The Coil

No, not a contraceptive. Rather, a contraption. The Tesla Coil, to be precise.

For those that don't know, the Tesla Coil is a way of making more power out of a current. Nikola Tesla was a genius. For me, one of the greatest to have ever lived. Certainly better than that Edison chancer, who actually had Tesla working for him, promised him a bonus of 30,000 dollars if Tesla came up with a certain number of patents (this was back when 30,000 would have set you up for hundreds of years), which Tesla did, only to then say "I was only joking, chump".

So Tesla left, but took his genius with him. Edison and Tesla engaged in a kind of inventing war for a while, and Tesla often won. An example of which was AC. Alternating Current. Edison invented and championed Direct Current, but DC meant sending electrons out and then bringing them back. It was a very bad way of sending electric to people. In New York at the time, the multitude of wires needed to carry electricity sometimes blacked out the sky. It must have been something.

DC meant having to erect power stations every couple of miles, just to keep the electron flow going. So Tesla invented AC. Alternating current. It meant the power cables were much thinner, and could just keep on going with no need for a boost every few miles. Needless to say, Edison was incredulous, and slagged AC off at every opportunity.

But Tesla wanted to go further than AC. Further than fewer, thinner wires. He wanted no wires at all. In fact, he wanted free power. To all. And, with the Tesla Coil, he deemed it possible. If you plug a Tesla Coil in to an American socket, you're giving it 120 Volts. But the coil spews electricity from the top of the coil at 500,000 volts. How? Well, if you imagine the electricity flowing like water, the voltage is likened to water pressure. If you attach a nozzle to the end of a hose, the water pressure is increased, while the flow of water is decreased. Try putting your thumb over the end of a hose and you'll see. So the coil steps up the voltage and reduces the current. Its a transformer.

If you hold a light bulb in a room with a Tesla Coil in it, the light bulb will illuminate. No wires. No sockets. Just electrical energy in the air. Tesla wanted to build giant Tesla Coils and provide the earth with electrical energy, using the earth itself as a conductor.

This would mean impoverished countries that still live off the land would all of a sudden have access to power. And not just any power, clean power. The global warming merchants needn't worry about coal fuel stations, we'd only be powering a few energy stations. Tesla built a huge coil, Wardenclyffe, and managed to illuminate light bulbs over a mile away. Sadly, and is so oft the case, the money man pulled out of investing in Tesla's invention, when someone beat him broadcasting radio waves over the Atlantic. Later, the accolade was reversed and granted to Tesla, after it materialised that the chap who beat him to it used at least 5 or 6 of Tesla's patents.

Regardless, I see Tesla's ideas for free world power as...obviously a threat to establishment....but more than that, even back then he was thinking big. Really big. If we are one world and we all look out for each other, I  don't think the regular 5 pound a month pledge to Oxfam can really cut it. Oh it helps, sure, but we, as a species, need to think bigger. Tesla style bigger.

He also invented the induction motor, which is the standard electric motor used everywhere these days. A larger type is used in a car, also called a Tesla, which is an electric car that can do over 200 miles on a single charge. Now, Steve, you might say. What was that? Why, if we can build electric cars that can do 0 - 60 in under 4 seconds and travel over 200 miles on a single charge, are the governments of the world not making this standard issue? Why are we still bothering with the internal combustion engine?

Short answer: fuck knows. The technology is there. It exists. It can be used and utilised. But everyone seems to be looking the other way, to the point where shares in the Tesla motor company dropped last year and continue to decline.

If the men in power cared about the environment like your green taxes claim they do, then we would all be driving these cars. By law. But that would punch a huge hole in their revenue, and we can't have that. The Saudis have so much invested in the American economy that if the Saudis were ruined because we didn't need their oil any more, the American economy would collapse.

Free power, clean transport. Isn't this what we should be pursuing?

Nikola Tesla invented many other things; remote control, energy saving light bulbs (seriously), X-rays (again, seriously but he was never recognised for it), proposed the idea of bouncing radio waves off objects to determine position and speed 17 years before the invention of radar, and the laser.

He also built something called The Earthquake Machine. Going on the principle that every object, once struck, has a resonant frequency, he concluded that if you match that frequency and increase it, any material can be shaken to pieces. Dangerous, but true nevertheless. You could bring down a building with a very small device.

