Bournemouth
What a beautiful place. I’d never walked around it before, but this time I had a great stroll around. And if you’re looking for somewhere to stay, there’s nowhere other than the Captain’s Club Hotel: amazing food and the friendliest, most attentive, spoil-you-rotten service.
The BIC is a great barn of a venue to play. The audiences were lovely, but the acoustics are rotten for any performer. From the stage you can only hear the front row’s responses, so it took some assurance from Jonas, our sound guy, that the audience was responding with more than the slow, single trickling hand-clap that was reaching my ears. Equally, those of you at the back were VERY far away – I hope you could make everything out that you were supposed to.
It was one of those few venues where we have to build everything – the stage, everything, from scratch, so our dedicated assembly team, and the in-house crew were just amazing. Thank you everyone, it is always a mammoth task.
I had a few days off, and spent them painting a picture of Rufus Wainwright. Miserably, it wasn’t working, so I am going to ditch it and start again: annoyingly, it made me come back to the tour feeling unhappy and unsettled. But sitting by the river here reading Proust and tucking into amazing seafood has perked me up suitably, and the ordering of the iPad (wifi-3G of course) has provided an exciting punctuation point at the end of this little jaunt. Tonight you’ll be aware, UNLESS YOU’VE BEEN LIVING IN A CAVE FOR THE PAST THREE WEEKS, a series of documentaries starts about modern-day troglodytes and their habitation patterns. Following that, your blogger goes about looking at paranormal things. There are but three of these docs, so make sure you catch them. They’ve been great fun – and sometimes gruelling – to do, and I hope to make some more if people like them. I’ve really approached the subjects ready to be convinced and with an open mind (open, but not so open that my brain falls out).
Hope you enjoy them – thank you Bournemouth: must dash now to Wimbledon, there are others that need me.
x
PS ‘Blue Movie’ – yes, I know. Long story.
Derren Brown Investigates – Tonight 10pm Ch4!
Firstly welcome back to the blog!
Apologies for the down time on the site over the weekend. Seems as though a large number of sites all got hit (including a few government ones). Should all be fine now, we are just waiting for google to take the remaining malware messages off (they say it can take a day or so).
In case you haven’t heard, Derren’s new series starts Tonight 10pm.
We’ve created a new section on the blog especially for the series so you have a place to discuss it during and after each show.
Click here to head over to the Derren Brown Investigates page. (Or find it in the menus at the top under “TV Shows”)
Enjoy!
Whatever Happened to the Hole in the Ozone Layer?
“Three British scientists shocked the world when they revealed on May 16th, 1985 — 25 years ago — that aerosol chemicals, among other factors, had torn a hole in the ozone layer over the South Pole. The ozone layer, which protects life on Earth from damaging solar radiation, became an overnight sensation. And the hole in the ozone layer became the poster-child for mankind’s impact on the planet.
Today, the ozone hole — actually a region of thinned ozone, not actually a pure hole — doesn’t make headlines like it used to. The size of the hole has stabilized, thanks to decades of aerosol-banning legislation. But, scientists warn, some danger still remains.
First, the good news: Since the 1989 Montreal Protocol banned the use of ozone-depleting chemicals worldwide, the ozone hole has stopped growing. Additionally, the ozone layer is blocking more cancer-causing radiation than any time in a decade because its average thickness has increased, according to a 2006 United Nations report. Atmospheric levels of ozone-depleting chemicals have reached their lowest levels since peaking in the 1990s, and the hole has begun to shrink.
Now the bad news: The ozone layer has also thinned over the North Pole. This thinning is predicted to continue for the next 15 years due to weather-related phenomena that scientists still cannot fully explain, according to the same UN report . And, repairing the ozone hole over the South Pole will take longer than previously expected, and won’t finish until between 2060 and 2075. Scientists now understand that the size of the ozone hole varies dramatically from year to year, which complicates attempts to accurately predict the hole’s future size.
Interestingly, recent studies have shown that the size of the ozone hole affects the global temperature. Closing the ozone hole actually speeds up the melting of the polar ice caps, according to a 2009 study from Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.
So even though environmentally friendly laws have successfully reversed the trend of ozone depletion, the lingering effects of aerosol use, and the link between the ozone hole and global warming, virtually ensure that this problem will persist until the end of the century.”
Read more at LiveScience.com
Bulletproof of Mind Mapping: Overview, Tips and Tools
“Many people these days feel that their minds are being flooded with various bits and pieces of data or information and they quite naturally find that it is more and more difficult to organize many of their thoughts. Along with this lack of logical thought the people start to experience moments of time where they find they are forgetting relevant facts, dates, events and similar data. During important meetings these same people may find that it is difficult to even take simple notes. The problems that I have just mentioned are typical of those that many people have been experiencing lately in their daily activities.
