The Barnum Effect

I've been host to an unexpected house guest these last few days, a little Patterdale Terrier Cross whom I now know as Bruce. I was driving through Meanwood on Sunday afternoon when I saw a van stopped by the side of the road, hazard lights flashing, and the motorist on the pavement bent down holding a small dog whilst making a call on his mobile. I pulled over to see if the chap needed any help. He explained that he'd stopped because he was worried for the dog which he'd seen straying, fearing it would come to harm crossing the busy roads. He'd called the police who weren't interested, and he'd called the dog warden to be told they don't collect strays at the weekend. The motorist was stuck, he couldn't put a dog in the van as he was on his way to a job, but neither could he just leave the dog to fend for itself, and so the dog came home with me. He was well behaved and calm in my car, but when we got to my house he was understandably unsettled. I

I’ve been maintaining radio silence for a wee while now, but today I’m free to wax lyrical. Well, I say I’m free, but I suppose I’m only as free insomuch as anyone is truly free, given the behaviours we must forgo in order to participate in a social community. For instance I’m not free to murder, maim or create mayhem. Alas. On the plus side I get to reap the benefits of participating in civilisation, and this should not be underestimated. Imagine a world where there was no cooperation, where it was each person for themselves. You could take what you want from anyone else, as long as you had the might to take it, and the strength to keep it, but would there be anything worth taking in such a world?   We cooperate on a massive scale to produce even the most humble of objects. A door is simple thing, but if I had to make a door from first principles with no assistance how would I fair? I’d need to chop down a tree, so first I’d need to make an axe.  I could go stone age, and track dow

Good luck to the crew of the Atlantis now on approach for landing at Florida! To all the people who've contributed to the Space Shuttle program from inception to its final mission ending today - thank you for taking humanity forward. Let us hope that these small steps into space will lead to bigger strides into the galaxy. Live coverage

Unfit for work this week, I've been comparing the nuances between co-codamol and trammadol for a spasmodic symphony of pain from a cricked neck. Co-codamol seems to ease the spasms, it also makes me queasy and dopey. Trammadol, aka tremmadol, relegates the pain to something of an irritation, whilst hitting me with the buzz of a dozen double espresso's. Back at the ranch, it seems the rumoured axe has manifested and culled the herd. First they came for the poor performers,     and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a poor performer. Then they came for the long of tooth,     and I didn't speak out because I wasn't long of tooth. Then they came for the weak and sickly,     and I didn't speak out because I wasn't weak and sickly. Then they came for me,     now just another weak and sickly, long of tooth, poor performer. Someone up top is divorced from the ugly reality of a demoralised workforce, brutalised by repeated deep cuts, haunted by

I'm in the calm at the centre of the storm. I've been badly buffeted by the storm's arrival, and there will be more distress before it's over, but just now I'm enjoying the respite. Ordinarily I'm so tired, caught up in the drudgery of working and commuting, that I fail to raise my head and take in the scenery. Today, my mind is settled, and I'm at peace. In this oasis all things seem to sparkle with intense vibrancy under the solstice sun. A premonition of incipient nostalgia perhaps. This brief moment in time feels like a gift. One last chance to value what I have before it becomes what I had.

Fallibility of memory, the curse of middle age, is upon me. A thought will occur to me, causing me to rise and walk into another room to get something, but by the time I reach my destination my mind is blank. Now what was it I came here to do? I’ll look vaguely around until my eye happens on some chore waiting to be done, which I assume is what I came to do. Leaving the room, I look back, with that nagging feeling of something forgotten. The moment I sit back down, it hits me, the memory of what I’d intended to collect. So I rise again, sometimes with the same result. On the bright side, it gets the chores done, and since there usually is a flight of stairs to traverse I get some exercise too. When we say we can’t remember, we really mean we can’t recall. The memory is undoubtedly resting comfortably somewhere deep within our noodle, barring brain injury and neurological issues. I have trouble with the passwords I need to remember to access systems at work. Often they are so fiendi

The sparrows, starlings, blackbirds and goldfinches all seem to have had a successful year judging by the number of batty baby birds flitting around my garden. Yesterday the fledglings were vibrating their wings and chirping for food, but today the parents are using the "monkey see, monkey do" educational technique to teach their demanding offspring how to forage for themselves. There is something utterly charming about the young birds, their feathers all fluffy and ruffled, with their inelegant and haphazard flights from perch to perch, often landing on the flimsiest of branches which oscillate wildly under their weight.

