Proven By Science

PLAN 10 FROM OUTER SPACE.

We are very firmly of the opinion that Humans are the best animals at Freaky Trigger, and it is nice to see that yet again this is proved by looking at the energy efficiency of our walking style. As this hopefully trustworthy BBC report* has it, walking on two legs like a human is four times more energy efficient than the lolloping gait of a chimpanzee. Which perhaps factors in to that most difficult part of human evolution, namely just how vulnerable we are as wee nippers. No walking, communication, higher functions. Is the price to pay for the complex movement, the complex talking and other complex shit we humans do. Is out first year of life just booting the software?

What is nice about this story is that it is a feel good story on how we are naturally energy efficient creatures. If monkeys rules the Earth i daresay thair standby buttons would use more energy that a human appliance running on full. Indeed such is the natural urge for energy efficiency that I often find myself spending an extra hour in bed JUST TO SAVE ENERGY. Which makes me wonder, this so called profligacy with energy that Al Gore is shouting at us about. It seems unnatural. Almost as if the energy inefficiencies are not due to humans at all. But rather the meddling hands of evil aliens. Its no dumber the Plan 9.

*”Hopefully trustworthy” will be appended to every FT source until the BBC stops lying.

PerpMotionWatch: UPDATE

it is with the usual tremendous irresponsible glee i am able to inform youse all that this story remains ongoing! yay ORBO best of all the boes

Clean Yr Head While Asleep: THE BRILLO PILLOW

No: Don’t be stupid. Using a giant scouring pad with super cheap soap imbedded inside as a pillow would both be
a) uncomfortable, and
b) a rubbish way to clear your head.

However, what if you problem is not night-time head cleaning, but a hot head. And I don’t mean in the figurative sense. Then you need the Chillow Pillow, a pillow wot - er - chills your head down. It is a very strange thing indeed. Not refrigerated, not “cold”, the Chillow Pillow apparently will gradually draw heat away from your head. How it does this is unclear, except via the use of SoothSoft Comfort Technology (these words are trademarked and I use them at considerable risk). Here, read all about it. Note the 30-day cooling off period for online sales (ha ha). Scientists amongst us might second a guess to how this all works, cos it seems magical to me.

BUT, what is best about it is of course the name. The Chillow Pillow. So few products plump with rhyming in the name any more, so well done. And if they do bring out a Brillo Chillow Pillow (made of Willow) don’t be surprised.

KITAN on the KEYS: a bad pianist’s practice diary #1

today was xi and x and nothing else [see here for haha key]:
the bach i just played through twice — it’s just like a computergame, how far can i get before i get zapped (by my own fumbly fingers partly, but also by failing to look ahead and remember the trick): ans = first time bar 5 [it's only 27 bars long] at a place i have got perfectly right before now, and what was nice is that the next two bars went more or less exactly right after the fumble; second time bar six. In both cases it’s about a non-intuitive fingering trick, so if i keep my head, I’ll go straight through (and of course then fall over right after when I’m still patting myself on the back for getting through). I can also feel that speed is picking up on the second page, tho it’s still a LOT slower … read on …

FT Periodic Table: Element 4: POP

Pop. It is what Freaky Trigger was about. Here, have a look at some of the early articles (COO-EE Who remembers INDIESHITE!). It was Tom Ewing’s pop fanzine, when suddenly fanzine became websites. It was quite a reputable one too. We had favourable reviews left right and centre, well Tom did. Because whilst there were a few articles written by other people, the lions share of the site was written by Tom: it was clearly his website so his gaff his rules. Though as someone who wrote something was back then the rules were pleasantly light (Tom has never been one to insist on a style guide). Just be interesting about pop music. Oh, and try not to make too many typos*.

It is quite hard to remember a world before the internet, and what I believe is called the Poptimist position was less prevalent than it is now. … read on …

Finalé, it has happened to me :-(

I got stung! Only the other week I was recalling the era of decoy mp3s. Now listen carefully children – occasionally, back at the turn of the century, the odd illegal download of a new mp3 would be a decoy, or a loop of the intro. Imagine! You wasted those four hours it took to download that 5MB of mp3. “Oo, that hasn’t happened to me in ages” thought not-at-all-superstitious me.

(Of course I don’t download illegal mp3s, never have, but that explanation hadn’t occurred to me before I sat down to write this on a public website.)

ANYWAY. Telly. An episode of current top dramas – a 24, a Lost – weighs in at 350MB these days. And although you can get a lucky torrent that finishes in 30 mins, it’s usually a few hours even now with the internet running on mega-tubes, or whatever it is.

Now 24 has just had its finale and I JUST FELL FOR A DECOY of sorts. (Not that I actually download illegal telly. I’m just writing an entertaining story for you here.) The file, although the right size, just played a still caption telling me I needed a special player and I should download it now. Obv the player will be full of hideous trojan malware that infects your browser and turns your PC into another zombie in the legion spambot army. They haven’t bothered writing one for the Mac. Obv. So saved.

Anyway, Lost finale tonight…

Scare quotes

“Panorama found that radiation levels from wi-fi in one school was up to three times the level of mobile phone mast radiation.”

A quote from BBC online’s own story on tonight’s Panorama which is headed “Wi-fi health fears are ‘unproven’ “. Marvellous use of scare quotes there. Are the fears proven or not? No they categorically are not. In fact the fears are rubbish.

The basic wrongness of tonight’s show has been picked up by most other news sources covering the story (OK, so I haven’t checked the Daily Mail’s “Blair’s legacy - wifi causes house price plummet” story) with the Guardian finding a physicist who explains about “the so-called inverse square law” which kind of explains why the above quote is missing some important facts. Let’s try that quote again:

“Panorama found that radiation levels from wi-fi ONE METRE AWAY FROM A LAPTOP in one school was up to three times the level of mobile phone mast radiation FROM A MAST ONE HUNDRED METRES AWAY.”

Hang on why “so-called” inverse square law? There’s no need to be so mealy mouthed. The same goes for ‘unproven’ of course, but then the regular cross-promotion that the BBC is doing with Panorama becomes pointless. What do you mean they shouldn’t be doing it anyway?

Of course this total lack of story is exactly why people get their science on this and related stories so wrong. It’s one layer of rubbishness extra on top of publication bias. It’s not even only noticing the positive reports, there are not even positives here. You never hear of a proof that there is no link – only dumb scare stories like this that pop up, get publicity, then are forgotten about except for the nutters with clippings files and selective memories.

FT Periodic Table: Element 3: ROBOTS

Robots. And not the so-so computer animated flick of 2005, but real actual robots, computer-brained servants made to follow our every need. The Freaky Trigger periodic table is forward looking to anticipate - in our time - more domestic servitude from our clanking friends.

Except, as that recent article predicted, robots will not be C3-PO-esque droids with cut glass British accents, acting as our own robo-butlers. … read on …

The Universal Declaration Of Robot Rights

Scientists are being naive in saying that the government report on granting rights to robots is a waste of time. But then scientists are always the last people to apologise when their wacky projects accidentally end up grafting intelligent robotic arms onto their back turning them into meglomaniacal villains. Its unlikely, say the scientists, that intelligence which would require any kind of rights is going to be developed in robots in the near future. And then they tell us that there is already a robotic KILLING MACHINE patrolling the North/South Korean border.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN IT GETS STRUCK BY LIGHTNING? … read on …

Only Three Cassoulets Left in Him

Stumpy the duck is down to three legs. The usual terse reporting from Ananova explains how he got one of his superfluous appendages stuck in a fence and the vet came and harvested a leg for dinner helped free him from his predicament.
… read on …