Jon Ronson is an excellent writer who seems to specialise in describing the stranger shores of the human species. His The Men Who Stare At Goats, for example is a book both hilarious and chilling about some of the bizarre characters in the US military. Well worth checking out.
If you’ve never read any of his stuff, then here’s an excellent introduction in today’s Guardian. It’s an article in which he describes his visit to North Pole, Alaska. Truth is stranger than fiction, and Ronson’s deadpan descriptions of the people and the place are terrific, in all senses of the word.
It’s only this week that the weather has become noticeably colder, and thus more in keeping with the season. Last Monday, the mist rolled in, so the daily walk in the woods took on an additional air of mystery.
We’re unlikely to have a White Christmas though, which is a pity…
As the old joke says, the majority of those who use natural family planning turn out to be parents… Never a truer word was spoken… And don’t even begin to ask about the appallingly stupid dandelions versus thornless roses that also figure in this vacuous nonsense.
That bizarre piece by Ziauddin Sardar that I mentioned recently has garnered support from (to me) an unexpected quarter: Sunny Hundal. Fortunately, J. Carter Wood from Obscene Desserts is at hand to unpick the arguments.
This time, I feel comfortable with the outcome, being as I was trained to be an engineer…
You scored as Engineer. Military Engineer. Your job is usually overlooked, but without you nothing gets done. While you sometimes annoyed at this, and you know the only time people come to you is when there’s something wrong. You understand that you are the heart and soul of any organization with honesty and nice work ethic to boot. "I need more Duct Tape!!!"
…The Christmas Cowboy Merman. Okaaay… What’s the backstory on that? Our tree doesn’t even have a fairy this year (more’s the pity, but then I’m not in charge of the tree decorations this time around).
… That was the dedication on the film Contact, the best film of exploring the wonder of the universe by the scientific method I’ve ever seen. The stunning opening three and a half minutes that takes you travelling out across the universe and back in time to the Big Bang is worth the price of admission in itself, but the film goes on to frame the old religion versus science debate with a cracking good story. And since the Carl of the dedication is Carl Sagan, who wrote the original novel, then the film comes down on the side of science, and not superstition.
I am reminded, by Obscene Desserts, that today marks the tenth anniversary of Sagan’s death. He is sorely missed. Time both to watch Contact and read The Demon Haunted World again, I think.
Here’s a salutary tale from an overseas student at Cambridge. He received a letter from his bank (the HSBC Group) telling him that they no longer wished to provide him with banking services, and that he had 30 days to move to another bank before his HSBC account would be closed by them.
After unsuccessfully trying a number of times to ring the contact number on the letter (his local HSBC branch could do nothing), let him take up the story:
After two written complaints and a phone call to customer services, a member of the “Team” finally contacted me. She enquired about a single international deposit into my account, which I then explained to be my study grant for the coming year. Upon this explanation I was told that the bank would not close my account, and I was given a vague explanation of them not expecting students to get large deposits. I found this strange, since it had not been a problem in previous years, and even stranger since my deposit had cleared into my account two days after the letter was sent.
I love that: the bank "doesn’t expect students to get large deposits". Dear lord, when I was at university forty years ago, I got my student grant paid to me in a single large deposit each year, hasn’t the penny dropped yet at the HSBC that this is what happens?
I note that this student isn’t the only one to receive a similar letter from the HSBC. Clearly, some newly-introduced fraud or anti-terrorist checking system has been throwing up false positives. It all leaves a nasty taste, particularly after reading the similar experiences of others who have commented on the student’s Blog entry. Cockney rhyming slang doesn’t even begin to describe this bunch of bankers.
And another tip of the hat to Mind Hacks. This time for the entry illustrating schizoaffective disorder, with a link to an article describing the symptoms, written by someone who suffers from it. Hell on earth comes closest to what I think it must be like. I consider myself fortunate that, thus far, I have remained reasonably sane.
Mind Hacks has an entry on Professor Temple Grandin. It includes a link to the BBC Horizon programme made about her. Unlike many of recent Horizon programmes, this particular episode is well worth watching. Grandin is a fascinating individual, and her insights from her position of standing somewhat outside of the "normal" human perspective are valuable and revealing.
I adore QI, the slightly bizarre quiz show hosted by the urbane national treasure that is Stephen Fry. Last week’s episode on BBC Three was the Christmas Special (it’ll be repeated this Friday on BBC Two). It contains this somewhat amusing comparison between two mythologies.
Sometimes the exchanges between Fry and his guests make you realise that there is no way that this show could ever be broadcast in America without censorship. For example Fry’s recent explanation as to how, when he was at university, a fellow student came by the nickname of "Heinz" reduced his guests, the studio audience, and me to tears of shocked and hysterical laughter…
There’s a couple of films that have gone on my "to see" list. One is The Fountain and the second is El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth). As you can probably guess, I have a soft spot for the cinema of the fantastic…
I’ve blogged about this FizerPharm Inc. presentation before. But now I see that it has come to the attention of PZ Myers, so I feel that it’s worth repeating. What I didn’t realise the first time around is that Peter Watts, the author of this creepy little presentation, also wrote an SF novel: Blindsight, from which the material for the presentation was taken. The novel is now available for download, as it has been released under a Creative Commons license.
Peter Watts’ web site itself is also worth visiting via the front door, despite Watts’ antithesis to people (like me) who use Internet Explorer.
The town of Kingston Upon Thames is troubled by the number of pigeons it has. The council proposed a cull of the pigeons, and this was duly reported in the local paper. The newspaper also has a web site, where readers can leave reactions to the stories. Many people reacted to this particular story in ways that become increasingly surreal. Go and read it for yourself.
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