Now that we’ve finally reached polling day, I am happy to say that even though I consider myself Conservative by UK standards, I am solidly behind Barack Obama tonight. So what’s Milton Keynes got to do with it? Well, MK is a city I go through regularly on the train, and if we put the jokes about concrete cows to one side, it is actually quite likeable.

If Milton Keynes had an airport, its IATA code might easily be MLK*, which would take us to civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr, who is perhaps best known for his “I Have A Dream” speech in 1963. Whatever your opinions on Milton Keynes, somebody had a dream to build it, and if you ever get a chance to fly over it, MK does look like a giant circuit board, complete with tiny cars efficiently moving around its quiet streets.

MLK is featured twice on the U2 album “The Unforgettable Fire”, firstly in the anthemic Pride (In The Name of Love), and then on the final self titled track.

Here’s my favourite bit of Pride^:

Early morning, April 4
Shot rings out in the Memphis sky
Free at last, they took your life
They could not take your pride

So, I’m not going to be staying up to watch the polls (Glowny means Central in Polish), but I do hope to wake up tomorrow to some long awaited good news from across the pond!

(*MLK is actually the IATA code for Malta, Montana; ^ - actually took place at 6.01pm)

So does Google really no longer trust itself to fulfil its role as the sewage works of the internet? If not, then it must be time for someone else to come along and do a better job.

Correct information v Useful Information

Whatever Google says or does, we shouldn’t forget the original founding purpose of its search engine - to categorise the world’s information — Google was a popular mis-spelling of the word “googol”, which means 1 followed by 100 zeros. Whenever I think of this, I think of General Gogol from the Bond movies - but I guess he might well have had to remember 100 digit long secret codes!

There’s no doubt that the information is out there on Google - even if some of the highest ranking sites are not exactly of the quality Google likes to say they should be. Sometimes though, I’m not sure if it really matters whether the information is there or not - how much of it do we really need. The internet may or may not be a cesspool, but the amount of information it contains is certainly infinite. So if Google could just give the right answer without all the other junk, then they really would be able to clean up.

PS - I thought I’d test that out by asking the old politicians’ question of “What is 2 + 2″? Amazingly, Google does just come back with the result of 2 + 2 = 4 - and no other clutter. Then I tried finding a reference to David Blunkett thinking 7 x 8 = 54. No wonder I couldn’t find it - that was Stephen Byers!

Infinet Distractions

Anyway, as I was saying, there’s just too much information out there on the internet - some of it useful, some of it less so. Back to work!

I can’t really comment on this much further, because I have been so out of practice lately with all of these techniques, but I hope that at least by making a bookmark to this website, and scratching out a few thoughts here to come back to, I can make sure that I go back and do a lot more of this into practice.  However, there is something about this guy that really separates him from all the traditional self-improvement manuals which are out there, and that’s at he is able to use such wonderful jargon and acronyms. I’ve never met the guy, and only even spent about five minutes on his website, but I’m liking him already!

Here’s a few of my favourites:

• “Everything popular is wrong” (sounds like a little bit of a rewind back to Zoo TV)
• MBA = Management by absence
• Geoarbitrage
• “Protecting” time (after all, we all go to such great lengths to protect our money)
• Remote Control CEOs
• “Ultravagabond”

Now, what was that I was thinking about whether or not I really need an office?

Back to work….

Some numbers are much easier to remember than others, regardless of their length — for example, the Beverly Hills ZIP code 90210 is used in the TV series of the same name, we all know the significance of 999 or its 180 degree rotation, and I think we have been irritated enough by the two 118 men to know exactly what happens when we call that number.  So what about other sequences?  Single numbers are quite easy to remember, but to try and think of a memory chain for 11 numbers can be quite cumbersome, so it is usually easier to break a phone number up into chunks of two and three digits, depending on where this yields and easier block to remember.

Naturally, as someone who’s very geographically minded, I are more likely to associate numbers with places, especially motorway numbers or country / city dialling codes, but there really are no hard and fast rules — just thinking up the first association that comes into your head will do fine.

