So. 2007. Pretty good, overall. Particularly memorable moments for me:

• After an early-morning phone call, nonchalantly driving to the hospital where my sister was due to give birth. I had books and food to share with my father, assuming we’d be in for the long haul. In fact Aimee was born ten minutes after I arrived.
• Meeting Abi.
• Feeling completely bloody stupid at a university interview.
• Walking into the first day at said university, as terrified as I’ve ever been.
• Trying not to shake as I photographed a friend’s wedding ceremony and reception.
• Walking around Stratford in the snow, and building Boris.
• A bad week in June.
• Photographing a couple dancing in Stratford’s floods - this shot became my most popular photo on flickr.
• Putting everything on hold to read Harry Potter 7 spoiler-free.
• Asking Neil Gaiman to sign a book on photographic theory.
• Finally, finally nailing the foxtrot at my dance group’s Christmas Ball.
• Keeping friends and family up until all hours on a Sunday night by making them perform various ridiculous acts to create a bonkers photo.

Resolutions:

• Get more organised. All my free time is now completely taken up with photography, dancing, guitar and blogging - I’m pretty much running at full capacity. I don’t mind this at all, but a bit more organisation would be a very good idea.
• Practice the guitar more, as I’ve been slack for a few months.

Thanks to everybody who’s read / commented on / linked to my blog this year, and particular thanks must go to Damian for his hard work deflecting massive spam attacks.

Numerologically speaking, 2008 feels boring. Eight is definitely the least interesting of digits. Still, I won’t hold that against the next twelve months, especially as there are important things like a new Indiana Jones film to look forward to. Bring it on.

Watching Robin Hood is a bit like going to the panto and finding everyone on stage taking it seriously. Last year’s season finale was a bit bonkers, and yesterday’s more of the same.

I missed the first half hour, but I think this was the basic plot: the Sheriff of Nottingham and Guy of Gisborne head off to the Holy Land to kill King Richard. As you do. They take Marian, recently exposed as an ally of Robin, with them for no particular reason. Robin and Men follow, determined to thwart said scheme.

So, machinations lead to Robin, King Richard (sans any kind of bodyguard), Marian and Men wandering about in the desert. Robin does a completely rubbish job of strategising a coherent plan, and they all end up running around a bizarrely deserted village, which culminates in the Sheriff of Nottingham firing an arrow into King Richard’s back¹. Oh dear.

King Richard then loses consciousness and falls off his horse in the deserted town square. The Sheriff somehow isn’t around so Guy of Gisborne is the man on hand to finally finish off the King. Will he do it? He’s been having crises of conscience all series - which path will he choose? Up turns Marian, who stands between him and the King in Heroic Fashion. She knows Robin and the other superheroes are around somewhere, so all she needs to do is keep him talking for a few seconds.

Obviously, this is a stressful situation. If I’d been Marian, though, I think I’d have gone with ‘Guy, I love you and if you don’t kill the King I’ll marry you’ as opposed to ‘I’m in love with your sworn enemy and am going to marry him, you moron, yah boo sucks to you’. The former might help, since he clearly fancies you², while the latter might, say, get you stabbed in the chest. I actually wasn’t expecting that.

Everyone else turns up half a second later. Guy and the Sheriff give up on trying to get at the still-unconscious-and-exposed King Richard - if only they had some kind of weapon that worked from a distance - and instead elect to escape on magic horses. All King Richard’s injuries are instantly cured by removing the arrow, so he’s back to full health, but Marian dies in Robin’s arms. It was actually a little bit sad, mainly because Marian’s one of the few you can bring yourself to care about. After that two more cast members announce they’re leaving, there’re some obligatory Koran references, King Richard doesn’t send word to have the Sheriff killed or anything, Robin looks even more depressed than usual, and they walk off into the desert. The end.

In the 1980s ITV ‘Robin of Sherwood’ the original Robin died heroically and was replaced. I think they should have stolen this plotline. Kill off Robin, ’cause he’s annoying, and have Guy, the most watchable character by a million miles, switch allegiances and become the new Robin Hood. His first act would be to fire Little John for being overexcitable, and Much for being a waste of space. Sorted.

Apparently Series 3 is in production. Yikes.

1. the Sheriff’s one-liner? “Long live the King? No.”. Dearie me. [↩]
2. also has the advantage of ending up with Guy over Robin. I am a heterosexual man, but come on [↩]

It’s been quiet around here over the Christmas break as I’ve spent most of it lying on my parents’ sofa, feeling ill. I’ve given up trying to predict when I’ll get over it, so shall just wait it out. I went on a 7 mile walk this morning so must be a bit better, but am pretty exhausted this afternoon.

