Valentine's Massacre

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Coca Cola advert. Some things are even more sinister though, like the supposed origin of the phrase 'Rule of Thumb'. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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).

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'.

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.

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.

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.

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 Valentine's massacre was just keeping up the tradition.

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?

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?

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.

Happy Valentine's!

Bull. Shit! (Literally)

I've mentioned before how the credibility of science is exploited and mangled for the sake of advertising. So have more capable people, like Ben Goldacre. I was recently asked by a media representative to provide a critical perspective on the Dettol 'Mission for Health'. It seems that this major distributor of disinfectants has, purely out of the goodness of their hearts, conducted some research as to how badly infested with bacteria certain public transport services are. Why public transport? God knows. It couldn't be because so many people use public transport and this is a good way of alarming them and increasing their desire for disinfectants. That would be so cynical.

I was sent the Dettol press release, which described the different bacterial levels found on Cardiff Buses, Manchester trams, and so on. The numbers mean nothing out of context, or in the absence of any data about what's 'normal', and whether the (geographically and physically) distinct sample locations are comparable in any way. But it's OK, because the press release includes some comments from a 'media doctor' who says the bacteria levels aren't good. I was actually more alarmed by the revelation that 'media doctor' is a real job description these days.

The reporter who sent me the press release also included some comments from an actual qualified bacteriologist. These comments can be summarised as follows: 'Eh?'

It was gibberish, but it was just another example of corporations conducting a self-serving 'scientific survey' and just interpreting the data in a manner that suits their needs. Business as usual, I suppose. This sort of thing happens all the time.

Then, a few days later, I saw this. And that, for me, was the final straw for advertising-led science. I've never seen such obvious 'scientific' fabrications.

You might want to go over that article a few times, to convince your brain that yes, it does say what you think it says.

To summarise; on behalf of Laughing Cow, Comedian Milton Jones performed to a field of cows as part of an experiment in whether or not animals can laugh. And it turns out they can.

Essentially, it's a nonsensical experiment that bastardises science via the exploitation of the mediums of comedy and animal behavioural studies. Given my background, I'm not entirely convinced that this whole thing wasn't thought up with the express intention of annoying me specifically.

I will say right now that this is not an attack on Milton Jones, who is brilliant, and as a father of three trying to make a living in an increasingly crowded field (by which I mean comedy, not cows), I have no issue with him taking the corporate dollar. Plus, I imagine he felt it would be funny to perform to cows. And it is.

What's not funny in the traditional sense is the contribution of Bruce Woodacre. Bruce is, apparently, a 'Cow Expert'. Again, one of those jobs which I didn't know existed until I read this. His CV must be very interesting… Actually, it isn't. It's disappointingly normal.

Bruce has an MA in Animal Science from Cambridge. I don't know what that really involves (couldn't find it online, and he did the course nearly 40 years ago), but it sounds impressive. It's got 'science' in the title, but it's also an MA, not an MSc, so that's not 100% reassuring. But let's not get distracted by that*.

So, here's is my critique of this experiment, and why I disagree with the 'findings' that cows can be amused by comedians.

METHODOLOGY:

This wasn't written down anywhere that I could see, so I have to make conclusions based on what I saw in the video. It seems like the cows were herded towards a stage constructed in the middle of a field, and Milton Jones performed to them. My questions about this would be as follows;

• Was there an interval between the cows being corralled and the performance starting? The sensation of being herded towards an unfamiliar construct would be likely to cause levels of activity in the subjects that could obscure the behavioural responses being assessed.
  
• Why were there so few independent variables? 'Comedy' is known to have a very subjective component. Even if cows are capable of expressing amusement, there's no guarantee they would be amused by the surreal whimsy of Milton Jones. A repeat of the experiment with Frankie Boyle, Stewart Lee, Michael McIntyre etc. may provide a more robust assessment of whether cows can be amused.
  
