A gateway to logical english

How about

'or' becomes 'xor'

'and/or' becomes 'or'


Just a thought.

This weeks tidbits from the wider world

"We are 13.7 billion light years from the edge of the observable universe, that's a good estimate, with well-defined error bars, and with the available infomation I predict that I will always be with you" -Singer Katie Melua's redrafted lyric to the song Nine Million Bicycles, in response to science writer Simon Singh's complaint that the original wa inaccurate.


Stupid Design

"When it comes to dealing with "intelligent design", scientists should take a leaf out of the book of Karl Rove, George Bush's tenacious election strategist. "It's time to start playing hardball," said Donald Wise of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, speaking at the Geological Society of America's annual meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah.

"In a call to arms, geologists were urged to join their biologist brethen in attacking the creationist challenge to Darwinian evolution. The conference devoted two sessions -comprising 24 presentations- to the debate, plus a panel discussion on the so-called "national attack on science"

"With the trial over teaching intelligent design in full swing in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the urgency was palpable and the sessions attracted large crowds. Many of the speakers stressed the anti-evolutionists' high level of organisation, dedication and persistence, and urged scientists to match this. A variety of tacticts were discussed, from bolstering legal efforts to grass-roots action such as teaching evolution to children to children at an early age, reaching out to voters, and leading church group discussions about evolution. "Join the school board," suggested high-school science teacher Mark Terry from Seattle.

"Wise drew enthusiastic applause by arguing that science should go on the offensive. He suggested a Rove-style campaign to "find a few of your opponent's weakest points and pound on them mercilessly".

"What are these weak points? Look no further than out poorly draining sinuses, cramped teeth and hunched spine, all hangovers from our long-muzzled, knuckle-dragging days, and perfect examples of what Wise calls "incompetent design"."



Both courtesy of the 22 October edition of New Scientist which includes a facinating feature on metal-fueled car engines.

In search of Meme

There are many things I want to do before I die. They range from the usual (but important): have a (large) family. Through the usual (but not that important): write a book. To the outright fantastic: read by the light of another star. But there's one thing in particular I am very determined to do, I want to create a meme.

Ok, some background, a meme is a 'culture gene'.

Infomation can be said to be viral, that is, a word a picture a sound an idea can find it's home in a persons brain by altering it (forming a memory) and then 'infect' other people by word of mouth or drawing etc where it will be hosted and so on and so forth. For example: the cross.

The cross is a very simple design, for those of you who don't know it firstly I say welcome to earth and secondly that it is a horizontal bar with a perpendicular bisector that it slightly longer. This image can easyily find a host in a person's brain and be redrawn to so someone else. The case is the same through many old (I don't really want to say ancient) religions, like the Star of David for Judaism and the cresent moon for Islam (sorry, I don't know the offical term for the symbol).

The survival of memes depends on other memes and/or it's simplicity. The cross, star, and cresent moon worked perfectly in along time ago because of it's simplicity, it could be reproduced from memory with ease, a stick and dry mud at the very least. But as soon as the technology is right, more sophisticated memes like the Sikh symbol could survive accurately when the printing press came along.

Of course, religious symbols are not the only memes. Flags, slang, smiley faces are all examples of common memes.

So you see, the construction of a successful memes can be a powerful and lasting icons.

Hopefully we all now are on some sort of level playing field.

Some of the most successful memes today are in fashion and language. I mean, just look at what The Matrix did for sales of long leather coats (although admittedly Star Wars nothing for pastry ear muffs). Also 'Chav' spread like wildfire across the UK, so strong was it that it has even replaced the local word for such a creature, in the locality of Yetiville they were known as 'Kevs'.

So my first attempt (that I can remember, I've been doing this kind of thing for a while but only recently have I brought had a name for the thing I was trying to create) was to make up the word 'flib' meaning the tuft of hair which one tucks behind their ear. However, it never reached what I called a critical number of people and so I am now the only host of this word, unless you remember it.

Another meme is my forum 'The Juction'. You can see links on the left and if you've got a computer that likes you you should be able to see it at the bottom of this page. This forum was supposed to be a place where people from all around the world could interact and swap ideas and opinions with each other. But alas this meme (it's alittle strained to call it a meme but I'm going to anyway) is very resistant to spreading and so very few people visit it and if they do it's only to write words that reminds them of other words.

Being a man of 90% laziness and 10% eatting machine (yup, that's me summed up) I've yet to put in motion my next attempt at a meme. This meme is in the sphere of fashion. The idea is to wear duct tape on jeans. Now hold on a second, hear me out. Duct tape on jeans is very versitle, you can have a simple strip going down the outside seem on both legs (or just one), or strips going around the leg like three in parallel near the ankle. The potential designs are endless. All this meme requires to get going is for it to reach enough people and for them to act on it. Say one person with duct tape on their jeans walkes down a busy city street, hundred or maybe thousands of people might see it. If just ten people copy and/or modify the design and then walk down a busy city street they can spread the infomation to maybe a hundread people and so on and so forth.

If I see duct tape being sold in H&M, or Next, or GAP I'll die a very happy man.

Wear duct tape on your jeans, you know it makes sense.

Like a kid in a sweet shop

I have just visited a site full of 'retro' sweets. It's this site to be precise

Just scrolling through the site I had mouth ulcers starting to grow, my teeth started to quiver in fear. I could eat almost everything (there's chocolate on there which I'm not allowed for about another six months) on there. They've got sherbet lemons, sherbet strawberries (aka strawberry sherbets), lemon bon bons, candy canes, cola doughnuts, fry's turkish delight, fry's turkish delight, fry's turkish delight, fizzy vampire teeth. If fruit made this kind of effort I'd probably eat some of that too.

I went on there in the first place to find some sweets called Spangles (I'm not sure if thats the correct spelling). If memory serves they were like vitrified orange. They had a revival many moons ago but have since faded away.