Shine on you Crazy Diamond

I’ve not felt the urge to write for a while now, but I’m starting to feel inspired again. What I want to share is how much I enjoyed watching recently “The Long Way Round”. By now most people will know of Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman’s motorbike trip around the world. When LWR was first broadcast I managed to catch a couple of episodes, however, I’m not a Sky subscriber so I could only watch if I was visiting a friend’s house and it was on. As they say, “What you don’t see, you don’t miss.” I forgot all about it. Then, some time later, I bought myself a new motorbike.

Yes, like a lot of men hitting their middle years I revisited an old passion of mine, convincing myself that my life would be so much better if I bought a motorbike. In fact, since my early twenties I’ve lusted over having a big bike with lots of torque - something mean looking hopefully. Ten years later, I scanned through a bike few magazines, read the reviews and decided on Honda’s CBF1000. The bikes an all rounder, the engine is as big as I hoped for, there loads of low-end torque, and it’s very easy to ride. This was a major selling point for me because it had been such a long time since I’d last ridden a bike.

Now, after a couple of months, which included a two-week holiday riding around France and Spain, I’ve managed to scrape most of the rust off my riding skills - To begin with it was nerve racking having to lean over as I went round bends. I’m getting better, but I’ve still got some way to go as I’m nowhere near getting my knee down on the corners! I suppose I’m more of a tourer than a racer.

Which brings me neatly back to my point. As I’m now back into biking, I thought it would be nice to travel up to Birmingham to see the NEC Motorbike Show; I’d never been before so it was a mini-adventure / nice day out. And lo, who was there - Charlie Boorman doing a book signing for his latest adventure. Having seen Charlie up close I decided it was about time to buy the DVD and watch their adventure; I was sure that now I had a bike of my own I’d really enjoy watching Ewan and Charlie travelling round the world (especially the falling off bits).

When the DVD turned up I sat all evening watching it. For me it was heaven! What could be better than i) a travel journal ii) by a couple of bikers, and iii) one of whom was a fellow Scot! As I live in England, it was especially enjoyable to see Ewan describing his adventure mixed in with some genuine Scottish patter: telling anyone who would listen how Scots invented the modern world and how this or that mountain range was almost as good as the ones in Scotland. Having toured Scotland several times myself I couldn’t help but agree.

TV sometimes can suck and suck bad. Yesterday was no exception, but I luckily came across “Don’t watch that, watch this“. It was on BBC2, I think.

The tele was on, as it sometimes is, because no-one had got the guts to switch it off and do something more entertaining - like going to bed. I was staring into the void, when Sir Cliff Richard came on - normally he’s spectacularly boring (to be fair he’s like a uncle who was cool when you were a kid but you now pray never comes round to visit), however someone decided to bleep out a number of the words as he was singing, e.g. “She’s a **** woman”. At first I thought someone was making a political point about free speech - a ‘hot political topic’ recently (an oxymoron, if ever there was one) . Slowly, as I continued to watch I learned the whole point of the programme was satirical. Several dull political speeches, as well as interviews had been reedited to make the speakers look like the pumped up egos they really are. What came as supremely twisted and cruel was bleeping Cliffs lyric, “Isn’t it funny how we don’t **** any more”. To get the joke you have to understand how insipid the lyric is normally while having a mind like a sewer. That’s me all over!

Update:
Here’s a site where you can download or stream the first series.

How do you take a group of your average educated everyday people and turn them into criminals and thieves? Easy! You brainwash them. And that’s exactly what Derren Brown did in last night’s programme, “The Heist”.

You’re asking yourself right now, “Derren who?”. He’s that guy who plays mind tricks on the public, playing on their suggestibility, and working off their instinctive language cues. Still no idea? Then I suggest you sneak-a-peek at his website. It’s a bit creepy!

Getting back to the programme. Derren starts with a group of individuals, with a specific background, inviting them to a seminar, as he states, “that teaches some of my techniques, but lots of bullshit too”. What the group doesn’t realise is that they are being manipulated to believe that stealing is okay. After a successful seminar, the ‘programmed’ group is given the task of visiting a nearby shop (or store) and steal some sweets (or candy). The owner knew what was going to happen, the shop was rigged full of hidden cameras. However, the staff didn’t have a clue.