• In a similar vein, was it just comedians used? The cows are in a unique situation, were there measures in place to rule out the novelty of the situation as the main factor eliciting responses, rather than amusement? Did Milton Jones read out a tax return form at some point, or recite from the phone book? This would have shown whether the cows were actually understanding what was being said and not just 'laughing' at his hairstyle. Alternatively, was the behaviour of the subjects assessed when there was nobody on the stage? Some calibration and standardisation wouldn't have gone amiss.
  
• Was this experiment repeated with multiple herds? The one herd used may have been more/less open to amusing stimuli than others. Or they may have been pissed. That makes a difference with comedy sometimes.
  

EXPERT ANALYSIS:

Bruce Woodacre is a cow expert. He has 'spent 40 years of [his] life trying to understand cows'. This immediately leads to thinking 'WHY?!?!' This also causes me to have some concerns as to the extent and nature of Bruce's 'interest' in cows. Seems a bit overenthusiastic, if I'm being brutally honest.

He also promotes different approaches to cow management on his website, and uses the term 'holistic' at one point, which is enough to make any scientist twitch nervously these days. I've also found examples of him saying that it's important to put yourself 'in the mind of a cow'. I don't really know how to do this. I tried, but after 5minutes of thinking about cud and grass I just got too bored to continue.

So, I'm sure Bruce knows a lot about cows. But this does not make him an expert behavioural analyst. I myself have spent much of my life in or around cars. However, I am not a mechanic.

There are several points in Bruce's expert analysis that I take issue with. These are as follows:

• "This cow is a heckler. She doesn't like what Milton's saying. She doesn't think he's funny at all"
  

Said cow was seemingly chewing cud and moving her head around, in a manner much like most of the other cows in the video. She's also remaining audibly silent, which is not a form of 'heckling' any comic would recognise. Bruce is probably right in saying the cow doesn't think Milton's funny, in that the cow doesn't have any mental concept of what's 'funny' as we'd recognise it, and that goes double for the concept of 'heckling'. It also doesn't speak or understand English. Even if it could, it's spent its entire life in a cow rearing facility, so can't really grasp the social and/or cultural references that make Milton's (or anyone else's) jokes work. The reasons for all this can be explained by one simple fact; It's a cow, not a human.

• "I don't think a cow laughs in the same way as a human does".
  

It wouldn't, Bruce. It's a cow. Have you seen any evidence anywhere that they laugh at all? Please provide references if so.

• "[The cows] display signs that they wouldn't normally display. The position of its ears, its' rate of breathing, things like that, which could well be interpreted as laughter".
  

I'd be surprised if they weren't displaying signs they wouldn't normally display. Normally, they wouldn't be corralled into a field and forced into a small area in front an unfamiliar artificial structure and have a human in a flamboyant shirt make noises at them through a microphone. When animals are exposed to unfamiliar scenarios, they behave in ways that they wouldn't normally in situations they are familiar with. All these things could well be interpreted as laughter. They could also be interpreted as fear, confusion, curiosity, irritation, indigestion, stomach parasites, impatience, thirst, hunger or a response to any sensation or feeling an animal is capable of

• "Another example, a pair of cows that are certainly paying attention to Milton…"
  

In the clip used, the cows in question are clearly paying attention to the camera in their face. Unless they had serious budget issues, I'm guessing it wasn't Milton Jones who was doing the filming. If he's referring to the fact that the cows in question are close to the front of the stage, this is undoubtedly what happens when you're forcibly moved into an area and have several dozen of your co-creatures (each weighing the best part of a ton) pushed in behind you. Admittedly, they may well be paying attention to Milton. He's an unfamiliar thing in an unfamiliar situation. Animals that don't pay attention to things like that are usually dealt with harshly by evolution.

• "…and that one is showing clear signs of amusement".
  

'That one' has its mouth open. If that's a sign of amusement, I'm guessing cows find food hilarious. It does look like it's smiling, admittedly, but remember Bruce just said "I don't think a cow laughs in the same way as a human does". Inconsistency there, Bruce? What sort of cow expert are you, man!

