John Walker's Electronic House

Tim pointed me to this fantastically stupid article in the Guardian.

It’s a response from hippy charlatan Denis MacEoin to Ben Goldacre’s extended piece providing all the arguments and evidence one needs for dealing with the murderous witchdoctors in the homeopathic practice. And it’s a supremely silly and wonderfully idiotic attack.

Lines accusing Goldacre like, “he paraded his superior knowledge,” are a thing of joy. How dare he! How dare he prove he is an expert in a subject?! These people with their superior knowledge, pointing out that my pile of lies practise is a pile of lies! He must be stopped!

He then goes on to announce that Goldacre clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about because he is, “sure he has not acquired any homeopathic qualifications, and I’m confident he has not sat in with an experienced homeopath for a year or so or worked at a homeopathic NHS hospital.” Excellent work Dr MacEmptyhead! It’s impossible to criticise homeopathy unless you are a homeopath, working for a homeopathic “hospital”. Brilliant. So doing massive amounts of research into the subject, following the studies, and most of all, recognising that A BOTTLE OF WATER DOESN’T CURE ANYTHING BUT A SLIGHT THIRST, cannot be enough. You have to be entrenched within the subject of your doubt before you will be heard by these stubborn morons.

And of course MacEoin then trots out that homeopath favourite: it’s impossible to test homeopathy by scientific means. Regular tests for medicine can’t work on homeopathic snake oil, because homeopathic snake oil isn’t like other medicines! Even though a homeopath will state that a bottle of their expensive tap water, taken five times a day for a week, will cure you of your ailments, at the moment someone wants to test this, it’s suddenly something that takes months and years to work, and requires thousands of different bottles of tap water. Oddly the follow-up to this is never, “So we’ll have to devise a double-blind, peer-reviewed test based on these criteria.” It is instead to just sort of stop, in the cute belief that if they obfuscate the rules enough, it will bewilder those sciency nerds and their “superior knowledge”, and they’ll just have to accept it works.

He then spits in disgust that Goldacre would be so stupid as to think scientific rationale is appropriate for homeopathy.

He must know something as elementary as this about homeopathy, yet he puts up an Aunt Sally, “proves” homeopathy does not work, and calls all homeopaths “morons”. This is not science, and as someone who believes strongly in science, I would challenge the good doctor to prove that his vaunted trials had anything to do with homeopathy at all.

Yeah Ben! It’s elementary, you big old thicko! Don’t you even know that?! Duhhhh! Cor Ben, I bet you feel a bit stupid now, madly treating homeopathy with the dignity that it could be scientifically measured. MacMoron continues,

“It would be to his credit to come clean on this and to help design trials that would match the homeopathic way of prescribing. If he isn’t willing to do that in collaboration with homeopathic doctors who know as much as he does about the science and are not morons, he is demeaning the very notion of scientific medicine.”

That’s right – the one thing Ben Goldacre has refused to do is offer a rational scientific process for fairly measuring the efficacy of homeopathy by homeopathy’s own rules. Oh no wait. He did exactly that in the piece to which MacEieio was so angrily replying. Goldacre devised criteria for a test that would take into account the ridiculous charade of months of homeopathic consultations, and twelfty different potions. How very, very odd that MacBlind missed this bit, and wasn’t able to recognise it in his response. A more cynical person would suggest that he’s a deceitful conman, purporting his witchcraft bullshit for financial gain, terrified when someone writes a rational and reasoned piece demonstrating how his “medicine” is an utter fabrication.

When these are the people who puff their chests out and declare, “I’m a sceptic too! I believe in the importance of science too!”, when these are the best and most scientific that homeopathy has to offer, the ridiculous charade becomes only more apparent. Or at least you’d think it would. But instead the NHS is investing vast sums of UK tax payers’ money into researching this utter drivel. In fact, I find it frankly insulting that money is being spent on tests for the idiotic parade when it’s literally BOTTLES OF WATER being sold. What has happened? How has the NHS of all things reached this point of giving even vague credence, let along swathes of money and dedicated hospitals, to the most obvious and blatent of con tricks?