One by one the members of the group enter the shop. Most are successful in their task, but as the exercise progresses it increasingly obvious to staff that something very strange is going on. One suggest they introduce a ban on people wearing suits in the shop. One guy gets caught red-handed and replies, “My wall isn’t 4-foot high” - a technique Derren taught him to confuse opponents. Funnily enough the member of staff starts talking about how high the shop’s door is and our man sneaks away. This was the first test.

The second was far more extreme. It was a repeat of Stanley Milgram’s Obedience experiment. I recommend you read the link, but in short the participants are asked to deliver electric shocks to ‘trial subject’ if they fail to answer one of a number of questions correctly. As the trial continues the voltage is increased, reaching in the end 450 votes - more than enough to kill someone. The important element is the third ‘offical’ person who instructs the tester to continue and to ignore the shouts of pain coming from the subject, who is in another room. As in the original experiment, half the people were prepared to deliver lethal shocks when instructed. It was amazing to watch people cracking under the pressure, the conflict created between ‘doing what you’re told’ versus ‘doing what you know is wrong’. Apparently 50% of people obey no matter what. Scarily, one tester suggested that the experiment ended too soon and that the equipment should be enhanced to included higher voltages. Afterwards all the testers had the purpose of the experiment explained to them, most of the were relieved.

Examining the result of this second test Derren selected his final 4 subjects. They received some more programming. Previously, group members had used NLP techniques to recreate emotional states by means of trigger. For example listening to a piece of music or rubbing your leg. In the lingo this is called ‘anchoring’. Originally, in the seminar some positive emotions were anchored to ‘Can you feel it’ by the Jackson 5 and some leg rubbing. However, with the final four Derren added some emotions of aggression to the mix, and used their suggestibility to make them believe they could use their chi to overpower an attacker. Now all the pieces were in place to carry out the heist.

Back in the seminar all the group were given a toy gun to play with, and significantly, to take home. For the final exercise Derren asked to meet them in London and asked that they bring their toy gun along with them. What each of the four didn’t know was that a small section of London had been cordoned off by the police, cameras mounted and security van and guard placed on standby. On four separate occasions viewers watched the programmed subject walk up the street. As they approached the van a car drove past playing the Jackson 5 track very loudly, seconds later a security guard carrying two large containers of money walked towards the back of the van.

As I watched the first robbery taking place at gunpoint I was relieved to see a hoard of camera crew and minders jumping out seconds afterwards. Running about an uncontrolled street in London with two large containers of cash and a toy gun is likely to get you killed, whether it was a TV experiment or not. In the end three of the four (including one woman) went through with the robbery. It was disappointing to watch the last person continue to walk along an empty street, but in hindsight, it was perhaps the most reassuring part of the whole thing. All four were taken to a quiet area and Derren reprogrammed them not to steal sweats from shops or carry out armed robberies with a gun (toy or real).

One of my long-time personal dreams has been for some years to travel into space, so when the programme ‘Space Cadets’ from the UK’s Channel4 started promoting their new show I was curious to learn more, especially as I’m a fan of sci-fi and sci-fact.

As it turns out, the 5-day mission is not to boldly go into space, as I hoped, quite the opposite. The programme makers, the same ones that brought us Big Brother, are aiming to fool the astro-nots that three of the small group will selected to become the first British space-tourists … ever. In reality, they’ll never leave Earth, nor travel to Russia for training; where they think they are right now.

‘Crazy’ was my first thought. ‘Just how are they going to explain away the lack of weightlessness?’

I put this question to M who really surprised me with his reply, “Oh, they’ll just use of those anti-gravity machines they use to train astronauts’.

‘Eh? That’s an airplane that’s falling towards Earth at the same rate of gravity. They can hardly do that, it only lasts a few minutes’, I replied. Apparently, I’m know way too much about science.

