REVISIT SERIES -  An updated post from July 2015 I've recently had a very mild case of being trolled when someone moaned about a review I wrote of a book called  Chilled .  Before anyone thinks I got too horrible in my opinion, I ought to point out that I gave the book four stars, was very positive about it and the publisher gave every evidence of being highly pleased with the review. But someone wasn't (and certainly wasn't chilled), as I received this tweet: If this sounds rather confusing, I had said in my review: There are comments on both the front and back covers by Tony Hawks. Now, my first inclination was to wonder what a pro skateboarder had to do with the science of cooling. But it turns out that this is Tony Hawks the comedian and raconteur. Ah, well, it's obvious what his connection is. Well, no, it isn't. Apparently he did a TV show and/or book where he went round Ireland with a fridge, and this is the only reason for having him along to give the book a...

One of the interesting things about moving from an ancient car to a recent model is the availability of mechanisms to help the driver. At the extreme level, such as claimed by Tesla, this goes all the way to driving for you (occasionally into things you don't want to drive into). My car doesn't go that far, but for me provides three levels that give me what feels, for the moment, to provide the Goldilocks ideal of not too intrusive, not too feeble, but just right. At the highest level, which I use on motorways and fast dual carriageways, it keeps me at my desired speed, slowing down if there's an obstacle in front, keeps me in lane and (when it's in the mood) will change lane when I indicate. The fascinating thing about this is that because the steering movements are very gentle it is almost impossible to detect that it is steering unless you take your hands off the wheel (at which point, the car fairly rapidly starts to complain). Steering is such an automatic thing fo...

The question of whether a tree makes a sound if it falls in a forest with no one there to hear it is usually ascribed to the philosopher cleric Bishop George Berkeley, better known in mathematical circles for his attack on fluxions as 'the ghosts of departed quantities'. Apparently he never said it.  But I was reminded of it on seeing one of BBC News' entertainingly bad headlines. It read:  'It felt personal': Si King on avoiding Sycamore Gap tree felling site until now For those not familiar with his work, King was one half of The Hairy Bikers, a likeable pair of TV chefs. We are told of King's visit to the site as if it were the location of a massacre: 'He takes several deep breaths, steeling himself, then walks slowly up to the stump.' In case you have somehow missed the story, in 2023 a pair of idiots cut down an attractive tree that nestled in a wide ditch alongside Hadrian's Wall near Haltwhistle. It had endless news coverage, first of the vand...

REVISIT SERIES -  An updated post from July 2015 No, it's not a new, rather disgusting sounding cocktail. I was amused to see headlines on Facebook saying that drinking tequila could help you lose weight. Can it? TL;DR version: No. Move on. Longer answer follows. If I had £1 for every new story where [insert your favourite alcoholic drink] is shown to have some positive effect, I could retire immediately. And, surprise, surprise - this is yet another such story that has no basis whatsoever as far as the headline goes. But it does have one interesting possibility for an alternative to sugar and existing sweeteners. All the press coverage comes up with statements like 'You won't believe why drinking tequila might actually help you lose weight,' or 'You won't feel so guilty after that extra shot.' To be clear. Tequila will definitely not help you lose weight, and even if the implied benefit were true, which it isn't, the dangerous impact of alcohol would f...

REVISIT SERIES -  An updated post from July 2015 One of the themes I return to with regularity is the way that the media rarely concerns itself with the quality of scientific sources. There is a huge difference between a Cochrane survey of all available research, or a large scale properly controlled trial, and the type of 'study' where you choose 12 people who only ever buy Volkswagen Golfs and ask them what's the best family car. Yet the media just churn it all out with equal weight, telling us that 'a study has found...' or 'research shows...' They may give us a hint of a source, but that rarely gives enough information to be sure of the quality. As a demonstration of this, I did a bit of a butterfly-on-a-wheel analysis of a story in today's papers. It tells us what the top ten things are that parents do to embarrass their children - things like dancing and trying to use yoof-speak. And according to my favourite newspaper (the i ), this is the result o...

I have to admit, I was initially drawn to this box set of 13 murder mystery novels because it was just £1.99 ($2.99) on Kindle, but it has proved largely enjoyable. The series features a Scotland Yard murder squad, sent out to help struggling provincial police forces, headed up by the urbane Superintendent Masters and the rough and ready (chief) inspector Green (he was promoted part way through the series), who initially seriously dislike each other, adding to the fun. It's important to realise that these books were written in the 60s and 70s - the earlier books in particular feature a decidedly dated approach to women from the male police. (To be fair, this was also true of, for example, the earlier Morse novels.) What I really liked about the first seven books though, was both the period feel and the old fashioned approach of portraying the entire story from the viewpoint of the investigator (just as was the case, say, with Sherlock Holmes). Once the books reach the 70s, there is...

As someone who earns most of my living from writing books it is genuinely painful to be negative about whole classes of books, but for me, there are definitely three circles of bookish hell. The worst, without doubt, are adult colouring books. I once upset Alex Bellos by being snarky about a mathematical adult colouring book he wrote the words for, both because it missed the opportunity to give far more text to accompany the pictures and also because... well, it was an adult colouring book. But that was arguably one of the better examples of the species. In the next circle come the coffee table books. These seem now to be something of an endangered species. You don't see them as much, perhaps because fewer people have coffee tables these days (or perhaps because there's less pretentiousness in home decor - we have less of the Changing Rooms vibe). The idea of a coffee table book is that it should be large format and picture driven. No one is intended to read it from end to en...

Technically, this 1985 Gene Wolfe novel could be classed as science fiction, but the reality is far closer to fantasy. I particularly love the cover image from my UK edition, because it's the worst example of a cover artist not knowing anything about the book I've ever seen. It portrays a hi-tech future city complete with a spaceship, where the actual novel is set in a seedy, run-down US city with a 1970s feel - and even when surprising technology does arrive, it's decades old. It feels like Wolfe is still finding his feet with real-world fantasy, and the book has a number of flaws, but it's still interesting. Four individuals down on their luck end up staying for a few nights free at the condemned house of Ben Free. The majority of the book simply features these four going about their lives, often in near-farce. This is particularly the case in a section involving a mental hospital where the staff assume everyone they meet is mentally ill. The two female characters - s...