All you people who have been Googling for William Shatner’s much-anticipated cover of Pulp’s “Common People” and only finding this - your prayers (as well as mine) have now been answered - a decent-sized snippet [Quicktime, 1.2MB] has been released online (via Chocolate and Vodka).

Even if you’re not a Pulp or Shatner fan, I implore you to listen, it’s gloriously good, bad, and everything else, all at once.

A wordy, over-technical and generally poorly-written article on RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) and NFC (Near-Field Communication) - basically, using small wireless devices that have short range - in today’s Guardian Online eulogises the advent of NFC as some sort of revolution. The main example given is, rather than use cash to pay for things, we’ll use ATMs to charge our mobile phones Oystercard-style and then pay with them.

I’m not convinced - the inconvenience of cash is often wildly overstated. While in some cases paying for something takes up a large proportion of the transaction time (getting Tube tickets is a good example, this is why Oystercard works), in others (like buying coffee, the example in the article), the time it takes to make and serve the product is so long that the time saved in cashless payment is relatively minimal.

Cash has many redeeming features, as well as being universally accepted, it’s portable, easy to use, robust and doesn’t need fancy equipment to use. You can always find out how much you cash you have by counting it - no extra equipment, or a supply of electricity is needed. It is a well-worked technology, not something we stumbled on by chance. When our ancestors started using notes and coins as tokens of money rather than money itself, it took control of one’s money out of the hands of the assayers and makes it no longer vulnerable to changes in metal prices. The denominations given are thoughtfully chosen to make paying arithmetically simple. The design of coins and notes is a marvel and worthy of detailed study. It is not an outdated burden that can be cast aside by the latest innovation, but a highly refined technology that has evolved over thousands of years.

Another example of the brave wireless future cited is:

You can imagine how useful this might be in practice: put your DVD player next to your TV and they say hello to each other using NFC and then trigger a WiMax link to carry video from the DVD player to the TV. Goodbye cables and goodbye hassle.

Or alternatively, you could just use a cable. It’s not as if most people like to continually reposition the DVD player and TV in their house. Once you’ve plugged them in, they stay there. And using a proper cable saves worrying about problems like interference and quality of service that wireless would inevitably bring.

RFID and wireless technologies have many potential cool uses (and some scary ones too). But they’re not going to change everything. Creating fictitious ‘problems’ and ‘hassle’ with current technologies and systems, and advocating replacing them all with your solution is bad science. It’s even worse when you disregard the reasons why the current technology is good, and the problems your new technology introduces.

Tonight, over an excellent (and slightly boozy) dinner with friends, I mentioned the fantastic Bulwer-Lytton awards - the awards for the worst opening line to a hypothetical novel - an example of one of the 2004 contenders:

After several minutes, Detective Wilson, standing over the lifeless, tuxedo-clad corpse, the spandex tights it had been strangled with still around its neck, realized that the poor ringmaster had simply been a victim of circus dancers.

After several equally poor puns from myself, Gytha mentioned that there was a pun society from Gonville & Caius College. After several seconds’ thought, I suggested she set up her own pun society, aiming for more elaborate and flowery puns, so that (in my words): “Your puns will be florid-er than Caius’”.

I wasn’t asked to leave the table, but I should have been.

(For those not in the know, ‘Caius’ is meant to be pronounced ‘Keys’)

One of the projects I work on is slowly progressing to fruition, and now’s the time to ask if anyone else wants in. The Line does what it says on the tin - it is a new newspaper for London. At the moment it’s still very much in the development stage, but we’ve already got some hard cash backing us, and a small team of enthusiastic writers (amongst them, me, Tom and Armand). We’re still looking for more contributors - not just writing, but also photography, cartooning and photoshopping. If you fancy giving print media a shot, and being part of something exciting, then drop us a line at newspaper@gmail.com.

Today is the 35th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing (and yes, it did happen), so enjoy a beautiful 360° panorama of the landing site (needs Quicktime VR), composed from photos taken by Neil Armstrong.

This video of Transformers Breakdancing (Flash, quite big) is extraordinarily good.

The Onion: Scientists Still Seeking Cure For Obesity
The Independent: Scientists Still Seeking Cure For Obesity

Paul Foot, one of the finest investigative journalists ever, is sadly no more. Tributes are flooding in already.