That's How It Happened

No articles online yet, but The Evening Standard are reporting that a gang of Islington youths have made 36 consecutive raids on Bond Street stores. The juicy details: they ride on two scooters carrying sledgehammers; they are 30 strong, but led by a "teenage mastermind"; their most lucrative raid to date has been £400k from Asprey's; they use an identical modus operandi each time, smashing the windows and leaving in under three minutes.

Eggway is the Japanese Line Rider. Use trails of egg white to guide the falling egg into the pan.

The actual Line Rider hasn't updated yet, but here's a great hacked version, with the essential "undo" feature.

PhilTube is a YouTube clone, that in a very oblique way is promoting the services of a New York "creatives agency" called PGM Artists. PhilTube hosts a series of videos, some starring the real boss of PGM, who spoofs life in an ad agency, YouTube, and blogging. It's genuinely hilarious, although rather derivative of Nathan Barley. The funniest thing though, is that the real PGM website is already practically a spoof, laden with ridiculous "Creatives2.0" blurbs: "McIntyre sees his company as the bridge between communications companies and the resources they need to remain competitive in today’s multi-platform marketplace."

I'm apologising right now for reposting this, but it made me laugh out loud.

Slate have provided an incredible example of poor editing. Stephan Fatsis who wrote the excellent book Word Freak, has analysed a recent game that broke 3 North American scoring records. 830 points is a great score, but it's still 219 points off the UK record. I'm sure Stephan Fatsis is well aware that 830, is thus not a world record, but Slate have slapped on the headline: "830! How a Massachusetts carpenter got the highest Scrabble score ever."
The equivalent in the UK press is when a Fleet Street reporter gets muddled over "English" and "British". In those cases though, they only manage to offend the Scots, not the whole world.

2 weeks ago I switched our domestic energy supplier from EDF to Good Energy. Following the Guardian's expose, I was concerned that EDF's green tariff didn't guarantee any "additionality". When you switch from a non-green to green tariff, you do increase the percentage of your energy supplied from sustainable sources, but you may be decreasing the percentage of sustainable supply for customers left on the non-green tariff. The situation is extremely complex, not least because all UK electricity companies are legally committed to supplying 4.9% of their energy from sustainable sources. At present only 1% of their customers opt for 100% renewables tariffs, leaving the big companies with a surfeit of green energy. Furthermore small and large energy companies are engaged in a form of "non-emissions" trading, via the sale of Renewable Obligation Certificates. I decided that as a moderately ill-informed individual, I probably wasn't best placed to judge which company really offered the most actual environmental benefit. Based on the recommendation of a friend who works for environmental consultancy e4tech, and on the basis of Good Energy's ethiscore rating, I plumped for Good Energy.
Today however I received a letter from EDF inviting me to phone them and close my account. Predictably, this was utterly false, and the freephone number actually led to their Customer Retention Department. Having spent 30 minutes on the phone with their retention expert, I was in a complete rage. His arguments for staying with EDF ran through the whole gamut of logical fallacies. A select sample of the ploys used:

1. EDF's 100% renewal tariff is better than Good Energy's tariff because they pay into a fund for renewables projects, including putting solar panels on schools. The educational value of such projects outweigh the lack of transparent additionality.

2. Although Good Energy are not involved in coal, gas, or nuclear power generation, their environmental contribution is negligible because they have so few customers.

3. EDF's environmental credentials are clearly demonstrated by their commitment to decommissioning some of their existing nuclear power stations.

4. EDF will not apparently be building new nuclear power stations, because nuclear power stations have to be situated near the sea, and sea levels are rising.

5. There's no point worrying about additionality anyway, because the UK only has enough land for 20% of its energy needs to be met by renewables.

And finally, and most amusingly, when confronted with my own counter-arguments:

6. You can demonstrate anything with statistics really.

The very fact that EDF employs customer retention experts, points to their complete lack of commitment to efficiency. It is utterly despicable that they would even try to dissuade their customers from switching over. Based on my miserable experience with them, I suggest you check out ethiscore, pick a new energy company, and switch today. If you do go with Good Energy, it takes less than five minutes to shrink your carbon footprint.

