That's How It Happened

List of TV shows within other TV shows. Somewhat akin to the Invisible Library, of books within books.

Shiny! Mud! Balls! Could well be a repost, but I still haven't mastered the technique for making christmas tree oranaments from soil.

I for one welcome our new...(just click here, it's a video of a robot that can juggle)

Outre dining experiences: lobster sashimi and drunken shrimp.

Tags: juggling, lobster

This evening we went out running in the park, leaving some macaroons in the oven. Mrs Q our next door neighbour called the fire brigade when she saw smoke pouring from under the front door. Luckily we beat the fire engine home, and quelled the flames before they had to sledgehammer their way in. I used the opportunity to expand my vocab:

A "Code 1" is a genuine lights and sirens emergency. In A&E that's usually called a "blue call".

A BLEVE is a boiling liquid expanding vapour explosion, which has a convenient backronym: blast leveling everything very effectively. This does not occur unless you really make a large batch of macaroons.

A blue canary is a term for a (presumably US) policeman who approaches a toxic blaze without proper breathing apparatus.

Tags: slang, firemen

Anastylosis is the process of taking apart a ruined building, measuring it carefully, and then reconstructing it brick by brick.

Valorise, a word spotted by 14 year old Countdown champ Conor Travers, which means to arbitrarily set the price of a commodity.

Obdormition, a fancy medical term for a dead leg or dead arm. (As in pins and needles, not actually dead.)

Tags: wotd

This entire post is almost entirely in breach of the Chatham House Rules, but too good not to share.

Story No 1:
Mr X and Miss Y while house hunting in Primrose Hill were shown around Jude Law's house. The highlight of the whole tour was a peek inside the walk-in wardrobes. My sources report "at a conservative estimate", 450 pairs of sneaks, all neatly filed in their mint boxes. I knew Jude had in the past been a big Bathing Ape fan, but that's still unexpected. Scanning though Google's repository of Law pictures (NSFW), I can find plenty of him with his cock out, but none in which he appears to be wearing trainers. Perhaps he's just a deadstock collecting maniac.

Story No 2:
While I was picking up a pair of purple Nike SB Avengers (and matching shirt) at a certain central London sneaker boutique, they mentioned that Damon Dash had been in the store earlier that week.

Damon Dash: "I'll take one over every pair of shoes you have in US size 9 and a half."
Store assistant: "Sir, that will be over 300 pairs of shoes."
Damon Dash hands over black American Express card.
Store assistant: "We don't take Amex, not even black Amex."
Damon Dash: "No problem", gets out Vertu mobile and calls Goon.
90 seconds later Goon shows up with £35k in cash in a hold-all.

I didn't actually establish how Damon got his shoes home. But since he never wears the same pair twice, he must face this problem all the time.

Tags: sneakers, damondash, judelaw

The British press is touting a huge "clash of cultures" between Prince Charles and my ex-Prof, Michael Baum. Prince Charles has recently spoken out in favour of wider incorporation of evidence based complementary therapies into the NHS, whereas Prof Baum is the priniciple signatory on a letter to the Times, calling for restriction of unproven complementary therapies within the NHS. Despite what the press might think, these two positions are not opposed. Both "sides" argue for selectivity in choosing to fund therapies with proven benefit.
The real opponents are the complementary therapy industry, who consistently try to defend homeopathy. Quoting from the official industry response:

"So, Baum and colleagues really need to stop patronising the public and realise that people want these disciplines - because they know that they work. Perhaps Baum and colleagues might like to get on with the job of researching complementary medicine to find out why these helpful disciplines work - and while they are at it perhaps they could look into the reasons why over 40,000 people are killed and over 850,000 injured in the UK each year as a result of conventional medical blunders."

Apart from the obvious diversionary tactics re: medical error, the problem here is that homeopathy really does not work, and if homeopaths could admit that, they would be out of a job. "Conventional doctors" can and do research alternative therapies. One blinded controlled trial from my own unit found benefit for acupuncture in overactive bladder syndrome. Nobody however can find any benefit, over and above placebo response for homeopathy. Both Cochrane and Bandolier (the two foremost sources for evidence based medicine) have found a complete lack of rigourous supporting evidence for homeopathy. Prof Edzard Ernst had his chair funded specifically to find such supporting evidence. His opinion?

"Homeopathic remedies don't work, study after study has shown it is simply the purest form of placebo. You may as well take a glass of water than a homeopathic medicine."

