Open reply to 'THE GREATEST BRIEF EVER FILED' by LegalEagle

16:40 "You'd have to be pretty dumb to think that the Facebook posts were real and also criminal" - LegalEagle

Caveat emptor. Unacceptable.


Date started: 08/11/22                Date completed: 08/11/22                Date published: 08/11/22


'THE GREATEST BRIEF EVER FILED' - LegalEagle (posted 02/11/22)
https://youtu.be/LxTWonQvXkw


What a horrendous failure to advocate for the innocent, that this video is. In sharp contrast, a staple of anti-fraud advocacy, is to remind potential victims, and especially those who gloat at victims, that anyone can be tricked. Even the great Jim Browning.

This video is a betrayal of all that we have worked for, in defending people from crooks. In it, LegalEagle sides with The Onion (a USAian satirical website) in defence of a man called 'Novak' (their surname) supposedly to defend satire/parody, by claiming that a 'reasonable' person would know that Novak were not the police department he was pretending to be.

The rest of this article shall be written as if a personal address:


It is simply not good enough, to shift the burden of responsibility onto the victims of deception. The man, Novak, deceived people - there was nothing available to indicate to a 'reasonable' man, that he were not a real police department in the USA.

I mean, let's face it - serial killing is one of the USA's national sports - of course they can have a "pedophile reform event", amongst the other things alleged by Novak. It's the USA. Do you seriously expect everyone in the world to have the same doe-eyed national prejudices as you?

Anyone in the world could read what Novak said, and reasonably think "well, that concords with the other things i've read/heard about America, therefore it's more genuine horribleness. I hear they're serial killers of Blacks, therefore Pedo-s too".

What you call 'reasonable' in others is not a product of reason - it's convenient prejudice.

Your own video opened with a racist conspiracy theory that because most people in an area are racistly profiled as 'White' that therefore the authorities are deliberately segregating people. Do you actually believe that the universe is run by a hyper-competent cadre of Straight White Male Jews? Is believing that conspiracy theory, what you think 'reasonable' is?

The only way for a 'reasonable' man to always spot lies about the USA, would be for the term 'reasonable' to mean 'omniscient'. And yet you, an advocate for 'caveat emptor' as an excuse for parody/satire (which is not even a necessary excuse) are evidently not scient of the fact that people self-segregate.

The USA provides much evidence of that - be it racist self-segregation into so-called 'black communities' or sexuality-segregation into the 'pink quarter' of a city, or class-segregation to be with fellow golfers, or religious segregation to be with people who wear the right clothes on sunday, people float towards those they regard as kith. And yet you assume that the demographic heterogeneity of Cleveland must be the product of an Illuminati-esque design. "You'd have to be pretty dumb to think that the Patriarchy are real and also criminal" (not sic) or do you disagree?


Being a foreigner, i have no emotional attachment to the police of Parma, or anyone else The Onion has parodied or sided against. As a connoisseur of comedy however, i have some emotional attachment to The Onion (i find it easy to laugh at many of their articles - though not the ones based on peculiarly American beliefs) but their attitude that people should just know that parody is parody is not even close to being OK.

That is the defence of scammers, to say "You should have known. An intelligent person would have done" and then not to bother enunciating the follow-up of "You basically deserved to lose your life savings". I have no love for that sentiment, and no man can do so with reason.

All we can see of Novak is someone impersonating the police. There was no evidence to the contrary. Incredulity is not an argument! You might think that your incredulity is equivalent to being 'reasonable' but it is not.

All that you have called "jokes" are not jokes, without the framework of comedy in which a joke could exist. Without the basic framework of set-up lines and punchline, there is no joke - be it literary, auditory, or even sensory - for example, a dessert that looks like fruit, but tastes of bacon. Set-up: here's some fruit. Punchline: lawl, it's bacon. Expectations subverted. Laughter ensues.


If you are going to permit any deceitful, or doubt-manufacturing, content to be called 'a joke' then you set a dangerous precedent on the subject of propaganda. After all, there are myriad bigots who've retrospectively developed a sense of humour to excuse a recently-publicised remark/action that were too bigoted for them to get away with.

If it were legal precedent to excuse all dishonesty that were at the expense of other people, even strangers who know nothing of the motives of their slander/libel, on the grounds of a retroactive statement that "that was a joke" then no harrassment by so-called journalists (rumour mill merchants) could be challenged. No gaslighting by charlatans could be challenged. No governments could be held to account for lying about policies, as their promises could be dismissed with "Oh, that was just a joke - you'd have to be pretty dumb to think that we'd actually give you healthcare!" (again, not sic)

The natures of such statements are indistinguishable from the statements of Novak, based on available information. I implore you - don't pressure others to be worse - pressure parodiers to be better. Here is an example (from your video) of The Onion needing to be pressured to be better...

There is plenty of parody in the world that does not require explicit statements, in order for the audience to know that it is parody. Take a novel, for example. Pick a novel up, and you already have its fictional nature before your eyes. Go to see a stand-up comedian, and you know it's comedy - it's even written on your ticket, if you struggle to discern that from your environs, and need a hint.

Not all information is communicated explicitly, but some information must be communicated to allow others to discriminate between cases: sincere, or satire.

In The Onion's case they really should do so. Other parodiers have made explicit statements. What would The Onion lose by doing it? Their pride? Maybe they're not really pretending to be arrogant at all. Maybe you're gullible for assuming they're self-aware, because really they believe that they're the best news service in the world. Without evidence, you have nothing by which to realise their arrogance, or lack thereof.

Here are some examples of Britons showing you and The Onion how to be honest:

{NewsThump}

{The Spoof}

{The Daily Mash}

{NewsBiscuit}

 
None of the people who run these web-sites have any difficulty being funny, while also being honest that their intention is to be funny. If you're not good enough at being funny to be honest at the same time, then get better!


I can see why The Onion's defending Novak - it's because they've made the same mistakes, so they feel like they're justifying themselves as well, and what they do for a living. They don't want to lose that living.

But on your part, instead of excusing the sociopathic abuse of 'caveat emptor' as a principle, you could be encouraging better practice in parody/satire, and you could be encouraging the communication of this essential information, which separates comedians from con-artists: the fact that you're joking.

Facts are established with evidence. Make that evidence count. Don't pretend you don't need it. Without evidence, you are indistinguishable from any slandering, libelling, con-artist, swindler, or gas-lighter.


My round-up of points to remember:

- It's a dangerous argument to make, that your assumptions are correct, because someone else is dumb.
- Anyone can be tricked.
- Reason is not the same as knowledge.
- Common Sense is a misnomer.
- Parody does not need to pretend to be sincere, in order to be funny.
- Without clarification, deception is just deception.
- Without respect for comedy, all propaganda will be excused as 'jokes'.
- Incredulity does not justify dishonesty.
- Make evidence count.

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'As Much' Or 'More'? A Language Peeve

Date started: 10/11/20            Date completed: 10/11/20            Date first published: 18/11/20


In case you're collecting pet peeves, and you don't have this one, then here it is.


Every time i hear somebody say something like this:

"this costs 4 times more than that"

it noodles my brain. Why? Because '4 times more' is not what they think it is.


Let's think it through....

Let's pretend that i have two widgets. One costs £1 and the other costs 50p. This means the second costs half as much as the first.

It also costs half less than the first. Ignore this, it's an illusion - i'll get onto that next. But the second does not cost half more than the first!

The second widget costing half more than the first would mean its price were £1.50

If i have two widgets, and one costs £1 while the second costs 25p, then the second costs a quarter as much as the first.

The second does not cost a quarter less than the first - it costs three quarters less.


So describing a price as being 'more/less' or 'times as much' another price, describes a different mathematical operation. {operation = calculation = adding, minussing, multiplying, etc}

Stating one price as a fraction 'more' than another means calculating a fraction of the first price (or whatever number it might be, for that matter) and then adding it on to the original number.

Stating one price as a fraction 'less' than another means calculating a fraction of the first, and then minussing it.

But stating how many 'times' one price is, compared to another, means dividing the second by the first. So of course, the number you say should be different.
 

"2 times £1 is £2" --> "£2 is £1 times 2"

If one widget costs £1 and a second costs 50p

The second costs half less, or 50p less.

It also costs half as much.

If one widget costs £1 and a second costs £2

The second costs once more, or £1 more.

It also costs twice, or 2 times, as much.

So if a widget costs five times as much as the first, then it's price is £5. That's easy to calculate.

But if a widget costs fives times more than the first, then what does that mean?

To calculate "a quarter more" we would multiply the original by one quarter (£1 x 1/4 = 25p) and add that on, to get £1.25

So to calculate "five times more" we would multiply the original by five (£1 x 5 = £5) and add that on, to get £6


So 'five times as much' is £5 but 'five times more' is £6

Disaster at the tills! Your shopping list costs more/less than you thought it would.


