musings of a misanthrope

21st Century Darwinism, part 2

2011-02-09T14:02:00.002Z

Following on from my previous post about how morons who spend half their time gawping at their cellphones can on occasion remove themselves from the gene pool, I was somewhat cheered to read this article in the Metro this morning.

"Ryan Robbins, 19, plunged seven storeys from a building in Melbourne, Australia, as he sent a text arranging to meet a friend.
Grandmother Patricia Schroeter said: ‘Unfortunately, he was watching his phone instead of where he was walking. The barriers are not high enough’."

So, although you concede that he wasn't looking where he was going, it's still the fault of the barrier. The barrier which nobody else in the history of the car park has managed to fall over. Of course. Clearly we should live in a world where every stupid action we could possibly make should be pre-empted and compensated for. Maybe we should brick up every window above the ground floor of every building, just in case we're too busy texting to notice them there? While we're at it, as I previously observed, many people like to text (or even read the paper for fuck's sake) whilst walking along the street. So to make things safe for them, we should remove all lamp posts, post boxes, street signs and trees so they can do that without risk of injury. Oh, and probably cars, too.

The real tragedy of this is that there will be almost nobody who takes on board the obvious message of this story. But as I said before, if the highest price we pay is that a percentage of the world's unaware morons cease to exist, I can live with that.

Legislation vs. Natural Selection

2011-01-28T09:36:00.019Z

Something that caught my eye this morning was this article regarding New York Senator Carl Kruger's current attempt to ban the use of handheld electronic devices whilst crossing the street in New York City.

(A brief digression here: I think Carl Kruger is a pretty cool guy, because he also joined 12 other NYC assemblymen in sucessfully petitioning American Express to rescind the merchant status of Holocaust denier and general all-round neo-nazi prick David Irving in 2009).

Anyway, as someone who frequently (and by "frequently", I really do mean "at least 4 times a week on average") gets knocked, bumped and elbowed by unobservant morons whose entire attention is devoted to gawping blankly at their mobile phone whilst walking along the fucking street, I was, at first, quite excited by the prospect of someone in authority actually recognising this unpleasant 21st century phenomenon for the dangerous inconvenience that it is, and attempting to do something about it.

Admit it, you're rooting for the truck to plough into her car just as much as I am.

However, I'm now reconsidering my position on this. Let me explain. If you've read the article, you'll have noticed that the Senator cited a rise in "accidents stemming from pedestrian distraction," including the death of a 21-year-old man crushed by a Mack truck while listening on headphones to music and a woman "engrossed in conversation on her cell phone walking straight into a park fountain."

To me, these kinds of "accidents" are merely examples of the natural selection process for the modern world. In the past, early man's threats came mostly from extreme climactic conditions and dangerous predators. Over time, as we've found ways of coping with our environment (wearing clothing, building shelter, not living amongst dangerous wildlife and so forth), these threats have been somewhat neutralised for most of our species (no, I don't need 300 emails pointing out the threats faced by African tribesmen and sub-arctic eskimos etc., or the dangers of current climate change. Don't be pedantic, you get my point). This is a simple process called "adaptation", and one of the basic phenomena of biology. It's also part of the natural selection process; as you'd expect, those species (or members of a species) who fail to adapt are generally removed from the gene pool as a result. Obviously within the modern world there are fresh challenges to our continued survival, which include, for example, Mack trucks and large concrete structures such as park fountains.

I think you're getting my point by now. Our advances in technology are fantastic and amazing, and the use of hand-held devices has changed the way we work, play and interact forever; but the price of such technology should not be the sacrifice of your own personal awareness. So how does this relate to Kruger's proposed legislation? Well, as I said at the start of this post, at first the idea of legislating against this seemed appealing to me; it appeared that the problem of unawareness had become widespread enough to be noticeable, and possibly even to warrant action being taken against it. On the other hand: fuck 'em. If your level of awareness is so low that you can't even stop staring at your phone for the 20 seconds or so it takes to cross a street, then maybe you deserve to end up being a red smear on the asphalt (incidentally, for an interesting article about awareness by an evolutionary psychiatrist, see here). Unfortunately, I doubt that a $100 fine will suddenly drag peoples' attention away from the glowing screen in the palm of their hand and make them take notice of the world around them, so I'm forced to conclude that nature is just trying to do what it always does; remove those who are unable to cope with their environment from the gene pool. Or to put it another way: I'm not saying we should make stupidity a capital crime, but can't we just take the warning labels off everything and let the problem solve itself?

