iblog

Rushda: Well, hold your horses, how about you make sure you even know how much that is first! Apparently we are entering into “the age of the trillion”, where the number is featuring in all sorts of domains. For example mortgage debt in the UK is now nearly a trillion pounds, and computers can store terabytes. Very few however actually know how much a trillion is and even people who know their numbers are in disagreement. Here is the official claim though:

A trillion is a thousand billion, and a billion is a thousand million.

Essentially we’re talking twelve zeros here. So back to the original question about whether you’d like a trillion pounds. Let’s just say you were to spend £25,000 a day (which is pretty difficult). To own a trillion pounds would mean that it would take you 109,000 years to spend all your prize. You greedy greedy thing!

Alex: Twitter is the very latest Web 2.0 social networking waste of time. Essentially, the singular purpose of it is to send via SMS or simply posting, “what you are doing” and thus record in a mundane way ones day to day movements. One can then checkout what ones friends are currently up to, which is probably “sitting around, posting what I am doing to Twitter”. I am so meta sometimes, it hurts.

Slightly less pointless, but still pointless is Good Reads.com which functions much like Last.fm, yet quite obviously for books that you are reading and books that you have read, rather than songs you have listened to. Citeulike is a genuinely useful version of this aimed at academia. Here is my profile as an example.

Pow! Yet more websites to contribute to the time black hole that is Web 2.0. Those revising for exams, consider those exams not revised for anymore.

Alex: According to an an article in today’s Daily Mail, there may well be “proof” that humans can see into the future. This research is the largest ranging and most scientifically valid research into the paranormal. However, in the examples of 9/11 pre-cognition, for example, it seems that these “predictions” only occur after the fact, a reaction to the event and an attempt to make sense of it, rather than a true prediction. It is certainly interesting.

Despite the fact the article might prove pre-cognition, what is truly great about this article is the fantabulous prose stylings. Classic Daily Mail territory. Thus it reads somewhat like scientific slash fiction:

Professor Dick Bierman sits hunched over his computer in a darkened room. The gentle whirring of machinery can be heard faintly in the background.

He smiles and presses a grubby-looking red button.

In the next room, a patient slips slowly inside a hospital brain scanner. If it wasn’t for the strange smiles and grimaces that flicker across the woman’s face, you could be forgiven for thinking this was just a normal health check.

LOL in general, but in particular to grubby-looking red button. This tendency is not limited to the Mail, Red Orbit adopts a similar style in a similar article:

Deep in the basement of a dusty university library in Edinburgh lies a small black box, roughly the size of two cigarette packets side by side, that churns out random numbers in an endless stream.

At first glance it is an unremarkable piece of equipment. Encased in metal, it contains at its heart a microchip no more complex than the ones found in modern pocket calculators.

Goodness knows what is going on here.

Jo: Have you ever wondered what your soul is like? Given the opportunity to meet your soul, would you take it?

These were not questions I thought about much until I read Northern Lights, by Philip Pullman. In the novel, and the others in the ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy, Pullman conjures up worlds where humans’ souls live on the outside of their bodies as animals. These animals, dæmons, speak to their humans, and accompany them throughout their lives and adventures. As I put Northern Lights down, I realised with a sigh how much I would love to have a dæmon of my own.

Almost eight years have passed, but my wish for a dæmon has not faded away at all. In the books, as children pass into adulthood, their dæmon ceases changing shape into different animals, and remains in one shape. I was propelled through the trilogy by a burning desire to know if Pantalaimon, (dæmon of the story’s heroine, Lyra) would ever stop changing his shape – and which animal he would finally stay as. I wonder what animal my own would be – and at what point in my life it stopped changing. And yesterday, I came a step closer to finding out.

His Dark Materials has been adapted for the stage, and now a film is coming out, resplendent with a magical website to accompany it. Grit your teeth for the American adaptation of ‘Northern Lights’ to “Golden Compass Movie”, visit www.goldencompassmovie.com, and…you too can meet your dæmon.