And that's my pet peeve. Many people are in the bad habit of saying "less" or "more" (especially 'more') when the habit of saying "as much" would steer their minds into much safer numerical territory.

So the moral of the story is this: don't mix 'more/less' and 'as much'. Or you might get as much than you bargained for ;-)



Notes:

Inspired by Barry Lewis. Kind-of. I thought of actually writing this down thanks to watching one of his videos. It was this one: 'Cooked Breakfast - Cheap vs Steep 4'

Since writing this, but before making the pictures, i discovered an old LindyBeige video, in which he tells everybody that they CAN get the less/fewer thing right, because they never mix up much/many. You can do this, folks - don't let me down :-D 'You can do language!'

Blogger forced me to post this with the font as Verdana, instead of the usual Trebuchet, because Trebuchet wasn't working. [shrugs]
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We Need To Talk About Mary Sue

Date started: 08/12/19                 Date completed: 08/12/19                 Date first published: 08/12/19


I'm going to start with a rundown of who Mary Sue is, to give you context:

An observation was made, that Star Trek fan-fiction often featured unrealistically and story-ruiningly over-competent characters. The observer then made a parody of this fan-fic malaise, calling their main character Mary Sue - a 15.5 year old heroine that left all of the Star Trek protagonists in the shade.

And that's Mary Sue - a character that is, to put it in two words of unsurpassable succinctness - nauseatingly wonderful.

You might wonder what's wrong with a character being wonderful. Isn't that the point of a hero/heroine? That they're so wonderful that they save the day, and get the girl, and so on and on and on... Well, no. It isn't. Close, but no vaping pen.


What makes strong characters are not their strengths, but their weaknesses. A strong person in real life always makes the right choices, resists any corrupting temptations, and is so staggeringly vanilla that their only possible reward can be to have a library named after them when they're dead. This person in real life has a strong character, but in fiction, they have a weak character, because they're so boring. Even reading about them, you're probably having an attack of Vyvyan Basterd Syndrome, shouting "I'M BORED" at the nearest wall.

In order to make a fictional person interesting, you have to strengthen their character by giving them traits that, in a real person, would weaken their character. This is why the greatest characters in fiction, are the ones you'd least like to meet. Vyvyan Basterd, for example. Hannibal Lecter. The Sherriff Of Nottingham. Arnold Rimmer. James Bond. Even Lord Flashheart, who's depicted as a kind of Mary Sue within Blackadder's fiction, is the kind of guy you'd have nailed to the wall with a rolling pin within two minutes of his entrance to the room, because he'd be that UNBEARABLE.


All of this has led to the term 'Mary Sue' being used as an insult toward painfully over-competent characters in fictional works. Especially painfully over-competent female characters in fictional works, with alternatives like 'Marty Stu' being used for male characters. Inevitably, it has sometimes been used wrongly. Female supremacists are a population who can easily be relied upon to use words wrongly. Generations of them have strived to change the world, by writing stories about the world that aren't true. And as a result, the term 'Mary Sue' has become the subject of feminist hatred. Well, if they will keep putting Mary Sues in their stories, people will keep deriding them for putting Mary Sues in their stories, won't they. But they don't seem to understand that. Armed with deliberately-encouraged misunderstandings of the term, however, they've actually had success at persuading people to treat the term 'Mary Sue' as taboo.

Most recently, and most certainly receiving the ire of feminists, the name Mary Sue has been applied to the character of Rey, in the latest Star Wars cashgrab trilogy. She appears out of the desert, with unsurprisingly deserty skills, but then she's revealed to know how to wield a lightsaber, without ever having been shown which is the pointy end (and let's face it, that's a 50/50 chance of the trilogy ending in part one) and that they can use the Force without ever encountering it before, and can even employ Jedi mind tricks, and so on and on and on. Her character arc is basically this: random kid becomes most powerful wizard in the galaxy in one hour of movie. If she's not a Mary Sue, then i'm a dinosaur.

We must be clear, given the deliberate misunderstandings that frequently happen, that it does not matter whether a character 'has a backstory' (translation: excuse) for being nauseatingly wonderful, or whether another character in the same story is also nauseatingly wonderful. If a character fulfils the definition of being nauseatingly wonderful, then they are a Mary Sue. QED.


However...

Don't make the assumption that the use of Mary Sue characters is always bad. The story in which this kind of character's name originated, was a very short, but very amusing story, in parodying its now-eponymous phenomenon. And i can actually give an example of a really good story that deliberately employs a Mary Sue for entertainment's sake, and does it well. I've already mentioned Arnold Rimmer, and it's their fictional universe that we're going to now.

In one episode of Red Dwarf (Dimension Jump) a Mary Sue character jumps from one dimension to another, where they bump (quite literally) into the crew of Red Dwarf, aboard Starbug. Who are they? Ace Rimmer - a character deliberately made to be brilliant, like a hero of comic strip proportions, so that they would contrast with the 'normal' Rimmer. If you can call Arnold Rimmer 'normal' without wincing.

Arnold Rimmer, Rimmsy, Big Arn, or Duke, as he is never known, is a "gutless, spineless, gormless, directionless, neurotic, underachieving, snivelling, cowardly pile of smeg". And that's a description provided by his best friend in the whole universe! He's pompous, he's anally retentive, and is, in the words of Kryten, who cannot lie: "an overzealous, trumped up little squirt, and an incompetent vending machine repairman with a Napoloen Complex, who commanded as much respect and affection from his fellow crew members as Long John Silver's parrot".

The whole point of Ace Rimmer, was to provide as sharp a contrast to Arnold Rimmer as possible. In the context of the story, their extremity of wonderfulness was what made them so fantastically funny. As a regular character, they would be awful. As a serious character, they would be awful. But Mary Sue finds herself a place, in that episode of Red Dwarf, because characters as cartoon as her are apt material in an outright comedy. And let's face it - Star Wars just isn't that funny.



This mini-essay, suprisingly, was inspired by Thunderf00t. Not surprising on its own, but if you know Tf, you'll understand what was surprising about it.

P.S. The title is a reference to 'We Need To Talk About Kevin'. We didn't really need to talk about Mary Sue, but i hope you found it interesting and/or amusing anway :-D
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Entertainment stuff from the period 12/12/16 - 28/7/17

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday Tapejara, happy birthday to me...


This blog is now five years old (plus one day, at time of publication) so i suppose now's as good a time as any to break the silence, and throw some stuff onto the internet.

Last time i posted a new article to this blog, i'd missed three months. This time, it's five. So maybe i'll see you again in December? LOL. BTW, yes, i'm using the same excuse. And maybe one day you'll get to find out what i've been doing with the time.

Anyway, here's a collection of some of the things that have happened - some serious, some asinine - if you're familiar with the blog, you'll know what to expect. Let's get cracking...


Three months ago, my headlines were that a certain person-of-color was leading their way-hey-hey in the USA, and well, they're still doing that; with even more lead in their pencil water than before;

There was also a certain internet-based video-hosting company that seemed determined to shoot itself repeatedly in its own feet, and well, they're still doing that;

And there was also a prize ceremony for research that makes you laugh and then makes you think. Well, presumably they're doing that as well; we'll find out at the end of the year :D

'YouTube is asking me how accurate their record keeping is? 0.o'
https://youtu.be/bcQctoWymb4


Now, should i start with the downers or the uppers? Hmmm...

OK, i'll mix it up.


'Why Red Crosses Aren't Allowed In Video Games' - Censored Gaming
https://youtu.be/vOAq26xCefY

The red cross, contrary to many people's belief, is not a symbol of medicine. Did you know that?

It's not a symbol of medicine at all. In fact, i'll go as far as to say that you won't find a genuine hospital or ambulance or paramedic worker in the entire world, that is legitimately branded with the red square-sided four-fold-rotational-symmetry cross.

Why? Because all legitimate medical organisations will care that the legal protection of the red cross symbol is upheld, for the sake of those who might be aided by it, in military or otherwise politically dangerous situations.

The red cross is in fact a symbol of humanitarian aid - not just a symbol of medical aid. When a military field ambulance, for example, is painted with a red cross on a white background, that doesn't mean it's a medical ambulance, it means it's a politically neutral vehicle, on a politically neutral mission, to provide humanitarian aid.

The red cross, and respect for the red cross, is intended to ensure the neutrality of, and safety of, people who are trying to save others in conflict zones, and other socially precarious locations.

And so you will not find it on any hospital ambulance near you. If you're unfortunate enough to meet a paramed at work, you will not see it on them either.

They will probably have a six-pointed blue star on them, and their kit might be green, with a white cross on it - that is the design of First Aid* kits - but you will not see a red cross on a white background.

