I hate computers. I hate them in the same way as I hate audio equipment. For me, gadgets have always been a means to an end. My idea of the perfect audio system is one with no wires, no speakers, no knobs and no disks. All that stuff is ugly and distracting. I would be happy if I could just go into my favourite room and hear the music without any need for the accompanying paraphernalia.
And my idea of a perfect computer is one with no hard drives, no interfaces, no file systems, no processors. I don’t really care that something has 3 terabytes of RAM or a 16GHz processor. And the big humming boxes that house such things are ugly, distracting and hot. My idea of a perfect computing environment is one with nothing more than a screen, a sketchpad, and a keyboard ((I still like typing over writing, and for the short term at least I don’t see any alternative to a keyboard. When voice recognition becomes MUCH better, maybe it will be nice to speak things to your computer, but as long as we read, I think there will be writing of some kind. Perhaps that will change when direct neural interaction becomes possible…)) and where I can do stuff and get results without having to think about file management or disk fragmentation or syntax or communications protocols.
The last few days have seen a lot of discussion about the sad passing of Steve Jobs and the legacy he has left the world. There can be little doubt, even among the detractors, that his vision did change our modern lives in a most profound way. To deny it is to be trivially contrarian. For me, the greatest thing for which Steve ((It’s funny how I feel quite comfortable calling him Steve. In my circles it’s always been the way. I think he has been such a big influence in our daily lives that I feel, like a lot of people I guess, that I kinda knew him personally.)) is responsible is not the Mac, nor the iPod, the iPad or the iPhone, ((I’ve always detested that pretentious and irksome ‘i’ prefix…)) but the wondrous behind-the-scenes tech of the operating systems in all those gadgets.
Some of you are probably old enough to remember the kinds of computing devices that existed before the Apple Macintosh came along and changed the computing world forever. I had two of them: a Commodore 64 and an Atari ST. You communicated with the Commodore via BASIC ((The C64 had no operating system as such, hard as that is to comprehend these days. When you booted it, it was just a dumb blank brain until you loaded something into its RAM.)) and with the Atari via Atari DOS, neither of which were what you could remotely consider ‘intuitive’. Each of these devices required a significant amount of figurin’ if you wanted to get something useful done with them. There certainly wasn’t much need to own one unless you intended to do something that was, in those days, fairly obscure, like music sequencing or database building.
I believe that Steve Jobs greatest gift to us was to make the ‘computeriness’ of computers go away (well, at least to start making it go away – it’s still not as invisible yet as I would like personally). I think that Jobs understood in his bones that most people don’t have the remotest desire to want to tangle with computers. They just want to do stuff. They just want to have their whole music collection to choose from when they’re taking a walk. They just want a little game to play while they’re waiting for the train. They just want to snap pictures and send them to a friend – or make them into a photo album. They just want to be able to lie in bed and browse the web.
And, when they work, they just want to be able to write a letter, prepare a report, record a song, edit a movie or hold a video conference without having to understand what C+ or printer drivers or ROM or RAM or SCSI or serial ports are. Mr Jobs took us a long way along the path to never having to think about this kind of ephemera and to just getting on with doing the things we needed (and wanted) to do.
I admit, quite proudly, to being what is derogatorily known these days as an Apple fanboy. I bought my first Apple product, a Mac Plus, in 1988, and not long that after switched up to an SE. After the Atari it was like upgrading from a badly-tuned 2 cylinder motor scooter to a Rolls Royce. I was initially only interested in having a computer solely as a music tool, but with the Macintosh, suddenly I could do all this other stuff as well. It was truly an enlightening experience. The thing that captured my imagination most of all with those early Macs was that for my mind, at least, they just felt right. It was like there was someone sensible in the design process who was thinking more about me and how I might want to use the machine, than whether it had the latest chipset or the fastest clock speed. That someone was Steve Jobs. In short, I felt an immediate affinity with the Macintosh because it didn’t get in the way of what I wanted to do with it.
