Laws of Physics, Schmaws of Schmysics

Tonight Matthew, we're going to talk about trees, fences (specifically iron ones) and walls. How come when a tree grows near a wall/fence/combination of the two, it can deform the structure? The answer must lie in the laws of physics; otherwise ghosts exist, and Mercury Retrograde is a thing to be scared of. 

The last time I was sent out of class was in 1984. It was physics with Mr Taylor, and Mr Taylor's teaching method was thus:

"Read pages 67-72 of your text book, and write out what you think it all means. I'll be watching the girls play hockey out of the window."

Okay, he didn't actually say the last bit, but it's what happened every lesson. There were 25-30 budding scientists in that "lab" my friends, and who knows how many of them would've turned out the finished genius if the "lab" hadn't looked out onto the girl's hockey pitch (or Operation Yewtree had been about).

Anyway, one bit in the text book said that if you lean against a wall, then according to Newton's Third Law (which states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction), the wall is pushing you back with equal force. This, of course, is bollocks. 

Yes, blah blah blah Newton, indeed blah blah blah Third Law, but the wall is just a structure. It's there, it was built, it's been left, it doesn't fight back.

I argued this with Mr Taylor, but the girls must have been playing a particularly vigorous game of hockey that afternoon, so he was in no mood to argue and sent me out. If he'd at any point said that the laws of physics are unarguable I might've shut up, but he just pointed at the bit in the book saying the wall was pushing me back as hard as I was pushing it. Which, of course, was bollocks.

On my walks around the streets of cinema's own London town, there are a few examples of trees that have, over their hundred or so years of growth, deformed walls and fences that once contained them. When I see this I think: "wow that's weird, a plant made of living and dead cells is able to knock a wall down." But I also think: "that seems about right, a plant made of living and dead cells is able to knock a wall down." I don't have a problem with it happening, but I'm not sure if Newton's Third Law can explain why it happens.

First, some other things that happen with trees and walls (which are more explainable):

Sometimes trees fall onto walls. I've seen the aftermath of this, and it's pretty one-sided. A mature London Plane tree is too heavy for just about any wall to resist. Where's the equal and opposite reaction here? I'm guessing the answer is that if the wall was of equal size/weight/strength to the tree, it would be able to push back said tree. The speed of the tree falling must also multiply its weight, I assume. But this still assumes the wall wants to push back the tree. 

Back to a tree slowly growing towards a wall...

The tree is made up of living cells in its middle, dead cells on the outside, and can grow roughly an inch wider every year. When the tree reaches the wall, why doesn't nature 'tell' it the wall is too hard to grow through? Every year another inch of live cells have been produced inside the tree, but these cells are not tougher than a brick wall. Neither are the dead cells on the outside. It's possible to remove bark from the outside of trees with your hands, for instance. Yet together, this minute movement of living and dead cells is somehow able to completely destroy a wall over time.

My one attempt at an explanation: imagine a tube of toothpaste (it isn't hard to do). When the tube is full the toothpaste comes out with force, but with minimal effort from you. When the tube is half full, the toothpaste comes out less forcibly, or you have to put more effort in. However, if you curl up the bottom of the tube to half-way, you can recreate the original force of a full tube, because it's "full' where the toothpaste comes out. Imagine a tree is a tube of toothpaste (it isn't hard to do). The live cells are constantly growing, and adding "toothpaste" to the tube, but there's no cap to remove and let the toothpaste out. So the tube gets bigger, is always full, and is always at full strength. Strong enough to knock down a wall, anyway.

I asked Robin Ince of 'The Infinite Monkey Cage' if he or science dreamboat Brian Cox could help shed some light on this. Perhaps there is a sub-law of physics that explains this phenomenon. Perhaps no explanation is needed. Perhaps it's all down to ghosts. 

He 'liked' my tweet, but no reply has come. I put this down to the following possible reasons:

It's a stupid question; if I'm sensible and adapt the laws of physics properly, it can easily be explained.

He asked big Bri C the question, and because Coxy couldn't come up with an answer, they've fallen out and BC has joined a religious cult.

He couldn't be arsed.

Listen and read Proff C prove ghosts don't exist here:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/ghosts-brian-cox-large-hadron-collider-cern-real-truth-standard-model-physics-a7598026.html

Captains log, star date: supplementary... 

