Death by Dibley

This weekend the TV channel G.O.L.D. (which apparently stands for Go On Laugh Daily...) is showing back-to-back episodes of The Vicar of Dibley. Sadly I won't be able to watch these as I'll be too busy sticking forks in my eyes.

The man with the never-ending surname

Yesterday, the video about our research into coincidences that Hannah liked so much made it on to the website of the Liverpool Daily Post. So up yours Hannah!

Speaking of coincidences, while looking for the link to the video on the Daily Post, I just took a look at the Daily Post's main page as that was where the video appeared yesterday. The video that appeared in its place today was about a launch event for something called CAUSE (Children's Aid Using Soccer Events) and featured former Liverpool and England footballer Steve McMananam. The coincidence? Somewhat bizarrely, when Rachel and I were enjoying a meal out on Monday this week, for Rachel's birthday, we recognised one of the large party at a nearby table as a famous footballer. Neither of us were able to remember his name at the time, but when we got home we did a bit of internet searching to discover it was none other than Steve McMananam.

Somewhat of a coincidence that Mr McManaman turns up twice in one week, once in person and once in an indirect link to this project via the Daily Post, don't you think?

Everyone's a critic

As you know, I absolutely love Facebook. Can't get enough of it. So just as I posted about our horse-riding lesson last night, I was delighted to receive an email via Facebook informing me that Hannah Mowl had made a comment on a video of me on Facebook!

If you remember, the University's PR agency suggested we set up a group on Facebook (called 'Do you believe in destiny or chance?' in case you're interested) to help recruit people for a survey on meaningful coincidences that one of my students was conducting. Well they also suggested that a short video on the Facebook page might for some reason attract people. So they did an interview with me a couple of weeks ago, and posted the short video on the site at the beginning of this week.

And now Hannah Mowl had seen fit to post a comment about the video on the Facebook group page. How exciting! I immediately clicked the link that took me to the page to find out what insightful comments Hannah had made. Imagine, then, my surprise as I scrolled down the page to discover Hannah's one word review. The solitary word she had chosen to post to convey her innermost thoughts about the short film about our research project? "fanny".

Thanks Hannah! And I don't even know who Hannah Mowl is! That's what I love about Facebook. Now I can get the insults of complete strangers dropped straight into by email inbox. Cool, eh? I suppose I could be grateful that this is a fairly tame insult (and a step up from insults like "tosser" or "wanker" that I'm used to...) but who knows what future comments might bring?

If you're really keen to watch the offending video then you need to do no more than click here. I was going to say you could also read Hannah's scathing review but it seems as though it's been removed, but you can always leave your own insults!

Why the long face?

The last time I sat on a horse, I cried. I was probably about 9 years old at the time. My sister, Sally, went to horse-riding lessons and so my mum took me and my brother, Anthony, along too. The first few times Anthony and I would just play around while we waited for Sally to have her lesson, but eventually my mum thought it might be a good idea if me and my brother had a lesson at the same time. I don't really remember if we had a choice in the matter, but before we knew it we wearing hats and boots and were lined up next to each other on our respective horses. Sally was on her quite respectable looking mottled grey steed whose name I don't remember, Anthony was on a smaller, hairier, horse I think called Snip, while I was rested upon an animal that went by the name of Jason.

Now Sally, of course, was a more than willing participant in the lesson (indeed she was the reason we were there in the first place) and so no doubt found the whole thing rather enjoyable. Perhaps even fun. But my brother and I were more reluctant riders and so found it less enjoyable. Traumatic even. Anthony probably had the tougher horse as Snip seemed to have trouble seeing through his shaggy mane that fell over his eyes and would often stop half way round the ring to graze on the grass over the fence. My horse, Jason, seemed to be more up for it but paid little attention to what I was doing with the reins or my heels and decided to do whatever he fancied doing in whatever direction he fancied doing it. Which I personally think is fair enough. But you try telling the horse-riding teacher that. (I use the word 'teacher' but I think fascist cow is nearer the mark.) From the beginning to the end of each lesson she would shout her instructions from the centre of the ring, telling me that I was doing it all wrong. Hence the tears. (Hey, I was a sensitive kid.)

