tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14402867501381990442024-03-18T20:20:12.243-07:00Science DigestiveAttempts at an amusing take on the latest stories from the world of Science by the UK's only Stand-up comedy Neuroscientist (at the moment)Dean Burnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15054744507490592341noreply@blogger.comBlogger184125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440286750138199044.post-4431045926464143052012-10-16T06:06:00.001-07:002012-10-16T06:06:08.977-07:00Forwarding addressI don't know why all the images on this blog have suddenly gone all blank, is anyone else seeing that?
The timing is weird anyway. For the 3 people and seven spiders who may still frequent this blog, you've probably noticed it's not been updated in quite some time.
Rest assured, I've not quit. Although my son was born in March, so I've been a bit distracted since then, so that did prove to be quite a barrier to regular waffling for the disinterested.
No, the real reason I don't blog here any more is that I've essentially sold out.<br />
<br />
The big media people came a knocking, and I jumped ship like the soulless attention seeker that I am.
I blog for the Guardian now, is what I'm saying. My new blog is called Brain Flapping (long story), and it can be found <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/brain-flapping">here</a>.<br />
<br />
They pay me for that one, so it's updated far more often. I may still use this one for random non-publishable things, but that's not guaranteed as the standard they require is worryingly low.<br />
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So, if you do miss my ramblings, don't worry, there are now more than ever, except that now I have a banner that blends in with a corporate logo.<br />
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Remember when Iggy Pop did that advert for car insurance and everyone was disgusted? This is exactly like that. Exactly.Dean Burnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15054744507490592341noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440286750138199044.post-25415662266522737032012-05-14T16:32:00.002-07:002012-05-14T16:33:03.185-07:00On Man flu<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Last week I was ill. Not incapacitated, just a bit under the weather in an annoying way, rather than debilitated.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It was my son's fault. Millen (which is his name) caught a cold of some sort. Not sure how, he's not really been near anyone with a cold that we've noticed, but that's apparently just one of the things kids do, find and incubate illnesses without any seeming cause.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And, inevitably, I caught the cold too. It seems that if you have someone with a cold and spend as much time as possible in close contact with them and handle all (ALL!) their bodily emissions, you risk picking up any bugs they have. Who knew?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I admit I wasn't expecting to catch a cold from an 8 week old, but more fool me I suppose. It wasn't even a proper cold, it went from having an overweight but irritated bumblebee lodged in my sinus cavities, to my nose running like a satirical commentary on the British drought announcements, to sneezing more regularly than an apprentice pepper tester. Never all at once though, more like some symptomatic triple tag-team.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">None of these were, as I say, incapacitating. My wife is on maternity looking after our first child, who is 8 weeks old. Even if I was the sort of person to complain about inconvenient personal ailments, I certainly wouldn't do that to a new mother, especially not one I live with.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But I did mention my cold to a few people. To those in work when I opted to work from home to contain the infection (I have that option), to people on Facebook and twitter, because I like social networking but with a new baby in the house your range of conversational subjects suddenly gets a lot more limited. My having a cold was something a bit different to talk about. It was either that or discuss the contents of Millen's latest nappy, and that seems like it would have 'niche' appeal at best.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So, I mentioned my cold once or twice, just as a passing comment. And, it turns out, I have man flu. This surprised me, if I'm honest.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As far as I was aware, man flu is a joke used by women to describe the phenomenon of men over-dramatising their symptoms and suffering if they happen to come down with a cold, often to a theatrical extent. I'm not denying that this happens. When it comes to physical weakness or failings, most men are seemingly programmed (by society, evolution, hormones, Hollywood, I don't know) to exaggerate whatever it was that caused them to demonstrate weakness. If asked after the event, a guy is unlikely to have been beaten up by one guy, more like four. It wasn't a child's scooter they tripped over, it was a motorbike accident, The fish that got away was always the bigger one.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">That previous paragraph was, you may say, nothing but some unfair generalisations and stereotypes. Good point, and it brings me neatly back to man flu.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I thought that man flu was reserved for the over-dramatic emphasis of standard cold symptoms, but lately, as I've found, it's become more of an automatic classification. It could just be my experience, but it seems Man + Unwell = Man flu. If a man mentions being under the weather for non-alcohol related causes, it's man flu. I wouldn't mind so much, but I hadn't complained, just observed that I had a cold. I was still working, I didn't want special treatment or sympathy, I just felt like it was something to say. That's man flu now, apparently.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I'm very much a feminist supporter, as I hope my article about <a href="http://sciencedigestive.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/unilad-to-bone.html" target="_blank">Unilad</a> demonstrated, but I've seen/heard many women who, rightly, criticise this male tendency to be macho about everything, to posture, to reduce everything to a pissing contest, to refuse to show vulnerability or emotion. These women say this, and they have a point. But I've seen these same women who, as soon as a male mentions being ill in some way, immediately start mocking them for having man flu. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">If you're going to insist that men stop posturing and acting so tough, but immediately start mocking them the instant they confess a weakness, this will probably end up being somewhat counter-productive. I've known guys who turn up for work hacking their guts up and infecting everyone around them like a 14th century rat, rather than be accused of being a wimp.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">All things being equal, the man flu thing is still mocking someone for being unwell, and that's not very nice. It's completely unacceptable in almost all other contexts. And I've no doubt there are women reading this, perhaps as many as two, who will say I'm being ridiculously over-sensitive, that this is just a front for wounded male pride, that I should grow up and learn to take a joke. All fair points, and to those women I might say this;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I had a stomach cramp once, I didn't even mention it, let alone whinge about it for a full week.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The previous statement would be seen, rightly, as extremely offensive by many. How could I mock someone for suffering in a way that I don't have any appreciation of? Yes, how indeed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Obviously the man-flu thing is different. Women can experience a cold, and just carry on, whereas it seems to incapacitate supposedly big burly men. That logic cannot be denied.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Except for the fact that it's wrong. It's assuming that a woman's cold and man's cold are the same. But that isn't true. Because man flu actually is a real disease.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It's an evolved mechanism. The human male, evolved for hunting and fighting, has developed a more robust immune system and physiology that can endure more damage. Any virus that infects the human male can be certain of a rugged, durable host for as long as it can withstand the formidable immune system. So a virus would evolve that was strong enough to get through the immune defences and convert this mighty organism to its infectious ways. However, such a virus would be very powerful, too powerful for a lesser system to withstand.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Long story short, man flu is a real illness, and if a woman caught it she'd be killed. Instantly. She'd liquefy on the spot, like ebola on fast forward. And a pathogen which kills it's host in seconds wouldn't have any chance to spread, so would be an evolutionary dead end, so man flu has evolved to avoid women.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But, you say, you've known a woman to catch a 'cold' from a man? Of course, that's because the mighty male immune system eventually beats back this virus, to the point where one or two molecules will 'jump ship', onto a less demanding host, which may be a woman at times.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But what about when a man catches a 'cold' (Man flu) from a woman? It's the same thing, the weakened virus builds up it's strength until it is powerful enough to infect a man again. It takes all of it's strength to do this though, to so the female host is left with only a pale imitation of the true disease.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So think about that, next time you mock a man for being ill.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Although, of course, a lot of what I've just said is absolute nonsense. I'm certain viruses don't work that way. I'm just bored and stuck at home babysitting. And babies don't say much, so my social skills are seriously rusty. </span>Dean Burnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15054744507490592341noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440286750138199044.post-23417990856589279522012-04-14T14:57:00.000-07:002012-04-14T15:00:45.076-07:00Life under the glittery Jackboot<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I've not blogged in quite some time. Nothing personal, it's just that as of March 7th I've been a dad. Babies in the house tend to take up a lot of your time. Who knew? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So that's why I've not said much here. I've got an actual full-time job to keep up with, which, coupled with my myriad new responsibilities, means I've got much less time to play with, and priorities have to be made. Long-winded blogposts which will only be read by a few people with nothing better to do? They're not very high up on the list, I'm afraid.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But, sometimes you just have to speak out. Someone says something that strikes a chord, and you can't just remain silent while a great injustice continues. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Today,<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9203953/Britains-Christians-are-being-vilified-warns-Lord-Carey.html" target="_blank"> in the Telegraph</a>, Lord Carey, former Archbishop, stated that Christians and those who wish to express themselves are suppressed, forced underground, vilified by the homosexuals who have essentially taken over society.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">He has been widely mocked for this, via that there Twitter, the<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2012/apr/14/1?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebook" target="_blank"> Guardian</a>, and elsewhere. But the people mocking his stance clearly don't understand. They must live abroad or in elitist enclaves in the more modern 'hip' cities. They clearly don't know how it is for normal people and wealthy peers who have lived in palaces. I am neither homosexual nor Christian, but ever since the tyrannical homosexuals started running society, life is a constant struggle for anyone who deviates from their tyrannical views on what is 'normal'. So, to enlighten you and show to truth of Carey's words, I've decided to describe a typical day in my life, as a suppressed heterosexual living in homosexual Britain. Or 'The U-Gay' (as in UK, yeah? Geddit?), as it should be called these days. Just so you know Carey is speaking the truth, not living in some deranged fantasy world.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The day starts with me waking up before the wife. She has to feed the baby during the night, so needs to sleep in. I notice in the fridge that we've no milk yet. It's getting harder for me to get milk now, the homosexuals who control society don't approve of milk. It's a symbol of heterosexual reproduction so is considered offensive, especially if a male drinks it as this constitutes transfer of organic material across the genders, which is 'clearly immoral' I'm told. Milk isn't banned yet, but it's surely only a matter of time.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I get dressed for work. I usually wear a combination of tight trousers and/or vests, sometimes with studs or rainbow accessories. I don't suit this stuff at all, and don't like it in the slightest. I'd much rather wear something more sober and plain, but it's really not worth the risk of offending the sensibilities of some of the more flamboyant people I work with, they're likely to lodge a complaint against me if I do. I'd like to just be myself, but that's not a good idea at present.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I head towards the train station. On the way, I pass many gay bars, they're so commonplace these days. One that I pass was recently in the news after throwing out two Christians for public praying. Some of the more tolerant media highlighted their harsh treatment, but most papers and news services just flamed them for threatening to destroy the fabric of society. Seemed like quite an unfair accusation for what was just a bit of public faith between consenting adults, but most media is on the side of the silent majority of gays these days, although whether these people exist is debatable</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On the train, there is a group of flamboyant homosexuals loudly singing show tunes and Lady Gaga numbers. They're annoying everyone and making people quite uncomfortable, but you can't stifle people from expressing their views, so everyone just lets them carry on. A conductor does ask them to possibly keep it down, but they are outraged by his attempts to curb their freedoms. They tell him to 'talk to the hand'. I've never been able to work out if/why this is offensive.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I distract myself by reading the free newspaper. The main story is about a community of B<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_(gay_culture)" target="_blank">ears</a> being bombed by a hard-liner <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twink_(gay_slang)" target="_blank">Twink</a> group. It's down to some fundamental difference in views regarding which Madonna album is better. It seems utterly ridiculous and superficial to me, but then I'm not part of that community so am told I'm not able to understand the importance of the dispute. Fair enough, I suppose.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Spend the next few hours in work. Am occasionally pestered by my annoying co-worker who keeps telling everyone they should attend her LGBT pottery class. She keeps telling me I should go and how much good it would do me. I keep declining, she wants to know why. I eventually tell her that I'm not a part of the LGBT community and I just find pottery immensely dull. She's polite about it, but is clearly very angry. That's probably going to get me ostracised for the next few weeks. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><i>(This happened in my last job. I said I wasn't going to Mardi Gras as it didn't really apply to me, and then I stupidly asked why an event with the name 'Fat Tuesday' always occurred on the weekend? This resulted in a massive backlash, and accusations of me aggressively undermining the true meaning of the occasion by trying to change the name. Madness! I had to leave that job, it was too much. My boss made a decent effort to be supportive, but what with his office filled with Mardi Gras merchandise I don't think he really saw my side of things)</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I nip out for lunch in town. I'm waylaid by and incredibly camp man with giving out flyers about how essential it is to become homosexual. He tries to give me one, but I decline, saying I need to be back in work. He gets very angry and remonstrates me, telling me that unless I embrace homosexuality I'll never get into heaven. He means it as a threat, but I don't really have much of a concern. I've <a href="http://sciencedigestive.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/hiss-of-piss-on-bonfire.html" target="_blank">never cared for night clubs anyway</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Back in work, a meeting with HR. I've got to sort out paternity leave and the like. It's quite complicated. My wife and I are, logically, married, but society doesn't recognise it as 'true' marriage, what with it being mixed-sex. After all, they argue, men and women are so different, they're practically different species. We're mixed-race as well, which just makes it worse. It's no better than bestiality, they say. I try not to let it get to me, but it's hard going some times. We don't have the same protections that 'normal' gay couples have under the law. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Could be worse I suppose, at least we're not religious. The treatment they get is worse again. It's not natural, they say. Some of the arguments seem to make sense, sadly. Homosexuality is <a href="http://sciencedigestive.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/homosex-reality.html" target="_blank">natural</a>, you can't help that, but being religious is a choice. A wrong one, clearly, judging by this society. But still, the vendetta against religious people seems a bit much, given that they're not hurting anyone with their beliefs. You'd think the gay organisations running society would have bigger things to worry about what with the economy and so forth, but apparently not.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I eventually head home. On the way, I pass a hotel I stayed in once. Fairly low budget, but even then they had the obligatory copy of <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Look-who-Story-Alan-Carr/dp/0007278233/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334438535&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Alan Carr's autobiography </a>in the bedside drawers. Never read it myself, but apparently it's become the homosexual text which they tend live their life by. From what I know of Alan Carr, he is a very amiable friendly bloke, but in the book there is apparently a miss-print. One sentence should read 'I said "God, no!"', the typical exclamation meaning immediate denial. But instead it reads 'I said "God? No!"', and this is what all the religious persecution is based on. Seems flimsy justification, but like I say, I've never read it. There's also apparently a part that uses the phrase 'straight to hell', which is interpreted as a condemnation of heterosexuals. you could argue that these are very much open to interpretation, but it's never any use.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So I get home. Wife, son, all one happy family. We can't go out much, but we probably wouldn't anyway. Modern society means our lifestyle and relationship isn't really approved of by many, even if those who disprove don't really know why. I'm fairly sure that most homosexuals have no problem with what other people do, but that's not really helpful to us. It's the aggressive, shouty ones who get to dictate what happens. Nobody ever pays attention to the people who aren't saying anything, for obvious reasons.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So there you have it, an account of life in a society run by dominant homosexuals (pardon the double meaning of that). At least Carey has had to guts to speak out, hopefully many more will follow and bring about real change, ending this injustice once and for all.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>DISCLAIMER: Sadly, odds are I'll need to state this for clarity's sake; The above anecdote is entirely fictional. It never happened. It is a (probably weak) attempt at satire, intended to portray what life would be like in a society under the control of what are clearly ridiculously exaggerated homosexual clichés, which a worrying number of people seem to be convinced is the case, despite the substantial evidence to the contrary. Any analogues between this blog piece and the real world are obviously intentional, but the society portrayed only exists in some possible parallel universe, and the heads of myself and Lord Carey. I write this disclaimer to show that I, at least, am aware that it's not real.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Twitter: @garwboy</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>Dean Burnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15054744507490592341noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440286750138199044.post-90305495005821294652012-02-29T04:24:00.000-08:002012-02-29T04:24:02.782-08:00Hot War-on-War action<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There's a lot of war about these days. I know that's sadly usually
the case globally, but I meant in daily life here in cushy western society. And
I don't mean this in the most literal sense. I'm not regularly experiencing
mortar fire every time I go to Morrison's to buy some bin bags. I meant the
word 'War' is, as far as I can see, popping up seemingly everywhere. And words
are funny things, aren't they?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Actually, forget that, most of the time they're not. Words can
be quite bland. Slate, Grey, tepid, felt, step, moored, these are just some
words which provoke little or no reaction in your average person, they just exist
to fulfil a function. Like windowsills. They're useful and we'd miss them if
they were gone, but I doubt anybody has ever said 'I do love those windowsills'.