I could go on about this particular topic all day, but just to emphasise the level of ignorance we're talking about here, I'll leave you with this absolutely true story. This happened to me on Oxford Street, London in the middle of a weekday. For those who don't know, this is what Oxford Street looks like on an averagely busy lunchtime:

Yes, I sometimes have to walk down this. Any questions about the title of this blog now?

You get the idea. Anyway, there I am walking along, picking my way through the crowd and trying my hardest not to wish for the immediate death of all humanity, when I spot a woman coming towards me, head down, Blackberry clamped in her paw, obviously mid-text. On Oxford Street. At lunchtime. Now, misanthrope I may be, but I try not to be a total prick (all the time), so I try and angle myself to my left to avoid her. As if tracked by radar, she starts to drift (still not looking where she's going) in the same direction. We're getting pretty close now, and there's not a lot of time left for evasive manoeuvers, but I try moving back to the right, and I swear - I couldn't make this up - she drifts back in that direction too. It's too late now, and BAM, she walks straight into my chest, actually hitting me with the crown of her head first because her head is so craned down at her phone.

Now comes the good bit. And by "good", obviously I mean "utterly fucking unbelievable", as she looks up at me, screws her face into an expression of contempt and sneers "Look where you're going!". I thought I knew what the word "nonplussed" meant up until this point, but suddenly I found myself with an entirely new definition of it. Seriously, such a perfectly illogical experience really can't be put into words that do it justice, so here's a big space instead.

I'd have made it bigger, but that'll do for illustrative purposes. Anyhow, I eventually managed to stammer the words "I'm not the one walking down Oxford Street STARING AT MY FUCKING PHONE" (I say stammer, but the last five words were pretty much roared directly into her face). She snarled something back at me ("fuck off" or the like), since I'd now obviously injured her ego by pointing out how much of an utter fucking moron she was, and we parted ways; me to reflect on the deep abyss that is the human capacity for ignorance and her to (hopefully) get hit by a Mack truck and thrown into a fountain.

Should of, could of, would of

2011-01-19T13:44:00.015Z

I promised you a follow up rant about these particular crimes against English, and so here it is. I'm aware that I'm not the first, nor shall I be the last to have their blood run a little colder upon reading this phrase (29,000 Google results goes some way to restoring my faith in humanity), but its recent rise in usage is somethind I find interesting (read: scary and depressing).

The first and most significant thing that strikes me about this abuse of the language is that it's purely a written phenomenon. I'm assuming that if you're reading this, you're a smart person, and like me, you can see that it originates from a mishearing of the correct contraction "should've". Now, I can understand someone hearing that, and, without paying too much attention, believing that they just heard "should of" (see this page for an interesting experiment which demonstrates just how unobservant we actually are in everyday life) and not really giving any thought to the grammatical implications of the phrase. Fine. Lazy, but understandable. The real problem arises once we write the phrase down. There's really no excuse for not reading what you've written, and even the most cursory of glances should reveal that the words "could of" make no fucking sense.

I don't mean there's an ambiguity, or that it could charitably be percieved as one of those little quirks of English that occasionally confuse non-native (and sadly, far too many indigenous) speakers. No. It just (in bold again, because this is the really salient point) makes no fucking sense.

If you don't trust me, surely you can trust the Beatles:

See? Even Scousers could get it right. I hope you're ashamed of yourself.

