Brain Gym
Man the lifeboats. The idiots are winning. Last week I watched, open-mouthed, a Newsnight piece on the spread of "Brain Gym" in British schools. I'd read about Brain Gym before - a few years back, in Ben Goldacre's excellent Bad Science column for this newspaper - but seeing it in action really twisted my rage dial.
Charlie Brooker in The Guardian gets deservedly angry over Brain Gym, after seeing an article about it on Newsnight (1, 2 on YouTube). The creator of Brain Gym was destroyed by Paxman, rather too easily to be honest.
NP: Voices, Vangelis (via Last.fm)
Ely
Today, we went to Ely. Nice (very small) city, with a rocking cathedral.
In other news, the new Lightroom 2 beta is very nice.
Photoshop Horrors
Thanks to Photoshop Disasters, this Photoshop horror cheered me right up.
Original
source, although the image was just pulled from the site.
Freecycle
In the last fortnight I have managed to Freecycle the following objects:
- Bathroom scales
- A safe
- An Orange Pay As You Go SIM
- A wooden chopping board
- A Bluetooth headset
- Six iPod cases
- A Bodum teapot
- A radio walkman
- A Sharp portable minidisc recorder
- A Nikon APS camera
- Five belts
- Two boxes of word fridge magnets
- A 802.11g CardBus card
- An external USB sound device
It sounds a little like the Generation Game, I know. Combined with a bin bag full of junk, I can actually see the bottom of my drawers now!
Dear Mark Prisk
It's been over three months since my last letter to Mark Prisk MP, and I've yet to receive a reply. Is he ignoring my letter, or is he just useless?
NP: Sounds Like Murcof, Last.fm
Repulsive
From the most excellent Flat Earth News, a rip-roaring (I've always said that phrase should be used more) tale of corruption, falsehood and propaganda in journalism:
The readers are never wrong. Repulsive, maybe, but never wrong.- Piers Morgan, as editor of the Daily Mirror, referring to how he lost circulation due to the paper's stance against the Iraq invastion.
Flat Earth News is a great book, and I can recommend it to everyone who is disappointed with the state of global journalism, and even more to anyone who thinks journalism is in general doing a good job.
Bad Idea (#4211)
Just seen on Freecycle:
OFFERED: 7 Blank Dual Layer DVD+R
was using them for xbox 360 games however found they failed alot. ideal for home movies or backing up data.
"About Freakin Time"
NHS primary care trusts are slashing funding for homoeopathic treatment amid debate about its efficacy and the drive to cuts costs, a study has suggested.
As Dan so succinctly put it, about freakin time. That said, the BBC are still a little wooly on the scientific side of things:
...and some scientists argue the solution is so diluted it does not contain any active ingredients at all.
Both sides generally agree it doesn't contain any of the active ingredient, that's pretty much the entire point of homoeopathy verses conventional medicine or poison (depending on what the active ingredient is). Scientists point out that a remedy can't do anything if there is nothing but water in it, homoeopaths insist that water has a mysterious (and bounded, unless tap water in old houses doubles as the homoeopathic remedy Plumbum Metallicum) memory which makes it magically work.
Selecting Quoting
As we all know, the Express are a load of xenophobic racist ignorant misleading cocks. Thanks to Iain who pointed me at this glorious post entitled something I won't repeat for fear of offending the children, I discovered what is probably the best example of selective quoting in the Express.
They said:
The Government's equality chief Trevor Phillips recently said the fear that migrants are jumping council queues for homes is fuelling tensions.
Well if the government are scared that migrants magically jump up the council house queue, then it must be true. Or is it. The Guardian has the full quote:
Mr Phillips [chairman of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights] said tensions were driven by a widespread perception that newcomers often received unfair advantages. "Specifically, that white families are cheated out of their right to social housing by newly-arrived migrants," he told the [Local Government Association]. "I have never seen any reliable evidence to back up this claim. And there can be no doubt that much of the public feeling is driven by the careless media and racist parties."
If you ever wonder how low the Express and co. will go to get a quote or statistic, this is a good example. In a quote where the essence of the message is that the scum-class tabloids and racist parties are fueling anti-immigration views, they managed to get a quote to support a story against immigration. Well done, Tom Whitehead, you really do deserve a special place in hell.
NP: Skreamizm Volume 4, Skream
Why I Love Jon Snow
There are many reasons why I love Jon Snow: his eclectic ties and socks, his personal morals and ethics (his biography is pretty good), and of course Snowmail. Today's Snowmail contained this referential gem:
These are not just bad sales figures. These are M&S bad sales figures.