1. Fishguard
2. V
3. Camp Coochie
4. Loopallu
5. Blood Tap
6. Secret Garden
7. The Zone
8. Damnation
9. Pokey Hole
10. Love Box

Answers:
Vagina 3, 5, 7
Festival 1, 4, 6, 8, 9
Both 2, 10
(All information from either Muffy's Vaginal Euphemisms or eFestivals.)

The Moleskine City Notebook is a Moleskine crossed with Lonely Planet. It has some precompiled essential information, and then you use it as a scrapbook of your travels. I like the idea so much, I might get one for London. (via)

For the best part of 12 years I've resolutely ignored irc, until that is I discovered the art of Conversation. It's an OS X irc client, that connects you to file-sharing bots. Honestly, it's like being in War Games.

Must see pictures: Bravia Ad vs Madrid Airport. (via)

Great howtos: make a muppet. My shocking fact of the day, is that apparently, in the US, the word "muppet" has no pejorative connotations.

I read this a couple of weeks ago, and I've been sitting on my review, mulling over my conclusions about Dawkins' arguments and motives. In the book he persuasively dismisses assorted "rational arguments" for the existence of god, and goes on to argue strongly for the many benefits of atheism, and the many pervasive harms associated with irrational religious belief. As a committed atheist, I really enjoyed it. It's an exhilarating affirmation of the joys of faithlessness. But in a very literal sense, if I'm representative of his readers, he's preaching to the converted.
In the introduction he claims that he hopes this book will actually cause readers to reject their gods:

"I believe there are plenty of open-minded people out there: people whose childhood indoctrination was not too insidious....(who) should need only a little encouragement to break free of the vice of religion altogether."

I am a committed atheist, but not an evangelical atheist. Dawkins has two fundamental misconceptions that weaken the thrust of this book. Firstly, I don't think there are any real believers in god, who will be swayed by an angry evolutionary theorist ranting at them. No matter how true Dawkins' beliefs are, no matter how well he argues, religious people won't be receptive. Clearly some people do abandon religion, but the conversion comes through introspection, not in the guise of a pop-science attack on religion.
Secondly, childhood indoctrination, may start people off on a religious path, but that's not to say they aren't rational in their adherence to religion. They recognise that belief in God is not rational, and for the most part don't seek "evidence" for his existence. Harmful though religion may be on a world stage, religion clearly brings its own personal and societal benefits, that persuade believers to stick with it in the modern age.
Chapter 8 is called "What's wrong with religion? Why be so hostile?". While I agree with almost all Dawkin's claims and arguments throughout the book, the main reason for atheists not to be hostile, is that we would be wasting our time. Dawkins likes to interpret other people's words for them, most notably in claiming Steven J Gould as an atheist. I'm positing for Dawkins that he must at heart know that he's screaming into the void. You can't spend much time as the world's foremost atheist, without realising that you aren't winning hearts and minds. His aggressive tone and evangelical approach to atheism, are fundamentally motivated by a desire to be noticed, and to sell books, not a genuine belief that he's saving the damned.

Call off the search for the "perfect murder". Charles Henson has already found the method. He broke into his ex-wife's house, and knowing she suffered from latex-induced anaphylactic shock, attempted to suffocate her with his latex-gloved hand. However it emerged in evidence in court, that while he tried to subdue her, he screamed "By the power of Grayskull". The judge, perhaps rightly, saw this as evidence of psychiatric disturbance, and adjourned the case, pending assessment. Obviously if you were planning to recreate this murder, all He-Man catchphrases would be off-limits, as obvious evidence of copycatting. Instead I have prepared a list of key 80's cartoon catchphrases, that will certainly get you certified:

Thunder, thunder, Thundercats Hoooooo!

Form arms and legs.

When Eric eats a banana, an amazing transformation occurs - Eric is Bananaman

Dangermouse, Powerhouse, he's the fastest he's the quickest he's the best!