Seriously though, the reason it doesn't work is because "of" is a preposition, and simply cannot, under any circumstances, magically transform into part of an auxiliary verb. English just doesn't work like that. If it did, sentence construction would be impossible as we'd have no shared frame of reference with which to communicate.

Language does evolve, of course; hence the reason why you're not reading sentences like "ne ġelǣd þū ūs on costnunge ac ālȳs ūs of yfele" on this blog. But it evolves slowly and methodically, and in keeping with its already-established rules. Sure, new words enter the language every year, and we're linguistically much richer for (most of) them; but altering the meaning of some of the oldest words in the language (seriously; both of and shall are over 1100 years old) simply out of laziness or complicity is just shit.

If you use "sleeps" as a plural noun, I'm going to kill you.

2011-01-18T12:51:00.006Z

Well, not really. But I can't be the only person out there for whom this nauseatingly twee phrase evokes a feeling akin to biting down hard on a frozen fork wrapped in several sheets of tinfoil. When did this become popular?

First of all, what's wrong with the word "days"? If I'm excited about something happening the day after tomorrow, I'm going to put it... well, just like that. "I'm excited about something happening the day after tomorrow". Or even "Only two days until that thing I'm looking forward to". But two more sleeps? That's as stupid as saying "Two more lunches", "Two more daily routines", " A few shits" (actually, I kind of like this one) or "Fourteen more furious masturbation sessions to re-runs of 'The Onedin Line' on the Yesterday channel".

This is also not withstanding the fact that you may be wrong on a technical level as well. What if you take an afternoon nap at some point between your "two sleeps"? How about if insomnia strikes, and you sit wide-eyed through the night, staring into the murky gloom around you, pondering the utter futility of your insignificant existence (or, more likely, since you're the kind of vacuuous cunt who uses phrases like "two more sleeps", you'll be mentally cataloguing your Forever Friends bear collection and worrying about Jordan and Alex's forthcoming divorce)?

I've been trying, during the course of writing this post, to google around and see if I can find any other opinions about this particular (mis)use of English to either back up my argument or point and laugh at, but due to the somewhat common nature of the word, it's rather hard to do so. For what it's worth, dictionary.com only has the verb form of "sleep" pluralised in its extensive listing, and as far as I can see, doesn't contain any official source for the pluralisation of the noun. Not, of course, that correct grammar is any obstacle to the kind of person likely to use "sleeps" as a noun; indeed, in my experience, they're precisely the sort of semi-literate dick who'll also use "should of" or "would of" (an even larger bugbear of mine, but I'll have another misanthropic rant about that some other time).

So what do we do about this? Unfortunately, summary execution is rather frowned upon in polite society these days, and since the dictatorships that existed during the mid-part of the last century have given the concept of the re-education camp a bad name, our options are somewhat limited. I'm going to have to think it over, and I'll get back to you in four shits, three breakfasts, a change of clothes and two wanks. Or possibly sooner.

Whatever happened to simple porn?

2010-08-13T10:42:00.008+01:00

I started this week off by promising myself that I'd try and discover some surprising facts on the internet. However, this idea quickly became derailed, as the most surprising thing I've discovered is that there's other stuff on the internet besides porn. This is akin to a revelation for me. Suddenly a whole new world has opened up, one that doesn't involve laboriously laying clingfilm over my keyboard before switching my computer on. And, frankly, I'm glad.

In seriousness though, one of the problems that I'm sure we've all found with internet porn is that it's just too damn accessible. You want Korean midgets vomiting into each others' mouths? *click* Your fetish is albino amputee watersports? *click* (and no, I'm not linking either of those things. Find them yourself. I had to.)

In fact, I don't actually believe that half of these fetishes existed before the fucking internet was invented. On the one hand, we can be grateful for the new employment opportunities this has provided (particularly for Korean midgets and incontinent albino amputees, two sadly under-represented groups in my place of employment at least) - but it's also raising the masturbatory bar somewhat. Doesn't anybody just find normal naked ladies enough anymore? When I was a young horny teenager, back before we all knew what an "internet" was, you basically had the choice between Razzle, Escort, Mayfair, and Penthouse. All variations on a theme; a lady (or two) in a reasonably nondescript setting showing her vagina to the camera. Straightforward and to the point, if somewhat uninspired.