Tesla then. Had his fair share of good ideas and dangerous ones. Died alone in a hotel room in New York, undiscovered for two days. The FBI seized his files, and the world largely forgot about him. These days, we need his genius more than ever before. Sadly, the Tesla Coil is not taken seriously. Think of all the money the power suppliers would lose. The electric car is not being taken seriously. Think of all the money the oil companies would lose. Of course, if the world built giant Tesla Coils, the electric cars would pick up the power as they drove. They wouldn't need a charge. You could just keep on driving as long as your tyres went round and the motor was okay. Wouldn't that be something?

Pie Anna & The Snob

Music is one of the few global processes we know of in the brain. Hooray for music then. Now, music has done much to me and for me. My ears are damaged, though only time will tell to what degree and how it'll all end up and whether I consider it a fair trade-off. Music has also shaped me though, and made me much of the person I am today as well as allowing me the opportunity to travel to many places I most certainly would not have done and play to people that would otherwise have ignored me.

Apparently, when you reach a certain age you begin to lose somewhere in the region of 50,000 neurons a day. It means that starting something, learning something new, is more difficult than if you tried it when you were a kid and your brain was a sponge soaking it all up. I was daft enough to start learning the piano a year ago. 35, and taking on something as monstrous as the piano. A year later, I am pleased with my progress, though I never imagined for one minute it would be as difficult as it is, with or without losing my brain cells.

I think that everyone should be made to take piano lessons. Here's why; it teaches you to take things one step at a time, it teaches you co-ordination, and it teaches you expression. Three bloody good reasons. Not least the first one. In piano, learning a piece, you do it bar-by-bar. You learn a bar, you move on. Then you piece them together. It gets programmed into your fingers, your motor cortex, and you know it. And its a good lesson to take with you. Do things one step at a time and its easier. Go rushing in and you'll fuck up.

Now, the piano is something I've kept relatively secret. I play for me, to me, its me me me. I get a huge amount of pleasure from it, especially when it just works or you pull off something fiendishly difficult that has been plaguing you for months. Why then, would I not want to shout about this, record me playing pieces and stick them on Youtube? Because I play classically. I play Bach, Chopin, Debussy and Schumann. 

Sadly for these splendid fellows, many people view classical music as the domain of the upper class, of the snobs and the stuck-ups. The upper classes have done nothing to dispel the myth that classical music is for the rich or the especially intelligent. The morons. Beauty is for anyone fortunate enough to turn their senses to it. Many are afraid of introspection for fear of what lies within, and I think certain pieces of classical music are so affecting, looking in is the only thing you can do. If you don't like what you see there, see a therapist, but don't blame the music.

Why you would not want to listen to music of such beauty and power with all the sonic garbage that clogs up the charts is quite beyond me. Sure, you can't put up with it all the time, you need a beat, you need some noise, some anger and some fun. But when you want to be moved, and I mean really, really moved, where every fucking emotion you can imagine is moulded over a couple of staves and spread out over 6 or 8 minutes, I don't see how you can go anywhere but to a piano. 

Chopin's Raindrop Prelude. So called because the one note (A flat) that plays throughout it is supposed to symbolise the pitter and the patter of raindrops. Plus the middle section could almost be a storm, a storm that later recedes and is replaced again by a light rain.
Aww. Nice. But come on. Such an adolescent interpretation. For me, the Raindrop Prelude demands to tell you that it soundtracks your life. It begins very delicately, then the initial theme is expanded upon, then it gets darker. And as we grow, we learn the important things; that people don't always get what they deserve, that we are often exploited, that we lose things and people we love, and we get very, very pissed off about it. This, to me, is the middle part of the Raindrop. The anger you contain throughout a lot of your days. Then, at the end with the refrain, so it goes with us. We return to a state similar to the one when we got here. We realise the little things don't matter a fuck, we realise life is a thing of beauty, even with the tragedies, and as the song closes, we too find peace. The one note that plays throughout, to me is a heartbeat. Not rain. Rain is a daft idea.

Would I be afraid of saying the above to some bow-tie wearing knob shank of a classical music critic? Damn right. But why would my interpretation of that piece be wrong? It is what it is. He doesn't agree so what. I'll take it to the grave, to my last chord, because its what the piece says to me. Therefore, it can never be wrong. 