I was up at 5:30am to meet my dad and his dog Jessie for a walk around the lake at Roundhay Park. As is often the case at that time of day, the sky was clear, though rain has threatened since. There wasn't a whisper of wind and the lake reflected park and sky perfectly. The view had the makings of a fine one thousand piece jigsaw. Back home, after a little breakfast, I caught up on some telly on the BBC iPlayer. On a whim I watched Wonderland - The Trouble With Love and Sex . I hadn't seen an episode of Wonderland before, so I didn't know what to expect. I was quite taken with the concept - the voices belonged to real people who'd agreed to be taped during their counselling sessions at Relate, and the footage was a cartoon interpretation. It was insightful to listen to these sessions, with the nuances of body language and expression heightened by the cartoon characters, seeing them immersed at times in the imagery from their psyche. There was a point in the document

The other day a popup dialog appeared asking if I'd like to upgrade to Firefox 4, to which I blithely agreed. Woe is me. In Firefox 4 the buttons have been moved around and the address bar has been incorporated into each tab. Trivial stuff, but I'm becoming more adverse to change for the sake of change as my brain fossilizes into middle age. When I discovered the option to move the address bar back to its proper position I resolved to stick with version 4. After the next reboot my Firefox woes began in earnest. Each time I tried to navigate to a new page, open a new tab, or even refesh the page I was on, Firefox 4 hung in a not responding state. The browser would eventually spring back to life, but the net effect was much the same as if I'd reduced my connection speed to 2400 baud, placing Firefox 4 in the chocolate teapot category of browsers. Googling 'I hate Firefox 4', 'Firefox 4 sucks' and other such blunt phrases I discovered I was not alone in

Recently a wedding and a funeral have conspired to keep the AV referendum at the bottom of the news agenda, but it deserves more attention. The First Past The Post (FPTP) system has allowed our democracy to flounder in a evolutionary eddy. With FPTP there is no incentive for cooperation or constructive debate. Instead we are poorly served by the "Oh yes we will!" and "Oh no you won't!" pantomime politics we so commonly see in our House of Commons today. AV would be a great leap forward in evolutionary terms. Parliamentary candidates would have to work much harder to be returned as an MP for their constituency, requiring more than 50% of the vote, rather than a simple majority. Party politics would focus more positively on the policy similarities with their rivals in order to garner secondary votes. Coalition governments would be more likely, but this would foster a more adult and collaborative approach to government. There is a fear that AV would lead to a

Barack Obama today announced that US ground forces have killed Osama Bin Laden. Will this make the world a safer place? I suspect not - bloody retaliation from Al-Qaeda seems more likely. I would not be surprised if the UK threat level increases from Severe to Critical in the next week or two. Will it save Obama's presidency, and give him a second term in office? I hope so. While unpopular at home, Obama is still well thought of outside the US, where we continue to enjoy the pleasant novelty of an American president whose IQ is larger than his shoe size.

The threats of the unions to organise strike action to coincide with the Royal Wedding came to naught in the end. One suspects that some shady part of the establishment brought pressure to bear on the union leaders, or perhaps they realised that their proletariat workers are actually rather fond of the monarchy. The day was free from terrorist atrocities too, all credit to our spooks and law enforcement agencies. The wedding was streamed live on the YouTube Royal Channel, gloriously free of inane commentary, but the frame rate gradually decreased, until it ground to an ignominious halt just as the bride arrived at the Abbey. The BBC News website was similarly afflicted. I flipped across to the CNN website whose video stream wasn't affected by network congestion. After a pretty standard Church of England wedding ceremony, the newly-wed couple left the Abbey with the orchestra playing Sir William Walton's "Crown Imperial" march written in 1937 for the coronation

