News

Just when you thought you had enough time to catch your plane, another terrorist nutjob has a go and ruins it for the rest of us.

You've probably heard about the Christmas Day underwear bomber, whose aborted revealed another dangerous weapon in the terrorist arsenal: homemade pants.

We complained about having to remove our shoes for security checks after another famous failed attack, but imagine how long the queues at security will be when you have to remove your boxers for inspection. Not to mention the additional questioning:

"Did you pack your bags yourself, sir?"
"Did anyone ask you to carry anything, sir?"
"Is that an improvised explosive device in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?"

But undergarment humour aside, this does seem to leave us in an unfortunate vicious cycle. Another failed bombing every few years and hastily designed restrictions are put in place. Leaving us in an even longer security queue, and mentally accusing the guy sat next to us of being a terrorist based on ever flimsier generalisations. Blissfully unaware that he thinks you're a potential bomber too. 

However, we might be spared from airing our dirty laundry in public due to the arrival of full body scanners. Through the magic of electromagnetic waves, these devices can take a picture through a person's clothes.

Upside: we won't need to take off any clothes
Downside: a complete stranger sees what your privates would look like painted blue.

The demonstration photo from the BBC is less than flattering:

I get the feeling this won't so much discourage a future toupee bomber, as it will encourage travellers to stick to their January diet.

Sadly, there is now little use arguing with growing airport restrictions, as most people are resigned to the belief that we're marginally safer with them in place. Particularly as flying is now the only means of getting between some parts of the world.

Which makes me wonder if there isn't a vast conspiracy. Everything has been building to this point, with full-body scanning technology putting self-esteem and body image at an all time low. Maybe the entire war on terror was engineered by a coalition formed by the makers of Alli, and spammers selling penis enlargement drugs.

If you'll excuse me, I'm off to the gym.

It's been a bad week for living, apparently, as scientists the world over conspired to ruin more stuff for us by finding out how they might give us cancer.

Today, horror of horrors, Iranian scientists discovered that drinking hot tea gives you oesophageal cancer. After helpfully explaining that oesophageal means "food tube" (although in this case "drink tube" might be more appropriate as a lowest common denominator term), the article goes on to describe how drinking tea at temperatures of 70 degrees or higher can damage the lining of the throat and cause an eight fold increase in cancer risk.

Initially this seemed like horrifying news, given that the entire British way of life revolves around tea (receivership of Whittard's aside). However, there was s light at the end of the tunnel. The research also showed that putting milk in your tea lowered the temperature to below 60C, a temperature at which the life-threatening consumables pipe injuries did not occur.

Finally! Lovers of milky tea are vindicated! For years, herbal and fruit tea fanboys have chided us for our so-called unhealthy lifestyle choice. Well, now I don't care if your tea is decaffienated or doesn't have any measurable calories...my drink of choice doesn't give you cancer!

The article also quoted some handy health advice for the concerned:

Dr Whiteman advised tea-drinkers to simply wait a few minutes for their brew to cool from "scalding" to "tolerable".

The question that springs immediately to mind is who actually enjoys drinking "scalding" hot tea? Wikipedia defines a scald as: a type of burn injury caused by hot liquids or gases. So in theory the only people really at risk here are black tea drinkers with a penchant for autoerotic masochism. And they deserve everything they get, quite frankly.

The health scare news doesn't end there. On Tuesday, it was revealed that eating red meat makes you more likely to die. Dang, tea and red meat are two of my favourite things. Way to try to ruin my week, science.

Of course, this wasn't particularly new information, just glancing at the related news items shows they bring out the old chestnut of red meat danger at least once a year:

But this year, it wasn't just cancer. Oh, no. It was much, much worse. The second paragraph of this article of meaty horrors read:

They found big meat eaters had a raised risk of death from all causes over a 10-year period.

All causes? That's terrifying. There're some pretty nasty causes of death out there, ones that hurt...a lot. If there'd be an equal chance of any of them happening to me, I'm not sure I feel comfortable eating meat any more. But then again, it is really tasty.