Imposing limitations on your musical tastes is a daft idea. I remember when I was at school you could only like Def Leppard. Anyone else and you were out cast. Whilst it now seems okay for anyone to like anything, still classical music is the elephant in the room. I wish more would embrace it. I know it seems dense, I know it seems overwhelming, but by jingo its worth it. 

The people who wrote this stuff weren't snobs either. Many of them lived awful lives, lives of poverty, lives of heart-break, lives of ill health. Chopin died at the age of 39 of Cystic Fibrosis, heart-broken that his great love was not there as she promised she would be. Beethoven died at 56 from unknown causes, he was a raging alcoholic, had chronic diarrhoea, and was profoundly deaf in his later years, the worst thing you could wish upon a composer of music. He was also twice nearly beaten to death by his alcoholic father when he was a child. Bach had 10 children die in infancy, as well as experiencing the death of his mother and father before he was 10, and the death of the love of his life. Who else can be more qualified at expressing tragedy. Yet this music is for everyone, they created this stuff that was so beautiful, and the upper classes got hold of it and made it feel exclusive to them. Fuck that, take it back off them. Its out there to enjoy, to plough through, to soundtrack your life. If needs be, start with one of those arbitrary 'Best Piano Album In The Universe (though we have no proof of that) Volume 3 (How can they do Volumes of something that they proclaim to be the best in the universe?). Whatever you start with, just try it. Dip your toe in the water, see how it feels, or else you too will be a snob, only an inverted one.

Start Spreading The News...

Tomorrow morning, at roughly 11 in the a.m., I leave for London to catch a plane. A plane that will eventually take me to JFK airport in New York.

When I became aware of how much more of the world there was to see, I had 3 places on my list of places I had to visit before I ceased to function. Number one was Hollywood, number two was New York, and number three was Egypt. Number one is now crossed off my list. Its gone, many times over. Hollywood was not what I thought, but I still loved it, and thinking about it now, I kinda miss it. Frenzy have spent weeks there, using it as a base from which to tour, prepare to tour, and hold fruitless meetings with people.

So New York was elevated to the number one position. Boom. With a bullet. Many times in the past we have been making plans to go to New York to play, but they sadly came to nothing. At least this time, my ass has a space booked and paid for on that plane. I'm going. Even if I get turned around by customs. Even if the gig doesn't happen. Even if it happens but I don't get paid.

No matter.

When I was a kid, I heard a piece of music on an advert for a chocolate bar. It turned out to be Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue. There's only a small piece of it that caught my attention, but for me it soundtracked a city. Not the commercial parts of a city, but the back alleys, the blinking neon signs, the dumpsters, the shadowy figures in hats and trenchcoats. All the stuff from detective novels and film noir. All the fantasy stuff that didn't exist now, if it ever did back in the 30's.

As I grew I became more entranced with big cities, being a boy who grew up in the country. Both alluring and frightening, New York seemed like the Big Daddy of cities. It made sense to go to the biggest and baddest, to get the best experience.

Plenty of films depict the same city in many different ways. Taxi Driver, my most favourite film, describes New York almost as a living organism, but one that is infected, decaying, and rotten. It almost holds the city itself responsible for the actions of its inhabitants, as if it somehow turns people bad. When I was 14 or 15 and deeply into comic books, the streets of Gotham City just felt like they were really New York to me. Like Bob Kane just couldn't really call it New York because he didn't want people to grief him over it. Most obviously, Manhattan, the movie that itself linked up Gershwin's music to the cityscape in a way I'd only previously saw in my head. Manhattan romanticises the city, just as I was doing, and the black and white used in the film only adds to its dreamlike qualities.

We only have a few days in NYC. The Empire State is high on the 'must do' list. However, I shall be bitterly disappointed if I don't also see the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge. The gig itself feels like a minor inconvenience, and I fully expect to have little sleep during my stay. I don't see the point with so many other things I could be doing.

Its time to begin packing, to tick off another one of my ambitions. After this, Egypt is the last one left in my top three. Can't see us getting a gig over there somehow.

Round 2

The aggressive stand-point taken by such intellects as Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens is sometimes a little much for me, and I regard those that wear atheism as a badge of intelligence as suspect and believe that it conversely signals their lack of intelligence or ability to think independently.