NP: Herbstlaub, Marsen Jules
For Sale: Camera Bag
I'm selling my camera bag and lens case as I never use them, and thought I'd offer them here first before they hit eBay.
Camera bag: Lowepro Toploader 65AW. Very good condition: it's mostly been in a cupboard apart from three weeks in India a while ago. I'm thinking £25 including delivery to the UK.
Lens case: Lowepro 1W. This is as-new, and has never left the office. £10 including delivery.
If anyone is interested, drop me a mail.
NP: Another Late Night: Zero 7
It's That Time Of The Year Again
It starts off just as you'd expect.
Yes, it’s that time of year again. No sooner does an important traditional religious holiday roll around than the PC-brigade feel the need to strip-mine it of its original significance, just so’s no-one’s feeling get upset.
However, it doesn't quite continue as you were thinking.
It is the Christians who have the most gall of all, daring to attach the name of some first-century Palestinian to a once-proud British festival. ‘Yule’ I can live with, despite its being a continental bastardisation of our British pronunciation ‘Geola’, but ‘Christmas’ is just wrong. You even have to mispronounce ‘Christ’ to say it.
An excellent piece of satire from Nathaniel Tapley on Liberal Conspiracy, which is well worth a read for a good laugh.
NP: Giant Steps, John Coltrane
No More 4400‽
USA Networks are evil, mean, nasty people.
NP: Bossa Très Jazz: When Japan Meets Europe, Various
Philosophical Sifting
The Daily Mail, as you know, is engaged in a philosophical project of mythic proportions: for many years now it has diligently been sifting through all the inanimate objects in the world, soberly dividing them into the ones which either cause - or cure - cancer. The only tragedy is that one day, amongst the noise, they might genuinely be on to something, and we would simply laugh. That day has come.― A Rather Long Build Up To One Punchline
A classic example of the Mail taking a valid scientific press release (that is a surprise) and twisting it into a scare story for no real reason. I wish I could understand how this works to sell papers, although I guess at the end of the day regurgitating a press release with added anger and Moral Outrage without doing any relevant research is a pretty cheap way of filling column inches.
NP: F♯ A♯ ∞, Godspeed You Black Emperor!
Dear Mark Prisk
I sent this last night to my MP as a followup to his reply to my original letter.
Dear Mark Prisk,
Recently I wrote to you regarding the "homoeopathic hospitals" EDM, and your response included the following paragraph:
"All therapies should be considered equally, and decisions on whether or not to provide them on the NHS should be evidence-based, as is the case with all other conventional medicines and treatments."
I wholeheartedly agree that all therapies provided by the NHS should be judged on openly peer-reviewed evidence of their effectiveness, because otherwise we'd still be using leeches, performing exorcisms or practising blood letting. However, as far as I am aware there is no scientific evidence that homoeopathy is any better than placebo, so could you tell me where you saw the evidence for homoeopathy that you are using to justify homoeopathic hospitals because I'd like to see it myself. Indeed, evidence that it was in fact better than placebo would be welcomed with open arms by the scientific community, because this would open entirely new realms of both medicine and physics.
Yours sincerely,
Ross Burton
My MP Is A Fool
My MP finally replied to my letter where I questioned his signing of the Early Day Motion regarding homoeopathic hospitals. Whilst defending homoeopathy he said that doctors should be allowed to prescribe homoeopatic treatments, which I expect many homoeopaths wouldn't like as the homoeopath/patient interaction is pretty much where the cure is. Whilst I was still laughing at that, I came across this.
All therapies should be considered equally, and decisions on whether or not to provide them on the NHS should be evidence-based, as is the case with all other conventional medicines and treatments.
I'm about to write to him, asking for this evidence. I haven't seen any, and I'm sure the medical profession would like to see it too.
NP: Burning Off Impurities, Grails
Ewan and Charley Hoaxed
Last night in the excellent Long Way Down, Ewan and Charley crossed the equator and were shown how water spins in different directions as it pours out of a bowl either side of the equator. Remember everyone, this is an urban legend, and the demonstration was faked.
NP: Oneiric, Boxcutter
Flickr
Some interesting Flickr news today, first some old news I only just heard: the two billionth photo was uploaded this month. Impressively, whilst it took three and a half years for the first billion pictures to be uploaded, the second billion took only three months. (source).
Second, the Flickr team have just added some new features, specifically a world map with popular tags overlaid and a new Places interface, providing a summary of a particular location. The new map has temporarily lost the ability to zoom in straight away (press Search then Go to get the zoom bar), but the Places interface is amazing fun.
NP: People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, A Tribe Called Quest
The End Of Homeopathy?