In the meantime, and in the spirit of New Year lists, here are the 9 Most Badass Bible Verses.

Everybody have a fun Christmas? Hope so. I have so far watched rather a lot of television and eaten rather a lot of chocolate, which is what Christmas is for, I say. I’ve also been merrily playing with a shiny new Canon 400D since Tuesday. It’s smaller, lighter, faster and a higher quality than my old 300D, and talks very nicely with my Canon flash.

It also came came with an Image Stabilising lens, something I’ve been after for years, which lets me take photos at shutter speeds as slow as 1/10 second without noticeable camera-shake. The whole package is excellent - I love it. Should be great for the digital photography module next term.

My cold never really went away, probably due to my ignoring it and not slowing down in the slightest, and came back with a vengeance on Tuesday evening. Lemsip hasn’t phased the thing in a week, but today it finally started having an effect, thank goodness. Haven’t slept very well since the weekend before last, so it’ll be nice to actually get some rest.

Something of a manic day today, what with last-minute deliveries, wrapping, present deliveries and carting a car full of…I don’t know what, really, but it sure as hell was the entire car…over to my parents’. Finally all done, and I’m just settling back to relax for the evening. Phew.

Tomorrow will be even crazier, with ten of us plus a 3-month-old baby, a 5 year-old and a labrador. I may have to escape with Megan for a while once the madness starts; she’d like a walk, I think.

I had a comment read out on Radio 2 earlier. Ken Bruce was asking for reasons to play ‘Santa’s a Scotsman’, so I texted in saying I’d made my guitar teacher tab out the entire solo, but I’m not sure he believed it’s ever been on the radio. I am famous! I expect to be invited to all the New Year celeb parties. 

Watched Muppet Christmas Carol yesterday. I am now of the opinion that MCC is the perfect Christmas film - it’s one of the few that somehow never gets old, no matter how many times you see it. At least tying with Miracle on 34th Street (the b/w version), anyway.

Merry Christmas to anybody reading - hope it’s a good one.

The Archbishop of Wales:

Any kind of fundamentalism, be it Biblical, atheistic or Islamic, is dangerous.

I think we can agree that fundamentalism, suitably defined, is indeed horrible. I’m not sure what atheistic fundamentalism is meant to refer to, but helpfully he spells it out. Here’s what we’re going to do: let’s pretend for a minute that it’s real. It’s not, of course, but we’ll give him a pass as he can’t be expected to research his Christmas messages and perform all his Archbishop-y duties. Here is his list of the things fundamentalist atheists are supposedly doing:

• Forcing councils to rename Christmas ‘Winterval’
• Making schools put on plays other than the nativity at Christmas
• Getting crosses removed from hospital chapels
• Advocating that religion in general and Christianity in particular have no substance
• Advocating that some view the faith as “superstitious nonsense”
• Making ‘virulent, almost irrational¹ attacks’ on Christianity
• Forcing schools to stop their children sending Christmas cards with a Christian message
• Making airlines refuse their staff permission to wear a cross around their necks

Holy shit. Those atheist fundamentalists are really pulling out the big guns. Councils are renaming Christmas? The humanity! Just for fun, here’s a list of the things Biblical and Islamic fundamentalists do:

• Kill people for not worshipping their deity
• Kill people for performing abortions
• Kill people for trying to convert to another religion
• Kill women for…pretty much anything
• etc.

Not a disgusting comparison at all, then. What a revolting thing to do.

1. Freudian slip [↩]

Definitely the closest final yet. I thought they were neck and neck after the first half, so it was really down to the show dances. Matt’s was probably technically better, but it just didn’t do much for me - the style of the music and costume was good, but it didn’t have the extra spectacle I wanted from a show dance. Alesha’s was, to be fair, a little messy once or twice¹, and I suspect the final lift went wrong, but I still preferred the powerful performance and style overall. It’s just a shame she didn’t completely blow everybody away with a Darren & Lilia / Mark & Karen style final dance, though, and I’m sure she could have. I can see how you could argue the other way based on tonight’s show only, but imho there’s no doubt that talent-wise Alesha was the fair winner.

No more proper Strictly for 9 months. What am I going to talk to people about now?!

Update: I take it back. Just watched the show dances again (shut up) and Alesha’s messiness was mostly camera angles - what looked like an imbalance was just the supporting arm while the other was hidden from view (directing such things must be a nightmare). Not spot-on perfect, but better than I thought; still not sure about the final lift though. Somebody pointed out that Matt didn’t move much in his, which is true but a bit mean - he was still pretty damn sharp. Would that I were that good. Am in the mood for dancing now. Shame it’s 2320.