It's a canard. Red crosses are nothing to do with medicine, and everything to do with factionalistic neutrality. White crosses are the symbols of medicine.

If you're finding this confusing, and slightly overwhelming (you probably still associate the red cross with medicine, even though you've read this far) spare a thought for certain members of the armed forces, who see and drive vehicles that are called 'ambulances' and have the red cross on their sides, front and rear.

They can easily be more confused than you, because they drive a vehicle emblazoned with a symbol that they always thought meant 'medicine' but actually doesn't.

It's a bit like when people put furry dice on the rear view mirror, in their first car. If you always see furry dice in people's new cars, you might think it symbolises the driver's success at passing their driving test.

Then what on Sagan's pale blue dot does the red 'P' on the back mean? And what does it mean... if the red 'P' isn't there? Do the furry dice mean it, instead?

Confusion reigns.

So remember: red cross means neutrality. White cross means medicine.

But what does any of this really have to do with gaming? Well, it's fiction in general really. Films, and TV, and comics, are just as guilty of getting it wrong.

But fiction doesn't really change anything. And i don't think that it does. I'm no Mary 'Feminist' Whitehouse, after all. So why do red crosses that are erroneously presented in computer games, or any fictive content, really matter?

Well, they don't. But the fact that people thought it was a good idea to put them there, does. You can't hurt people in real life, by hurting a non-existent person in fiction, but if you put something in your film/game because you believed it was true, then you might act alike in a non-creative context.

In 'real life'.

In other words, the International Committee of the Red Cross suing gaming developers for misusing red crosses, doesn't have genuine utility because 'video games impose notions of normalcy' but because discouraging the devs from misusing the red cross means real people in the real world have learned a lesson - the devs, not the gamers.

Plus, if a YouTube channel dedicated to censorship publicises the debacle, then many thousands, even millions, of people might find out that the red cross has been misused again and again and again and again....

And then they might stop doing it themselves.

So maybe it is a good idea that the Red Cross sues fiction creators for misusing the red cross - not to influence the real world via fiction, but to influence the real world through the real people who make it.

Stuff that in your pipe and smoke it, all you anti-censorship whiners in the above-linked video's comments section :-P

*People commonly misremember what a First Aid kit looks like. The background colour is green, and the cross is white. The cross is always white. Only shonky suppliers will have them the wrong way around.


Here's a downer: How bad can one person's year be?

Falsely accused of rape, falsely accused of murder, and consequently a year without employment - a year without income.

'2016 - CJ de Mooi'
https://youtu.be/1RRLuaYGCE4

This is an awful but brilliant example, of the horrendous consequences of what happens when people think they can impose justice without evidence.

Even the idea that holding someone in a cell could be a better option than spending £4 to find out whether the claim was true, is shockingly stupid!

But CJ's by far the only one to suffer the injustice of verdict by superstition. It could be any one of us tomorrow.

If this isn't one of the most persuasive arguments in favour of skepticality, then there must be a bloody good case that i don't know about!

Superstition makes people ruin others' lives, while thinking they have the moral high ground.

'How one tweet can ruin your life | Jon Ronson'
https://youtu.be/wAIP6fI0NAI


And here's an upper: Potatoes, it turns out, don't cause cancer.

'It’s too soon to say browned toast and crispy roast potatoes cause cancer'
http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2017/01/23/its-too-soon-to-say-browned-toast-and-crispy-roast-potatoes-cause-cancer/

Why on Sagan's pale blue dot has the UK Food Standards Agency made a campaign advising people not to eat toast and roast potatoes?

Well, the mechanism of concern is explained in the article, but finite hazards are not necessarily significant hazards. The conclusion of Cancer Research UK's reviewers is that toast and potatoes are not worth worrying about - the fags and booze will kill you much quicker than the toast and tatties!

So why did someone(s) at the UK Food Standards Agency think it was worth 'going national' with this hypothetical threat?

I don't have an answer. But it's my working hypothesis that their PR department/consultants, or somebody who now works for them, and used to work in PR, have told them that a 'media campaign' would be a good idea, to 'raise their profile' [gags].

TV 'news' is splattered with doe-eyed women and depressed researchers, forlornly pleading for a massive, global, billion-pound campaign, to work out what one sick kid actually has.

I mean, 1500 people die on the UK's roads every year, as a result of road traffic unsafety, and millions of lifeyears are lost to obesity and lack of exercise; but hey, the millions can screw themselves because one lone kid's more newsworthy.

Pure drama, eh, BBC? (That's their new slogan, BTW)

A 'campaign' for a completely hypothetical effect has nothing to do with scientifically-reasoned public health advice. It's the hallmark of nauseating PR merchants, desparately pleading for popularity, and rarely through their own merits.

Consequently, this kind of 'story' is perfect material for the "everything causes cancer, cures cancer, or both, you insecure middle-aged women who read our publication, so keep on reading or you won't know what to be scared of" mantra of the Daily Fail / Fail on Sunday.

But it isn't genuinely useful for informing people about how to look after their health.

Anyone have déjà vu about media orgs making claims about potatoes and cancer? Oh yeah...


Here's a slightly-downer: Elon Musk's scientific standards are slowly sliding.

'Entire Hyperloop could be destroyed in SECONDS!'
https://youtu.be/Z48pSwiDLIM

Elon Musk got his billions from software - he has no formal training/education in Physics, or Engineering. But at least he's shown that one guy with massive amounts of enthusiasm, and massive amounts of money, can really make an impact on the world.

He started with electric cars (anyone noticed that adding 'hi' to 'electric cars' gives you 'electric chairs'?) which are based on old technology (see EEV's video on the 30+ year old Sinclair C5) and so require no great leaps of technology. Tesla Motors is born. Familiar technology; pragmatic business.

Next, he moved onto space flight: travel in, and into, outer space. You'll notice that this is something that's been done before too, but Space X has been doing it a bit differently. So with a lot of hand-holding from NASA, they've had modest success. Less familiar technology; semi-pragmatic mostly-hypothetical business.

And now he's moved onto ground-level, above-ground, supersonic travel. "Supersonic?" i hear you say? Well, what do you think the speed of sound is, in a vacuum, or near-vacuum? Obviously, it's zero in a vacuum, because sound can't propagate in a vacuum at all; but in a near-vacuum, the speed of sound is much lower than at RTP (room temperature and pressure) because the air is less dense.

The basic idea of the hyperloop is to treat passengers like bullets. You put the bullets in a cartridge/sabot (the train) and shoot them down the barrel - the Loop. And eventually, if all goes well, they hit the bullseye at the other end.

Even if it works, and everything goes well, you might have noticed that shooting bullets down barrels produces huge amounts of noise. That noise is an inevitable consequence of the process that accelerates the cartridges down the barrel, to achieve their bullet-esque speeds.

And that noise would be created every time a train left the station. That massive amount of noise would be made every time a train left... in a public place.

I mean, what's the point of a transport link that doesn't link two places where people are? You can't hide the noise by making the thing remote, because it's useless if it's remote.

The number of fails realised in the all-hype-rloop project is only going to go up, as long as it stays on this... um, this awful pun :-P

The Hyperloop is the least tried-and-tested project that Musk has taken on, so far, and it is the least pragmatic, given the already-known limitations of Physics.

What we're essentially considering when we think of the Hyperloop, is an above-ground underground - a gigantic tube, through which some metal-things-with-people-in trains run. So why not just build a trainline? Because the vacuum is intended to reduce friction, thereby reducing energy costs, and increasing the maximum speed and acceleration of the bullet train capsule whatever they call them now.

An above-ground vacuum tube is inherently dangerous, because it is so easy to rupture. Any mad conspiracy theorist 'sovereign citizen' can shoot a hole in it, with lethal results. So how about this solution...

Build it underground.

Why not build your over-ground-underground underground? It'll be an under-over-under-ground. Then you can pump the air out of the tube, and it'll be safe and secure. A la the LHC.

Reciprocally, there's another barmy project that could be benefitted from being raised while the Hyperloop is lowered...

The Solar Freakin' Roadways.

The whole problem with the Hyperloop stems from its being built above ground. The whole problem with solar roadways stems from its being built in the ground.

All that has to be done, is to build a roof over the road (roofs are a tried, tested, and successful technology, after all) with solar panels on the roof (again, a tried, tested, and successful technique) which can be angled to gather an extra third of sunlight. Then all of the LED signs and beacons and things, that are so difficult to see in direct sunlight, would be under the shade of the roof, and thereby be actually visible to traffic.

It also means the road surface can continue to be made of the most efficient, effective material available - bitumen-mix.