Any other suggestions? rufus dot cartwr1ght at gmail dot com.

Sony are at it again with another great Bravia ad shot in Glasgow by Jonathan Glazer. There's a matching game, and killer behind the scenes footage. I wonder if non-Brits are familiar though with Glasgow's reputation as the drabbest, dourest place on earth.

$9000 FLOM dunks might be some kind of record for "real sneakers". Solepedia has a little background on how they became so desirable.

No surprises for the sexiest woman in the world: GQ hearts Johansson.

Brilliant short film of US flight traffic data animated in different ways.

This is not to everyone's taste, or interest, but The Coroner's Autopsy: Do we deserve better? (2006), is an amazing document exploring the work, and failings of the coronial process in the UK.

Richard Dawkins gives religions of all kinds, a delicious kicking in The God Delusion, but reserves particular scorn for The Catholic Encyclopedia. Delightfully, it's online. Today's WOTD is thus drawn from its pages: laity.

I have been messing around with a Nokia N80 for a week now. In the process of compiling this list of the best next-gen phone apps, I've racked up a 3 figure data bill. These apps are cool, but be warned, they are all bandwidth heavy. They get expensive fast if you are on a regular $$$/Mb contract.

1. iSync is my most essential GTD app. It takes a quick hack to get it running on an N80. It combines calendar, todo, and contacts syncing. You can take notes, numbers, and appointments down from your email into iCal, and be sure to have them handy on your phone, when you need them later (and vice-versa of course).

2. Shozu are a UK start up, offering a great free service. The app downloaded onto your phone gives you "one-click" upload of photos to Flickr, videos to YouTube, or practically any file, to any place. Some of this functionality will be inbuilt in the upcoming N80 "Internet Edition", and some other phones have this pre-enabled as part of the Nokia/Flickr initiative. However there is another must-have feature: scheduled downloadable "ZuCasts", which are video podcasts tailored for your phone screen.

3. The cool kids all like GPS integration on their mobiles, but I swear Google Maps Mobile, is more useful. It produces beautiful street and satellite maps of anywhere on earth. Better still, it has integrated search results and directions. Unless you struggle to read maps, it has everything you need to never get lost again.

4. Widsets is a widget based RSS reader for your phone, with a fancy GUI. The N8O already has a nice RSS reader built into its excellent XHTML browser, but widgets are so cool, you just have to add them. More complex widget mini-apps are in development, for more show-off goodness.

5. There are VNC clients for mobile platforms available, but Soonr makes it really simple. You can remotely access files on a nominated computer running the Soonr desktop client, and use Soonr to arrange a Skype conference call between your phone and anyone else. Until an actual Skype set-up arrives on Nokia, that's an amazing feature. In fact together those two features (together with QuickOffice) might save me from taking my laptop away on trips.

6. Last on the list is SmartPox, a phone barcode scanner, trying to bring QR Codes to the gaijin masses.

So called advertising "creatives" need to work harder on their creative thinking. I speak for the whole internet, when I say that we're done with Le Parkour based ads. This 360 ad is good, but it would have been better still, if it hadn't been preceded by similar ads for the BBC, Nike (x 3), Toyota, Coke, Snickers, and Rogers.

These Polka Footscape Wovens are now officially my sneaker of the year. These were the only pair in my size in the UK, if not Europe. There are a few pairs on the 'Bay, if they takes your fancy though

The more older brothers a man has the more likely he is to be gay and sexually deviant. (Note especially the "Most Deviant Index" for rating sex offenders).

The Nike Untold Truth Pack is a cynical cash-in on the history of the negro leagues, but it has produced these dope Vandal Lo "White Elephants".

2,500 police officers have been injured so far this year in French street battles. How come French kids riot so much harder than the rest of Europe?

Insane factoid of the day: "Heavy Metal" was a William S Burroughs neologism in The Soft Machine.

Picto is a harsh flash pelmanism game. You have to remember 100 icons, based on shape, colour, and location.