Many of the arguments atheists throw at religion can themselves be thrown at atheism too. How do you know....that would be my basic one. There is no evidence for God yet, but that's not to say we won't find any. There's no evidence for the Higgs-Boson particle either, but we're spending billions of pounds searching for it. So I'll sit on the fence if that's okay, in this weird limbo that means I get labelled an agnostic.

Recently a christian friend of mine posted on Facebook that there is no evidence for evolution. I saw that he had support from some of his christian friends, and objection from a mutual friend who tried to point out that there is evidence for evolution and its all around us.

Of course, me being me, I had to stick my oar in. Now, the discussion has remained just that, there is no insults being thrown around, no name-calling, just a back and forth about...well, its gone from evolution to all things religious. Its interesting for me, though I confess that I begin to tire of it.

All of a sudden Dawkins and Hitchens have my sympathy. There is just no talking to these people, and I've begun to feel like I'm now the victim of condescension. They talk as if "You poor soul, I only hope the spirit of our Lord visits you soon". As if I'm a sinner in need of redemption. Logic and reason doesn't feature heavily in religious debates, from the religious side at least.

I even posted a web site link. A web site link to the vatican web site to be precise and on that site, you can see a piece of text that acknowledges the universe probably started with a Big Bang and that mankind came from a single organism. I'm not sure how they can say that since it so obviously contradicts their sacred texts, but its there all the same.

I'm shocked to learn in this discussion, that my friend considers his moral compass to come from God. Being a psychologist (for the next year and a half at least), I can point in him the direction of his morals. They come from the orbitofrontal cortex and the amygdala. One, the OFC, is similar to Freud's tri-partite theory of personality in that it considers the options before you and then plans a course of action which you inevitably follow. One, the amygdala, is responsible for emotional memory....so guilt or shame would feature heavily, especially in christians.

I appreciate this view is reductionist, but it doesn't make it any less so. Furthermore, spiritual experiences have now been traced to temporal lobe epilepsy. It must be remembered that 2,000 years ago, most mental illnesses would be attributed to either God or the Devil.

Regressions aside, I pointed him in the direction of the wreckage in New Orleans that came from Hurricane Katrina. In the aftermath, many people went pillaging, and in some horrific cases, women trapped in their homes were raped and abused. People with a previously balanced moral compass can do morally reprehensible things depending on their situation. If someone threatens my son's life, I will do pretty much anything to end that threat, using any means at my disposal. Morals can go hang, and I don't mind hanging for the crime as long as he's protected. Research indicates all societies are three meals away from anarchy. Deprive us of three meals in a row, and you've got a shifting of the moral compass. To say its guided by God is to be too subjective.

To counter this, I was told that there are tribes in 'the Amazon' - which narrows it down - that have similar morals to us. So, how could they do that? It must be God that put these morals there. Interesting argument. Were it not for the Yanomami tribe who torture, beat, rape, and brand their women in order to assert their male dominance. Where's God's moral compass there?

I don't wish to destroy anyone's beliefs in the manner that Dawkins or Hitchens might. However, I get a sense of the gloves coming off in this discussion. I hate that I have to provide evidence for everything I say, and yet they can get away with just having faith. Its frustrating.

My friend believes the world is only 6,000 years old. Despite the fossils. Despite carbon dating. He cannot explain dinosaurs either. Nor the platypus. Nor the ice age. Nor extinction. Nor the fact that 99% of species are now extinct. Nor the fact that if Adam did indeed name them all, he would have needed one hell of a memory considering there's over 2 million species of insect alone.

The big guns will be the striking similarity between the Egyptian God Horus, and our own Jesus of Nazareth. Let's cherry pick some good ones, but rest assured there are many more...

- Both were conceived of a virgin.

- Both births were announced by an angel.

- Jesus' mother was Mary, Horus' mother was Meri.

- Jesus' father was Joseph, Horus' father was Seph.

- Both fathers were of royal descent.

- The birth of both was heralded by a star.

- Both were visited by shepherds at birth.

- Both have no recorded history between the ages of 12 and 30.

- Both baptized in a river at age 30.

- In both cases, the baptizer was later beheaded.

- Both had 12 disciples.

- Both walked on water, healed the sick, the blind, and cast out demons.

- Both delivered a sermon on the mount.

- Both were crucified (Both next to two thieves)

- Both were sent to hell for three days and then resurrected.

- Both said to return for 1,000 year reign.

