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Captchas are things that are easy for humans to do but hard for machines to do (I wrote a post about this for that google image matching thing: [Harnessing People’s Boredom]).

The most common usage are those numbers and letters that are a bit squiggly which you have to type in to add a comment to a blog. They are obviously there to stop spammers from adding spam to your blog. A lot of very serious technology people have worked on making these reasonably easy for you to read but impossible for the spam software.

But the other place you see a captcha is when you get spam these days. A lot of spam at the moment have those pictures in them which say that you should by such and such a stock. And the way they get round your spam filter is that they are using a captcha to stop the spam filter from recognising the words in the image that they are sending you.

Talk about ironic.*

*But is it ironic though? I say YES!

We have a big problem facing us as time goes on which is that at the moment we can be reasonably sure of when things happened and what happened when things happened and also what things we don’t know about happening because we know what we don’t know.*

My point is that Wikipedia is becoming more and more reliable, the concept of the wisdom of crowds makes people feel like they can trust what they read there. Especially as the Wikipedia puts such a premium on being able to source where they found information from. So what’s the problem? Peaches Geldof is the problem. Or More accurately Peaches Honeyblossom Michelle Charlotte Angel Vanessa Geldof is the problem.

Imagine the situation. Somebody goes on Wikipedia and tries to completely change an article because they are young and rebellious. And then soon learn that Wikipedia won’t allow you to do that because the community will very quickly revert the article back to normal and then ban you as a user. So you think to yourself, I know what I’ll do I’ll make a small change somewhere where it’s very difficult to notice that something has happened. You give Peaches Geldof a few extra names and nothing happens. It’s now the truth. Then you tell your friend and your friend thinks that this is so funny that he goes in and adds a few more. Then, after a while, somebody called peachesfan comes along and fixes the problem. So far Wikipedia is working exactly as it should. People saw the wrong name for a bit but ultimately the problem was fixed.

But then Peaches wrote an article complaining about the stupid names given by celebrities to their children and the problems that they cause. A journalist at the Daily Mail was tasked with writing an article about the article and decided to look her up on Wikipedia. A lot of people have been told not to trust wikipedia and so they carefully check the recent edit history to see if the version that they are looking at is the right version or not. Clearly the person looking at the history noticed that there were some far more interesting names in the article’s history and clearly rationalised to herself that the most recent edit by a fan was somebody trying to help Peaches out of her most silly name. This was especially as two seemingly separate users had added names more than six months apart it seemed much more likely somehow. So she diligently published an article called, ‘So, Peaches Honeyblossom Michelle Charlotte Angel Vanessa Geldof, why do you hate your name?’

And now the wikipedia article has had the names added back in quoting a venerable source for the information. Who they? Step forward the very same Daily Mail story. Talk about circular logic! Future historians are in real trouble. The only way to get the truth is to read this article by the person who added Michelle and Charlotte and friend of the person who added Angel and Vanessa. Of course Honeyblossom is actually part of her real name.

Of course I could fix the article but… It seems much more like the kind of exciting scientific experiment that we should let run its course.

*This is sounding spookily like one of those Donald Rumsfeld quotes, which everyone seems to think makes him sound stupid but I actually think sounds pretty Zen:

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.

I hope you are all having a wonderful Christmas wherever you are. I’m sure you probably weren’t expecting a post today but it’s still a Monday and so post I must.

The thing I was going to talk about today was the two sides of Christmas. Some people really love Christmas and some people genuinely fear it. One of the things that some don’t like is the enforced jollity of the situation. But at least you can call them scrooge.

One of the things about Christmas is the themed art. Christmas films, music and to a lesser extent artwork get wheeled out again year after year. The worst of them are schmaltzy and sickening but the best of them have the ability to show both sides of this holiday.

In film we have the ever perennial It’s a wonderful life. I do love this film despite some rather saccharin moments of heavy handedness from Capra. The performance from James Stewart is sublime.

The other Christmas movie that I love is one that you can kind of watch any time of the year and most wouldn’t realise it was a Christmasy film is When Harry Met Sally. A great film. Especially for people who would love Woody Allen, but have a moral objection to him. I myself have no objection to him – but there are those out there who do.

My favourite Christmas song is Fairytale of New York which does ideally combine the two sides of optimism and sadness that can go with Christmas.

And my favourite Christmas carol is The Coventry Carol which deals with the sadness that the women faced knowing that Jesus had been born. The story goes that Herod the King was so worried that a rival to his claim was being born that he went and killed the first born children of everyone. Of course Jesus had been whisked away into hiding in Egypt. But the song speaks of the sadness of all of the mothers whose children have been killed. But also they have the knowledge that it is for a higher purpose.

My favourite piece of art associated with this period is linked with the last story, and it comes from William Blake (he of the poetry). He was also an accomplished painter, but this painting is wonderful because of its simplicity. It is a painting of Madonna and Child while in hiding in Egypt, but because it has the pyramid in the background it can’t help but look a little bit like a holiday snap.

Anyway, Merry Christmas to one and all.

At this time of the year it’s hard to avoid the exciting world of satsumas, tangerines, clementines* and mandarins. As I believe Eddie Izzard once pointed out there is a big fight going on in the world of fruit at the moment and it’s being fought right here between the oranges and these smaller things.

But what are these smaller things and how do you tell the difference between them? Well I’m sure you’ve wondered (but I suppose if you haven’t and aren’t interested yet then maybe you’d like to stop reading now?) what the differences are.

Well the first important thing is to realise that there isn’t such a thing as a mandarin. Well there is, but there isn’t. Mandarin is the name for the whole group. So a satsuma is a mandarin, a tangerine is a mandarin etc. But if somebody says, “oh would you like this mandarin” then they are being less specific. But it’s is the important safety word. Because this means that you’re basically able to get away with calling any of them mandarins and you’re okay, this would not be true if you were to pick any of the other names in the list.

So down to the nitty gritty. Tangerines are basically one of the pure varieties of Mandarin’s. They’re basically your bog standard. They usually have seeds in them too. The name comes from Tangier in Morocco where most of the fruit was at one point imported into Europe.

Then you’ve got your Clementines. These are similar to Tangerines, but they have been cross bred with another fruit called a Pomerans. This results in a seedless fruit. The big nightmare for people making Clementines is that it’s very easy for them to get their seeds back. And all it takes is a few bees poking around to cross them with another fruit and ruin your entire crop.

And a Satsuma is basically another type of seedless mandarin, which is actually a cross between a tangerine and a mandarin orange. This was done by a guy called Philip Satsuma** using cuttings from a kumquat plant.

In fact there are millions of varieties, because they are relatively easy to cross with other things. The rangpur is a cross between a tangerine and a lemon for example. And to further complicate things different countries “market” these fruits under different names. So in America for example you might find satsumas and clementines both being called clementines. And in Japan the satsuma is most often called the Mikan.

But in Britian you’re most likely to be eating a satsuma if somebody offers you something with no pips, and in the states you’d be most likely eating a clementine. But if you have pips in there in any country then it’s probably a tangerine. But if you’d rather play it safe then just call them all mandarins and be done with it.

*In fact you might know a Clementine as it’s a persons name as well, which might make them hard to avoid all year round.

**No really!