This is one of my two really essential non-fiction reads this year. George Monbiot, is the only columnist I read infallibly every week. He explores environmental issues tirelessly, using a sort of armchair private detective approach to discover shocking hypocrisies and abuses.

In this book he argues coherently and plausibly that the UK needs to make a 90% cut in CO2 emissions by 2030, and that such a cut is possible without making significant cultural changes.
These 215 pages of reasoned honest argument, really changed my feelings about climate change. I was under the mistaken impression that due to the Kazzoom-Brookes Postulate, operating at both micro and macro-economic scales, we simply couldn't cut down our use of CO2. Monbiot uses straightforward calculations to show that with a combination of personal and governmental commitment, we can do it.
There's a great accompanying website, and some extracts from the Guardian, if you'd like a taster before you dig in.

This world record might be infringing the human rights of these prisoners in the Philippines. But then setting a world record for the Algorithm March is great rehab.

Mekanism X Invader X Rubik skateboard. Speechless.

Jelly sparks toxic waste alert:
"A large area near the town of Halle was cordoned off after a "flabby red, orange and green substance" was found by the road", which is only mildly surprising in this age of heightened alert, but here's the curious part: "(firefighters)...conducted a variety of tests and figured out it was jelly."

Sinister Dolls, the name does not lie, these are really extremely sinister. Like something out of a Hell House. (Speaking of which the Landover Baptist Interactive Hellhouse 2006 is open for business. Prepare to be saved.)

"The final folly of a populist museum?" The Unilever Commission 2006 at the Tate Modern, looks awesome.

Google paid $1.65 Billion for YouTube? That's evil. Since Google intend to maintain the YouTube branding, YouP0rn.com (enesseffdoubleyoo) can count the days until they get cease and desisted out of existence.

This is such old blogosphere news, but I have just this one chance to save you from a £17.99 lump of dead tree that you really don't need:

1. You know this stuff already. If you are here, reading a blog, and a distinctly d-list blog at that, you are already consuming media from deep in the long tail. Assuming you regularly browse the ol' b-sphere, you are already familiar with the central claim: that wide choice of media and products promoted by the internet, has widened consumer uptake of niche media and niche products. If you still need an update The Long Tail Blog, has everything for free.

2. The book really is as simple as that. It's padded out with a stack of fun stats about amazon, netflix, and rapture, but the central idea is never really substantiated beyond that. It's an extremely light read. I knocked back my copy in a shade under 2 hours, mostly while I was waiting for a plane to leave Heathrow. The concept is so simple, that it hardly demands your attention.

3. New York Magazine accused Chris Anderson of "laying out the whole argument in the subtitle". The UK subtitle ("How endless choice is creating unlimited demand") is better than the US subtitle ("How the future of business is selling less of more"), but they're both wrong for two reasons. Firstly Anderson never really shows that wider choice has increased demand. It's obvious that wider choice has diversified consumption, but seems unlikely that it has actually changed the pattern of what we want to consume. Before the internet, I certainly hankered after stuff I couldn't find. I wasn't able to download back issues of Grand Royal Magazine, but that's not to say my demand for it was sated by reading back issues of the NME.

4. The second major flaw, along the same lines, is that Anderson doesn't prove either that this is in any way a new, emerging, or universal phenomenon. He tries to draw together some principles for "21 century Long Tail businesses", presumably to sell more copies, but his own examples let him down. Sears & Roebuck exploited the "long tail" long ago. Online grocers like tesco.com, are currently hugely successful without needing to exploit it.

5. Like all pop-science books there's always an obvious counter-example to every example put forward. Anderson spends a long time trying to justify Wikipedia as "Long Tail", grossly stretching his overworked idea. However the OED is, like the Wikipedia, in part created by unpaid volunteers who look for early uses of every English word. The OED also uses a team of expert lexicographers to oversee that work. OED is not just "long tail", in its production methods, but in its content: it contains more words than any other dictionary. However is no other sense does it conform to what Anderson thinks of as "long tail": it's authoritative, it's mainstream, and it's 150 years old. When confronted with this diversity of "long tail" characteristics, the idea starts to seems incoherent.