• "[This experiment] has been very useful. No, cows can't laugh in the same way as humans can, but we've shown they can show amusement, and that's got to be worthwhile".
  

You haven't shown that Bruce. You've shown that you can take some ambiguous footage and speculate wildly about what it means, and then bizarrely make firm conclusions based on these speculations. As for worthwhile, if this conclusion was accurate and cows can indeed perceive and understand jokes and humour delivered by a surreal English-speaking comic, then this would undeniably prove that they are thinking, intelligent beings capable of the complex logical processing required to appreciate jokes and recognise the structural elements that make them humorous. This would mean the cattle trade is responsible for the mass slaughter of thinking, intelligent, emotional beings like most die-hard vegans already think it is. I sincerely doubt the dairy and meat industries (who seem to pay Bruce's wages) would consider this finding 'worthwhile'.

I know I'm taking this far too seriously, but this is the worst example of utter bullshit (appropriately) science and ridiculous conclusions that I've yet seen. There's no indication that the analysis is a knowing joke or parody, it's presented as straight up fact. The publicity stunt would have been just as effective, possibly more so, without this horrendous attempt to make it seem scientifically valid. I think Bruce Woodacre has crossed the line, and is making claims that are not just exaggerated or cynically worded, but flat out wrong. He may disagree, and that's his prerogative.

After all, what do I know? I'm no cow expert.

Utter Bullshit.

* = Turns out, "Cambridge awards BAs that magically become MAs- for all disciplines". Why? Don't know, but there you go.

Email: Humourology (at) live .co.uk

Twitter: @garwboy

Science and the Media: A personal perspective

Following my last blog, and where at the end I hinted that I would be making my own media appearance soon, I felt it would be appropriate to discuss my own experiences as a scientist who keeps getting involved with the media. Although I think it is a relevant subject for blogging, it also neatly covers the fact that I can't seem to find an article that I feel can be thoroughly satirised or ridiculed.

I've been featured in all types of media now, apart from films. TV, Radio, journals, newspapers, magazines and of course, the global interworldweb, what you're looking at at the moment. So, I feel I have as much right as anyone to comment on the portrayal of scientists in the media, and I'll be honest, I'm not happy with it. You might think it churlish of me, that I'm biting the hand that feeds me, and this would be a good point if at any point in my life I'd actively sought out media exposure.

The weird thing is, I never have. Genuinely. About 90% of my media exposure has been thrust upon me as if by the whim of some wacky God with a questionable sense of humour. The only times it hasn't been, it's been me calling in a favour on behalf of some other friend/project.

I usually get my media gigs by the same route; an email ends up in my inbox, my work or personal one (possibly via my myspace in the past but not so much these days), which says something along the lines of "Hello Dean, we've never met, but I'm X and I work for Y, and we need a scientist to say something about Z for article/show ... Z1... yeah, that works.

This happens surprisingly often. Here's a brief synopsis of some of my media appearances and how they came about.

GLEE TIME (ITV) - I emailed Glee club manager to enquire who the 'local acts' advertised as part of the show were, he said I could do the first night. Unprompted.

'SCIENCE' MAGAZINE - Journalist (the lovely Krista) created a myspace account for the sole purpose of asking if she could profile me, and berated me for being hard to get hold of in the first message.

FUNNY BUSINESS (BBC Wales) - Director Neil gets hold of Dan Mitchell, who assembles us all to discuss it. I end up progressing further in the televised 'contest' than any of us expected, especially me.

SOUTH WALES ECHO - Get called several times by Katie, lovely girl, asking for my contribution to various articles, which oddly continues after she leaves.

BBC RADIO WALES - Get contacted, again out of the blue, by Sarah, who asks me to guest on the Rodri Williams show.

HTV NEWS FEATURE - Email via work, asking for me, discussing the exact same topic mentioned in and echo article a year previously.