When the programme finally started I was astonished and amused to see how the show’s producers went about selecting the crew: one of the tests was to hold up a white card covered with coloured dots of various sizes. Each subject was told the dots contained images of famous people - it didn’t. The psychologists explained to us viewers that the most suggestible subjects would be able to see things that were plainly not there. And these subjects are the perfect types for the mission to no-where. It’s so pathetic it’s funny.

Today, I finally heard the part I’d been waiting for - where have they put gravity? Well, M had it down perfectly. Apparently there will be a anti-gravity machine on-board. Yup, that’s incredible!

Dragon’s Den has returned, as good as ever. It’s a TV series is the UK where every week a new bunch of inventors pitch their ‘fantastic’ new product to 5 venture capitalists in the hope of winning somewhere around £100K+ of investment in return for equity in their start-up company. More often than not the entrepreneurs crash and burn, but occasionally there’s one that jumps out and captures the interest of the VC experts. In the last programme, one guy had three separate bids from the experts, which was a relief as all the other pitches were rejected very quickly. It’s very entertaining to see the weird and wonderful things that real people think up.

But what can be more weird and wonderful than the latest idea to come out of the US: brothels for women?

In Nevada, where prostitution is legal Heidi Fleiss is hoping to set up a brothel charging women $250 for an hour of passion with some of the best men in the world. She even plans to fly high class prostitutes around the world for the paltry sum of $10,000 a night. As she explains, “women, these days, are very liberated”.

I hope she does well. But I suspect that like a lot of entrepreneurs that enter the dragon’s den, she gets eaten alive.

Here in the UK, BBC2 have just started showing ‘Making Slough Happy’^*. The idea behind the series is that a group of experts will carry out a social experiment to make the population of Slough happier folk. The premise being, if it works for Slough, it’ll work anywhere. The experiment includes stuff like participating in some simple activities and workshops, e.g. singing, speaking to strangers, and planting stuff, etc. You can find the complete list of steps to happiness here.

I’m very interested to see how the show develops - I’ve read loads of self-help books including, ‘The Art of Happiness‘ a book cataloguing some interviews with the Dalai Lama on the subject of Happiness.

Part of the experiment is to take a sample cross-section of the town and workshop them using the latest psychological techniques. However, it’s not all plain sailing: out of the small group of fifty people they’ve discovered someone with a serious phobia of singing, a woman who relatively recently tried to commit suicide and another lady who’d experienced 3 bereavements in quick succession. Another expert who was cheerfully trying to give away free flowers was stunned when the first person to accept one wanted it to put on her son’s grave. Being happy, as we’re finding out is a tricky business.

The Challenge:

Besides being the setting for the hit TV series ‘The Office’ - I have to admit I never liked the series, John Betjeman wrote in his poem, Slough:

“Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn’t fit for humans now,
There isn’t grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!”

^*Slough rhymes with “wow”, but those who’ve become acquainted with the town, myself included, sometimes prefer to use the disparaging version - ’slof’ to rhyme with shit-hole.

Click image for more.

Did anyone else see Richard Hammond blow up the House of Lords tonight? Wasn’t it just awesome!?

Richard, the little rascal, has a great job. He’s a British TV presenter who loves to, basically, blow things up - just for fun. The first crazy thing I saw him do was catapult cars - real cars - into a humongous target drawn in the base of a quarry. Richard and his Top Gear (a British car programme) pretended to be playing darts - with cars for darts. To spice it up at the end of their competition they placed a caravan over the bulls eye and tossed a few more cars at it. Cool, eh?

On this occasion Richard out did himself, I’d say. His new test was to discover what would really have happened if Guy Fawkes had managed to blow up the House of Lords, in 1605, using 36 barrels of gunpowder hidden in the basement. Just to be clear, they weren’t really going to blow up the current House of Lords. No, they found some dusty old blue-prints and built a whole new building in a secret military bomb testing facility somewhere in the north of England. The first thing I said was, “There going to build a brand new building just so they can blow it up again!”, “Wow!”.