It is more than just a question of funding within the NHS. It would be unethical to prescribe a medicine that you do not believe works, and based on the current evidence, no-one without self-interest in homeopathy should believe in homeopathy.

Tags: homeopathy, princecharles

Money Mark has been added to the line up at Secret Garden Party. Along with The Infadels, Graham Coxon, Poj, GoHomeProductions and of course Sunset Gun, that makes it my most essential festival of the summer.

Guy Pearce's washer-dryer and dirty towels up for auction on eBay.

The Footscape Wovens are here! And on sale from Saturday. I'm considering queuing, so pray for no rain.

Before it disappears, listen to Westwood host the Sunday Surgery. Fantastic inappropriate advice and lack of sympathy regarding all sorts of STIs.

Howto: dry a wet book.

John Tickle blowing up bathtubs on Google Video. Come back old Big Brother "stars", all is forgiven.

Words of the day: gobelin, a kind of tapestry; hypothecate, the act of pledging property as collateral.

Tags: wotd, muppets

Everyone in the whole known blogosphere will eventually write a post about how incredibly bad their cold is, and how they're so sick they can barely post.

My godson and protege Oscar, has started blogging at the tender age of just 18 months. International House of Oscar is a must for all fans of cute baby photos. He hasn't started on snarky comments about Clap Your Hands, but it can't be long.

Cool tool of the day: Air Zound, a 120Db bike horn, that you charge with compressed air from your pump. So simple, and so obviously effective.

Papercraft pinhole camera: Lighthouse in a tree.

And force fans everwhere rejoice: George Lucas mint in box dressed as a stormtrooper.

Tags: too sick, to tag

My highlights of an evening spent slumped in front of the TV, are this video of Mr T rapping, seen in "Bring Back the A-Team"; and the guys at the launch of Big Brother 06 carrying a huge sign saying only "I hate signs".

I give McVideoGame about 3 and a half seconds before it goes down in a blitz of "C 'n' D" orders from McDo's lawyers.

Charlie Kaufman hagiography in the LA Times: "Why can't there be a movie simply about flowers?"

Huge collection of "Oops! Photos" featuring all manner of vehicular mishaps.

The dictionary of Antarctic slang.

Sneaker Whore t-shirt. So hot, so true.

I once made a skateboard from a maple blank, and it was hard work. Roarockit make it easy with a super-awesome vacuum system.

Watch the creation of the world's largest artificial reef, made from a scuttled aircraft carrier.

Towel Day celebrates the life of Douglas Adams: "More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value."

At first I imagined the CEI was a spoof. But actually it seems they are crazed neo-con Pro-CO2 campaigners(assorted format lunatic ads).

Joel Robuchon is widely acknowledged as a living genius of potato cuisine. His french fries are the stuff of legend, and his potato puree is widely considered the best in the world. If you want to cheat you can just order some Robuchon Smash from L'Atelier Robuchon in Tokyo (672 yen/pack). The "official recipe" seems to be grossly oversimplified, compared to how Joel must actually cook it in his restaurants. I found genuine reverse engineered recipes from Jeffrey Steingarten, and Stephen Downes, both based on insider knowledge, as well as a copycat recipe from Anthony Bourdain. I also picked up some tips from a "L'Atelier" intern at eGullet. The basics seem clear: the potatoes need to be very waxy; they undergo an initial period of gentle precooking to minimise gumminess; immediately after the final cooking they are combined with as much butter as they can possibly hold without liquefying. There are worrying inconsistencies between proposed methods though. I taste-tested two alternatives tonight to try and clear up the uncertainties.

Method 1 (Steingarten/Bourdain combo style): Peel and slice the potatoes into 1cm thick discs. Place in unsalted water at 175F, and cook for 20 minutes at 160F. Drain and chill immediately, then recook in simmering salted water until done. Mash with a potato ricer then combine with butter, then hot cream.

Method 2 (Downes style) Bake the potatoes with the skins on. Peel and cut into 2cm cubes and boil. Then mash with melted butter alone.

Controversially, the clear winner was the prebaked potato. It was fluffy and creamy and pretty much everything you could want from mashed potato. The Steingarten method produced a mash that was just too rich in fat. Perhaps my mashing technique was inadequate, but I couldn't get the same light texture. I have a lot of faith in Steingarten's dogged approach to kitchen experimentation, but this was a failure. I'm going to do my next batch with the Heston Blumenthal method, which involves preboiling like Steingarten, but then has pureeing through a tamis like Thomas Keller. Perhaps that's the secret of the perfect pomme de terre.

