Confessions of a Dibberous Mind

via youtube.com Simon Singh says you should watch this and I whole-heartedly agree. Remember folks, celebrities are only good at the thing they do - the only celebrities you should take medical advice from are celebrity doctors (and only then after backing up that advice with research and second opinions). It's great that Jade Goody started a surge in the numbers of women getting smear test but please remember that the medical profession has been calling for more women to get test for decades!

via bigthink.com A brilliant summary of Mandelbrot's Fractals from the man himself. He has left a significant (and possibly self-repeating) hole in the world of science and mathematics. Benoit Mandelbrot (20 November 1924 – 14 October 2010)

http://c2.libsyn.com/media/18828/Joshua_Knobe_on_Experimental_Philosophy.mp3?nvb=20100828212026&nva=20100829213026&sid=4748f07a7c8b7d262735b42bd406fcf6&t=0793a3a33a643f1275fd2 Do you find philosophy too esoteric to be trusted? Well Joshua Knobe et al may just be administering the cure.

via ted.com In lieu of footage from this years UCL Lunch Hour Lectures series (including Steve Jones on Incest and folk dancing) which will appear here as soon as it is available. Here's Susan Blakemore on memes and "temes" from a couple of years ago.

Have you seen A.I.? The really sad but utterly beautiful movie by Steven Speilberg? Well, something disturbing has bumbled its way into my field of vision... See, there's this robotic teddy bear that acts as a sort of Jiminy Cricket to our android hero's Pinocchio. You can't help but feel for the little blighter and you come away wishing that you had one too. For those that haven't seen the movie here is a suitably traumatic scene: Now those crazy kids over at Fujitsu can make your wish come true: Just another reminder that in this life the biggest curse is that you might just get what you wish for.

via youtube.com Within the first 10 seconds of the clip above there is one of the finest site gags committed to celluloid. A comedy legend that will be sadly missed.

via bbc.co.uk Sad days indeed.

via current.com Saw this film yesterday and was amazed. It's a couple of years old but still resonates.

via bbc.co.uk So, I'm a bit confused... How the hell is this news? I'm sure the £500k earning wanker must be sobbing into his last packet of Asda 6p noodles

via youtube.com http://bababrinkman.bandcamp.com

via youtube.com http://bababrinkman.bandcamp.com

Off That (Single) by Baba Brinkman  

Strange to read a statement like "We're the lucky ones" about something as negative and life changing as Diabetes and my immediate reaction was one of surprise but... It's true isn't it? We truly are the lucky ones. We live in an age where information flows like wine. We are never alone with a condition anymore, there are support groups of faceless but caring people who have suffered just as much and maybe more than you and have survived. When I was first diagnosed I was scared - I pretty much stopped eating because I didn't know what I could or couldn't eat - but the internet came to my rescue. If you consider the plight of those that came before, the uneducated, the unmedicated, the vulnerable, then, despite the misery that Diabetes can cause, we are indeed the lucky ones.

A new iPod has been announced that can act as a watch as well as doing all the usual iPod stuff... You know... Playing music really poorly but doing it with enough superfluous bells and whistles to keep the herd nonchalantly grazing away. Apparently it is small enough to be docked into a strap so that you can wear it on your wrist. Next up will be a new app in which you guide a sinking Steve Jobs around a swamp whilst he desperately clutches at straws.  

I'm trying man, I'm trying really hard... I eat too much crap and it's depressing me. It's not that I don't like fruit - in fact I bloody love the stuff. A good strawberry has a kiss of flavour that no artificially created taste could ever hope to emulate and a mouthful of peach (careful now) can invoke in me feelings of a most cliched and pretentious nature. There's something easy about crap though isn't there? You know what you're going to get. The worst criminal in this battle for olfactory control is chocolate - what a bastard! Chocolate is the Amsterdam window whore of the food world. It loiters in your pysche promising a life changing experience and secretly (or otherwise) you long for its embrace - it's a meaningless embrace though and one for which you will pay dearly. At best it's a decadent memory best kept to one's self, at worst a guilt-ridden quick-fix, a swift knee-trembler in a dark and filthy alleyway. So why must fruit be h...