Actually, if I can digress for a minute here (and of course I can, it's my fucking blog), it's probably worth mentioning the eye-opening experience that was a trip to the Netherlands at the age of 18. The image that's seared into my recollections from that trip is of visiting a sex shop somewhere in Eindhoven, and seeing a magazine which, my memory swears to me, was called "Gay Schoolboy Dog". As far as titles go, I can't fault it for accuracy; indeed, the content was exclusively photos of male dogs dressed up in school uniforms having gay dog sex with each other. Two things struck me about this at the time; firstly, "Who is this for?", and secondly, "If this is the stuff on the shelves, what the fuck do they keep underneath the counter?". Fortunately, I never got to answer that question, as the proprietor looked somewhat less than impressed with a quartet of giggling English teenagers in his shop and encouraged us to leave.

So I guess that some of these kinky fetishes were around before the birth of the web, but it would seem that you had to put more effort in to find them. This also raises the question whether the internet is actually diversifying our sexual tastes to an extreme level by making things we might not have previously found erotically stimulating so accessible.

I'm concerned that it'll get to the point where my girlfriend and I are in bed, things are getting a bit frisky... and suddenly I'll be all "look, this isn't really working for me... can you hold on while I fetch a monkey wrench, two alsatians and a bucket of creosote?"

I can see that having a negative impact on the relationship.

Some thoughts for election day

2010-05-06T10:42:00.001+01:00

* Do vote if you can. But if you don't want to, don't buy that crap about "people died for your right to vote, so you must". Those people died for freedom, which includes the freedom to choose not to vote.

* Our democracy is flawed, but we should always be grateful for the fact we have any choice. Even if it's between a giant douche and a turd sandwich.

*Try not be surprised when things don't change much in the next few years. Whatever party these people belong to, they're still politicians which means a) they're all cut from the same mould, and b) they're not to be trusted. Which leads to:

* It's all a big game. It's not a very fun game if you're on the poverty line and dealing with real-world issues while these privileged politicos are spouting their rhetoric; but it's all a game nonetheless. Don't take it personally.

*My final thought, and perhaps the most important: Whoever wins this election is going to have one of the smallest majorities in recent history. This is the leverage that we, the people, can use against our next government. Let them be terrified of defying our will.
NEVER FORGET: These people are our SERVANTS, not our leaders. We should make sure that the next government is reminded that the very root of the word that they bandy about so carelessly, "democracy", means "by the people". No more phony wars in the face of mass opposition. No more financial irregularities, either in the economy, or from MPs themselves. What we give we can take away; but solidarity is the key.

Have a fun day.

A correction

2010-02-02T23:52:00.002Z

I wrote in an earlier post "no-one reads this blog anyway". Now, mostly they don't, because I don't publicise or link it much. And that's all good.

But I wrote the above quoted sentence before noticing the 43 comments that have been left on a post I made just over a year ago about removing a particularly sneaky bit of malware. Seems that my original intention (to get in the Google search results for people suffering the same predicament as I did a year ago) was pretty successful, and I'm very pleased that the advice I provided seems to have helped several people. Gives one a nice warm glow inside, it does. I've even found my removal guide copypasta'd onto several forums (judicious Google searching for key phrases and all that).

So to those who visited (or even are still visiting) as a result of having picked up that nasty virus-trojan-malware-thing; thanks for your comments, and I'm very glad I was able to be of assistance. I'm not a technical support guy though, so I'm sorry that I can't really help with some of the more detailed questions that a few of you left - in fact, the point behind my post was to try and outline the solution in vaguely layman-ish terms for the intermediate level user. Anyway, I'm just glad it helped.

iDon'tthinkso

2010-01-28T13:37:00.010Z

I've always been a bit of a fence-sitter when it comes to the whole "Mac vs PC" thing. Having worked for some years in the professional audio industry I've come to appreciate the stability of Macs when used as the core of a DAW or digital studio. I'm also very aware of their shortcomings, and I often find myself missing the simple things I can do on my PC when using a Mac. I'm definitely a PC user, but I appreciate the strength of Apple for certain applications.