It's funny how sometimes the origin of a phrase suddenly comes into sharp focus. Looking out of the window just now I spotted two Wood Pigeons sitting together all cosy on the fence. One was pecking at the neck of the other, and I thought 'aye-aye - I know what he wants, randy ole pigeon.' I stood and watched them a while, and saw that they were taking it in turns to groom each other around the head - the only spot on their own body they can't groom for themselves. They then started rubbing their heads together, and I thought 'ahh, how nice, just like young lovebirds.' That was the light bulb moment. I'd never thought about the origin of the phrase 'lovebirds' nor ever had any image of courting birds in my mind whenever I've had cause to use the phrase. This might be because I've never before witnessed this gentle side of bird courtship - I'm far more used to the Rock Pigeons in London where the male aggressively harasses the female t

Everywhere we go we leave electronic traces. If we walk in built-up areas we're captured on CCTV. If we drive we're caught on the ANPR system. If we carry a mobile phone we leave a trail in the logs of the cell towers. When we browse the internet we leave behind details of our IP address, ISP and city (see the Feedjit live traffic feed on this blog.) Use a cashpoint, credit or debit card and the time and location are recorded. We're ok about this because we're comfy in our democracy. We have civil liberties, and the expectation of privacy. If someone has broken the law, then we're happy for the relevant authorities to order companies to release their data on the culprits. Since we're law abiding citizens we have nothing to hide, and hence nothing to fear. Some freely choose to share itineraries and personal information on the internet, yet it is disturbing to be unwittingly "outed" by technology. Take a photo with your smart phone and post it on

The UK is a free and democratic society today, but what about tomorrow? History has plenty to teach us about the fragility of society, and the ease with which a totalitarian regime can emerge given the right conditions. It seems to me that we're on the brink catastrophe on so many levels - climate change, population growth, and fossil fuel scarcity. Imagine the measures governments would have to take to keep order in a world where crops are failing due to changing weather patterns, populations are displaced by rising sea waters, and fuel & electricity have become rationed commodities. In such circumstances we'd be lucky if we just had to put up with a totalitarian government - resource scarcity also triggers war. We all hope that a new energy source will be invented, and climate change will turn out to be a load of bunk, but perhaps we should be planning for the worst? We often joke in the family about putting together a Mad Max kit - a survival tool chest for a p

I have a large area of decking at the back of the house, which was constructed by the previous incumbent. Ground level drops away from the front of the house to the back, so what is ground level at the front is one storey up at the back. The decking was built on 2m stilts in order to be level with the 'ground floor' of the house. I've never seen anything like it, and I'm sure the neighbours weren't best impressed when it was put up. This time last year I wrote that I'd been swabbing the decking. I did intend to apply an oil to the deck afterwards, but wet weather and a tree releasing a tonne of fluffy floaty seeds which coated every surface conspired to put me off. I've had that tree pruned, so there would be no seeds to scupper my plans this year. I spent last weekend cleaning the decking with a pressure washer, and it is now ready for the oil. We've had beautiful weather all week while I've been stuck at work in London. I've been avidly che

Occasionally I'm overwhelmed with the urge to have a really good stretch, tensing my muscles until they tremble, tipping my head back and unleashing a full on yawn. Lately this is followed by a faint spell - the world goes distant, my vision fades, and everything gets a bit woozy. After a few breaths the world re-intrudes, and normality resumes. It hasn't concerned me, but after a particularly strong episode today my curiosity was peaked, and I typed 'stretch yawn faint' into Google (hallowed be thy results, for thine is the engine, the spider and the crawler) to see what cropped up. It turns out the combo of stretching and tipping the head back starves the brain of oxygen. The stretch lengthens the blood vessels causing a blood pressure drop, whilst it also creates demand for oxygen in the tensing muscles, and finally the head tip constricts an artery in the neck which cuts off the blood to the brain. I'm not sure how common it is in absolute terms, but the f

A piece on the BBC News website titled Dib, dib, dib...Scouts offer sex education scheme caught my eye this morning. Scout's honour - this is the photo that accompanied the article: Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, fnarr-fnarr, ooh-err crikey missus. Do you think he's already got his badge? Know what I mean? Eh? Eh? I was getting my current affairs fix this afternoon when I noticed the article had been updated with a new picture: Ah well, all good things must come to an end. Sigh.