So by raising the SFR above the ground, the integrity of the road surface can be retained, the solar power can be increased, the LED lighting will be more visible, the electrical componenets will not be subject to physical degredation underneath the road traffic, and... you won't need huge amounts of energy to melt fallen snow, because roofs keep snow off the ground quite well enough already!

See? All problems fixed, in just a few sentences. Now, with a plan so easily debunked and superceded as SFR, it must be very difficult to con people into something even worse. Surely?

'Plastic Roadways BUSTED!'
https://youtu.be/Sj_FZduqblo

Oh.


Anyway, let's move on. Downer or upper? Downer or upper? The coin says... downer

'The REAL reason Milo Yiannopoulos was betrayed by his base!'
https://youtu.be/FC3HElx-CQ0

How can you tell when someone's lying? One method: wait and listen. Eventually, they contradict themselves. All you have to do is notice, and remember.

As far as i'm concerned, Yiannopoulos is a Poe who's been so dumb as to pursue a joke, without making it clear that it was a joke. I mean, let's take a comparator, to see the difference between someone clearly pretending to be a bigot, and someone who's maybe pretending to be a bigot.

'Richard Herring "Hitler Moustache" Racist Liberal'
https://youtu.be/mwEi5Dpq6zs

There are two major differences between Richard Herring, and Milo Yiannopoulos: one's intelligent and funny, and the other's... well, Milo.

By making all of the claims that Richard Herring does, on a stage, in what is clearly a stand-up comedy show, he can claim pretty much anything he likes. And when he turns around and says "i'm only joking" it would be you who'd be the idiot, if you decided he weren't. I mean, it's his job to joke. I'd be pretty disappointed if he didn't, at least twice per hour. Or even once. He's getting old, you know. (Aside: I wouldn't. I'd be very glad. Rrrooom, rrooom, and all that)

Whereas Milo has made absolutely no effort to make it clear that he's been joking at any point. He has no stage show. He has no posters. He has no Twitter profile saying "Professional Troll"... Well, he certainly doesn't now :-P

But let's take another example. A kind of mid-way house. A character who has no stage-and-screen pedigree. No stand-up career. But someone who does clearly present themself as a Poe.

This guy was picked up by a female supremacist at the BBC, and was invited on to her programme to noise off feministly, because she couldn't tell that he wasn't sincere. His name was: Godfrey Elfwick.

Elfwick didn't make any explicit statements that he was joking, but did he really have to? His tweets were so funny that he didn't have to explain. Or did he?

Need i remind you that Poe's Law is defined thusly: "The crazier an ideology becomes, the more difficult it is to distinguish a mockery of it, from a sincere presentation"? No, of course i didn't. I was just humouring you.

So how do we really know that Godfrey Elfwick, a "Genderqueer Muslim atheist. Born white in the #WrongSkin. Itinerant jongleur. Xir, Xirs Xirself" who "Filters life through the lens of minority issues" and says things like:

"I was born white but realised later in life that I was #WrongSkin and transitioned mentally to black"
 
"Don't want to be labelled a rapist? Then respect women's boundaries and remember that consent can be revoked at any time. Even after sex"
 
"I used to identify as #atheist as I don't believe in God but when I saw how racist the movement has become I converted to moderate Islam"
 
"Men will be men. There's no changing their nature. Thank God I'm a trans woman, so it doesn't apply to me"
 
"I've never actually seen #StarWars but the fact that the bad guy was all black and ate watermelons was unbelievably racist even for the 70's"

And more recently:

"For those who say "the Quran is full of violence!" - it took me just under an hour to find a verse that wasn't. Checkmate Islamophobes" [link]
 
"It's exhausting defending and justifying the reasons for Islamic terrorist attacks. Thank goodness my Wokebody Yoga class was cancelled" [link]
 
"It is better to spread progressive lies, than #Islamophobic truths. #lovenothate" [link]
 
"Before blaming Islamic terrorism on Islam, please read this and educate yourself:[infographic]" [link]
So it makes us laugh. Does that mean he doesn't believe it? How could we tell? It's an old Creationist canard, that something that 'looks' designed, must have been designed. But complexity doesn't mean intentional construction, and funnyness doesn't mean intentional ridiculousness.

Ultimately, we can only judge things by what we can actually see. If Godfrey Elfwick got into hot water over one of the things he'd said on Twitter, then how could anyone defend him? He deliberately only says ridiculous things that sound like they could be sincerely stated by other people.

I'm prepared to consider that maybe Yiannopoulos just let a joke get out of hand; but ultimately, he brought it all down on himself.


OK, so that was a downer. Now here's an upper: Ben Goldacre. He's always good for a pick-me-up :-D

'“Transparency, Beyond Publication Bias”. A video of my super-speedy talk at IJE.'
http://www.badscience.net/2016/10/transparency-beyond-publication-bias-a-video-of-my-super-speedy-talk-at-ije/


And now a downer again. Are you spotting a pattern? :-P

'Burzynski ruling is in (Update: Pathetic punitive actions imposed)'
http://doubtfulnews.com/2017/03/burzynski-ruling-is-in-stan-saddled-with-a-overseer/

So the guy who injects people with piss, while telling them it's their cancer treatment, is let free? And his business, through which all the crimes have been perpetrated, is permitted to continue its fraudulent, abusive and dangerous operations, in order to continue harming people?

I call that a travesty of justice.

Justice is not about the sadistic pursuit of vengeance - it's about making the world better, for the future. Prosecuting and/or humiliating Burzynski is not the point - stopping his company is what really matters.

In the same vein, here's some quackery news:

'Researchers warn of dire effects of herbal remedies'
http://www.skeptics.com.au/2017/02/06/researchers-warn-of-dire-effects-from-herbal-remedies/

"The predominant user group of complementary medicines in Australia comprises younger women (under 35 years old) with a tertiary education. People with chronic diseases or co-morbidities such as cancer, diabetes, musculoskeletal disorders or mental illness, frequently use complementary medicines"

If you take herbal potions, then stop. And tell your GP what you've taken. They can be directly harmful, and they can interact with any medications you might be on. Including contraceptives. On a side note, don't rub any of the 'natural/essential oils' like Teatree Oil, Coconut Oil, etc, into your skin. They're actually the primary cause of dermatological allergies - not parabens, sodium laureth sulfate, aluminium, etc.

'Wide condemnation of pro-acupuncture research paper on infant colic'
http://www.skeptics.com.au/2017/01/22/wide-condemnation-of-pro-acupuncture-research-paper-on-infant-colic/

“The statistical analysis in the paper is incompetent. This should have been detected by the referees, but wasn’t... For a start, the opening statement, ‘A two-sided P value =0.05 was considered statistically significant’ is simply unacceptable in the light of all recent work about reproducibility.”

Don't accept any 'treatment' for 'colic' at all. 'Colic' is a catchall term for any situation in which a baby (under 4 months, usually) is crying, but there's no apparent cause. In other words, colic is not a medical condition - it can not be treated. In studies, the only consistent correlate with 'relief' (the baby stopping crying) is affection - just pick them up and pet them.

If there are no symptoms, it's almost always wind, or a headache, or something banal like that. Babies being smaller, they're more susceptible to heat stress; and without much experience of extra-uterine life, pretty much anything can upset them. So as they age, it's quite sensible to think that tummy aches become banal to them, where previously they were new and scary. Etc, etc, etc.

'Chiropractor found guilty of making false claims of curing cancer'
http://www.skeptics.com.au/2017/02/15/chiropractor-found-guilty-of-making-false-claims-of-curing-cancer/

"Ken McLeod said that he and Peter Tierney have put in complaints against more than 700 chiropractors; Prof Ken Harvey said that he and Mal Vickers have put in complaints against about 800 chiropractors; and the Friends of Science in Medicine has submitted complaints against 400 websites, involving as many as 1200 chiropractors. For many of these cases, McLeod says, there has been little or no response from AHPRA or the CBA"

As if it would just be one! I can hear the PR gurus working on #chiropractophobia as i write. As if a crime being rare somehow excuses the ideology that caused it.

Frankly, chiropractors are making false claims if they declare they can treat anything. It's annoying that people only behave as if that matters, when it's cancer or HIV.


