livingbrands

Do getaway drivers really worry about cyclists?

I completely get this (we only see what we're looking for), and it's well made.

Just not that sure a getaway driver after an armed robbery is the best 'role model' for road safety! Or memory you want to leave viewers with either.

Can't see them being that fussed either way when it comes to hitting cyclists, even if they have seen them (socially concerned violent crims please comment if I'm doing you a disservice).

More pressing things to worry about, I guess, like not being shot by a tactical response unit...

But I could be wrong (happened before)

Mattessons gets primal

Two minute version of our new Mattessons Fridge Raiders commercial...

And why not join our Facebook group!

Birds

As I ponder Posterous, maybe it's worth doing just so I have somewhere to stick stuff I like that I come come across like this...

(Ffffound)

10 things we didn't know before the 10th week of 2010

1. A parrot can be repossessed.
2. Germans call chickenpox windpox, due to the speed with which it spreads.
3. Chickenpox is not referred to in medical literature before the 17th Century but it is thought to be an ancient condition whose name springs from the fact that the blisters resemble chick peas.
4. Some chickens are half-male and half-female.
5. The largest meat-eating plant in the world likes to eat the droppings of tree shrews and rats, rather than tree shrews and rats themselves.
6. "Hurt locker" is a phrase used by the military since at least 1966.
7. The Yukon never actually has 24-hour darkness.
8. Fifty percent of a jumbo jet can be recycled.
9. The world's first sleeping bag was patented in 1876, and called an Euklisia rug.
10. Soldiers in Afghanistan use concrete mixers to wash their clothes.

(Borrowed from the BBC)

The [blank] [blank] theory generator

This photofrom Russell would have made me laugh anyway, but seemed particularly apposite given my previous post on Horizon and dark matter/energy/flow (maybe the cosmologists had seen it as well!)...

The spirituality of science and why the Big Bang doesn't work

 
(Tiago Ribeiro)

I've never believed that science and spirituality conflict half as much as they are often seen to do: like waves and particles they are simply two complimentary ways of being and seeing.

And last night's Horizon gave a good example of this (check it out on iPlayer - it was brilliant).

Titled 'Is Everything We Know About The Universe Wrong?', it looked at cosmology, the Big Bang theory and the way we believe our universe works as a consequence of this.

And, more significantly, how a new generation of cosmologists are unpicking this theory because, well, it doesn't really work: the maths don't add up, the laws of physics fall apart, and you have to invent a whole raft of unprovable, hypothetical concepts to explain what we can now observe (dark matter, dark energy and now dark flow)…and still the gaps remain.

Sound familiar?

It all confirmed to me that, ultimately…and like religion, cutting edge science boils down to faith in the unknowable and unexplainable, and the stories told to provide the knowing and explanation people crave.

Because, 'logical' as the stories were that's what they were doing.

Just watch the guy who has been sat in the bowels of a mountain for 5 years trying to issolate the dark matter that 'must' make up 80% of our universe's mass to see this - so far he's had 2 negligible hits.

Which dramatises the ironic faith-based similarities between the scientific and the spiritual (but in a good way - i think what he's doing is important).

And which also (for me) shows why rational humanists who belittle those with spiritual leanings are themselves being narrow-minded (and I will add here that I have just as little time for those at the other end of the spectrum - the literalists and fundamentalists from all religions).

After all, if you know anything about the more mystery-based, mystical traditions within the main religions, where unknowing is embraced rather than feared, you would notice that cosmologists are using exactly the same language and concepts to try and explain how the universe.

We are looking at the same things, but just using different metaphysical constructs to explain what we see.

How to receive and give feedback

A good two parter on the Guardian website, looking at the 'rules' famous authors have for writing fiction.

Won't try and do a synthesis here, as that removes the specific interest value each has - so go and have a read, as there are lessons to learn even if you're not writing a book.

One that did particularly resonate for me, though, given it's day to day relevance in what we do, came from Neil Gaiman.

On the receiving (and, by definition, giving) of criticism, he had the following to say...

"remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. But when they tell you what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong".

What happened to feminism?

Today is International Women’s Day, which I always remember being a big deal when I was a student.

Less so nowadays in seems, in the era of 'New Feminism'. Which is maybe why, in Saturday’s Guardian, Charlotte Raven was asking where this new version went so wrong; a desire for genuine egalitarian liberation sacrificed on the altar of a Katie Price wannabeism; a new vision that promises freedom through ‘being yourself’ but is, in reality, just slavery to another set of images and behaviour.

Maybe it’s because I’m a moralistic old lefty at heart, but this failure (which I’m sure is a failure many wouldn’t accept – and who am I, as a man, to really comment) seems rooted in a common misconception: that social ills and injustices can be solved by market forces, rampant materialism, consumer 'choice' and selfish individualism.

They can’t.

Fact.

It seems to me, that for every (apparently) happy and successful Madonna who has achieved their ‘have it all’ potential though individual empowerment, there are 99 (or 999) others stuck in a cycle of emulation that fails to deliver "what you really, really want".

At best, as Charlotte Raven suggests, this world view of New Feminism has led (and is still leading) to a generation of women who have confused anything goes behaviour and instant gratification with true freedom, living under a veneer of fun and superficial 'enjoyment' that can be passed off as (sometimes delusional) happiness.

And, at worst, it has (in the name of women’s liberation) normalised the sex trade and sexualised children.

Before it seems I am suggesting a return to po-faced, hair shirted self-righteousness, I’m not.

I’m all for fun and glamour and having a good time.

But the moment you decouple this from a sense of morality, responsibility and the common good, and make pursing your own selfish gratification a new dogma, you arrive at a destination no better (maybe even worse) than where you started.

The little rebellions that make life worthwhile

10 things we didn't know before the 9th week of 2010

1. Romance films do better than any other genre at the Academy Awards.
2. The extreme fear of childbirth is called tokophobia.
3. Dead pigs are good for more than bacon - they can help with underwater research.
4. Rats can detect tuberculosis in the saliva of sick patients.
5. The answer to "agtaq gufnx mbvrp eselx vurnm xsmqc aqzxa gakro altam yrvtn tpqzy vgnbx nofqw gonov?" is Station X.
6. The average railway carriage is home to up to 1,000 cockroaches, 200 bed bugs and 200 fleas.
7. A 16th Century portrait of Queen Elizabeth I once contained a snake.
8. She's not just a gold medallist - Amy Williams still holds her school's 200m record
9. Deep sea fish eat green plants.
10. City-dwelling single men aged 25 to 35 are the country's biggest food-wasters.

(Borrowed from the BBC)