All UK mobile numbers start 07, and many start with 077 — there is no real need to remember the zero, as virtually all phone numbers start with a zero, so that can be taken for granted.  As I said, I’m a geography nerd, so I would start many mobile phone number chains with Prestwick airport, as this is reached from Glasgow by the M77 motorway.  However, football fans might just prefer to remember David Beckham and his number seven shirt.  To remember to two sevens, either think of David Beckham indulging in one of the seven deadly sins, or as David Beckham played for Manchester United, and Seven is one of the best-selling albums by the Manchester group James, you can also think of David Beckham sitting down. Number 7 is also associated with luck, days of the week etc, but once we get to three sevens, we get back to travel geekery again courtesy of Boeing.

For my friend’s number, the memory chain involved George Orwell, a German referee and David Beckham, playing with a dice on Airbus about to take off — I won’t give the full game away, as his number is his business, but as my mobile number is public elsewhere, I don’t mind giving it out here:

0 77 9000 14 94.

If I ever give that number to someone, I always read it out in that sequence — i.e. spacing out the 9000, as that is a very obvious chunk of the kind that I was talking about above.  I said I wouldn’t give away my friends number, but perhaps here’s a little clue to some of it — he has three numbers which are in a descending sequence, and this relates to the Airbus being about to take off.

There are two obvious ways for remembering 9000, which can also be linked to each other — the ISO 9000 quality system, and the Saab 9000.  To create a memory reference talking about the Saab could easily refer to other models, but to talk about a well built Saab (not to suggest that the Swedes would build anything different) would pin the association down to 9000.  The number 14 is easiest associated with a fortnight, the best referred to as two weeks, as a fortnight is a little bit close to the number itself, so it could easily be forgotten.  Alternatively, the number 14 is the shirt always worn by the right-winger in Rugby.

Mathematicians might know that 94 is a Smith number (9 + 4 = 13 = 3 + 3 + 3+ 2 + 2), but so are numerous others, so that only serves as an additional boost to any memory chain.  94 is also the atomic number of plutonium, but I prefer the fact that the observation deck of the John Hancock Centre in Chicago is on the 94th floor — and if you feel up to it, you can take part in the annual “Hustle up the Hancock” benefit stair climb race in February.  Also, if you’re going to visit the USA, you will need to fill out form I94 to get into the country - but that probably isn’t much use to any Americans reading this, as they would never have to use it.

So, for British geeks, the easiest way to remember this number is to think of driving to Prestwick airport in a well built Saab to go away for a fortnight in Chicago.  For something a little bit more amusing, might I suggest Sarah Palin (a right-winger who might be able to get her hands on the nuclear button if we’re not careful), indulging in some extramarital activities with David Beckham in the back seat of a Saab.

Well, that works for me, I hope it works for you.  If you do happen think that this is just nonsensical verbiage, then bear in mind that Private Eye also likes to use the number 94 to refer to any drivel which could be continued ad infinitum elsewhere.

It turns out that in the British version of the game, played to just get one £20 note, but in other get versions of the game, they get six.  So what other monopoly questions might we anticipate?  As Lewis and I are already ardent players of the game, we should do reasonably well on any subsequent questions, but one thing I was wondering about is just how many monopoly properties are actually within the boundaries of the city of London?

This question is not as easy to answer as it looks, as the boundaries of the city of London follow so many random twists and turns as they negotiate various different backstreets.  Motorway map.co.uk has attempted to show all of the London monopoly properties superimposed on a map of London, and combining this with the official City of London authority map suggests that Whitechapel Road (brown) and Strand (red) are just on the edges of the City of London, but they don’t really go inside the boundaries.  Fleet Street (also red) and the two stations of Liverpool Street and Fenchurch Street are certainly within the boundaries of the city of London, so I would guess that the correct answer is three. 

However, to be fully accurate, I’d have to go out and look for those City of London black bollards at the end of Fleet Street and Whitechapel Road — and however infinitely curious I might be, that would be taking my geekery just a little bit too far.  I think a far more interesting question would be to explain why the hell Fenchurch Street, which has to be the most irrelevant station* in London, made it onto the Monopoly board in the first place (again, Motorway map has a go at explaining) – as with last week, answers on a postcard please.