Hello, the NHS please. Hi, I’ve invented a cure for all diseases. It involves having me kiss the person better. It definitely works, because I say so really very firmly. Could you spent millions of pounds wasting money on investigating this please, rather than spending it on your collapsing hospital infrastructure? Thanks!

PS. This tragic story from Australia should shed some perspective for those in any doubt.

Homeopaths are not content with trying to sue people who report their desires to murder people with malaria – now they’re going to cure AIDS too.

This latest attempt at genocide through expensive ignorance is being led by one Peter Chappell, who will be heading a conference held by the The Society of Homeopaths, called the “HIV/AIDS Symposium”. This vile human being is claiming,

“Right now AIDS in Africa could be significantly ameliorated by a simple tune played on the radio across Africa. Or there is a slower solution using pills, and drops that works very well, but is harder to deliver.”

As homeopathy frantically tries to throw around medical terms, and skews study results in desperate attempts to reveal a glimmer of hope that a bottle of water could be more powerful than, er, a bottle of water they didn’t put a label on, morons like this at the head of their organisation make the entire thing more of a laughing stock than it already is.

But more seriously, this piece of excrement is claiming that playing a song can significantly improve the AIDS epidemic – a hateful deception that could potentially kill untold numbers of the desperately hopeful.

Perhaps he is simply ignorant, you might say. His actions are not evil, but naive. But no such claim can be made. His own site states,

“While we have no proof in scientific terms that the AIDS treatment is effective, in practice it is very reliable and thousands of people have recovered and we supply this treatment FREE through the Amma Resonance Healing Foundation.”

He KNOWS it does not work. And obviously the Amma Resonance Healing Foundation present all their data on this subject? Oh, they don’t. They have nothing but their own studies, apparently published only in homeopathy pamphlets and not on their site, and the statement, “We are now in the process of building hard science based results to consolidate this new technology for the benefit of humanity.” Well, they started this in 2006, and oddly enough, results have yet to emerge.

For those who still hold on to the belief that there is some possibility that homeopathy does anything beyond sell lies to the sick, the wonderful Ben Goldacre has written the definitive article on the subject, addressing all the various wriggles homeopaths attempt to use when explaining why every accurate study reveals it to do nothing over placebo. It’s a wonderful read. A favourite moment:

Many people confuse homeopathy with herbalism and do not realise just how far homeopathic remedies are diluted. The typical dilution is called “30C”: this means that the original substance has been diluted by 1 drop in 100, 30 times. On the Society of Homeopaths site, in their “What is homeopathy?” section, they say that “30C contains less than 1 part per million of the original substance.”

This is an understatement: a 30C homeopathic preparation is a dilution of 1 in 100^30, or rather 1 in 10^60, which means a 1 followed by 60 zeroes, or – let’s be absolutely clear – a dilution of 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000.

To phrase that in the Society of Homeopaths’ terms, we should say: “30C contains less than one part per million million million million million million million million million million of the original substance.”

At a homeopathic dilution of 100C, which they sell routinely, and which homeopaths claim is even more powerful than 30C, the treating substance is diluted by more than the total number of atoms in the universe. Homeopathy was invented before we knew what atoms were, or how many there are, or how big they are. It has not changed its belief system in light of this information.

One show that’s been continuously great, but rarely gets any coverage, is My Name Is Earl. And its third season is developing really nicely.

Season two ends with Earl taking the rap for his ex-wife Joy’s kidnapping crime, and has gone to prison. Which you’d imagine would put something of a dampener on a series about a man trying to make up for the wrongs in his life by helping people on his list. But, no.