Dr Ben Goldacre hits the jackpot, moving from a column on Saturday's Guardian to a cover story in Friday's Guardian. It's a very balanced and reasoned argument against homoeopathy for people who don't understand what a fair trial is, how placebo works, or just how stupid homoeopaths sound when they try and explain it. It's down to permeated nano-particles, apparently.
I recommend reading the article to anyone who thinks that homoeopathy is better than placebo or agrees that homoeopathy has a place in treating AIDS and malaria. Or people like me, who like watching homoeopathy get slapped down. For the medical geeks out there, there is the companion article in the Lancet too.
Daily Mail Smack Down
There are many reasons to love the blog Five Chinese Crackers, and printing the letter sent to The Daily Mail from the author of an immigration report which was drastically misrepresented certainly is one of them:
Unfortunately, your piece is a mixture of ignorance, misinterpretation and speculation. I couldn't care less about your intellectual capacity to absorb the data, but you have included my name in an article that conveys a false impression of what the study was about.
In other news, today I discovered that the epitome of British retailing, Marks and Spencer, was co-founded by a foreigner! Michael Marks was born in Belarus, and came to England to avoid the persecution of Jews. The warehouse in Leeds where they started up has a blue plaque commemorating the event. What would the Express or Mail say to this?
I Worry
I phoned Camelot and they fobbed me off with some story that -6 is higher — not lower — than -8 but I'm not having it.
As much as I admire your determination Tina, I really do think that you should give in on this (from Manchester Evening News via Good Math, Bad Math).
NP: Groove Salad, Soma.fm
GUADEC 2008?
I don't suppose anyone knows when GUADEC 2008 will be, or who I can ask? I'm planning a holiday in July, and obviously don't want to clash...
Shame
(wow, three blog posts — albeit short ones — in one day)
Some people appear to believe that having a letter in the Granuiad is sad and I should be shamed or something. Honestly, I thought the email was going to be in some online forum thingy, not actually printed, but can I help it if even my brief flippant replies are insightful? Anyway, you can't shame me with newspaper clippings, I've had a like-cures-like homeopathic treatment against that.
Satire Is Dead
I should be doing useful things like having a bath and getting dressed, instead of blogging in my pants, but this is just too funny.
Foreign workers have taken every new job in Britain for the past four years, astonishing figures show.
Is this from The Daily Mash? NewsBiscuit? No, it is the real genuine Express article. More evidence that the Express has been covertly taken over by satirists.
Really?
Continuing my series of one-word blog posts, really?
Vicky got a new job in September, and I'm pretty certain she isn't a migrant.
Roku SoundBridge
Yesterday my new NAS arrived, to replace my aging and failing hacked Linkstation. As part of the bundle I also received a Roku SoundBridge, which was a nice surprise. Basically, it's a consumer-orientated device which plays music from iTunes or Internet radio, which you would plug into a hifi or powered speakers. I'd heard of these before but I've been using my old ThinkPad X22 for this duty for a while now, and MPD has served me well. I thought I'd give it a go, and I'm actually really impressed with it.
Physically the SoundBridge is pretty good looking: a sliver and black ten inch cylinder about two inches in diameter, with a large LCD panel on the front. When turned on it found my wireless network, asked for the WEP key, and promptly upgraded its firmware. Once all that was done, it let me select from two libraries: Vicky's Music or Internet Radio. Vicky was running iTunes on her laptop which exports the library over DAAP, so I listened to Tori Amos whilst I explored the Internet Radio options. Then I listened to the most excellent Groove Salad on SomaFM (apparently the #4 station on the Roku Radio charts). At this point I discovered that there was a SoundBridge link in Epiphany, the SoundBridge uses mDNS to publish the web control panel: a useful application of clue from Roku. Then it just got better. The SoundBridge will stream from DAAP and UPnP servers (they pimp mt-daapd and SlimServer), and announces the web interface over mDNS and UPnP. There is a web site which indexes Internet radio streams, currently it has over 5000 entries. This site uses a Java applet (currently only tested in Windows though, I haven't installed Java yet) to talk to your SoundBridge so it can show the currently playing station and tell it to play another station. Then I discovered this in the manual.
Geeks - read this. The M-bridge has a command line interface that you can telnet to for piddling abut. You will need to telnet to port 4444. Type "?" at the command prompt to see a list of commands. ... M-bridge has a built-in UPnP AV "media renderer". This protocol can be used to control the M-bridge from your own software.
The SoundBridge supports both a custom protocol (documented in a 200-page PDF) and the standard UPnP protocol for controlling it. They even documented the signals the remote control uses. This is probably one of the most hackable "consumer" devices I've seen for a long time, short of the N800. Well done Roku, you've created a damn neat product which actually does just work out of the box.