Tags: robuchon, potato

I'm reading "To Die For: 100 Gastronomic Experiences to Have Before You Die", which is far superior to the BBC's "Gastronaut". The final "experience" chosen in To Die For is raw fugu. Stephen Downes writes:

"Apparently they have a bland taste, chewy texture, and can numb the lips nicely. I say "apparently" of course because I haven't tasted fugu, and probably won't. You'll one-up me comprehensively if you do."

Oddly the GF and I have had fugu; entirely by accident. We would never be brave enough to order it, but we got served it at a restaurant called Uosue in Kyoto. It's a tiny kaseki place, run by a husband and wife team, who together do all the cheffing and waiting. They speak no english at all, and only offer omekase or "chef's choice" each night. We had a succession of fantastic tiny unidentifiable fish courses. As each dish was served the Madame brought out a japanese picture book depicting different fish, with translations into french, german, and english. She pointed at the appropriate fish, and we said "Ah hammerhead/geoduck/hamachi" etc, and then chowed down hungrily. The final course was a fish skin salad, not utterly dissimilar to Nobu's rather ubiquitous salmon skin salad. We knew it wasn't salmon though, because the flesh was translucent white, and very gelatinous. It was delicious, and I failed to notice any lip tingling. Only after we had finished it did the chef announce that it was fugu, and point out how ugly blowfish are. As far as I know there isn't a single fugu-trained chef in London, so it might be a while before I have any again.

Tags: fugu

A hapax legomenon is a word that appears only once in the entire literature of a language. My learned friend Refik points out that Homer is rich in hapaxes, living as he did so far in advance of other Greek writers. As Fowler says "...in all cases it may be said that a writer should not indulge in these unless he is quite sure he is a good writer."

Dynamitard proves how much lexicographers copy from each other. Nearly every online source cites Webster's "a political dynamiter", though Chambers has the rather more elegant "a user of dynamite, esp for political purposes". I picked it up in The Guardian prize crossword as "Explosive character subverts bother! One with lots (500)"(10)

If you like these words of the day I quite recommend the Worthless Word of the Day mailing list. They chose avolate, recently which means both "escape", "fly away", and "exhale". Much more poetic than anything I pick.

Tags: wotd

Pendulumeca, play it, love it, move on in about 10 minutes.

My friend OG is struggling to find 15 facts about the number 15 for a design project. He came up with these:

15 is the atomic number of phosphorus

15 is the number of letters in 'uncopyrightable' (longest word with no
repeating letters)

X15 is a rocket plane used for training astronauts

15 grams is the world's largest collection of navel fluff.

15 seconds is the length of time a human head remains conscious for after
decapitation.

Annually, an Australian eats 15 kg of bananas.

The hog-nosed skunk can spray up to fifteen feet.

My suggestions are wordier, but no less interesting:

The 15 certificate was introduced on November 1st 1982. That is the same day as the Mexican Day of the Dead. Ironically although Sam Raimi's Evil Dead was being considered for a rating by the BBFC at that time, they banned it instead, until 1990.

15 facts about Chuck Norris is the most popular email in the history of the internet. The 15th fact about Chuck Norris:
"CHUCK NORRIS died 10 years ago, but Death is too afraid to tell that to CHUCK NORRIS."

When you cannot count to 15 before thunder is heard, the last lightning bolt struck less than 3 miles away. At this point you should definitely consider seeking shelter.

And my favourite:
Takeru Kobayashi, the world's greatest competitive eater holds the world record for eating cow brains: 57 (17.7 pounds) in 15 minutes

Any other suggestions?

Tags: fifteen, kobayashi

Palimpsest is such an obvious word of the day. I always forget this one, but it means: "A manuscript, typically of papyrus or parchment, that has been written on more than once, with the earlier writing incompletely erased and often legible."

Aunt Emma is a term for a person who "cheats" at croquet by not playing mean enough. She (or possibly he) doesn't go in for runs of exciting roquet action. Instead she just uses unerring aim to race round the hoops. This phrase clearly merits wider application.

From way-deep in the long tail of the wikipedia: a list of morganatic branches of the Russian Imperial family.

There's something a little wacky about Amazon's addictive text stats service. They are now calculating three readability indices for books that have "Search Inside!". The results are sometimes amazing. For example compare the stats for Infinite Jest and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Where are the 19% of books that are easier than 'Caterpillar, and the 64% that are more challenging that 'Jest?

