Maths, Monkeys, Species and Science.

Some time ago, I was thinking about little Change The World type things I could do, without too much energy or effort expenditure. I had heard about SETI@home and really liked the idea that my computer could be doing Important Things while I wasn't using it.

The only thing was, I wasn't especially interested in a Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

I tried to find similar things, but as I didn't know the name for this whole genre of programme, I was entirely unsuccessful. All I knew was that you downloaded a screensaver which, when active, performed calculations on your computer, and then sent them back to a base, maybe a research centre, who could use them. The idea being that thousands of computer around the world doing the calculations would get loads more done than just the computers at an individual centre.

So, being intrigued by the idea, and with the lack of any others, I ended up downloading SETI@home.

It was quite intriguing, and at first I frequently left my computer inactive deliberately, so I could see it at work. I knew the funky graphics were almost certainly for my benefit, rather than integral to the work it was doing, but I appreciated them anyway.

Look, my computer's doing science!

But I still couldn't get past the feeling that if my computer was going to be doing Important Science Things, it should really be doing Important Science Things that I cared about. Or was at least interested in.

I spoke to my brother, who informed me that the phenomenon is called distributed computing, and that he was involved with a protein folding project. He said he'd send me a link to a site which had a fairly comprehensive list of different distributed computing projects, so I could choose one from there.

So, when he sent it me, I spent some time browsing the distributed computing active projects information, trying to decide which was the best use of my computer's lazy time. How on earth do you choose between fighting AIDS, and predicting climage change, or between the search for multifactorial primes and the Prime Sierpinski Project?

In the end, I decided to go with Lifemapper.

Participants "compute, map and provide knowledge of" where Earth's species of plants and animals live currently, where they could potentially live, and where and how they could spread across different regions of the world.

I had really liked the sound of the project, and got fairly involved with it, in terms of googling the various animal or plant species which my machine was calculating, and creating a record of names and pictures of each species on a webpage.

I was, thus, gutted when I was informed that the LifeMapper project was ending in January 2005. I had really enjoyed participating in the thing, and would miss learning about new animals!

So, back to the DC Active Projects list.

I eventually decided on find-a-drug. I thought that my screensaver trying to cure cancer, AIDS and malaria had to be a good thing. I downloaded it from the Find-A-Drug site, and it is currently calculating something totally incomprehensible to me, to do with cancer.

Find-A-Drug, like LifeMapper and SETI@home, humours me by doing graphics, described as

Each ball corresponds to an atom and each stick to a chemical bond between two atoms and these are coloured in accordance with the elements. The common colours are: blue for nitrogen, red for oxygen, yellow for sulphur and cyan for carbon.

It also only does the calculations when my computer is idle, and so doesn't slow the machine down when I'm using it.

And I have also set my home page to the Monkey Shakespeare Simulator, the theory behind it being the famous quotation,

"If you have enough monkeys banging randomly on typewriters, they will eventually type the works of William Shakespeare."

Joining and Journeying.

Hello! And happy belated Christmas to anyone who does that stuff.

I have actually had a nice Christmas, mainly because it was ultra chilled. I read the Join Me book, which I loved. It was funny, and really quite compulsive. And it has led me to using the word lebstromonous on at least an hourly basis.

And I can see myself joining fairly soon. Just need to get a passport photo sorted.

My diary that will change my life has finally arrived from amazon. I ordered it ages ago but my card kept being refused (oops). I had one last year, when it was fabulous. This year it's maybe slightly less fab because they are everywhere, rather than something quite rare and unique. But it's still fab. Mmm.

The weather is entirely miserable. Grey, cold and wet.

My train journey back home yesterday was hellish. I was going from Telford to Sheffield, which should involve a change at Birmingham New Street and a total journey time of up to 2.5 hours.

It actually took me over four and a half hours, and 1.5 hours of that was trying to get from Wolverhampton to Brum, which should normally take between 15 and 17 minutes, according to National Rail Enquiries.

I think it's time to re-nationalise the railways, ladies and gentlemen.

Used Stamps *Still* Save Lives!

I have bought the domain used-stamps.co.uk to replace the rather clunky www.geocities.com/purplestar1uk/usedstamps.html. The former should be pointing to the latter, and after a few teething problems it seems to be working well now.

In an entry in June, in Used Stamps Save Lives, I explained the page as follows,

Used Stamps Save Lives!! You know when you collect piles of used stamps to send to charity but then never get round to it, cos finding info about which charities and organisations want them is just not straight forward enough?

Well now it is. I have created a webpage with information on charities and organisations worldwide which accept used stamps as a form of fundraising.

