Archive for the ‘Distractions’ Category

On Thursday we headed over to see Stewart Lee in Harrogate.

The show was opened by Simon Munnery who I have heard twice before – he opened for Stewart Lee last time I went to see him and spoke at the Enquiry conference as well. He was good as ever but doing the almost exact same set as twice before I kind of new which jokes were coming.

Stewart’s set was good, there were some classic moments, but he was trying out new material and so it really didn’t build like his previous show did and while there were some very funny parts, I really felt it didn’t match up to the standard set in York.

It did seem quite a networking event though – I ran into Mike from work who had managed to get a ticket at the last minute, David who I used to work with and Professor Ian Cram who is coming to speak to Atheist Society on Tuesday.

I was thinking about the selective attention videos Jonni was showing me earlier and that lead me on to thinking about some videos I saw many years ago that made me jump.

Such videos to something along similar lines of this: they present to you two identical pictures and ask you to “spot the difference.” Of course there isn’t any and as time goes on your eyes move closer and a closer to the screen as your concentration increases to try and spot the differences you are told are there to be spotted.

Suddenly a ghostly image appears and a scream comes hurtling through your speakers and the majority of people will jump. There is a crude example of such a video here.

This got me thinking, it’s actually quite easy to scare someone. How many times have you walked up behind someone concentrating on a computer screen for them to suddenly realise you are there, jump and claim you “scared the life out of them.” Probably many times.

And yet, horror films continually fail to scare us on a regular basis. When was the last time you watched a horror film that was actually scary? I found Silent Hill had a good attempt but that was a few years ago now and most people found that rather tame. Of course it varies from person to person but most people I talk to, at least among my male friends, claim they haven’t seen a scary movie in a long time. Of course they could just be embarrassed to admit they were scared but for the moment lets take them at their word and assume all recent horror films haven’t scared them.

Surely we must be able to put some science behind this?

Take roller coasters for example. There is a lot of research and engineering that goes into making roller coasters and exhilarating experience. The problem is now that they simply can’t make them go any faster, drop any steeper or throw people around any more than they already do without injuring people.

So, as a friend was explaining to me, they’re now working on techniques to make people feel disoriented. The current avenue of research is to attempt to recreate the feeling we all had when we were children and went rolling down hills (I say children, I would imagine in Michelle’s case, it was last week as I presume it still works 😉 ) and that sensation of tumbling over and over. They can do this already but not without people throwing up everywhere, so the research continues.

I would have thought, in the same way, we could apply new techniques to horror movies rather than just adding even more blood, gore and guts to each film. Maybe they already are of course, but I think so far, the general consensus is that it isn’t working.

Memes are incredible things. One good example I have noticed, is that there are quite a lot of fun facts that survive – despite not even being true, simply because they make a good story. Here are a few of my favourites…

You can see the Great Wall of China from space
Think about it. The United Kingdom is a dot from space, maybe a small blog at best. The city of Leeds is indistinguishable. It’s streets, rivers, buildings, Tesco Extras, all not even a speck. And you think you can see a wall four metres across? Didn’t think so 😀 .

The Americans spent millions developing a zero gravity pen. The Russians used a pencil.
This one is sort of true, but the Americans started out using pencils too. They just found they broke a lot and it’s irritating sharpening a pencil in zero gravity because the shavings go everywhere. It wasn’t like they just didn’t think to use a pencil.

If you put a frog in boiling water it will jump out, but if you heat it up slowly it will just slowly cook alive and won’t notice
Again, this is probably one of those that first makes sense but when you think about it is probably quite unlikely. To prove the point someone did it and found the opposite happens – if you heat the pot up slowly the frog soon jumps out when it gets too hot whereas if you throw it in a pan of boiling water it gets really badly scalded and dies.

On a hot day, it’s better to wearing white
This just isn’t true. This probably originates from the stereotypical image of Saudis wearing all white but many people in the Middle East wear black and are just fine. Actually there is no real evidence that light coloured clothes are any cooler in the warm weather than wearing all black.

