A customer I sketched in the Summertown Costa this morning, inspired by Charlie Stross's blog posting about how news is bad for you, PSA: Ignore the news.
A heavyset fifty-ish man sitting in an armchair reading the Daily Mirror. No sign of enjoyment is visible in his grim expression.
]]>
(8 April 2013: Margaret Thatcher dies.)
In the foreground are the gates and walls of Heaven. From behind one wall come the words "And sort out your overmanning! You do not need a Father, a Son, AND a Holy Ghost!"
A handbag bearing the initials M.T. can just be seen being swung, accompanied by the sound "WHAP!"
An angel looks down at the scene from a cloud, frowning.
My neighbour is a geomorphologist, and he explained it to me. During our frosty nights, moisture from the air condenses onto the patch, making ice. Because the days are cold, the ice doesn't melt. Instead, it reflects sunlight. So the ground stays cold, and when more snow falls, it won't melt either. So the patch reflects more sunlight, then even more, and soon the ice lasts all year round. The ice remains as a glacier, and the local climate has flipped into a stable state from which it cannot return. Palaeogeologists call this the White Summertown Scenario.
They debate whether this has happened before. A few think it has, more than 650 million years ago. Many believe it hasn't. But my neighbour says that's not relevant. Nascent pre-Cambrian glaciers did not have lock-up garages to shelter behind. This one does. And it is definitely growing. This does not bode well for house prices.
I walked past it again yesterday morning. There was a frozen puddle behind it, on which ants were holding a Frost Fair. One was roasting a whole ladybird on a spit. Several were skating to a grasshopper band playing grass-hop music. There was a flea circus, and a refreshment stall with an aphid tethered to it. The stallholder was feeding the aphid yeast, and two teenage ants were slouching against a corner post drunkenly taunting a damselfly. On a seat nearby, a mayfly was begging for cash. Its DSS cold-weather payments had been delayed owing to a computer cock-up, and were not expected to arrive for another month. Although this is 31 mayfly lifetimes, a DSS spokesman today refuted accusations that the system was in crisis.
And I'm worried. I suspect my neighbour. Last night, I saw him emerge from his house with a plastic tray of ice cubes. This morning, the ice had engulfed the garden next door. I THINK HE'S FEEDING IT.
And now the ice patch has expanded again. The lady down the road is walking her husky; the bookshop round the corner is advertising Penguin books using real penguins; and I've just passed Ranulph Fiennes. It looks like being a long hard winter.]]>
I drew this for someone who was leaving their job in a local café to work in an opticians.
A customer is standing in an opticians, in front of the desk. The optician, behind the desk, is holding a pair of glasses and saying "And these ones make the tiny cups of coffee sold by expensive cafés look big!"
A tiny take-away cup of coffee stands on the desk, and can be seen greatly magnified in one of the lenses.
"Robots from Universe Next Door Rush to Steal our RAM."
"Black-Hole Storm Set to Batter Betelgeuse. How YOU Can Beat the Photon Floods."
"Keep Germany out of Singularity, Warns Minister. Secret Plot will Convert Jupiter to Hitler Super-Brain, Take Over EU."
The Express likes Big Freezes because it hopes they will kill immigrants. When not yelling about Minus-Fifteen Misery For Millions or provoking race hate, the Express proclaims medical cures. These are always for arthritis, diabetes, or blood pressure, and involve either stem cells, scientists from King's College London, or cranberries. With a new medical miracle reported once every three days -- One-A-Day Jab Means End To Arthritis Misery For Millions -- it is a wonder that we are not immortal. Perhaps the Big Freeze got us. Or the immigrants.]]>
The images, in essence, are abstract political cartoons. She thinks of the economy while staring at the blank paper, then creates the artwork.From WSU instructor displays abstract political cartoons by Becky Wright, a piece announcing an exhibition by Kristina Lenzi.]]>
(12 February 2013: "Horsemeat scandal: Tesco reveals 60% content in dish. Some Tesco Everyday Value Spaghetti Bolognese contains 60% horsemeat, DNA tests by the retailer have found.".)
A customer is standing at a Tesco checkout in front of the drinks shelves. He is holding a pack of Tesco Everyday Value Spaghetti Bolognese, and asking the checkout assistant "What wine goes with horse?"
(7 February 2013: "Findus beef lasagne contained up to 100% horsemeat, FSA says".)
A policeman is standing on the pavement outside a Findus factory, taking notes from a lady who is holding a photo of a cat. He is asking "And when did you last see your cat?
"
This was inspired by some work once done for the Oxford Pain Research Unit. I'd been working out correlations between two independent ways of measuring pain. One such correlation came to 79%, and a colleague commented that this was "about as good as it is likely to get in any biological system (unless you count death and absence of heartbeat, perhaps)". The language used for the analysis is a stats language called R, by the way.
Two researchers are looking at a cross-tabulation of hospital patients output by the statistics language R. It tabulates their state HAS HEARTBEAT / HAS NO HEARTBEAT versus DEAD / NOT DEAD. The tabulation shows a fair number of patients who are dead but have a heartbeat, or who are not dead but have no heartbeat. One researcher is saying "I think your tabulation has programming errors"
. The other replies "Naaaah! Biological data never yields perfect correlations!"
.
By the way, the R window reads:
R version 2.19.5 (2013-6-13) -- "Statistician's Heaven"
Copyright (C) 2012 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing
> tabulate.my.data()
CROSS TABULATION OF DEATH VERSUS PRESENCE OF HEARTBEAT IN A
SAMPLE OF HOSPITAL PATIENTS
TOTAL PATIENTS IN TABLE: 96
|
| WITH HEARTBEAT | WITHOUT HEARTBEAT |
-----------|-------------------------|-------------------------|
NOT DEAD | 601 | 368 |
-----------|-------------------------|-------------------------|
DEAD | 268 | 648 |
-----------|-------------------------|-------------------------|
]]>
(17 January 2013: Horsemeat in Tesco burgers prompts apology in UK papers".)
A Tesco factory stands on a hill, at night, under a crescent moon with a dead tree nearby. Two men are staring fearfully at it from lower down the hill. One is saying: "And on quiet nights, 'tis said, you can hear the sound of ghostly hoofbeats."
(27 December 2012: The women's minister Jo Swinson announced that magazine "miracle" diets should be "dropped".)
A slim young girl labelled ECONOMY and wearing leggings and a skimpy top sits in a modelling agency. She is holding a newspaper bearing the headline "BAN MIRACLE DIETS", SAYS MINISTER'. Propped by her feet is a book titled THE AUSTERITY DIET. There is a question mark over her head.
]]>
Santa is sitting at his desk gazing at a list which reads
I want:He looks sad, and is thinking[Signed] Santa
- A nuclear-powered sleigh.
- An A-Z of the world for 2013.
- New long johns.
- A good thermos.
"But who can I ask?"]]>