1. although the camera angle can trick you in this regard - I didn’t think the earlier ballroom dances were shown to their best effect [↩]

Is exciting. The last two finals have been edge-of-the-seat stuff, and a highlight of my Christmas break. I’m not sure tonight’s will be quite so tense - Alesha is ‘Manchester United’ to Matt’s ‘Watford’ according to the head judge, and it’s hard to disagree - but anything can happen on the night (muppetgate!) and it’ll be easy to get caught up in it.

Should be spectacular entertainment, too: they’re both performing five dances - five! - but it’ll likely come down to the show dances, always difficult to enjoy on first viewing as your heart’s in your throat hoping they don’t make a mistake.

I don’t want it to be over, though - with the results show on a Sunday I’ve had a Strictly fix (not to mention Claudia) every day since October. January may be bleak.

Upside: best ‘It’ll Be Lonely This Christmas’ singalong ever.

I am weirdly impressed by the effort this person put into my parcel.

Every year this happens. I reckon it’s statistically more likely at Christmas. Here’s how it is:

1. You’re walking around in the cold.
2. You head into a shop, knowing it won’t take long as you’re after a particular item.
3. You queue, unaware that the shop’s air conditioning is slowly melting tiny mucus icicles - mucicles - and get to the till at precisely the same moment as the first ticklings of incoming snot.
4. You’re handing over books, typing in pins, confirming that you would indeed like the receipt in the bag, not being the kind of person who hands over Christmas presents still in the bag, all the while judging whether you’ll need to dive for a tissue and annoy everyone in the queue whilst disgusting the pretty assistant who could very possibly be the future mother of your children¹ if only you don’t turn into Colonel Boge of Bogington Vasey and flood the shop.
5. The Race of Snot is generally won or lost by how long the credit card takes to verify. Thankfully most shops are in full-on assembly-line mode at this time of year, so it’s efficient as hell and I personally am generally victorious.

This is worse atm, as I have a cold. Not fair. I did the whole cold thing last month - it was meant to be out of the way! I actually feel fine, but sound terrible and leak a lot, so appear remarkably unconvincing when trying to talk people into spending time with me. Have a big Christmas party tomorrow; hoping I’ll be a little better in the morning, as infecting all my friends four days before Christmas might not go down well.

1. obviously I am not thinking this, I am generalizing in a scientific manner [↩]

3D Realms released a Duke Nukem Forever trailer today. It’s short and doesn’t show much, but is nevertheless a real-life, actually existing DNF trailer. I don’t think anybody can quite believe it.

To say that DNF has been delayed is something of an understatement. Put it this way: I started looking forward to this game’s imminent release when I was fourteen. Quite a lot has happened to me since then. The Internet has happened since then. I can’t believe somebody’s financed a decade of development. I wonder if there are programmers who’ve been working on the same game for ten years - that’s gotta be soul-sapping.

I’ll buy it. I have fond memories of Duke 3D. But, seriously, it had better not suck.

I thought ‘homeophobia’ might catch on - there’s a Guardian piece today with the word in its headline. First thing to point out is the author:

 Rustum Roy is Evan Pugh professor of the solid state, and research professor of materials at Arizona State University

Research professor of materials. Got it. He spends a couple of paragraphs going on about closed-minded scientists who don’t think water has a ‘memory’, and then comes this:

As it happens, there is agreement among all those who have studied liquid water that it is, in fact, the critics, who are totally wrong. Proof? Diamond is the planet’s hardest material; graphite one of the softest. They are absolutely identical in composition, and they can be interconverted in a millisecond with zero change of composition.

I think this paragraph should win some kind of award. The whole thing is a complete non sequitur, for starters: how do carbon compositions translate to ‘proof’ that water has a memory? Not that the diamond thing makes sense. Graphite and diamond are not, as far as I’m aware, ‘absolutely identical in composition’, or my pencil pot would be worth a fortune. They sure as hell can’t be ‘interconverted in a millisecond’, or de Beers would be out of business, not to mention how it’s apparently possible to convert something with zero change of composition. This is from a ‘research professor of materials’?

It’s not like the next paragraph continues this argument - that’s it. I find it difficult to take the guy seriously after this. But here’s some more:

But the main thrust of Goldacre’s argument is the role of the “placebo effect”. Yes, this works. And, yes, it is without doubt present in every homeopathic intervention; but it is far more powerfully present in orthodox medical pills because they are advertised so widely in billion-dollar campaigns.