Thanks to the show’s frequent use of flashbacks, and Earl’s dealings with a number of other prisoners, there’s no problems there. But interestingly, recently they’ve entirely ignored the list, and yet the show hasn’t lost anything for it. Over the first two seasons they built up such a fantastic collection of recurring characters that it’s almost as developed as the Simpsons for being able to spin off new stories by mixing and matching from the collective (except unlike the Simpsons, it’s funny). So the one-legged woman, the middle-aged hooker, drunken Timothy Stack, the weedy thin gay guy… these ludicrous stereotypes, all presented with real affection, let it concoct any nonsense that comes to mind. The feel-good, do-gooder morality that spoiled the endings of some of season two’s episodes is completely abandoned now, far more interested in really well presented silliness.

A recent double-length episode saw them returning their second season idea of showing the characters through the eyes of Fox’s show, COPS (which is a weird collaboration between NBC and Fox). Again, it gave them an excuse to set a show in the past – the prisoners were watching the episode – this time set in 2002, on the 4th July. And, amazingly, the entire episode was a satire of the over-reaction to terrorist fears inspired by 9/11. Sure, it’s six years later, but it’s hardly any less topical, and some of the gags felt surprisingly close to the knuckle, mocking not the government, but the public response. Even the show’s pun jokes were delivered in a surprisingly deadpan manner, creating a weird atmosphere that felt far from sitcom. A highlight was a cop walking around with two paint sample cards, one a beige “Swiss Almond”, the other a brown “Coconut Husk”, seeing if people’s skins fell between the two to see if he needed to question them.

Then the following episode takes the mocking in another direction, tackling last week’s completely daft initiative by NBC to have a “green” theme in every programme, with their peacock logo all green. 30 Rock apparently did some whoops-my-trousers-have-fallen-down-vicar references to networks overreaching, but My Name Is Earl’s approach was far more direct. There’s a story about the inept, incompetent prison warden asking Earl to organise a “Scared Straight” initiative (with the obvious jokes involved) taking prisoners into primary/junior schools to scare children out of committing crimes. During a meeting about this, there’s the following exchange:

Warden: Just had another thought. What if the Scared Straight show had a green message too?
Earl: I don’t follow.
Warden: Green! It means environmentally friendly.
Earl: Yeah… The thing is sir, going green… doesn’t fit with the rest of the show.
Warden: Well work your magic, make it fit.
Earl: Well I’d just be wedging it in.
Warden: What if I told you you had to do it because I’m your boss?
Earl: Then I’d say I could take the shower kill in the story and turn it into something about the importance of conserving water?
Warden: That’s good… And how about if we start the show when the guy bends down to pick up the phosphate-free soap?

It must have been the exact exchange between the writers’ room and the network execs.

Another line later on:

Prisoner: Things were going from worse to even worser. Not only did the cops have my footprint from the casino vault, but my carbon footprint was off the charts.

And finally,

Randy: Great show guys! I heard one kid say he’d never stab anyone, or order Chilean sea bass.
Huge Terrifying Prisoner: They are dangerously over-fished.

Don’t forget it. It’s been consistently brilliant this season, with a much more careful use of guest stars that the sophomore year, and the smarts to know when a character is good enough to keep coming back. If you ever worried that the show would die with the list, put that aside. Also, try to forget that Jason Lee is a Scientologist.

I’ve finally managed to get hold of the full version of Phenomenon episode two, and it’s far more ludicrous than simply the fight. The bemusing format spirals off into madness. There are ten contestents, who will be gradually voted off. But not in any order the audience could ever guess at. In the first week four magicians performed their half-arsed routines with various degrees of pretending it was psychic power, and then the viewers were told to vote. This week, all four of them did a quick one minute trick (and it really was just lame tricks by this point, without the time to pretend it was the magic of their dead brother), and then the final six did the same. Now, two of the first four are getting thrown off. Huh?

It’s so astonishingly poorly conceived. But worse is Tim Vincent’s ludicrous, biased presentation. His script requires him to announce that we will “believe the impossible” and so on, calling them “remarkable people” rather than “mediocre magicians”. When they were going through some bullshit about channelling spirits to achieve that which most magicians can do without the help of the undead, it was silly. When they’re performing really standard party magic, especially with the dire sleight of hand on display from some, Vincent just sounds like a lunatic.

