Brian Clegg's Blog, page 149

Left brain, scmeft brain

I'm in the editing process on a book at the moment, and had mentioned the idea of the left brain/right brain split in terms of creativity. There are two concepts involved here. One is that you effectively have two brains. The left and right halves are pretty well separate, joined only at the corpus collosum, the big bundle of nerves at the back. The second is that the we have two distinct modes of operation, one is 'left brain' thinking that deals with the logical, sequential, verbal, rational, analytic, linear style of thinking. The other, 'right brain' thinking deals with the overview, spatial thinking, colour, art, imagery and the like. The assertion is that for creativity it is good to have both sides of the brain active, but when we settle down in a meeting (say) we tend to plug solidly into left brain mode.

Now my editor pointed out that there as been some doubt cast on the left brain/right brain split in this regard. (And, to be fair, I had actually said this, just not clearly enough). With evidence from fMRI and the like it becomes clear that both sides of the brain are involved in both types of thinking. However, what I was saying in the book is that the 'left brain' and 'right brain' labels are still quite useful, because there certainly are two clear modes of operation corresponding to these types of attribute.

If you'd like to feel your brain switch modes, there is a simple exercise you can do to experience it. Run the video below. It will put up a series of words. Your task is to say out loud the colour each word is printed in. Ignore what the word says, just say the colour. It's important that you do it out loud. Try it now:



What you should feel is a grunge as your brain desperately tries to switch mode. It doesn't matter what I told you, it pretty soon accepts it's dealing with words and selects left brain mode. Then, panic, it has to engage right brain. After a few words it should settle down and be fine again.

So, yes, technically the labels are out of date. But then so is the direction of flow of current in electricity, which goes the opposite way to the electrons. But it's still quite handy to use the left/right brain tags.

The joy of coincidence

If you've been around here recently you would have heard that the UK edition of How to Build a Time Machine, which is confusingly called Build Your Own Time Machine over here, is out and about with a rather smart retro cover. I've recently discovered a wonderful coincidence concerning the cover.

One chapter of the book is dedicated to Ronald Mallett, an American physics professor who has spent his life working on the general relativity and its applications to time travel. He was inspired to do this because his father died when he was a boy, and when he came across the concept of a time machine he realised that he wanted to make one of these to go back and see his dad again.

The initial idea came to young Ron while reading a comic book version of the H. G. Wells classic, The Time Machine. And here's the wonderful coincidence (thanks to tbrosz on Litopia for pointing this out). The UK cover isn't just a pastiche of the old science fiction style, it is based on a specific comic book cover.

You guessed it. That same comic that inspired Ronald Mallett also inspired the designer of my book's cover. And, as far as I can tell, it is pure coincidence. Here's the cover from www.tkinter.smig.net/ClassicsIllustrated

The Bulgarian connection

I still can't quite believe that I recently appeared on Bulgarian TV. Speaking in Bulgarian. (Sort of.) It was all rather surreal.

The interview took place via Skype, between me, sitting at my desk in my office and the glamorous presenter, Sophia Tzavella, in a sizeable serious TV studio.

We discussed various weird aspects of science in English. They have then dubbed over us (presumably Sophia dubbed herself) in Bulgarian, so you hear the voice of a suitably scientific sounding Bulgarian actor.

If you would like to take a look at me in action, it's available online here. I'm on from about 7 minutes 17 seconds, but I particularly like the shot at 8 minutes 4 seconds (screenshot on the left) which shows the studio in all its glory with me on a big screen in the background.

All in all a fascinating experience!

One more Time

Time, as they say, waits for no person. Neither do books about time machines. Because I'm delighted to say the UK version of my book on the science of time travel, Build Your Own Time Machine is now available. I didn't get my own copies until the very last minute, so it's brilliant to be able to see it for real at last.

So run, don't walk to your local Waterstones and demand a copy yesterday. Or even easier, nip over to Amazon (there are links to do so on the book's web page) and order one up.

At risk of being a touch biassed, this is one of my favourites of all the books I've written. Time travel. What's not to love?

I'm glad to say the publisher was able to respond to a concern about the cover. The original version didn't have the subtitle, which meant there was nothing to distinguish it from a science fiction book. They were able to slip in 'The Real Science fo Time Travel', which is great.