I also own an iPhone (3GS 16GB if you care), and I think it's great. As a mobile device/smartphone, it's fantastically functional, and while some of the idiosyncrasies (such as the lack of Flash support) can be irritating, overall it's pretty much the greatest phone I've ever had. No hyperbole.

All of this is preamble to the question I find myself asking this morning, following the much anticipated release of the Apple iPad. And that question is:

"Why would I want to buy one of these?"

I can't see any reason to purchase an iPad other than sheer "must-have" mentality. Sure, it looks very nice, all slick lines and shiny glass (I'm not being facetious here, these are things that I really appreciate on the iPhone), but can it actually fulfil any of its raisons d'etre better than the alternative devices on the market?

The answer, simply is no. Let's look at how Apple are touting it.

"The best way to experience the web, email, photos and video. Hands down"

Whoa there, Steve. That's some pretty big talk there. But I'm guessing since you're saying these things, that this new device must be at least as good as, if not better than, the highest-end browsers and web interfaces, and offer total functionality?

Unfortunately not. For me, the best way to experience the web is for all the elements on any page I choose to visit to be available to me. And since the iPad, like the iPhone and iPod touch, offers no support for Adobe Flash, users had better get used to seeing this little icon. A LOT.

While we're on the subject, the lack of Flash also somewhat scuppers the whole "best way to experience video" claim, as something like 80% of the web's video is flash based. So no Hulu, DailyMotion, Google Video, Vimeo, Megavideo...basically anything that's not YouTube.

Speaking of video, I don't consider 4:3 to represent "the best way to experience" it. That's right folks, the iPad's display is in that quaint, but horrendously outdated format. Must be Jobs' tip of the hat to "retro". I'm joking of course. But it's still in 4:3, and no amount of wishing it was 16:9 or 16:10 is gonna make it so.

How about "the best way to experience email", then?

Well, like many people, a significant percentage of the emails I receive contain attachments. Audio files, office documents, spreadsheets and so forth. And while I am pleased to see that it apparently offers file attachment support (a step up from the mail application on the iPhone), it's limited to certain document types: .jpg, .tiff, .gif (images); .doc and .docx (Microsoft Word); .htm and .html (web pages); .key (Keynote); .numbers (Numbers); .pages (Pages); .pdf (Preview and Adobe Acrobat); .ppt and .pptx (Microsoft PowerPoint); .txt (text); .rtf (rich text format); .vcf (contact information); .xls and .xlsx (Microsoft Excel). This is actually pretty laudable, but it's hardly a comprehensive list of all the file types one might receive attached to an email. Notable by their absence from this list are compressed file types such as .rar or .zip, as well as many of the audio file types that I need to send and receive.

On the subject of audio files, I also note from Apple's page of features, that it functions as an iPod as well. No problem with this per se, except that I already own an iPhone 16GB, so I don't really need something four times the size to listen to my music collection, thanks.

So, you've used your iPad to download the attachments that you got sent in your email, and fortunately for you, they're just a couple of jpegs and a word document. Awesome! So, if you can just stick them on a USB memory stick, you can take a copy to pr... ...oh. Where's the USB port again? I mean, I see the ridiculous 30-pin proprietory Apple interface, sure, but... maybe it's on the back... no.

This has been, and remains my main gripe with Apple's products: You are forced to use iTunes or other Apple software to interface with them. In the case of the iPhone it's particularly annoying, as by default you can only synchronise the content to one computer (there are workarounds for this, in all fairness, but they are somewhat involved and complicated). I discovered this the hard way, when I had the smart idea of adding some of the mp3s from my work computer to the iPhone's library in addition to the 700 or so I'd put on already at home. iTunes was happy to do that for me, sure; and cheerfully wiped every song I'd already put on the thing. Thanks Apple! I can see how this would make life so much simpler for everyone! Why be troubled keeping all the data you've meticulously stored on a device previously when you can wipe it all at the touch of a button? Much easier, and a lot fewer of those annoying mp3s to have to manage. Sweet.