I recently came across the following speculation by Aldous Huxley. Written whilst on board a cruise ship in 1933 and taken from the travelogue "Beyond the Mexique Bay" "In 1980 the population of the Western world will probably be somewhat smaller than it is at present. It will also, which is more significant, be differently constituted. The birth-rate will have declined and the average age of death have risen. This means that there will be a considerable decrease in the numbers of children and young people, and a considerable increase in the numbers of the middle-aged and old. Little boys and girls will be relatively rare; but men and especially women (since women tend to live longer than men) of sixty-five years old and upwards will be correspondingly more plentiful - as plentiful as they are on a cruising liner in 1933" It amazes me that a passage can be so wrong and yet, simultaneously, so right; but then, Huxley has never ceased to amaze me since my teens. ...

via ted.com Another video from Ted.com. Again, I'll let David do the talking. Due to a new found obsession (more on that in a later post perhaps) I am currently going through a bit of a busy period so my blogging is a bit limited. If there is anything you want me to look into or give my opinion on please let me know. Later Dibs

via radiotimes.com Basically it boils down to this: TV needs to pull its socks up and join the 21st century with all its TV on demand and where's-my-bloody-jetpack resentment. If you concentrate you can smell something in the air, it could be a nascent variety show/celebrity culture backlash or it could just be the taint of bullshit wafting from the mouths of those not wishing to be thought of as the kind of person who would be "into that crap". The former would please me greatly, the latter would not even come close to surprising me. Let's not forget comedy though eh? If the recent slew is anything to go by there is real talent out there (Mongrels, Peep Show, Ideal, Psychoville) but you have to wade through the turd (TittyBangBang, The Klang Show) infested water to get to it.

via news.bbc.co.uk Ooh Chimpanzee that... Snail news you @*%$

via ted.com No need for me to add anything... let the man himself do the talking. Later Dibs

via rollingstone.com The top ten Beatles songs of all time? I'm not so sure. What do you think?

via youtube.com In case you missed it...

It looks like the public school coalition has been caught robbing the poor again in the name of "progressive austerity". When will people learn? Politicians simply will not meat unless it is lean and tender. See that? That's bloody satire that is. Hell, it's almost Swiftian ! Condition of the day: Megalomania

I really want to tell people that the world will not end in 2012 just because someone predicted it will but I'm worried that if it doesn't they'll claim I predicted it! Honestly people, if folks with a huge array of instruments can't even predict the weather for the next few months how could some bods from the past predict the end of the world? Word of the day: Augury

What an amazing world we live in... Whilst reading over somebody's shoulder on the bus ride to work I noticed that today's Metro made mention of Iron Maiden 's new album and literally 20 seconds later I was listening to it. Just a few short years ago I would have had to save up my pennies and make the journey to the local purveyors of recorded media in the hope that they still had an available copy; now I just pick up my mobile, search Spotify and the music flows, almost immediately, into my lug 'oles. That's proper progress that is. Laters Dibs

It's been a long time but the old place hasn't changed much at all... So, why come back to a blog that died more than 5 years ago? I dunno really, I just miss it I suppose. Several things have happened to me since I was last here: 1) I got my own website where this all continued for a bit before dying on it's arse 2) I sold the house and moved to Birmingham 2a) I got a job with Cadbury and on an unrelated note... 3) I got Type 2 Diabetes 4) I got engaged 5) I got a bad back 6) I went to my second Download Festival 7) I got married I weathered the storms and I'm still alive - pretty much all you can ask for really. The current plan is to try and journalise a bit more so expect this to be the last entry you'll ever read. In a nod to the old days: Word of the day: Recrudesce Laters Dibs