So, from deep in the heart of the media long tail, I'm pleading with you not to bother buying The Long Tail. If you still feel you have to read it, I'd suggest doing something very long tail, and waiting for the inevitable e-book torrent.

I've grown tired of trying to convert this template to work in Wordpress. I've grown tired in general of hacking away blindly at odd bits of html. So as of now, I've bitten the bullet and switched template. You probably hate it already. The colophon below explains a little more about how it works. Mostly it borrows the concept (and html, and css) from fimoculous, though evidently any glaring errors are my own. It probably loads really slowly, but I can't fix that without learning php.

'I spent 15 hours a day for seven weeks sculpting a minute piece of diamond. The beams are made out of floating fibres that you see in sunlight. To paint the house, I took the hair from a dead spider's legs and made a paintbrush. Then it was a case of being very patient and careful.'

It is a replica of a Huf Haus, by micro-artist Willard Wigan, going on display tomorrow at the NEC, Birmingham.

Tags: willardwigan, nano,

KAWS x Young Scientist Anatomy Set. Dope. No news, if a Damian Hirst style law suit is pending.

Wind Generator flash game.

George Galloway on Sky News ripping into Sky, The Sun, and Murdoch himself regarding pro-Israel bias. Long but fantastic. In some ways he's Britain's most capable politician.

Amazing photos of Baring Sea crab fishing (America's most dangerous job): Corey Fishes

The i-Bar, a sort of flat panel plasma ball for a bar. Must-see video. (via)

Sneaker of the day: Evil Monito X Cr8 Capones

Plain old damn fine journalism: BBC documentary about Chobe lions hunting adult elephants.

Passing the Gladwell point. An interesting article about what's gone wrong with Malcolm Gladwell. The problems described are magnified x10 for Levitt and Dubner though. (via (via (isn't it creepy how the a-listers all know each other?)))

That's How It Happened is officially 1000 posts old. It seems like one hell of a lot. I'm almost incredulous that I did anything this pointless 1000 times in a row. What better way to celebrate, than with a picture of my Nike iD Studio Air Max 90s. They arrived today, shipped fresh from China. They have a gloriously deluxe box, and a nifty faux-suede shoe bag. The picture doesn't quite do them justice, because it's hard to photograph 3-M and metallic silver at the same time.

Coincidentally perhaps, That's How suffered some downtime today, after I left the webmasterial credit card in a taxi, while mad drunk, and forgot to update GoDaddy with the new card details. Apologies to anyone who briefly felt as bereft as I did.

Though obviously you can't have any sneaks as great as the Studio AM90s, you ought to check out the Reflector Pack Court Forces (see they can't photograph 3-M either), and the Mita Air Stab Premiums.

I'm in love with this Attractors flash game. It's similar in appeal to the Falling Sand game, but so much cleverer.

Draw A Pig, compete for it to enter the pig drawing hall-of-fame, and use your drawing as a personality test. 3 entertainments in one.

My stat of the year from Harper's Index: Ratio of the estimated U.S. cost of ratifying the Kyoto Protocol to the cost of the Iraq war so far: 1:1

I read somewhere, that in all documented tournament Rock Paper Scissors play, Paper is the least used move, at only about 29%, and therefore statistically when in a strategic bind should be the move of choice. Anyhow the Wikipedia RPS page is a model of excellence in collaborative encyclopeding.

Eric Schmidt addressed the Tory Party conference today: ""Most blogs have precisely one reader--the blogger themselves.". How true.

The Giant Puffball is absolutely other-worldy, looking more like a sci-fi prop than a supermarket mushroom. This specimen appeared overnight in my parents' garden. It was about 8" by 8", and quite solid inside. We ate it tonight as a starter. Fried in butter, garlic, and olive oil, it tastes out of this world too. I'm no mycologist, but a good sized one like this can't be confused for any toxic fungi (well except for the fantastically named Pigskin Poison Puffball). There's more helpful advice for budding puffballphages at this fungi of the month site.

Tags: puffball