Rail delays after body discovered Nightmare journeys for tens of thousands of travellers. Far worse of course for the person killed and their family. My sympathies to them.

As I left my house one morning I noticed a football lodged high in the branches of my shrubbery. Nothing particularly unique about that - the boys next door are all footy mad. Then I noticed my lovely lilac tree lying on the lawn, broken at the base of the trunk. It was the juxtaposition of the two that caused my eyebrows to rise. My mind's eye played a ghostly video reconstruction of events in CSI style. Ball gets lodged in shrubbery, boy tries to gain extra height to reach said ball by climbing the lilac, only it promptly breaks under his weight, and the boy jumps clear as the tree crashes earthward.. This is pure speculation of course. It could well be that the tree came down in high winds. We had some strong winds a few days before this happened, although not between the time I last saw it standing and when I saw it felled. Did it fall or was it pushed? Needless to say, no young lads rang my bell to sheepishly admit they'd accidentally killed one of my trees. This

Whilst passing through St Pancras on my way to Kings Cross I noticed that a "London 2012 Shop" has opened with a sign at the entrance stating "We are proud to accept only Visa." What about notes and coins? Surely it is against the law to reject legal tender? I decided I would challenge the till troll, but before I had chance I saw an American gentleman paying with a Visa card and cash. While they do accept cash in the store, online they cannot, making ticket and merchandising purchases inaccessible for people who are not customers of Visa. I suspect I will not the only one to be incensed by the idea of a payment monopoly for what is billed as an inclusive sporting event. I do have a Visa card, but this has left such a foul taste in the mouth that I'm considering switching to a less obnoxious credit card provider. Mooching round the store in a half-hearted attempt at browsing I was un-tempted by the vast variety of t-shirts and the like carrying the naff 20

I love the perfect duality of the word spring. It is the name for the season of regeneration and growth. It also means to rise, leap, move, or act suddenly and swiftly. Both senses of the word come together in me as the season of Spring arrives, and I can fly into action after months of being constrained by the bleak winter weather. 

Once again I've been led a merry dance from platform to platform at London Bridge train station. Arriving at Platform 1 on a service from Cannon St, I crossed to Platform 4 to catch my onward train. When it arrived it was already packed, and after everyone piled on it left resembling a sardine can, an experience I decided to forgo. A little while later my next train option was announced - back on Platform 1. See Harry. See train. See Harry run. Run Harry, Run! Other than that, my journey back to my London digs was much less eventful than yesterday. We were rocking along as usual last night when suddenly something started clanking around under the train. We had either run over an object, or a piece of the train had fallen off. Either way it sounded large and metallic, striking the underside of the train a dozen times with floor vibrating clangs. The was a nervous titter around the carriage when I remarked to the lady opposite "that's not a reassuring sound." When

I'm in a dark place. Storm clouds have rolled in to block out the sunlight, leaving the world tinged in that sickly yellow light that precedes a thunderstorm. Gulls circle overhead, and beneath me the waters swirl in a vortex that threatens to suck me deep into the maelstrom, where I would surely drown. Suddenly, my folly laid bare, I realise the ocean despises me and will not tolerate me to stay in its demesne. The strong might be allowed to swim its waters, but the weak and ill are fools to believe the sea to be as supportive as it appears. You might paddle in the shallow bay awhile, rising with the gentle swell, but tarry too long and the sea will test you, falter and the riptide is merciless. I had been so sad and lonely on the beach, watching my friends swimming back and forth, slowly recovering from the grievous injury that had washed me ashore. Fear and longing held me immobile for the longest time. 'Come in, you can do it,' urged the swimmers. So I dove into t

