Half a percent

The BBC are reporting that a study involving allegedly haunted vaults under South Bridge (oh, and also some palace or other in London) has found evidence of clustering in reported experiences similar to hauntings. What they don't say is what people were apparently experiencing. Given that those vaults have been empty for most of their history, I do wonder what that happened there would be said to be affecting people - was it the ghosts of indie clubs past, perhaps, or ectoplasmic music characterised by a succession of regular beats?

In other news, I've been reading a couple of historical essays on the idea that Odin was a historical figure. I'm not convinced, but the ground they tangentially cover's very interesting.I got given some Ecoballs too. These, in case you're not familiar with them, are plastic balls (well, balls with a collar that make them look slightly Saturnine) containing small pellets, which are claimed to clean your clothes without normally needing any washing powder.

I'm not convinced. In fact, as far as I can tell they rely entirely on people not being familiar with how clean warm water and agitation can get their clothes. I will, though, just quote you some of the guff that comes along with them.

You're gonna like this.

Q. How do the Ecoballs™ work?

A. Ecoballs™ increase the degree of alkaline.

In the water Ecoballs™ will react with stain/dirt under saponification [ . . . ] the Activated water molecule filters easily into the inside of clothing fibre and and makes combination between filth and fibre[1] loose [ . . . ] I.e. the Ecoballs™ makes the molecule of the water smaller which returns the water to having its brilliant hydrating properties, high solubility and good permeability.

So there you go. We've been using soap all these years when all we needed to do was shrink the water. How foolish we've all been.

Went for a walk around town yesterday in opposition to current events. Bumped into Nuala and Alex (and little Aisling, who mostly slept). Ken was apparently there too, but I didn't see him.

[1]: "Filth and fibre". I think I've got an EP by them.

I was highly amused by the comments of Donald Trump's point man in Aberdeenshire, George Sorial, on hearing that the council had inexplicably decided to throw out the overblown and environmentally damaging plan to build yet another sprawling golf course in the area.

Sorial defended accusations the Trump team had been "arrogant and patronising" in its approach. "There's a view we are arrogant. We are not arrogant. We set certain standards. It may be incomprehensible to smaller minds, but we have always set high standards."

Priceless.

Also, Hedy Lamarr has been accorded posthumous honorary membership of the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists, which is obviously excellent news for fans of spread-spectrum communication the world over.

Gosh. One of my favourite record shops is in Dr Who on Saturday. I may even watch it.

I've been neglecting them recently, actually. Must try harder.

This Wellcome Trust project is very impressive. There's some Sanger involvement - Panos is mentioned, and I'm sure I saw Chris Clee on the news last night. Or, rather, I'm sure I saw Chris Clee's hair, beard and white coat on the news last night.

New Scientist has a handy breakdown of climate-related misconceptions which could usefully be pointed to any contrarians you might happen to see in pubs on . . . . oh, Saturday nights in the Dagda or wherever.

This is good news. In my view, anyway. I can't find the actual draft bill, though. {Ah - it's here]

I'm quite disappointed we're not going to have a leadership election. I was definitely going to vote for McDonnell if we had (he's funnier, as well as proposing stuff I gree with more) and while Gordon was pretty much certain to win I think it would have been a very worthwhile process to actually argue the tossdiscuss policy. Perhaps someone would even have persuaded Gordon to leave some useful hostages . . .

In more frivolous news, El Reg reports that novelty act Rednexx are up for sale. Apparently they have a world record for longest song name, for a little ditty called The Sad But True Story Of Ray Mingus, The Lumberjack Of Bulk Rock City, And His Never Slacking Stribe In Exploiting The So Far Undiscovered Areas Of The Intention To Bodily Intercourse From The Opposite Species Of His Kind, During Intake Of All The Mental Condition That Could Be Derived From Fermentation - 52 words, 306 characters.

This, of course, is a challenge. Can any of you think of a longer one? I'll open with Test Dept's magisterial Long Live British Democracy Which Flourishes And Is Constantly Perfected Under The Immaculate Guidance Of The Great, Honourable, Generous And Correct Margaret Hilda Thatcher. She Is The Blue Sky In The Hearts Of All Nations, Our People Pay Homage And Bow In Deep Respect And Gratitude To Her, The Milk Of Human Kindness.

53 words, 320 characters. Beat that.

Finally, I'll mention that there's a Writers' Bloc reading tonight at the Tron Tavern, and Gav's having a solo reading, and launch of a new edition of Crap Ghosts, on Saturday at the same place. Details can be found here.

Firefox is annoying me severely. Ff2 is probably not going to be any better.

Anyway - happy new year, everyone. Several of you have commented on last year having been a bit of a trial. I hope this year's much better - including the ones who had a good year, of course.

The Guardian today has an interesting interview with James Flynn, of the interesting "Flynn effect" - the observation that raw IQ scores have been rising by about three points per decade across the industrialised world for more than the last century. This, of course, is now a well-established result, regardless of what pessimists, eugenicists and Daily Mail leader writers will tell you.

I also came across this page again - pictures of the world's largest diesel engines. Work safe, of course, although if you're prone as me to bursts of impressed profanity when you're surprised, then be warned.