BBC RADIO SCOTLAND - Another work email, asking if I'll do a live link-up to a chat with Fred Macaulay and Tim Vine.

I know a lot of comics who would crave such exposure, and I'm genuinely not trying, so I feel bad in a way, but there's not much I can do about it. I think if you type in 'comedian + Neuroscientist' into google, you get me, although I don't know why people keep typing that in.

But anyway, my credentials established, I think the problem with media and science, and this is becoming a laboured point, is one of ignorance. On both sides. Scientists, by and large, either don't understand or don't expect the way 'the media' does things, it goes against their grain. In scientific media, you can't say or do anything without evidence supporting it, or the references to back it up (but then there are those scientists who do it anyway, but they tend to get frowned upon). The Media doesn't work this way. My impression is that scientists try and tell people what they think they people need to know, or should know, whereas the media leans heavily toward telling people what they think they want to hear. These two things rarely overlap.

Case in point. The recent 8 second clip of me on HTV news (it was on Monday, I think I was on for 8 seconds, I don't know because I didn't watch it) was part of a 'humorous' feature on Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year. When I say 'most depressing day of the year' this is according to Dr Cliff Arnil, whom everyone I know has their doubts about. He once taught a night class at Cardiff University centre for life long learning, and has since labelled himself a 'Researcher at Cardiff University'. Hmmm.

His equation is self promoting bollocks he sells to travel agents, sales executives and anyone else without the scientific wherewithal to question it. So, media people lap it up. When the reporter Duncan (nice guy, I'll say that) turned up at my flat (yeah, they come to me, I'm that important) to get footage of the story form the 'scientific perspective', I explained thoroughly why it was bullshit. His expression turned to what can only be described as 'I've dedicated an entire feature to this theory and if this viewpoint ever gets established I'll look like a right arse' expression. But we ploughed on. He allowed me to say it wasn't the most depressing day of the year, that there's no such thing as an absolute most depressing day of the year.

According to people who saw it, in the final edit a bit of that was left in. This is quite impressive. The editing I mean, because I didn't say much else, apart form a crap joke which got pride of place of course.

But this sums up exactly why science and the media don't get on. By the time the scientists are asked to get involved, the media has already decided on the story/report from an understandably ill informed viewpoint. A lot of people have complained that science stories in the media are rarely looked over by trained scientists in the way political or economic stories are. This may be the case, but when you consider that most people who study science go on to become scientists, there's probably a shortfall of science versed people with media jobs. Those scientists who do spend a lot of time with the media are generally ones who are more concerned with self publicity. This is also frowned upon in the scientific circles.

But I think the media does need to give scientists more say in how they're represented, they should give control over what's said about an issue to those who understand it most. The media's obsession with the MMR-Autism link (which doesn't exist) has probably resulted in the deaths of children. Doctors aren't familiar with measles, and it's quite a potent disease, but because some idiot said there might be a link and the media took his side, some child somewhere will not have the vaccine, catch the illness and will be presented to a doctor who doesn't know how to handle it. Assuming this hasn't happened already.

On a lighter note, here's a good example. When I was filming funny business, the fact that I was a comedian-neuroscientist proved to be of interest to the film crew (this is why I get all my exposure, I won't deny it, I'm an oddity). They wanted to film me at work. As it happened, a busy neuroscience lab like the one where I work(ed) isn't really open to filming, a lot of sensitive material and equipment scattered around. But no matter, they just wanted to film me 'doing science' a phrase that I've never really defined.

This ended up with me sat in an empty teaching lab that normally occupies over a hundred students, transferring water from one vial to another with a pipette while they asked questions. Apparently, this looked fine. This is the equivalent of someone being an IT technician in a busy office building, and interviewing him/her sat at a child's desk in an empty warehouse while he plays with a calculator. This wouldn't look fine, but people would see that. And that, I think, is the problem.

Rant done