Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this, the sixtieth edition of the Weekly Head Voices!

I know that I’m terribly late, so I imagine that you’ve probably missed my incoherent babbling. To try to make up for this, allow me to present you with this YouTube clip of me babbling almost coherently for 20 minutes! In week 41 I had the privilege of giving an invited talk to an audience of 100+ medical imaging geniuses at the yearly symposium of the Netherlands Forum for Biomedical Imaging in Leiden, and the whole thing was recorded by the artist formerly known as fpixel:

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We kick off this week’s edition of the WHV with Ben Goldacre giving his TED talk on “Battling bad science” at 180 km/h:

He’s fabulous, isn’t he? If you haven’t done so already, you should really read his book “Bad Science” too, and don’t forget to hand a copy to anyone in your neighbourhood that might be confused about homeopathy, accupuncture, any other forms of alternative medicine, or anything by Patrick Holford, vitamin-peddler of note.

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The title is pretty close to pure gobbledygook, but that’s what you get when the foundations of physics seem to have been rattled every so slightly. Let’s first take a gander at this gentleman, pointed out to me by TNR, as he rattles the foundations of absolutely insane facial expressions. He really gets going at about 23 seconds into the video:

The insane asylum soundtrack accompanying this artwork belongs to the music genre called Dubstep, music that is notoriously hard to dance well to. However, the following gentleman seems to have mastered the art just perfectly (if you’re really pressed for time, start watching at 1:13):

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Yes boys and girls, I was keeping back writing that Rebecca Black post, but now it’s 4 days later and I can let ‘er rip again, like I promised. This week’s post sort of reflects my week 37: Chock-full of super-dense life nuggets. Hmmm, sounds like a brilliant new high energy meta-physical chocolate bar that would probably be immediately declared illegal by the current conservative and non-thinking (excuse the tautology) batch of spineless politicians (excuse the tautology).

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Probably the most brainless song on the whole of YouTube must be “Friday” (don’t click that link, please) by Rebecca Black. At one stage, she’s seriously singing about leaving home and going to the bus stop on Friday. As if that’s not mentally taxing enough for her, her friends arrive in a car, and, wait for it, SHE HAS TO DECIDE IN WHICH SEAT TO SIT. Heavens. Talk about broody teenager angst. DANGIT I MISS GRUNGE!

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In this week’s Weekly Head Voices, looking back at weeks 33 and 34 of 2011, there are three important topics that I’d like to discuss. For your convenience, I’ve arranged them in order of increasing significance. This has the added advantage of guaranteeing that this post ends, at least technically speaking, with a sort of climax. Oh yes, the theme of today’s post is dry.

One

I turned 37 very recently. This is the last prime number I’ll have the privilege of gracing before shooting past the big four-oh. I remember when I turned 32. Amongst other defects which I believe I’ve gotten more or less under control, I was extremely smug, and I would probably have irritated the living daylights out of 37-year-old me. I’ve been very much desmugged in my search for harmony and balance in life, although I’ve been told that I tend to be self-congratulatory, an observation that I personally think might have been triggered by my extroverted optimism. Whatever the case may be, I’ll take 5 more years to de-self-congratulatorise myself as well. It’s really a small price to pay for harmony with the universe.

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At least part of this post was conceived right on this balcony over here:

Yes friends, that there right in front of us is the beach, and right in front of that the North Sea, and right over that the beautiful setting sun. We will definitely be going back there, it’s just that awesome spending a few days right on the sand.

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It’s traditional around these parts that I write a post whenever I get to welcome a new computer into the family. In July of 2002 it was Dr. Evil, more a brick than a laptop, in May of 2004 it was my beloved 14″ HP NC6000 laptop, in July of 2006 I met my 15.4″ HP NC8430 (employer-supplied, thank you employer!), which in turn led to this Ubuntu-critical blog post of mine that attracted 50000 (yes, fifty thousand) readers over 2 days, in July of 2008 I splurged on a lovely quad core desktop machine, in September of 2009 I acquired an Asus 1005HA-H netbook, and in November of 2010 my employer got me a super-strong Dell Latitude E6410 laptop.

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Dear friends, I was planning to write a nicely focused post, but it’s definitely not going to be this one. There’s just too much we need to talk about, and by “we need to talk” I of course mean that “I need to do my monologue”. Do strap yourselves in, as this edition of the WHV has tea, peanuts, chocolate milk, general nerdery, some ground-breaking science and even some thought-provoking art.

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On Thursday July 14, 2011, it rained for 20.5 hours straight, and it did so from all directions at the same time (yes, apparently also in the upwards direction as my wet socks will attest). The last time it rained this much on one day, was on July 17, 1954, as confirmed by the paper this weekend. I believe I might also have broken several swearing records (in terms of duration, variation, originality and vehemence) whilst struggling through the water on my bicycle, on my way to my work.

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