After all that cogitation take a break with old school game Dungeon Escape.

Tags: dfw, croquet, wotd

It seems I was completely wrong about Drowned Alive. I suggested he was going to breathe 100% O2, and that if he failed it might be due to shallow water blackout. Instead if you watch the video of the final minutes (YouTube 9.20mins), you can see that he actually hits (or more likely pretends to hit) breakpoint because he gets involuntary diaphragmatic contraction. The phenomenon is well known to freedivers, and is explained in this ancient paper. The underlying respiratory rhythm just kicks back in when your brainstem can't stand the hypoxia/hypercapnia anymore.

I have a bugbear about inappropriate depiction of resuscitation efforts on TV and film. However the absolutely clueless way in which Blaine was released from his shackles, and left upright in the water, makes me pretty sure this was all still fake. If the doctors on set were really worried that this was a peri-arrest situation, they couldn't have allowed anything so negligent. I think he had pre-apnoea oxygen and then faked the breakpoint. It makes for good TV anyhow.

Interestingly a paper about Blaine's starvation stunt is now in the semi-public domain. It's a letter from the New England Journal, from November 2005. I've reprinted the full text below because it makes for quite convincing reading:

"The opportunity to study the effects of refeeding after prolonged fasting is rare. We recorded anthropometric, biochemical, and endocrine changes during the refeeding period after a much-publicized 44-day fast by David Blaine, a performance artist; we compared the findings with results obtained from a control group of 16 age-matched men who had a similar body-mass index (the weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters) after an overnight fast. Blaine ingested only water during his fast. He lost 24.5 kg (25 percent of his original body weight), and his body-mass index dropped from 29.0 to 21.6. His appearance and body-mass index after his fast would not by themselves have alerted us to the risks of refeeding. Despite cautious management, he had hypophosphatemia and fluid retention, important elements of the refeeding syndrome.After hospital admission, he underwent hypocaloric refeeding for the first three days with an oral, nutritionally complete liquid formulation and oral vitamin and mineral supplementation (Fig. 1). His metabolic status when he arrived at the hospital on completion of the fast showed preserved blood sugar of 5.2 mmol per liter and normal levels of cholesterol and triglycerides, but elevated levels of free fatty acids (1.53 mmol per liter; control-group mean [±SD], 0.50+0.27 mmol per liter) and a greatly elevated hydroxybutyrate level (4.92 mmol per liter; control-group mean, 0.163+034 mmol per liter). The levels of vitamins B1 and B6 were depleted but were replenished immediately after admission. Hemoconcentration was observed on the day Blaine was admitted (day 0), and by day 10 there was slight edema, despite a restricted salt intake. On admission, his potassium level was slightly low (3.3 mmol per liter), but the magnesium level was normal. Subsequently, the potassium concentration returned to normal with oral supplementation. Hypophosphatemia was observed on day 1 (Fig. 1), necessitating prompt treatment with intravenous phosphate. Grossly elevated levels of vitamin B12 (>1500 ng per liter; normal range, 150 to 900), high levels of zinc (31.7 mmol per liter; normal range, 11 to 24), and slightly abnormal liver function (alanine aminotransferase, 218 U per liter; aspartate aminotransferase, 157 U per liter) were also observed. High levels of insulin-like growth factor-binding protein 1 (33 ng per milliliter; control, 14±11 ng per milliliter), somatostatin, and cortisol, low-to-normal levels of insulin and very low levels of insulin-like growth factor I (65 ng per milliliter; control, 211±53 ng per milliliter), leptin (1.7 ng per milliliter; control, 4.6±3.6 ng per milliliter), and ghrelin (27.6 pmol per liter; control, 218±157 fmol per milliliter) were observed at the end of the fast; circulating levels of peptide YY, agoutirelated peptide, α-melanocortin-stimulating hormone, neuropeptide Y, and pro-opiomelanocortin were not substantially different from the levels in control subjects after an overnight fast. Blaine's sensation of hunger, which he did not have during the first few days, increased considerably on day 3; this increase had been immediately preceded by an elevation in plasma levels of orexin A and resistin, an observation of unclear relevance, given the available data."