If I'm wrong about this and you know someone who does say that, then fair
enough. But I'd give that person a wide berth if I were you.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But undeniably, some words can trigger intrinsic emotional
responses. This is actually used in clinical assessment in a few ways, one of
which is a version of the <a href="http://brainimaging.waisman.wisc.edu/~perlman/papers/stickiness/WilliamsEmoStroop1996.pdf">stroop
test</a>. To briefly describe it, subjects/patients are asked to say the colour
of each word in a list of words, not to read it. Of course, people tend to be
unable to stop themselves reading words, even if it's <a href="http://www.reference.com/browse/typoglycemia?__utma=1.754404273.1330508298.1330508298.1330508298.1&__utmb=1.1.10.1330508298&__utmc=1&__utmx=-&__utmz=1.1330508298.1.1.utmcsr=google|utmccn=(organic)|utmcmd=organic|utmctr=can%20read%20the%20words%20despite%20">made
more difficult</a>, it's an automatic process much of the time. The emotional
stroop test, as it's known, gets participants to give the colour of a list of
words, some of which have strong emotional connotations. For example, if the
test is intended to assess whether someone is depressed or not, a lot of the
words will have strong, 'bleak' connotations (murder, suicide, cancer etc.). In
theory, a depressed person will divert more attention to these loaded words
than they will to more neutral, generic ones (leaf, wheelbarrow, melon etc.).
Depression tends to be a self-perpetuating condition due to the psychological
preoccupation and emphasis on the negatives, and this test arguably reveals
indications of this.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So words can and do have intrinsically powerful meanings, is
what the overall point is. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This has been brought up a lot recently, with the
controversy over <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/feb/28/workfare-uk-plot-job-snobs">Workfare</a>
in the UK, the government scheme to get the unemployed back in work but without
all that pesky payment to sort out. Whatever you think of it as a concept, it's
definitely caused a lot of controversy, and there are plenty of other, better
informed blogs/articles out there if you want to delve into that.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What struck me was the fact that many people are <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/search/slavery%20tesco">comparing it</a> <a href="http://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/tescos-secret-workfare-slaves/">to</a>
<a href="http://camelshump.co.uk/2012/02/19/workfare-slavery/">slavery</a>.
Some were doing it for <a href="http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/business/jobless-offered-free-glimpse-into-very-slightly-better-future-201202274944/">satire</a>,
which is fine. But many people <a href="http://thegreatunrest.net/2012/02/17/is-workfare-slavery/">objected to
those objecting to workfare by comparing it to slavery</a>. No doubt a fair bit
of the latter is intellectual posturing, people wanting to show that they're
even more 'right on' than the 'right on' bandwagon, but there's obviously some
relevance to the complaints. I don't think that being compelled to work for
several hours a day in order to justify benefits, however unpleasant and unfair
it may be, can be seen as directly analogous to being kidnapped, beaten, sold
as property and forcibly made to toil all day every day for the rest of your
(undoubtedly short) life. Obviously, a lot of people feel strongly about the
casual use of such a loaded word as slavery, one with such terrible historic
implications. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Some words are too loaded, apparently, unless used with 100%
contextual accuracy. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is largely
subjective and depends on your views on free speech, censorship etc. I've
mentioned before how the previously used <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2012/jan/16/blue-monday-depressing-day-pseudoscience">term
'depression' may be too generic</a>, meaning sufferers might get short shrift
as a result. And the casual use of the term 'rape' is not something that
usually ends well, as I <a href="http://sciencedigestive.blogspot.com/2012/02/unilad-to-bone.html">may
have discussed</a>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What confuses me, though, is why the same consideration and
gravitas isn't applied to the term 'War'. I don't think there are many rational
people who actually think war is a good thing. Those who are 'pro war' are
almost exclusively people who are very unlikely to actually experience it directly.
I may be wrong about this, but I'll go out on a limb and say that people who
genuinely think war is a good thing are unlikely to be the sort of people who
would object to using a specific term in an incorrect context. They're clearly
an 'ends justify the means' type.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But of those who do object to the casual use of meaningful,
loaded terms, I've not yet seen anyone object to the causal use of the word
war. I'm just wondering why this is? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">War is, at best, viewed as a necessary evil. And when the
most positive spin you can give to something includes the word 'evil', that's
not a good sign. The very existence of war has often been used as a shortcut in
sci-fi to show that humans = evil (check out <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119116/">The Fifth Element</a>, or any
series of Star Trek). War is bloody. War is destructive. War involves armed conflict
and invariably a high death toll. War kills people, usually in their thousands,
often indiscriminately. Cultures, societies, populations, environments, there
are many examples of each that have been utterly devastated by war. Historically,
that's what war does.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In a historical context, War has killed countless millions
over thousands of years, and with the invention of nuclear weapons it has
become something that could wipe out the human race altogether, and relatively
easily. We still have remembrance day and many other occasions across the world
to honour those who went to war (and never came back) so we don't have to now. So,
historically, war clearly has the same resonance and connotations of words such
as slavery, or genocide, or holocaust. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now, imagine if there was a TV advert for a bleach or toilet
cleaner with the slogan 'It's like a bacteria holocaust!' It would be pulled
from the air in seconds and those who made it would be pilloried mercilessly
(and rightly so, I hasten to add). However, if the slogan was 'go to war on
bacteria', that would be fine, people probably wouldn't even register it as
anything unusual. Because it wouldn't be.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Just through the use of google autocomplete, here are some wars
that are apparently going on at the moment.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">War on Women</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">War on Waste</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">War on Want</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Welfare state</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">War on Free Speech</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">War on Christmas</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">War on Drugs</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">War on Terror</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">War on Binge Drinking</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">War on Teenagers</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">War on Poverty</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">War on the working classes</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">War on Piracy</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">War on Censorship</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">War on Islam</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">War on Christianity</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">War on Religion</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">War on atheism</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">War on science</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">War on Democracy</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">War on Unions</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Price War</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Bidding War</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">That's a lot of war to be getting on with, and I've not even
mentioned the actual armed conflicts (which are these days, contrastingly,
being described as 'police actions', 'insurrections' and so on, not 'wars'). </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The term war is clearly thrown around so casually that I
worry it's become largely devalued. Vince Cable declared that he'd '<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/21/vince-cable-rupert-murdoch">declared
war on [Rupert] Murdoch</a>'. As much as I like the idea of Vince Cable
recruiting an army and forcibly storming the offices of the Sun at Wapping, I
don't think that's what he meant. I'm pretty sure for something to actually be
a war, both sides involved have to actually be aware that it's happening.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">War on women, war on waste, war on want, war on working
classes, war of words, I now move we declare 'War on words that begin with W purely
to take advantage of the phonetic similarity'. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16273917">war
on Christmas</a> has been going on for many years now. I guess that's
inevitable, as it's one of the only wars where you can't say 'it'll all be over
by Christmas'. It's the opposite, if anything. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Poverty">War
on Poverty</a> was declared in the 60's, apparently. I'm going to assume it
didn't involve carpet-bombing impoverished areas with shell casings filled with
banknotes and jewels. If anything, the war has stepped up in recent years, with
the <a href="http://www.makepovertyhistory.org/takeaction/">'Make Poverty
History'</a> campaign calling for all-out eradication of poverty. A
poverty-genocide, if you will.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If you believe what you read these days, most of the major
religions (and also atheists) are having war waged against them, although none claim
to have initiated hostilities nor to be actively taking part in said war. Indeed
many are engaging in some bizarre form of pre-emptive retaliation, which
doesn't seem logical when you think about it</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A lot of these 'wars' are shorthand ways of describing a seemingly
orchestrated campaign by a particular organisation or powerful body to limit
the powers/rights of another group, or to undermine a process or principle
which they see as a threat. I'm not saying these are good things or that they
aren't happening, but I just question the appropriateness of describing them as
'wars'. And I'm aware of the irony of me questioning whether or not 'War on
Freedom of Speech' is an acceptable term.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It would be easy to blame George
W. Bush and co for starting all this, with their 'War on Terror', an official
armed conflict against an abstract concept. But there's plenty of examples
before this. <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/coldwar/">The Cold
war</a>, which had the threat of war but no actual conflict. <a href="http://www.britains-smallwars.com/RRGP/CodWar.htm">The Cod war</a>, which
was purely about fishing territories, but at least was an official disagreement
between 2 countries, which is one of the aspects that normally defines a war.
But these days it seems that someone can declare a war against
something/someone at the drop of a hat, and nobody even registers it. People
even use the phrase 'been in the wars' to describe someone who's had a run of
bad luck. Not even one war, several! </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You could argue
that the term is being used correctly, as war can be described as <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/war">'active hostility,
contention, conflict'</a>. Indeed, not arguing that; hostility and conflict can
easily occur without actual violence or weaponry or death. But then a slave can
be defined as <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/slavery">'a
person entirely under the domination of some influence or person</a>'. People
on workfare could be said to meet this description, as they are under the
domination of the government/social services who will remove their life sustaining
benefits if they don't work for free, but this is argued to be an inappropriate
term because of the historical context around slavery. Fair enough. This is the
case for slavery. Not for war, though. Granted there are still people
experiencing slavery today, the fallout from it is still very real and it's
undeniably a very real problem that ruins lives. But this is also very much the
case for war.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I just can't
help but wonder why this casual use of the term war has come about unremarked
upon. I can't imagine someone who has written a successful book talking about
it being subject to a studio 'bidding war', to a WWII veteran with one leg. Odds
are it could happen and neither party would think anything of it. It just
strikes me as odd. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Maybe people are
more comfortable with using the term war as it is taken to mean 'conflict', and
it's very hard to avoid conflict in normal everyday life, whereas most people
can easily go their whole lives without enslaving anyone or committing
genocide.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I don't have an
answer or any real alternative for this situation, other than to highlight a
supposed double standard that nobody else seems to have picked up on. If I were
a conspiracy theorist, I could suggest that this was an orchestrated attempt by
those in power to rob the term War of its gravitas, so that when the next
full-on military war is declared (let's say against, oh, I don't know, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8969551/US-military-ready-to-engage-in-a-conflict-with-Iran.html">Iran</a>,
to pick a country entirely at random), people are more likely to just tut and
sigh, rather than stage <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/2765041.stm">massive
protests</a>. Another war? Just add it to the pile.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I guess we need
a new word to describe initiating a conflict without a violent military
component. I propose 'Bilgefest' or 'Lubeathon'. It would be hard for
politicians or powerful individuals to declare a 'Bilgefest' and retain any
credibility, so they might not bother?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; text-align: justify;">
<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; text-align: justify;">
<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Twitter: @garwboy</span><o:p></o:p></i></div>Dean Burnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15054744507490592341noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440286750138199044.post-55509530247509974702012-02-14T04:21:00.000-08:002012-02-14T04:22:02.241-08:00Valentine's Massacre<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Today is Valentine's Day. SAINT Valentine's day if you want
to give it it's full official title. I was told in school that St Valentine was
a Roman soldier who was imprisoned for many years and wrote a love letter to
his girlfriend/wife/horse every day (it was the olden days, details are
sketchy), and that's why we give romantic messages or gifts on the day named in
his honour.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This raised several
questions, like; since when did they have a functional postal service in
ancient Rome? Was it customary practice for the less-enlightened enemies of the
empire to provide their prisoners with writing materials and generously deliver
their letters for them? What was someone with the ability to read and write
doing in a combat situation where they could get captured anyway? This suggests
more of a noble background, they didn't do grunt work like that, surely? Maybe
all of my arguments are valid, but it happened anyway? This would most likely count
as the miracle required to achieve sainthood, so at least it's consistent in a
way.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is all academic anyway, seeing as my attempts to find
this account of the origins of St Valentine's day drew precisely nothing. I can't
find any mention of this bizarre origin story online. I suspect my rambling old
headmaster accidentally picked up a Mills and Boon book instead of his prepared
notes for the assembly where he told us about where Valentine's day originates,
and as such I have this implausible anecdote lodged in my memory.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But any attempt to find out exactly where Valentine's day
comes from is tricky. Just try it. St Valentine was a composite of 14 different
people. Or 7. Or just the one. And he was a Roman nobleman. Or not. There are
very little (if any) reliable records about who he was and what he did. He's
essentially the 'Where's Wally' of saints. The festival in his name appears to
have just come from nowhere.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That's often the way with well accepted themes and symbols
though, their origins are either arbitrary, unknown or quite surreal, e.g.
Father Christmas's red outfit being due to a <a href="http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/heritage/cokelore_santa.html">Coca
Cola advert</a>. Some things are even more sinister though, like the supposed origin
of the phrase '<a href="http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/heritage/cokelore_santa.html">Rule of
Thumb'</a>. Again, that's not so certain. It's believed to derive from a law
that states men could beat their wife with a stick 'no thicker than their
thumb'. However, this law never existed. 'Never base a cliché on domestic
violence' would, ironically, be a good rule of thumb.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So where do all these Valentines symbols and themes come
from? What does chocolate, love notes (later cards), flowers, cherubs, hearts,
arrows, all that, where does all that come from? Again, the origins are nowhere
near as twee and gushy as that. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The heart seems to take precedence as the organ that most
represents Valentine's day. This is most likely due to the fact that the heart perceptibly
changes it's activity in response to stimuli like arousal or anything involving
hormone release. Arguably, there are certain other organs which noticeably
respond to hormone release, and probably have a more direct link to romance,
but society has deemed that these are not suitable for children to see, not even
in cartoon form.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So where does all this symbolism come from? Well Valentine's
day as a festival was, supposedly, introduced and emphasised to supplant pagan
festivals with similar themes. A lot of pagan rituals have a fertility emphasis
and so on, convert-hungry Christianity at the time would have noticed that
offering chastity and discipline wouldn't have been much of a marketing
strategy in getting people to sign up.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So you have this Christian ceremony of romance and passion,
but presented within the paradoxically rigid framework of the religion which
teaches self-discipline and that pre-marital anything is a sin. Religion in
general has never had much of a problem with illogical teachings though, so
this problem wasn't really of any concern.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Life when Valentine's day was introduced would have been
largely based in rural communities, and this would have been the case for some
time. The melting pots of cities are harder places to enforce strict religious
dogma, but the traditional, rigid, land-based regions are much more amenable to
discipline and hard work. Farming, woodland areas, that sort of thing, small
communities ruled over by an fearsome preacher or pastor who whips them into a
frenzy when it's time to go burn/drown a witch (depending on which country
we're talking about). </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Such places would take a very intolerant approach to
youthful high jinks and deviance from the strict rules the Bible (or any
religious text) demands. Fundamentalist areas are the same today, they just now
usually have inconvenient 'laws' to stick to before dishing out the brutal
punishments. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But if history has taught us anything, it's that horny
teenagers can't be stopped by strict rules. If anything, that makes them worse.
So in these strict religious communities, on St Valentine's day, when romance
and passion were [technically] encouraged, teenagers who have been developing a
mutual attraction to each other would arrange an illicit meet up in a secluded
area, knowing there'd be dreadful punishment if they were caught. As being seen
talking together would automatically arouse suspicion in communities where
everyone knew everyone, they communicated via letters and notes, if they could
write (hence the Valentine letter, later cards, tradition, and of course they
had to be anonymous in case somebody else found them and they got into trouble).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If they couldn't read and write (which was more common) they
had to leave a symbol, something romantic but easy to get hold of in rural
communities, like flowers. The recipient would then look for the person
carrying around the same type of flower, so they knew who had asked them for a
'hook up'.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of course, fundamental religious communities don't look
kindly on this sort of thing. Those teenagers that were caught mid-dalliance in
the woods or other secluded areas, committing the cardinal sin of lust, were
punished brutally. As the heart was believed to be the seat of emotions and
behaviour, and these teenagers were guilt of a deadly sin, they were typically
shot by crossbow through the heart, in front of everyone, in order to set an
example, or to 'release the demons in them', or something like that. And so we
get the image of an arrow through the heart.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some wilier or well-off culprits were able to negotiate
being spared their lives, if they made a substantial donation to the church and
agreed to marry their partner immediately, hence the tradition of expensive
gifts and proposals.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of course, small communities with limited law enforcement
authorities can't police the wide rural areas in an attempt to catch unruly
teen lovers, so it was traditional to co-opt the local children who would go
out exploring or playing. If they saw a couple up to 'no good', they could run
back and tell the local magistrate or whoever, and they'd be caught and
executed in the 'traditional' way. The child informants would be rewarded with
sweetmeats and stuff, and so we have the tradition of giving chocolate on valentine's
day, and also the image of the cherub, an innocent child shooting young lovers
through the heart, seeing as many young kids actively went searching for
courting couples to rat out, and essentially get them shot.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So there you have it, a rather grim and brutal story of
intolerance, betrayal and death underpins all of our Valentine's traditions. It's
essentially based on ritual massacre of young lovers. The 1929 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Valentine's_Day_massacre">Valentine's
massacre</a> was just keeping up the tradition.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You may be wondering why you've never heard any of this
before. Is it some corporate or church cover up, to preserve the pleasant image
of the annual event and keep people participating?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Or is it because I've just made the whole thing up? Because
I have. Valentine's day symbolism is just a mish-mash of Greco-Roman mythology,
symbols of fertility and a big helping of commercially manufactured elements.