The only female competitor took part in episode two, and you’d think she was the first woman any of them had ever met. Obsessed over the fact that this magician contained a vagina, they asked her if she felt she was representing all women ever. Embarrassing fawning over her, even from Angel, had the exact opposite effect of their intent, seeming like something from the 1950s.

However, it did feature the first decent act by a man called Mike Super. He did an excellent prediction trick, based on multiple participants’ suggestions, with a wonderful finish where the audience found they had the final part – the time 3:13 – printed on their hands in UV paint. Which is just a lovely way to end a trick. So when it came to the judges, Uri of course didn’t like it. Why? Because as Criss Angel immediately pointed out, he hadn’t claimed he was psychic. To which Super immediately responded categorically stating that he makes no such claim. It was a refreshing moment in this pile of woo-woo tosh. Of course, despite this they edited his intro movie to try to imply that there was something there, chopping up his comments about his parents’ dying to sound like it was somehow involved in his act. Cretinous producers.

When I wrote about it before, I mentioned MAGICIAN Uri Geller’s pathetic moment where he gets to use his brainrape on the viewing public. When I joked that he’d be asking us to pick a number from 3 to 5, I also had in mind suggesting he’d stoop so low as to do the 9 planets trick. Where the nine planets (Pluto keeps his old status for this maths-based trick to work) are in a circle, you pick one, and the follow his instructions about counting back and forth. AND SOMEHOW HE KNOWS WHICH ONE YOU’LL LAND ON! Now, perhaps this nonsense could be gotten away with when most people didn’t have a VCR, but in the age of DVR and torrents, only a complete moron would attempt this, surely? It’s a simple maths exercise, whichever you choose always resulting in landing on Venus. So anyone with the show recorded can go back and check. So fine – if you’re watching a magic show and you figure out how something’s done, whatever. But when it’s presented as proof of psychic powers, it’s so astonishingly weak as to be unbelievable. Geller will sue anyone who suggests he is a CHARLATAN or even a MAGICIAN, and yet he’s happy to go on live TV and present one of the most excruciatingly obvious tricks, known to most children, as an example of his powers. It’s bewildering.

To see this for yourself, follow it through with any planet:

Pick any planet. Then starting on Jupiter, spell out the planet you chose. (So if you picked PLUTO, you go P: Jupiter, L: Earth, U: Pluto, T: Mercury, O: Saturn. So you’re on Saturn). Then carry on going clockwise, spelling out the planet you landed on. Then eliminate Pluto. Carry on clockwise with the new planet you’re on. Then eliminate Neptune. Spell out your new planet again. Eliminate Uranus and Mercury. Spell out the last planet. And you’ll land on Venus. Every time. Wow – I’m a psychic too.

The only disappointment is that she doesn’t finish by declaring that the audience is her best friend, and then asking to borrow 10p for the bus.

A Brief History of Rubbish Magic

It’s funny how magic has come full circle. After the naivity of the 70s and 80s, the 90s saw us get all cynical and want to know how it was done. As Paul Daniels fell from grace, and Penn & Teller rose to popularity, it was, appropriately enough, the illusion of being told how tricks were done that appealed to us. P&T really gave nothing away, but everyone giggled with the pleasure that they thought they might be. This then went to the next stage, and “magic’s greatest secrets” were revealed. The only room for primetime magic was ruining it. And you’d think, if anything, we’d have gained some sort of maturity from this.

Of course then everyone went a bit Derren Brown. (I continue to think Brown is a fantastic magician, and I still wish he’d stop using deceit to achieve his excellent effects. While he has thankfully abandoned pretending there’s any reality to NLP, he still maintains nonsense about hypnotising and still lied about not using stooges. I’m also really pleased that his act has gone toward disproving hoaxes, but I wish he would take an honest position like James Randi’s to do this from.) We started believing all over again, because the patter changed. In America, this took the form of Criss Angel – an incredibly carefully crafted persona that taps into every zeitgeist theme imaginable for winning over a decent chunk of the cable audience. Oscillating between emo and goth, on Mindfreak he freshened up American magic while simultaneously making it unwatchable to anyone over the age of 15.

