Tag: Big Brother

bookmark_border4 0 8

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Three numbers.

Two of them feature in Lost. I’ve not watched any of the new series. Yet.

4 is the smallest number of colours sufficient to colour all planar maps. It is also the smallest composite number.

0 is the additive identity. It also sparked philosophical debate amongst the Greeks a long time ago (the paradoxes of Zeno of Elea, apparently) but then they also found the time to wonder if 1 was a number so best pay them no attention.

8 is the largest cube in the Fibonacci sequence. 8 is the base of the octal number system, without which you wouldn’t be reading this (a byte is 8 bits ya know).

Neither 4, 0 or 8 are Prime numbers.

4, 0, and 8 are all natural numbers in the base ten system. That’s decimal to you and I.

The Book of Numbers is the fourth of the books of the Pentateuch, a record of the numbering of the people in the wilderness of Sinai, and of their numbering afterwards on the plain of Moab. Now known as plain old ‘Numbers’ (Of Issachar; Nethaneel the son of Zuar and all that jazz).

North American area code 408 is a state of California telephone area code which covers Los Gatos, Milpitas, Sunnyvale, Cupertino and San Jose.

408-1 = 407 = 43 + 03 + 73 (grasping? who’s grasping!)

And 4:08 am is the time that I awoke this morning. And the morning before that. AND the morning before that.

I’m presuming that something, somewhere, is turning itself on at this time… a new noise in the background that is enough to wake me from my slumber. I’ve yet to find out what though. Still, it does mean I learn a lot of nonsense about numbers.

Well, it was either that or watching the Big Brother housemates sleeping…

bookmark_borderNew, old, sleeping

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A couple of new blogs (links on the right in the ‘overflow’) to play with. The Big Brother one might be interesting, and Unreliable Witness already has shimmers of possibility.

The update to WordPress and the activation of … er.. one of the spam plugins seems to have done the job. Well worth it.

And in other startling news my headache has gone. It finally gave up around 6pm last night, although I still tried (and failed) to get to bed early. Sorry Zoe but thanks for the advice, although there is no way I could sleep with the window open.

I just can’t do it, it’s the same if there is too much light in the room, I need peace and quiet and darkness before my brain will finally accept the fact that I should be asleep. This holds true for the first few hours after I’ve fallen asleep where the smallest noises can be enough to waken me from my slumber. A few years ago a new fridge heralded a couple of nights of frustrated tossing and turning, the dull whirr and click from downstairs enough to keep me from gaining a comprehensive degree of unconsciousness.

But after the first couple of hours, well just you try and wake me! You could turn our bedroom into a parade ground, or allow an entire African savannah to stampede across the bed and you’d be lucky to get more than a murmur from me. In fact, and this is according to Louise as… well I couldn’t tell you about this because I’m asleep at the time… if you didn’t know me you may think that I’ve slipped away in the night. Between the lack of movement — I have an entire double bed to myself at the moment yet still find myself occupying the usual third, hanging off the edge like some large hairy mountain goat — and the s l o w n e s s of my breathing I can appear to be in a state of complete torpor.

This state remains until the radio switches on at blurry o’clock in the morning, bringing with it the slow painful progress to normal awaken-ness. This process takes until around 9am and includes breakfast, a train journey and two cups of coffee.

So, in an effort to collect some truly awful puns I’ll ask you: How do you sleep?

bookmark_borderShe sells…

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“And now for something completely different”.

Sex.

Well sexual imagery at least, we were sitting chatting a few weekends ago, and ended up putting on some music channel for some background noise as we chatted – younger generation today, must have noise!! – a plug for the channel came on screen and each snippet was of a young scantily clad lady, writhing and generally shaking her booty. Hormones rushed off to parts of my body and attention was diverted. Think Britney, Christina and that lot, all marketed, packaged and waiting for drooling blokes to ogle. Then Big Brother hits our screens and we are “treated” to acres of cleavage (both ends) and once again sex is the focus.

Sex most definitely DOES sell.

Underlying all of this, of course, is a certain seediness and the fact that it’s always the women who are portrayed in a very male orientated way. Sexism it seems is alive and well, even if it’s somewhat refined, honed and cleverly packaged these days. It’s now acceptable to use sex to sell anything and it’s starting to spread over into male products as well. What better way to get you to buy the new Nivea shower gel than have an advert featuring a buffed, tanned hunk to capture the attention of your lady and suggest that you too can be like him if she gets you to buy that shower gel or moisturiser.

So sex sells. Universal constant.

Now, getting away from the fact that my wife will pause mid-sentence for a quick drool when that Nivea advert comes on, and putting aside the notion that at a base level we are all sexual animals and one of the few (only?) species who take pleasure from sex, is this a good thing? It’s been going on for years of course, but it’s becoming more and more acceptable in general society and I wonder if it’s lowering our sensitivity and introducing more problems to our society?

I wonder if you can match the decline of the influence of the church against the increased use of sexual imagery and general acceptance that, actually, sex isn’t “evil” but can be quite fun!

So here’s a thought, if our society wasn’t so dominated by sexual imagery, would the levels of violence and educational standards be the same? It’s more acceptable to be a Page 3 model, so why bother working hard in school if you’re a pretty girl and have big boobs? And what of the sexual imagery of men? Is that leading to an increased inferiority complex and a resulting increase in the levels of violence (I’m guessing that some women feel “lesser” than the skinny models but don’t turn to violence when they are frustrated??). Am I generalising too much and missing the point completely???

Sex sells, but what is the price?

bookmark_borderWell Read

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Today is World Book Day.

In honour of this day, celebrating all that is good in the world of our paper based cousins (blogs and books, same family, different parents), I present to you my list of unread books and invite you to tell me which one I should read next. Should it be one of the ‘classics’? Or a more contemporary novel, should it be a novel at all? You decide (said in a Big Brother style).

Of further interest will be the World Book Day Online Festival which will have interviews with authors, chat sessions and much more. Should be worth a gander at some point.

So, my little bookworms, what should I read next, and what are you reading at the moment?

bookmark_borderTBD

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What we really owe Big Brother.

The scarce commodity in our society is not privacy but meaningful recognition. That is why people put weblogs on the internet, exposing themselves for peer review by a trusted community of co-bloggers.

So, finally, an explanation as to why we all do it (this thing called blog).

Except it’s not, is it.

I was going to write about this in some length, taking the article and offering my thoughts on each salient point, but I’m not going to do that. Instead I’ll just offer this.

Some of us are as intelligent as journalists, in fact several of us are more intelligent and when I say several, I mean several hundred thousand (natch). Some of us have the same concerns over privacy, some of us protect ourselves using silly names, some of us make up the story altogether (and get book deals!), and some of us had nowhere else to turn when we need someone to talk to… at.

That’s the thing with an outlet, sometimes it’s just that, a tap, a waterfall, always moving away from the source, never looking for, or wanting, the flow to change direction.

And for others it’s just a bit of fun, and sure, we use our own name and talk about friends and work and stuff but life’s too short and please don’t EVER use me in an argument concerning Herr Blunkett and ID cards.

Or am I wrong?

bookmark_borderFairy Tails

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Tonight I will mostly be watching Shrek 2.

Post match summary will be posted here… sorry can’t get football off my brain.. er.. Post cinema eviction summary will.. dammit.. Big Brother now…

Deep breath….. and relaxxxxx

I’ll tell you what I think later.

I might even tell you what I think about the movie…

UPDATE: It’s brilliant. Go see it. You’ll laugh lots.