But my version sounds quite believable, doesn't it? So feel free to tell any
sappy gits who keep banging on about the gushy, twee aspects of the holiday,
perhaps making them think the whole thing is based on child informants and
ritual execution might put them off finally?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The origins of Valentine's day are largely artificial
constructs anyway, so there's no reason why we can't introduce some darker
elements to the story, to try and offset the overly-saccharine elements of the
holiday as it currently stands. Consider that my gift to you.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Happy Valentine's!</span></div>Dean Burnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15054744507490592341noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440286750138199044.post-2826939583169436652012-02-03T04:24:00.000-08:002012-02-03T04:25:22.280-08:00UniLad to the bone<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>[This piece was originally written as a more concise audio rant for <a href="http://poddelusion.co.uk/blog/2012/02/03/episode-121-3rd-february-2012/" target="_blank">The Pod Delusion</a>]</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>[Also, this is quite a long one. I've tried to keep it amusing or interesting, but if you want to give up by paragraph 5 then please feel free]</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Before
I start with the main point of this piece, here are some facts about me that
are worth bearing in mind for what I’m about to discuss.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Firstly,
as you can probably tell from my name and picture, I am male. I have XY sex
chromosomes. Counter-intuitively, the Y chromosome is quite a <a href="http://dhushara.freehosting.net/book/upd/aug201/xychr.htm">weak and
feeble chromosome</a> compared to the mighty X. Perhaps this is why us males
tend to be so big and aggressive, we’re all compensating for small-chromosome
syndrome. It’s like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_complex">small-man
syndrome</a>, but it goes right down to the bimolecular level.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">My
being male means I’m probably not a feminist. I support gender equality in all
its forms, but feminism is such a broad and diverse ideology these days I’d
hesitate to label myself as one due to ignorance alone. I feel similarly about
Jedis; I agree with what they say, I think it would be cool if I was one, but I
just have no idea how to go about achieving this. I did wonder what the term
was for a militant feminist who was male. I suggested an effeminate militarist,
but apparently this isn’t right.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Also,
being male, I think this makes me immune to any accusations of being a lesbian.
Although I do share their appreciation for the female form, that’s where the
similarities end. You could say there are some lesbians that have hair as short
of mine, or wear the same size boots, but those are just superficial choices
that happen to overlap. There are some very pronounced reasons (well, averagely
pronounced if I’m being honest) why I can’t be a lesbian. Also some very
obvious logical ones. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I am
also a married man whose wife is currently pregnant with our first child, so I
can claim to be sexually experienced to a certain degree. I’m no Casanova or
renowned ladies man, but I know how it all works in that department, and
obviously I’m proficient enough with women to have convinced one to live with
me forever. That may just be pity on her part, admittedly, but you work with
what you can.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I have
also been doing stand up comedy for about 7 years now, and have been writing
and creating comedy in other formats for almost as long, with a surprising
degree of success. I'm not a household name as a comedian or anything, I've
just done a lot more high profile gigs than I'd expect to as someone who's not
actually pursued comedy as a career. This is probably due to some niche appeal
via my science career no doubt, but still.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I say this not to brag, but to demonstrate
that I clearly have A sense of humour. It's an odd one, and many would argue
that it's a crap one, but I unarguably do have one, that much is obvious. If
you're reading this now, the evidence is on this site. It might make you
chuckle or shake your head in despair, but that's the beauty of a subjective
medium.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Why am
I telling you this? Well, it's in relation to <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/01/uni-lad-slogan-t-shirts">Unilad</a>,
a website that became notorious this week and has now been taken down. I don't
know who spotted it first, but it quickly entered the social network sphere via
women who were outraged by it. I didn't get to see a great deal of it before it
was taken down after a deluge of complaints, but what I did see warranted a few
raised eyebrows, to say the least. Advertising itself as a guide to being a
successful 'lad' in university, it seemed mainly dedicated to the degradation
of women, disabled people and pretty much anyone who doesn't conform to their
masculine ideal. One of the <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/sazza_jay/status/164143856768663553/photo/1/large">passages
I read</a> was a bizarrely detailed mathematical analysis of how many women are
sluts and how to have sex with one, and ended with the observation that 85% of
rapes go unreported, so you're likely to get away with it if you force yourself
on a slut if she ends up rejecting you. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Or
something like that. I may be mistaken, it's hard to read clearly when you're
brain is trying escape through your eye sockets.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Obviously,
once it became known about, a lot of people had some serious complaints about
the Unilad website, and complain they did. From what I saw, the Unilad team,
demonstrating reasoning skills in-keeping with their writing skills, seemingly
resorted to one of 3 responses to these complaints.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">1. Accuse the complainer of being a lesbian. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">2. Accuse the complainer of being a feminist</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">3. Accuse the complainer of having no sense of humour.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Undeniably,
a lot of those complaining were women. This is understandable, seeing as it was
largely women who were being denigrated and degraded by Unilad. If you break
into someone's home, it's usually the home owners who end up calling the
police. Cause and effect, that is.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So, as
a heterosexual white male non-feminist, non-lesbian, working class background
comedian who's been a member of a university for over 10 years, I'm clearly
part of Unilad's target demographic. And they claimed it was all for comedy,
all a collection of jokes and 'banter'. If we accept this claim at face value, then
those who object to it are 'wrong' to do so as it's not serious. Any criticism
for it should be delivered in the context of comedy and humour, not political
ideology and serious stuff like that. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So,
taking this into account, as a comedian with a sense of humour, what reason do
I have for not liking the Unilad website?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In a
nutshell, it's crap. From a purely comedic perspective, viewing the whole thing
as one big collection of jokes as they assured us it is/was, all the jokes are
very poorly thought out and lacking in any element of subtlety or nuance that
elevates crude jackass level physicality to genuinely good comedy.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The
argument Unilad use that those who don't like their site lack a sense of humour
seems very counter-intuitive to me. Only someone with only the most basic sense
of what humour actually is could find their work genuinely funny. Anyone who
has a working sense of humour and appreciation of good comedy would find the
Unilad website as painful as Unilad's theoretical targets would find the
consequences of their advice. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Perhaps
I'm being unfair, perhaps there are many men who found Unilad funny, but I'd
imagine they're not the sort of people I'd want to share a night out with. I'd
probably prefer not to share a country with them, if that was possible, but
that's just me. 'It's funny because it's a good joke' is a very different thing
to 'it's funny because it agrees with my prejudices', and I distrust anyone who
champions something based on the latter.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I
should clarify that I'm not reflexively offended by the subject matter in
principle. I've heard many feminist friends say that rape jokes are never
acceptable, and I respectfully disagree. I see the arguments for this, but I
don't believe there is such a thing as a subject unsuitable for comedy, as long
as it's done right. Undeniably, it's never pleasant to hear someone make crass
jokes about a subject that's emotive and painful for you, believe me I've
experienced it myself, but a blanket ban is a level of censorship usually
employed by totalitarian regimes, and it only ever gives power to those willing
to make the jokes anyway. But that's a discussion for another time.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> My
point was, making jokes about any controversial subject can be funny if it's
done well. Unilad, for all their bluster at being humorous and just 'banter',
do not do it well. It's seen as fashionable in comedy these days to be
deliberately dark and bad taste, but this isn't that. This is just bad.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I've
lost count of the number of aspiring young male (they're always men) stand ups
who are relatively new to performing, who will go out in front of an audience
of people and casually discuss graphic stories about rape, paedophilia, murder,
racism and lord knows what else. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Bad
taste comedy has been around for a long time now, from the shock comics like <a href="http://www.frankieboyle.com/">Frankie Boyle</a>, and the stalwarts of bad
taste comedy like <a href="http://www.jerrysadowitz.com/pages/main.htm">Jerry
Sadowitz</a>, or the Americans like <a href="http://www.dougstanhope.com/">Doug
Stanhope</a>. Comics who use bad taste and push boundaries, like Boyle, <a href="http://www.jimmycarr.com/">Carr</a> and many others, have become more
successful in recent years, and this has had a questionable affect on the
comedy scene. It means you can get away with more now, as people are more
familiar with controversial statements or material intended to shock, thus
widening the areas of what is acceptable to talk about. But on the down side,
you get this slew of imitators, who see these comics becoming famous for saying
these horrible things and decide that they can do that too. But they usually
miss the point entirely.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Whatever
you think about Boyle and Carr and all those guys, it's hard to deny that they
are good at what they do. They make people laugh at things they know they
shouldn't laugh at. And there's the key. You can usually say shocking things,
controversial things, anything you like, as long as it's funny and obviously a
joke. I know funny is a subjective measure, but it's often obvious to see where
an attempt to introduce humour has been made, even if you think it's an
unsuccessful one. If a comedian says something shocking/offensive and it looks
like they actually mean it, <a href="http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/15816126/ns/today-entertainment/t/richards-says-anger-not-racism-sparked-tirade/#.TyvJv1w9Xw0">then
they've screwed up.</a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The
funnier the joke, the more offensive it can get away with being. That's not an
established fact, but it's a good rule of thumb to go by. But where many
younger/newer comics, and Unilad in particular, seem to go wrong is assuming
that, in comedy, offending people is an end in and of itself, when it really
isn't. I've seen so many just come out with obviously horrific statements (that
they clearly don't mean) as a short cut to getting a reaction. Rather than
putting some effort into constructing some well thought out jokes, they just
say some offensive statements and count the audiences shocked reaction as a
successful response. But it isn't a success, any more than getting booed and
having bottles of urine thrown at you is a success if you're a stand up. It's
just lazy and short sighted.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Pretty
much every comic who goes down this offense-for-offense-sake route has some
excuse or rationalisation for it. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Some
claim they're being ironic. This may be the case, as irony is such a slippery
concept for many. But irony which isn't funny or has any obvious purpose is
pointless, and if the irony in a statement is very hard to detect then it
should, and will, be evaluated on its own merits. Ergo, it's often not really an
excuse.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Many
others use an excuse that particularly gets on my nerves; they say that what
they're doing is 'challenging people's politically correct preconceptions'. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Why?
Why is that a thing that needs doing? I don't deny that political correctness
can be ham fisted and over the top quite regularly, but I'd say that's by far
the lesser of two evils. To me, the phrase 'political correctness has gone mad'
is often an alternative way of saying 'I resent being made to feel guilty about
my bigotry'. That doesn't apply to everyone who uses that phrase, of course,
but it's repeated use suits the needs of those who do mean that. The phrase
itself has such negative connotations, suggesting that if it wasn't for
self-serving busybodies we'd all be regularly using racial slurs and oppressing
people, and everyone would be happier for it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So why
do politically correct preconceptions need challenging? This has never been
fully explained by anyone. You going to come to my house uninvited next and
knock out some load bearing walls? Under the premise of 'challenging my
architectural preconceptions'? How about you try saying something genuinely funny
before attempting to undermine the accepted norms of society for questionable
reasons? Run before you can walk, and all that.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(I'd
wager there are many people who will object to my previous statements as they
are deeply offended by it. Now, THAT'S irony)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But
however much I might criticise these comics, I can't fault them for having the
courage of their convictions and getting up on stage and saying these things.
As far as I'm aware, that's not something Unilad have ever done. They're not
exactly anonymous, but they prefer to convey their horrible attempts at humour
via the safety of the internet, where anyone offended is likely to be many miles
away. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">One of
the rules of the world of comedy is that it's a bad comic who automatically
blames their audience. It's a wonderful example of cognitive dissonance. A
comic who has had a bad gig must consider the possibilities that a) they're not,
or weren't, funny and must work on their act for next time, or b) every single
person in a room full of people (who have usually laughed at every other comic)
are all deliberately not laughing at them for some reason. A bad comic will go
for the latter very quickly. It's worrying that they do so so often. Unilad's
first line of defence was to blame the audience, always a bad sign.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">You
could argue that the people complaining about Unilad weren't its target
audience. Well that's tough. You write deliberately offensive comedy and put it
out in the public domain, you have to be prepared for people who don't like it.
I won't be surprised if I get a few 'you're an unfunny pompous prick' comments
under this article (albeit probably not spelled as accurately), but that's an eventuality
I'm aware of when I write this guff. You don't get to cherry pick your audience
in advance, that's not how it works. If you promote yourselves as a
deliberately offensive comedy website and include warnings beforehand of what
people are likely to expect, then that argument may have some weight. But if
you don't, you deal with the flack you create. Unilad apparently promote
themselves as providing everything you need if you're a lad to succeed at
university. As someone who approves University applications, let me say that
the advice they give you will let you succeed at getting arrested, but not much
else.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://robinince.com/">Robin Ince</a> once said that, if challenged about
something said for comedic effect, you should have <a href="http://www.podcast-directory.co.uk/episodes/episode-6-phill-jupitus-11999713.html">a
stronger defence than 'it's just a joke'</a>. If you don't, then that's not a
justification, unless you're Bernard Manning, apparently. If you truly believe
that what you say is harmless fun, then you should have the guts to defend it.