*Just to keep the good people of Essex happy, I mean irrelevant in the sense of number of passengers served, and the fact that Fenchurch Street has neither long-distance train services, nor its own underground station.  I have nothing against Essex people, and in fact, many of my friends come from Essex, blah blah blah.

Unsurprisingly, Wikipedia doesn´t have much to say on the matter. That great bastion of PC speak is probably quite happy with the concept of killing time, as so much of said activity is done on their own website! Well, at least you should learn something from each visit to Wikipedia, although if your name is Vernon Kay, then perhaps Wikipedia is one website you could do without!

A quick scan of Google for the phrase “killing time” (well, this is Spanish Google, so there might be better results in the UK) comes up with a hardcore band from New York, “Murder Consultants” (of the gaming variety, not hitmen - Dixon Jones of Receptional can sort anyone out in the UK looking for this kind of event in & around London), a Youtube spinoff and a book about Death Row in the USA.

No-one out there is giving much by way of definition or origin of the phrase (although according to Wikipedia, it has been used in the New York Times as far back as 1893), beyond the obvious. So in our 21st century society of re-branding and doublespeak, how should the phrase “killing time” be re-packaged to suggest a more productive use of such temporal luxuries?

Or would the PC brigade baulk at the suggestion that all time should be used constructively? After all, if exam failure in schools, sorry, learning communities, is now called “deferred success”, then sitting idle for a couple of hours is surely just “deferred activity”? Next time I´m sitting on the sofa watching another pointless squabble on Fox, I´ll think of that as my “deferred gym session” - but at least there are supposed to be a few feel good benefits from having a bit of a chuckle at some of the morons they get on that programme - everything in moderation as they say!

Well, that´s about 30 minutes so far of doing stuff which is mildly productive, and which has certainly managed to keep my attention going - so I certainly don´t think I need to go and turn myself in to the Time Police just yet! And if it means I´ve made my first non-political blog post in over 3 months, that can´t be too bad either.

But I´m still no closer to that definition. Answers on a PC please (that´s postcard, or comment sent from your Personal Computer - not reporting me to the Politically Correct Brigade or the local Police Constable).

If you saw Jack Straw’s interview on TV yesterday, or even just the highlights, you’ll see that he has now become a fully paid-up member of the Tony Blair waving hand gestures club.  Frankly, the main point he had to say, about Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling being experienced pilots, was rather laughable, considering the current state of both economy and Labour’s position in the polls, and the fact that any new leader is always going to start with no experience:

“Let me just use this analogy - For sure, We’re in a plane - sure, we face turbulence. The question for this country is - who is better to take us through this turbulent period? Is it an experienced pilot and co-pilot in Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, who’ve had the experience and proved that they have done better than the world situation over the last 11 years, or is it two people in David Cameron and George Osborne, who have had no experience of flying a large plane whatsoever”.

Jack Straw BBC Interview [4:50]

But behind the pointless hand movements (which might just qualify him to become an airport marshall), does Mr Straw still harbour loftier ambitions?

Now we all know that politicians say one thing when they mean another, and I just can’t help myself from thinking that what Jack Straw was really telling us yesterday is that he is itching inside for the top job.  We know that he can’t be seen to make any moves to depose the current leadership himself, but as soon as somebody else makes a move for him, what would stop Mr Straw from making a bid to take the controls? 

However tired most of the Cabinet might look, I’ll have to admit myself that Jack Straw is one of the few genuine heavyweights the Labour Party still have left, and he would certainly be more competent at seeing off David Cameron at the dispatch box than the lightweight David Milliband.

In the meantime, it looks like he has stirred up much more interest in the 42 days of debate among Internet users.  Before Wednesday evening, the largest anti-42 days group on Facebook had just 43 members.  The “against 42 days” group now has 1675 members, with over 1000 members also joining the “Fight for freedom — support David Davis” group.