We have an answer: THE WIND. The tree gets close enough to the fence for its movement in the wind to act on the fence. Tall buildings move in the wind, which is a bit scary but happens nonetheless, and so do trees once they're tall enough. So it's as if the tree has fallen onto the fence, but very slowly. 

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In Reply To "The Kinks were better than the Stones."

Hello.

Instead of a tiresome thread, which would've made me look all upset, I'm replying to a tweet by @VaunEarl, which went: "The Kinks were better than The Stones"
I'm doing it on this thing, because it's even easier for you to ignore.

Let's get one thing straight, I love the next man as much as I love The Kinks, and so on. This is one guy's opinion, and everyone on Twitter is allowed at least one of those.

Where we would perhaps agree is on 'Waterloo Sunset.'
It was released on May 5th 1967. Now I know for a fact that on this day The Stones were collectively shopping at M&S (Charlie bought a throw), then they all went back to Bill's for a curry. Therefore, on this particular day The Kinks absolutely knocked The Stones out the park (or to labour the point, threw The Stones through a glass house window they were living in.)

We may also dovetail when it comes to 'You Really Got Me.'
It was released on August 4th 1964. Now I know for a fact that The Stones were pony-trekking across the South Downs on this day (Charlie fell off.) Again it's in the back of the net for our sibling-rivalrous, accidental Britpop-inventing boys from *checks notes* Muswell Hill.

Where there may be, as Jimmy Tarbuck used to say on 'Winner Takes All' a difference of opinion, is when we consider 'Mick snorts gak off Marianne Faithful's cistern, Charlie drums at Ronnie Scott's before going round Mick's to punch him in the face, Bill being problematic (again!) and Keith is still awake after eight days.'
Now I know for a fact that while this was all going on, Ray Davies, Dave Davies, and *checks notes* the other guys were listening to 'Sing Something Simple' round Ray's mum's. Bless 'em.

I don't want to get bogged down in who did or didn't make 'Let It Bleed', 'Exile on Main St.', 'Sticky Fingers', 'Black and Blue', 'Some Girls'; who released doves in Hyde Park, who had an Altamont (however horrible it was), who had a 'Rock and Roll Circus' (however poor it was), I mean I could go on...

But The Kinks were better, of course they were. VaunEarl has a cameo in the latest Vic & Bob shows, so he'd know.




Disclaimer: may not contain actual facts

A Philosophical Guide To Superdry®

Hello!

Let's start with the big question: how old is too old to wear Superdry® clothing?
I'm afraid is it almost impossible to answer this scientifically. The received wisdom is that once you reach 25, 30, 40, ... you are too old to walk around covered with logos of any kind, let alone the Superdry® ones. But we've seen middle-aged dads, grandads even, doing so. Yet these outlaws are not arrested, deported, or even given a stern verbal warning from security staff. Let's for argument's sake assume that there is no age limit (it'll make things easier).

What about Superdry® jackets? Well, perhaps a more pertinent question is how many zips is enough zips? They, as a rule, have too many zips. Last time I zipped up a jacket I found one zip was all I needed to get the job done. Yet Superdry®, inspired perhaps by the unnecessarily multi-mouthed alien in the 'Alien' films, give their outerwear upwards of thirty zips. Stop it. If you particularly crave zips, for whatever "reasons" you may have, go ahead. Some of their jackets don't have loads of zips, and in my humble opinion these would be the ones to go for.

Now let's get on to t-shirts. They're the cheapest entry into the world of The 'Dry® (as no one calls them), and as a result the most popular. Which ones should you choose? We will concentrate on the words printed on said t-shirts, because it's all about the words...

The Superdry® Logo

Which one? There appears to be loads of different ones, which is a problem for corporate identity. Their stationary must be all over the shop (no pun intended, none taken). You could argue that the smaller the logo, the smaller the issue, but Superdry® are all about the big letters on t-shirts. So instead of buying a Superdry® t-shirt with a tiny logo, you could be buying a cheaper t-shirt with no logo on it at all.