Afaik the placebo effect is much more subtle than he’s suggesting. It’s not just about public awareness, it’s about time spent with the patient, the type/colour/dose of ‘medicine’ and plenty of other factors - placebos are complex. But even if he’s right, so what? Is he suggesting that ‘orthodox’ medicine is all placebo effect?

Goldacre is accurate in pointing out the high rates of positive v negative outcomes in many of the homeopathy studies. But there are enormous discrepancies in any set of randomised controlled trials on the same orthodox pills.

Only if you include all the crappy trials. Once you remove the poor methodologies you tend to find a convergence of outcomes, and there’s plenty of statistical analysis to help figure it out. What’s this meant to prove, anyway? That trials aren’t indicative of anything? Why does he think homeopathy works, then?

Ben Goldacre must be doing a good job - the homeopathy proponents are increasingly desperate, and increasingly rubbish.

The US tv network NBC recently broadcast a show called ‘Phenomenon’¹, a reality show which purported to look for the country’s best mentalist. The judges were: ardent skeptic and magician Criss Angel, and Uri Geller. It was hotly discussed on the skeptical blogs due to its deliberate vagueness on whether the contestants were magicians or had real psychic powers - Geller obviously claims to be looking for the real thing, while Angel was quite the opposite.

By all accounts the latter dominated the show from the second episode onwards, when a contestant claimed to be able to talk to the dead. Geller was convinced. Shock. So, on live TV Angel produced an envelope and offered $1million cash to either if they could tell him the contents. Of course neither could, and the contestant reacted in the usual way - he was offended, angry and confrontational. This was funny (and possibly a little staged).

In the final episode Angel revealed the contents of the envelope, and some have claimed that Geller correctly predicted the contents:

Did you find that a little more impressive than expected? Yeah, me too. But watch it again - it’s a great example of how memory lies.

It’s initially impressive - he definitely seemed to mention the numbers nine and one. What are the odds of that? Well, despite the text, Geller doesn’t just mention ‘1′ and ‘19′. If you take just the numbers, in order it’s ‘1′, ‘20′, ‘19′, ‘40′, ‘1′. Here’s what you have to do to get to ‘911′:

• Arbitrarily choose the 19 as an important number.
• It’s backwards whichever way, so reverse it, for no reason.
• You need another 1, so choose just one of the two mentions of ‘1′. Maybe he mentioned it twice because it’s important, or something. Put it afterwards, even though none directly follow it.
• Stop, for no reason.

There’s no logic there, nothing replicable; nobody looking just at those numbers would come up with an obvious meaning of ‘911′. There are a huge number of possible numeric combinations if you allow the above machinations - ‘911′ is clearly working backwards from the result, which isn’t allowed. It’s a hell of a stretch to get from these numbers to ‘911′, but classic numerology. There are only ten digits - there’s always some way to manipulate numbers to get the desired result.

Angel happened to have written a number in the envelope. But if he hadn’t there’s still plenty that could have been used to retrospectively claim Geller was right. He mentions december, months generally, days, births and spoon-bending, none of which is relevant. He doesn’t doesn’t articulate himself very well, but if you catch his final sentence he appears to be making some kind of point about his 40 years of success, and this seems to be his main aim - there’s no hint that he’s trying to make a prediction. And seriously, you’re telling me that Geller, master showman, really knew the answer and chose to reveal it in a bunch of garble?

Plenty of YouTube commenters use a telling phrase when they call it ‘interesting’. That’s a desperate word. Even the most enthusiastic don’t think there’s any positive, smoking-gun evidence here, but it’s still apparently suggestive of something, although nobody can say what. And that’s the point. When working backwards, it’s always possible to infer odd goings-on. A few years ago The Bible Code claimed that incredibly specific predictions could be found in the Bible by laying out all the letters, picking one to start with and moving up, down, left, right and diagonally, looking for phrases. This produced astonishing results, like the ‘assassination of Yitzhak Rabin was in close proximity to letters spelling out his name’. But it worked backwards from a desired result. When heavily criticised the author said ‘[w]hen my critics find a message about the assassination of a prime minister encrypted in Moby-Dick, I’ll believe them.’. So they did, producing predictions of the Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Yithak Rabin assassinations, as well as the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Argument destroyed.

Geller did not say anything specific - everything is interpreted after the fact. He didn’t make any claim about the contents of the envelope, nor did he make any claim about his intention to predict, or how his prediction would work. This doesn’t make it ‘interesting’, this makes it ‘ambiguous’. There’s nothing to latch onto without making unjustified claims - Geller said something that, after rather a lot of manipulation, could be interpreted positively; why, when the most obvious solution would just be to say the answer? There’s no answer to this, so you have to make something up. In this case, I guess it’s that he was picking up the correct answer subconsciously. It’s a red flag when this kind of extra supposition is necessary. Based on this extremely fuzzy evidence, which is more likely: psychic powers exist, or it’s a mixture of chance and backwards thinking?