Advocates of PCs and the Microsoft Windows way of doing things (and to a lesser extent aficionados of worthy alternatives like Linux), can’t understand why we Apple disciples love our Apple environments so much. They look on the Apple culture as something like a fashion trend, believing us to have all been sucked in by the slick design and the tinker-toy simplicity of the computers themselves. They frequently proclaim that we have ‘drunk the Cool Aid’. What they fail to understand is that people like me simply don’t care that there are faster, cheaper, more efficient, cleverer ways to do computer things out there; ((Consider these two options: 1. An ugly car that has a theoretical speed of 300 mph, has a super-efficient engine, an optimized drive-train and is technically superior to every other car on the road – as long as you fully understood the complicated procedure for driving it; 2. A nicely designed car that reliably gets you to the shops and back without any thought on your part about how that’s achieved. Some people will undoubtedly choose the first option. People whose main concern is just getting the shopping done will be the same people who buy a Mac.)) to us, computers are necessary annoyances, and the simpler it is to get something done with them, and the less they force you to think ‘like a computer’, the better. ((In this respect, Apple’s ‘Think Different’ campaign is not so much about how people think about the world, but about how the world was thinking about computers. Apple was truly thinking different(ly).)) This was the critical insight of Steve Jobs – an insight that went on to inform the Apple music players, the phones, the tablets and the online stores. We love Apple, and we loved Steve, because he made our lives richer by giving us the power of computers without needing to be part of the arcane secret societies that had previously been the sole interlocutors for the mysterious digital magicks. This, I believe, is what the PC (and IT) crowd hate most about Apple – that it has given the peasants the keys to the church.
One of the criticisms you hear most from Apple critics is that Jobs pushed ‘style-over-substance’. This is mostly a cry of ‘How come we can’t make OUR things so neat?’, because if you think about it, how can anyone celebrate a lack of style? The real implication of this complaint is, of course, that if there is style there must necessarily be little substance. Such a deprecation indicates the profound absence of acumen of the prosaic mind. As any thinking person should realise, style is not just an outer layer in which something is cloaked, but is an integral part of its very being. To quote Jean-Luc Godard:
To me style is just the outside of content, and content the inside of style, like the outside and the inside of the human body. Both go together, they can’t be separated.
The style with which Jobs imbued Apple products is not surface deep, but reaches down into the core of the Apple brand. It is his personal philosophy that we engage with every day when we use our iPods and iPhones, our iPads and iMacs. We believe that Steve understood exactly how to allow us to engage with the world in a way that felt stylish and empowering and fun and, well, yes, insanely great.
It is for this reason, I believe, that even though we didn’t know him personally, many of us long-time and dedicated Apple users feel very deeply that with his untimely death we’ve lost a dear friend. And we fear that the people who are now taking over the reins at Apple might not truly understand what Steve Jobs seemed to embody intuitively as a driving force. Certainly, there is currently no-one else in the tech world who does, even including the very closely philosophically aligned Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
Perhaps that’s the way it happens. I guess that’s for history to judge. For now, Steve Jobs has planted the seeds of great ideas. We can only hope that they continue to grow into beautiful trees without him to tend them.
Rest in peace Steve. I, for one, am richer for having had my life illuminated by the tools and creative philosophies which you brought us.
When I was a kid I really wanted to be a Secret Agent. ((It was always spelled with capitals.)) Like, really, really. So much so, that when we had a career counselor come visit us in 5th class, I summoned up my best James Bond suave and went for broke and told her so.
“That’s nice dear,” she said, removing my hand from her knee. “Now, let’s have a look at these pictures of people stapling bank invoices together.”
She was probably right, I guess. In those days a career as a Secret Agent meant a lot of training and hard work (like being a composer or a filmmaker, say), but back then we didn’t have the INTERNET. Now, thanks to the wonders of technology, if one has a computer it is easy to become an instant artistic genius.
OR… a spy!