- Jesus was known as Christ, Horus as KRST. Both these things mean 'the resurrected one'.

Looks a bit odd doesn't it?

I genuinely believe the religious among us are simply being vocal about their search for meaning. As such, they attribute meaning to random events and either thank God for the good ones, or accept he works in mysterious ways for the bad ones. God can't lose in their eyes.

I don't need a God to tell me the best thing to do. As such, if it fucks up I can blame no-one but myself either. I don't need to believe there's ever-lasting reward awaiting me in heaven. There's enough reward down here already. There's enough hell too but let's try and be optimistic.

I will continue the debate with my friend and the members of his church. As long as they keep replying, I have faith that logic, reason, and scientific advancement are on my side and will give me the ammo I need for the argument. Attributing the good in your life to a supernatural being is to deny yourself some serious credit, some serious understanding, and to have a pretty dim view of your life and your abilities.

For out of fear and need each religion is born, creeping into existence on the byways of reason. - Neitzsche.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

A short time ago I decided to see what this Twitter malarkey was all about. So I joined and found that few of my friends were on it really. I did the thing you usually do when you join Twitter, and that's follow @stephenfry. He's a national treasure. Its the law. It became a kind of personal Heat magazine for me, as I found people like Derren Brown, Gervias, Martin, Ginger Wildheart and Teller. The stuff they update is mildly interesting / amusing at best and I soon lost interest in it. I did check back every now and then though, and I saw a post by a person I both respect and admire, the coolest ginger on the planet; Tim Minchin.

Not only is he a highly skilled pianist, he is also an advocate of rational, logic reasoning and scientific thinking. Full marks, I tip my hat. However, he happened to post a link to an article in the LA times which stated that climate change skepticism was being taught now in schools alongside the AGW theory. He was saying how this is wrong, and that its skepticism based upon politically motivated reasoning.

He couldn't be more mis-informed. James Hansen, the NASA scientist who started this scam, was politically motivated in his actions. So I 'tweeted' back at Tim, that skepticism is good. I mentioned three scientists that prove this point; Newton, Einstein and Bohr. Each of those physicists interpreted the world in a new way. We had Newton's law of gravity, then Einstein's special theory of relativity, then Bohr gave us the quantum. Each one changed the way we saw the world, each one broke new ground and aided understanding. Its what science does, we do the best we can with the information we have. As time changes, we change that understanding. Skepticism isn't just good, its necessary.

So then, surprisingly, Minchin tweeted me back, claiming that good skepticism is good, but bad isn't. Well now, this is a whole new ball game isn't it? 'Good' is a concept. And its a subjective one. Your good might be my evil, and vice versa. Is good result based or intention based? Who decides? On what grounds? Its a hard conversation to have over Twitter using only 160 characters. I did explain this to him however, and he never tweeted back. Why would he?

It did make me marvel though, that this man, this science heavy, rational thinker would not apply the same scrutiny and reasoning on global warming. Why would he take some facts as red and not look into those from the other side?

Recently there has been some news regarding Michael Mann, the creator of the infamous 'hockey stick' graph, used to great effect by Al Gore in that brilliant piece of fiction 'An Inconvenient Truth' (for an explanation of why its fiction, see the bottom of this piece). Turns out Mann's hockey stick, showing that there has been a huge surge in CO2 and temperature recently was bullshit. To get to that conclusion though, Mann had to be subpoenaed by a court, demanding the algorithms he used to get the graph. They then fed random data into his program, and the graph was the same every time.

There is plenty of evidence that challenges climate change, and as such it is not the 'settled science' they'd have you think it is. No science is settled. Physics is a wonderful example of this. In the quest to find a theory of everything (TOE...chortle), physicists have propsed ideas such as M-theory, multiple dimensions, string theory, superstring theory, and even posited the notion that we are in a universe of bubbles, each bubble being a different universe. Mental, but who's to say? We are a tiny species on a small insignificant planet, and have no idea how the universe works. We don't even know how WE work yet. Not entirely. The brain remains a mystery.

It disappointed me that Minchin was so unscientific. I thought he was a good thinker. He's sadly been duped into feeling guilty about this stuff, like so many others. It seems the more they have the more guilty they feel, so the louder they shout about it. Rock stars and politicians banging on about climate change does one thing: makes them feel good. Anyone with half a life is too damn busy to worry about standby lights. Taking everything at face value is easy, it requires little cognitive effort and allows us to feel how we want to. Cognitive dissonance that results from not being sure isn't very relaxing and needs to be sorted fast.