The process known as mind mapping has proven itself to be a helpful and very useful instrument for both individuals as well as corporations from all areas of the globe. In this article we’ll talk about mind mapping, why you need it, how to produce effective visual mind maps and the tools.”
Read more at aext.net
Lie-Detection Brain Scan Could Be Used In Court For The First Time
“A Brooklyn attorney hopes to break new ground this week when he offers a brain scan as evidence that a key witness in a civil trial is telling the truth, Wired.com has learned.
If the fMRI scan is admitted, it would be a legal first in the United States and could have major consequences for the future of neuroscience in court.
The lawyer, David Levin, wants to use that evidence to break a he-said/she-said stalemate in an employer-retaliation case. He’s representing Cynette Wilson, a woman who claims that after she complained to temp agency CoreStaff Services about sexual harassment at a job site, she no longer received good assignments. Another worker at CoreStaff claims he heard her supervisor say that she should not be placed on jobs because of her complaint. The supervisor denies that he said anything of the sort.
So, Levin had the coworker undergo an fMRI brain scan by the company Cephos, which claims to provide ‘independent, scientific validation that someone is telling the truth.’
Laboratory studies using fMRI, which measures blood-oxygen levels in the brain, have suggested that when someone lies, the brain sends more blood to the ventrolateral area of the prefrontal cortex. In a very small number of studies, researchers have identified lying in study subjects with accuracy ranging from 76 percent to over 90 percent. But some scientists and lawyers like New York University neuroscientist Elizabeth Phelps doubts those results can be applied outside the lab.”
Read more at Wired (thanks, @Soulmate02)
Curing the gays
We’ve been getting a few emails concerned about Conservative candidate Philippa Stroud and her religious inclination to ‘cure’ those who prefer a bit of healthy man-on-man, or gal-on-gal action to the other mixed-sex variants once popular in the nineties. A Guardian article outlining the story is here.
I’m not interested in politics, and don’t wish to comment on this as a political issue. I have, however, attended these sorts of church sessions and even courses which set about healing the ‘brokenness’ of homosexuality. Their premise is that we should be straight, as intended by God, but that when our early relationships with same-sex parents are unfulfilled, we develop an unmet need for identification and closeness from our same sex which is then eroticised during adolescence. Make of that what you will: certainly it’s not uncommon for us whoopsies to have struggled a bit with parents of our gender, but whether that’s a cause of sexuality, or a result of it, or not at all related, is a different issue. Offering counselling, holding courses, and authoring various books on the subject are a number of people once gay, but claiming to have turned straight through the Grace of God, and through healing those broken relationships. When these people are questioned closely, they do not so much as talk about a full ‘conversion’ of sexuality, more that they have learnt to not respond to their homosexual urge (and which they still acknowledge from time to time) and that they have found a place in their lives for a straight relationship. Again, make of that what you will. Certainly it seems to me that if you’re offering the promise of change to people who may (for whatever reason) desperately want it, it’s important to come up with the goods. I don’t believe that it does really come up with the goods, which will come as no suprise, I’m sure. So a word of warning to anyone unhappy in their sexuality who is considering this route. It’s more likely to cause further depression than stop it.
At the time I was fascinated by its claims, and like many people wishing their sexuality would pass or change, hoping it would be effective. Looking back on it, it is of course simply misguided and damaging. A good friend of mine was very active in the movement for years, eventually realised he was not changing, and is now very happy in a gay relationship, having dealt with the ‘guilt and embarrassment’ of ‘failing’, as it inevitably seemed to him. For all that, he has become a firmer Christian, so I wouldn’t presume to say that he regrets his experience of it all. Faith is a funny thing.
I share the distaste that many feel for this. Regardless of how ridiculous (and offensive, if you take offense at such things) it may sound to ‘cure’ gay people, there are plenty of unhappy people – especially, I would imagine, those holding a religious belief – who would welcome the idea of an easy change to being straight. It would be lovely to think that a church at least in part devoted to peace on earth and making people happier would turn their efforts towards the far more helpful cause of educating people to accept (through whatever complex play of nature and/or nurture) how they or others have turned out in life. I’m sure plenty of Christians – even Tories – find such ‘therapy’ quite distasteful, however confusedly well-meaning it might be within the world of the gross religious presumptions it inhabits. I hope that both groups have the sense to publicly distance themselves from this confused and probably quite harmful practice. I read of such things now and shiver.
D
Could A Mini-Horse Be Bred Small Enough To Fit In Your Palm?