Yes dear friends, prepare to have all your Secret Agent fantasies fulfilled as I point you to the wonderful treasure trove that is to be found at China Grabber.com. China Grabber is one of those ghastly third-world internet shops intent on offloading all manner of cheap electronic junk on the world in order to quickly deplete the planet of as many resources as possible. It has cell phones and USB sticks and mp3 players and, well, anything and everything that aspires to eventually end up as vast mountains of toxic landfill.
But it also has spy gadgets. Lots and lots and lots of spy gadgets. Oh, I’m not talking about your standard run-of-the-mill pen cameras and wristwatch cameras and cigarette packet cameras – the stock-in-trade of your generic 20thC spook. They do have those, of course. But for those of us on the cutting edge of 21st Century Spydom they have awesome things like…
Tie Cam! ‘The World’s Smallest Wireless Color Pinhole Camera built-in this nice-looking Necktie.’ Yes, you too can record video everywhere you go whilst looking entirely inconspicuous like this young chap (for best incognito results the Super Amusive glasses are de rigueur).
If, like me, you thought that the tie was not so much ‘nice-looking’ as ‘Hi I’m a voyeur!’ ((C’mon. Let’s not pretend that we don’t know what most people buying these things use them for…)) then you might like to consider the less-affected Button Cam.
Dress it up, dress it down, Button Cam goes with any outfit! I would suggest avoiding the lycra, though.
If infiltrating nuclear facilities or other high-risk security zones is more your game, then this is the gadget for you:
Posing as an innocuous identity card, this little beauty will give you a whopping 4 gigabytes of video and audio recording. Now you can post up on YouTube the embarrassing footage of yourself being frogmarched out of the Playboy mansion by Mr Hefner’s henchmen. Oh, teh lulz!
For those of you who are less mobile in your spying, why not try a little Coke & dagger subterfuge?
Pop this little sucker in the fridge and get the goods on your coworkers’ annoying habit of stealing your strawberry yoghurt! Aside from gathering evidence, you’ll find out what really happens to the light when you close the door (also comes in Coke Classic for the less calorie-conscious).
Not what you’re looking for? Something with a little less taste for monsieur? Well, you can go no further than the Tyre Clock Cam:
It’s a clock! It’s a tyre! AND it’s a spy camera! w00t! The best wish for my good friend! ((You filthy rotten thieving bastard!)) Absolutely guaranteed to become completely invisible in the workshop of your shady neighbourhood mechanic (comes with complimentary girlie pinups).
I’ve been saving the best till last of course. Being a Reverend & all, I like to keep tabs on my flock and what better way than the with the sophisticated Cross Cam?
The Spy DVR Camera Cross with necklace design digital video recorder is so convenient to wear and record. This cross spy camcorder looks really fashionable as it dangles from your neck… This discrete spy video camera system can be applied to almost any situation… You are ready to make high quality video files as well as a fashion cross necklace!
Convenient and fashionable! Sweet! I’m not sure about it being applicable to ‘almost any situation’ though – it might not be all that discrete in the local mosque. But hey, totally appropriate for lamington drives, in the ‘hood or at boy scout meetings!
Goodness gracious, Faithful Cowmrades! It looks like just about anything can be a spy camera! Lawks, why even that cup of coffee sitting on your desk… yes, that one to the right there… maybe that is a spy camera! With all these sneaky devices posing as innocent everyday items, how can you be sure that you’re not being spied upon right this very minute!!!((You are looking a little tired today, if I may say.))
A highly effective, practical device to detect spies or sleazy co-workers. A simple yet incredibly effective device that might just save your bacon, get one today and eliminate the paranoia that comes from living in today’s constant surveillance society.
A constant surveillance society proudly enabled by China Grabber.
Thanks to Steve H for pointing me to the totally covet-worthy China Grabber, a place that surely has the dubious distinction of being the internet equivalent of the 2 Dollar Shop
Crikey those Japanese roboticists are goddamned determined. Without even missing a balance-threatening beat after the cyberclockwork embarrassments that were Asimo and Aiko, they’ve wheeled a new proto-Terminator out of the lab. Now, the Japanese National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology is presenting to the world their all-singing, all-dancing HRP-4C Gynoid ((Gynoid? Now there’s an expression that I don’t see catching on.)) Hmm. HRP-4C. Not exactly a roll-off-the-tongue kind of nickname, is it, really? I think I’m going to call it Harpy.
