Serendipity Book

Inedia & Breatharianism

There are some silly people out there. This guy thinks he doesn't need food. His name is Michael Werner and he's a German professor who claims that he has not eaten since new year's eve 2001.

He believes in breatharianism, or inedia, whose followers claim that the elements contained in air - nitrogen, carbon dioxide, oxygen and hydrogen are enough to sustain a body. That and the occasional cup of coffee.

As the Daily Mail reports today, "there are an estimated 5,000 Breatharianists/light nutritionists worldwide, of whom Werner claims to know about 30". Thankfully the Mail is sceptical of their claims and ends the piece with the warning that  "if ever there was an experiment which should not be tried at home, this is it".

More scepticism about inedia here.

Thanks to Mr Bevis again for tipping me off to this (he reads the Mail for a living by the way - we pay him to read stuff - I don't want to cast any doubt on his character).

Just look it up

Someone is walking round the agency today wearing this tasteful item from the catalogue of YesNoMaybe:

At least he wasn't wearing this much more offensive garment.

Thanks for the spot Mr Bevis.

Fluffy Cupcake

  Cupcake 
  Originally uploaded by smallbird/knitchick2.

People have some funny hobbies. There are dozens of people on Flickr sharing their knitwear creations including this rather daft knitted cupcake.

And sometimes hobbies can get just a little bit fanatical and tip over into the land of the surreal, kinky and bizarre (thanks to the B3ta regular newsletter feature on the Human Zoo). I probably shouldn't laugh at someone else's kink but that is an extremely funny thing to be turned on by.

On a similar subject (!), I vaguely remember a lecture I received in psychology about a behaviourist treatment which was used to correct supposedly abnormal kinds of sexual deviancy.

In this experiment men were trained, in a more or less Pavlovian way, to disassociate their sexual desires away from women and onto matchsticks! Yep, matchsticks. So every time the saw a matchstick they were aroused but whenever they saw a woman they were non-plussed.

I'm not sure whether that really represents a return to normality but it was an interesting demonstration of the power of behaviourist thinking.

I've tried in vain over the last few minutes to find any reference to this experiment anywhere on the web (and you can imagine the incriminating search terms that have just been marked down against me by our IT department in the process) so maybe I just hallucinated the whole lecture.

Anyway, thanks Fluffy.

Gormley statues go to work

  Gormley statues go to work 
  Originally uploaded by T L J.

More abuse of the Gormley statues on Waterloo bridge. Here the RNLI have sprung one into service as a tin-rattler.

Nothing is more believable than the product itself

Another great skit from Hugh McLeod.

On the subject of good and bad product, I'm perhaps a little too fond of repeating the saying, most recently attributed to Robert Stephens the CEO of the distinctive U.S. retailer and service brand Geek Squad, that "advertising is a tax on an unremarkable product". Having a great product certainly makes the job of advertising easier if not exactly irrelevant. Browsing through the archives it seems that old Leo Burnett knew this to be true too ...

Picture Credit: Hugh "Gaping Void" McLeod

BBC iPlayer

Almost all of the BBC's output, representing approximately 400 hours of programming a week, will soon be available via the BBC iPlayer following the launch of a public beta on July 27th. There is a demo here.

The BBC Director General Mark Thompson said: "Forty years ago, in July 1967, BBC Television launched colour TV. This July we are going to launch the iPlayer and in our view, the iPlayer is at least as big a redefinition of what TV can be, what radio can be, what broadcasting can be, as what colour television was 40 years ago."

The platform is designed fo use by UK license fee payers but a commercial platform will be made available later for viewers around the world. They also plan to move it across onto cable, satellite, digital free-to-air and to syndicate content onto other online 'networks' like YouTube and to other media owners like the Daily Telegraph.

The iPlayer retains some digital rights management (DRM) features which stop you from keeping the content that you download. You can only download content within 7 days of airing and you then have only one month to view it. This is satisfy the rights owners. The stated wish of the BBC Future Media Editor, Ashley Highfield, is to allow the content to be DRM-free but it seems unrealistic to expect a DRM-free version given the number of rights owners that they would need to get on board.

The main worry is that the internet won't hold up to the demand ...

Endangered Sounds

I just listened to Simon Fanshawe's Endangered Sounds on BBC Radio 4. The programme reviews the trends in our society through our changing soundscape.  What a fantastic use of radio this was!

"The melodramatic clang of the old style police car bell, the tranquil tick of a grandfather clock; the warm purr of the old dialling tone - all formerly familiar, all under threat of extinction or already consigned to the sound file marked nostalgia. Simon Fanshawe examines the idea of a changing soundscape and asks whether we care about the passing of evocative sounds, and looks at which sounds will immortalise the 21st Century."

The programme first aired in February of this year but they repeated it last week and I've just caught via one of my Mac Dashboard widget RSS wotsits.

Fanshawe, a renowned media tart, plays a wonderful montage of sounds that are "endangered" as a function of changing technology including ...

• Electric typewriters
• Flash bulbs on cameras
• Dentists drill
• Steam engines
• Cash registers
• Milk floats
• Trimphones, dialphones
• Rusty lawn mowers
• Fax machines
• Matches
• Whistle of a kettle
• Vacuum tubes in department stores

He noted the increasing homogenisation of the sounds of last 40 years - e.g. each of the emergency service sirens / bells used to sound different but all now sound the same; corner shops used to sound very different from each other but now Sainsbury's sounds like Tesco etc.

He went on to discuss the sound of silence by going into an anechoic chamber (beautiful things - as pictured above - more here) and also pondered on the sounds that may disappear in future like the internal combustion engine.

Where's my license renewal reminder ...

The Common Cold

  Echinacea Bud 
  Originally uploaded by roddh.

When I was a cash-strapped Psychology student I repeatedly sold my body to science.  As a guinea pig for the Common Cold Centre at Cardiff University I helped test out a range of different cures for the common cold.

For a not insignificant amount of cash (remember I was really skint) I happily blew my very snotty nose into the box of tissues they provided whilst taking a course of medication which, for all I knew, was a placebo.

Once a week I would take in my bag full of tissues and then they would weigh it to work out if I was getting any better as a result of the medication. I've always loved the raw simplicity of that experiment.

Of course, with a grocery budget of only about £7 a week, and with a preference for cheap orangey-yellow foodstuffs (cheese, crisps, crackers, chips and the occasional banana), it was no surprise to anyone, me included, that I used to regularly get a cold. So I kept being allowed back to the common cold centre to have another go!

As a result, I like to think I've done more than my fair share to help find a remedy for the sniffles and I was encouraged to hear that a review of the literature has found that echinacea (pictured) may be an effective way of warding off the common cold.

Peekapoo

  Peekapoo 
  Originally uploaded by dontaskme.

I'm really missing my trips to South Korea.

Whilst it was always an arduous trip (especially when we travelled westward via the US) we always got some interesting briefs to work on and I met some great people out there.

This shot was one of the more bizarre photos I took on a rare occasion when I allowed myself a break.

Kitlers - a tricky decision

Amongst the critical business of the day today was the urgent decision over which "Kitler" looks the most like Hitler.

My money is on kitler number 1254 Spoony, pictured top right. However, Spoony faced tough competition from kitler 1198 who  goes by the name of Adolf.

Catsthatlooklikehitler.com is worth it just for the agonising over the cats that only get an honourable mention because they don't look quite enough like Hitler.