I'm expecting talks based on this book to be popular - there are already a couple booked, at Pewsey Library at 7.30pm on 1 February, at the Scottish Storytelling Centre as part of the Edinburgh International Festival of Science at 5.30 on 2 April and at the Brympton Festival at 1pm on Sunday 22 April. You can always keep an eye on my upcoming events on the web page.

Mr Newton's Rainbow

I'm currently reading for review a book called Quantum Physics for Poets (the next step, I suppose, from How to Teach Physics to your Dog). In it, the authors comment

A glass prism hanging in our window splits the white sunlight into its spectral constituents Red-Orange-Yellow-Green-Blue-Indigo-Violet (ROY G. BIV)

Now, leaving aside the rather bizarre idea that 'Roy G. Biv' is somehow a useful way of remembering anything, I thought it rather sad that this book, written by a Nobel laureate and friend, passes on as wisdom without comment the idea that there are seven colours in the rainbow. It's a load of tosh, for which we have to thank Isaac Newton.

If you take a look at a rainbow and look for blocks of colour, it's hard to see more than six. Alternatively, if you consider the rainbow of colours on your computer screen, it is likely to be made up of millions of subtly different hues. Either way you consider it, seven is wrong.

There's a good reason for this. There was no scientific basis for Newton's assertion that there are seven colours. We aren't absolutely certain, but the best supported theory for why he came up with this number is because there are seven musical notes - A to G - before you come back to the A in the octave. If music had seven notes, Newton seems to have argued, a rainbow should have seven colours, and he came up with a set to match.

Interestingly, he was lucky to be able to come up with those particular colours. One of Roy G. Biv's constituents didn't exist a few decades earlier. When I do talks on this subject and ask people to guess which colour didn't exist they usually go for one of the obscure colours at the far end of the spectrum, but in fact it was orange. The word existed. It was the name of a fruit. (Still is.) But the colour didn't take its name from the fruit until the 1600s.

Newton did many wonderful things, and contributed vastly to science. But his rainbow colour scheme was a bit of a fraud.

Image from Wikipedia: D-Kuru/Wikimedia Commons

The secret life of the Dell press office

Spot the contact detailsI do a bit of consumer/technology journalism, which means I'm frequently in touch with technology press offices and PR companies. There was a time when you relied on a little black book of contacts, but these days you just zip onto the net and type in Company X Press Office and the details pop up. Unless you are trying to contact Dell. Their press office is so well hidden it verges on farce.

Go to their News Room press office contacts page and you are told the following:

Dell UK and Ireland Press OfficeDell ComputersInnovation HouseCherrywood Science and Technology ParkCherrywood, LoughlinstownDublin 18Ireland

Note no phone, no email. Yes, the press office of one of the world's leading computer companies only provides a postal address. Snail mail. Nineteenth century at best.

Admittedly they do then go on to give a telephone number for 'UK Head Office Contacts' followed by a Bracknell address. Ah ha! Got em. But no. The phone number is for their (Indian) call centre. Who don't have any phone numbers for anyone. At all. But they do have an email address for the Marketing department. Excellent. If you can't get a press office, the marketing department is the next best thing. So I zap off an email. And get this reply:

Thank you for your mail. Please note this mailbox is used for outbound messaging only and therefore checked very infrequently. If you are internal to Dell, please contact the relevant member of the Marketing team to answer your query. Kind regards UK Marketing

For crying out loud! Dell Marketing or Dell Press Office - if you are monitoring this (and it's not impossible, I have had companies getting in touch as a result of my blogging about them), PLEASE drop me an email at brian@brianclegg.net so I can contact you. I want to write nice things about your computers. In a large circulation national magazine. But I can't if you hide. Come out, come out wherever you are...

P.S. A journalist contact has told me who their PR agency is (Axicom), so I'm fine. But this cloak and dagger stuff is still bizarre.

Grow up, guys

It's an iPhone - get over itAs long as Apple Computer has existed it has roused strong emotions. It has been a marmite company. You love it or you hate it. We shouldn't feel too sorry for Apple. They started it. Once they had the Mac, they undertook aggressive comparative marketing, putting the savvy, smart Mac against the creaking, boring PC. And they had a point. But back then I wouldn't have touched a Mac with a bargepole. They wouldn't work with anyone else's network, they had poor file interchangeability and they were closed systems that you couldn't add hardware to, nor could you do much with the software.

