Keith Bradnam Keith Bradnam

The Littlest Birds Sing the Prettiest Songs — or do they?

According to this video testimony from musical performers The Be Good Tanyas, ‘the littlest birds sing the prettiest songs’. If we take their claim at face value, one might presuppose that ‘size of bird’ and ‘prettiness of song’ might be connected in some form of linear relationship where smaller birds sing prettier songs:

Littlest1However, as they fail to clarify the nature of the relationship between ‘size of bird’ and ‘prettiness of song’ one could postulate that the following examples also satisfy their description:

Littlest2


Littlest3


Thus we feel that — in the absence of supporting data — their observation that smaller sized avians produce more pleasing vocalizations, should not be regarded as a relationship which necessarily suggests that larger-sized birds sing notably less pretty songs.

Regardless of whether there is a relationship between these two metrics, we might still expect to find supporting evidence for the notion that diminutive avians produce trillings, warblings, and other chirruping-like sounds that are of a fetching nature.

One might therefore assume that the songs of Hummingbirds should be among the prettiest of all bird songs. However, according to the Hummingbird-themed site World of Hummingbirds:


“the sounds of hummingbirds are not exactly considered music…it would be more appropriate to call them chirps then it would be to call it music.”

This testimony, along with the audio evidence provided on their site, suggests that the claims of The Be Good Tanyas should not be taken at face value. Further undermining their claims is this list of the top ten song birds from ‘Bird On! News’. While some of the entries on this list also feature in whatbird.com’s list of small-sized birds (those birds 5–9 inches in length), the top 10 list also includes the mute swan which can grow up to 1.5 meters in length, a size described by Wikipedia as ‘impressive’.

Without published data in a peer-reviewed journal we find the evidence to support any claim that ‘the littlest birds sing the prettiest songs’ to be lacking and we humbly request that The Be Good Tanyas ‘show us the data’.

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Please do not read this

Reposted from my older blog that is about to disappear.

This is a test, a little psychological play thing. I’m just curious as to how many people will proceed with reading this even though I have (kindly) asked that you refrain from doing so. Most people will come across a link to this blog post from Twitter or App.net and therefore will see nothing more than the following text: ‘Please don’t read this’ along with a shortened web link.

And yet…and yet you are here, reading these very words which I asked you not to read. You disregarded my instructions and if you are still reading this then you have thrown caution to the wind and are willing to risk the possible destruction of your computer in order to see what I had to say (have you people never heard of clickjacking?). From a psychological viewpoint, you might be interested to know that you are now a victim of my (successful) attempt at using the Pique Technique.

Of course it is entirely possible that the brave souls who have clicked on the link to arrive here actually know me (at least in a virtual way) and therefore trust that I would not do something so malicious as to cause them (or their computer/internet device) any harm. However, who is to say that I am not a sleeper agent that has been recently ‘activated’ to carry out a mission of inflicting chaos and mayhem on an unsuspecting world?

Okay folks, here is your final test. If you scroll down to the bottom of this page you will find three words waiting for you. However, I strongly suggest with all of the urgency that I can muster, that you DO NOT READ THOSE THREE WORDS! I can take no liability for what damage, psychological or otherwise, may arise from the reading of those three words. These three words have been carefully chosen for their potential to cause grave offense and so I will end this post by once again urging you that you should not, under any circumstances, scroll down to the bottom of this post to read those three words.











































Moist muffin flaps.

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Reposts Keith Bradnam Reposts Keith Bradnam

Why I deleted my Facebook account

Reposted from my older blog that is about to disappear. Originally posted May, 2010.

Tumblr mj6cn7rIMd1s7a35oo1 1280
 
Once upon a time I was a happy facebook user. But that was before the dark times, before the Empire. The first wave of facebook annoyance came with the arrival of applications. Leaving aside the annoying applications where a friend would invite you (and everyone that they know) to be a zombie or a pirate, the arrival of applications seemed to trigger a big switch in how people fundamentally used facebook.  In the ‘post-application’ era, people started writing less about themselves and instead resorted to revealing their personality via applications such as ‘What type of fruit are you?’ or quizzes such as ‘Keith named 4 out of the 26 most popular sexually-transmitted diseases, how many can you name?’.
 
This was a change that I sad to see. In the ‘good old days’, people spent more time adding information to their profile. I could actually learn something about someone’s interests. Now however, people seem to rarely write anything, and the ‘info’ section on people’s profile pages is often a barren expanse of nothingness. There is still plenty of ‘face’ in facebook, but much less ‘book’. Even status updates are often auto-generated via plug-ins from other applications.