"Real"

As opposed to those virtual t-shirts you mean? I'm guessing this is to differentiate themselves from pirate versions of Superdry® garments. Of course if anyone was going to counterfeit Superdry®, the last thing they'd think of putting on them would be "Real" (*eye-roll emoji*). The word "Real" is pointless here, let's see what else they've got...

"Genuine"

See "Real" above. Otherwise touch one; if it exists, it must on some level be genuine. "I feel, therefore it is", as the man said.

"Yokohama High Flyers"

No idea really. Do you automatically become a member of this (no doubt august) body of men/women merely by buying a t-shirt? I've never had flying lessons; is it easy? Does buying one of these t-shirts get you a discount on high-flying lessons in Yokohama? Do you have to show your Yokohama High Flyers membership card before buying one of these? So many questions. Perhaps too many questions...

"Classics"

We'll be the judges of that, sunshine. If the design they refer to is a classic, why would it have "Classic" written on it? They never called Classic Coca Cola "Classic" from the start did they (*points at brain*)? Did they decide at the outset that these designs would already be classics? If so that's brave, fucking brave.

"Vintage"

First you must ask the same questions as "Classic" raised. Then, and only then, you have to spend at least eight hours getting your head round what "Vintage" might mean. Are they second-hand? You know, like, are they from a particularly good year for Superdry® and some kind soul decided to donate them to the store curator unworn? Were you supposed to buy them in the 60's and shrine them away until they matured enough to be wearable? Problematic.

The-Ones-That-Look-Like-The-Football-Strip-Of-An-Actual-Superdry®-Football-Team

Yeah, right.

"Team"

See The-Ones-That-Look-Like-The-Football-Strip-Of-An-Actual-Superdry®-Football-Team. These may be referring to members of staff of course, in which case all the questions (so many questions) aimed at "Yokohama High Flyers" apply here too.

"OSAKA"

It's a place in Japan. If you've been there and forgot to get a t-shirt to commemorate the experience, you might do worse than get one of these. Depending on font and colour preferences, this could be one of the more "fair enough" choices, because it doubles as a tourist souvenir as well as a fashion statement.

To conclude, once you've taken on board the above questions, it really depends on whether you like the look of Superdry® garments or not. I think they suit girls more than blokes, but hey, wear what you like. If anyone has suggested you're too old to wear a Superdry® t-shirt, perhaps now is the time to give them *the fingers* and take the plunge. If they do them in your size, then according to the laws of this still green and pleasant land, you're allowed to wear them.

Ricky G•rvais Comes Out as A Leicester Fan

Kevin Spooner writes:

Legendary documentary maker, and star of BBC sitcom 'Upstart Crow' Ricky Gervais, has admitted he is a Leicester City fan. When I tracked him down to his one-bedroom flat in Slough (or wherever it is he lives), I asked him what first attracted him to the role.

"Well.....(pointing both index fingers at himself) ... success, mainly. I mean, I'm successful.... won awards and shit, and they're successful. I mean, hello! Winners of THE BEST LEAGUE IN THE WORLD, the P-r-e-m-i-e-r league yeah? I mean what have your team won?"

I point out that Manchester United won the F.A. Cup a couple of weeks ago.

"Right, the F.A. Cup, well done, no really, well done on that, nice little trophy, don't get me wrong, but it's not (grimaces)... the Premier League title is it?"

In fact, Mr Gervais, who is roughly middle-aged, has even been approached by Nick Hornby to star as Claudio Ranieri in his Hollywood movie version of The Leicester City Story.

"They gave Clooney a screen test, but he couldn't do the accent (points at self again); range you see, some have it, some don't. I'll basically play him as a chilled-out entertainer, with a penchant for expensive leather jackets."

I asked Nick Hornby at his North London home 'The Emirates' if The Leicester City Story was really hollywood material.

"I've thought about that," he said, "if they don't like it, I'll turn it into an insufferable middle-class comedy drama with a few references to Arsenal to keep working class viewers interested. In fact it'll be all about Arsenal, it'll make things simpler. The soundtrack can be culled from my Spotify playlist, and Ricky could play Arsene Wenger, 'cause he's great at accents."

Leicester City fans not sure what to wear this Summer.

Leicester City fans, who have been clad head-to-toe in Leicester City shirts, shorts, socks, scarves and hats, while holding those things that make a noise, aren't sure what to wear this Summer.