There's a current documentary doing the rounds called Earthlings. Its about how humans are, like, really bad, and like, animals n that, they're like, really nice n stuff?

Yeah, its made by a fucking vegan. I can't see it being very objective. I will attempt to watch it without laughing, but I can't see it happening. Even the trailer was biased and ignorant, showing all the like, really bad things? That like, humans have done and stuff? Well he could have shown footage of doctors, have-a-go heroes, man walking on the moon, toddlers at play, scientific achievements. Anything fluffy. He was selective in the fucking trailer, he's going to be selective in the film. Its not an argument, its biased. The sad and scary thing is, people buy into it. Without thinking, without researching, without discussing. Because it suits them to do so. It makes them kind, caring, considerate. More the person they want you to think they are. More of the person they want to be.

Face value is a dangerous thing, though I appreciate there's little time to look into everything, certain things should be investigated. If you harbour the same opinions after you've done that, good on you, but if you don't....even better on you. I expect Minchin has the time and resources to look into things, but chooses not to. Its disappointing. I enjoyed our back and forth Tim, and can't tell whether you stopped replying to me because you were on to a loser, or you just thought that your time is worth more than communicating with one of your random ticket buyers.



The following is from the eco-warriors handbook, and is advice on how to handle 'deniers' on web sites, forums, chat rooms etc:

1) Use the 'Denier' insult or equate deniers with creationists
2) Imply links to big oil or fossil fuel industry
3) Use phrase "Oh yeh, it's all a massive conspiracy"
4) Quote selective data from 1979 onwards
5) Refer to Peer review process as if infallible
6) Refer to IPCC as if were not political organization
7) Claim all the worlds scientist agree
8) Denigrate as 'weatherman' world's most viewed climate site.
9) Denigrate reputation of scientist or journalist
10) General insults, best placed at end of comment.


ELEVEN “FACTS” CHALLENGED - AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

• SOURCE: English and Wales High Court Decisions

1. The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming. The Government’s expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.

2. The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years. The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.

3. The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that it was “not possible” to attribute one-off events to global warming.

4. The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that this was not the case.

5. The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice. It turned out that Mr. Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.

6. The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant’s evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.

7. The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching. The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.

8. The film suggests that the Greenland ice covering could melt causing sea levels to rise dangerously. The evidence is that Greenland will not melt for millennia.

9. The film suggests that the Antarctic ice covering is melting, the evidence was that it is in fact increasing.

10.The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7 meters causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 32cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.

11.The film claims that rising sea levels have caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.

After the court hearing, the film was no longer permitted to be shown in schools as an educational film. Result.

They're Really After You

There was something fishy in the Formula 1 race yesterday. One team needed their driver to win, but he hasn't won once this season because his team mate is so good. They both share the best car on the grid. So what to do about that? Give the guy who's so good a technical fault so their number two driver can win. That's all well and good, but a fault that means you lose the lead surely means you then fall further back into the field right?

Well, no. He 'somehow' managed to keep going as fast as his team mate. Not really a technical fault then was there?

Of course, it might all be above board but it was a little too prefect for me. Something didn't sit right.

This, combined with a few comments on the social networking site Facebook got me thinking about that glorious chestnut, conspiracy theories.

I don't know how anyone can fail to find them interesting. They merge fact and fiction in such an attractive way. The problem is, people fail to rule out the notion of co-incidence with regard to some of them, like the cult of 23. Try it with another number. 22 if you want, and you'll find ways in which the number 22 seems to be cropping up everywhere. But to see how co-incidence can rule, its 19:35 now, on the 28/11/11. So 28+11+11 = 50. 1+9+3+5 = 18. 50 - 18 = 32. Switch them around and YIKES! Its 23. Spooooky. Or not.

There are the rather tasteless conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11. Not least that it was all propagated by the Bush Administration. Now, I'm not sure how the Bush Administration could fuck everything else up so brilliantly and yet pull off 9/11 the way they did. That doesn't add up to me. If you've ever seen the movie Loose Change, you'll know there are some pretty unexplainable things around that event, and the 'people' want answers.