The YouTube clip above shows Harpy on stage doing a song and dance with some human girls as backup. ((These Japanese tech folks need a bit of a refresher in marketing methinks. Demonstration Tip #1: don’t display your product next to something that is visibly superior.)) Harpy’s creators have managed the build a robot so astonishingly sophisticated that it can move and correct its balance throughout an entire dance routine without faltering. They have, at the same time, demonstrated an impressive inability to get her body dimensions correct. Can anyone say ‘man hands’? Wait – can anyone say ‘orangutan arms’?
It’s not that the inventors haven’t given any thought at all to Harpy’s anatomy – she’s also done a little bit of modeling on the fashion catwalk, where it is obvious that the NIAIST drawing board wasn’t all doodles of just hydraulics and micro-relays.
Just look at that shiny titanium ass! I can hear what you’re thinking – she’s so sexy you want to marry her! Well, you can.
It’s OK – it’s a wedding. You’re allowed to cry. ((Billy Jean? Why? Someone please tell me why?))
Just over a year ago (April 1, 2009, as it happens) I made my first post in what was to become a bit of an ongoing series – the ShooTag saga. Had Melissa Rogers, one of the CEOs of ShooTag, refrained from calling me ignorant at that time, and had not attempted to air her preposterous faux scientific notions on my blog, my interest in the dubious ShooTag might have blown away in the wind like so many other tumbleweeds of pseudoscience that have rolled my way. That wrong step by the ShooTaggers was just the first of many that has kept them in the focus of my attention and led us to this moment, which I think you will agree when you get to the end of this post, is a defining one for the credibility of this product and its makers.
When I first visited the ShooTag site, my main attention was, of course, on the science that was claimed to be behind this remarkable gadget, and, to that end, one of my first stops was the ShooTag Science page. It was immediately obvious that the scientific sounding language that was used there was utter waffle. ((This is the ‘scientific explanation’ originally offered on the ShooTag Science page:
All things are composed of atoms that are mostly electrons and protons. In between the electrons and protons and in between the atoms is mostly empty space, filled with magnetic static, quantum and gravitational fields. The science of voltammetry tells us of the electrical principles of all biological entities. Our research has shown that subtle inductance/capacitance fields (magnetic and static) can have dramatic effects on biology.
The only true measurement in electricity is the voltage and amperage, everything else is a mathematical variation of the two. These calculations are referred to as virtual or mathematical measures. Variations in flow of amperage and voltage give us a way to measure capacitance, inductance and frequency. These measurements reflect the static and magnetic effects of bio-electricity.
This is straight out of the textbook of Professor William Nelson, without a shadow of a doubt.))
The page also featured a link to a report called ‘Subtle Magnetic Repulsion of Insect Pests’ by someone called Professor William Nelson, which allegedly appeared in a periodical called The Quantum Agriculture Journal. It took me a scant second to establish that The Quantum Agriculture Journal didn’t exist [Note: See update at the bottom of this post]. The linked paper was an incoherent ramble through Chaos Theory Lite, MRI mechanics, the electro-sensitivity of sharks and the effects of magnetism on cell cultures – much of it inaccurate, most of it contextually adrift and the sum of it an addled mess of gee-whiz pop-science ideas that would be at home in a bad science fiction movie. [See more about this, also, below.]
Unsurprisingly, this link was also rapidly removed from the ShooTag site after my post, along with all references to the Quantum Agriculture Journal and Professor William Nelson. You can still see the original full text here though, complete with reference ((This reference has also been removed since I wrote this post. Only problem for them is that this time I anticipated that there was a very high likelihood of that happening, so I archived the site as it appeared on April 24, 2010. Compare that with the site as it appears today (January 27, 2011). Is there any more damning proof that the ShooTaggers are desperate to distance themselves from Professor William Nelson? Is this the behaviour of honest people who truly believe in what they sell?)) to ‘The Quantum Agriculture Journal’ edited by Prof. William Nelson for IMUNE. ((A search for IMUNE shows it to be another of William Nelson’s projects; it features references to a course in ‘Quantum BioFeedback’ featuring instruction in EPFX, SCIO and QXCI devices. So this ‘reference’ is to a an article in a non-existent journal attached to a website belonging to the person who supposedly wrote the article. Do I need to point out the fraudulent nature of that circuitous process?))