The Old School

So it’s with a confused face that I discovered NBC’s new Phenomenon wasn’t further post-millennial illusions given primetime space by a confident network executive, but the most dated, tired old routines dressed up as some form American Idol style show. But it gets weirder/worse: the audience aren’t asked to vote on who is the best magician – in fact the word “magician” only appears once in the episode, with the presenter practically trying to shout over it – but who “amazes you the most”. We’re being asked to believe in these acts. Oh, and of course, MAGICIAN Uri Geller is a judge.

But so is Criss Angel, which didn’t strike me as such great news at first. The ponciest opening credits imaginable have Angel prancing around in the desert, floppy shouldered and shouting disaffected muted cries, along with MAGICIAN Uri Geller staring at the camera looking really rather cross. And having tried to watch Mindfreak in the past, Angel always came across as a self-important moron. Which makes me pleasantly surprised to find out he’s a properly decent guy, who promised Randi he’d tell the truth on the live show.

Two episodes have aired now, and I’ll admit I started writing this after the first and was then distracted by a bee. And it’s got a whole lot more interesting. So I’ll say what I was going to say, and then get onto the FIGHT!

Oops

Angel stayed true to his word, and scoffed at those who tried to pass off really poor tricks as Real Life Magic. Remember, this is a programme that refuses to use the word “trick” or “magician” (probably because MAGICIAN Uri Geller’s head would start spinning around like a mad top), so after a particularly pisspoor performance where a man claimed he could cause people to feel like they were being touched when they weren’t, through mystical mind power, Angel responded by naming both the trick, and the man who invented it, and added that it was a rather average demonstration of it. This was hilarious, and if the show wasn’t live, would surely have been cut. But then even better, Geller gets his turn where he praises the performance, and states that the man was proof that there really are mystical brain powers at his behest. After Angel has named both the trick, and the trick creator.

Of course, things don’t go so entertainingly when someone does a trick Angel has bought and performed as well. After a particularly dreadful rendition of the Russian Roulette trick Derren Brown made very famous – this time done with weedy nail guns, one loaded, five not – Angel can’t immediately point out how poor it was, and how it was a simple trick, because it’s something he’d done on his own show with ludicrous over-hyping. So instead he praised NBC for being brave enough to air the trick (admittedly, Channel 4 did have to jump through all sorts of hoops to show the Brown trick, including filming it outside the UK), and then pointed out that he did it better on his own show, but added that therefore he understood the risks that were involved. i.e. none at all, but he couldn’t say that without making his own pomp look a little silly.

And so there’s a problem. Angel, being a particularly pompous and overproduced performer, is rather stuck with his own exaggerated claims in his past, and doesn’t want to diminish his own effects. So if someone were to reproduce his walking on water, or disappearing in the desert on the show (I’m not sure how either would be managed on the stage, but you know), he won’t be groaning and saying, “That’s easy – any idiot can do that trick”. Meanwhile, MAGICIAN Geller will be furiously masturbating in excitement because someone else claimed to have powers while doing shitty parlour tricks, just like him.

I’m thinking of a number between 3 and 5…

Pathetically, they’re giving MAGICIAN Geller a slot to demonstrate his psychic abilities each week. In the first episode he showed five ESP symbols, picked one (the star, because EVERY TIME HE DOES IT HE PICKS THE STAR) and forced it into our minds with his brainrape. The phonelines opened, the internet voting began, and the viewers let them know during the live show which symbol he’d inserted within them. And guess what – like it always does, because for whatever reason people are more likely to pick the star, it won! By a whopping 1% over the second place circle. 27% to 26%. So damn close. Of course this was claimed as a clear victory, and proof of MAGICIAN Geller’s actual real-life magical powers that he definitely does have. Good grief, in a couple of episodes he’ll be resorting to one of those “and take away the number you first thought of” tricks. Seriously – YOU TAKE AWAY THE NUMBER YOU FIRST THOUGHT OF – OF COURSE IT’S GOING TO LEAD TO THE SAME NUMBER. Sigh.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

