Books and Music That Make You Dumb
A fun bit of research by a student called Virgin Griffith about correlations between intelligence (at least as measured by college SAT scores in the US) and what music you listen to and books you read. Judge yourself accordingly. I know where I am on that scale, but it would be gauche to mention it.
From the brilliant David Britland: Thank you, David.
Off we go
Last night in Chatham, after a gruelling packing up of the show. The in-house crew: Graeme, Neil, Chris, Pete, Frank, Alec were all just excellent. Thank you, guys.
Currently sat in the Ramada hotel (where I arrived to find a fresh poo in my toilet. No paper in there with it, mind.) Have ordered pizza for us all. Tomorrow, off to Hastings. The show feels up to speed, though I was a little under-energy tonight.
Thank you anyone out there for supporting the show in previews.
X
5 Million hits later
So we hit 5 million hits today (wooowee!). Yes we’re well aware that’s not 5 million individual, rampant Derren Brown fans only visiting once (we’re a bit more clued up than that) – but it does represent a lot of traffic. Hits/visits/stats are a weird thing – you can’t get an accurate number from them – but you can work out an average.
So we’ve filtered out the spam bots and bogus traffic and it roughly translates as around 650k+ actual “visits”. We’re now up to 10-12k “visits” a day – that’s counting IP visits – and I know things like 500 AOL IP’s only show as one but we’ve taken this in to consideration – it’s certainly NOT lots of repeat visits from one super over-enthusiastic uberfan called… say… Flapjack!?.
We have 37 countries on the list (see Derren’s birthday post for an idea), links from over 100 sites – huge blogs like Boing Boing and awesome websites like iTricks and all this without 1 single advert in under 6 months; we have yet to step on the gas. There’s plenty more to come and when Derren has finished the tour there’s talk about getting a dedicated person involved rather than the fleeting moments we spend on it at the moment. (Not to mention Coops & Phillis’ new 6 hour, non-stop Transcendental meditation chants broadcast live) and we’re even looking in to competitions that don’t totally and utterly suck.
So a big pink lipstick smothered thank you to all the people who help spread the word and come here regularly (and bad luck to the ones who seem to think we’re failing or that there’s no interest – sorry). We’re so pleased so many of you email us saying you like what we’re doing – along with things you want us to change, great ideas, links and what you do and don’t like. It’s all appreciated and means that you guys help sculpt the content on here.
Keep up the great string of links you all send in (massive thanks to Benji, Brian, several Chris’, Claire, Damon, Dr Wiseman, Ekaf, Greetje, Harriet, Houdinia, Hogg, Ian, Ishtar, James, Jenny, Joanne, several Johns, Katherine, Katie, Liz, Marc, Mark, Maura, Michael, Michelle, several Roberts,Neil, Nicosia, Po, Phil, Richard, Robert, Sabina, Sam, Sara, Siobhan, Spasm, Sue, Sy, Tash, Theo, Vicky and Will – and all the other regular contributors who need to be thanked too! – sorry if I missed you here – this is a scan from my email inbox early on a tuesday morning with a hangover the size of Chatham). We hope you keep sending in links of what you like and hope in the future we can organise a special party – just for you – where you all get to sleep with Derren in a giant 40 foot bed whilst Coops, Alex and Phillis perform Latvian songs about how our love lives amongst the stars in the night sky.
Thank you all – Next stop 10 Million.
Thank you Chatham
A big thank you to all the crew (monkey included above) at the Central Theatre Chatham for a brilliant and unforgettable few days, it’s been a pleasure.
Coops
Twitter brain interface
Just in time for the influx of sedentary oprah viewers, [adam wilson] built a brain interface that allows you to post twitter messages. the electrode cap monitors the user’s brain functions to determine where they’re looking. The display slowly flashes each letter in the alphabet. the user focuses on the letter they want and when it flashes the cap can pick up the resulting impulse.
It’s a long process and the average user can only do ten characters a minute i.e. 14 minutes to use all 140 characters in a twitter post. It’s interesting research and shows how far we still need to go with neural interfaces. The researchers note that twitter’s forced brevity levels the playing field between locked-in patients and normal users. A video of the device in use is available on the nitro blog.
Hackaday (thanks Michelle)
Magic telekinetic pen
Now for sale in the US here
Scam healers prey on vulnerable
Police are warning about a scam involving bogus spiritual healers who are conning thousands of pounds out of vulnerable people. Posing as holy men, they prey on Britain’s religious Asian community and those facing hardship or health trouble, and falsely promise to solve their problems in return for large sums of money. Look in almost any Asian newspaper or glossy magazine and you will find advert after advert for spiritual healers, or peers.
It’s an industry which is condemned by mainstream religions, including Islam, but is thriving nonetheless. I was contacted more than a year ago by someone, who we’ll call Mohammed, who put his faith in one of these men after seeing an advert in his daily newspaper. He told the BBC: “I had a problem, a family problem, and I saw the advert for Haji Imam. It said he could solve any problem within three days.”
Mohammed, a Glasgow taxi driver, called the number in the advert. The man on the end of the phone said he could help him, and all Mohammed had to do was send some personal items including a lock of hair and a toenail, along with £130 in cash in a jiffy bag and send it recorded delivery to a PO Box.
“But then he said he was having difficulty with my problem and needed more money, another £750,” he said. ”I was desperate to have my problem sorted so I sent it.” And it didn’t end there. Over the next six months, Haji Imam persuaded Mohammed to part with more than £10,000. When he realised he’d been conned, the so-called holy man turned nasty. Mohammed said: “Haji Imam said to me, I know you are a taxi driver, if you don’t stop phoning me I can make accident for you. I was scared.” I tried to find out this Haji Imam was, and managed to trace his PO Box address to Leicester.
Mustafa Malik, spokesperson for the Islamic centre in Leicester, said that bogus spiritual healers were a disgrace to Islam and that it was a widespread problem in Leicester’s Asian community. Mr Malik said: “This is a huge industry, in which these men are conning people, simple people, who find themselves in some sort of difficult situation.”There are some out there who genuinely believe they have healing powers, but they do not charge for it. ”As soon as someone tries to make profit, you can be 100% guaranteed that it is a fraud.”
Michael Jackson face appears in Muhammed Ali video: hoax or pareidolia?
Forgetomori posted this video of the George Foreman and Muhammad Ali fight from 1974. He notes that during one second of the video (between 5:45 and 5:46) something that looks like the head of Michael Jackson, circa 2000, appears.
If you don’t want to wait for the video to load, visit Forgetomori’s blog, where he has an animated GIF of the relevant section. Michael Jackson face appears in Muhammed Ali video: hoax or pareidolia?
From BoingBoing
No Eye-Contact Glasses
They’re giving these glasses away at the Rotterdam Zoo after a woman was attacked by a gorilla she made eye contact with. These could also be marketed towards the perpetually shy, or those with crazy-eye envy.
BuzzFeed (Thanks Michelle)
It’s not magic, it’s neuroscience
Yet another article that extends from the original article published in November 2008 in Nature Reviews Neuroscience.
“The interest for magic has been there for a long time,” says Gustav Kuhn, a neuroscientist at Durham University in England and former performing magician. “What is new is that we have all these techniques to get a better idea of the inner workings of these principles.”
These new techniques promise to give scientists front-row seats to magic’s action in the brain and may yield insight into the very basis of consciousness itself.
“We do this because we want to know how the human brain works,” says Stephen Macknik, a colleague of Martinez-Conde at the institute. “That’s a fundamental question.”