At the time I thought that the reason for these excisions was simply that the ShooTaggers didn’t like being sprung for their silly science. Fair enough – it does make them look pretty incoherent. However. Our recent investigations into the magnetic strips on the ShooTags prompted me to re-examine some of the scientific claims made for the gadgets, in particular, the notion of the ‘trivector electromagnetic signature’ that seems to be of such importance in the ShooTag promotional literature.
So I plugged that phrase into Google. The very first result throws up a link to a pdf of a document called ‘QUANTUM ELECTRO DYNAMICS and The VOLT-AMMETRIC TRIVECTOR SIGNATURE For DUMMIES’ by William Nelson MD Prof of Medicine IMUNE.
The pdf is a disjointed mish-mash of misunderstood science and erroneous analogies all whirled up into ball of unfathomable conclusions. It sounds, in fact, not unlike the incomprehensible babblings of a certain Dr Werner.
And there he is again. That Professor William Nelson guy.
Now, we’ve had cause to mention him before here on The Cow, but only in passing reference to the ShooTag scam. I think it’s time we turned the magnifying glass onto Professor William Nelson himself.
Here is a clip of him ‘explaining the trivector’:
Whoa. That was even more incomprehensible than the pdf we just looked at. ((I could really rip this apart if I could be bothered, but honestly, it’s just one dumb concept warped into another dumb concept mashed into another dumb concept for its entire length. There’s no point even trying to attack all the daft pieces of it because the whole thing is just utter nonsense.))
•He was childhood genius and accepted into Mensa at age 16 ((This really means nothing at all, even if it’s true – the Mensa tests don’t screen for lack of rational or logical thinking. You can still solve puzzles and be dissociated from a rational thought process))
•He is an accomplished golf, tennis and basketball player and was selected to compete in gymnastics in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.
•He worked at NASA and was involved in the Apollo program, notably in the trajectory mathematics of the first moon landing ((He would have been only 18, had that been the truth.)) and the rescue mission of the astronauts on the aborted Apollo 13 flight.
•He is an accredited quantum physicist, medical doctor, mathematician, computer expert, naturopath, acupuncturist, and homeopath.
•He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine on numerous occasions.
As well as the comprehensive reference links I’ve added above, you can read Professor William Nelson’s personal Curriculum Vitae here, courtesy of the Seattle Times. (Note that he tones down the more egregious exaggerations when writing in his own hand, and adds the caveat that ‘Whatever Dr Nelson says about himself can be relied on as true. Information that is not direct from Dr Nelson may be distorted’. O-k-a-y. Very convenient. And not that he bothers to correct any of this ‘distorted’ information anywhere, as far as I’m able to determine. To the contrary, as we shall see, he has a ‘friend’ who is very happy to take it one step further still…)
Depending how far you want to trawl and how much time you want to waste, you can find all kinds of other accomplishments for Dr/Prof Nelson. Needless to say, most of them can be established pretty quickly to be false. He (or anybody else) simply can’t know if he has ever been nominated for a Nobel Prize because Nobel Prize nominees aren’t advised they’ve been nominated and all nominations are kept secret for 50 years. So unless his Nobel Prize nomination was made when he was 10 or younger, that’s just plain rubbish. ((Thanks Dewi!)) NASA explicitly denies ((http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004020583_miracle18m2.html)) having any involvement with a Professor William Nelson and it is possible that he is hoping to dupe people into mistaking him for Clarence William ‘Bill’ Nelson – a NASA mission payload specialist of some achievement. ((Digging deeper we can find evidence that maybe William Nelson worked in a minor capacity for a company that worked for NASA. That’s not the same as ‘working for NASA’ and certainly not the same as ‘saving the lives of the Apollo 13 crew’.)) And, investigation into ‘Professor’ Nelson’s degrees reveals that they all come from dubious unaccredited institutions and mail-order or online courses. He is certainly not a quantum physicist.