These memories re-surfaced today as I agreed to join Rachel for a horse-riding lesson. Yes folks, a horse-riding lesson. I've been reading Susan Jeffers' book Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway, so I thought what the heck! (And the fascist cow/teacher of 30 years ago must be retired, or even dead, by now right?)

When we arrived, the smell brought it all back to me. I could almost feel the tears welling up in my eyes. I actually felt a little nervous. And the pair of crutches beside the door of the reception office didn't help my confidence too much either. Still, Ms Jeffers would have been proud of me, as I followed Rachel into the office and found a suitably sized pair of riding boots and hat.

"Rachel, you're on Rosie", the woman behind the desk informed us. "Matthew, you've got Ed". She pointed across the stable yard to a black horse with a white streak down his face. I liked the look of Ed. As we led our horses out to the ring, Ed seemed very laid back, almost not caring. Did he not realise the demons I was exorcising?

Our teacher today was Geena. She was neither a fascist nor a cow. In fact she was really nice. She told us both (me and Rachel that is, not me and Ed...) how good we were doing and she was "very impressed" (her actual words mind) with my rising trot!

The entire lesson passed without a single tear. In fact, I had a smile on my face the whole time.

Men who...

I was looking for information about Jon Ronson's book The Men Who Stare at Goats, and so started to type the title of the book into Google. I got as far as typing "Men who" and of course Google, being Google, suggested the various ways in which this phrase might end. The first surprise was that the phrase I was actually wanting to search for "Men who stare at goats" came up as the first suggestion (with around 298,000 hits)! But I was more intrigued with the other suggested endings to the phrase. Google's second suggestion was "Men who cheat" with 14.7 million hits. Further down the list were the suggstions "Men who can't love" (100 million hits) "Men who have walked on the moon" (4.7 million hits) and "Men who knit"(968,000 hits). What stuck out, though, with 950,000 hits was the suggested phrase "Men who look like Kenny Rogers"!

It would seem that basically having a white beard is enough to count as looking like Kenny.

Blind leading the blind

What do you find yourself thinking about on those occasions when you wake up at 3am and can't get back to sleep? Sometimes it's the strangest things. Freya is teething at the moment and so tends to wake in the night crying. After getting up to settle her, I found I couldn't get back to sleep as my mind starts to ponder some of life's questions. Tonight my mind decided to mull over this little engima...

Those of you who also have young children will more than likely be familiar with the BBC channel CBeebies. One of the more recent additions to the fine range of programmes on CBeebies is called Me too! set in the fictional city of Riverseafingal which is a kind of composite city made up of bits of cities from around the UK. Amongst the array of characters is Rudi who runs a fruit and veg stall on the market. Now the first time I saw Rudi, I thought "he's not a very good actor! He's not even looking at the woman he's supposed to be talking to...". I then I realised there was a good reason for that. He's blind. But what confused me is that at no point do they refer to him being blind. He goes about his business, selling fruit and veg and exploring the confusing hybrid town that is Riversea Fingal as if he can see perfectly well. This confuses me (it's even keeping me awake at night!) so surely it's going to confuse pre-schoolers.

I wish I could get back to sleep.

I feel dirty

One of my dissertation students is conducting an online survey on 'meaningful coincidences'. Please feel free to go and complete the survey. Thing is, our University's Public Relations agency had the rather ingenious idea of using social networking to get people to complete the survey. Yes, folks... that's Facebook to you and me! Aaagh! This means I have had to join a specially constructed Facebook group and invite all my "friends" to join too...

I just wanted to say sorry.

If you've got a young child then my guess is you'll hav esome kno

Slumdog a winner!