So it's not surprising that back then there were strong pro and anti feelings. But I think it's time we got over it. Macs are good computers - so are PCs. Android phones are excellent - iPhones are brilliant. As yet the iPad is the only decent tablet, but it won't be for long.

It really quite saddens me when I see the silly, unthinking, knee-jerk reactions from the pro- and anti- camps springing to life. When a while ago I contemplated switching my desktop to Mac, I got plenty of emails and messages from Mac lovers telling me that it would transform my life. It really wouldn't. As it happens I decided it would transform my bank balance too much, and didn't go ahead, but the emotion in their response was worrying.

Similarly, a friend recently announced on Facebook that he'd got an Android mobile phone that was much cheaper than an iPhone. He immediately got a string of really quite nasty comments from his anti-iPhone friends. Comments included:
Nice phone - and Samsung are miles better than an Apple! - Well, I've compared them and no, they're not.iPhones, smart phones for the dumb - That's a really reasoned argument. Not at all ad hominem.With Android you can set it up exactly how you want, with iPhones you can set them up exactly how apple allow you to. - I'll come back to this.You resisted being assimilated then ! - Oh, please.  I thought that penultimate one was interesting. It was certainly always the argument against Macs that swayed it for me when I was at BA. But in a phone it misses the point. Leaving aside that there's plenty you can do to change the setup of an iPhone, I don't want to have 'set it up exactly how I want', I want to be able to take it and use it. Someone else accused the iPhone as being style over substance - but concentrating on how you can set it up, as opposed to how good it is at its job, is exactly style over substance. The fact is the iPhone does the job brilliantly without having to faff about making it work.

But for that matter, in my experience, good Android phones work well too. (The difference with Android is that you get crap phones and great phones, so you have to avoid some.) Which brings me back to my original point. Lose the tribalism, guys. Apple make great, stylish products. If you want one, that's excellent. There are also great and more affordable PCs and Android phones. If you want one, that's excellent. Arguing you shouldn't buy an Apple product is like arguing we should all drive Fords and Vauxhalls. Arguing you should only buy Apple is like insisting everyone should go for Jaguars and Range Rovers. Remind me, what's all the fuss about?

This book's a horror

I love classic science fiction and fantasies set in the real world, but I've not ventured that much into reading horror. Okay, I've got a secret pleasure in Dennis Wheatley, and my favourite fantasy writers Ray Bradbury, Gene Wolfe and Neil Gaiman can all produce a form of horror but I've rarely gone for the pure thing. Apart from Mr Wheatley, my only real experience is Steven King. I think some of his work - particularly It - is surprisingly well written and pins you in place as a reader. So it was interesting to be sent the latest book by Dean Koontz, an author I've never tried - 77 Shadow Street.

To look at it's quite a chunky hardback, but I found it a reasonably quick read as it's a page turner. This is certainly my kind of horror, in the sense that it's fantasy horror, rather than simply man's inhumanity to man. The setting is very well built, and the sense of menace effectively done. It's interesting that I mentioned It earlier, as in some ways there are similarities - the dark, almost elemental inhuman force occupying an island of humanity and attacking it.

If I'm honest it's not as good a book as It. I don't think Koontz produces the same quality of writing as King. It's fine, but lacks the finesse. He also spent far too long on the build. Although there are lots of strange goings on, nothing definitive happens for well over 100 pages. There's also far too much internal narrative from the characters. We get page after page of their thoughts. I sometimes wanted to scream at Mr Koontx that creative writing mantra SHOW, DON'T TELL!

And the final problem is that it suffers from California Suite syndrome. I'm sure everyone knows those films that ought to be great because they have lots of great actors in them, but that fall down because there isn't a main character or characters to identify with. Instead we get a whole cast of different people and follow their intertwining storylines. Great idea, but it never quite works. The audience is always distanced. And the same things happen here. We meet all the different characters who live and work in apartment building - but it's difficult to get too involved with any of them.

All that said, this is an intriguing story, Koontz is quite brave in introducing several mysterious and confusing characters long before there's any certainty of what they are - and parts of it are genuinely horrific in a good way. What's more there is an excellent twist in the storyline (though you have to get past page 300 to reach it), even though the premise depends on a highly unlikely coincidence that one of only two people in the world that would enable this storyline lives in a specific house. As long as you are happy with suspension of disbelief, it's definitely a book I'd recommend trying, and I may well try some more Koontz as a result of reading this. You can see more at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.