There was also an article on Indymedia.

In looking for a good organisation or charity to send my ever-growing pile of used stamps to, I couldn't find any kind of central source of information.

So, after much searching I have compiled a list and made it into a web page.

Saving used stamps and sending them on is one of the easiest ways to help different groups to raise money, and now it's even easier with one list of organisations in different countries who would benefit from them.

Also, if you want your charity or organisation to be added to the list you can do so from that page.

With the Christmas cards I have received, I have 2 envelopes full of stamps ready to be sent off. It's nice to have such an easy way of helping with fundraising, especially at a time of year when money and time are short.

So, welcome to the world, used-stamps.co.uk.

Popping My Head Round the Door

Today is horrible, and I suspect tomorrow will be more horrible. So apologies if this entry is odd.

hippie has somehow jumped from position 191 to position 81 in the Diarist.Net Top 250. No idea why, but it's quite cool.

hippie is also the 3rd msn search result of 879 for the 12 STIs of Christmas.

The whole of this Benefits and Work Newsletter is worth a read.

That's it for now.

Obsessive, Moi?

I see this poster on a bus I get sometimes. It has bewildered me for years.

Actually, it has irritated me for years, but I have found myself looking at it quite fondly lately. I don't know why.

It's the brackets, you see. Or parentheses, if you're that way inclined.

(including)

(Thorpe Hesley).

It is a poster for a all-day ticket you can buy, and it is telling you that the ticket extends as far as a place called Thorpe Hesley, which google tells me is in Rotherham, in South Yorkshire.

But why is it (including) (Thorpe Hesley) and not (including Thorpe Hesley)? Who knows?

But lately I have been quite taken by the symmetry of the brackets as they are.

Lynne Truss would be ashamed. Quite rightly.

I guess there's not enough to do on bus journeys than to consider and reconsider the same old posters with the same old grammatical errors. And if it is true that familiarity breeds contempt, then maybe in this case, familiarity has bred contempt in me for my previous contempt at the excess bracket situation.

Or something.

(including) (Thorpe Hesley) 

Funny Flaps and Willy Wonky.

Ok, it seems that huge British institutions creating flash animations about our rude bits is the vogue of the moment. Yesterday I brought you the NHS's 12 STIs of Christmas, and today, the esteemed British Broadcasting Corporation brings us Funny Flaps for the girls, and Willy Wonky for the boys.

And they are actually great! Thanks to faintpraise for telling me about them!

However, doing the total opposite and counteracting much of everyone else's efforts to help women and girls accept their bodies, is the Vagina Institute.

Prepare to shout...

The inner vaginal lips should not protrude past the outer lips, they should be symmetrical and even. The vagina should be small and tight with a pink hue or pink interior walls to it and lastly the female body should be shapely with beautiful facial features.

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And so it goes on. Mostly it seems that it is important to have a beautiful (according to their weird standards) vagina, in order to please our men.

Men are not interested in female genitalia, which present deformities, although most men will have intercourse with a woman who presents some degree of labial deformations. They will not seek a long-term relation ship with her because of her abnormal vagina.

I'm actually loathe to use those quotations. On the one hand, they are illustrating the awfulness of the Vagina Institute. On the other, I don't especially want to propagate their cruel and misogynist messages.

Interestingly, it seems a Mexican Salamander can be cute. Who knew?

And gun crime may be on the rise...

And a Partridge in a Pear Tree...

There's no avoiding the impending hell that is Christmas, and thoughts wander to the Christmas Carols which will soon be being played in town centres the country over, by the always surprisingly good Salvation Army brass bands.

One of the most fun of these - though only when being sung along to - is the one which causes people to joyously pop their head round doors, and interrupt their deep conversations to join in with Fiiiiiiiive go-ooold riiiiiiings. And don't pretend that isn't you.

The National Health Service has now contributed to Christmas jollity and wellbeing with The Twelve STIs of Christmas. STIs being, of course, what we used to call STDs. I'm not sure that Go-ono-reeeeeah will have the same appeal...

I Hate Listening to Gardeners' Question Time.

Starting with Billy's post, then meandering a little, I found Hello Kitty Robot, created to celebrate her 30th anniversary.

The toy is unfortunately unable to walk, but is expected to make up for this with its supposed communication abilities. With an impressive stock of 20,000 memorized conversation patterns to choose from, you can expect the robotic cat to blurt out random words and phrases at the most inappropriate times imaginable. And to aid this communication ability further, the device is able to gesture by moving its head and arms.