There’s also the possibility that Geller, being an extremely capable con-man, was deliberately trying to load his comments with ambiguous phrasing in the hope of getting a random hit. I personally doubt this, as I think he’d have done a better job, but it’s always possible - the guy’s spoon-bending was debunked 30 years ago, yet he’s still raking in the money from the same old shtick. Maybe he’s more canny than I suspect. If he’d scored a miss nobody would have cared, and he could have easily dismissed it as due to Angel’s attitude, but a hit of any kind (no matter how ridiculous) is going to go down well amongst his fan base.

It’s clearly the work of various logical fallacies, but even if you were to grant all these at the very best you’ve only got a hypothesis - it’s not evidence for anything. By his own admission Geller’s been doing this for 40 years, so he must know how it “works” - why doesn’t he take James Randi’s $1 million challenge and give the money to charity? Why doesn’t he get himself a Nobel prize, and change the world overnight? Strange, that.

I’ve read the skeptical literature on this kind of thing. I know about Geller’s con-artistry and his techniques. I know about numerological chances, cold reading, and the intricacy and allusion-filled-nature of language. Yet still I found it impressive on first viewing. I want to believe that psychic powers are real and my natural instinct is to latch onto something that suggests it, but I have to engage my brain if I want to avoid being tripped up. I’m a bit of a rubbish skeptic in this respect, as it takes me a while to get into the right frame of mind. Fun, though.

The show solved one mystery, albeit not a very pressing one: we now know what happened to Tim Vincent.

1. etc. [↩]

Meant to be Christmas shopping, but instead getting annoyed by the radio. The Jeremy Vine show is incredulous that Richard Dawkins, avowed atheist, enjoys singing Christmas carols. They interview him. He explains that singing is nice and means nothing. Vicar retaliates that singing is inherently an act of worship. Which is stupid.

Penn Jillette put it well: I’m not in your club, so I don’t have to follow your rules. Rumour has it that senior Freemasons wear special rings - junior members are not permitted such jewellery. But I’m not a Freemason, so I can do what the hell I like. Any senior Freemason objecting to my wearing their special ring is going to get laughed at. You don’t get to impose your own club rules on the rest of society. Christians think singing carols is an act of worship, and that’s fine - go ahead. But don’t tell me what I can and can’t think, thanks.

A Guardian cartoonist stood up for good sense, but briefly took a wrong turn, imho, when he started to argue historically. It’s used frequently, but I don’t much care for the argument that Christmas was a pagan tradition so it’s ok for atheists to celebrate it, or the debates over whether the Christmas tree is a traditional Christian thing. Doesn’t matter, for two reasons:

1. The meaning of any particular tradition is entirely relative - if I like the tradition, I can appropriate it without dragging along all the historical baggage. The Guardian columnist pointed out that his favourite ink was used to stamp people in concentration camps - should he boycott it for this reason? No, that’s silly. It’s ink. Culture is a great big amalgam of unpatentable ideas from throughout history. Christmas trees look good - I like decorating my home with them. I don’t care whether some Christian came up with the idea, or what it means to religious people. I just like having a pretty tree, it’s nice! Some would raise politeness at this point - if Christians get offended by my having a tree, isn’t it polite to avoid it? No! People can declare offence at anything; bending over backwards to accommodate beliefs that make no sense never a) works b) leads to anything good.
2. Religion appropriates nice things to attract people¹. It’s a trick. A toffee-sprout. “Look, we sing nice songs, decorate our homes and all meet up once a week - these are all unequivocally nice things! Also by the way guy-came-back-from-the dead-angels-demons-witchcraft-magic-crackers-floods-smiting-gay-people-bad-also-snakes-don’t-ever-have-sex-unless-we-give-you-permission, and you only get to do all the nice things if you believe all that. This applies to everyone”. No. Get lost with your manipulative crap. I’ll take the yummy toffee, which is nothing to do with you, and leave the sprout for anyone who wants it.  This isn’t all that different from #1, actually - free-floating ideas can be netted by anyone, and nobody gets to claim copyright.

I like carols too. Don’t care that Christians consider carols an act of worship. Tell you what: if you can do that, I’m going to declare doing the vacuuming a rejection of god. From now on any Christian who hoovers the hall is a hypocrite.

1. not necessarily maliciously, but probably just through cultural natural selection - memetic, if you will [↩]