I'm going to be watching my back everywhere I go now, just in case my love of red meat has made me some kind of runaway truck magnet, or there's a sociopathic vegan on a mission from the Goddess to punish all us carnivores. Now that would make a good movie.

My view on the recent controversy surrounding England getting Street View (apparently we ignored the controversy when the US got it).

Citations what are needed:

• Some of the BBC coverage
• The lead roof thief story

From BBC News:

Alcohol on TV 'prompts drinking'

"People are more likely to turn to alcohol while watching TV if they see drinking being portrayed in films or adverts, a study suggests."

Now, forgive me for being naive here, but seeing something in an advert and wanting it? Doesn't that mean the advert has...you know...succeeded?

The research, which consisted of showing combinations of films and adverts to 80 students, was "led by a team from Radboud University in the Netherlands". Which implies that it takes more than one team to organise a booze up and a movie night, not only that, but a sufficient number of teams are required that a separate team has to be appointed to supervise them.

I'm suddently regretting my decision to leave academia. Free beer is much more fun than being able to afford it.

I came across a wonderful little news item about benefit fraud today on the BBC site. In a nutshell, a couple managed to con over £50,000 out of the welfare state through a complicated web of lies, subterfuge, and not understanding the meaning of the phrase "keep it on the down low". This came with the fantastic Daily Mail-esque middle-class bile inducing headline of "Benefit fraud pair's £100k yacht".

My favourite line in the article had to be:

His barrister, Francis Jones, said he was in the process of selling the yacht.

Which sounds a bit like a teenage shoplifter offering to return the Coldplay CD if the security staff didn't tell his mum. Of course, he technically only had to sell half of it to make back the money. Or perhaps do £50k worth of charitable work to clear his conscience. Although a more plausible reason for the sale comes later:

Judge Huw Davies QC agreed to postpone sentencing to allow probation officers time to prepare reports on their backgrounds. He granted them bail but told them releasing them was no indication of the sentence they would receive.

I'm guessing the bail amound was around, ooooh, £100,000.

Apparently, Pepsi have changed their logo - although the redesign hasn't filtered to their UK concern, seeing as pepsi.co.uk seems focused soley on Pepsi Max (suppose it goes to show that the British are more "extreme" than other nationalities...quite).

But how do you go from this:

to this:

The most sensible answer would be "bend the logo a little". But that's not the Pepsi way, no, they shelled out millions of dollars in fees to the Arnell Group, who combined pretense, pseudo-science, and an art A-level to produce an explanation for their cursory modification of a curve.

Their report, entitled "Breathtaking" (which I imagine is a reference to the hyperinflated invoice), proceeds through a study of the Pepsi brand over time, likening the new logo to the Golden Ratio, but with a twist (the twist being that it uses circles instead of squares). It then dives totally off the deep end, comparing the design to Earth's magnetic field, and implying that a 2D vector image can manipulate gravitational fields (or maybe that was some kind of psychology thing).

Just when you think they've reached the heights of pretention and bull, the Arnell bods manage to outdo themselves, designing the "Pepsi Universe", which seemed like the manner of hallucination you might experience after drinking 100 cans in a one hour sitting.

Download the pdf report [here]. 

I don't normally like to comment on politics - its frankly a little boring.You've probably guessed from the opening sentence that there is a large cliche'd 'but' coming, and you'd be totally right.

After a spate of scandals of the formula X said Y and Z wasn't happy about it, Jeremy Clarkson is back in the news for another apparent faux pas. This time, the target of his verbal barbs were not hauliers who allegedly murdered members of the oldest profession, but the PM.

From the BBC:

Speaking to journalists in Sydney, the presenter reportedly called the prime minister a "one-eyed Scottish idiot".

This has resulted in a torrent of complaints from....two Scottish MPs. According to Iain Gray, the Scottish Labour Leader:

"Most people here are proud that the prime minister is a Scot and believe him to be the right person to get the UK through this global economic crisis."