More Oz. And more satire... (if indeed the last lot, up ^ there, was satire...) ...this is supposed to be an upper, by the way... :-D

'Coopers recall bottles featuring bible quotes condemning alcohol'
http://chaser.com.au/national/coopers-withdraws-products-featuring-bible-quotes-condemning-alcohol/

'Outrage at inclusion of gay character in film about woman-buffalo romance'
http://chaser.com.au/world/outrage-at-inclusion-of-gay-character-in-film-about-woman-buffalo-romance/

'“Humans aren’t meant to drink milk” claims woman slamming tequila'
http://chaser.com.au/world/humans-arent-meant-drink-milk-claims-woman-slamming-tequila/


And a contemporary downer:

'Atheist Ireland's John Hamill on Sky News discussing blaphemy charge against Stephen Fry'
https://youtu.be/zQVj6h6tmpw

'The Stephen Fry Blasphemy Case - Michael Nugent in Helsinki'
https://youtu.be/WgjKk5m9LHo

Having checked Michael's citation of Richard Dawkins' letter to the Irish Times (mentioned at the end of the second video) i was 'recommended to' another article, written by an arse with a made-up qualification: the 'Social Theology Officer' of the 'Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice'. I almost choked on my own facial expression when i read his conclusion:

"There is no theological warrant for a blasphemy law and no religious desire for one"

OMFSM!!! The only cause for the existence of blasphemy laws is religious superstition! If there were no religion, there would be no blasphemy laws. Religious desire to purport theological 'warrants' is the only attempted justification for such blasphemy laws.

Religion is entirely to blame for the embarrassment that this has brought upon Eire, and the threat that it has presented to the rest of the world, by peer-pressuring other nations - principally Islamic ones, led by Pakistan - to push for the 'recognition' of their blasphemy laws in every other nation in the world.

Kevin Hargaden, you are up there (or is it 'down' there?) with Mehdi Hasan, a pseud who purports to believe in winged horses who can fly sadistic, murderous, warmongering, pedophilic rapists into outer space when they die, and somehow reach 'heaven' from there; when it comes to intellectual veracity. Tapejara awards both of them: "nul points"

Oh yeah, and ants can talk, too. Apparently... :D

'Shabir Believes Ants Can Talk - Hyde Park, UK'
https://youtu.be/OHhSoK1QuEU


But here's a huge upper: Zimmers, the Dawkster, and more... 😄

"Worst Ancestors Ever" - Roy Zimmerman, and his around-the-world orchestra
https://youtu.be/5AnVQjwIxlY

And an up-and-downer too:

'It Looks Like Rain In Cherry Blossom Lane with Sir Roger Moore, Igudesman & Joo & Friends'
https://youtu.be/rQEXiDMwmSI

RIP Roger Moore. I shall always think of you as the third best James Bond, and the oneth best Simon Templar. And the guy someone said ran like a duck.


Some other news:

'First living example of giant ancient mollusc found in the wild'
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2128009-first-living-example-of-giant-ancient-mollusc-found-in-the-wild/

Yet again, shock and gasping eschewes from those who've heard that ten's the thing, and five's not jive. Yes: advice is now that you should eat ten portions of fruit per day. Well, the truth is that advised fruit intake has long been, rather cynically, understated for decades. The only reason it's usually "five portions" is because the local organisation responsible thinks the local people wouldn't manage more, and so would get dejected. In other regions, convention is more than five. In Scotland, it's only three. In actuality, you should eat as much fruit as practicable, while maintaing a good tooth-cleaning regimen, to minimise harm from the acidity of fruit and fruit juice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egKxYHdf6-Q

'Kiai Masters VS Reality! Can Magic Help You Win A Fight?'
https://youtu.be/3-ZZxlcskYs

There's something cathartic about seeing these kinds of idiots getting the shit kicked out of them. I think it's just because they've consented to it, that makes such a huge difference. Martial Arts are essentially just choreographed fighting. As the name implies, it's 'art' not 'science'. It's not really about training people so they can defend themselves - it's about spiritualist goons pretending they have 'special' powers. So the further up the hierarchy of martial arts bullshit you go, the more choreographed it becomes, until right at the top, you get these airheads that actually think their 'students' aren't being stooges, and that they can actually use 'qi' or 'the force' to knock their enemies down. Tapejara judges them to be: "most amusing" :-D

------------------------------------------------------ contemporary stuff

'The origin of M19 - Deep Sky Videos'
https://youtu.be/P92B1Mkt49A

'Honey bees in the Infrared! THEY GLOW!!!'
https://youtu.be/aw1deys67vM

'How to spot a broken wrist with a thermal camera!'
https://youtu.be/PLwOdjmtNJU

'Can 1000C Gummy Melt GOLD??'
https://youtu.be/u9oCG_SRj1k

'It costs 70 MILLION dollars per kg! But why?'
https://youtu.be/UiDsZ4TZAGs

'Glass blowing. Why do you need special glasses?'
https://youtu.be/Mwbd1qGvTeQ

'HUGE Solar Flares through specialist telescope'
https://youtu.be/Bh7zXrmRcA4

'Hammer vs DIAMOND: Will it smash?'
https://youtu.be/o9uCh8LRtvI

'Skyscraper that hangs from asteroid -BUSTED!'
https://youtu.be/RyTjdkNEgV0

'DIY Doppler Sonar'
https://youtu.be/5KtOvtH6d_w

'High Voltage Phosphorescence'
https://youtu.be/3u91eCZW59E

'High Voltage and Phosphorescence (part 2)'
https://youtu.be/0iW3cslXSiQ

'Climate: What did We Know and When Did We Know it?'
https://youtu.be/ox5hbkg34Ow

'Lysenkoism' - C0nc0rdance
https://youtu.be/AK1PnV_xEI8

'Do cell phones cook your brain?'
https://youtu.be/qAfKeHB9Gq4

'Degrees of Doubt: The Claims and Credentials of Ravi Zacharias (TTA Podcast 325)'
https://youtu.be/ncrIBxj1OGI

'NOAA vs Mail on Sunday -- FACT CHECK'
https://youtu.be/kQph_5eZsGs

'Swisse Update' - The Checkout
https://youtu.be/56tD0NTxnHM

'Fish Oil' - The Checkout
https://youtu.be/pxh1B7GBC9Q

'RAW: VIOLENT ANTI-TRUMP protesters near inauguration!?'
Dumbest. Reporter. Everrrr.
https://youtu.be/DoQMav6alLo

'Trumps UNHINGED press conference'
https://youtu.be/sNn5R4dhkeM

'Lauren Southern: YES DISHONEST AS HELL!'
This degree of duplicity is newsworthy on its own! #FireKuenssberg
https://youtu.be/vkA876B6TFY

'IDIOTS REACT TO #BLMKidnapping'
https://youtu.be/mYtB4smQkaE

'Testing Flattards - Part 2'
https://youtu.be/TeMooNFtFJk

'11 Chemistry Tattoo Fails'
https://youtu.be/xmNfdcFFO5A

'Top 5 Chemistry Fails by the Food Babe - Jeff Holiday Guest Video'
https://youtu.be/7ITj4IRys58

'Homeopathic Toothpaste? – Myles Reviews'
https://youtu.be/9SYhFOVwuDI

'The Speaker's seat - Why is there no election in Buckingham?'
https://youtu.be/EqGoJN-zNXk

'Trichroic Prism'
https://youtu.be/GbZ1GSlBDGY

'The Transparent Man: Quirkology Investigates'
https://youtu.be/o4DRJLQDn1w

'Nerd³ Plays... The VR Museum of Fine Art - Chiseled'
https://youtu.be/jo0Z3W5Fft8

'Product vs Packshot: Jetstar Noodle Soup' - The Checkout
https://youtu.be/B4kO__rb3EE

'Product vs Packshot: Peppa Pig Icecream' - The Checkout
https://youtu.be/j2T_a4Rf0gU

'Signs of the Time' - The Checkout
https://youtu.be/FQQ4h1i9r3Q

'Christian Reilly on AIOTM - 'I'm Dreaming Of A Traditional Christmas'' (my upload)
https://youtu.be/rV_BQZu4-e8

------------------------------------------------------ of the weeks

Word Of The Week: jimp -- slender, trim, delicate; scant; barely sufficient. Usage dates from the beginning of the 16th century, in northern Britain

Etymology Of The Week: stationery/stationary -- the word 'stationery' derives from the profession of the 'stationer' who sells them; their job title comes from the fact that their ancestors used to be the exception against the rule, who had stationary shops, from which they sold books - most vendors would be travelling salespeople, as they had to go to the products (there was no 'special delivery' in those days) and then transport the goods to the potential customers.

Quote Of The Week: "All the world is queer, except thee and me. And i'm not too sure about thee. Come to think of it, i'm not too sure about me, either" - Dave Allen's corruption of a quote attributed to Robert Owen

Fact Of The Week: North Korea has a grand total of 28 websites, according to a slip-up made by the North Korean government, in September 2016

{I know this FOTW's a bit late, but i thought i'd claim it while it still had a chance of not being wildly wrong :P }

Epidemiological Joke Of The Week: How many epidemiologists does it take to change a lightbulb?