Unilad just took down the whole website when challenged. If they thought what
they were saying was harmless banter, wouldn't they be willing to stand by
that?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It
didn't come across as harmless banter, it came across as the classic behaviour
of bullies, victimising someone for their own amusement and to make themselves
feel big, and when the victim finally turns, accuse them of being unable to
take a joke. Having your testosterone cake and eating it isn't an option,
'lads'. As someone who grew up in a pub in an impoverished working class
community, I've known many 'lads', and here's a hint; although having 'balls'
is often referred to as a sign of manliness, a real man usually has a backbone
as well</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So, in
summary, Unilad claimed that all their material was just harmless fun and
jokes. If this is the case, the problem still stands that their attempts at
comedy were dreadful, nowhere near amusing enough to make up for the horrific
bile and misogyny they contained. So even if it was all a big joke, that's not
really an excuse. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">You are
of course free to look up my comedy output online, and odds are you'll find it
terrible, all nerdy and weird and incredibly laboured. That's fine, but my
comedy victimises no-one but myself and individuals who usually don't exist. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And if
anyone has been upset or offended by anything I've said so far, then don't
worry, I'm just joking.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">That's how this works, right?</span></div>Dean Burnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15054744507490592341noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440286750138199044.post-115142659385077622011-12-31T03:40:00.000-08:002012-01-01T07:01:56.075-08:00Ambiguous new year!<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Today, I shall be hearing the phrase 'Happy new year' a lot. I don't like it. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I appreciate the sentiment behind it, when it is said to mean 'I hope you have a happy new year', often shortened to just 'happy new year', which is less specific but you can usually tell what is meant by it. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ironically, saying 'happy new year' before the new year has actually started is one way of telling that it's intended to mean 'I hope the new year is a happy one for you'. Obviously as the old year is still currently happening, by default it requires a forward-looking, predictive element to the statement. Ergo, it obviously means the person saying it wants you to experience happiness in the new year. A cynic might suggest that this will inevitably happen at some point, as given the length of a year it's highly likely that some parts of it will be happy ones. It's possible to have an entirely miserable year, but in Western society by and large this is statistically unlikely.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So, when someone says 'happy new year' to me before midnight on new year's eve, I interpret that as them saying 'I hope the new year is a happy one for you to an extent that is beyond that anticipated by normal statistical likelihood'. Hypocritically of me though, if someone did actually say that in full, I'd be quite alarmed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">However, I do take issue with the phrase 'Happy new year' when used on Midnight on new years eve, and on most of new year's day. Because it's not a prediction then, it's a statement. And it's an inaccurate one, to say the least. As soon as the clock hits 12 on NYE, everyone starts saying happy new year as if it's an established fact. It isn't.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If you say 'happy new year' as the clock hits 12, what you are saying is 'the new year is here, and it's a happy one'. This, based on about 11 seconds of the year having actually passed. Undoubtedly, as you're probably at a party with friends and in a cheerful, inebriated state, they probably have been 11 happy seconds. But that's nowhere near a big enough sample to base such a firm conclusion on. A year is 31,557,600 seconds long. So, based on the initial 11 seconds, you've decided that the remaining 31,557,589 seconds will are definitely going to be happy ones? More fool you, that's not how things work at all. That's like declaring the winner of a marathon before most of the runners have even crossed the starting line, or crowning the winner of Masterchef before they've even got to the kitchen, based on the fact that you've spotted that one of the contestants is using an ingredient that you like. Such blasé attitudes annoy me, they aren't helpful. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Officially, if you're going to be declaring whether a year is happy or not, you should at least base your decision on the data provided by how half of the year has been. So the phrase 'Happy new year', in order to be a valid one, should be used around mid-June at the earliest, because then you have a decent body of data to go on, but you may also have noticed trends in the years progress and have an awareness of upcoming events.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">However, stating it in mid-June means that the 'new' element of 'Happy new year' is now redundant and completely inaccurate. So, overall, there is now point where 'Happy new year' used as a statement rather than a prediction can be accurate. And as a scientist, I try to discourage inaccuracy wherever I can.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"Ah, but Dean", you may say, "you say you don't like inaccuracy, but earlier you said a year is 31,557,600 seconds long, when 60 secs x 60 (mins) x 24 (hours) x 365 (days) is actually 31,536,000 seconds, so surely your own accuracy needs more work?"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And I'd say yes, surprisingly observant and pedantic commenter, your maths is impeccable, but you have also overlooked the fact that, in astrological terms, the Earth orbits the sun every 365.25 days, this is why we have leap years. And even if you ignore the astronomical element, you have to take into account that every 4th year is 366 days long, so overall the average year is 365.25 days long, which is 31,557,600 seconds long. So, my accuracy is even more extreme than you realised, not less. But thanks for your concern.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So bear all this in mind, and when you're at a party and midnight rolls around, and someone says 'Happy new year' to you, you can tell them in detail why their statement is flawed, and I'm sure they'll thank you for it. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">That's what I would do. But I don't get invited to new year's eve parties any more, for some reason.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Twitter: @garwboy</i></span><br />
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<br />Dean Burnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15054744507490592341noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440286750138199044.post-35246839293474462132011-11-29T13:23:00.001-08:002011-12-21T07:32:32.976-08:00DECEMBER 20th [Science Comedy Advent Calendar]<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MZtMQ17RSxg/TvH8A1zTB7I/AAAAAAAAAOA/ruNFq8ulUUs/s1600/gif+sprouts.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MZtMQ17RSxg/TvH8A1zTB7I/AAAAAAAAAOA/ruNFq8ulUUs/s1600/gif+sprouts.gif" /></a></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">December 20th: Sprouts</span></u></b></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There are lots of really good things about Christmas, but then there are many parts that nobody likes at all. Namely; <a href="http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/content/knowhow/glossary/brussel-sprout/" target="_blank">Sprouts</a>! Everyone hates sprouts. Even the people who claim to like sprouts secretly hate them, seeing as everybody hates sprouts, apparently.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">They sit there, on your plate, being rubbish and awful, spoiling the dinner for you with their small, green, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clz2fS2klbQ" target="_blank">evil, spherical presence</a>. Why do we even have them? It's 'traditional', they say. Like having a tangerine in your stocking or having to endure the critical and racist proclamations of increasingly inebriated elderly relatives. It's the done thing, so you've got to do it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Thing is, unlike the majority of other things on the Christmas dinner plate, sprouts are green. Why is that? Obviously, being a plant, they contain <a href="http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/chlorophyll/chlorophyll_h.htm" target="_blank">chlorophyll</a>. You might not know chlorophyll, but it's the pigment that allows <a href="http://biology.clc.uc.edu/courses/bio104/photosyn.htm" target="_blank">photosynthesis</a> to happen, a process which is essential for pretty much all life on Earth. So that's nice.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Unlike all the other bone idle vegetables like potatoes, who just sit there underground, not doing anything apart from getting fat and sprouting feelers to spawn more greedy, useless offspring, sprouts are <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=Brussel+sprout+plant&um=1&hl=en&safe=off&sa=N&rlz=1C1CHFX_en-GBGB448GB448&biw=1366&bih=643&tbm=isch&tbnid=6PQTS1yW20J9aM:&imgrefurl=http://myseedgarden.blogspot.com/2010/04/brussel-sprouts-catskill.html&docid=bqAcYS2R5yO5cM&imgurl=https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-iHZPrFg-rb2Cqk9Zewk_UZ8HC9cOFgmcO1Eepxls7BceSqv23Qjskag5bQsgBAG212x0vVUS_9FTfnfvKnkgabWh7Gpb5qXtnZ-N74nOtWpZnoMm7xfHm5a88pqDdzx22361RngOVOI/s1600/Brussel%252BSprouts%252B-%252BCatskill3.jpg&w=614&h=404&ei=qfnxTtDzHIT28gOHybGZAQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=283&vpy=327&dur=270&hovh=182&hovw=277&tx=85&ty=90&sig=108591724227682056849&page=1&tbnh=128&tbnw=179&start=0&ndsp=24&ved=1t:429,r:9,s:0" target="_blank">up and about</a>, <a href="http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2363/2" target="_blank">storing nutrients</a> and also generating oxygen for us to breathe, essentially pulling double duty as both a source if vital gas and mass for us non-photosynthesising life forms.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And how do we repay them? We boil them to death, devour them en-masse, and complain about how crap they are the whole time. Is that was Christmas means to you people?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ungrateful gits</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Twitter: @garwboy</span></i>Dean Burnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15054744507490592341noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440286750138199044.post-82961086769478684582011-11-29T13:22:00.001-08:002011-12-21T06:43:42.193-08:00DECEMBER 19th [Science Comedy Advent Calendar]<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9YmEG4mWiD0/TvHwlDv2qEI/AAAAAAAAAN4/UVsI01k0Kbw/s1600/gif+uranium.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9YmEG4mWiD0/TvHwlDv2qEI/AAAAAAAAAN4/UVsI01k0Kbw/s1600/gif+uranium.gif" /></a></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">December 19th: Uranium-235</span></u></b></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Christmas can be described as a time of year where there is great deal of anticipation and work towards it. Then when it's finally arrived, it requires a lot of work to keep it under control, because if you don't keep an eye on it then it will get out of hand, and possibly cause devastating carnage in the brief space of time where it occurs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Also, the presents. There's usually one thing you want. Possibly two. There are many things you'd like, but few things you actively want. And sometimes you get them, or you get something that gives more than you were expecting. That's always nice</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Encapsulating both of these things is<a href="http://www.world-nuclear.org/education/uran.htm" target="_blank"> uranium-235</a>, an isotope of Uranium that is the one we use to generate nuclear power. Uranium-235 has an odd atomic structure that means the nucleus can be split relatively easily, by the addition of another <a href="http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nucene/fission.html" target="_blank">neutron</a>. This releases a lot of energy, as there is a net loss of mass when the nucleus splits. This mass becomes energy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Thing is, when the uranium-235 nucleus splits, it releases neutrons. These could feasibly hit another atomic nucleus and cause it to split, releasing energy and more neutrons, which could feasibly and so on and so on.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In the enriched form of Uranium, there pretty much always another atom within neutron-spitting distance, hence the chain reaction used to give us nuclear power, or nuclear weaponry.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Bright lights, followed by uncontrolled carnage. Isn't that just like Christmas?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Twitter: @garwboy</span></i></div>Dean Burnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15054744507490592341noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440286750138199044.post-1226326277481963742011-11-29T13:21:00.001-08:002011-12-21T05:54:10.047-08:00DECEMBER 18th [Science Comedy Advent Calendar]<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0eUdiFVG9p4/TvHk9c2_ihI/AAAAAAAAANw/490YPLIGG6U/s1600/gif+necker.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0eUdiFVG9p4/TvHk9c2_ihI/AAAAAAAAANw/490YPLIGG6U/s1600/gif+necker.gif" /></a></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">December 18th: The Necker Cube</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The build up of exciting, chunky presents under the tree is synonymous with Christmas. The soft, edgeless presents are fine, but everyone knows they're just socks. And since where were socks exciting?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">No, it's the boxy, cubic/rectangular ones that really stoke the imagination. It could be anything? Anything that fits in a box. It might even be an Xbox, in a box. Like some sort of 'box squared'. Which, considering that squared is one step below cubed, which is what a box is, then a 'box squared' might suggest some sort of sub-box? It's a mathematical-philosophical minefield.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But one fun thing you can do with basic, transparent boxes is look at them. Yes, I said look at them. What's fun about that?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Well, if you look at a Necker cube, it's an image that can be perceived as both angled downwards, or upwards. There is nothing to distiguish the two states, so people either see it as pointing 'up', or pointing 'down'. Then, if you look at it long enough, it switches from one to the other. Then back again. Then back again. And so on.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It's just a good example of how the brain's perception system doesn't deal with ambiguity, so it tries to impose order on a visual stimulus when perhaps there is none. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So there you go, an example of how, in response to the most basic stimulus, your brain overshoots and gets things all messed up. So it's important, at such a hectic time as Christmas, to load up on as much stimulation as you can to keep it quiet, or maybe just obliterate it with excessive booze</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Your choice, but either way, the doctor recommends!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Twitter: @garwboy</i></span></div>
<br />Dean Burnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15054744507490592341noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440286750138199044.post-17132842625049663792011-11-29T13:19:00.001-08:002011-12-17T03:58:13.593-08:00DECEMBER 17th [Science Comedy Advent Calendar]<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-at5nCrZDrEw/TuyDxzSd_uI/AAAAAAAAANo/NsT2PPZayZQ/s1600/gif+coal.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-at5nCrZDrEw/TuyDxzSd_uI/AAAAAAAAANo/NsT2PPZayZQ/s1600/gif+coal.gif" /></a></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">December 17th: Coal<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The traditional Santa mythology emphasises how he discerns
between naughty and nice children. Nice children, they get toys. But what do
naughty children get? It could be anything; reindeer dung, wood shavings, beard
clippings, unwashed Santa pants, anything that the big man can get his hands on
that he and a child are unlikely to want.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But apparently, he gives them <a href="http://www.christmascoal.net/">coal</a>. This makes a superficial amount
of sense. <a href="http://energy.gov/coal">Coal</a> is ‘dirty’. Coal can’t be
played with. Coal is mundane.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">That is, unless you’re a science fan, of course. If you are,
what Santa Clause is essentially saying to you is; “you’ve been very bad, so
what you’re getting is a mass that is essentially the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel">compacted remains of dinosaurs and
prehistoric plants</a>, that is <a href="http://www.ket.org/trips/coal/agsmm/agsmmhow.html">millions of years old
and has been processed by the incredible heat and pressure applied by the very
Earth itself,</a> and extracted from the ground in conditions that are
extremely dangerous and <a href="http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/coal_mines_industrial_revolution.htm">regularly
kill people</a>”. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Any bad kid worthy of the title should be very happy with
coal. But maybe they’re not? Maybe I just don’t understand kids. It’s an old
tradition, of course. But imagine the consequences of it all.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Bad kids get threatened with coal, don’t heed the warnings, and
then actually do receive coal. Children arguably don’t really have enough appreciation
of the consequences of their actions to completely alter their behaviour to appease
some omnipresent magic bearded man (whatever the Pope may tell you), so the
receiving of coal convinces them that life isn’t fair, and you have to look
after number 1 in this world, every man/woman for himself etc. All other kids would have the cool toys they
so desire, but can’t have. This would be compounded further by the revelation
that there was never any Santa in the first place, so you can’t even trust your
family. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What you’d eventually end up with a large proportion of the
adult population who had no real grasp of ethical behaviour, a fierce sense of
self interest, a covetous desire for the possessions of others and access to a
lot of coal.</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.britishempire.co.uk/article/liverpool.htm"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What could possibly
happen there...</span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(Short one today, and probably tomorrow, v busy of late)</span></div>
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<i>Twitter: @garwboy<o:p></o:p></i></div>Dean Burnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15054744507490592341noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440286750138199044.post-6976387473927140682011-11-29T13:18:00.003-08:002011-12-17T03:13:04.944-08:00DECEMBER 16th [Science Comedy Advent Calendar]<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ls91zCfDgQs/Tux5NCuPN3I/AAAAAAAAANg/hQxePYXnp2U/s1600/gif+duck.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ls91zCfDgQs/Tux5NCuPN3I/AAAAAAAAANg/hQxePYXnp2U/s1600/gif+duck.gif" /></a></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">December 16th: Ducks<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There is one group for whom Christmas is not exactly a
joyful time of year. It’s the exact opposite if anything. I refer, of course to
the fowls. That’s ‘fowls’, no ‘Fowlers’,
the desperately unlucky Eastenders family, although it works <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYgZ4P3CBS4">for them too</a>, as it
probably does for any British soap opera family at Christmas. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But even more than unfortunate fictional families, <a href="http://www.thefreedictionary.com/fowl">fowls</a> (Galleiforms, if you
prefer) have good reason to fear Christmas, as it pretty much translates to ‘mass
slaughter’ for them. Something about Christmas makes humans, in the west, at
least, want to consume the flesh of a deceased relatively-obese bird. Not that
we don’t do that at other times of year of course, but it becomes a bit more
intense at Christmas time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Turkey has to bear the brunt of the festive lust for flesh,
although chickens come in for it too, but then when do they not? This is likely
to be a result of Christmas occurring in the past when meat was somewhat more
of a luxury, rather than something that you can find <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=doner+kebab&um=1&hl=en&safe=off&sa=N&biw=1366&bih=643&tbm=isch&tbnid=6veB73oSMlIiWM:&imgrefurl=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/4295701/The-man-who-invented-the-doner-kebab-has-died.html&docid=jPyNUClA2j_z0M&imgurl=h">discarded
in gutters</a> the morning after the day people beak up for work. If the
quantity of meat was the priority, rather than the quality, then it’s no wonder
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_(bird)">Turkey</a> came to the
forefront of holiday foodstuffs, usually being the biggest, chunkiest of the
fowls. Although given Christmases pagan roots, it does make you wonder where
this whole ‘kill something big and consume its flesh’ ritual <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice">originally came from</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If that’s a bit of a dark way of thinking of things, I have
precedent. Coming from a small Welsh village, by family growing up were part of
a small rural community where ovens large enough to cook whole turkeys were
very rare. I’m told that, on Christmas eve, it was normal for groups of the
women to travel with their Turkeys en-masse to the local crematorium, which
wasn’t in use at that time of year. You can figure the rest out for yourself.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I have no evidence to back this up, it’s purely anecdotal.