I did a little straw poll in the office, and none of us could care less about the nationality of our Prime Minister, one guy didn't even know he was Scottish. Personally, the only pride I feel is that we haven't yet outsourced the government of the nation to India - which would probably save us a few of those billions we're short of at the moment.

As for the second point..no, we don't, or at least I don't. Leaving the job of sorting out the biggest financial mess this century (I won't say "since records began" as they only go back about 20 years, apparently) to the guy who effectively led us into it in the first place is something like hiring a convicted arsonist to run the local fire station...in 1666.

But political views aside (and locked safely away until the next election), considering a joke about the Prime Minister to be an offence to an entire nation is absurd. Ignoring the implications on free speech (and avoiding Godwin's Law), such thinking would have put the entire cast of Spitting Image in hot water every single week...and they only got in trouble a coupla times over 10 years. Should we also consider jibes about George W's resemblance to a monkey to be a slight against the whole of Texas (and the simian nation)? Well...no, he's not in power any more, but still.

Its a little sad that its fashionable nowadays to make a scandal out of every silly thing a famous person says. Even when they're off air, apparently.

What's even sadder is that the general public seem totally immune. Nobody even raised an eyebrow when a striking refinery worker - a refinery worker on strike, not one that was looking particularly lovely that day - claimed that he couldn't work with "Eyeties". On the news. On the BBC. At 6pm. British Jobs for Xenophobic Fools!

Also of note is that only the Scottish seemed bothered by Clarkson's complaints, nobody from any charities for the blind came forward to criticise the comments...nor did any idiots for that matter. And I thought the Scots were a tough bunch, where's Begbie when you need him? 

I'm amazed by the recent surge in research into the effects of coffee on the human brain. First came stories such as this:

Caffeine can induce hallucinations

followed today by:

Drinking coffee reduces Alzheimer's risk: study

"Middle-aged people who consume modest amounts of coffee can significantly lower their risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, according to a new study by Finnish and Swedish researchers released on Thursday."

This may say a lot about the relative attitudes to chemical stimulants in New Zealand as compared to Scandinavians. The Kiwis taking an alarmist approach and Vikings (best synonym I could come up with there, and probably not even the right one) seeking to find a suitable use for what is one of the few legal mind-altering substances in the Western world.

However, taken together I see even more reason that I should cut down my coffee drinking habits. If I continue as I am doing, not only will I have horrifying hallucinations now, but I'm more likely to remember them when I'm an old man.

Cup of tea, anyone?

Disgruntled developers around the world were (at least partly) appeased today as Apple lifted the NDA on the iPhone API.

After opening the iPhone up to third-party developers, Apple has raised the ire of many a bedroom programmer by exercising what some might deem a draconian level of control over their App Store. Aside from complaints about (arguably unfairly) rejected applications, chief amongst developers' grievances is the highly restrictive NDA that effectively prevented anyone discussing the development process of their apps.

Any programmer who isn't gifted with a god-like understanding of all things technical will inevitably reach for community code samples and tutorials every now and then, so it is easy to see why this would pose a problem. Not only was developer collaboration curtailed (sacrilege in a community that abhors reinventing the wheel), but developers with rejected apps were not permitted to discuss the reasons they were given for the rejection, leaving others reluctant to even begin development for fear of their work being wasted. So frustrated were those using the API, that the site F*cking NDA was established to aggregate complaints from Twitter, along with numerous online petitions and blog entries.

In response to this, Apple placed a statement on the developer program site, announcing the removal of the gag:

Being in the midst of dabbling with the iPhone API, I was somewhat relieved to see this. Let the idea-sharing commence!

After last week's chaos, the mergers and US government handouts (let's just say they offered a chap some cod) prompted a jump in shares. Which was nice surprise.

BBC coverage of the event was, as usual, swift and to the point. With this page:

At first glance, it would seem the man is cheering the lift in the market. But look closer. Look at the expression on his expensively bespectacled face. Nothing, no joy, no happiness, not even a twinge of hunger. He's stretching. He couldn't care less.

Nice use of stock photos there, Beeb.