Now that the football season is over, The Foxes' supporters will be reduced to telling everyone they meet, within 30 seconds, that during the football season they support Leicester City. The alternative is to carry on wearing Leicester City kit and chanting Leicester City songs (if they have any), throughout the closed season.

Although England have qualified for Euro 2016, they tend to play in England shirts, which aren't even blue. If Leicester fans were to walk around in white shirts they might be mistaken for Leeds fans. Leeds haven't won the Premier League in ages, compared to Leicester, who actually won the title last year (we looked it up).

A spokesman for the Leicester City Supporters Club said: "It's a dilemma: we want to live and sleep in our Leicester kit, to let everyone know we're connected to a group of well-paid sportsmen who have done what they're paid to do, but we're starting to stink, and those clapper things are getting on everyone's nerves. The kids can keep going on those bastards for up to twelve hours a day."

Superfan Ken Fravington admits he'll not be able to leave the house at all: "I'm playing it safe, I'll spend the whole Summer in the garden, trying to do an elaborate tartan pattern on the lawn."

Serious Question: Why do you watch 'I'm A Celeb'?

Hello. Let us start by assuming that 'I'm A Celebrity, Please Get Me Out Of The Jungle As I've Already Been Paid And It's Really Shit Here' is, to all intents and purposes, a torture show. Yes it is. I've seen enough clips on Gogglebox to come to that conclusion, without ever putting ITV on to form a wider view. It's okay, I'm not going to accuse anyone who watches it of enjoying people being tortured, you know, being fed horrible things, cut off from friends and loved ones, undergoing physical discomfort... no, definitely not.

You're safe from the moral dilemma of watching people suffer for your entertainment because of the distance between you and them. For a start I bet hardly anyone reading this is in Australia, which we are led to believe is where the show is made (and NOT the Eden Project place or Kew Gardens or a disused TEXAS Homecare just off the A13 near the Ripple Road roundabout). No, there is a distance between you and the infliction of discomfort on others, which is why, presumably, you can still sleep soundly at night after watching it.

And they're getting paid right? If they win they get £ALot apparently, so they've asked for anything that's thrown at them, or placed through them, or on them. And it's this bit I want to focus on. In 1961 a psychologist called Stanley Milgram ran an experiment in the U.S. to try to get to grips with one of the biggest questions of the 20th century: why do people do harm to others? At the Nuremburg trials after World War II, Adolf Eichmann claimed that he carried out atrocities against the Jews because he was simply 'following orders'. Milgram wanted to try to set up an experiment to test if ordinary folks might be capable of such acts if told to do so.

The experiment involved three people. An ad was placed in a local paper, it asked for volunteers to take part in a psychological test for a pre-paid fee of $4. Two volunteers would then draw lots to be either the 'teacher' or the 'learner'. Thing is, this bit was fixed: one of the 'volunteers' was a stooge, and they always became the 'learner'. The third person was an authority figure, a man in a white coat who oversaw proceedings. The 'teacher' and 'learner' were separated by a wall (here's your distance), and the 'teacher' then gave the 'learner' a series of memory tests which got progressively harder to repeat.

If the 'learners' got a test wrong, he (and they were ALL men) were given an electric shock.

The 'teacher' was given a very mild shock before the experiment began, enough to be uncomfortable but not to actually hurt. So, the 'teacher' knew what the 'learner' was going through. The big deal with this experiment is that the amount of shock administered was variable. As the stooge deliberately started making more and more mistakes, the man in the white coat and the clipboard advised the 'teacher' to increase the charge. Pre-recorded cries of anguish, turning to pleads to be released, were played as the charge increased.

Put yourself in the 'teacher' position. When would you stop the experiment? Will they take my $4 away if I bail straight away? Once you know there's an electric shock involved you'll get cold feet and politely call it a day right? Once the poor guy in the other room starts "ow"ing, that's the cut-off point, surely? In the actual experiment, almost all of the 40 'teachers' went beyond 330 volts! Despite recorded screams and even a faked physical episode, most went on to deliver potentially fatal shocks.

It can't have been the money. Even accounting for inflation, $4 isn't enough to risk someone's life for. No, the experiment shows that when people are told to do things by someone in (even bogus) authority, they tend to do as they are told.