But still, put’s sprouts into perspective, doesn’t it? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But apparently, before Turkey (in the UK at least), it was
goose. This makes sense; goose can be obtained in Britain, whereas Turkey is
indigenous to America. And it’s a fairly hefty bird which, like turkey, doesn’t
really get a lot of sympathy from people, as they’re believed to be nasty,
unpleasant creatures. But this does draw up the fowl/waterfowl disparity.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One bird that seems to get off relatively lightly at
Christmas (<a href="http://www.crashtestkitchen.com/duck-a-lorange/">but not
completely</a>) is the humble duck. People have a bit of a soft spot for ducks,
with their comical waddles and lust for bread. It’s possible to interact with
ducks in a pleasing, slaughter-free environment, so they are relatively
innocuous.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Although maybe that’s not it? Maybe ducks are largely
avoided, and goose was replaced so readily, as festive food, because waterfowl <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anseriformes">(anseriformes</a>, if you
like) are relatively very fatty. Cooking and eating them is, therefore, more of
a chore. <a href="http://www.goosefat.co.uk/page/usage-recipes">Goose fat</a>,
which is smokeless, is still used to roast things, but it’s been separated from
the goose long beforehand.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Evolution-wise, this makes perfect sense. If you end up
spending a lot of time in the water, being made up of substances that increase
buoyancy/insulation is obviously going to be an advantage. So ducks and geese
are packed with fat, which is made up of a variety of fatty acids, which are <a href="http://www.iscid.org/encyclopedia/Hydrophobic">hydrophobic</a> and <a href="http://www.aquaticape.org/fat.html">insulating.</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Interesting chemistry anecdote, apparently fatty acids were
originally called aliphatic acids, but during the preparation of a paper in the
early days there was some dictation issues and the person typing it up thought,
reasonably enough, that they were called ‘fatty acids’. The name stuck, for
obvious reasons. (My chemistry teacher told me this, I don’t have a reference)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Also, did you know a <a href="http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/birds/p/Ducks-Quack-Echo.htm">ducks
quack doesn’t echo</a>? Well you shouldn’t, because it does. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So, ducks are like the new expensive toy that children want
for Christmas. Looks cool, should be fun, but a lot more complicated and fiddly
when you realise how many bits are involved, and it never does exactly what you
think it should</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Twitter: @garwboy</span><o:p></o:p></i></div>Dean Burnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15054744507490592341noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440286750138199044.post-71787021111843115542011-11-29T13:18:00.001-08:002011-12-15T05:41:49.289-08:00DECEMBER 15th [Science Comedy Advent Calendar]<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://picasion.com/" title="gif make"><img alt="gif make" border="0" height="300" src="http://i.picasion.com/pic47/0891ec5beeef3916241bf618e92891c2.gif" width="300" /></a></div>
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<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">December 15th: Susan Greenfield<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You get a lot of fictional pop culture stories about
Christmas. Some are <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038650/">good</a>,
some are <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0452681/">crap</a>, some are <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095016/">surprisingly violent</a>, but the
common factor that unites a lot of them is that there is often a character or
some sort of body that, whether by design or by consequence, seems hell-bent on
ruining Christmas for everyone involved. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebenezer_Scrooge">Scrooge</a>,
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzXKWKaxt3c">the Grinch</a>, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/history/herod.shtml">King
Herod</a>, all fictional characters (apart from Herod) who's selfish desires
mean they are at best nonplussed, at worst pleased about the fact that their
actions ruin Christmas for innocent people. King Herod could, arguably, plead
ignorance given the context, and also given the fact that it's unlikely that he
did any of that stuff in the Bible, but that's by the by.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Of course, in the real world, we don't have people who would
be so honest about their festive-cheer-destroying actions. Ruining Christmas is
frowned upon. But then, some people still do their best.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We <a href="http://www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/pdfs/christmastips06.pdf">can't eat</a>
too many of those treaty things, that's bad for you. Don't undercook the
Turkey, that's probably poisonous.
Drinking too much? Don't do that, you'll probably die. Have you not
spent enough on gifts? then you're <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/city-news/2011/12/06/christmas-cheer-deserts-high-street-as-takings-tumble-115875-23613041/">ruining
the economy</a>. Have you spent too much on gifts? Then you're stupid <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/consumertips/3486049/Happy-credit-crunch-Christmas-25-tips-on-how-to-save-money.html">for
not having enough money saved</a> for the months ahead. Are you a Christian?
Then how dare you not appreciate Jesus enough at this time of year. Are you not
a Christian? Then how dare you not <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1351585/Stephen-Green-rails-immorality-voice-Christian-Britan-private-wife-beater-says-partner.html">appreciate
Jesus enough at this time of year</a>. And on it goes.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But at least, once all the health and morality concerns have
weighed down on you with their guilty burdens, you can enjoy some time playing
with your gifts (if you're a child), or playing with the children's gifts (if
you're not). Nothing wrong with that, surely? With all the other guilt-inducing
health-destroying elements of Christmas, a bit of harmless play is fine, right?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">No. It's not. So say's Baroness <a href="http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Susan_Greenfield">Susan Greenfield</a>,
previously celebrated Neuroscientist, tabloid darling and apparent nemesis of
all things technological and fun. In
this society, most entertainment items are a lot more high tech than they used
to be. But that's bad! Anything that over stimulates you, anything that might
be enjoyable that comes with a plug or battery (within reason, pervs) is bad
for young minds, because it might corrupt them in <a href="http://www.badscience.net/2011/11/why-wont-professor-greenfield-publish-this-theory-in-a-scientific-journal/">some
ill-defined way.</a></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Susan Greenfield is seemingly opposed to anything which
needs a screen to work. Be it <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/children_shealth/8825655/Video-games-can-alter-childrens-brains.html">video
games</a> (except the <a href="http://www.which.co.uk/technology/archive/guides/brain-training/mindfit/">ones
she makes money from</a>, presumably), the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/24/social-networking-site-changing-childrens-brains">internet</a>,
or even porch doors (possibly). That last one might seem like a wild accusation
based on nothing, but that seems to be the way she does business. I've made my
opinions on Greenfield's views <a href="http://sciencedigestive.blogspot.com/2011/10/dont-read-this-itll-destroy-your-brain.html">quite
clear before now</a>, so please see that if you want a thorough critique of why
her views are so much hot air. But it bears repeating here as it's a Christmas,
and you might possibly end up letting kids enjoy their new games worry free,
and we can't have that now can we?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So keep it in mind, if you see a child enjoying themselves
with something electronic this Christmas, be sure to wrench it from their gasp,
berate them for befouling their young minds with too much stimulation, and kick
them outdoors to play, where it's clearly just as stimulating, but colder and
with more dog crap, so it doesn't count for some reason.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Next time, Andrew Wakefield explains to us how coloured
fairy lights lead to diabetes and premature balding (in men and women)</span></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Twitter: @garwboy<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>Dean Burnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15054744507490592341noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440286750138199044.post-83923623534961618272011-11-29T13:17:00.003-08:002011-12-15T04:24:04.692-08:00DECEMBER 14th [Science Comedy Advent Calendar]<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Q5uRHzSB_tw/Tunm2JRPxII/AAAAAAAAANA/75NFMI0ydN8/s1600/gif+entanglement.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Q5uRHzSB_tw/Tunm2JRPxII/AAAAAAAAANA/75NFMI0ydN8/s1600/gif+entanglement.gif" /></a></div>
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<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">December 14th: Quantum Entanglement<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">All this talk of Father Christmas travelling around the
world in one night, visiting every child and delivering at least one gift for
each of them (or something unpleasant for the ones who have not met his ill-defined
but thoroughly checked criteria for being
'nice', but either way, mass is donated to each child), it's all well
and good. But how could he do this? It's all very well saying that he's
'magic', but that's not really an explanation, that's hand waving and invoking
the mythical <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MacGuffin">Macguffin</a>.
</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In this day of instant internet access and Children being
better at computers than their parents, it's harder and harder to fob children off
with blaze non-explanations. They'll just go and look it up if you don't
provide a satisfactory answer, and then they'll realise the whole 'Father
Christmas is real' thing is just an elaborate con told to kids for ill-defined
reasons. Their ignorance will be shattered by finding out the harsh truth at
too-young an age, they will lose all trust of their parents and become a
cynical and ill-disciplined child, eventually becoming an authority-bucking
teenager who will have no qualms in experimenting with drugs and casual sex,
eventually dropping out of the education system and becoming a homeless
derelict who survives thanks to petty theft and small-scale drug dealing. All
because you couldn't think of a good explanation for the activities of Santa
Clause. Is that what you want?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So, here's an idea. Is it possible that the Santa-system is
one based on <a href="http://www.davidjarvis.ca/entanglement/">quantum
entanglement</a>? That mysterious system whereby previously connected
particles/molecules/miscellaneous remain entangled by some unknown mechanism. <a href="http://rugth30.phys.rug.nl/quantummechanics/">Quantum mechanics</a> has
given us a lot of weird stuff to consider, and this is one of the good ones.
You split two entangled particles and separate them by a great distance, then
manipulate one, and the other will show direct signs of that manipulation,
despite the fact that it's very far away. A direct connection that transcends space
and time? That would come in handy, wouldn't it.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So maybe Santa is the master of quantum? If he was capable
of large-scale quantum manipulation, it would explain a lot. Let's look at the
arguments.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As previously pointed out, his naughty/nice list
has to take into account the vast fluctuations in the Earth's child population,
their associated behaviours and locations, and as a result this list has to be
constantly updated and checked at least twice. This would require an
extraordinary degree of computational power. Modern CPUs may not be up to the
task, but </span><a href="http://www.howstuffworks.com/quantum-computer.htm" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">a quantum
computer</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">? That should be easily capable. But the processes that would
support quantum computing are </span><a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-decoherence/" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">notoriously fragile</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">,
and would probably require a very stable, low energy environment to function
properly, so Santa would have to spend a lot of time in some </span><a href="http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=santa+workshop+north+pole&um=1&hl=en&sa=N&rlz=1C1CHFX_en-GBGB448GB448&biw=1366&bih=643&tbm=isch&tbnid=L4NLb1a08NjDgM:&imgrefurl=http://iamwriterhearmeroar.blogspot.com/2010/12/addressed-to-santa-santas-workshop.html&docid=G" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">very
cold, isolated environment</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">...</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span><!--[endif]-->Actually, how can Santa possibly know if every
child is being bad or good? The songs suggest he personally watches every child
which, as well as being creepy, is a big task. But what if he had a direct
quantum connection into the home of every child? For someone with his
manipulation of quantum processes skills, it wouldn't take much, just a small
sample of matter from something that is still in the child's home, per se.
Let's say, I don't know, the ink from a pen or graphite from a pencil? But even
then, the establishing of a quantum connection to every child would require
every child to write something and send it directly to Santa. <a href="http://derekslark.hubpages.com/hub/Childrens-Letters-to-Santa">Which is
ridiculous</a>...</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span><!--[endif]-->How does he get to every child's home in a
single night? Well, one possible explanation for quantum entanglement is that
entangled things stay <a href="http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2007/05/could-entangled-particles-be-linked-by-wormholes.ars">connected
via wormholes</a>, that <a href="http://www.gateworld.net/">Science-fiction</a>
<a href="http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Bajoran_wormhole">go-to</a> <a href="http://www.sliders.net/">favourite</a>. Connecting two disparate points
of space to allow instantaneous travel between them in a manner that is outside
the usual temporal constraints, that would be handy wouldn't it? Using the
initial connection established by the child's scribbling (see above), Saint
Nick could establish more reliable connections with each visit, all he'd have
to do is leave something in the child's possession that he created and that's
entangled with something in his home base. So it would have to be something the
child didn't have before, but that they'd be unlikely to panic about or dispose
of. Like a toy, for example. Teenagers eventually stop writing to Santa and put
their toys away, so he stops coming.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span><!--[endif]-->Actually, what would this wormhole travel look
like, to someone who was lucky enough to witness it? It's bound to be a <a href="http://www.universetoday.com/12732/large-hadron-collider-could-create-wormholes-a-gateway-for-time-travelers/">very
high energy process</a>, so it would look like a large fat man emerging from a
bright, high-energy opening that appears to lead to a tight tunnel that he
couldn't possibly fit into according to normal spatial laws. But people who see
this wouldn't have the vocabulary to explain this, so they'd have to describe
it using <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=santa+chimney+fireplace&um=1&hl=en&sa=N&rlz=1C1CHFX_en-GBGB448GB448&biw=1366&bih=643&tbm=isch&tbnid=62HXVyNB2NTGoM:&imgrefurl=http://www.art.com/products/p13023921-sa-i2271395/susan-comish-santa-in-chimney.htm&docid=vASQF9o">metaphors
they can relate to</a>.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span><!--[endif]-->But Santa isn't often spotted, is he? You'd
think with millions of children trying to catch a glimpse, a few hundred would
be successful, just based on the law of averages alone? But if Santa has
control of quantum processes, he could well have the ability to manipulate his <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_superposition">superposition</a>.
Santa may exist in a condition of unspecified possibilities. If someone does
see him, it should be feasible for him to collapse the <a href="http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/qmech/lectures/node28.html">quantum
wave function</a> to a state where he isn't there at all. Or maybe he can
transfer into some <a href="http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/multiverse.pdf">parallel
world</a> where he's in the room but the child isn't. It's quantum, why the
hell not?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So there you go. If a child ever asks you how Santa does
what he does, feel free to give them the full Quantum explanation. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">'But Dean', you may say, 'how does he do all this? What
gives him such mastery of quantum processes? And what's the deal with the
Reindeer?'</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I don't know. He's not actually real, so just chill out, no need
to get carried away.</span></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Twitter: @garwboy</span><o:p></o:p></i></div>Dean Burnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15054744507490592341noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440286750138199044.post-52292528189849959182011-11-29T13:17:00.001-08:002011-12-14T14:55:56.816-08:00DECEMBER 13th [Science Comedy Advent Calendar]<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4dwvJIWw8oQ/TukpcMjbcjI/AAAAAAAAAM4/o6VuK3TsZdI/s1600/gif+periodic.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4dwvJIWw8oQ/TukpcMjbcjI/AAAAAAAAAM4/o6VuK3TsZdI/s1600/gif+periodic.gif" /></a></div>
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<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">December 13th: The Periodic Table<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One phrase that keeps popping up a lot during Christmas is ‘making
a list, checking it twice’. This suggests a few things, namely that Santa
Clause has a LOT of time on his hands. Making a list of every eligible child on
earth, that’s an arduous task, and possibly a never-ending one considering the
birth rate of human society (let alone checking it twice). I would suggest that
it’s unlikely that he could ever have it done within the space of single year,
when you include the births, accidental deaths and children graduating from
childhood to teenage/cynical phase that occur constantly throughout the year.