Tags: blaine, apnoea

Catalonia finally achieved official recognition from Madrid, of its nationhood today. Want to see how this meme developed over 35 years?
Pau Casals at the UN in 1971 gives a completely moving speech in which he makes the claim to nationhood of Catalonia. This is the start of the phrase "Catalonia is a nation!" that you see tagged all across Barcelona:
Then in 2006 this hilarious, if rather fattist picture circulates on the internet. Look closely at the wall in front of the fat guy's peachy butt. Someone unkindly picked up on this at Craigslist Barcelona:
"What kind of nation is catalonia? Gay nation?"

Surely this can't all be a coincidence?

Tags: paucasals, catalonia

I somehow forgot ever to blog about Jean-Marc Mathieu-Lajoie. He's a Quebecer artist, who uses commercial jigsaw puzzles to make his pieces. He blends and literally remixes the puzzles to create new images. Not only is he pushing the technical limits of an unusual medium, but his work is emotionally and intellectually complex. (more images here)

If you are sick of seeing others profit from your content, read Slavery 2.0. It's a devastating essay on the merits of taking your data back from Flickr et al. If you're sick of me monetising my blog, I urge you to click my Google Ads, so I can reach my first $100 pay out, and be done with them.

Howto: build your own cruise missile, from commonly available parts.

WOTD: Nuraghe, which is a bronze-age stone pyramid, seen all over Sardinia. They conceal huge domed chambers, corridors, and staircases, and no-one seems to know what they were for. We were particularly struck by the Sacred Well of Santa Cristina, which looks exactly like something off the set of 2001. Related WOTD: tholos.

Ordering off-menu at Starbucks.

While the wait for GDrive continues, check out Orcaa, a web based desktop. (I realise that link may be at odds with my anti-2.0 comments above.)

Tags: nuraghe, jigsaw, wotd, orcaa

Two of the dogs that played the part of the Littlest Hobo were called London, as was the character itself. The name is presumably after Jack London, who wrote The Call of the Wild and White Fang.

I had low expectations for the Sultan's Elephant. It is part of a piece of giant public street theatre, playing out over this weekend, created by a team of renowned French puppeteers. Like Craig in "Being John Malkovich" says of The Great Mantini's 60ft Emily Dickinson marionette, I had thought the whole thing would be "gimmicky". Despite my misgivings, we snuck past the crowds, under the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery to see the elephant in Trafalgar Square. As it came into view, I realised how wrong I was. It is a 40ft, 42 ton robot, mounted on a modifed cherry picker. It has huge articulating legs, and monstrous head and trunk. There is a team of 40 puppeteers, dressed in red velvet page costumes, controlling the beast as it stomps about. A mahout seated astride the massive neck, steers the head. Under the tusks two puppeteers twist and turn the trunk, spraying the crowds with water. Another puppeteer walks beside the elephant, with remote control in hand, moving the eyes and blinking the eyelids. Perhaps because of its obviously mechanical nature, it sits comfortably on the right side of the uncanny valley. It's remarkably emotive for a huge lumbering object. When I saw policemen scattering, trying to avoid the spray of water, I felt as if an Oliphaunt had come to visit London. Awe-inspiring in the most literal sense.

Tags: london, elephant, puppet

(Thanks P Dicky!)

In case you hadn't heard, via every news source in the Western hemisphere, David Blaine is spending 7 days underwater, before breaking the world record for static breath holding (currently 8mins 58 secs), while escaping from a set of chains. Despite the fact that Blaine has been "training exhaustively with the Navy SEALS", and has "lost 50lbs in weight in order to reduce oxygen consumption", it ought to seem implausible to you that a celebrity magician could break a highly competitive world record. That's because he's going to cheat. You don't need a PhD in diving medicine to figure out how.
If you can't stand maths, skip this bit, but it's pretty easy:
Resting oxygen consumption for a 70kg adult = approx 0.2l/minute
Total lung volume for said adult = approx 4.5l
% of oxygen available to dissolve into blood during prolonged breath holding = more than 80%
(80% x 4.5)/0.2= 18 minutes
Essentially nine minutes is a grossly conservative estimate for how long you can hold you breath if you fill your entire lung volume with 100% oxygen. There is a risk though. Without any CO2 to warn him when he really needs to breathe, Blaine is at risk of a shallow water blackout. My guess is that he has practiced the timing of the stunt quite carefully. Conceivably he even has a pulse oximeter clipped onto one of his gonads, so he can tell when hypoxia is ensuing. Either way it's a stupid con, and he won't be getting his name in Guinness for this.

Tags: davidblaine, howto