Titre : Boring VII
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Boring VII
Notes from Boring 2017A conference at Conway Hall, Holborn, 6th May 2017
Organiser James Ward welcomed us to the seventh Boring Conference, a celebration of the mundane and the overlooked, with his two traditional housekeeping jokes. He then kicked off proceedings with 7 facts about the number 7, each of which was neatly summarised by means of a subjective isomorphism to the group S Club 7.
10.45 James Ward @iamjamesward: So much brighter at non-science subjects
The title of the opening talk gave few clues to its content, but a broad hint was offered when James observed it had recently been World Stationery Day, part of National Stationery Week. He offered us a tantalising glimpse of his stationery-related bookshelf, featuring Henry Petrovski's seminal The Pencil, but chose instead to focus on Derek Hall's 1984 volume Basildon Bond - Letters for every occasion. This handy compendium offered useful exemplars for written communication in a pre-email age, advising readers how to respond when unable to accept a christening invite, when requesting an increased salary or when booking a guest house by post. The talk's title was a quote from a letter to a school regarding a "child's problem with teacher", in which poor Anne was being treated less than optimally by Mrs Woollacott. Even though Derek advised against proposing marriage by letter, a template was still provided, along with various excruciating scenarios for making up after a quarrel or breaking off an engagement.
11.02 Tiahowler Biltawülf @Biltawulf: Ironing - live
After the success of last year's on-stage jigsaw puzzle action, 2017's mundane Live Task involved the pressing of damp clothing. Tiahowler brought an ironing board and hangers onto the stage, along with a big pile of washing which he hoped would decrease during the day. He proceeded to smooth while others spoke, pausing for carrot cake just before noon and unscrewing a bottle of red wine mid-afternoon. During his ironathon Tiahowler pressed 15 shirts, 9 pillowcases, a king size duvet cover and a king size fitted sheet, the last of which created somewhat of a debacle when it became unclear when to stop. At least two of the newly-ironed shirts were donned as costume changes during the day.
11.06 Zoe Laughlin @zoelaughlin: Transparent Concrete
Zoe Laughlin is Director of the Institute of Making at UCL, with a particular penchant for innovative materials, which she views as a talisman of human achievement. Zoe was the only contributor not to launch into a set of slides, hence we all had to visualise her Venn diagram in which she postulated architects as the sexy overlap between artists and engineers. From her bag of props she withdrew a block of concrete that floats, then a block of self-healing concrete whose microscopic cracks are sealed by intrinsic bacteria. Her key story involved the stubborn unwillingness of a French innovator to share a sample of transparent concrete, so she ended up commissioning some of her own. Although technically opaque, glass fibres pass through the material allowing light shone on one side to be visible in speckles on the other. Zoe was excited by the potential of her transmissive medium, for example in allowing traces of sunlight to pass through walls, but as yet no producer is biting.
11.19 Alan Connor @alanconnor: Fact-checking a geography quiz question
As well as being an author and writing for the Guardian, Alan is also the question editor for the BBC2 quiz Only Connect. All questions for the show are checked by an independent panel of verifiers, led by a clergyman's wife from Cornwall, although occasionally ambiguities do slip through. Alan recalled one awkward incident when a 2nd round sequence question was supposed to conclude with the shortest verse in the King James Bible, Jesus wept, but an alternative interpretation had to be accepted. Even geography questions are not immune to destructive verification, so great efforts are made to avoid reference to disputed territories or the coastline paradox. The board game Trivial Pursuit was singled out for giving credence to a false definition of a "blue moon", lifted from a children's almanac, so that society now accepts this to be the second full moon in a month rather than the third of four full moons in a season. A far more expensive faux pas in the original Genus 1 pack was the claim that Columbo's first name was Frank, based on a false fact planted in The Trivia Encyclopedia for copyright reasons, and a $300m lawsuit followed. Always use a second source, Alan advised.
11.39 Liam Shaw: Pallets
Liam is a mathematical biologist at UCL, and former University Challenge contestant, who recounted his own quizzing controversy when a flag-identification furore erupted on the letters page of the Daily Telegraph. Liam led us through a history of the humble pallet, the wooden structure defined as "the structural foundation of a unit load", and once described as "the single most important object in the global economy." Pallets came to prominence in the 1940s as a key enabler of military logistics, but really took off after Norman Cahners added two perpendicular notches to create 4-way access. The creation of the European Pallet Pool in the 1960s improved trade by facilitating substitution, although North America insisted on a separate standardisation based on inches rather than millimetres. Every Euro Pallet contains 78 nails, 11 boards and 9 blocks, can support 60 times its own weight, and is personally approved by Global Brand Ambassador Reinhold Messner. However counterfeit pallets from Ukraine have become a significant problem, triggering the recent (and somewhat bitchy) collapse of the EPP, and hinting at a bleak scenario for the future of pallet exchange.
11.54 Claire Thomson: Danish Public Information Films (1935-1965)
Continuing the UCL vibe, Claire is a lecturer in Scandinavian Studies with a penchant for an underrated movie genre - "not a topic that brings the boys to the yard", she confessed. Denmark introduced its own public information films at cinemas in the 1930s to fill screentime which might otherwise have been taken by German propaganda. Claire has rifled through the cellar at the Danish Film Institute and digitised such early gems as How A Brick Comes Into Being (1936), somewhat inexplicably the most-hired film in mid 20th century Denmark. Jaunty brass accompanied an action-packed clip urging recycling for the war effort, while the filming of They Guide You Across (1949) accidentally led to the destruction of a Norton Sinclair camera clipped by the wheel of a Douglas DC4. Internationally the peak of production came with an Oscar nomination for A City called Copenhagen (1960), but Claire's personal favourite is The Potato (1944) whose information is imparted entirely in song.
12.12 Louise Ashcroft @LouiseAshcroft1: The Argos catalogue
First introduced in 1973, and often worth a fortune on eBay, Louise contested that the Argos catalogue has become a touchstone in the evolution of the UK's cultural life. As a child poring over double-page spreads of calculators, lawnmowers and stretchy gym equipment, she considered the catalogue an empowering window into an alternative reality. Today she sees strong parallels with the Whole Earth Catalog, launched by Californian counterculture in 1968, and read out a Ginsberg-esque beat poem created from Argos catalogue product descriptions to help prove her point. So many of Argos's original products were orange, she noted, from chairs to crockery to vibrant rugs, while the shower pages also acted as mainstream soft porn with carefully positioned suds. These days Baby's 1st Tablet has ousted the caravan playtent, and the women modelling engagement jewellery no longer gaze with expressions of despondent sadness.
12.36 Benjamin Partridge @benpartridge: What is beef?
Ben produces the award-winning Beef and Dairy network podcast, the inevitable successor to the Attlee government's first agricultural newsletter, The Livestock & Meat Situation. Having shocked us all with the revelation that the plural of beef is beeves, Ben went on to investigate the classification of farmed meat by asking "What is beef?" This question became important in 1978 when The Livestock & Meat Situation was split into separate newsletters, and specialist herds such as ox or venison needed to be allocated to one or the other. Four categories were established based on molecular analysis - Beef, Lamb, Pork and Chicken - which Ben illustrated by means of a 2-way chart. Venison is now classified as 'forest beef', goat as "mountain lamb", rabbit as "hedgerow porkmeat" and turkey as "robust chicken". Such all-encompassing taxonomy ensures that there will never be a fifth meat, Ben confirmed.
LUNCH
(remainder of day to follow)
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