It’s like <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-16137688">painting that
bridge</a>.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But then again, if we’re starting to go through all the
things that Santa claims to be able to achieve that aren’t logically possible,
that is, ironically, a list that’s never going to end.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Speaking of ongoing, overly complex lists, science has one
in the form of the periodic table. Never mind checking it twice, the periodic
table has been ‘checked’ countless times, with adjustments being made whenever
required. Much like Christmas gift lists, it was all much simpler in the old
days. It was just a block of wood and an orange then (or <a href="http://www.astrology-numerology.com/elements.html">Earth, wind, fire and
water</a> from an elemental perspective). But these days it’s all PS3 games and
tamagotchis! And in terms of the periodic table, it’s <a href="http://www.rsc.org/chemsoc/visualelements/pages/data/intro_groupviii_data.html">noble
gasses</a>, <a href="http://www.chemguide.co.uk/inorganic/transition/features.html">transition
metals</a> and <a href="http://web.fccj.org/~ethall/uranium/uranium.htm">transuranium
elements</a>. Particularly with regards to the latter, it’s hard to check them
twice when, being the products of <a href="http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nuclear/nucrea.html">nuclear
reactions</a>, they have a fraction of a second. But saying that, some have a
half life of millions of years. So, you know, no rush.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But how could I summarise the complexity and detail of the periodic
table in an understandable and entertaining way in just one blogpost?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I can’t. Simple as that. So instead, here’s the awesome
science rapper Jon Chase to do <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDp9hUf_SV8">it in the form of rap</a> for
you. Merry Christmas.</span></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Twitter: @garwboy</span><o:p></o:p></i></div>Dean Burnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15054744507490592341noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440286750138199044.post-54168456603968257362011-11-29T13:16:00.003-08:002011-12-14T14:20:27.186-08:00DECEMBER 12th [Science Comedy Advent Calendar]<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BkbZkPJmexE/TukhIH6tkvI/AAAAAAAAAMw/aBJUl_sv308/s1600/gif+fovea.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BkbZkPJmexE/TukhIH6tkvI/AAAAAAAAAMw/aBJUl_sv308/s1600/gif+fovea.gif" /></a></div>
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<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">December 12th: The Fovea<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div>
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<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></u></b></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Christmas. There’s a lot more that goes into it than one
person can feasibly experience. The amount of preparation involved in acquiring
gifts, all that food to get, cook, and give to people who may well be too
intoxicated to recognise what it is they’re consuming. The decorations, the work scheduling to get
it all organised, the arrangements, the visits. A lot of effort by one part,
which may be experienced as nothing more than a brief visit and an exchange of pointless
Christmas cards by another party. It’s tragic, in a way.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And that’s just on a small-scale, individual family basis. What
about the industrial processes that go into the whole festive season? Christmas
seems to have a profound effect on the whole economy, it’s reported in the
news, with constant update son how the high-street is doing. And think of the manpower
that goes into converting every branch of every multinational into a more ‘festive’
style. Even the fictional aspects, the Santa and his elves thing, if that were
true, it would involve countless hours of manual (‘elf’ual?) labour and the
violation of spacetime by a bearded fat man; and for what? This herculean effort
is experienced by individual children as a period of excitement and the
acquisition of a few more flimsy toys. Is that really all it amounts to?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This shouldn’t be surprise though, seeing as humans experience
such a thing on a regular basis. Our own eyes and brains are actually capable
of experiencing only a small fraction of the visual stimulus that constantly
bombards us. You’d probably assume that our eyes encode the visual scene we
experience in much the same way as a camera processes an image; light goes in, gets
moved around a bit, then sent to the brain/film/memory card. But no, not the
human eye. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When it comes to fine detail, the sort of useful, accurate,
specific processing is limited to an alarmingly small area. It’s the <a href="http://www.stlukeseye.com/anatomy/fovea.html">fovea</a>, the part of the
eye that’s most densely packed with <a href="http://www.nku.edu/~issues/illusions/Photorecepters.htm">photoreceptors</a>
(only <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_cell">cones</a>, no <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_cell">rods</a>, by the way). It can pick
up on the small details, the finer points, and no other part of the eye can. It’s
like a very small searchlight casting about through the fog of our visual sensory
input. What we essentially do is use the fovea to focus (no pun intended) on
things which our visual systems classify as worthy of attention. Visual
psychology experiments have used <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=eye+movement+tracking+painting&um=1&hl=en&safe=off&biw=1366&bih=643&tbm=isch&tbnid=7ejyvq7MQIXwHM:&imgrefurl=http://www.cis.rit.edu/pelz/dissertation/chap1/index.html&docid=MzdQi4Z85zQD9M&imgurl=http://www.cis.rit.edu/pelz/">tracking
software to follow a person’s eye movements</a> when looking at stimuli such as
elaborate paintings. It’s interesting, the tracking pattern is like someone
tried drawing the painting themselves on an etch-a-sketch while suffering serious
drunken tremors.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But it’s enough. The brain can take this scattering of
detailed glimpses <a href="http://static.vodenski.com/django-sites/vodenskicom/cms_page_media/5/paper_.pdf">and
build up a detailed and, more relevantly, useful perception of the world itself</a>.
All from a part of the retina that’s no even a millimetre in diameter. Even for
something as small in area as the retina, that’s a pretty pathetic amount of
space given over to detailed perception, don’t you think? Especially when the periphery
of the retina <a href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/biosi/staffinfo/jacob/teaching/sensory/vision.html">can’t
even encode colour</a> (our brain just infers it later in the processing stage,
if you’re wondering). </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But if you did think the fovea was a measly allocation of
useful processing space, look at it this way; this measly bit of retinal space
is sufficient to provide us with the sort of rich detailed vision we take for
granted, despite the fact that it’s mostly the result of brain processing
rather than direct sensation. You want more? Well, if the fovea were twice the
diameter it is, we’d actually need brains the size of beach balls to handle the
data input. And that wouldn’t be practical. We’d need crackers to have paper
hats that were a lot bigger (there may also be other consequences, like needing
bigger wigs if you’re a bald man).</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So yeah, the effort that goes into making Christmas happen
is just like our visual perception; far more is going on than we can actually
perceive. But what we have, that is usually more than enough.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">See, I can do schmaltzy too, just so you know.</span></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Twitter: @garwboy</span><o:p></o:p></i></div>Dean Burnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15054744507490592341noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440286750138199044.post-32387105721143988262011-11-29T13:16:00.001-08:002011-12-11T02:57:39.818-08:00DECEMBER 11th [Science Comedy Advent Calendar]<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-StT3E4pwVHg/TuSMmZkEyOI/AAAAAAAAAMo/PQBen0ybFlI/s1600/gif+kepler.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-StT3E4pwVHg/TuSMmZkEyOI/AAAAAAAAAMo/PQBen0ybFlI/s1600/gif+kepler.gif" /></a></div>
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<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">December 11th: Kepler 22-b<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For some, Christmas is all about the anticipation. What you're
going to get, how other's are going to react to what you get them, will you get
what it is you actually want, are you going to end up never speaking to certain
family members again? The possibilities are what get some people worked up, to
the point where the actual main reveal is something of a disappointment. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">At the time of writing this, a similar situation exists in
the astronomical community, as well as, to a certain extent, the 'understanding
the universe and our place in it' community, although they can get a little
theological/philosophical at times. The sort of people you would invite round
for dinner, but wouldn't want them renting your spare room for fear of constant
discussions about man's role in the grand scheme of life itself when all you
want them to do is pay for some of the milk they keep stealing from you.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Recently, it was announced that the most Earth-like planet
to date was <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16040655">discovered</a>.
Named <a href="http://kepler.nasa.gov/">Kepler</a> 22-b, it's sparked a lot of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16055120">debate</a> and
conversation about the ramifications of the possibility of life, the uniqueness
of Earth, interest in space travel and numerous other things. Its location is
known, it's in the right place to support life (by our standards, anyway) in
the <a href="http://science.howstuffworks.com/other-earth1.htm">'Goldilocks
zone'</a>, it's bigger than Earth but <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/n3l5h/if_kepler_22b_is_25_times_the_size_of_earth_would/">not
excessively so</a>, and it's (by galactic standards) right <a href="http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-cetera/kepler-22-nasa-relevant-2011127/">down
the road</a>. But they don't know if it's made of mostly gas, rock or air yet
(but judging by the name, they seem to know its cup size?) so it may be completely
useless for what we 'want'?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is the space science equivalent of the big chunky
square present under the tree with your name on it. It could be the new laptop
you've been going on about, it could be a new PS3 that you're sure you've heard
a few hints about, or it could be a large pair of novelty pants in an oversized
box.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Time will tell, but in many ways, the waiting ends up being the
best part. That is sort of the point of advent calendars, in a way</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Twitter: @garwboy<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>Dean Burnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15054744507490592341noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440286750138199044.post-91870333620877797712011-11-29T13:14:00.003-08:002011-12-10T11:21:03.214-08:00DECEMBER 10th [Science Comedy Advent Calendar]<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rrUOcJ1GuBk/TuOxCekc5nI/AAAAAAAAAMg/HHKRJOA4KDk/s1600/gif+trilobite.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rrUOcJ1GuBk/TuOxCekc5nI/AAAAAAAAAMg/HHKRJOA4KDk/s1600/gif+trilobite.gif" /></a></div>
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<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">December 10th: Trilobites<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div>
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<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></u></b></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You get a lot of ‘stuff’ at Christmas, don’t you? It’s different kinds of stuff, yes; But a lot
of ‘stuff’, overall. Some of the stuff is very obviously Christmas stuff, some
of the stuff is everyday stuff that is just receiving more attention than usual
because it’s Christmas.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For example, cheap decorations (tinsel, baubles etc.) and
red bobble hats = Christmas stuff. Vegetables, nuts and winter clothing =
regular stuff that is rendered festive by the Christmas period. And this first
part of this piece has the word ‘stuff’ in it far too much, doesn’t it?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">That’s sort of the point though. What defines ‘stuff’? It
could be argued that it’s the sort of thing that is encountered often and/or in
large enough quantities that it breaches the point where the human mind finds
it necessary to specify it in any detail. And we encounter this sort of thing
often at Christmas. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The brain is quite good at filtering and generalising when
presented with too much stimuli. “What did you get for Christmas?” “You know,
stuff” (Pairs of socks/pants, deodorant, slippers if you’re of a certain age
group). Those chocolates you get in the
big tins, the ones that have nougat or that hard crystallised stuff which nobody
can identify, they’re generally lumped together as ‘leftover stuff’. And so on.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Scientifically, stuff has a different meaning. <a href="http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/dark_matter.html">Dark
Matter</a>, for example, is ‘stuff’ because it is impossible to specify. There’s
lots of it (supposedly), but scientists are <a href="http://www.eclipse.net/~cmmiller/DM/">very keen to actually see the
bloody stuff</a> (although by definition, that <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2010/01/dark_matter_what_is_essential.html">should
be impossible</a>). However, scientifically speaking, it’s rare for a species
to be classified as ‘stuff’. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If any has managed this bizarre achievement, it’s the <a href="http://www.trilobites.info/">Trilobite</a>. One of the <a href="http://webfossils.co.uk/fossils-for-sale/trilobite-fossils-for-sale/">most
abundant</a> fossil types you’ll find, it’s more of a species type than an
individual species. Trilobites arrived on the scene, life-on-Earth-wise over <a href="http://www.trilobites.info/firsttrilos.htm">half a billion</a> years ago,
and hung around for at least a quarter billion years. In comparison, humans are
just at the point where we’ve crawled out of the sea.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Trilobites. They
spread <a href="http://www.trilobites.info/trilopaleogeo.htm">everywhere</a>.
They <a href="http://www.trilobites.info/trends.htm">swam</a>, they <a href="http://www.trilobites.info/feeding.htm">hunted, they filtered, they
grazed</a>, they may well have dressed up like bats and fought crime (although
this is doubtful as this was long before the existence of bats, or crime as we
know it, probably).</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Then they died out, as things often do. With their
exoskeletons and widespread antics, they left <a href="http://www.paleodirect.com/trilobites.htm">durable remains</a>
everywhere, becoming the fossil equivalent of a pair of socks at Christmas; not
something you’re unhappy about getting, but it will probably be thrown aside
while you seek out the ‘cool’ stuff. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But there will come a time when you need the socks, and
while that games console is riddled with bugs and just causes frustration and
headaches, the socks are always reliable and useful. Trilobites are a bit like
that. Despite the fact that most lay people would think of them as fossil
‘stuff’ (if they think of them at all), trilobites have taught us an amazing <a href="http://www.trilobites.info/trilopaleogeo.htm">number</a> <a href="http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/phacops.html">of</a> <a href="http://cires.colorado.edu/blogs/bighorns/2009/07/19/day-3-4-trilobites-and-tectonics/">things</a>.
Or ‘stuff’, if you prefer.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Trilobites and socks at Christmas; generally ignored, but
we’d be complaining if they weren’t around. We’re so ungrateful as a species. </span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Twitter: @garwboy<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<br />
<br />Dean Burnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15054744507490592341noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440286750138199044.post-37139317809278967282011-11-29T13:14:00.001-08:002011-12-09T09:19:50.923-08:00DECEMBER 9th [Science Comedy Advent Calendar]<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uWIVASRylQI/TuJC9A4h4-I/AAAAAAAAAMY/djIiezvtYJ4/s1600/gif+saw.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uWIVASRylQI/TuJC9A4h4-I/AAAAAAAAAMY/djIiezvtYJ4/s1600/gif+saw.gif" /></a></div>
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<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">December 9th: Robert Liston<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div>
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<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></u></b></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For your typical adult, Christmas always seems to fly by. This
is probably a consequence of the ever increasing build-up to Christmas, which the
commercial sector currently starts advertising some time around the summer
solstice. With a build up that lasts for at least 2 meteorological seasons for
something that lasts about 3 days (not counting the desperate <a href="http://www.thefreedictionary.com/bacchanal">Bacchanal</a> that is New
Years Eve), it's no wonder that Christmas seems to go by in a mad rush.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But despite the ludicrous build up time, there still seems
to be a frantic sense of rush around Christmas. There have been months to get
everything done, but still the shops are clogged on Christmas eve with people
suffering a sudden attack of remembering they have family, , and whoever is in charge
of hosting the family on the day itself usually ends up as a twitching mass of
stress and tension, red enough to rival the jolly fat man himself (either Santa
or some bloated sleazy uncle who keeps turning up despite nobody knowing who
he's related to, take your pick). </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Couple this with the tendency of some children to tear the
wrapping off presents so manically that you wonder if they've got secret a habit
of snorting crack out of shiny boxes, and there's a palpable sense of
franticness and speed around the festive season. Everyone has a lot to do, and
it seemingly against the clock.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When it comes to science, the man who personifies this is <a href="http://www.general-anaesthesia.com/images/robert-liston.html">Robert
Liston</a>, fastest knife in the West End (I didn't make that up, that's an <a href="http://www.aintnowaytogo.com/rListon.htm">actual nickname</a>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The link will give you all you need to know about Liston, but
just in case you prefer to finish this first, Liston was a surgeon. Everyone
respects a <a href="http://www.rcseng.ac.uk/">surgeon</a>, right? The ability
to actually delve inside a living human being, repair a living, biological system
that's not working to a potentially fatal extent, and put everything back
together so the patient lives through the whole thing; what more noble,
honourable profession is there?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Liston was nothing like that.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It's important to remember, for all that some people might
not like it now (I'm looking at you , <a href="http://www.homeopathy-soh.org/about-homeopathy/what-is-homeopathy/">homeopaths</a>!),
medicine used to be a hell of a lot <a href="http://museum.gov.ns.ca/sv/history/medicine/_1_4.html">worse in the 1800s</a>,
and surgery in particular. The 3 main developments that made surgery something
people survived with some regularity were <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diethyl_ether">anaesthetics</a>, <a href="http://www.theaword.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=564&Itemid=41">analgesics</a>
and <a href="http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/joseph_lister.htm">antiseptics</a>,
meaning people stopped dying due to the horrific pain during surgery, the
horrific pain after surgery, or infections caused by the surgery (this would
have been before germs were even properly discovered and recognised as
something to avoid, so hospitals were rarely cleaned; why would they be?) Blood
loss is also a problem, but they've got that essentially under control too
these days.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Liston operated (in every sense of the word) before any of
these things were taken into account during surgery. The only thing that
mattered was speed. Medical knowledge wasn't as advanced as it is now, so it was
a simple two-step system; lop it off, quick as you can. Job done.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Liston was the best at this. He brought the energy and
enthusiasm of a hyperactive child opening presents on Christmas day to the
operating theatre. And you know how sometimes those kids will get so carried
away they actually end up damaging the present as well, sometimes irreparably?