The next big set of problems with facebook came with the succession of poorly implemented design & policy changes. I’m not opposed to change but I think that even facebook will admit to having rushed through changes without properly explaining in advance what was going to happen. This seems to a recurring feature and one might depict the facebook development cycle like so:

If you are a recent convert to facebook then you may have forgotten about their first big PR issue over their Beacon technology which tracked your visits to sites outside of facebook. Like many of facebook’s missteps, they had to apologize and backtrack a little bit. It didn’t take long before Zuckerberg et al. created more controversy by silently changing the terms of service to allow them to keep any content you had created (even if you deleted your account). The backlash was swift, as was facebook’s move to revert to the prior terms of service.
 
Hopefully, many of you are aware of some of the latest problems that have arisen from facebook’s changes which are an attempt to let them dominate the entire galaxy be the central hub of all social interaction on the web. On Wednesday April 21st 2010, Mark Zuckerberg introduced facebook’s new Open Graph Protocol. This software makes the outcry over the Beacon technology look like a storm in a teacup. If I visit a site such as Fandango or the New York Times and I haven’t logged out of facebook, then facebook can track my browsing of those sites. In a way, this is not any different to what other web sites do, but the big issue here is transparency. How exactly are facebook and their partner sites using this huge amount of information? Do people realize the consequences of clicking the new facebook ‘like’ buttons that are beginning to adorn web pages everywhere?
 
Of course, if you understand the privacy policy and privacy settings of facebook then maybe this isn’t an issue. Just change your settings to whatever they were before facebook quietly changed them behind your back. The problem is that no-one really understands facebook’s privacy policy anymore. It has grown in size by nearly 600% since 2005 and now contains more words than the US constitution. That factoid is part of an excellent New York Times article which also points out that there are now 170 different options within the privacy settings. If you want to see how facebook has slowly eroded your privacy, then this page has a fantastic graphic on the evolution of privacy on facebook.
What annoyed me more than the new Open Graph Protocol is the change to my profile page. I had written a lot of text in all of the categories so that my friends could get some insights into my personality. The recent changes to facebook now require that this information must be linked to something called Community Pages. It is not enough to say that you work/study at Institute X or like Film Y. Instead, you must now link to a page for Institute X so that everyone can see that you are a member. This may well be a good idea, but I would have preferred a way of opting out of this.
 
There are so many changes that facebook have introduced in the last few weeks, it is a little overwhelming, but this article does a great job at going through them  all and explaining the potential risks. All of these changes had made me consider whether I wanted to stay a part of facebook, but in the end it was reading this article on 10 reasons to delete your facebook account, that persuaded me to commit facebook suicide.
 
I am now cut off from facebook, and am therefore no longer one of its 400 million users. Maybe I will return, but I don’t think so. I feel that I have much better social interactions with people via my twitter account than I ever did with facebook. Indeed, there are many twitterers who I have never met in the real world, but whom I now consider to be more of a friend than many of the ‘friends’ that I had on facebook. Farewell facebook, it was fun while it lasted.
 
 
Update (added 13th May, 2010)

Of course I should have also pointed out that facebook doesn’t make it easy to leave. It’s a bit like trying to leave the clutches of a cult. Here’s a good piece about  what happens when you (try to) deactivate your facebook account.

 

 

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10 rival social networking sites that may spell the end of Facebook

  1. Farcebook - people recount hilarious episodes of their crazy lives
  2. Acebook - Veterans of aerial combat recount their tales of dogfights in the sky
  3. Faceliftbook - exactly the same content as facebook, but with a new, younger look
  4. Twofacebook - sign up to praise your friends (and then bitch about them when they log off)
  5. Plaicebook - where people write their own recipes that feature everyone’s favorite fish
  6. Facecook - only for people who resemble TV chefs
  7. Macebook - people hook up to discuss their experiences with tear gas
  8. Faceoffbook - each week two site members pair up to battle to death in unarmed combat
  9. Visage de livre - Facebook for French people
  10. Face2facebook - people actually leave the computer behind and meet people in real life (not sure if this one will ever catch on)

Reposted from my older blog that is about to disappear.