Own brand painkillers are just as good as Nurofen
This might surprise the sceptics who read my blog, suprisingly. Actually research shows that Nurofen can often be more effective than own brand painkillers. Not because it is actually any better (they are exactly the same as own brand) but because a lot of people aren’t as sceptical as us and associate the fact that Nurofen has adverts on the telly box with medical efficacy. It is of course nothing more than a placebo effect but a measurable once none the less. Pat yourself on the back if you find the own brand ones just as effective because you know it’s the exact same ingredients – you’re one of us smart people.

In Australia, toilets swirl the other way round
It’s widely believed that when you flush a toilet in the Southern hemisphere it will swirl counter clockwise. But it doesn’t. The fact is the Coriolis effect simply isn’t strong enough to overpower other influences such as the way the drains are laid out, the way the jets are set up to go or even a draft in the bathroom.

Toffee tastes better when manufactured in high altitudes
I’ve tasted Lowland Toffee and it’s just as good.

Coca Cola made Santa Claus red
Smart people know that Santa Claus wasn’t always red. He used to dress in all kind of colours, often, green, until the Coca Cola Company re-branded him in red to fit with their advertising. Even smarter people know that actually, while the Coca Cola Company did go a long way to popularising Santa’s red outfit, the iconic modern image of Santa should really be credited to the American cartoonist Thomas Nast if anyone should receive the honour.

The death penalty still exists in the UK, but only for treason
This is something I hear from time to time although more people are becoming aware of it’s falsity. We actually did still have the death penalty in the UK until 1997 (not that it was ever used any more) but one of the first things New Labour did when coming to power was to see it out of law.

I went to see the new Chris Morris film, Four Lions, on Tuesday. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a “comedy” sort of about Islamic terrorists trying to blow themselves up in London. I say comedy because it isn’t really a comedy, it’s more of a serious drama that happens to be really funny. It’s slapstick humour but set on a backdrop of something as serious as The Hamburg Cell.

It was brilliant.

A lot of people said it was really toned down before it was allowed to be released. However I didn’t feel it was particularly toned down at all (which should make the director’s cut really interesting!). That isn’t to be confused with controversial however – the film certainly was not an attack on Islam, it presented a balanced view.

It was very Chris Morris with some amazing throw away lines and easily misable humour that will no doubt provide many more laughs the second time round (think along the lines of “so much for reported crime – but crime we know nothing about is going up as well”). Well worth going to see.

Yesterday we screened Ben Stein’s Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed documentary which looks at the reaction of the scientific community to intelligent design proponents. It was of course pretty rubbish and didn’t really present much evidence but has plenty of emotional pleas about the future of freedom and of course the obligatory appearance of Godwin’s law in.

Attendance was good for an exam period, at least for those who managed to find us tucked away in the Baines Wing, in the three years I spent running around that campus I think I have only been up there once.

I recently stumbled across the idea of playing Bejeweled again and having brought it up in a conversation with Si a few days later he pointed out it was available for the iPhone too. As a consequence I purchased it and am now highly addicted. Like mega addicted.

It’s almost scary.

I mean, do you remember when that game took over the Enterprise on The Next Generation? In the episode, appropriately named The Game Riker brings back a game from Risa which is so addictive everyone is soon playing it but behind the game there is an evil plot lurking.

It’s easy to dismiss the idea as the science fiction that in that case it indeed is but I am really finding it quite shaking how easy it is to slip into playing Bejeweled all day. Last night I was playing it for hours rather than going to sleep and tonight as I tried to get some work done I was constantly like “I’ll just do this one last level” and say that over and over again at the end of every level.

Forget the Illuminati, the New World Order, the Umbrella or Rossom Corporations. If anyone has the power to bring us to 1984, it’s PopCap Games. Now there is something I wasn’t expecting.

Rage Against The Machine’s “Killing in the Name” beats out the X Factor single to be Christmas number one. Win.

I don’t know Joe McElderry. I’ve never met him. I don’t know what kind of personality he has, whether he is a enjoyable man to be around, funny, charming and interesting or not.