Rushda: …Des’ree’s well known hit Life, as voted by Radio 6 music listeners recently. To be top of the list for bad lyrics in the pop world is probably a most shameful crime, and so I’m not surprised that when interviewers tried to get Des’ree to make a speech about the award (how cheeky!) they simply got “dignified silence”. Personally, I’m rather amused at the award given that the song has been stuck in my head for ages and now finally when I get a break from it it goes back in there! Though I think it’s rather catchy, many a time I’ve laughed about the ridiculous lyrics with a friend, and now I’m glad I’m in good company. What’s perhaps most amusing is that some popstars are even a little annoyed to not bag the award saying they “could have written worse”. Oh well, not sure about that. Here is an extract of the profound song. Enjoy!

I don’t wanna see a ghost
It’s the sight that I fear most
I’d rather have a piece of toast
Watch the evening news

Life, oh life
Oh life, oh life
Life, oh life
Oh life, oh life

Rushda: Rich kid Paris Hilton is finally getting her just deserts and will be serving 42 days in prison following her drink-driving antics. She was found violating her probation for a previous drink-driving conviction. It just sickens me that all these celebrities can just think they can do anything they like because of their money (much of which they didn’t exactly earn themselves, like in Paris’s case). Only recently rapper Busta Rhymes was arrested for the same kind of thing. Just look at the way Paris struts into court late. She claimed that she “forgot” she was on probation. Thankfully the judge didn’t have any of that and she is now going to go to the same prison other criminals find themselves in. Let’s see how she copes away from her spoilt life of luxury! Maybe she’ll lose some of that attitude problem. Well, we’d hope.

Matthew: My dwindling faith in the taste, culture and critical faculties of the Great British public took another blow today. I regard mobile phones as a mixed blessing; useful, undoubtedly, but it’s all too easy to get over-reliant and consider it an extension of one’s personality. I feel no urge whatsoever to buy one of the innumerable customisation packs or spend my hard-earned sterling on ring tones or screensavers. I feel desperately sorry for anyone who does.

Imagine my amazement, therefore, when I saw an advert for a new service being offered to mobile phone users. You take out a subscription (£1.50 a week I think), and every week you get a text message giving you two pieces of vital information; the name of your perfect husband and the ideal name for your baby. Should this information be even slightly accurate, rather than randomly generated, I should consider it good value for £1.50. The real absurdity is that the ‘business’ behind this venture is proposing to sell you one baby name and one husband name per week. Besides the fact that this should expose the service to any potential customers as the nonesense it is, I would suggest that it does nothing to promote the family values, relationship stability (and ideally, low birth rate) certain track-suit wearing, special brew drinking sections of our society are sadly lacking.

Rushda: An octopus in a New Zealand aquarium has amazed everyone by the fact that it’s actually learnt a trick. It can actually open the lid of a bottle with its tentacles in order to get the food inside. The video of it can be seen here. The keepers describe the creature, who was brought to them a few months ago, as “friendly” and willing to play games. I think it’s interesting as this kind of mental power (could you call it that?) has been rare even in higher-level creatures. I just wonder if it has any kind of “inner life” or is it just mindlessly following patterns!

Caroline: If you are a bridegroom who threw caution to the wind the night before your wedding and appeared a tad the worse for wear on the big day, spare a thought for the unfortunate young man in a village in eastern India who turned up drunk to his own wedding and was chased away by the guests. As if that was not punishment enough, the bride’s family asked his sober younger brother to step into the groom’s shoes which he did willingly. Just goes to show that stag nights are best held well before the actual wedding day!

Caroline: Since I got married 29 years ago we have got through at least four if not five fridges and I was told the last time I bought one that I should think myself lucky if they last more than five years. It’s astonishing to think, therefore, that a fridge purchased by Ian Rowarth in 1957 is still working. When he bought it, it was an object of wonder in his small Norfolk village, and cost him 65 guineas which equated with his monthly salary as a headmaster. Fridges have certainly come down in price in the last fifty years but they obvously don’t make them like they used to. The current owner of the fridge, Ian’s daughter Sally Garrod, plans to donate it to a museum when it stops working.