Writer's Block: Really, Truly

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No, and no. Sorry. I don't believe in either. It's all oxytocin and serotonin and monoamine oxidase anyway. Just brain chemicals and pheromones.

Writer's Block: It's the Little Things

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Oh, there's always something. I just have to recognise the opportunity when it comes around, and act upon it. Sometimes, it's a moment of reassuring physical contact, touching the arm of this friend of mine who'd had recent surgery - or it's laughing out loud at something hilarious I've shared with the folks.

My nephew and I were in the library once, and I had a little pendant ocarina with me. Right underneath a sign which read "SILENCE" I belted out a couple of bars of "Boys And Girls Come Out To Play" and, looking at my nephew, yelled "LEG IT!"

Another time, a bit closer to the present, whilst in Manchester I spotted a little Buddha figurine = one of those little Laughing Buddhas, made out of yellow glass. It looked like a little solid blob of honey. I gave it to Mum, who has long wanted one of those little Buddhas for her home.

And yes, she's a Catholic.

XKCD - Two Mirrors

This one is priceless!

March 13th

Okay, so today's March 13th. It's a Friday the 13th, and it's the second one of three to fall this year (the last is in November, IIRC).

On this day, twenty years ago, Sir Tim Berners - Lee launched the World Wide Web.

Also, and entirely unrelated to the above, on this day back in 1996, Thomas Hamilton went berserk and shot dead a bunch of children in a primary school in Dunblane.

I was actually in college at that time, during my freshman year, catching up on online news feeds. March 15th, 1996, was the first time that I had actually used a news client to get news - and the feed scooped the main broadcast news by something like an hour.

Of course now, they all use feeds, and RSS has become one of the de facto standards for getting the news in fast. But back then, if you wanted to learn something you had to wait until one o'clock and get it on the Beeb. Then you'd get it on Teletext, and finally, a long way down the line, somebody in the press would print it out on rag, a day late for them to do anything about it.

I'd say that the event that we ought to be celebrating on March 13th, the one that has had the most influence on the world, has got to be the 1989 anniversary.

Thank you, Sir Tim. It'd be worth imagining there's a heaven, because I imagine that when it's your turn you're guaranteed a place there.

Sitting in a windowless room in the basement, monitoring the servers. *sigh*

"I laugh at your claims to scientific validity!"

News article on cocaine asserting its links to violent behaviour

Okay, these guys have released all these facts and figures. But this is not a scientific study by any means.

I was watching a news report on this, and when I heard the newscaster begin a sentence "To support this theory, DrugScope collected data from bzzzzzzzz ..."

I filled in the blank with laughter there, because no matter what they were going to say, no matter how fervently they believed what they were saying to be true, the gathering of data from police records and from second hand accounts of behaviour is not scientific evidence.

The only scientific evidence that can truly back up the theory would have to involve using a very large sample of volunteers, about 20,000, measuring their health, body masses, gender and metabolism, recording their diets and physiological and mental changes throughout, and sending them out regularly onto the streets, week in, week out, for a period of not less than two years, ripped to the twiddly bits on precisely measured shots of Vod Bulls and the finest cocaine, and see what trouble they get into.

And the difference between the police's effort and this effort is that this effort would have to be taking place under controlled conditions, and likely involve a double blind with a control group of equal size whom we would feed on the finest Corona fizzies and snorted sherbet.

And you know it makes sense, because this is Science. Good, clean Science.

I'd love to get funding for this. I'll have my IgNobel prize in green, thank you very much.

Pink Priapic Mickey

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Words fail. :)