With my scientific background and logical mind I'm practically duty bound to denounce horoscopes as so much bunk and twaddle. Indeed, I have no problem doing so. Horoscopes epitomise the Barnum Effect. Here a few Scorpio horoscopes I’ve pulled together from the internet, covering the week and month ahead: http://www.cainer.com/weekly/scorpiot.html Think about how hard you have worked. How much effort you have invested. Has it all paid off? Of course not. Nothing we ever do is 100 per cent successful. It's the same with the money we spend. Not every penny can be parted with wisely, no matter how frugal we try to be. We either accept this or we drive ourselves insane in an effort to achieve unattainable perfection. Now, think of an aspiration that you are all but ready to give up on; a campaign that you have lost faith in. Put more energy into your great dream this week, it won't all work out... but some of it will. http://www.homepagers.com/daily/scorpio.html You are

In the red corner we have the Union movement, an old bruiser whose glory days are decades in the past, needing a big win to stave off extinction. The unions come from the cage fighting school of boxing. No rules and the last man standing wins. In the blue corner we have the Conservative government, using the dire economic situation to green light all the swingeing cuts to public services they've ever dreamt of. The government prefers to play by the Queensbury rules of boxing. As far as the authorities were concerned Arthur Scargill rather ruined the sport when he just didn't have the decency to know when to stay down, and changed the law to cramp the style of any future Scargill wannabes. The days of general strikes and mass pickets may be legally curtailed, but the unions are beginning to realise they can pick strike dates that, just by chance, coincide with action by their sister organisations in other industries. Socialist politics are typically republican in outlook, it

Perhaps it was post-christmas shopping deprivation, or a need to spend a little on myself before the cost-of-living and tax increases suck my wallet dry, but whatever impelled me I had a wee buying frenzy on Amazon the other day. Normally I'm extremely adverse to buying gadgets for the kitchen, as they typically end up gathering dust after the novelty wears off. Bread and ice cream makers, electric carving knives and pepper mills, fondue sets and chocolate fountains. Lets be honest, who doesn't have a little herd of white elephants looking sad and unloved at the back of a cupboard? I started off innocently enough, looking for a handheld vacuum to do my stairs. Having picked one with dozens of glowing reviews I added it to my basket. This is where it all went horribly wrong. Amazon showed me one of those "People who bought this, also bought...." lists. Before I knew it I'd added two other items that I didn't know I needed to my order. A big Amazon parcel

The doorbell just rang, which is unusual as I don't generally have casual callers at this time in the evening, so I raced down the stairs to answer the door. When I opened it I was faced with a young woman and a girl in Woodland Trust tabards. They both waved their arms and chimed "Hello!" immediately followed with the woman chirping "Aw, don't you look cute with your hair in a little bob!" "Would you mind not patronising me on my own doorstep and tell me why you're calling?" I responded. You can tell I wasn't best pleased. I'm never happy to be called to the door by chuggers , but I'm damned if I'll be insulted by cold callers. It might have been a suitable greeting if a toddler had opened the door, but it's just a teeny weeny bit inappropriate for anyone over the age of five. She seemed non-plussed by my directness, and launched into the usual chugger routine of asking questions that demand a "yes" response,

Astronomy was scuppered by meteorology today as clouds obscured last night's Quadrantid meteor shower and this morning's partial solar eclipse. To add insult to injury I didn't feel the 3.6 magnitude earthquake which hit Yorkshire yesterday. We've had an uncanny number of portents and omens in the last month. In addition to meteors, solar eclipse and earthquake, we had an eclipse of the moon on the winter solstice which has not occurred in nigh on 500 years. On New Years Eve 3000 blackbirds fell dead from the sky in Arkansas, while 125 miles away 100,000 drum fish washed up dead. The end of days? Today we're intellectually curious about these events, but in less enlightened days we would have been disturbed, fearful even, and looking around for a suitable sacrifice to appease the obviously angry Gods. I might be hard pressed to pick just one person if someone had to be ritually slayed. We have so many figures we love to hate who would do nicely. Politicians ar

Last night, as the clock struck midnight, revellers all across Leeds set off fireworks. After the fireworks faded, the sky gradually filled with Flying Chinese Lanterns, which drifted south east across the city, forming orange constellations of hopes and dreams in the clear night sky.