Tetherd Cow Ahead

You may have heard of the unusual psychological disorder Jerusalem Syndrome, in which visitors to the Holy City somehow get swallowed up by the delusion that they are Jesus Christ, and dress and behave like him.

The untimely death of Steve Irwin* this week prompted me to wonder if there might be other kinds of syndromes attached to appropriate locations. Let’s start with:

Brisbane Syndrome. Sufferer dresses in khaki shirt and skimpy shorts, attempts to climb into estuaries and wrestle crocodiles, and says “Crikey!” a lot.

Chicago Syndrome. Sufferer dresses in double-breasted suit and fedora, eats spaghetti at most meals, threatens people with a machine gun and cheats on taxes a lot.

Stockholm Syndrome. Oh wait, there’s already one of those.

Wellington Syndrome. Sufferer dresses in loose floppy clothes, grows a bushy beard and is overweight and unkempt. Carries around a viewfinder and mutters phrases such as “More orcs!” and “Come to me, my precious”. Can often be found in cinemas.

Deadwood Syndrome. Sufferer dresses in shabby Wild West attire and/or stained and unwashed long-johns, drinks copious quantities of rye whisky, and liberally peppers conversations with words such as “fuck”, “cocksucker” and “pussy”.

Nottingham Syndrome. Sufferer dresses in Lincoln green, wears a cocky hat with a feather, mugs tourists but gives the money to buskers and attempts to inveigle passers-by to “Joine my Merrye Bande”.

Westminster Syndrome. Sufferer dresses in twinset and pearls, casts eyes downward under a floppy fringe and protests often “I am not bulimic”. Is very thin.

I’m sure there are many more. Over to you.
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*As tragic as this was, at least the guy got to die quickly and doing something he loved. Oh that any of us should be so lucky. I feel I am obliged to point out that he was dealing with dangerous animals and so he must always have been aware of the risk. He who lives by the swordfish… (yeah, yeah, I know it was a stingray, but I could wait forever for someone to be killed by a swordfish).

Speaking of laughing…

A company based in Ireland going by the name of Steorn claims to have invented a method for generating free energy. Oh dear. The old Something-For-Nothing perpetual motion delusion comes up for another breath.

You can see a comprehensively information-free piece of hype from the company here in which various Steorn personnel demonstrate the benefits of regular visits to Blarney Castle. Here’s CEO Sean McCarthy explaining why existing energy sources are problematic:

“Most of the hydrocarbons in the world, oil gas and so on, happen to be in dangerous places, they happen to be in places that are politically and economically unstable…”

Er, duh Sean. They happen to be in those places? Like there’s some kind of coincidence at work there buddy?

He goes on to divulge the secret of Steorn’s incredible new accomplishment:

“The technology is the ability to construct certain magnetic fields, that when you travel around the magnetic fields starting and stopping at the same position, you’ve suffered a net gain of energy. Quite simply the analogy would be, you walk to the top of the hill and then you walk back down to the bottom of the hill, but in doing that you’ve gained energy.”

Wow, cool analogy. Like, I’m convinced. So, if I’m understanding it correctly (bear with me, I’m not really good with all this scientific stuff) putting it another way it’s like opening doors in a hallway, and then shutting them again, and in doing so you’ve gained energy! Or, maybe, like sticking a pipe-cleaner through one ear, pulling it right through your head and out the other ear, and in doing so you’ve gained energy!

If you’re falling behind with all this technical stuff, don’t worry – the Steorn movie includes a little piece of animation that clarifies the principles at work. In it, a little green whirlpool goes round and round between some magnets:

See? Could the science behind this astonishing discovery possibly be any more persuasive?

This from Richard Walshe, Steorn’s Marketing Manager:

“There’s an ecological advantage to it, absolutely. There’s a cost saving to it, but ultimately for me, the advantage is convenience. The advantage is never having to plug your mobile phone in.”

OK. So Steorn has invented a revolutionary way of creating entirely free energy thus instantly solving all the world’s industrial, travel, pollution and communications problems as well as knocking global warming on the head (not to mention rewriting the tenets of physics in the process) and Richard is most excited about the fact that he won’t have to remember to stick his phone on charge?

I guess it’s not that unusual for the marketing arm to completely miss the point. One does wonder, though, how Steorn, with the best product EVER (forget sliced bread, forget the mousetrap, forget the wheel), has managed end up with a nitwit like Richard as their strategist.

Then again, maybe the members of Steorn are crazy like foxes. The company has taken out an ad in The Economist challenging scientists to prove them wrong. You’ve gotta give them points for chutzpah. With some major scientific hoo-hah and a few serious-sounding names in the fray they could spin this hogwash out for, hey, maybe a couple of years and bring all kinds of investment money on board.

And they’re no strangers to that game.

My advice? Before you throw your hard-earned cash into Steorn’s Magical Magnetic Moolah Magnifier, take a trip to The Museum of Unworkable Devices and ponder the old saw ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’.

It holds just as true for the Laws of Physics and investment strategies as it does for interpersonal relationships.

This is the scene of carnage after a guard dog named Barney went berserk at a Somerset Teddy Bear exhibition. Barney was meant to be guarding the bears but seems to have completely lost it when he realized what the cost to his reputation might be. One of the bears that was chomped was worth £40,000 and once belonged to Elvis Presley.