So in the second episode, this got a whole lot more interesting. Something Angel had specifically promised Randi was that he’d not allow anyone to claim spiritualism powers on the show, and if they did he’d debunk them immediately. And so, sure enough, there was the most atrocious performance of a sealed envelope trick you’ve ever seen, with the ‘psychic’ in a trance bordering on convulsions, as a pre-recorded video of him narrated what was happening – with remarkable timing. He was channelling the dead spirit of someone-or-other, and it was causing him great pain and effort. And what for? So he could write down the name of an object someone who used to be on The Cosby Show had chosen from a collection of 100, off camera, before the show, and then sealed in a box. Because all spirits are retarded, the writing came out backwards and spelt wrong, but fortunately he just happened to have a mirror set up on stage to show the audience the results. And wouldja believe it? It matched! So he basically did the same trick as pretty much everyone else on the show – picked the number/word/object that was sealed in the envelope/box, but this time with an epileptic fit.

MAGICIAN Geller did his usual half-asleep ramble about how the man convinced him that he had a spirit guide, and that therefore he must be a real psychic too, and not a MAGICIAN who has been debunked and shown to be a fraud on live television numerous times. Then Angel reached into his pocket and pulled out a couple of envelopes, declaring that if either the idiot on stage, or Geller, could name the words written in the envelope, or even allude to them, he’d give them a million dollars of his own money. At which point the performer suddenly recovered from his exhaustion and began calling him a “bigot”. And then tried to punch him, as Angel kept repeating his challenge. Sadly Angel, who is clearly a bit of a twit, started squaring up to the guy, leading to the hilarity of watching former Blue Peter presenter Tim Vincent and Geller break the two of them up before going to commercial. And you can watch it all here:

Hilariously, this is uploaded by someone supporting Callahan (or indeed Callahan himself), claiming at the end to demonstrate Angel’s hypocrisy – which appears to boil down to his presenting his tricks as remarkable feats on his own show. I don’t doubt Angel has gone too far in the wah-wah bullshit in the past, but it’s hardly a defense of a psychic to point out that another magician lied.

It does look a bit staged toward the end, but I’ve got a feeling that it’s not. Something about Vincent’s Alan Partridge-like panic, and the fact that those involved are all puff-chested performers anyway, suggests to me that were they to get into a fight outside a pub over who was looking at whose girlfriend, it would appear just as scripted and set up. But that’s not really important anyway, since the final score goes in favour of the skeptic, fake or not.

So, kudos to Criss Angel, even though he can’t spell his own name.

So, 30 then.

It’s hard not to look at your life with more introspection than is normal when reaching a round number. What have I achieved? What haven’t I?

I think a part of being freelance is the curse of never feeling like you’re doing a proper job, no matter how much work you do. For about three weeks from September to October, I didn’t have a single day when I wasn’t working, and hence making money. But because work involves sitting at the same computer I use when relaxing, in the same room in which I sleep, in the same house in which I have fun, it some how never feels Proper. Oh, and that’s hardly helped when work is centered about playing. In those particular three weeks I was making some fairly decent money, but it still lacks a feeling of authenticity. I stress, I do think it’s authentic work. Perhaps it’s because I enjoy it. I’m sure you’re not meant to enjoy things that make you money.

So what’s been achieved. Well, in my three decades I’ve done the following (note: you might consider this to contain name-dropping, etc – but for me, I’m listing the fun stuff I’ve done):

(continue reading…)

Dexter got an early my-birthday present:

Which Dexter seems to approve of.

It’s great to be wrong.

I can’t even be bothered to watch Reaper any more, but I’m totally into Chuck.

The two shows have so much in common – both feature a reluctant regular guy who works in the nerd section of a large store, thrown into a fantastical situation where they have to fight evil/crime. Each has nerd buddies, nerd gags, and a wise-cracking geek best friend. Except one ran out of steam by the second episode, while the other, despite seemingly having nowhere to go with its concept, is really, really fun.