A good night last night for Danny Boyle and friends... Slumdog Millionaire won 8 of the 10 Oscars it was up for (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Music [Song], Best Music [Score], Best Film Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Cinematography, and Best Adapted Screenplay)!

Have you seen it yet?

The future of cubing?

Oh dear. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. They've just released a new Rubik's TouchCube. All the fun of the original Rubik's Cube but without any of the twisting and turning that actually made up much of the original fun! (See my earlier post that brings back memories of cubing as it should be...)

Still, with a price tage of $149.99, I think us 'purist' cubers are safe for a while.

15 Steps to Tyranny

This week I have watched a TV documentary called Five Steps to Tyranny three times. It is something we show to our first year psychology students as part of one of their seminars. As I take three separate seminar groups, I have sat through the film three times this week!

The film is a very useful introduction to how social psychologists explain how it only takes a few key ingredients to turn any one of us into someone who might inflict terrible harm to others. Step 1 is that from an early age we identify with various 'in-groups' of which we regard ourselves to be a member, and can contrast those with 'out-groups' of which we are not a member (i.e., 'us' and 'them'). Step 2 is that we readily obey orders, often without questioning them. More worryingly, perhaps, when there is an authority figure who asks us, or commands us, to do something that we might normally not want to do (Step 3: do 'them' harm) we will often follow the command especially if we feel that someone else will take responsibility. The eye-opening research conducted by Stanley Milgram in the 1960's revealed the extent to which this was the case. Around two thirds of people who participated in his studies of obedience (who thought they were taking part in research on the effects of punishment on learning) would go on to deliver electric shocks to a co-participant of 450 volts when told to do so by an experimenter. (The co-participant was actually a confederate of the experimenter who never received the shocks, but the real participant wasn't told this until after the experiment.) Experts in human behaviour had predicted beforehand that only a very small percentage would administer these shocks.

Step 4: 'stand up' or 'stand by' shows how many of us are far more likely to stand back and do nothing when we see somebody who might need our help. Combine this with step 1 and we are particularly reluctant to offer help to someone who we see as being in an 'out-group'. By the time we get to the final step, 'exterminate', we've reached the point there is every chance that members of a more powerful 'in-group' will seek to get completely rid of any 'out-groups'. It was the research of another psychologist, Philip Zimbardo, which demonstrated this so effectively. In his Stanford Prison Experiment he turned the basement of the Psychology Department at Stanford University into a prison. Male students were arbitrarily split into either 'prisoners' or 'guards' and asked to role-play these roles as part of the planned 14-day experiment. As it turned out, after just 6 days the guards had become sadistic and were treating the prisoners so badly the study had to be stopped.

It is through these 5 simple steps that, according to social psychologists, tyrannical regimes can emerge and be allowed to continue to exert their power.

Bummer.

The full documentary can be found here.

Better late than never

In October 1993, US stand-up Bill Hicks recorded a set for The Late Show with David Letterman. The set was never aired as the show's producers felt that Hicks' material was too controversial and might upset the TV network's sponsors. Bill Hicks died of pancreatic cancer (aged just 32) a few months later in February 1994. In the final months of his life, the fact that his stand-up routine had been cut from the show was of major concern to Hicks (and his fans).

Last month, the set was finally broadcast. Enjoy:

Hair cut

Today was my first day in work since getting my hair cut at the weekend. Not one person commented on it.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Hide and seek

This advert for the Ford Ka caught my attention in the first advert break tonight during Lost on Sky 1. There are supposed to be 80 Ka's hidden in the ad. Just love the idea and the song:



The clip above, from our friend YouTube isn't great quality. Clicking here will get you to the Ford Ka website for a much better quality version (click on the 'media' link), which you'll probably need if you want to be sad (like me) and make it full screen to see how many Ka's you can spot.

True love

True love is like ghosts,
which everybody talks about
and few have seen.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Happy Valentine's Day.