So, you know you want to spend 2 grand on a Hello Kitty Robot new home hippie present, yeah?

Dooey reports a great newspaper story about a couple arrested after they reported to police that their marijuana was stolen, and they needed it back because they were going to sell it... :-/ And I can't help but notice that Dooey herself seems to have had a birthday, as she's now 19 and not apologetic at all :)

PawSense, mad as it seems, is probably a must for cat owners whose cats ambush their computer keyboard. A whole series of features designed by a truly cat-centred person I feel!

Astrid brings us some nice photos of the Eid and Christmas lights in Sheffield city centre this year.

Baghdad Burning blog brought me back into a sharp, devastated focus. Glad once more I don't have a television, and didn't see the images myself - though inside my head they are there anyway. It needs to end. All of it.

Catching up in blogland anyway.

Oh My Goodness Gracious Me...

I'm back!!

I have been offline for only about 3 weeks but I have missed it terribly! I feel kinda lost now - no idea where to start as there is so much to catch up on. Courier is downloading a ridiculous number of emails, I'm listening again to last night's hilarity that was I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, and I've discovered that despite moving to the other end of town, my least favourite person is still my MP.

My new house is lovely and I am full of all those great determinations which come with a new start - I'm going to keep it really tidy, I'm going to cook home cooked meals, lead an organised life, all that stuff. We'll see ;)

Magazines, Members, Majorities, Marriage and Malarkey.

Firstly, I send you over to Billy to see the cover of Time Magazine with their view of the US election results.

Secondly, I look at my own political representative - my Member of Parliament who works so diligently to represent his constituents' views and concerns. Actually he doesn't. Getting a reply to a letter you send him can take months, getting him to have any opinion which isn't exactly the same as old Tone's is virtually impossible. And now I discover, thanks to theyworkforyou.com that he replies to 14% of messages sent via FaxYourMP.com within 14 days — 564th out of 589 MPs, and that he has attended 41% of votes in parliament — 623rd out of 658 MPs.

564th out of 589 for responding to correspondence? 623rd out of 658 for attending votes. He's a fuckin MP! His job is to attend votes. And, erm, vote in them.

Yet he has a majority of 12,544, and is in the 80th safest seat out of 652 MPs. How does that work?! Git.

What else? I've heard murmurings about some Republicans in one of the swing states posing as Democrats and phoning round undecided voters and saying "Oh you absolutely must vote for John Kerry because you can rely on him to allow late-term abortion and gay marriage" and suchlike. Bet that went down well :-/

Anyway back to Billy again because I can't resist this type of task.

There's been some reyt sheninigans goin off with this election malarkey. Some folk are claiming jiggery-pokery while others are pronouncing such phrases as 'jeepers creepers' and 'golly gosh' that such a rapscallion got in again. What a brouhaha!

America??

What have you done????

Beat Bullying

When I was at school I experienced some bullying. The first significant time was in Junior 3 (Year 5 in new money, age 9-10) when a girl in the year above pushed me and a friend around fairly regularly, and called us names. It never crossed our minds to tell anyone or do anything about it, but one day our class teacher announced to the class that this girl had been found to be bullying various people, and had she done this to any of us. My friend and I put our hands up and were made to stand up in class and say what she had done, how often, for how long. This was pretty embarrassing and fairly humiliating (which is, of course, a feature of bullying itself), but thankfully we never had any more trouble from her again.

At secondary school I was regularly bullied, particularly by two girls. I never really acknowledged that it was bullying, and tried to ignore it, to not dignify it with a response. Contrary to popular belief, this doesn't seem to stop it happening.

The bullying left me feeling vulnerable, humiliated, scared (of getting on the bus, of going to certain parts of the school, of encountering them at all, of others joining in) and also full of a self-hatred which left me even less able to protect or stand up for myself.

It wasn't horrifically violent, or severe in the ways you hear of some children experiencing it, but it was really, really horrible and unpleasant and didn't help my teenage development - already a complicated process - one bit.

Children can be really, really cruel and there are many other incidents coming into my mind as I write that I realise now could also be classed as bullying. Like my whole class completely ignoring myself and a friend, being very obstructive and mean to us, constantly criticising us. I'm not sure if this was bullying, or more just a very cruel response to an argument we had had. I don't want to downplay bullying by describing any and every cruel behaviour as that, but equally it is something which manifests in many behaviours and it is important to acknowledge that.

Children have to go to school every day of the week, most weeks of the year, and for way way way too many children, school is a place characterised by ridicule, violence, shame, self-hatred, isolation and misery, all due to bullying. To be put in that situation every day, is unbearable and leads to depression, low self-esteem, self-harming behaviours, truancy and suicide.