I want answers too. But I won't jump to the conclusion that it was planned and performed by the government of the United States. I'll wait for all possible explanations to come in, then I'll decide.

For me, its the people that buy into these things that are way more interesting than the theory itself. Which part of the truth isn't weird enough for these people? Why, in the words of Douglas Adams, isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe there are fairies at the bottom of it? Sometimes it iz wot it iz, and no amount of co-inky dinks are going to change that.

I propose that the hardened theorists are simply scared. Scared of the world and the people in it. They then give themselves a license to withdraw from society. They'll say its because they know who's really running it and why, because they know what's going on and we don't, but really its because they haven't the balls to participate in society and make something of it. Its much easier to run away to a cabin and await the apocalypse than to try and build a life for yourself full of meaning.

Furthermore, their stance that they know something you don't, that they're somehow clued in to the 'truth' appears to elevate them to a lofty status. One in which us sheep are the ignorant, and they the enlightened. Sadly, I do talk to someone who believes in a lot of this guff, and he drinks in the same pub as me. So this knowledge has gotten him.....where exactly? Nowhere. He is in the same position as I, having a drink in a pub. He knows something he considers important but doesn't act on it, save for trying to appear like a smart arse in front of everyone. And of course, if you challenge the belief, its like arguing with an environmentalist....you are always wrong, because they are always right. And if you provide evidence to the contrary, its because you're part of the system....man.

I'm all for an entertaining life, but the line between fact, fiction, and pure confirmation bias must be drawn. A mind is a parachute, and works best when its open, but it must also be a finely tuned bullshit detector. Believing a conspiracy theory over anything factual doesn't make you more intelligent. In fact I'd argue it makes you the gullible one.

Do I believe Red Bull fixed the race? To be honest I couldn't care less. I hate the fuckers anyway. The point is I won't let it dictate my life or my attitudes towards other people.

School of Life

I am as guilty of this as the next man. Or at least, I used to be. When I was 16 all my friends decided they were going to bugger off and go to University, leaving me with literally no-one to play with. Of course the ego kicks in defensive, and I declared that University be a waste of time. There was no jobs anyway, I reasoned, so why go and get a degree to end up jobless when you could just be jobless anyway.

A friend of mine at the time, Din, asked if I could understand the notion of simply learning because its good to learn, and one may have a love of the subject. Being young, and stupid, I told him I had no idea what he was on about.

So today, a full half my life on, I find myself at University having to defend myself against exactly the kind of thing I was saying all those years ago. Many people on the social networking site Facebook list as their education 'School of Life'.

This is intended to represent many things. Firstly, that they've seen it and done it. Whatever it is, they've experienced it and have the scars to show. Secondly, it illustrates that they don't need no education, they've learnt enough. GCSE's were a waste of time, they just left school and got on with the business of making money.

The third thing I believe it implies, is that those who have got an education can't possibly know or have experienced as much as they. Let's be clear, there are two schools of skill. There's the practical, and the academic. Sure, some boffin with his face in a book all day would be ill-prepared to fix your plumbing. But I wouldn't trust a plumber to do brain surgery either. Is one better than the other? I'd say not. I'd say each one has its merits and each practitioner should be equally proud of their work.

The other day I posted a humorous Facebook update, and to cut a long story short, I was met with a comment by one of my friends that, as a student, I don't live in the 'real world'. Now I'm not sure which world I live in then, because I assure you if there's a nuclear war I will be affected. If there's a drought or food shortage, I will find myself hungry or thirsty. I pay my bills. I pay my rent. I pay to keep an automobile on the road, no small task these days. When I need food, I have to pay for it. Which part of all this is not living in the real world?

One suspects living in the 'real world' entails getting your hands dirty for a living. But we can't all do that, it just wouldn't work.

Happily, we can attribute this attitude to a wonderful thing called the Dunning-Kruger effect. This is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to recognise their errors. They therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own skills as above average.

Basically then, idiots refuse to believe they're wrong about anything because they're incapable of seeing that they're wrong about anything. A vicious circle, and a dangerous one too.

This now has the danger of sounding like snobbery, and claiming that anyone who hasn't been to University is an idiot. Not so. I know many smart people who hold few to no qualifications. They can however, see that self-improvement is a good thing, and following a chosen path is an admirable thing, and supporting your friends with their choices is the best thing.