If Apple have designed the iPad in the same way (and with it running on iPhone OS, there's reason to believe they have), then this hammers the nail into its coffin as far as it having any use as a business device goes. First, you need to have remembered your interface cable. Next, the computer you want to connect to must have iTunes installed. (yeah, I can see that being a popular idea with IT departments across the globe). Finally (and this part, I admit is conjecture), it might well "synchronise" your device with that copy of iTunes, clearing your files off it. I hope I'm wrong here.

Ahem. At this point I've just realised that I could go on about the lack of multitasking, the absence of any camera (after all, why would you want to use a $600 tablet computer for video conferencing, Skype or chat?), the maximum of 64GB storage space and so forth, but I don't want to start sounding whiny (I know, too late) - so I'll just say that while I can't see what I'd want it for, plenty of people are bound to buy it, use it and love it. And, no doubt, sit smugly on the underground, flaunting it.

Annual Blog Post

2010-01-15T11:58:00.002Z

I remembered today that I had this blog. Not bad going for me, only forgetting something for a year. Mind you, no-one reads this anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter that much.

Fake Security Center Alert Win32.zafi.b

2009-01-07T11:22:00.006Z

Since it took me a while (and a lot of pointless system scanning) to find the solution to this problem, I'm gonna leave this here in the hope that it'll pop up in search results for other people with the same issue.

If you've come across this, you may be experiencing what happened to me: A supposedly legitimate "Windows Security Center" box warning you about a trojan on your computer, and telling you that you need to download new software to be properly protected. Of course, if you click the link, it takes you to a site which will download lots of nasty spyware onto your machine.

I had this last night. As I'm sure you realise by now, it's not a genuine Windows alert, but an attempt to con you into downloading malware. So first, don't download the stuff it's telling you to.

It took me a fair bit of searching to find the solution for this, but mercifully it's really quite simple to remove manually (interestingly enough, neither Ad-Aware or MB Anti-Malware picked up the problem when scanning).

Removal (This guide is for XP, the directories may be different for other OS's, so you might have to do some digging if you're not on XP)

1. Go to C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR USERNAME\Application Data\Google

2. In there you should see two files, one an .exe and the other a .dll. The actual filenames are randomly generated I believe
(mine were called ocboo1892823.exe and sysspc.dll, for example). Depending on whether you have any Google apps such as Google Earth or Google Toolbar installed you might also have a couple of sub-directories in there as well, but you can ignore those. We're concentrating on those two rogue .exe and .dll files.

3. Since the process is currently runnning on your machine, Windows probably won't let you delete the files, so you need to write down the names (you'll need this in a minute as well) reboot in Safe Mode (or Safe Mode Command Prompt if you're paranoid like me ;), navigate to the aforementioned folder and delete those two files, the .exe and the .dll. Quit safe mode and reboot into normal Windows again.

4. Go to Start> Run> regedit to open the Registry Editor. In the Registry Editor, go to Edit > Find and search for the filename of the malicious .exe file you just deleted (this is why you just wrote them down). You can safely delete any registry key that refers to it. Don't forget to press F3 to keep searching after you delete each instance, until you get the message "Finished searching through the registry". Repeat for the other file (the .dll). Once this is done, you should be all clear, but it's still worth rebooting and running full anti-virus and anti-malware scans on your machine.

It's not the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine)

2008-09-09T13:28:00.006+01:00

Aargh. Aargh and thrice aargh. Is there any issue that has spawned more underinformed and retarded speculation in the past 6 months than the Large Hadron Collider? In case you haven't got a clue what I'm talking about, the LHC is an enormous particle accelerator - the largest ever built in fact - in Switzerland, which physicists intend to use to study elementary particles, search for clues as to the nature of the universe and expand on current Quantum theory. Pretty cool stuff, huh?