"We’ve found 12,000 switches hidden around the house. Some of them turn this lightbulb on, some of them don’t; some of them only work sometimes; and some of them work sometimes, but twenty years after you flick them. Some of the switches only work, sometimes, twenty years later, if one of the other switches is flicked too (and at the right time). In any case the wiring’s rusty, everything’s completely different in the house next door, and by the way there are lots of people selling spare bulbs who tell lies about houses, switches, and fingers. We can change the lightbulb, but I’m not sure that’ll stop you dying from cancer in this metaphor."

------------------------------------------------------ non-contemporary stuff

'ATP Tennis - Creating the most Unorthodox Player - The Serve (HD)'
https://youtu.be/bYSNITmbGZU

'Let's not get into semantics'
http://imgur.com/gallery/bw3Pi

'Ever get that sinking feeling..?'
https://twitter.com/davidclewis/status/848449398627606528

'QI Unaired: The Grammatical Terminator'
https://youtu.be/ff3YVruoTgs

'Islam is Shrinking'
https://youtu.be/-sIDphS0R6c

'Koran Textual Criticism 1 - The Clear and Easy Koran'
https://youtu.be/G79-853Ky04
.
.
.

Entertainment stuff from the period 12/9 - 11/12/16

Hello? Is anybody there?


Yes, i did miss a week... and a month... and a quarter of a year. I've been trying to do other things, so i've been powering through my weekly article-writing time. So here's a collection of some things that have been done by other people, in the meantime. First, an orange septuagenarian has won an election in an economic backwater. Not that it was beforehand.


Second, there's an internet-based company that's been screwing over its users by making a terrifyingly stupid decision.

Question 1: Do the YouTube people actually have functioning brains?

Question 2: If 'yes' have they actually been on the internet before?

'Nerd³ - How To Fix YouTube Heroes'
https://youtu.be/6NxrW-JDQNg

'Youtubes new flagging 'Heros' 98% disapproval!'
https://youtu.be/m6o8RPCHXUA


Third, there's the yearly Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, for research that first makes you laugh, and then makes you think.

'The 26th Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony'
http://www.improbable.com/ig/2016/

The prizes have gone to research into the contraceptive effects of trousers, the perceived personalities of rocks, the role of colour in flying and mating, the magic of reducing pollution by manipulating tests, the effects of mirrors on itches, for believing lying liars who lie, for spotting bullshit, for impersonating other species, for collecting flies, and for looking between people's legs.

You can watch the entire ceremony, and the winners' brief and explanatory acceptance speeches, by clicking on the link above.


And fourth, there's lots of other things.

Thunderf00t's been bringing out many of the best science videos:

'Time-lapses of everything cool in the universe!'
https://youtu.be/PDO69TTuTP4

'Golden Cubes and Gravitational Waves - Sixty Symbols'
https://youtu.be/yzPPnP9FQeI

'Can a green light actually be red!?'
https://youtu.be/kx5R-3iakOw

'White light Hack!'
https://youtu.be/bQH4bOuP4P8

'Hot Man, COLD shower..... thermal camera!'
https://youtu.be/JlpU4AeU4wk

'Can you see the SUPERMOON through a drinking straw?'
https://youtu.be/oZwmsD683dU

'The infrared explained!'
https://youtu.be/uXeM6jRk6w8

'COOl BLUE LASER BALLS!'
https://youtu.be/vqVloJ3CV04

'goodbye, Chernobyl! the New Safe Confinement has started moving... [November 2016]'
https://youtu.be/wkzLukgLt2A

'inside Chernobyl ЧАЭС sarcophagus 2016 - reactor #4 control room and lead-lined corridors'
https://youtu.be/_4siRRMN4Nk

'inside Chernobyl's sarcophagus - the turbine hall & ventilation stack (chimney)'
https://youtu.be/nyvFJcgcDIk

'HighVis Fabric'
https://youtu.be/GzC3isQsWZY

'3D Camouflage in an Ornithischian Dinosaur'
https://youtu.be/BEzguRJAuXE

'Horns, Antlers & Hoofed Mammal Headgear With Paleontologist Zac Calamari'
https://youtu.be/cWFV34WfHQQ

'Endangered crow is expert tool-user'
https://youtu.be/rg4JMLBuWIM

'4 Wire Resistance Measurement'
https://youtu.be/Y254ge9oPFA

'Fair Dice (Part 1) - Numberphile'
https://youtu.be/G7zT9MljJ3Y

'Fair Dice (Part 2) - Numberphile'
https://youtu.be/8UUPlImm0dM

'Why is TV 29.97 frames per second?'
https://youtu.be/3GJUM6pCpew

'The s-Process - Sixty Symbols'
https://youtu.be/KlBG_A4Djp4

'Sum of Fibonacci Numbers Trick'
https://youtu.be/CWhcUea5GNc


And the best interrogations of pseudoscience too:

'First AMAZING Solar Roadway UNVEILED!'
https://youtu.be/3pIfo1Dynjg

'Spinning Solar -BUSTED!'
https://youtu.be/zMQA9khsF10

'SpaceX UFO Explosion EXPOSED!!!'
https://youtu.be/1AIkuTU69qM

'Detailed analysis of Spacex Rocket Explosion'
https://youtu.be/EhdQPaABFK0

'ABOLISH ALL SCIENCE 'COS ITS RACIST! -SJW University Student'
https://youtu.be/1i80qaETtw8

'Waterseer - BUSTED!'
https://youtu.be/LVsqIjAeeXw

'Waterseer -why did Berkeley disclaim it?'
https://youtu.be/pen6dBszLgA

'Waterseer, now featured in Time Magazine!!'
https://youtu.be/fDHdIH13FRU

'EM Drive BUSTED!'
https://youtu.be/jCAqDA8IfR4

'Are humans contributing only 3% of CO2 in the atmosphere?'
https://youtu.be/CcmCBetoR18

'The Water of Life – Myles Reviews'
https://youtu.be/4sGNo0FJaYo

'As A Gullible Golfer | The Checkout'
https://youtu.be/pDnNfKNJPAw

'Testing Flattards - Part 1'
https://youtu.be/JgY8zNZ35uw

'Cicret Bracelet DEBUNK'
https://youtu.be/KbgvSi35n6o


But Dad³'s been ruling over the deliberate sillyness:

'Another amazing bet you will always win'
https://youtu.be/ORAwmR-EIzI

'10 Christmas Pranks And Illusions'
https://youtu.be/6Ypo3VmtLUo

'The Words of Dad³ - Another Rude Joke!'
https://youtu.be/d5xOngXLEQ8

'The Adventures of Dad³ - British Jackass II - The Shave'
https://youtu.be/gLIBxucfDGE

'THE MOST AWESOME PING PONG TRICK SHOT VIDEO EVER MADE !'
"It took us 6 years to make this video. Don't try this at home"
https://youtu.be/HMBQjQy3OHo

'Le Alien'
https://youtu.be/QJwIsBoe3Lg

'Top 5 Computer Game Fails of March 2016'
https://youtu.be/Khn6zv8XMcE

'Top 5 Fails for September 2016'
https://youtu.be/R_w6BI54hxw

'CHILLI FROG FOOD REVIEW - Greg's Kitchen'
https://youtu.be/urZanixoI0Q

'Where do you get your food from, Grandma?'
https://youtu.be/B_XmUm1SMr0

'Igudesman & Joo - West Side Simpsons (NOT by Hans Zimmer!)'
https://youtu.be/ddKHdrUktkY

'Affter Effcest Snudnay Strrectshascraashed'
https://youtu.be/wtkd_mlhfRU

'The Adventures of Dad³ - A Christmas TV Advert'
https://youtu.be/riUIftEhLqo

------------------------------------------------------ of the weeks

Computer Game Of The Week: The Bunker. It's very impressive!

TV Quote Of The Week: From episode 1 of Penelope Keith's Hidden Villages "Village life and the Cotswolds seem made for each other". Yes, Margot, and urban life and central London seem to be made for each other too. Well done :-P

Quote Of The Week: "The Wild West. Where men are men and women are women? That's not wild. If the men were women and the women were men, that would be wild!" - Dave Allen

------------------------------------------------------ non-contemporary stuff

'Spotty Illusion'
http://micro.cibermitanios.com.ar/post/150508692860


'12 Hilarious Voice Acting Fails In Video Games'
https://youtu.be/RA7QnG_zz4o

'Who reads the papers? - Yes, Prime Minister - BBC comedy'
One of those 'funny because it's true' sketches ;-D
https://youtu.be/DGscoaUWW2M


'ATP Tennis - Top 10 Worst Shots in History (HD)'
https://youtu.be/ewOOdbX0wgI

'ATP Tennis - Top 10 Worst Shots Ever PART 2 (HD)'
https://youtu.be/Lat5QcZXLYo

'Fabio Fognini - Top 10 Crazy Only Fognini Moments (HD)'
https://youtu.be/3e1yrXvIhi4


'Tony Robinson - Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast #122'
https://youtu.be/rf8aol3ly1Q
.
.
.