It is entirely and totally unacceptable that so many children are terrorised in this way, and I was so so glad to hear about The Million a Week Campaign, run by and for young people, and who state,

A million young people a week are affected by bullying. The message from the young people of beatbullying is:
enough is enough!

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They have a petition for people to read and sign here. I reckon you should go do it.

Scam Spam, Wind and Words.

Ach! It's not often an email can cause my heart to stop, but I just got one that did. It looked like an average paypal receipt, but when I read it, I was informed that I had made a payment of $278.99 to phonebuyer451@yahoo.com

Luckily, I knew enough about phishing to know not to click on any links in the email, or to reply to it. Instead, I went to the secure paypal site by typing in the address, and checked my account which reassured me that no such payment had been paid. A quick google search informs me that a few others have been hit with this same scam too.

If you ever get dodgy emails like this (often from paypal or ebay), don't click on the links in the message or reply to it if you are at all suspicious. Instead, go to the site involved either from your bookmarks or type in the address, and if there are indeed problems with your account (or whatever the email is telling you) you will find out there. Another way to check is to forward such emails to spoof@paypal.com or spoof@ebay.co.uk and they will reply and let you know whether it is a genuine message or not.

Ethical Adventures (newly discovered cool blog) led me to Embrace the Wind Revolution site, where you can sign up in support of wind energy, and have your name on a wind turbine :)

When catching up with Lectrice I came across an utterly fantastic entry, detailing the years in which words entered the British vocabulary. For a linguist-y type like me it's totally fascinating. What did people sing before tiddly-om-pom-pom came about in 1909? Who was wearing a Wonderbra in 1947? What was racism called before 1935?

Incidentally my namesake, Hippy, came into use in 1953.

Disability, Democrats, Dosh, Devastation and Daftness.

Gosh it's been a week since I updated. Sorry.

So, according to the Disability Discrimination Act, employers are obliged to make reasonable adjustments to enable disabled people to work. The things that often spring to mind are ramps and hand rails, hearing aid loop systems and such. But what would a reasonable adjustment for a fairly mad person be?

Pyjama Girl discusses this here on BBC Ouch, and I have often wondered myself what adjustments I might need, to be able to work. This has been more preoccupying than usual lately, what with the terrifying disability benefit cuts which have been speculated about lately. All I can conclude is that the adjustments I would certainly need to even contemplate work at the moment would never, ever, ever be ccnsidered reasonable by an employer.

The stuff about cutting incapacity benefits is frightening a lot of people. Some disability benefit claimants are unable to work because they are blocked at every stage by prejudiced and discriminatory employers. This group of people absolutely deserves help and support to find and maintain work. Other claimants are unable to work because they are chronically ill, in pain, and so on, and pressurising these people to work, threatening benefit cuts, will only succeed in making people more distressed and ill.

A TUC report has been released which counters some of the myths and misconceptions which have been flying around lately.

The benefit has fallen in value to less than a fifth of average earnings, the numbers of claimants has been falling consistently for the past decade and it is estimated that less than one in a hundred claims are fraudulent.

Apparently, a single person on incapacity benefit receives 15.2% of the national average wage. Are they really going to cut it further?

A separate report announced that Disabled people on benefits are £800 a month short of an acceptable quality of life. The report's author concluded that,

Even maximum benefit levels fall well short of meeting the true costs of disability; and it is equally clear that many disabled people in paid work cannot achieve the income required to meet their needs either

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An action plan, on getting sick and disabled people back to work, contains some intimidating and unmanagable prospects which I know during several periods of time in the last few years I would have been incapable of.

Failure to agree an action plan and discuss necessary alterations to it at subsequent interviews leads to repeated reductions in benefits until the claimant is left with just 10p a week to live on.

As for those who have been part of trying out the New Deal for Disabled People,

For the majority, it seems, a period of insecure, low wage work and then back to benefits was as close as they got to the prime minister's courageous new world of social mobility.

Do I even need to go on to talk about the social model of health? About how poverty causes and worsens diseases and disabilities? How many people I have seen relapse after someone somewhere decides they're capable of work and their money and support stops?

There is an allegation that Democrats in Tennessee have printed a poster with the text, “Voting for Bush Is Like Running In The Special Olympics: Even If You Win, You’re Still Retarded.” The Democrats say it is a Republican dirty trick. Whichever, if either, of those it is, it's horrible. Stop it.

This made me laugh.

This made me cry.

I leave you with George, God here.

Extreme Weather

Read this first...