Some people don't think so. Amongst technophobes and doomsday nuts, there's a solid belief that this machine could cause the end of the world - a belief that's unfortunately become magnified by the attention of the media (who woulda thunk it?). A little fear and scepticism is understandable; quantum physics is one of the most confusing and difficult subjects around, and few outside the scientific community can claim to have any real understanding of it. After all, when Columbus set off for the Americas, many people expected him to sail off the edge of the earth; likewise, when the first nuclear tests were conducted, there was a popular fear that the explosions could ignite the earth's atmosphere. So it's not entirely irrational to be a bit scared of the advent of "new science". Likewise, it is flawed logic to claim that because Columbus didn't fall off the planet and the first nukes didn't evaporate the atmosphere, subsequent research won't have potentially harmful results. However, there's several convincing arguments as to why the LHC is a beneficial thing, and that it poses a minimal risk to humanity, which I'd like to collate here. Please note, I'm not a particle physicist; but then, neither are any of the people who are claiming that the LHC will destroy us all.

1. The types of experiment that will be conducted with the LHC are nothing new.

Scientists have been conducting particle collision experiments for many years now, using the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. Sceptics and paranoiacs said the same things about the RHIC when it was built - "it will destroy the earth, it will create black holes, it will replicate the big bang and kill us all". It didn't.

2. Particle collisions of the type which will be conducted in the LHC happen all the time in space.

What's more, the collisions that take place in space often involve much larger energy levels than those which the LHC (or any particle accelerator currently within our capacity to create) is capable of. Our continued existence is a reassuring proof that these collisions do not result in catastrophic events.

3. The LHC won't be "recreating" the Big Bang.

At least, not in the sense that science fiction might make you expect. When we hear about how particle accelerators are used to study conditions similar to those at the creation of the universe, we tend to picture a "mini big bang" being created within them. This isn't the case. The similarities are that by colliding hadrons at these speeds, the reactions caused may yield particles in a similar elementary state to those present at or near the origin of the universe. The idea that the LHC could create a new universe is, frankly, rubbish.

But what will the LHC do to benefit us? After all, it's costing a phenomenal amount of money and making a lot of people scared. Well, so does the U.S. Government. But unlike the U.S. Government, the LHC may actually have some benefits for us as a species.

According to Stephen Hawking (who I personally would tend to trust on these matters), the LHC should provide some interesting answers about the structure of space-time and the universe around us - or at the very least, raise more questions which will provide the basis for further developments in quantum physics. So essentially, whatever happens when they switch it on tomorrow will help increase our understanding of the universe we live in. The one thing it won't do is end it.

Things that don't go together

2008-09-09T09:45:00.002+01:00

I'm sure we can all think of some. Sumo suits and saunas, thumb tacks and bare feet, electricity and water, Oasis and talent... the list goes on. But this one wins it for me.

I kid you not, these two organisations share a building in Notting Hill. Yes, I'm aware that leprosy doesn't carry the stigma that it once did, nor is it anywhere near as infectious as was once believed. But would you really send your kids to this ballet school?

Summer's here, summer's gone

2008-09-08T15:19:00.005+01:00

Well, this post marks a milestone; I've given up my quest to be "least frequent blogger on the entire interweb". Whether that's a good or bad thing remains to be seen, but as you can see, the attempt on the world record for "least amusing blogger" proceeds in earnest.

Oh, self-deprecating humour, how post-post modern. Or just crap. You decide.

Anyway. This is always a bit of a tricky time of year for me (and, I suspect, most people involved in education), as the summer holidays are over and work has begun again with a vengeance. Don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting sympathy after the two month paid holiday I've just had; but that holiday seems like a wonderful dream now. One that ended abruptly with me waking up to find myself still strapped to the gurney in the prison hospital while sadistic guards perform nasty tests on me with pointy things.

