onemonkey.org

After something like 50 years the British Blasphemy laws have been repealed. Link

Seems like a good time to repost one of my own attempt at blasphemy

Operation Clone Jesus

Click for more..

Either the silly season started early or they've finally run out of things to write about Diana & Maddie because for some strange reason the News of the World are now calling me. I just got a call from some guy asking about my cocaine order form on my website, claimed he was from the News of the World.

I started to explain that it's been there for nearly 10 years and as anyone with half a brain could tell it's obviously a joke.

Obviously, he had less than half a brain because at that point he hung up on me

Mind you a NoTW hack is one of the few people who probably would order a kilo for personal consumption.

My sister's first book was published a few weeks ago but I only got hold of it last monday when Amazon finally sent me the copies I'd ordered. (Hopefully this means they are selling it so fast they didn't have enough of them.) Although I had been awaiting the arrival of her book for several years, it was surprising to be finally holding an actual genuine real-life book in my hands (well, three books in fact, you wouldn't just buy one would you?). Almost as a consequence of following the long process of research, writing, re-writing and editing that went into it, I have trouble believing that it is really here and that it looks just like a real book right through from ISBN to index, and having all the features one would expect from book published by Simon & Schuster. From the colourful and elegant flysheet with it's equally elegant author's photo, it took a little getting used to the fact that this tangible hardback in my hands was the final version, the first edition. Ishbel had succeeded, you could tell because her name was there in gold lettering along its spine (but not thankfully embossed in gold on the cover!) It even managed to strike the right balance between accessible and academic, it had pictures and jokes, a bibliography and plenty of precise little footnotes. Seeing all of that I was very impressed, very proud and of course very slightly jealous.

Well, then I started reading it and it's even better than in looks. I'll need another whole post to review it properly and even then I warn you that you can't easily summarize the highlights of such a meticulously planned and researched book. But in case you hadn't heard of C d B, he was a gay atheist sword-fighting sci-fi poet living in Paris in the mid seventeenth century. He was a freethinker who feared nothing and laughed at everything, and largely got away with it, perhaps in part due to his fearsome reputation as a duellist. To say he did not take himself seriously would be an understatement and yet he was scrupulous in avoiding taking patronage or conforming to the expectations of social advancement.

It must be difficult to write the biography of someone who is liberal (and libertine) with his own history and who's work was generally too controversial to be published in his lifetime. The problem that is doubled by the large shadow cast by the fictionalized Cyrano de Bergerac familiar from Edmumd Rostand's phenomenally successful play. Ishbel manages to tell all the versions of his life and legend of clearly and objectively and makes a very strong case that the real Cyrano was a much more interesting character. Especially given the time he was living in when heretics and freethinkers faced a very real threat from the Inquisition and the State.

I'm not really doing it justice but here are a couple of proper reviews from the Spectator and the Literary Review.

Inspired by the book, I just tried to rent the Oscar-winning Jose Ferrer film version from 1950 but lovefilm actually sent me the Cannes Grand Prix winning Gerard Depardieu version. I guess I'll get to see both. But like book says remember that the real Cyrano is better than the imagined.

Get your copy now, only £8.49 at Amazon.

Oh and yes, he really did fight off a hundred men single handedly.

Ponca City, We Love You writes "Researchers at Monash University, in Australia, have found a process to coat natural fibers such as wool, silk, and hemp that will automatically remove food, grime, and even red-wine stains by coating their fibers with titanium dioxide nanocrystals, which break down food and dirt in sunlight. Titanium dioxide is a strong photocatalyst and in the presence of ultraviolet light and water vapor, it forms hydroxyl radicals, which oxidize, or decompose, organic matter. "These nanocrystals cannot decompose wool and are harmless to skin," says organic chemist and nanomaterials researcher Walid Daoud. Titanium dioxide can also destroy pathogens such as bacteria in the presence of sunlight by breaking down the cell walls of the microorganisms making self-cleaning fabrics especially useful in hospitals and other medical settings."

from Slashdot

Meanwhile, I bet I am one of thousands of lazy and unimaginative people who use this image with this story.

That's the whole thing, right here. Life on Earth, in a nutshell. We are hard-wired to have a drastic double standard for the people inside and out of our Monkeysphere and those outside make up 99.999% of the world's population.

Have you ever gotten pissed off in traffic? Like, really pissed off? I think we all have. We've thrown finger gestures and wedged our heads out of the window and screamed "LEARN TO FUCKING DRIVE, FUCKER!!" We've all pulled the gun out of the glove compartment and let a few fly at the offending car. Not firing at their head or anything. Just, you know, at their tires.