The reality of the whole experiment started to dawn on him when, as a test run, they exploded a single barrel - producing an altogether bigger bang than expected. What would happen when they exploded 36 times that amount would be anyone’s guess! The experts ran some computer simulations - the results were so powerful that they were concerned that the experiment might be too dangerous. But not quite… preparations continued.

To give the test a greater sense of reality numerous plastic dummies were placed inside the building to simulate the king, King James I, his lords, bishops and a multitude of commoners - there in order to suck up to the king.

Once the explosives had been placed, the numerous cameras were positioned and primed, the five minute count down was started. Richard also pointed out with some drama that they had to take the weather conditions into account, to prevent the massive explosion from blowing out the windows in neighbouring houses for miles around.

Then BANG!

It was amazing watching the slow-motion cameras catch the sides and roof rippling off the building as they were in effect being ripped apart. Knowing no-one was in any danger you were able to see the beauty of the images, filmed from several different angles, inside and out.

Afterwards, the gravity of the test gripped Richard, our mischievous presenter. As the cameras searched through the rubble, we could see plastic body parts strewn across the ground. One particularly gruesome dismembered leg had a long rod of twisted iron running through it; the only part found of King James’ test dummy was the roof of his plastic skull.

Following Fawkes’ failed attempt to assassinate the King, he was tortured, hung until he was half dead, disemboweled, then finally dismembered. Four hundred years ago, this was the worst punishment meted out to traitors.

To celebrate King James ordered bonfires to be lit around the kingdom - a custom that we Brits still follow to this day.

Yesterday, orthopaedic specialist John Petri was interviewed on Channel4’s Richard and Judy. If you missed it, let me fill you in.

Firstly, the results: when Petri started his trial he had a waiting list of one year. Namely, patients once referred by their GP would have to suffer for around 12 months before the NHS could find a slot for them in the system. By the end of the trial, not only had Petri eliminated his waiting list - patients now only have to wait 2 weeks instead of 52, he’s lost a number of his own private patients. Clearly, there’s no advantage to going private.

When questioned by R&J he explained, the pleasure he receives from seeing patients’ tears and clear delight when told they can be seen in 2 weeks more than compensates for the money. He added that many of his colleagues are also frustrated by the way the current system works.

So how did he do it? By simply ‘prep’ing two operating theatres instead of one and walking between theatres (scrubbing up between jobs) Petri claims to be able to make a 90% improvement in efficiency.

No extra money required, no extra managers employed. Lots of happy patients.

For his efforts Surgeon John Petri has been nominated for a Medical Futures Innovation Award. Link

Congratulations must go to Andy Murray, a young Scot from Dunblane, who today won his first match against the British number one tennis player Tim Henman at the Swiss Indoor Open, in Basel.

Murray was described as urbane, Henman very middle English by the slightly envious BBC2 commentator. Lots of cliches were lobbed back and forth before the match even started, “Murray being the young pretender to the Henman throne”, and a volley more afterwards - “Henman still holds the crown, but Murray has his hands on it now”. I, like lots of other spectators, got so excited that it was easy to forget that this is only the first round of the competition - not the final.

When the match started Henman got off to his usual slow start, losing the first set 6-2. After three quarters of an hour he managed to settle his nerves, giving Murray more of a challenge. The two players broke each others serve back and forth - the commentators complained that both players were playing messy tennis: there was a lot of pride at stake. Towards the end of the second set Murray had the chance to clinch it for a 2 - 0 finish, but Henman wasn’t ready to give up yet, breaking Murray’s serve and going on to win the second set. Making it even at 1 - 1.

The final set was the real test of character for the Scot. Having walked the first, struggled towards the end of the second it was only by defeating an on-form Henman that you could take any pride in the victory. As both players raised their games, the score remained level until the match had to be decided by a tie-break. By this stage, it didn’t matter whether Murray won or lost: he’d just proven that he’s a match for Henman and that he has the mental composure recover from a bad run of play. In the end Murray did manage to pull off the victory.

For me, the best part of the match came from the commentators, “We’ve got another 10 years to watch this impressive young talent develop and grow”.