Omniscience – The narcissist often pretends to know everything, in every field of human knowledge and endeavour. He lies and prevaricates to avoid the exposure of his ignorance. He resorts to numerous subterfuges to support his God-like omniscience. Where his knowledge fails him – he feigns authority, fakes superiority, quotes from non-existent sources, embeds threads of truth in a canvass of falsehoods. He transforms himself into an artist of intellectual prestidigitation. Many narcissists are avowed autodidacts, unwilling to subject their knowledge and insights to peer scrutiny, or, for that matter, to any scrutiny. The narcissist keeps re-inventing himself, adding new fields of knowledge as he goes. This creeping intellectual annexation is a round about way of reverting to his erstwhile image as the erudite ‘Renaissance man’.
The truth of the matter is that in 1996 ((Or 1998 – like everything about William Nelson, the actual facts seem variable)) William Nelson fled his home in the USA to take up residence in Budapest because he has been indicted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on nine counts of felony fraud charges in relation to various ‘bioenergetic’ healing devices sold through his companies. These expensive (and needless to say completely bogus) devices, which are claimed to be effective for the treatment of all manner of ailments including debilitating diseases such as AIDS and cancer, have been implicated in the deaths of several severely ill people in the United States, and are responsible for the lengthening of the illnesses of numerous others. This is a monstrously repellent scam and William Nelson has made millions of dollars out of it. Consequently he lives extravagantly in a restored five story building in Budapest with his personal staff of about a dozen, including a cook, hairdresser, nanny, security guards and chauffeurs. He uses his money to make terrible movies, ((Hollywood is not interested in his movies because they have been ‘pressured by the drug companies’ to avoid dealing with him. It has nothing to do with them being so bad as to be laughable.)) even worse music, and run his nightclub Bohemian Alibi, among other things. ((Just an aside: if you thought the trolling by the various ShooTag supporters was bad, you should see how the supporters of William Nelson behave. It is very interesting to me that the tone of the commentary that I’ve read across various sites that have criticized Nelson is eerily similar to the way the ShooTaggers express themselves. I fully expect we’ll get trolled by both camps for this post.))
William Nelson’s network for the sale of his machines (which go variously under the names EPFX, SCIO and QXCI) is widespread. He uses chiropractors, homeopaths, physicians, nurses and volunteers to sell the machines worldwide and there is no question that he knows that they do nothing at all (the disclaimer on the QXCI site says, in part ‘No claims are made of the system or of its results.’ which, in anybody’s language, is the ultimate ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card).
And the ‘scientific’ basis for these completely fraudulent, dangerous ((Dangerous because they are completely ineffective.)) devices is the ‘trivector electromagnetic’ principle that Nelson promotes.
Which brings us, I believe, right back to ShooTag. As we have seen, Melissa Rogers and Kathy Heiney were at first very happy to invoke Professor William Nelson’s name when it suited their purpose ((And ditch it mighty fast when it didn’t, I might point out.)) and are still flaunting the ‘trivector electromagnetic’ principles behind their device. It seems to me very likely that Kathy Heiney, in her ‘training’ as a ‘Quantum Biofeedback Technician and Stress Management Specialist‘ could have come across the work of William Nelson. So, no real coincidence there. But now an obvious question arises: Is there any really tangible link between Professor William Nelson and ShooTag, Melissa Rogers and Kathy Heiney? Let’s see what a quick search brings up…
The link is protected with a login, but Google can see it, so it should be there… somewhere… Aha! Some further detective work from Dewi (who you will recall was our chief decoder of the data on the ShooTags a few posts back) reveals the complete schedule for the QX World Conference in Budapest, part of which features:
Now, I will quickly add that the act of associating with a criminal does not make you yourself a criminal. It can in no way be construed that the Shoo!TAG sisters are involved with the felony fraud committed by William Nelson. But the inference is written plain – William Nelson is wanted for fraud by the FDA because the ideas behind his gadgets have no scientific substance and are, through their complete lack of efficacy, misleading and liable to cause harm. Melissa Rogers and Kathy Heiney, by all the available evidence, advocate those exact same pseudoscientific ideas for their Shoo!TAG products.