Nonetheless, I console myself (and what a consolation this is) with the fact that this friday I'm going to see Stevie Wonder at the O2 Arena (that's the Millenium Dome for those of you who fondly remember the government spunking £750million of our money up against the wall to produce this half-arsed project in the first place). Funnily enough, it's exactly a year to the day since I saw Prince at the same venue for approximately half the cost of this gig. What does Stevie need the extra £35 for? Guide dog food? Genius insurance? That said, I'd probably have paid double again to see him, as he is one of the singularly most talented human beings on the planet. (Please, no jokes about "you're going to see him but he's not going to see you". Again.)

Recently, I've started defacing money again - as blogged by my dear friend San ns e, which led to an interesting IRC discussion about the legality of drawing on the Queen; is it treason? Is it even wrong? To my mind neither, but according to the Currency and Banknot es Act 1928, one could face a penalty of up to £25. Compare this to the same US law, under which you could end up doing six months in prison, and it starts to get a bit scary. Bear in mind too, that as that's a federal law, that means 6 months in a nasty federal penetentiary; that's right, the same place where they send rapists, murderers and serial killers. Can you say "disproportionate", kids?

Fortunately, the likelihood of actually being prosecuted for this "crime" is next to none; unless you're foolish enough to sidle up to a cop and offer them one of your freshly-defaced banknotes as a bribe, in which case, you probably deserve that 6 months just for being so damn stupid.

I would like to know hat happens to my creations after I send them out in to the world; have they already been destroyed by the Royal Mint as invalid currency? Are they still in circulation, making their way across the country and entertaining people whose path they cross (my preferred hypothesis) ? I'd even like to think that maybe they've been collected by someone who doesn't have to spend them. I'm considering signing the back of my notes with a url to see if people will leave me messages updating me on their progress in a similar fashion to wheresgeorge.com. Maybe.

I never said I'd be updating daily

2008-03-10T15:01:00.007Z

Good thing, too, because I'm clearly not going to be doing that. No, I've been busy. Actually, I've been Busy, with a capital B, to emphasis just how Busy I've Been.

Actually, "been" shouldn't have been capitalised there. That was just a typo.

"But what have you been busy (sorry, Busy) with?"

Good question. I'm not entirely sure where all the time's gone myself. I've spent the usual 37 hours a week at work of course, but those don't count. Well, they do count towards the "Busy" thing, but in terms of My Larger Life (look, more capitals, folks!), my job is somewhat on the irrelevant side.

At work, however, I have been busy working on the musical that the Director of Drama is staging in two weeks' time. Those of you who know me know how much I hate musicals; thus, every work day is even more of a Living Hell than ever these days. Fortunately, I'm able to counterbalance this by not actually caring; but don't tell the boss.

Also, I shouldn't leave without mentioning my extreme satisfaction at Portsmouth FC's qualification for the FA Cup semi finals; I'm not sure whether I'm happier about the qualification, or the fact that we managed to piss Alex Ferguson off so magnificently. Let's say both.

sigh

2008-02-24T01:29:00.001Z

so i figured i'd get a blog again. why not.

let me point out that nothing much interesting happens to me, so i don't expect it to be of much interest to anyone else; however, i guess it would be nice to start keeping some kind of record of what i've been doing, since i don't write a diary or anything like that, and my memory is... well, let's be generous, sketchy.

so i guess this is partly for me to be able to keep track of what i've been doing (god knows i've lost enough memories already over the years), and also some kind of insurance in case i'm ever questioned by the police in connection with an investigation. i'm not the kind of person who often gets in trouble with the police, you understand, but i do have a morbid dread of being asked questions like "so where were you on the night of june 21st 2007", as i'd have no fucking clue whatsoever, and would probably end up doing a 20-life stretch purely for being a bit daft.

oh and one other reason; other people seem to think i'm funny.

yeah, i know. i don't believe it either, but maybe that tells you something about the kind of people i hang around with.