “tranche of cake” the cakecutter is certainly obligated to give you MORE
*yes yes rube goldberg

Westminster privy information on the loos

Pedestrians in Wetminster, sorry, Westminster, who need to make a branch may text the word “toilet” to 80097 and get directions to the nearest public convenience for 25p.

The Register reports that the system was designed by a student named Gail Knight and is dubbed Sat Lav. It uses the phone masts closest to the desperate SMSer’s mobile phone to triangulate her approximate location.

The system is run by Westminster Council, so its emissions are less than gratifying if one attempts to get directions outside the council’s boundaries. A text from Holborn, for instance, provoked suggestions to walk to Leicester Square, Covent Garden or the Strand, missing out the public toilets at Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

No word yet if texting “lavatory” returns more upmarket results.

How To Rig A Taste Test

Imagine you are an unscrupulous Market Research* company who enjoys both Pepsi and Coke as clients. They both ask you independently to conduct a taste test** on consumers, each in the knowledge and expectation that their superior product will win. How can you run tests that will keep both of them happy? … read on …

Sea’s Got Claws

Important scientific breakthrough: man-size sea scorpion found.

Dr Braddy thinks the large scales may have had a lot to do with the absence early on of vertebrate predators. As they came on the scene, these animals would have eaten all the biggest prey specimens.

“The fact that you are big means you are more likely to be seen and to be taken for a tastier morsel,” he told BBC News. “Evolution will not select for large size; you want to be small so you can hide away. Even so, if you were caught by one of these things at sea you would most likely prefer the option of drowning rather than having it get you.”

When asked what a survival strategy against Jaekelopterus rhenaniae might have been, Dr Braddy was unequivocal. “Your best bet would be to shout “NOOOOOOOOOO!” very loudly. 

Cooking With An Espresso Machine

Hope to have time to blog the various gastronomic delights of our weekend in San Sebastian / Donostia soon. But just to bear in mind that this small Spanish town and its environs have more Michelin stars than anywhere else in the world. You can pick them up ont he pavement*. But a google for Txocoli, the local semi-wine drink brought up this gorgeously illustrated webpage of an expo by ten of the the best Donostian chefs. A bit of molecular gastronomy is going on here, but most exciting is the innovation of cooking using fruit juice from an espresso machine. Awesome!

*Sorry, just been told that they were Milky Way Stars.

my eyes! my eyes!

these are, in fact, my eyes! DO YOU SEE? (click to enlarge)

healthy yay! — the whitish crescents on the optic nerves are a sign of short sight, as are the “dark matter” tesselations patching the red areas

Food Science Day 2007 Experiment #2: Cavary Ham

Not on the list AT ALL when we entered the laboratory, this piece of pun based was invented on the spot. As with any great inventions it had necessity as its mother and sous chef. We had bought a bit too much Ye Olde Oake Ham. Now some of you might rightly say that the amount “too much” would be any amount, but we had something in store for the ham. But two tins was too much. And so we wondered what else we could do with this processed mean product (45% meat!). And our eyes alit on the bottle of pink Cava that some of the female scientists had brought to celebrate success with.

It was already open. The day was already a success.

Carvery Ham, someone shouted. (OK, it was me. I own too many Carter records). Carvery Ham, everyone else said with a question mark at the end. Whatever could he mean? And then the poor pun filtered in their head and excitement reigned. … read on …