P.S. - funny how the mind works. I was just loading the cover photo above and read the tag line as 'Elvis is real.' Sigh.

Seven steps to a better brainstorm

All we need now is some brainsI was rather pleased to be interviewed the other day by CNN on the subject of brainstorming. It's one of those subjects that it's easy to mock, because it is often done so badly. It probably featured on The Office. Yet do it right and it's very powerful.

If you want to see brainstorming done badly, just watch an episode of The Apprentice. It's almost like they follow a rule book called 'How Not to Brainstorm' (or Brianstorm as I just typed). They sit round a whiteboard and think up ideas. Some get written down, some are ignored. Many will be argued with. And they end up with some fairly feeble ideas. And go with one. Not a great advert for the process.

If you are going to brainstorm I'd suggest seven steps for success:
Make sure you are addressing the right problem. Don't rush in and assume you know what it is you need to do. Quickly think through just what it is you are trying to achieve and see if their are alternative problems to solve that would give a better solution.Use a technique to generate ideas. When Alex Osborn devised brainstorming he never intended people just to sit down and wait for inspiration. Use a simple idea generation technique, like using a randomly selected picture to generate a string of associations, then apply each of those associations as a starting point to solving your problem. (If that description is too condensed, see the ebook below for more details.) That way you will come at things differently and are more likely to come up with fresh ideas. It's fine to use top-of-the-head ideas too, but they often won't be the best.No negatives, no editing. All new ideas are easy to shoot down. Collect all ideas at this stage, however impractical. Make sure whoever is writing up captures everything - don't let them edit as they go. Stop anyone in their tracks if they try to criticize an idea.Give it some structure. I like putting each idea on a Post-it note. That way, when you've collected them you can move them around and structure them, bringing similar ideas together etc. Alternatively capture the ideas on a mind map, preferably using software and projecting the result on a big screen so everyone can see - that way you can restructure easily.Choose wisely. Don't select ideas on practicality, but rather on wow factor. It's much easier to take an exciting but impractical idea and make it practical than it is to take a practical but dull idea and give it appeal. Give everyone an imaginary £100 to vote with. They can put it all on their favourite idea, or split it as they like, but make sure they vote on appeal, not practicality. Be prepared to go back and develop more than one idea.Improve the ideas. Once you've selected an idea, refine it. Identify the key good points. Then find the main things wrong with. Finally improve the idea to get rid of the bad points, but keep the good points in front of you as a reminder. It's very easy to lose these as you fix the bad. Make sure your fixes don't wipe out the benefits.Prepare for selling and implementation. It's very easy when you're all excited about an idea to rush out and tell everyone without thinking about practicalities. Make sure you know how you are going to sell your idea to anyone who has to give it the go-ahead, and have an outline of how you will implement it. That way you are much more likely to get it into practice.It sounds a lot, but it's actually very simple - and makes all the difference. If you want to find out a bit more I have a free ebook Instant Brainstorming you can download here.

I don't believe it

I was interested to see that loveable old grumpy Richard Wilson on TV the other night moaning about all the automated systems we have to deal with.



A lot of it was fair enough. I mean, who could love automated telephone menu systems? (Can anyone explain how on over 50% of the calls I make, whatever time of day, they appear to be experiencing higher than usual call volumes?)  And I agree that those systems for paying for car parking by phone are a nightmare. But there was one thing they got wrong - and the way they went about it was very naughty.

Young Mr Wilson was moaning about supermarket self-checkouts. To try out (or rather to try to disprove) the claim that they are quicker to use, they took an immense sample of four people to compare self-checkout and going through a traditional till. And it was a fiasco of a test.

Firstly they compared the times for the two checkout processes from the point the checkout started. This misses the whole point, dumbos! When I go into the little Tesco which contains our Post Office, the manned checkout always has a queue of 3 to 4 people. At least one of the self checkouts is nearly always available. What you should compare is the time from entering the queue, not the time from starting checking out. Doh.

Secondly, they had suspiciously many problems with the self checkout. (I noticed one of the testers had actually put a piece of paper over the scanner and then spent ages wondered why it wouldn't scan.) I think the best of them had to be rescued by the operator about five times. Now I use a self checkout most days. And I'd say over half the times there are no interventions, and the rest there is usually one or two. I don't think I've ever had five. It was just ludicrous.

So Channel 4, by all means attack the irritating systems that give no benefit - but do it in a fair way. This was very naughty indeed.