With all the news on TV lately about the extreme weather conditions
affecting the East Coast of the US, the mud slides in the Middle East
and South America, along with the dire predictions made by such films
as The Day After Tomorrow etc, we shouldn't forget that England has
its share of devastating weather too. I've attached a photo
illustrating the damage caused to a friend's home from a storm that
passed through Southern England last night. It really makes you
cherish what you have, and reminds us not to take things for granted.

Click here for image.

More Nigerian Women Sentenced to Death by Stoning.

Two more Nigerian women are going to be stoned to death for adultery under Northern provinces' Sharia law. An international outcry led to the proposed stoning of Amina Lawal being overturned, so we must all speak out now to prevent these two women dying in such a horrific way.

You can send letters from here to the powers-that-be in Nigeria, to demand that these women's lives are saved.

Two Nigerian women have been tragically sentenced to death by stoning for having sex out of wedlock. Both sentences were imposed in the northern Islamic state of Bauchi, Nigeria.

Hajara Ibrahim, a twenty-nine year old woman was sentenced on October 5 for confessing having sex with a thirty-five year old man and becoming pregnant. The court decided that the woman will be given to a guardian until she delivers the baby after which her sentence of stoning to death will be carried out. The man whom Ibrahim confessed to having sex with was acquitted because the court found “no evidence to link him with the allegation.” On September 15, another Nigerian woman, Daso Adamu, was given the same sentence of stoning to death for having sex with a thirty-five year old man.

Sharia law has been introduced in twelve states in northern Nigeria. Last year, Amina Lawal was sentenced to death by stoning for having sex out of wedlock. Following an outcry from women around the world her case was then overturned in September 2003.

Please urge Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigerian Ambassador to the United States Ambassador George A. Obiozor, United States Ambassador to Nigeria Ambassador Joseph Campbell, and the Acting United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour to urge immediate action to prevent these atrocities from occurring. Click here to take action!

Women's voices prevented Amina Lawal's death in 2003, and women's voices can make a difference today. Help end archaic laws and brutal sentences - make your voice heard today.

Monkeys, Maidenhood and Mailshots

You know when you check your post in the morning, and you find a couple of AOL CDs that you will never use? Then you go out to the shops and are faced with multiple freebie CDs glued onto the front of the magazine you want to buy. And that's not even mentioning the one that's slipped into your shopping bag by the cashier.

You feel you should do something with them rather than just put them straight out with the rubbish, but the suggestions about coasters, and creating hanging mobiles just don't, well, don't work for you.

Well, there is an answer :)

NoMoreAOLCDs.com. Their aim is to collect 1 million of these nightmare free CDs and return them all to AOL, sending them a message about waste and junk mail.

It might sound a bit like one of those great ideas that never goes anywhere, but they have already collected 328,147. That includes 11,197 from the UK, in case any Brits were wary of what the postage rates would be to send these to the States. As it is, they only want the CDs - no packaging at all - so I can't imagine it would cost much to post even quite a few of them.

So, get sending your unwanted AOL / Netscape / Compuserve / BT Yahoo! CDs off to:
No More AOL CDs!
1601 Navellier St.
El Cerrito CA, 94530
U.S.A.

SarahJaneNewbury.com is a scary website. In fact I'd even go so far as to say that I'm actually quite scared of Sarah Jane Newbury herself.

Allegedly Britain's Most Famous Virgin, this site includes details of ex-boyfriends, several tributes to the late Queen Mother, scans of letters from various of her doctors confirming she is virgo intacta, a strange, strange collection of letters from the public, and some of the most visually painful backgrounds I have ever come across.

And that is a fairly conservative description of the site. You really need to see it to believe it. If you dare. And are wearing sunglasses. And can deal with letters saying things like the following:

God bless the Queen mother who like yourself is the same height as me and one of our mutual ancestors through Scottish royalty and the Lyons. In fact when we toured Scotland we felt something very strong and are so delighted you have helped us find our roots. I always felt she was an older version of myself and never knew why.

[Shudder]

You know the saying,
"If you have enough monkeys
banging randomly on typewriters,
they will eventually type the works
of William Shakespeare"?

Well, that theory is being tested on the Monkey Shakespeare Simulator site where the best result so far is a monkey having typed the first 20 characters of Coriolanus. Which is pretty damn impressive when you think about it.

If you go to the site when you come online, you can just leave the simulator running in the background (whether you are online or not) and they will all be typing randomly, leaving you in the hope that your computer screen will be host to the first monkey to get the next record of 21 letters.

It can get a bit obsessional, incidentally ;)