Now imagine yourself standing in an elevator with three other people, two friends and a coworker. A friend goes to hit a button and accidentally punches the wrong one. Would you lean over, your mouth two inches from her ear, and scream "LEARN TO OPERATE THE FUCKING ELEVATOR BUTTONS, SHITCAMEL!!"

They'd think you'd gone insane. We all go a little insane, though, when we get in a group larger than the Monkeysphere. You know the feeling, that invincibility of being an anonymous head in a crowd, screaming curses at a football player you'd never dare say to his face.
- David Wong

This is an entertaining and diverting rant about the size of our monkeysphere. The oft quoted research that our social group size ought to be around 150 because if you correlate monkey brain volume with size of their social grouping then that's how big humans troops should be.

The original research was done by Robin Dunbar who when not whoring himself to the BBC or defending evol psyc (sic) against the hordes of shrieking critics comes up with some interesting (if untestable *shriek* *shriek* ) hypotheses about primate social and linguistic evolution.

I haven't read much of his original work so (by the Mixing Memory criterion) I am no position to criticise but as I am not a professional it matters not.

One thought occurs to me is that extrapolating any supposed relationship between brain size and group size is doubly difficult..

theoretically the justification is that the bigger the social grouping the more c

Dunbar, a babboon expert, is no buffoon and he is aware of these limitations.

Finally, I know where that joke in Space Balls comes from.

via Dinosaur Comics

if only the world was populated with things like these it would be much more interesting (and dangerous) place

via Wooster Collective

Always good at asking questions the Edge has started the year by asking a whole bunch of sciencetists to think again. More specifically, to describe what they had changed their mind about (and why). Here's Susan Blackmore:

I decided, with splendid, youthful over-confidence, to become a parapsychologist and prove all my closed-minded science lecturers wrong. I found a PhD place, funded myself by teaching, and began to test my memory theory of ESP. And this is where my change of mind — and heart, and everything else — came about.

I did the experiments. I tested telepathy, precognition, and clairvoyance; I got only chance results. I trained fellow students in imagery techniques and tested them again; chance results. I tested twins in pairs; chance results. I worked in play groups and nursery schools with very young children (their naturally telepathic minds are not yet warped by education, you see); chance results. I trained as a Tarot reader and tested the readings; chance results.

Occasionally I got a significant result. Oh the excitement! I responded as I think any scientist should, by checking for errors, recalculating the statistics, and repeating the experiments. But every time I either found the error responsible, or failed to repeat the results. When my enthusiasm waned, or I began to doubt my original beliefs, there was always another corner to turn — always someone saying "But you must try xxx". It was probably three or four years before I ran out of xxxs.

And here are the rest.

UPDATE:
I've just read a few more and the disturbingly brilliant Antony Garrett Lisi is one of the best. Let's hope his Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything turns out to be more than just an exceptionally nice idea.

Science typically builds on the body of available knowledge - the more knowledge available the faster science goes. It's striking when you visit other labs in person; you see all of their unpublished work, and you know that most of their results and data won't be available to the bulk of the scientific community until a year after each particular scientific project is finished. By the time papers are in print, it's old news to the insiders. More striking is when you visit labs whose work you've thought about replicating and expanding on. It's not too uncommon to find that only one person in the entire lab is able to get the technique to work, and even for him the technique only works on Wednesdays. This type of information would be useful to know before you embark on a useless three months trying to adapt their method. But scientific publications are covered in a thick coat of high-gloss finish, making these unacknowledged difficulties hard to detect.

J's Blog

It's interesting observation that chimes with my own very limited experience. There is much larger number of things that can go wrong than can go right. All the experiments in our lab benefit from the experience of our senior scientific and RA staff. And then we almost always have several pilot phases. But even then, of course, the experiments don't always work. What's more the failures are often nearly as informative as the successes.

Perhaps what we need is a Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis?

Let's start the year with this colourful and gory video of someone undergoing brain surgery. the bit that gets me is how the exposed brain pulsates in gentle protest at the poking and prodding. It's almost as if it is alive.

via retrospectacle

If somebody called RICHARD DAWKINS adds you to their facebook account DONT accept it because he is a cultural theorist. DONT tell everyone on your list because if somebody on your list adds them you get them on your list and he'll figure out how MEMES spread. So DONT copy and paste this message to anyone even if you hate them and hold fast because if he get's proved right about this, he will probably go on to disprove the existence of God and the very fabric of our universe could be threatened.

Yes, it's that time of the year again. Starting at midnight, thousands of people all around the world are racing to write a 50,000 word novel from beginning to end in the 30 days that November hath. Yes, it's (Inter)NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth time. This will be my fourth attempt and this year I am going to have to try something different.