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Keith Bradnam Keith Bradnam

Alternative Valentines Day Poems

Had some fun yesterday coming up with some alternative Valentines Day poems which I posted on Twitter using a hashtag #altValentines. I have gathered those tweets together here. I think this is a good reflection of how my mind works:

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Keith Bradnam Keith Bradnam

My Postprandial Thanksgiving Quiz - 2012

For the last few years I’ve tried to entertain our Thanksgiving guests with a quiz of my own devising. I wait until the guests have eaten their fill, such that their near-comatose state forbids them an easy escape. Here is this year’s quiz. Ten questions, three points per question. Answers are at the bottom.

The Quiz

1) Like everything that is good in the world, Thanksgiving in America has it’s roots in English traditions. As part of the reformation, Church holidays in England were meant to be replaced with ‘Days of Fasting’ or ‘Days of Thanksgiving’ to mark events that Puritans regarded as having special providence. In January 1606, the English Parliament passed the Observance of 5th November Act 1605, commonly known as the “Thanksgiving Act”. What event did this act recognize?

2) In the US, Thanksgiving falls on the 4th Thursday of November. When does Thanksgiving occur in Canada?

3) The West Indian island of Grenada also has a Thanksgiving Day, but it has nothing to do with the American Thanksgiving. What does their Thanksgiving Day celebrate? Choose one of the following:

  • a) As the worlds second largest producer of nutmeg, they give thanks for a successful nutmeg growing season
  • b) They give thanks to their 1974 independence from their former colonial overlords, the United Kingdom
  • c) They give thanks for being invaded in 1983 by the United States military

4) Thanksgiving parades are a famous part of the Thanksgiving Day tradition, with Macy’s parade in New York City among the most famous. Can you match the following Thanksgiving Day parades with the cities where they occur?

  • a) McDonald’s Thanksgiving Parade
  • b) 6abc Dunkin Donuts Thanksgiving Parade
  • c) America’s Hometown Thanksgiving Parade

5) Thanksgiving Thursday leads to Black Friday (not to mention Cyber Monday). But there is another commerce-related day that occurs on Friday, a day that started in Mexico 1992, but is now an international day of protest recognized by many. What is it?

6) The world championships of which ‘sport’ are televised each year on Thanksgiving Day on the Science Channel?

7) Turkeys are perhaps the most famous food associated with Thanksgiving, but Turduckens (a chicken stuffed inside a duck inside a turkey) are growing in popularity. Turduckens however are not the only way you can stuff one animal into another to make it into a tasty dinnertime treat. The dish known as ‘Pandora’s cushion’ is a goose stuffed with three other avian species. What are they?

8) Another way by which Turkeys are associated with Thanksgiving is the National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation, where the President pardons a live turkey that is presented to him. According to the Eisenhower presidential library, President Eisenhower is said to have done what to the turkeys that he pardoned?

9) Turkey facts. True or false?

  • a) It is forbidden to sell a turkey (the bird) in Turkey (the country)
  • b) Turkeys can die of heart attacks brought on by stress
  • c) in 1982, a home-reared turkey in Alexandria, Louisiana was caught eating the family’s pet chihuahua dog

10) The Daily Press, a newspaper serving Hampton, Virginia has compiled a list of ‘Top 10 Thanksgiving Foods’. We ate six of these top ten items today (Turkey, Stuffing, Mashed potatoes, Cranberry Sauce, Green bean casserole, and pumpkin pie ). What did we miss? Pick three of the remaining food items.



Scroll down to see the answers.















The Answers

1) 3 points for ‘Guy Fawkes day’ or ‘Gunpowder Plot’, 2 points for ‘Bonfire Night’ and 1 point for anything related to fireworks

2) 2nd Monday in October (1 point for each correct part of the answer)

3) All of the answers are factually correct, but the one which caused them to create a Thanksgiving day is the invasion of their country by the United States. (3 points for correct answer)

4) 1 point for each correct answer + McDonald’s Thanksgiving Parade (Chicago) + 6abc Dunkin Donuts Thanksgiving Parade (Philadelphia) + America’s Hometown Thanksgiving Parade (Plymouth, MA)

5) Buy Nothing Day (3 points), any recognition of boycotting commerce (1 point)

6) Pumpkin Chunking/Punkin Chunking (3 points), pumpkin throwing/tossing/catapults etc (2 points), anything pumpkin-related (1 point)

7) Goose -> Chicken -> Pheasant -> Quail (1 point for each of the 3 birds)

8) Ate them (3 points), cooked them (1 point)

9) 1 point for each: a) False b) True c) False

10) 1 point for each of the remaining items from the top 10 list (3 points max)

1. 2. 3. 4. Ham 5. 6. 7. Bread rolls 8. Sweet potatoes 9. 10. Turducken

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