Liston did that too.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Which is a nice way of saying he killed a lot of people with
his enthusiasm. And you may be thinking 'surely with no anaesthetics or hygiene,
pretty much everyone undergoing surgery died back then?' And you'd be right,
but Liston went the extra mile and is one of the only surgeons to have killed
bystanders.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is a guy who accidentally cut <a href="http://www.braceface.com/medical/Medical_Authors_Faculty/Liston_and_Mutter.htm">off
a man's testicles</a> during one surgery (I'm assuming that wasn't what the operation
was actually for), but his most famous case was when he amputated a leg in 2
and half minutes and killed 3 people. In these days of the 1800's, surgery was
a popular form of entertainment, hence the term <a href="http://content5.videojug.com/0c/0cf05659-cc9c-b03b-f8b1-ff0008c91cad/the-old-operating-theatre-museum-and-her.WidePlayer.jpg">operating
'theatre'</a>. People would gather round and just watch. It's like <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/sep/15/saw-3d-trailer">Saw
3D</a>, only with no popcorn, so it probably smelled slightly better.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">During this one amputation, Liston cut off the patients leg,
but the patient died from gangrene anyway. He also cut off the fingers of an assistant
who was restraining him. The assistant also died from gangrene. At the end of
the amputation, he somehow got carried away and slashed through a spectators
coat, and they promptly died of shock from the fright. When people say 'natural
medicine', this is the sort of thing they never think of.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Imagine a child so carried away when opening a present they
break 3 of their siblings gifts, take someone's eye out, stamp on the dog and
set fire to the tree. Now give that child a saw and you've essentially got
Robert Liston.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Just to put the fast pace of the Christmas period into some
sort of perspective.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Happy Friday!</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Twitter: @garwboy<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br />Dean Burnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15054744507490592341noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440286750138199044.post-78759960202137088152011-11-29T13:13:00.001-08:002011-12-08T01:36:00.497-08:00DECEMBER 8th [Science Comedy Advent Calendar]<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Jv9lFH3Ljpc/TuCE9jsj7-I/AAAAAAAAAMI/YHxFiCFMiOw/s1600/gif+ice.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Jv9lFH3Ljpc/TuCE9jsj7-I/AAAAAAAAAMI/YHxFiCFMiOw/s1600/gif+ice.gif" /></a></div>
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<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">December 8th: Ice<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Another persistent theme of the festive season is one of
snow and other cold-weather phenomenon (if you’re in the Northern hemisphere,
that is; conditions are different in the <a href="http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/GG/ASK/seasons.html">southern hemisphere</a>
given the seasonal variations, but I’m not sure to what extent westernised
cultural norms overrule logic in this instance)</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Every recognisable festive image or icon, be it a space-time
defying over-generous bearded <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=santa+snow&um=1&hl=en&safe=off&biw=1366&bih=643&tbm=isch&tbnid=Qq15QIEbyWhynM:&imgrefurl=http://yaymicro.com/pages/ll-free-wallpaper-christmas&docid=aN7fPcwEc7UJUM&imgurl=http://static1.yaycontent.com/pub/wallpapers/free_ch">fat
man</a>, and <a href="http://www.ukwaterfeatures.com/ProductImages/275/BIG/BIG/BIG/BIG/275.jpg">indoor
fir tree</a>, a <a href="http://www.bradford.com.au/images/product_images/original_images/Thomas-Kinkade-Christmas-Village_BIG.JPG">sleepy
picturesque village</a> or anything in a liquid-filled globe that you shake,
has to be covered in or at least be in close proximity to some snow. And what
is snow? It’s just ice with a lack of discipline.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">People can be a bit hypocritical about ice and snow at
Christmas, though. They celebrate its image, even going so far as to get <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/products/catalog?pq=fake+snow&hl=en&cp=4&gs_id=f&xhr=t&q=spray+snow&safe=off&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&biw=1366&bih=643&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=15713234090366441678&sa=X&ei=MH7gTpO0HZTT8QO0ttnaBA&sqi=2&ved=0CHEQ8wIwAQ">imitations
of it</a> to decorate with, and they’ll espouse on the joys and merits of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjJn5RUBAOA">children playing in it</a>.
But when ice and snow actually does show up, it gets nothing but complaints.
This is like name dropping a successful friend or family member to impress
other people and get things your own way, but if said person then shows up and
asks if they can say with you for a few days, all you do is whinge about the
inconvenience, like how you have to pay more for the heating bill and they use
up all your <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8449755.stm">salt</a>.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We all like to have a moan about the snow and ice if and
when we are confronted with it, that’s almost part of the tradition (of a UK
Christmas at least). But so is gift
giving and generosity, we’re told. And yes, ice is annoying; it bursts the
pipes, clogs up the traffic, occasionally causes us to fall over and break
something, and forces us to wear thick clothes which are impractical and
annoying for tasks requiring fine motor control. However, this list of gripes
does seem somewhat petty when you consider what ice provides in return; namely,
the existence of life on Earth.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Granted, there are probably some <a href="http://life.bio.sunysb.edu/marinebio/hotvent.html">sulphur breathing
worms</a> on undersea volcanic vents which would dispute this fact, if they
were capable of complex cognitive processes and cross-species interaction,
which is doubtful. But even they might be indebted to the icy goodness. Life as
we know it on Earth wouldn’t be possible without ice doing what it does, and I’m
not just referring to the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00mfl7n">Frozen
Planet</a> life, as cool as it may be (pardon the pun).</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As you may probably know, ice doesn’t behave like most other
solid substances. For one thing, it’s less dense than the liquid form of the
substance, water. Ice floats, which is nice. This means it forms a sort of <a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/SeaIce/">protective, insulating
layer</a> on bodies of water in very cold conditions, allowing liquid water to
persist beneath, rather than ice sinking and eventually causing the whole mass
of water to freeze solid. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As you probably know, liquid water is <a href="http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/5620">integral for life</a> to
exist, providing an essential medium for pretty much all biological processes
to occur in, being known as a <a href="http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071014110834AADFXvm">universal
solvent</a>.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Unlike all the other <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalcogen">chalcogens</a>, H<sub>2</sub>O is
a liquid at room temperature. Oxygen, being a bit of a greedy molecule, tends
to hog all the electrons in this molecular state, giving it a net negative
charge, leaving the poor hydrogen atoms (or ‘protons’ if you prefer) all
exposed and naked in their positivity. This means water molecules are ‘<a href="http://www.biology.arizona.edu/biochemistry/tutorials/chemistry/page3.html">polar</a>’,
negative on one end, positive on the other, like a magnet, sort of (actually, <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/fcking-magnets-how-do-they-work">how do
they work</a>?). Essentially this means water molecules are drawn to each other
under typical environmental conditions, rendering it a liquid. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But when it’s cold enough, the <a href="http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/hbond.html">hydrogen bonds</a> that are so
rapidly formed and broken in liquid water become more ‘fixed’, as there’s less
energy to break them, feeble as they are. But hydrogen bonds are actually
longer than the polar bonds in liquid water, meaning <a href="http://www.nyu.edu/pages/mathmol/textbook/info_water.html">the molecules are
further apart,</a> meaning it’s less dense than the liquid.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It’s like getting a box of <a href="http://www.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">Lego</a> for Christmas. When it’s
in a box, it’s closely packed but all ‘loose’, you can shake it about. When it’s
assembled into something, it’s a lot more rigid but also takes up a lot more
space. And it’s essentially stable, but takes a certain amount of energy before
it reverts to its ‘fluid’ state. With ice, it’s a significant introduction of
heat energy, with Lego it’s more of a misplaced foot and a lot of swearing.
Either way, the result is the same; rigid but fragile bonds are broken.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It’s a lot more complicated of course, but essentially it
goes like this: Ice floats à
Life exists. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Also, its inclusion makes everything look ‘Christmassy’, and
enhances the quality of various beverages, alcoholic or otherwise. It’s up to
you which is more important, but surely that’s enough to overlook a few burst
pipes or traffic jams during the festive season?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Twitter: @garwboy<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>Dean Burnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15054744507490592341noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440286750138199044.post-59419986837961568612011-11-29T13:12:00.003-08:002011-12-07T12:02:01.360-08:00DECEMBER 7th [Science Comedy Advent Calendar]<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ld8QiPzDLec/Tt_GKsH-QKI/AAAAAAAAAL4/oe9GqfmGhGM/s1600/picasion.com_5c139c67869608dee41036c9af36c455.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ld8QiPzDLec/Tt_GKsH-QKI/AAAAAAAAAL4/oe9GqfmGhGM/s1600/picasion.com_5c139c67869608dee41036c9af36c455.gif" /></a></div>
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<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></u></b></div>
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<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">December 7th: Patient HM<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div>
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<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></u></b></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For many people, the Christmas period is used as a sort of
'anchor' for memory. It is generally accepted, regardless of the evidence to
support this, that Christmas is a happy time, a period of childhood in
particular where there is a strong emotional component, where a lot of good
things are condensed into one short period and so tend to stick in the memory.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In a way, the Christmas period gives us the opposite of Post
Trauamtic Stress Disorder, <a href="http://www.impact.arq.org/doc/kennisbank/1000010585-1.pdf">PTSD</a>. PTSD
is a serious issue for many people, and one of the hallmarks of it is a
tendency to mentally 'relive' the memory of the incident that led to the trauma.
This may seem illogical. Why would we want to keep repeating things we find
unpleasant? After a bout of food poisoning, we don't go straight back to the
kebab shop we stumbled into at 2.30 am and order another discount 'box of meat',
just to repeat the colourful experience. But with PTSD, people do apparently
constantly relive the cause of their distress, like a diabetic injecting syrup
into their veins for 'fun'.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It's a product of the way our memory systems work. The
traumatic experience kicks our <a href="http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/auto.html">autonomic nervous system</a>
into high gear, with our fight-or-flight coordinating <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/s/sympathetic_nervous_system.htm">sympathetic
nervous system</a> flooding our bodies with <a href="http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-adrenaline.htm">adrenaline</a> and the
like. and one of the consequences of this is that it amplifies the memory processing
aspects of the <a href="http://biology.about.com/od/anatomy/a/aa042205a.htm">limbic
system</a>, which is also heavily involved in emotion processing. It makes
sense, in an evolutionary context. If you find yourself in a dangerous
position, facing a considerable threat, it would be best to remember it as
vividly as possible, so that you rapidly learn to avoid it in future. Humankind
may not have survived if our memories of sabre-tooth tiger encounters were
recalled as just 'brown snarling thing, big teeth, or possibly tusks?'. As
such, our brains are wired for intense recall of emotionally intense
experiences. These ones stand out from our daily memories like a big shiny star
on a Christmas tree, which is just a green mass with shiny bits on it.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Admittedly, this is not how memory is described in many
textbooks, but then academic literature has never really targeted the festive
market. It's a niche sadly overlooked, one that this blog is hoping to corner.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But if PTSD can cause us to relive unpleasant experiences,
perhaps Christmas can have the same effect in the opposite way? For a child,
it's an intense period of pleasure, gratification, acquisition and all things
fun and magical, perhaps the flood of positive emotions cause the memories
formed at this time to be more salient? We always tend to look back at
childhood Christmases with a rosy glow. Unless they were shit.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But or most people, childhood Christmases are period that
they wish would never end. But look at that realistically for a second. What
kind of life would that be? Never moving on, never progressing, it's just
always 'now'. Sounds horrible, really.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One person who knew exactly what this was like (or, more realistically,
could have known but was unable to do so) was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_(patient)">patient H.M.</a> Although it
sounds a bit like the name given to someone undergoing some sort of
super-soldier research project, the trusth was far more mundane and far more
useful to science. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Patient HM suffered from crippling temporal lobe epilepsy.
In order to treat this, surgeons basically removed his temporal lobes. Presumably
they'd mainly treated people suffering appendicitis before this point.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Although it cures his epilepsy, patient HM didn't know this.
He didn't know much about anything after the surgery, as he lost the ability to
form new memories. He still had his short term memory, but that has a capacity
of <a href="http://psychology.about.com/od/memory/f/short-term-memory.htm">about
30 seconds</a>, which isn't much use really. He was like the guy from <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209144/">Memento</a>, but without a burning
desire for revenge to motivate him to do stuff.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For the remainder of his life, HM's most recent long term
memory was preparing for the surgery. Thanks to his condition, we've learned a great
deal about the human memory system, as we're not really allowed to cut out bits
of people's brains in order to see what happens, even if <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_subject_research#Questionable_psychological_experiments">they're
not bothered about it</a>.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Patient HM contributed a great deal to the study of the
human mind, despite the fact that he knew nothing about this. And Christmas is
all about generosity, isn't it? And what could be more generous giving a great
deal without even the minimal conscious awareness of it? Although that latter
also describes victims of theft, so maybe it's not an ideal comparison.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Patient HM passed away almost 3 years ago exactly, with almost
6 decades of his life that he had no memory or awareness of, all of it
acknowledged briefly but then discarded like the umpteenth pair of hideous
socks given to you for Christmas by a doddery relative.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Patient HM; gone, but not forgotten.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">…actually, given the context, that last bit is quite
insensitive. Apologies.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Twitter: @garwboy<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>Dean Burnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15054744507490592341noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440286750138199044.post-34670381311928775342011-11-29T13:12:00.001-08:002011-12-05T23:49:55.872-08:00DECEMBER 6th [Science Comedy Advent Calendar]<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-H7XjQetjTAc/Tt3IxULvL8I/AAAAAAAAALw/UBI0JY0cCT4/s1600/gif+Higgs.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-H7XjQetjTAc/Tt3IxULvL8I/AAAAAAAAALw/UBI0JY0cCT4/s1600/gif+Higgs.gif" /></a></div>
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<br />
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<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">December 6<sup>th</sup>: Higgs Boson<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You get a lot of weird things at Christmas that attempt to
derail the usual levels of cynicism of the world in general. A sense of
indulgence, a willing suspension of disbelief when asked to consider
magical/fantastical claims, childlike glee and enthusiasm, a ridiculous amount
of expense spent on something that may prove to be pointless.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Surely scientists, with their logic, cold reason, lack of a
sense of wonderment, and overarching sense of seriousness, could never succumb
to such ludicrous behaviour?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Well obviously this isn’t the case, and the title of this
entry obviously reveals what I’m going to be referring to.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In a surprising number of ways, the Higgs Boson elicits
behaviour in the world of science that has many obvious parallels with
Christmas, or a certain festive someone. For starters, the Higgs Boson is
widely believed to exist, but its <a href="http://www.phy.uct.ac.za/courses/phy400w/particle/higgs1.htm">existence
is not proven</a>. The mere possibility of it appearing at all is enough to get
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2011/dec/01/higgs-boson-seminar-lhc-findings">everyone
worked up</a>. There have been plenty of <a href="http://news.discovery.com/space/higgs-boson-discovered-not-so-fast.html">signs
for it being there</a>, but nobody’s actually seen it. Remind you of anyone? Sure,
there’s plenty of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson_in_fiction">fiction</a>
about it, and people behave as if it’s real, but that’s not really proof. What we
need is more. The ruffled foliage, eyewitness accounts, food going missing, a
footprint maybe, tantalising, but that’s not enough for proper scientists.
That’s what the Higgs Boson is like, though.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Higgs boson is believed to be the particle that gives
all <a href="http://www.exploratorium.edu/origins/cern/ideas/higgs.html">other
particles mass</a>. So the Higgs is a possibly-real thing that distributes
things to other things, and asks nothing in return? Its influence is
widespread, but nobody really knows what it is. That sounds a lot like a certain
festive Christmas figure, doesn’t it...?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Of course, the certain Christmas figure I’m referring to (if
they exist in the state they’re believed to exist in and are capable of what
they’re supposedly capable of) could only come about thanks to some very exotic
science going on. And when it comes to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson">exotic science</a>, there’s not
much to beat the Higgs Boson hunt. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Another thing this Christmas figure is associated with is
the cold. Well, it doesn’t get much colder than the hunt for the Higgs boson,
with physicists lowering the temperatures to <a href="http://press.web.cern.ch/press/pressreleases/Releases2007/PR03.07E.html">colder
than the vacuum of space</a> just to catch a glimpse of it. It seems wherever
this Higgs Boson goes, there’s a lot of expensive gear that <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2008/10/the-lhc-broken-but-officially.html">ends
up broken</a> relatively quickly in its wake. This is also true when a certain
someone else passes through. Thanks to them, you end up with a lot of expensive
stuff lying around that tends to end up in an unusable state due to mishaps,
proving perhaps that money doesn’t buy reliability. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It can’t be denied that, however much we think we know
already, finally encountering the Higgs boson would <a href="http://www-library.desy.de/preparch/desy/proc/proc02-02/Proceedings/pl.1a/haber_pr.pdf">fundamentally
alter our understanding</a> of how our own world works, and expand our
awareness of what’s possible far beyond the current levels. The same could be
said if we were to actually encounter and observe the festive you-know-who.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Many people refer to the Higgs as the ‘<a href="http://www.godparticle.com/">God particle’</a>. This is close to what I
was referring to, the all powerful, science defying individual that he is. But
I think it is far more symbolic of that other semi-mythical figure I’ve alluded
to; the one that’s always seen around the yuletide season.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I am of course referring to <a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XQY2evq0WHs/TeLI4q0mimI/AAAAAAAARE8/TWFj1tu6gq4/s1600/godzillamininfo1954.jpg">Godzilla</a>.
You often see him around Christmas time, as a toy or on TV or if a cheapskate
you know hates you enough to buy you the DVD of the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120685/">American remake</a>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This also proves that the associations made in this piece
were a lot more tenuous than they first appeared. And it ended up being
something else entirely, probably not what most people expected at all. A more
fitting analogy of the search for the Higgs would be hard to come by.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">How exciting!</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Twitter: @garwboy</span><o:p></o:p></i></div>Dean Burnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15054744507490592341noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440286750138199044.post-77090980934910738842011-11-29T13:11:00.001-08:002011-12-05T00:29:20.036-08:00DECEMBER 5th [Science Comedy Advent Calendar]<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-p7zj_KCme3g/Ttx8WHGGUiI/AAAAAAAAALo/SD2SnP6GCW0/s1600/cuttlefish+gif.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-p7zj_KCme3g/Ttx8WHGGUiI/AAAAAAAAALo/SD2SnP6GCW0/s1600/cuttlefish+gif.gif" /></a></div>
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<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></u></b></div>
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<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></u></b></div>
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<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">December 5<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">th</span>: Cuttlefish<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Often at Christmas or the festive period in general, there
will be mention of some sort of animal with bizarre or even magical properties.