No wonder they were so quick to divest themselves of any relationship to Nelson. Once they realised that they simply didn’t need to have the endorsement of a nutty ‘professor’ like Nelson to get their product to sell, they ditched all reference to him quick smart.
The credentials of Shoo!TAG can no longer be in any doubt. With absolutely no scientific evidence to back up their claims, a product that is revealed to be nothing more than a stock-standard magnetic swipe card, some third party testing that demonstrates clearly the complete ineffectiveness of the tags, and an indisputable link to the unsubstantiated irrational beliefs of a person who is a fraud and a swindler wanted by the FDA, it is more than clear that Melissa Rogers and Kathy Heiney are ripping off pet owners wherever they have managed to get their silly product into a retail outlet. Worse, by encouraging the use of their product for humans, they are putting the lives of people at risk.
I consider that what we have here, then, on the matter of the Shoo!TAG’s bona fides, is an emphatic QED.
[UPDATE] – Dewi points out that something calling itself the Quantum Agriculture Journal does indeed exist as a one-off document in exe format. I want to make it very clear that the Quantum Agriculture Journal did not have any web presence at the time I searched for it originally – and I was extremely thorough. All available references to it at the time pointed back to the ShooTag site. I did some further searching and turned up another online version of the ‘scientific’ paper (attributed to Professor William Nelson) that was purportedly carried by the QAJ (and originally linked to the ShooTag site). You can read the complete paper here. (This, also, has been removed from the web as of April 2010).
This is what I said of it in my original ShooTag post:
The ’scientific’ document itself (if you can be bothered) is a hare-brained ramble through a whole mess of abracadabra, beginning with some descriptions of chaotic attractors, jumping through magnetic resonance imaging and the electrical sensitivity of sharks, and ending up with the conductivity of chemicals in cells. It’s the most meaningless agglomeration of waffle that I’ve attempted to read in a very long while. If you’ve ever even seen a scientific paper, you know this ain’t one of those.
In light of recent comments by the ShooTaggers, though, it does have some interesting points. The ‘paper’ says that:
‘This three dimensional or trivector signature has been imprinted onto the magnetic field of a three-field magnetic memory card. This card is then hung around the neck of an animal and the magnetic field can stimulate the biology of the animal to build up defense to invaders.This is completely safe and proficient. In our preliminary farm tests the researchers found 75% less infestation of the insect pests when using the pests than in control populations. Further testing is presently being done in Europe.’
These words have been spoken in larger or smaller part by promoters of ShooTag at various times over the last year. It establishes quite clearly that they are using the exact same pseudoscience which underpins William Nelson’s fraudulent medical devices.
A little while back (oh my – I see it was just over a year!) I posted up some still images from my short experimental movie Microspore, but as I mentioned at the time, I was having some difficulty making it acceptably viewable in a format other than the very high resolution 10 gigabyte file that it’s rendered to.
I’ve been doing a bit of experimentation and I’m pleased to be able to show it to you now in reasonable quality. Be warned though, this is still a (relatively) massive file (about 250m) so it’s not for the faint-hearted. It’s still only a shadow of the beautiful hi-rez version, but at least it’s now watchable.
Everything you see – the critters themselves, the dirt, the distortion, the colours and the motion – is the result of reasonably simple math algorithms that I’ve constructed. The sound is also mine. If you can be patient, I recommend letting the complete movie load before you hit play – it sort of ruins the floating effect somewhat if you stop & start…
UPDATE: For some puzzling technical reason there’s a problem with the vid. I will investigate and repost.