“The world’s smallest horse was born in late April on a farm in New Hampshire. Weighing in at 6 pounds at birth, Einstein appears to have beaten the previous record holder by three whole pounds.
But Einstein probably won’t hold his place in the Guinness Book of World Records forever, because there may be no limit to how tiny we can make our horses, said equine geneticist Samantha Brooks of Cornell University. But to get teacup horses will take many generations of breeding.
‘In the last 50 years, breeders have made very good progress at making a very small horse, but they periodically hit these speed bumps,’ said Brooks. ‘It takes a while to work them out so that you end up with a horse that not only fits in the palm of your hand but is happy and healthy.’
In recent years, the genetic underpinnings of height and size in mammals have generated increasing interest from scientists. In 2007, genetics researchers made the surprising finding that a single gene plays a very large role in regulating dog size, a fact that partially accounts for the tremendous variation in dog size that we see from tiny chihuahuas to enormous bull mastiffs.
Brooks is attempting to do similar genomic studies of horses, drawing on a new genetic data set she’s created from the DNA of 1,300 horses ranging in size from 29-inch tall mini horses to draft horses that are more than 6.5 feet tall at the shoulder.”
Read more at Wired (thanks, DG)
Making Rain Clouds With Lasers
“Shooting lasers at the sky can make the germ of a rain cloud, a new study shows. In an experiment that smacks of science fiction, scientists used a high-powered laser to squeeze water from air, both indoors and out.
Although the technique is unlikely to be an instant rainmaker anytime soon, it could plant the seeds for more eco-friendly cloud manipulation.
‘This is the first time that a laser was used to condense water from both laboratory experiments and from the atmosphere,’ says Jérôme Kasparian of the University of Geneva, a coauthor of the study. The work appeared in the May 2 Nature Photonics.
Atmospheric scientists have been trying to build artificial clouds since the 1940s, with mixed success. The most popular method, shooting particles of silver iodide into the sky, relied on the fact that raindrops need something to condense around.
‘It’s just like when you take a shower with hot water — it’s very humid in your bathroom, but it’s not raining,’ Kasparian says. Water droplets need a surface to condense on, like a mirror in a bathroom or a speck of dust or pollen in the atmosphere.
Previous experimenters hoped droplets would form around flakes of silver, salt or other materials just like on a bathroom mirror. ‘The idea is, you provide more condensation nuclei, you get more condensation,’ Kasparian says. ‘It seems obvious, but in practice no one could really prove that it works.’”
Read more at Wired (thanks, DG)
Liverpool and Blackpool
Two big one-nighters: the Liverpool Empire and the Blackpool Opera House. Phwor. Both were lovely gigs, with great, great audiences. Thank you if you came along. I managed to break my mic in the second half in Liverpool, and had to call to the in-house crew at Blackpool to keep the conversation level down backstage, but despite these minor mishaps they were both good shows.
One fun aspect of chatting to the in-house crews is hearing the tales of ‘stars’ who have appeared there. Crews have a huge amount of power, and if they take exception to an arrogant star they can amuse themselves at the performers’ expense. I have heard tales of crew urinating in the rain machine for a production of Singing In The Rain. Of a spotlight operator purposefully missing a famous comedian with the light for the whole show because of a racist comment that was flung in his direction. Of a very well-known comedian defecating into the puppet of his warm-up ventriloquist, whom he loathed, who then had to do the whole act with excrement dripping down his arm. Of course I love asking about the big-name ‘psychics’ who tour, to see if there’s any gossip. In Liverpool, one very famous medium appeared and was spotted by a crew member sneaking in three old ladies through a side entrance (one seemed to be his mum)… old ladies who then played along during the show. Another, watched every night by the same crew, was seen to use the same ‘stock readings’ in every show… precisely the same stories, the same names, the same ‘details’ lazily thrown out to an audience who would make it fit their own situations every time. Doris Stokes would apparently have people come to her hotel for private readings during the day, and then invite them along to the show in the evening, where she would come out with the same information she had garnered from them during the afternoon. I thought that was particularly inspired.
Yesterday in busy, bank-holiday Blackpool I visited Carnesky’s Ghost Train, just next to the Pleasure Beach. Ooh, it’s rather good. I had been to her earlier version in London and been a little disappointed, but this is definitely worth a visit. It’s a scary, intelligent, layered, disconcerting experience. The girl in front of me was proper freaking. Everyone involved does a great job – thank you all those who were tweeting afterwards following my visit. Took me ages to find a working cash-machine, but it was well worth it.
Now some time off. Hope to start a new portrait of Rufus Wainwright. Searching for decent hi-res source material. Ta-ta.
Creationism Propaganda for Children Caught on Camera
Words fail me…