Entertainment stuff from the week 5-11/9/16

Hi uniplets,


Something that Brian posted slightly too late for last week's article:

'Freddie Mercury Asteroid'
https://youtu.be/o2vo6VR51eA


Massive coincidences. Interesting, aren't they.

'Family welcomed third child born on the same day for third consecutive year'
http://arbroath.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/family-welcomed-third-child-born-on.html

But how big a coincidence is this really?

Well, clearly it has to be quite unlikely, or it would happen all the time, in a population of 7 billion people, but it's nowhere near as random as it might seem, at first.

Think about it: what determines when a foetus is born, and becomes a baby?

1 - Time of conception
2 - Time to develop in the womb

That's it. So the question really is: if the parents bonked on the same night three years in a row, what's the chance that the three babies would be born on the same day, three years in a row?

Well, to calculate that, all we need is data on the statistical spread of gestational periods in different women, from child to child.

If there is a population of women who have very regular gestational periods, of consistent length, then we can assume that this family of 3s derives from a woman in this population.

{A gestation a few days longer would result in the same birth date, if the conception occurred a few days earlier. This widens the opportunities for such coincidences to happen}

In which case, the only significant opportunity for chance to be involved, is in element 1 - choice of when to have the bonking session.

Now, who wants to ring them up, and ask about that? :-D


As it occurs to me, as it occurs to me, as it occurs to-o me-eee ♫

...is coming back

'As It Occurs To Me: The Return'
https://www.comedy.co.uk/podcasts/as_it_occurs_to_me/2016_the_return/


I expect you will not be surprised to find out that last week's diatribe against tax dodging was not definitive, nor the last to feature on this blog. Oh yes, there's more...

According to a report by the General Accounting Office of the USA, nearly a fifth of profitable USAian companies paid no corporate taxes in 2012, through fraudulent accounting. A method of such deviance that i didn't mention last week, is the misappropriation of transactions.

Basically, because they're not required to pay tax if they make a loss, then by taking a lossful year and pretending that some of the costs of that year didn't happen, they can be 'saved' for a sunny day, to pretend that they had a rainier one. Do you know what i mean?

Let's say a company made a $50mn loss in 2012, and a $50mn profit in 2013. By declaring a $1mn loss in 2012, they pretend that $49mn of it happened in 2013. And by shuffling $2mn of profit in 2013 over to 2014's accounts, they can pretend that they had a $1mn loss in 2012, a $1mn loss in 2013, and $2mn in a year that hasn't happened yet. But of course, the tax people aren't going to be shown any of this, so how are they going to know?

There's a range of such abuses of prepayment/accrual accounting like this, called 'financial statement fraud' of which this is just one type. There's nothing wrong with prepayments and acrruals when done right, but done wrongly, it's a method of deceiving creditors and debtors, and... evading tax.

And when it came to avoiding tax in 2015, Pfizer topped the rankings in an R.G. Associates study. It paid 55% less tax than it would have done if all of its profit were taxed at the USA's 35% rate. That's $3.1 billion they dodged! A higher proportion than any other company in their study.

Of course, economists and businesspeople alike lay the blame for this at the feet of the 'cripplingly high' tax rate in the USA. Even though the tax only applies to profit. So if you're paying it, you don't need it. It's not like income tax, where you pay it because it's your personal revenue - corporation tax accounts for expenses. If you could draw up a Profit & Loss account for your finances, you'd probably pay less tax too, just because of the way the system works.

Oh, and health care and technology companies based in the USA added $266 billion to their profits over 10 years, thanks to pretending to be in tax havens, around the world.

To give you an idea of the scale of the financial fraud that Apple alone has perpetrated, their bill is going to be somewhere around €19 billion ($21 billion) whereas the entire cost of bailing out Greece's debts (the entire country) is just €2.8 billion ($3.2 billion) making Apple's tax bill (which at 35% is really not that high) enough to buy Greece's debt six-and-a-half times over!

It all looks a bit grim for Apple, these days, doesn't it. I imagine they must be doing something to try to PR all the crime reporting away. Y'know - PR - the only thing Steve Jobs was ever good at. Oh, is that yet another new iPhone design? Is that a new watch that can't actually be taken underwater despite the name? Is that an entire media event full of mini-press-releases to draw people's attention away?

Hmm. Looks like they are trying. Good luck to 'em :-D


In-and-on-or-around-this-date-or-time-of-year:

I think i missed it, but last week was The Naked Scientists' 15th anniversary :o)
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/podcasts/naked-scientists/show/20160830/

And i know i missed the 50th anniversary of the first airing of the original Star Trek, on the 8th of September 1966. As a little tribute, astronomers have identified nebulae that, from Earth's angle, look like the starship Enterprise. You can see images of them enlinked under 'contemporary stuff'.

Some time recently, some CRISPR-Cas9 "genetic scissor" genetically-engineered vegetables were cooked and eaten in a public show-off, for the first time. The CRISPR-based (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) genetic engineering technique was first published as a working technique in 2012. It's not yet known whether the anti-GMO mob will persuade anyone to ban its use, but it holds huge potential for making food more nutritious.
http://phys.org/news/2016-09-vegetables-crispr-cas9-cultivated-harvested-cooked.html

Here's one i haven't missed... yet. The 15th of September marks the 100th anniversary of the first use of tanks in warfare, at Cambrai, in the Somme, later designated as the Battle of Flers-Courcelette, when 36 Mark 1 tanks were used to advance the British front line.
http://www.1914-1918.net/tanks.htm


In other news:

$21 billion to settle Apple's tax bill, $3.2 billion to settle Greece's debt, and $3.6 billion to save Ecuador's million-hectare Yasuni National Park, which contains hugely diverse Amazon wildlife, and some of the world's last uncontacted indigenous populations. Unfortunately, the last of these has also gone unpaid, forcing the President to permit the oil company Petroamazonas to start trashing it for crude oil. But a fall in oil prices has meant Ecuador's income has fallen, and the lack of international support has forced his hand. I mean, he'd have to be massively corrupt to have $3.6 billion squirrelled away, somewhere, wouldn't he. Even former Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao (and his family included) had only extorted $2.7 billion by the time he got found out.
http://phys.org/news/2016-09-ecuador-oil-amazon-nature-reserve.html

Various companies are up in arms, whining about proposed copyright reforms, by the EU. Some are awful, or just awfully poorly thought through, but even the sensible ones have received the same lambasting. Unsurprisingly, Google-owned lobby group OpenForum Europe opposes ancillary copyright, which would make it financially expensive to quote anyone, on the internet, especially the newspapers it's designed to defend. Google opposes it because they have to quote newspapers' web-pages in their listings, otherwise no-one knows what the article they'd be clicking to contained! But then, media broadcasting organisations (like Sky and RTL) have been whining too, about the idea that maybe they should charge a base rate for access to their material, and not be charging extra just because customers are, for example, in Croatia. The internet's the internet - it doesn't cost more to make it available to Croatians, so why should they be charged more? It seems very sensible, to me, to prevent this kind of buccaneering geo-blocking. Other objections run along common objections to copyright law, full stop. Period. .. I maintain that intellectual property should not be allowed to be owned by organisations - only the individuals who contributed to it. And not beyond their death, either. That reform would fix a lot that's wrong with copyright and patent law.
http://phys.org/news/2016-09-eu-copyright-overhaul-cultural-apocalypse.html

I'm used to seeing sexist, racist, naturopathic, and theological pseudoscience crop up on press release sites like phys.org but this one's a rarity. Katherine Dafforn, Mariana Mayer-Pinto and Nathan Waltham, writing for The Conversation, are apparently quite happy to nail their flags to the mast of Feng Shui fraud - a pseudoscience famously deriving from the Orient, that is predicated on superstitious beliefs in and about 'qi', 'energy', 'harmony', 'balance' and 'building health'. They claim that such superstitious baloney could and should help with marinology, and ecology and engineering. Not a chance! If we want to ensure the health of our environment and ourselves, we must evict these intellectual trespassers, or all our efforts will be compromised unnecessarily.
http://phys.org/news/2016-09-oceans-feng-shui.html

The second death in a Tesla car this year (and in all history) has been the second in which blame isn't attributed to the car's autopilot system. In the first case, the driver was shown to be a rather reckless driver who was speeding at the time; and in this case, the autopilot has shown to not be on when the incident happened. In fact, the car's logs show that it was doing 155 kph (96 mph) when it was driven into a tree, which is 32 mph faster than the car in the first fatal incident. So Musk's Space X might be a bit dodgy when it comes to spaceflight, but his cars are not to blame when they go bang.
http://phys.org/news/2016-09-dutch-police-probe-fatal-tesla.html

