IMS_Blog

Why do people fill their houses with ticking clocks. Not with clocks note, that’s to fulfil the modern obsession with the current time, an entirely different subject, but with ticking clocks. In this age of microelectronics where a quartz time piece costs less than a penny sweet (so to speak) why do people insist on filling every room of the house with a monotonous ticking to disturb the silence. Hell, I’m pretty sure that most mechanical clocks could be made to run virtually silently; the tick is left in, enhanced, shaped for the very purpose of that tick. Like some audial momento mori they tick on and on and on to shatter the silence with that so regular beat to ensure that they can’t be easily filtered as the conciousness unthinkingly awaits the next tick, eager to know that indeed it is still alive. Most of them aren’t even tick tock; listen: they are clack, clack, clack, the wondrous variety of tick tock being only present by our own willingness to impose the myth on reality. Alarms, clocks, watches I understand but relentless tick tick, tock tock, clack clack on the second every second I do not!

So a random Norwegian skied down a London Tube escalator [YouTube link]. Now, ignoring for a moment whether or not this was reckless, dangerous, insane, fun, entertaining, etc, there is a point I haven’t seen mentioned in all this coverage. According to the BBC News report it’s believed the video was made about a year ago. In other words, in one of the most heavily watched and under surveillance areas of the country, if not the world (the London tube) a man (having allegedly had friends stop passengers getting in the way) skied down the escalator and nobody noticed, until it was a big hit on YouTube.

There in is the pointlessness of all the CCTV and big brother activity of this country. It doesn’t prevent anything, and it’s not even very good at detecting it. It is useful for later analysis of people though, should you wish to have a wonderful overview of what individuals are doing in their law abiding daily lives. So long, presumably, as they don’t ski down escalators.

Incidentally, presumably the BBC take an officially dim view of pieces of their programmes appearing on YouTube, so what about parts of the YouTube video appearing in their news bulletin (at least online) without even an actual link to YouTube from their story?

I seem to collect hiccup cures around here. Another variation comes to light via Lifehacker; a teaspoon of sugar. Well, I normally take one if possible after my preferred teaspoon of vinegar cure, so maybe there’s something in it. The vinegar does work (for me at least) by itself though. Maybe I should try the sugar by itself.

Via B3ta: Hmm, now I’m wonder if £235 is bad or not

Oh Dear…

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A sudden glut of posts! Just clearing out drafts. There’s still one to come, if I ever finish it.

As an aside, I think this whole crazy daylight savings thing is screwing with post update times (the server is in the US). I’m waiting until British Summer Time starts before I think of trying to sort it out though. I also just realised this is the only post I remembered to spell check, so apologies for my usual awful spelling ;-)

Back when I was quite a bit younger than I am now I was arguably more imaginative, or naive—or stupid if you wish to be unkind—and in moments of ideal wonder pondered if there was a big secret. I was always interested in science, and in some respects science has this great cloak of seeming to know all, and has its own secret language and all the other things that make science communication difficult for the brave souls which try it. So I occasionally wondered, in no great seriousness, if there were some great secret that was imparted to the priesthood of science once you rose high enough. Not so much “there is (or isn’t) a god” but maybe “here’s what the aliens told us”. Because I was quite young and hadn’t seen the writhing insides of academia the natural place for that to occur seemed to be when one was elevated to the magical ranks of the all powerful and, to youthful eyes at least, rare doctorhood.

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Smoking, as in cigarettes, is a bloody stupid and wasteful method. Without metioning that there are much better recreational drugs available (some of which really ought to be just as legal as the stuff you can freely buy in supermarkets), people sit with a small tube burning away for minutes on end. You may as well set fire to some paper for all the good that is doing.

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Decrypt Text (If you're: Me)

It should be noted that this post is a little late at night and quite rambling. I just looked at the BBC News front page and for a moment though this very cropped image of Naomi Campbell (because of this) was in fact a pygmy shrew. This is because at a very glancing glance it looks like this image of a pygmy shrew, which has been a running joke every since this University of York press release where they fed them to Barn Owls—the pygmy shrew image became my standard image place holder, including when writing my thesis. It’s possibly something like the second smallest mammal (the first is the Bumblebee Bat); in any rate it’s pretty damn small.

Oh, and to make this post more random, bunging pygmy shrew into wikipedia gets the american version which (currently) contains the line It is grey-brown or red-brown in colour with lighter underparts. which I read as “lighter underpants.”

Finally, an amusing look at the pygmy shrew’s life [flash warning]

This is a test post. Please ignore

Doctor Perkins came to see the delights of Newcastle at the weekend. In a fit of inspired maddness we decided to get a Metro to the coast. Warning: Large pictures follow!

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The Moon was eaten by dragons and its blood ran red. Trying to photograph that while shivering in the cold, using a handheld compact digital camera, is not easy. Shown here is the best I managed, which is to say, not very good. There’s a couple more, as if you care about these poor photos!

In case you haven’t got a clue what I’m about to moan about, some of the news doing the rounds is that Sky’s basic package has been removed from cable TV platforms (Virgin Media, which is what was NTL Telewest, which formed from the merger of NTL and Telewest—in fact Virgin media is so new that it mostly hasn’t actually rebranded; and NTL Telewest never really got the chance). That means that those who receive their wonderful flashy, isn’t it all so wonderful, digital TV through cable don’t now get Sky 1, Sky News, etc. Personally I’m not that bothered about Sky 1, though it’s probably the biggest profile loss and missed by the most people, but I do quite like Sky Sports News’s football coverage on a Saturday afternoon—and I want it back.

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