Episode two of Reaper was such a terrible mess. It was an almost scene-for-scene reprisal of the first, with a different monster-of-the-week, and apparently completely different parents. Sock, the comedy buddy was still funny, but the second he went off screen, it was like watching roadkill. Episode three I couldn’t even survive halfway through. It was the exact same episode again, ringing more hollow than before. And this time the jokes felt deeply contrived.

But there’s better news. Chuck. The potential didn’t seem to be there – a guy gets all of the government secrets from every American agency downloaded into his head, and rival CIA and NSA agents are assigned to keep an eye on him. So where can that go? Surely secrets are update constantly, and how exactly are they going to apply it? Rather well, it seems.

Each week the team of three – Chuck (Zachary Levi), Sarah Walker (Yvonne Strahovski) and John Casey (Firefly’s Adam Baldwin) – are either given a mission, or stumble upon one, where the two super-agents are forced to rely on Chuck, and his constantly entertaining bemusement and fear, to complete their tasks.

So there’s constant fight scenes, kung fu, daft gadgets (“How was I supposed to know Karina had a remote controlled jetski – it’s not usually an option in real life,”) and Chuck’s “flashes” where visual stimuli trigger information from the information in his brain. And that’s all fun. But it manages to get the in-between stuff right too. Chuck lives with his sister, and he has to keep his new life a secret from her, which leads to domestic issues. But not tiresome Clark Kent rubbish. It keeps it short, but realistic. Then there’s Chuck’s “cover” – he and the astonishingly pretty Sarah are pretending to be a couple, which of course leads to potential romantic friction. And again, rather than being a pain in the arse, this is done really nicely, and even manages to be touching occasionally.

It’s all-round great, and it would be lovely to see it survive a first season. Where Reaper’s pilot appeared to have great, sharp writing, the following episodes revealed that they used it all up in one go. Chuck’s pilot was over-serious and convoluted, and did not portray the strength of writing that was to come. It’s been consistent, and really smart. It’s second best to this year’s best, which is perhaps not too fair, since this year’s best – Pushing Daisies – is possibly the best in a decade. And maybe I’ll find the words to say why, soon.

This is fun:

Today I’ve been receiving phonecalls from a fax machine. Which is weird. The phone rings, and I hear a beeping tone, which won’t then hang up. This then ties up the line for the next couple of minutes. All day long.

So I called BT’s fault line, who called me back promptly, and told me that what I need to do is call Customer Services and ask them to block the number. Oh, that seems simple enough.

I call 150, dance through menus, and speak to a call centre in India. The nice lady takes all my details, and then once she’s sure I’m me she tells me, “Could you call back in ten or fifteen minutes as my system is broken.”

So I call back later on, get through to India once more, and the new nice lady tells me that I can block the number once I pay a fee of £10.05 per quarter. This seemed strange to me. I’m getting nuisance calls from a fax machine, and I have to pay money to stop them. Um, no. She tells me it’s impossible for them to block a number, but only I can. Wow – I’m more powerful than BT when it comes to controlling telephones. I pointed out that this was nonsense, but the poor woman was on a script. I protest that I’m not going to pay money to fix a nuisance call. She puts me on hold, and comes back with quite the offer. For one whole month, they’ll allow me free access to this Refuse The Call (or whatever) system, and then immediately start charging money when that month is up. Gee whizz.

That’s the BT way. If you receive nuisance calls that prevent your phone from working, you have to pay money to prevent them! Obviously they’re offering the rest of the service completely for free, so… oh no wait, they charge massive monopoly-based fees. Thanks BT – thanks for all your kind help.

So does anyone know a good trick to stop this? Or better, a way of learning whose fax machine it is so I can phone them and ask them to bloody well stop calling me. Ooh, or even better, does anyone with a fax machine want to contact me and offer to send them an politely abusive fax for me?

The number that’s calling is: 020 7490 2741