The trouble is that in none of the previous years have a finished what I started. I did once make it to the 50,000 word target but the story was incomplete. There were large holes where I had skipped the difficult bits to come back to later.In the three years since then, I haven't really been back. The next two years were even more inconclusive. And again and again my good intentions of completing some or all of these outside of November came to naught very much. Which is frustrating (even if it be entirely my own fault.) I am sufficiently attached and proud of them all that i'd like to finish them, but outside of november it just doesn't seem to happen. So this is the plan, I have these:

2004 - 53,640 words - Help Yourself

2005 - 16,210 words - Bodhidharma's Eyelids

2006 - 32,385 words - Awake!

I start the month with three fractional novels of some 102,235 words. The aim will be to end the month with 152,235 words which may go someway to completing one or more of them.

Oh yes, and whilst I am doing that I will also be growing a moustache for the merry month of Movember. Though I feel will be less successful than my novel writing.

And if you had a dog called Rascal, you would probably need a special vehicle to drive him around in, wouldn't you?

I just bought this:

Please welcome the newest member of our family, Rascal..

He will come to live with us just as soon as we move into our new penthouse flat in the barrier block:

It's been a good week!

more photo's of rascal and family here (Rascal is the mischievous one with the white tip to his tail.)

I went to the 12 bar on Denmark street on tuesday night the music started well and got worse. once again i was perplexed by this graffito on the condom machine. Can anyone explain what it means?

And what on earth will be written on the tampon machine in the girls rooms?

The erotic, intimate scent of an irresistible woman..
The precious, vaginal odour filled into a small glass phial.

VULVA Original is not a perfume. It is a beguiling vaginal scent which is purely a substance for your own smelling pleasure.

Vulva Original (NSFW)

Yes, it seems to be real. And yes it's certainly.. original. No.. I am not going to buy any.

Thanks to Nadja and Martina for the tip!

Update:
Now I wondering what goes into my aftershave.

Carl Zimmer is collecting science tattoos. So I sent him our Necker cubes.

Bit miffed but not surprised that he chose the more photogenic of us to picture on his site. Meanwhile, i am thinking of a way to work the stimuli from my statistical learning experiment into a new tattoo.

I am sure that i am a million internet years behind the pace here, but i have only just noticed that almost any fortune cookie saying can be massively improved by adding the phrase ".. in your bed." to the end. Try it and see:


You find beauty in ordinary things, do not lose this ability.

There is a true and sincere friendship between you and your friends.


A thrilling time is in your immediate future.

It takes more than good memory to have good memories.

Your blessing is no more than being safe and sound for the whole lifetime.

Plan for many pleasures ahead.

The joyfulness of a man prolongeth his days.

Your everlasting patience will be rewarded sooner or later.

Ideas are like children; there are none so wonderful as your own.

Make two grins grow where there was only a grouch before.

Something you lost will soon turn up.

Your heart is pure, and your mind clear, and your soul devout.

Excitement and intrigue follow you closely wherever you go!

A pleasant surprise is in store for you.

May life throw you a pleasant curve.

As the purse is emptied the heart is filled.

Be mischievous and you will not be lonesome.

You have a deep appreciation of the arts and music.

Your flair for the creative takes an important place in your life.

Your artistic talents win the approval and applause of others.

Pray for what you want, but work for the things you need.

Your many hidden talents will become obvious to those around you.

Don't forget, you are always on our minds.

Your greatest fortune is the large number of friends you have.

A firm friendship will prove the foundation on your success in life.

Don't ask, don't say. Everything lies in silence.

Look for new outlets for your own creative abilities.

Be prepared to accept a wondrous opportunity in the days ahead!

Fame, riches and romance are yours for the asking.

Good luck is the result of good planning.

Good things are being said about you.

Smiling often can make you look and feel younger.

Someone is speaking well of you.

The time is right to make new friends.

You will inherit some money or a small piece of land.

Your life will be happy and peaceful.

A friend is a present you give yourself.

A member of your family will soon do something that will make you proud.

A quiet evening with friends is the best tonic for a long day.

A single kind word will keep one warm for years.

Anger begins with folly, and ends with regret.

Generosity and perfection are your everlasting goals.

Happy news is on its way to you.

He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.

If your desires are not extravagant they will be granted.

Let there be magic in your smile and firmness in your handshake.

If you want the rainbow, you must to put up with the rain. D. Parton

Nature, time and patience are the three best physicians.

Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause.

The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.

You will have a very pleasant experience.

You will inherit some money or a small piece of land.

You will live a long, happy life.

You will spend old age in comfort and material wealth.

You will step on the soil of many countries.

You will take a chance in something in the near future.

You will witness a special ceremony.

Your everlasting patience will be rewarded sooner or later.

Your great attention to detail is both a blessing and a curse.

Your heart is a place to draw true happiness.

Your ability to juggle many tasks will take you far.

A friend asks only for your time, not your money.

You will be invited to an exciting event.


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