It's a victory for corruption! Facebook routinely censors depictions of the human form (specifically certain bodyparts perverts don't like seeing) including the now-famous photograph of a naked girl escaping a napalm bombing, during the Vietnam War. But when Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg decided to object, then after her photo was taken down through routine, it eventually got put back up again. Prime Ministers get to post nudes if they want to, it seems. I shan't fret about the asininity of the premier's ascerbic witticism "It shows that using social media can make [a] political change even in social media" but i shall take another stab at Facebook's aloof and prejudicial bid for "protecting the community" by maintaning the community's ignorance of its own bodies. Facebook has similarly censored a photo of Copenhagen's statue of the Little Mermaid, on the same grounds! Less surprisingly, though no less nonsensically, it's censored Gustave Courbet's painting 'L'Origine Du Monde' (The Origin Of The World) which depicts a map of tasmania... a ham wallet, a bearded clam, a cellar door, a front window, a happy valley, a gate of heaven, an itching jenny, a vertical smile, a cockpit, a bald echidna, a blown out tater biscuit, a ring-a-rang-a-roo... you get the idea, right? I'm not allowed to use the word 'cunt' you see :-P
http://phys.org/news/2016-09-facebook-censoring-napalm-girl-photo.html

Just weeks away from Rosetta's final rest, as it's spiralled in toward comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, Rosetta has spotted the lander Philae, trapped against a cliff face. You can see the images at the first and second links below, or here. Rosetta hadn't been able to capture a photo of Philae since November 2014, but both had already sent years' worth of data to Earth. Rosetta is due to find its own landing spot on the comet on the 30th September, when it will complete its spiral course and crashland onto the cometary surface. Hopefully, sending back pictures all the way. You can find out a little more about Rosetta's dusty grave, and planned descent by clicking here, and about the cometary dust, by clicking here.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2104594-found-philae-lander-finally-spotted-by-rosetta-on-comet-67p/
http://phys.org/news/2016-09-orbiter-comet-lander-philae-space.html

Yet another fossil discovery, marred by the stench of festering cryptozoology. There really has been an icthyosaur fossil revealed, having been discovered and eventually catalogued after 50 years sitting around, but there has never been the same discovery for a 'nessie'. Species are often classified, taxonomically, years and sometimes decades after discovery, simply because there are so many of them, and so few people to analyse them. They get shoved on a shelf somewhere, and passed by in favour of newer finds, and then half a century later, someone finally gets around to working out whether they're 'new' or not. Well, i suppose either 50 years or 170 million years can be old or new, depending on your point of view. But either way, nothing lived in Scotland 170 million years ago, because it didn't exist. Not the animal, the country. Unless you were thinking of a 'nessie' in which case neither did :-P
http://doubtfulnews.com/2016/09/cant-discover-a-fossil-ichthyosaur-in-scotland-without-invoking-a-fictional-monster/
http://phys.org/news/2016-09-nessie-real-scottish-sea-monster.html

Archaeologists of the Mary Rose project have published 3D visual-light scans of ten objects found on the wreck of the ship, including a skull of a carpenter, whose osseous malformations provide clues to the life he might have led. You can go straight the scans page by clicking here.
http://phys.org/news/2016-09-3d-skulls-henry-viii-doomed.html

Whether you know them as 'volatiles', 'essentials', 'odours' or 'perfumes', whiffy chemicals have a common property of miscibility in water. That means that they won't just linger on your body - they can collect in the environment, too. A study of 22 sites from the inner-city canals of Venice, out to the more rural areas, has found that 17 such volatile chemicals persist in the environment, 500 times more abundantly in the inner-city than on the edges of Venice. This includes chemicals known to be common subjects of allergies - immune malfunctions. Further research will be needed to quantify impacts from these chemicals' distribution in the environment.
http://phys.org/news/2016-09-perfumes-pollute-canals-venice.html

Barack Obama is a parasite. No, seriously, he is. But he's not Kenyan. Baracktrema obamai, a tiny parasitic flatworm, lives while causing no obervable harm, in the blood of Malaysian Freshwater Turtles. It's deemed a huge honour to have a taxon named after you, but sometimes it just doesn't feel like one :-D
http://phys.org/news/2016-09-barack-obama-parasite-honor.html

An imaging system in development at MIT can be used to read books without opening them. It uses infrared-to-microwave band light to look at and through the pages, and an algorithm to distinguish one leaf (page) from another, and to determine the shapes of the letters that are written on them. Even using 'books' deliberately pre-made to make the task easy, it can currently only see 20 pages into a book, and can only make out letters on the top 9 pages, but advancement of the technique could lead to a way to read texts inside codices that have stuck together through decay. If the contents are a curiosity, but the codex itself too fragile to open, this imaging system could be the solution.
http://phys.org/news/2016-09-prototype-method-letters-pages-stack.html

------------------------------------------------------ contemporary stuff

'Why did the Falcon 9 Explode?'
https://youtu.be/BPv0VZcvm4Q

{Musk is trying to frame it as an advanced problem, instead of a basic one}
http://phys.org/news/2016-09-spacex-accident-difficult-complex-history.html

'Coffee Cup Vibrations - Numberphile'
https://youtu.be/MfzNJE4CK_s

'Vorticella - Under the Microscope'
https://youtu.be/VOH2qOFoLto

'Are GMOs Dangerous?'
https://youtu.be/P3KDGHJE-SU

'Checking Out Your Privates | The Checkout'
https://youtu.be/jIVuiiC12HY

'As A Guilty Mum: Health Products | The Checkout'
https://youtu.be/s-HJzMQSm3o

'Punishing Doubt [cc]'
https://youtu.be/bdTZBVlg3nI

'Witnessing Jehovah'
https://youtu.be/TFYwmB1tX60

'Weather, or Climate Change?'
https://youtu.be/ABcG-QCBr6k

'Image: Jupiter's south polar region'
http://phys.org/news/2016-09-image-jupiter-south-polar-region.html

'Mars rover Curiosity views spectacular layered rock formations'
http://phys.org/news/2016-09-mars-rover-curiosity-views-spectacular.html

'Image: Plankton bloom in the Barents Sea captured by the Sentinel-2A satellite'
http://phys.org/news/2016-09-image-plankton-bloom-barents-sea.html

'Image: 'Enterprise' nebulae seen by Spitzer'
http://phys.org/news/2016-09-image-enterprise-nebulae-spitzer.html

'"T-Rump" by Roy Zimmerman'
https://youtu.be/Xwu-hagvVLE

'Joo sings to Igudesman "You are My Perfect Man"'
https://youtu.be/zO-4lb7Mbo8

'The International Maths Salute with Dr James Tanton'
https://youtu.be/gSMeawFz0Sw

'Signs of the Time: Series 4 Ep 13 | The Checkout'
https://youtu.be/iKNJ_YLgbA8

'10 more amazing bets you will always win! (new episode)'
https://youtu.be/T6qJ8i82Lo8

------------------------------------------------------ of the weeks

Word Of The Week: osseous -- pertaining to bones, in shape, consistency, or other quality; unchanged from 15th century latin, and dating back to Proto-Indo-European as 'ost'

Fact Of The Week: It has been variously claimed that all the people of indigenous Australian ancestry are incapable of counting past '4' and that they all have number systems that can be used to count well past '4'. Both of these extremities are wrong. The number of populations that do not have words for numbers above four is very few, but not non-existent; so most have some form of counting system with which they can understand and convey higher numbers. Warlpiri and Anindilyakwa-speakers are restricted to words for 'one', 'two', 'few' and 'many' but Wardaman speakers concatenate numbers to go above 5, and have the word 'yigaga' for 10. Kuurn Kopan Noot speakers have the word 'peep' for 20, and the word 'baarbaanuung' for 100. Chaap Wuurong speakers have numbers up to 28, for days of the lunar cycle, corresponding to parts of the body, thereby naming all of those places at the same time as having gestural demonstrations of number. Despite all of this, Humanities academics still use the factoid that Aboriginals 'can't count past four' as an excessively-reductionistic generalisation and rhetorical remark, to shaw up their vapid extemporisations. So now you know, you can correct them. An element of confusion can be found in the fact that the Pirahã speakers of the Amazon have no words for number whatsoever. They have an intuitive understanding of 'less' and 'more', and 'some' and 'none' but nothing more than the intuitive comparative ability that many other species have been demonstrated to have. None of these peoples have been demonstrated to be incapable of numeracy - only of unwillingness, because they see no use for it.

------------------------------------------------------ non-contemporary stuff

'John Cleese Genes'
https://youtu.be/wv6bB8EN2lA
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