Unlucky for some

Today is Friday the 13th, the first of three this year. And it would seem that on Friday the 13th there really is an increased chance of being involved in an accident even though there is less traffic on the road. A study conducted in the early 1990's*, compared the number of traffic accident casualties admitted to hospital in the South West Thames region of England on Friday 13th's with the number of admissions on Friday 6th's during the same period. The researchers found that there were consistently more admissions on Friday 13th's than on Friday 6th's (a total of 65 in the period examined compared to 45, an increase of more than 50%). The difference was statistically significant.

The researchers did a similar comparison for the amount of traffic on the roads on these days (specifically certain sections of the M25 London orbital motorway). They found that there were actually a little over 1% fewer vehicles on the road on Friday 13th's compared to Friday 6th's.

If these data reflect a genuine difference between the two days, then maybe Friday the 13th really is an unlucky day! What I think it might reveal is that people's beliefs about Friday the 13th could become a rather neat example of a self-fulfilling prophecy. That is, a small percentage of people (around 1%) may be sufficiently superstitious about Friday the 13th being an unlucky day that they avoid driving (or at least motorway driving). Those drivers that still decide to get in their car may still be aware of the superstitions surrounding Friday the 13th and this may actually increase their fear and anxiety enough to affect their concentration while driving.

I stayed at home today.

*Scanlon, T. J., Luben, R. N., Scanlon, F. L., Singleton, N. (1993). Is Friday the 13th bad for your health? British Medical Journal, 307 (6919), 1584–1586.

Colour changing card trick

I have been meaning to link to this clip from YouTube for a while, and what with the recent references to Professor Wiseman and his blog, I thought it was now time...



Richard uploaded this short film to YouTube in April 2007. Since then clip has been viewed a staggering 2.9 million times (2,909,647 times at the time of writing to be precise)! In addition to it being a dramatic example of change blindness, the clip's remarkable success on YouTube also demonstrates how sometimes when you do something you can't always predict what will come from it. The last time Richard and I met, he told me that one consequence of him making this film and posting it on YouTube was that world-famous magic double-act Penn & Teller had seen it and it had inspired them to devise a whole new routine for their Las Vegas show!

Fluent

I would love to live
Like a river flows
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding.

John O'Donohue 1956-2008

That's my girl

They say that the criminal always returns to the scene of the crime. Well it's true. Today we found ourselves back in the bookshop from which I, ahem, "stole" a book a couple of years ago. (I put the word stole in inverted commas there trying, unsuccessfully, to make it sound less wrong!) It was a book about cosmic ordering (which I've still not got round to writing about!), and I did eventually take the book back to pay for it, admittedly some months after I had originally taken it.

Today's purchase (yes, purchase... I paid for it) was a book by Susan Jeffers called Embracing Uncertainty (Mobius, 2003), a book that I thought might help me s I consider a career break. Dr Jeffers seems to be one of the more successful self-help authors, with over 20 books under her belt. Her best known contribution to the literature is her book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, a phrase that would now appear to be a registered trademark (and might even be taken by some to be condoning shoplifting! Or is it only me that reads it that way?). But you'll be pleased to learn that I did indeed pay for this book, along with the book of Rupert the Bear stories Rachel had chosen for Freya, who was being very good in her pushchair ("booky... booky!"). So, unlike my first visit to this shop, I was able to walk out proudly clutching my book complete with receipt!

As we walked through the shopping mall, Rachel turned to me and asked "Did you give her that?".

"Give her what?" I asked back.

"That...". I looked down at Freya in her pushchair as she looked innocently back up at me gently chewing on the end of a plastic container of Winnie the Pooh blowing bubbles. A plastic container of Winnie the Pooh blowing bubbles that she hadn't had a moment ago.

The irony didn't pass us by... but we did go back and pay for them.

O well...

I just had a quick look and it would seem that the article by Ben Sherwood for O, The Oprah Magazine is now published and is available here.

I don't even get a mention. O well...