The general manager of the Wookey Hole* Caves, where the bears were on show, said:

“About 100 bears were caught up in this frenzied attack, some were merely little chews, whereas some of them had some quite devastating injuries.”

All together now:

“I just wanna eat,
Your teddy bear…”

Full story of the Wookey Hole Massacre at the BBC News online.

Thanks Pil!
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*I couldn’t do better if I tried to make it up…

Today, a rather sad coda to the story of feuding bikers Rodney ‘Hooks’ Monks and Russell Merrick Oldham.

As you will recall, Oldham, a man with ‘a passion for astronomy and a history of violence’ shot Monks dead in a dispute involving a romantic liaison between Monks and his parole officer. Oldham, packing heat in his handbag*, fired three shots at Monks at close range, and escaped in a taxi (I’m not making any of this up).

Oldham has been at large ever since, until last night where he waded into the ocean and, in keeping with his history of violence, shot himself. I like to speculate that he was looking at the stars.

Even this last recounting of the story has elements of the bizarre. Witnesses to the incident record that they heard two shots, before they discovered the lifeless body of Oldham. This either means Oldham was a really lousy shot, or that he was one mean and determined bastard.

RIP Russell. I hope you and Hooks make it up in the Big Club in the Sky. Or in the Other Place.

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*It was in the news report. Handbag. Read it for yourself.

In Australia, our risible government has just announced the genesis of a personal identification card for the citizenry, something this conservative party has been trying to instigate for over two decades. It has never been popular, but since this government seems to believe it is invincible (and indeed, I am beginning to wonder if the Australian populace has had a sudden plunge in IQ, fulfilling this belief), it has just issued an edict that the card will be so, and that, apparently, is that.

I don’t want to dwell on the implications of infringements of personal freedoms here – I’m sure the smart readers of The Cow are already aware of such perils – but instead highlight some of the continuing idiocy that seems rife when it comes to modern technology.

Specifically this claim: The card would have the Highest Levels of Security and that it would be Completely Safe.

Now. Politicians and other people who think we are still living in the 1950s hear me: NOTHING IS ‘SAFE‘ IN THE DIGITAL WORLD. NOTHING!

This pig-headed, arrogant and stupid belief is based on the supposition that all the smartest people out there are:

a: Employed by friendly government or legitimate business interests, and/or

b: Honest

This is demonstrably not so, and as we become more and more reliant on the digital world for our data storage, the risk becomes proportionately greater. At the moment things hang together because the ad hoc system is diffuse and evolving and new, and the exploiters are by and large amateurish and not organised. But slowly that’s changing, and as the recent Citibank frauds have shown the execution can be novel and simple and devastating.

If you trust your valuable data to the online world unaware of the risk, you are a fool. An incidence of massive online fraud of some kind is inevitable and imminent.

Aside from intentional criminal manipulation for actual monetary gain, the other commodity that has value in the digital world is information. I have exactly zero faith that a government like ours, which has demonstrated time and time again its complete failure to grok the online world, would have even the remotest chance of protecting valuable personal data from someone who really wanted it. Or, that once such data is accumulated, it will not be used for purposes other than those for which it was collected.

I believe a ‘Smart Card’, for that is what they are calling it, is a very dumb idea.

This morning’s Sydney Morning Herald ran a front page story on a murder that appears to be the result of a dispute between two Sydney biker gangs. Police believe that Russell Merrick Oldham fired three shots at Rodney ‘Hooks’ Monk at close range, and then fled the scene.

The paragraph that caught my eye, though, came further down in the article where Russell Merrick Oldham is described:

“Oldham is the Bandidos’ former sergeant-at-arms (he lost the post when he went to jail for five years for the manslaughter of two men at Bankstown in 1998)… He has a passion for astronomy and a history of violence.”*

Ha! My coffee went through my nose and all over the crossword. I wish I’d been scanning police radio last night…

“All cars are advised to be on the lookout for Russell Merrick Oldham, wanted in connection with a fatal shooting in Central Sydney. When approached, suspect may attempt to engage in debate over the existence of zero-point radiation at black hole event-horizons and whether NASA should spend money on repairing the Hubble telescope’s failing gyroscopes. He is believed to be armed, violent and highly philosophical. Advise extreme caution.”

The history behind the nickname of Rodney ‘Hooks’ Monk is unfortunately not covered in the article.†

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*Not that I’m supposing that a biker, or anyone, shouldn’t have a variety of hobbies and interests. It’s just the juxtoposition with his other hobby…

† I wish it had’ve been spelt ‘Hookes’ and then we might have speculated that Rodney’s hobby was microbiology. That would give us the unparalleled opportunity to suppose that the disagreement between Rodney and Russell was over some point of scientific procedure. Oh, the joy!

I am a little disappointed to see that Russell Merrick Oldham doesn’t have a nickname.‡ If ever there was a bike gang member that deserves one, it has to be Russell. Maybe I’ll run a competition and we can send it to him in the slammer.

‡Unless he is named after Joseph Merrick, the ‘Elephant Man‘, and I really don’t want to think too deeply about that…