NP: theJazz, Internet radio
Burton's Law
Can I propose Burton's Law, a variation on Godwin's Law:
As a discussion about climate change grows longer, the probability of stating that China is building a new coal power station every week approaches one.
When used as a defense for not attempting to reduce climate change I'd like to also invoke the sudden death variant, where the discussion is finished immediately.
Idiotic British Press
Daniel pointed me towards this blog today, a great mix of insightful thought and humour to generally ridicule the British right-wing tabloids. This article for example is fantastic.
Daily Mail vs British Medical Journal
From an article in the Daily Mail this week:
Previous studies have found that cannabis claims 30,000 lives a year by causing cancer, heart disease and bronchitis, and that it can double the risk of mental illnesses such as schizophrenia.
Now, I wonder where that data is from. Oh look, the British Medical Journal:
It may be argued that the extrapolation from small numbers of individual studies to potential large scale effects amounts to scaremongering. For example, one could calculate that if cigarettes cause an annual excess of 120 000 deaths among 13 million smokers, the corresponding figure for deaths among 3.2 million cannabis smokers would be 30 000, assuming equality of effect.
Genius. Thanks to Dr Ben Goldache for spotting this.
NP: The Good, The Bad & The Queen, The Good, The Bad & The Queen
Knackered
This weekend, we tidied the garden a little. This involved some gardening and throwing away rubbish.
Thirteen large bin bags of garden waste, and a skip full of doors, concrete and metal tubing later, we've finished the easy tasks. Next week the new door and paving slabs arrive, so the hard work can begin. I haven't been sleeping too well recently so bought a herbal sleep remedy today, but I don't think I'll need any help tonight.
In other news, Jekyll finished last night. An excellent series with some interesting twists and a good mix of horror and comedy, I highly recommend it to anyone who can watch it (I believe it's being aired on BBC America next Saturday, and I'm sure its all over the interwebs).
For Sale: Babylon 5 DVDs
In the continuing effort to clear some space and pay some bills, I'm selling my collection of Babylon 5 DVDs. I have the boxed sets of series 1 through to 5, in great condition: they've been watched once and then put on the shelf, where they've stayed.
Each series retails at £57, I'm asking for £90 for the complete set (plus shipping, or we meet in Cambridge or London for the cost of a beer). If anyone is interested, please mail me.
Update: I've got a buyer!
For Sale: Discworld Novels
In order to make some space and a little cash, I'm selling my collection of Discworld novels. I have the first 24 in paperback, but sadly not Lords and Ladies. They are all in very good quality and I'm offering the lot for about £60. Reasonable offers accepted, and this is for collection or personal delivery if I'm feeling nice (say, you live in Cambridge). I can provide photographic evidence of the books if required, I just need to get them out from behind another pile of books.
Anyone interested? If so, mail me.
NP: Soulmates, Nobody
Comedy Gold
If the news that Jordan, sorry I mean Katie Price, and Peter Andre have released an album isn't funny enough, there isn't yet a serious review on the Amazon product page.
NP: Brown Sugar, D'Angelo
Packing
Tomorrow I fly to Boston for the Summit and the embedded GNOME hackfest. Packing clothes took about five minutes: pants, socks, tees, jumpers. Packing the electronic toys was a bit more complicated...
- ThinkPad X60 plus charger
- Canon EOS plus charger
- Canon IXUS plus charger (for Vicky)
- Nokia 770 plus charger
- Zaurus SL-C1000 plus charger and wifi card
- USB card reader
- My Nokia phone charger
- Vicky's phone charger
Please can people start using the same chargers? I'm impressed that the Zaurus charger is actually a PSP charger, but I'm not happing having to take two Nokia chargers and two Canon chargers.
Offered
Thanks to the recent purchase of a EOS 20D, I have a good condition fully boxed Canon EOS 300D (that's a digital SLR camera) with the kit 18-55mm lens, all of the accesories, a UV filter and 1GB CF card to sell. I'll be hitting eBay in a few days with this, but I thought I'd see if there is anyone out there who wants it first. I'm thinking that £250 is a reasonable price.
Interested? Email me.
Poseable Action Figures
Last Friday was Vicky's last day at the OU, as next month she hopes to be accepted onto a teacher training course for A-level Psychology. On Friday her desk was covered in fairy lights, cards and presents, including a Teacher Startup Kit: pain killers, an apple, a diary, and a poseable action figure of Sigmund Freud.
I'm not sure what worries me more: that someone at the OU found a poseable action figure of Freud, or that somewhere in Cambridge there is a store that sells Freud action figures, and probably more...
NP: Piss Frond, Dead Voices on Air