Robins that can summon the <a href="http://10000birds.com/first-robin-of-spring.htm" target="_blank">end of the season of Winter,</a> <a href="http://icr.arcticportal.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=142:flying-reindeer-and-santa-claus-&catid=2:feature-archive&Itemid=7" target="_blank">reindeer</a> that can fly and
seemingly violate multiple laws of time and space, sheep that are able to look
after themselves if their herders decide to wander off and <a href="http://www.textweek.com/art/shepherds.htm" target="_blank">look at a messiah</a>,
<a href="http://www.christmas-songs.org/songs/little_donkey_little_donkey.html" target="_blank">donkeys</a> that can carry a heavily pregnant woman for days on end, and Turkey’s
that can seemingly <a href="http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Healthychristmas/Pages/cooking-turkey.aspx" target="_blank">resist being cooked</a> no matter how long they spend in the
oven.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But all of these are in the realm of fantasy (except the
turkey one). What about animals that seemingly have miraculous properties while
sticking to the laws of science? Well, one such incredible creature is the
<a href="http://www.tonmo.com/articles/basiccuttlefish.php" target="_blank">cuttlefish</a>.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The cuttlefish is, for want of a better term, freakish (by
human standards, of course). First off, it’s not even a fish, it’s a mollusc.
So it’s practicing deception before we’ve even encountered it. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Anatomically, the cuttlefish is as alien and weird as you’d
expect from a sea-bound invertebrate, but perhaps even more so. They have 8
arms and 2 tentacles (these are different things in cephalopod terms
apparently, tentacles are longer and only have suckers on the tips, unlike arms
which have them all along their length). So they have a choice of manipulative
limbs, as opposed to our 2 crappy arms, which are both essentially the same.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">They communicate via a very impressive ability to change the
colour and polarisation of their skin via <a href="http://tolweb.org/accessory/Cephalopod_Chromatophore?acc_id=2038" target="_blank">cromatophores</a>, in ways that will
leave a chameleon looking like about as impressive as a Windows ’95
screensaver. The <a href="http://www.thecephalopodpage.org/cephschool/HowCephalopodsChangeColor.pdf" target="_blank">detailed resolution</a> they can achieve on their own skin can
rival modern inkjet printers, making this an extremely sophisticated form of
visual communication, which they can control. This is sort of like typing
writing a text message by having to manipulate each individual pixel into the
correct alignment. Anyone who’s ever had an <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Flair-Classic-Etch-a-Sketch/dp/B000E69YJI" target="_blank">etch a sketch</a> for Christmas will
know that humans aren’t really up to this level of manipulation.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In terms of visual communication using their own bodies, the best
humans can do is sign language. But bear in mind, cuttlefish also use their
skin patterning abilities to camouflage and avoid predators. This is like
humans putting their hands over their eyes doing the ‘you can’t see me’ thing
when under attack, and the attacker agreeing and going away.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Also worth pointing out, cuttlefish can turn their skin a
wide variety of different patterns, but they can’t actually see colour. So how
they know what they’re doing is anyone’s guess. They <a href="http://cephalove.southernfriedscience.com/?p=32" target="_blank">can see polarised light</a>
and we can’t though, so swings and roundabouts. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Cuttlefish are also <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/c/cephalopod_intelligence.htm" target="_blank">highly intelligent,</a> potentially
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasepia_pfefferi" target="_blank">poisonous</a>, have way better eyes than we do and have multiple hearts and <a href="http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Do_cuttlefish_have_green_blood" target="_blank">greenblood</a>, the latter making them some sort of potential Time Lord/Vulcan
amalgamation. Cuttlefish ink even led to the colour scheme of<a href="http://www.thecephalopodpage.org/Soffic.php" target="_blank"> sepia</a>. So every
modern graphics programme and digital camera pays homage to the cuttlefish.
Apple would kill for that level of influence.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">All in all, it’s lucky they’re aquatic creatures and stuck
in the sea, otherwise they’d be a real threat to humanity. It should be fine
though, so long as humans don’t do anything stupid like <a href="http://www.thecephalopodpage.org/Soffic.php" target="_blank">raising the sea levels</a>.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But why would Cuttlefish have a grudge against humans, what
have we ever done to them? Sure, we eat them, but we eat everything, and they
even eat each other, so that’s not something they can have a go at us for.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Well, it turns out that cuttlefish are also unique in nature
for possessing a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuttlebone" target="_blank">cuttlebone</a>, a specialised rigid internal structure that allows
a cuttlefish to control its buoyancy via complicated system of siphons. This
cuttlebone used to be used to make jewellery and polish, sometimes in
toothpaste. But these days, we use it primarily to provide calcium for caged
birds.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Cuttlefish are some of the craziest, smartest, most capable
organisms on Earth, and we slaughter them en masse so we can have slightly
shiner teeth, and so our budgies don’t get brittle bones in those legs they
rarely use. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You know when you’ve gone to extreme lengths to
create/acquire the most perfect, impressive or just downright spectacular
Christmas present you can for someone? And they just shrug and throw it aside,
but say they’ll use the box to keep their potatoes in or something? Imagine if
they did that, but gleefully attacked you with a chainsaw to get the box from you.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">That’s essentially what we do to cuttlefish on a daily
basis. When they do rise up and kill us all, I can only hope they do it <a href="http://xkcd.com/520/" target="_blank">swiftly and mercifully</a>.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Twitter: @garwboy<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>Dean Burnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15054744507490592341noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440286750138199044.post-58133902182950691312011-11-29T13:09:00.001-08:002011-12-04T02:14:34.712-08:00DECEMBER 4th [Science Comedy Advent Calendar]<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-g80TNnTJT3Y/TttGyGBIFTI/AAAAAAAAALg/WbM4wfIiTAQ/s1600/Gif+McKeith.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-g80TNnTJT3Y/TttGyGBIFTI/AAAAAAAAALg/WbM4wfIiTAQ/s1600/Gif+McKeith.gif" /></a></div>
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<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">December 4<sup>th</sup>: Gillian McKeith<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div>
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<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></u></b></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One of
the more jovial Christmas Carols is ‘Santa Clause is coming to town’. However,
many people have pointed out that the lyrics are somewhat alarming. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“He knows when you are sleeping, he’s knows when you’re
awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good so be good for goodness sake”. This
lyric is less suggestive of a kindly old magical gift-dispensing man and more indicative
of some sort of vigilante. At some heavy guitar riffs and this song could be
the ideal theme to the cartoon ‘The Punisher: The high school years’. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There’s
also the line ‘You’d better not shout, you better not cry, you’d better not pout,
I’m telling you why’. This is also alarming, suggesting that any normal, emotional
human reaction to the individual being discussed will not be tolerated and met
with serious retribution. This is not the sort of behaviour one would normally
attribute to Santa Clause, it’s more suggestive of the Borg. Resistance is
futile, after all.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But one
individual who does seem to inspire this sense of foreboding and dread in
people is <a href="http://www.gillianmckeith.info/" target="_blank">Gillian McKeith</a>, the millionaire nutritionist guru whose
qualifications have as much genuine substance as the magic food bars she sells.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">People
may be encountering Gillian McKeith’s work a lot after the festive period. Christmas
for many is a time of calorific indulgence, with the guilt not setting in until
the new year. And we do tend to go overboard a lot. It may be Band Aid’s fault.
When they said ‘<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-w-CmCCF7k" target="_blank">Feed the World</a>’, perhaps they could have been more
geographically specific? </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But
Gillian McKeith is known to many as just ‘the diet woman from the telly’, so when
they hope to shift the festive weight gain they may reach for any books or
products that feature a familiar (if rather alarming) face. But it’s not all
bad, because Gillian McKeith provides several excellent examples of how science
works.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Wait! Come back! She does!</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Firstly,
any defender of Gillian McKeith, when told about her scientifically ludicrous
claims and complete lack of real qualifications, will state that she ‘gets
results’. And this appears to be true, according to<a href="http://www.gillianmckeith.info/television" target="_blank"> the TV shows she does</a>. The
overweight people whose lives she invades do end up losing weight. Skip all the
<a href="http://www.badscience.net/category/gillian-mckeith/" target="_blank">pseudoscience guff</a>, and what happens is a 3 step process. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman'; text-indent: -24px;"> </span>Overweight person is shown how much they eat
[excessive]</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: left; text-indent: -18pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span><!--[endif]-->Overweight person is made to eat less and move
more</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: left; text-indent: -18pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span><!--[endif]-->Overweight person loses weight</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Although
dressed up in her surreal gibberish language, what is actually happening here
is an excellent demonstration of physics, such as the laws of<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamics" target="_blank"> thermodynamics</a>
and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_mass" target="_blank">conservation of mass</a>. Essentially, overweight person consumes excessive
chemical energy, which is stored as fat.
Overweight person then reduces chemical energy intake and increases chemical
energy requirements. Hopefully, a new equilibrium between input and output is
achieved. Nothing to do with vibrational energies and vitamin gremlins, just
good old physics. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But how does she get a compulsive
overeater to reduce their intake in the first place? It’s seemed like quite a
chronic problem before she showed up, why would they stop just because she told
them to? Surely she must have some sort of skill or power to achieve this? No. Once
again, it’s proper science to the rescue.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If you give a rat chocolate, it
will eat and enjoy the chocolate. Understandably, it’s delicious. It will
develop a taste for this unfamiliar but pleasant treat. If you then give a rat
chocolate followed immediately by an injection of lithium chloride, it will
feel incredibly sick (as in ill, not ‘throwing up’ sick, as rats can’t do
that). If offered chocolate again after this, it will reject it. It has
undergone aversive conditioning. The previously pleasant stimulus has now been
associated with a deeply unpleasant sensation, using pretty much the same
mechanism that<a href="http://brembs.net/learning/classical.html" target="_blank"> Pavlov discovered all those years ago</a>. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0cm; text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So, you’re an obese person who constantly
indulges in fatty foods. Then suddenly, whenever you reach for a cream bun you’ve
got this scary looking harridan shouting abuse in your face and talking about
magic beans or what have you. What’s going to happen? Pretty soon, you’re going
to associate your usual, unhealthy foods with Gillian McKeith. Again, it’s
simple process.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: left; text-indent: -18pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span>Obese person eats junk food.</span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span><!--[endif]-->Obese person eats junk food and Gillian McKeith
appears</span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span><!--[endif]-->Obese person associates junk food with Gillian
McKeith</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: left; text-indent: -18pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span><!--[endif]-->Obese person wants Gillian McKeith to go away</span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span><!--[endif]-->Obese person stops eating junk food.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Simple <a href="http://www.thefreedictionary.com/associative+learning" target="_blank">associative learning</a> is the answer. Junk food means
Gillian McKeith, who is essentially the personality equivalent of electroshock
therapy. Once the overweight person makes the association and reduces the junk
food intake, the physics can take over.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So
there you have it. Feel free to indulge in whatever you like at Christmas, but
try to exercise some self control, for if you go too far, the unintentional avatar
of science that is Gillian McKeith may come for you. You’d better not shout,
you’d better not cry...</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Twitter: @garwboy<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br />Dean Burnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15054744507490592341noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1440286750138199044.post-88460869896263954952011-11-29T13:07:00.001-08:002011-12-03T07:01:48.876-08:00DECEMBER 3rd [Science Comedy Advent Calendar]<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YC90FB-Uomo/Ttnp0Vezx-I/AAAAAAAAALY/teWyAkRMQQo/s1600/gif+neutron.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YC90FB-Uomo/Ttnp0Vezx-I/AAAAAAAAALY/teWyAkRMQQo/s1600/gif+neutron.gif" /></a></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><u><br /></u></span></b></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><u>December 3<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">rd</span>: Neutron stars<o:p></o:p></u></span></b></div>
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<b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></u></b></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For various unspecified reasons, big shiny baubles have
become quite a prominent feature of Christmas. Whether the flawless sphere is
symbolic of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_sphere" target="_blank">crystal spheres</a> that surrounded the earth in the <a href="http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/retrograde/aristotle.html" target="_blank">ancient geocentricmodel</a> of astronomy (which was probably in vogue at the time of the birth of
Christ), or the most cost effective shape for the mass production of pointless
decorations, they’re everywhere in December. I don’t really know, and I don’t
care enough to find out.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But speaking of celestial spheres, the universe has its own
shiny baubles. What would make a better shiny decorative bauble than a typical <a href="http://www.universetoday.com/24219/what-is-a-neutron-star/" target="_blank">neutron star</a>?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Almost anything would make a better bauble, actually. Tying
a mangled turkey bone to your tree would be a better idea. Neutron stars,
although technically big, shiny baubles in the strictest sense of the term, are
typically around 12km across and mass more than half a million Earths. A
teaspoon full of neutron star matter would weigh the same as 900 great pyramids.
Or 1200 average ones. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now, I guess it’s feasible that they can make teaspoons that
can endure that sort of treatment, but I doubt any fir tree in existence could
withstand having a neutron star hung from it, even if it is one of those fancy
plastic ones (the tree, not the star).</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Obviously, bringing a neutron star within the boundaries of
the solar system would likely play merry hell with the orbits of the planets,
so bringing one to within 2 metres of the Earth’s surface to attach to a plant
would undoubtedly end all life on and probably destroy the physical integrity
of the planet itself. And that would ruin Christmas.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You could argue that all stars are big shiny spheres, and in
a very loose sense you would be right. I singled out neutron stars as they
resemble Christmas baubles the most due to the fact that most neutron stars
seem to have a <a href="http://www.space.com/6682-neutron-star-crust-stronger-steel.html" target="_blank">solid ‘shell</a>’. Granted, they do have an atmosphere that is about
<a href="http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/weekly/6Page78.pdf" target="_blank">1m thick at most</a>. For contrast, if the earth had an atmosphere that was 1m deep, you
would be in the vacuum of space if you stood up and your head would probably
explode. But if you were on a neutron star, you couldn't stand up at all, so that's not a worry. Although being that close to it would have reduced you to an atom-thin spread anyway, so no need to worry either way.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> But a typical neutron
star, thanks to the extreme gravity, has a very smooth, hard surface. They also
emit visible light at pretty much all wavelengths, making them especially shiny
and more ‘bauble-esque’ than most stars with their thousand-kilometre deep
chromospheres and turbulent ‘surfaces’ of plasma. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Neutron stars are the remnants of massive stars that have
since gone supernova, and the extreme gravity allows the star to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrasekhar_limit" target="_blank">overcome electron degeneracy pressure</a>, a property that prevents too much mass from condensing
into one place. By violating the rules
of normal matter, neutron stars matter is possibly the densest substance in the
universe, relegating to second place the previous title holder, Christmas
Pudding.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So because of these properties (not including countless
others), Neutron stars are quite Christmassy. But that’s just in isolation.
What if two of them meet and, more importantly, collide? They’re essentially
big balls, right? And balls often come in pairs, don’t they.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It has been suggested that, if conditions are right, two
neutron stars can end up orbiting each other, getting closer and closer until
eventually they collide and produce a horrific onslaught of unimaginable carnage.
Neutron star collisions are one suggested cause of <a href="http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/bursts.html" target="_blank">gamma-ray bursters</a>, the most
energetic events in the universe, unleashing the same energy in seconds that
the sun releases in its 10 billion year lifetime. If such a thing occurred even
within our galaxy, it would release a wave of radiation that could
decimate/annihilate life on Earth.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A long, slow build up which involves a sense of coming together, a brief spectacular light display,
followed by a period of carnage and devastation; What more fitting metaphor for
the turning on of the city centre Christmas lights could you ask for?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Twitter: @garwboy. for regular updates</i></span></div>Dean Burnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15054744507490592341noreply@blogger.com0