Milgram's experiment was heavily criticised because of the stress it placed the 'teachers' under. Later versions had two authority figures, one saying 'stop' as well as the one saying 'you must carry on'. You'll be pleased to know that this made a difference. Although the original experiment was, for want of a better phrase, a nasty piece of work, it was the most instructive.

I think if anyone tried a similar experiment today, there would be a strong chance that the guinea pigs would know something fishy was going on. We've all seen Dom Joly's 'Trigger Happy TV', where he picked on old people or unsuspecting members of the public who don't use English as a first language, to play 'hilarious' (but also humiliating) pranks on. The distance between him and the victims was, oh hang on, there wasn't any distance! He was taking the piss out of these people and filming it and is proud to have done so. What a dick. Then there was 'Game For A Laugh', 'Fonejacker', 'Brass Eye'... all happy to humiliate in the name of entertainment. Admittedly no-one got hurt on those shows (I remember Dennis Norden commenting on 'You've Been Framed': 'It's funny, as long as they get up afterwards'). But no-one was really hurt in Stanley Milgram's experiment either, and no-one on 'Trigger Happy TV' was asked to be humiliated, or were offered a fee beforehand for the opportunity to be humiliated...

He really was a dick, wasn't he?

You would have to find people who haven't watched a lot of television, perhaps because they are always on the television. Because of inflation, you would have to increase the fee for such research. Ordinary people won't get out of bed for less than $4 today; if you want to experiment on celebrities in a controlled environment and film the results for posterity, you'll need to pay £Thousands, even £Hundreds of thousands. Perhaps it could take place in a jungle, with the public voting on who has to go through certain 'challenges'...




The proper historical bits from this are contained in:
'Investigating Psychology' edited by Nicola Brace and Jovan Byford
'Investigating Methods' edited by Jean McAvoy and Nicola Brace

Both are part of the Open University module 'Introducing Psychology'.

Witnesses

I've just read an interesting article on psychologist Alfred Binet, the man responsible for the first IQ tests. He wanted to use them to find ways to help those with learning difficulties, and not to highlight those difficulties as weaknesses. He thought it was as important how you asked a question as the question itself. A technique which highlights how the results of questioning can be warped by the questioner is 'interrogative suggestibility'. Just for fun (don't phone in), here's an example:

Case 1:

Kevin spots the actor Terrence Stamp in Oxford Street and says 'hi'

Kevin spots the actor Terrence Stamp passing in a 73 bus the day after.

When Kevin tells Rachel, she says that Terrence Stamp was being interviewed on Radio 2 at the same time as either of these sightings, what is Kevin's defense?

This isn't a court-of-law situation, so I'm not going to pretend to know the correct procedure for analysing the evidence, but just for fun...

I believe the first sighting to be true because Kevin spoke to the actor. Celebrities are used to being recognised (some positively crave it, especially Nick Grimshaw, the idiot), so to say hello to a complete stranger is unusual in London. It is possible that the person looks like Terrence Stamp and is used to being mistaken for him, or is the sort of person who says hello to strangers on the streets of London. A weirdo.

If we believe the first sighting I think it is logical that the second also occurred. If you've seen Terrence Stamp in the street AND spoken to him, why would you make up a story about seeing him on a bus? It is possible it's the same weirdo again, but the odds are mounting against it.

If Kevin saw Terrence Stamp on one, maybe two occasions, the Radio 2 interview could have been pre-recorded (and Steve Wright, the bastard, pretended that it was happening live). The second sighting is easier to dismiss as wishful thinking, or 'having Terrence Bloody Stamp on your mind too much'. Watch the road for heaven's sake, it's dangerous out there.

One way the prosecution could try to unseat Kevin would be to use interrogative suggestibility and ask the following question:

'What colour scarf was Terence Stamp wearing?'

When Kevin thinks long and hard (or long and woolly eh? Eh? Oh never mind) and answers: 'Brown, I think.' And the prosecution shouts: 'HA! We know for a fact that Terrence Stamp has never worn a scarf, brown or otherwise!' You know that they have used interrogative suggestibility in its evilest form. 

It could be enough to convince the jury that Kevin was making it up, which is perhaps better than being found guilty of stalking Terrence Stamp. 

Dismissed.