We've all read John Wyndham (Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris)'s novel "Web", haven't we? No? Well, it's about the discovery of a species of social spider, and the consequences, which aren't too pleasant.

Nervous yet?

Naa, me neither. Honest.

Artificial gravity. Popular in SF, but not practically possible, right? Well, according to this paper (found via a /. link) ESA scientists believe they have created a force of one ten-thousandth of 1G using a spinning superconducting ring.

It'll be interesting to see if this is confirmed. Obviously it's odd to find that something I'd believed impossible, or implausible for my lifetime, has happened. I should try to get used to it, though. It seems to be happening more frequently.

And there's a Gigantor tomorrow, too, but that needn't suprise you as much.

So Livingstone brought the office of mayor into disrepute by hurling abuse at a tabloid reporter? Sounds like perfectly reasonable behaviour to me, I'm afraid.

The dentistry is over for another year. ( Read more... )

Which reminds me. I was looking at the Onion the other day, and they're featuring a fine story about using technology to increase the impact of science on policy-making. They aren't ignoring the major matters of topical interest, either. I was also (admittedly slightly cynically) amused by the headline Betty Friedan Honored With Second-Class Postage Stamp also.

Anyway, that cloning thing leads nicely onto this article, from Wednesday, about moves to oppose the ALF and their cronies, who are issuing scarcely-veiled threats of violence against researchers, students, builders, and anyone else who has the temerity not to agree with them. ( Read more... )

A lot of people argue that medical research on animals is misleading. The evidence that tends to be supplied for this is generally inaccurate or irrelevant. Nothing (and nobody) is perfect, but the tools we have are used because they've been proven by years of testing.

On a more pleasant topic, Patti Smith will apparently be reading her poetry in Glasgow.

I'm moderately impressed by the Whitby lineup, but as I remarked elsewhere there isn't anyone that I'd drop everything for and run to buy tickets, as I did for (frinstance) the Lorries or ITN. I was thinking, though - if they're after that sort of coup, someone's playing what seems to be her first gig in well over a decade in France soon, and her initials are D D. I wonder if she could be tempted? In fairness, she used to be very expensive to book. Ah well.

Finally, this, although it'll admittedly be of little interest to most of you :

Hamburg, 23.02.2006. Olympus has developed a new family of objectives specifically for Total Internal Reflection Fluorescence Microscopy (TIRFM) which selectively visualises processes and structures of the cell membrane. Researchers can now choose from four different specially designed TIRFM objectives with magnifications between 60x and 150x, and extremely high numerical apertures (NA) - including a world record NA of 1.65.

Yeech! That's outrageous - f/0.6 in photographic terms. TIRF is also known by the far more beautiful name Evanescent-wave microscopy, but for some reason the buggeringly ugly term caught on.

Well, mostly better. And back at work, because it seems that somebody has to be here who understands the monochromator's little idiosyncracies. It has, I should say at this point, been working very well for the last few months, and I think people are now very pleased with it. A while back I mailed Till to thank them for whatever they did the last time they had it back, because whatever it was it certainly did the trick. There's a (very) slight problem with the control software, but I suspect that that's the fault of the software company, who are unconnected. There's a very simple workround, anyway. That was what Kirsten's call on Wednesday was about. Tom called me at home yesterday about another issue - he just couldn't get any illumination from it. I couldn't think of anything that might cause that, and when I fired it up this morning it worked perfectly. So it goes.

It was pointed out to me (thank you to sneerpout) that the man convicted of killing Mia Zapata has had an appeal upheld, not against his conviction but against the severity of his sentence. But even if he gets a decade lopped off the previous 36-year stretch, he'll still likely die inside.

There have been some interesting studies out too. That one on male bisexuality has apparently been printed now, as has one allegedly claiming that men are clever than women (difficult to prove using a tool like an IQ test, for only very slightly technical reasons) and also one on the worthlessness of homeopathy. I should probably drone on about each of these . . . and I may if I get bored.

What I probably will do sooner or later is spell out at unforgiveable length when and how I think the animal rights movement lost the plot. I mention this now rather than at any other point because A Prominent Local Scientist (not me or anyone I know personally) has had his van vandalised and his house threatened recently, and someone else from the same institute had had their house vandalised shortly before. A few years ago, of course, the Roslin Institute was firebombed, as was a building at the Bush Estate (part of Edinburgh University). In the latter case, the wrong building was actually bombed (stupid fuckwits), as the lab that was burnt out (destroying many years of work by a good number of people) was actually a tropical botany lab. You can insert the usual "vegetable rights" jokes here if you like, of course. Still, at least nobody was hurt. Or, alternatively, at least nobody's been hurt yet. All fun and games.

I don't have anything exciting to report about my life and travels, as I've been mostly sitting in the house for the last couple of days, stroking the cat and bringing up phlegm. I'm not downcast, though. New Model Army have a new album out very very soon (and I'll get to go see them on my birthday), Leonard Cohen has one out RSN, there's what looks like a very promising club on tomorrow and a big firework display on Sunday.

Finally, I'd just like to pass on a quotation about the Old Man of Storr, lifted from the NVA book:
"Had this rock been on the plains of Hindostan instead of the mountains of Skye, it would have been an object of greater devotion than the Jaggernaut Pagoda." J Macculloch, Geologist, 1819.