But if I was to guess I would give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he is probably a nice guy. Honest, genuine, just wants to get up there and sing.

Which makes me wonder how situations like this occur.

Look at yourself. You’re throwing darts at somebody else’s head! What kind of sick weirdo does that?

If I was to take a guess I would say a sweet kid who has a great voice on him but isn’t the smartest kid in the class that has been taken by the music industry and turned into a tool for their own use.

That’s why we’re raging against the machine.

Please, please buy Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name this week.

In case there are people out there who haven’t heard about it, there is a campaign to get RATM’s Killing in the Name as the Christmas number 1 in the UK singles chart in an attempt to beat the X Factor single.

I’m sure many of you are either aware or can figure out the reasons why we would want this to happen. X Factor predictably wins every year off the back of a TV show rather than genuine popularity of the music. This is evident from the fact it’s called the X Factor single rather than actually mentioning the song title or artist.

Not to mention the fact that the campaign for Killing in the Name has also raised £30,000 for charity Shelter.

However given you’re smart enough to know all this, what I really want to talk about is whether you should go out and actually buy the song. Many people will probably be thinking that it won’t make a difference and the X Factor single is obviously going to win so it’s pointless buying it.

But it isn’t.

Here are some stats. The Christmas number one normally sells around 400,000 copies, that is around half the number of people in the Facebook group for the campaign. If everyone in the group bought just one copy it would have twice the sales that the X Factor single would have.

Of course you’re thinking that most of the people in the group won’t buy it and so it won’t get nearly that much sales. I thought the same thing but apparently that simply isn’t the case. As well as the group growing exponentially (it’s gained 50,000 members in the past 24 hours) it is actually outselling X Factor currently according to BBC News.

It has been ahead of X Factor on the Amazon, HMV and Play.com sales charts and this afternoon finally overtook X Factor on the iTunes chart as well. It’s winning.

The reason we aren’t counting our chickens just yet though is because the X Factor single comes out in hard copy tomorrow, which is likely to give it a boost in sales.

However physical sales account for only 10% of singles sales these days and according to the BBC News article Killing in the Name is just over 10% ahead currently. This means that with the boost X Factor will get from physical sales it will amost be a dead heat.

Therefore we can draw two conclusions from this. Firstly is that you actually buying the single will actually make a difference as Killing in the Name can win this thing. Secondly it isn’t too far ahead that it makes it pointless you buying it because it’s obviously going to win. It’s going to be very close to the point where you actually buying the single could not make more of a difference.

So there you have it, buy it, it will make a difference. Also if you aren’t aware, it is only 29p on Amazon! For that kind of cash if you bring me your receipt when I next see you, I will actually refund you the cost of buying a single.

For those of you that really want to get involved, while chart rules prevent you from just buying loads of copies for yourself (although one wonders how they would know, especially if you buy from multiple sellers), you can gift extra purcahses to your friends and family. Don’t forget to join the Facebook group and invite all your friends too.

Oh and one final thought in case everything I have written has yet to sway you – just imagine how much Killing in the Name willing will annoy Daily Mail readers 😀 .

Having won tickets to the rugby league Four Nations final, I headed down on Saturday to watch the game. Luckily England had pulled a surprise victory over New Zealand beforehand so had made it through to face Australia in what would hopefully not be a repeat of their first encounter in the competition.

We started off quite well scoring the first try to take an early league and were only trailing by 4 points at halftime. However shortly after the second half had kicked off Australia realised that rather than trying to break our line, if they just kicked the ball past us and ran after it we wouldn’t really know what to do eventually leading them to win 46-16.

Still, no matter how many times you witness it, it’s still funny to watch someone shout advice about the rules to 26 national-level professional players whose job it is to play the sport and several officials whose job it is to marshall the sport even though they are at the other side of a 40,000 seater stadium.

All in all I have to say I really enjoyed it, I thought I would get bored at some point during the match but I never did. Although I did lose the £1 I had wagered on the match even with Australia having a 12 point handicap. Gutted.