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From the "rather old but worth reading" file comes this New Yorker piece on the Golden Gate Bridge and the people who jump from it. It's a macabre subject, but one that's treated respectfully, documenting the sad stories of those who leap - like the fourteen year-old who took a taxi from school directly to the bridge - as well as those who are persuaded not to and, most amazingly of all, those who jump but survive. This quote in particular, from one Ken Baldwin just glows on the page; it's almost perfect in its context:

"I instantly realized that everything in my life that I’d thought was unfixable was totally fixable—except for having just jumped."

Tangentally, this article was apparently the inspiration for the song "Jumpers" on Sleater-Kinney's album The Woods. First track (brilliantly described here as a "deterrent for weak-eared listeners") aside, I'd wholeheartedly recommend a listen - it sounds rather like an all-female Led Zeppelin tribute band that are mad as hell about being trapped in an echoey shed. And that's a compliment.

Overheard on the way to work this morning:

Small boy: When I grow up, I want to be a nurse.

Mother: You could be a doctor!

Small boy, determinedly: I want to be a nurse.

Mother, encouragingly: If you become a doctor, you'll have more authority.

(pause for consideration)

Small boy: I want to be a nurse.

And good for him.

I was a bit annoyed by the news that Heinz had chosen to pull a television advert following 200 particularly stupid complaints to the ASA. Apparently the complainants wrote (presumably in pencil, in a mixture of capital and lower-case letters, on the back of an old copy of the News of the World) that it was "offensive" and "inappropriate to see two men kissing". A few even went for the "Will somebody please think of the children!" approach, claiming that it had forced them to answer awkward questions from kids- questions such as, presumably, "who on earth would want to buy flavoured mayonnaise?".

Today, though, I've realised that this is actually a golden opportunity. If all it requires is 200 nonsensical complaints, just imagine the power that a small but committed group of people could exercise. One short letter writing campaign, and:

• No more Eastenders / Coronation Street / Emmerdale / Neighbours
• No more Big Brother
• Pretty much the entire BBC3 schedule destroyed in one fell swoop
• The new "let's have a conversation" Channel 5 news? Gone, gone away
• Living TV? Not any more
• And so on

In short, the world could be made exactly 147.24% better (and yes, I can prove this with a calculator) in less than a week. Marvellous. If anyone's interested, I could even knock up a template letter: Dear XXX, I consider your programme, XXXX, very offensive. What if a (parakeet/armchair/plank of alder) had seen it? I could have been forced to answer awkward questions about (mockneys/Stockholm Syndrome/the BBC's commissioning policy/the merits of viewer interaction in a news programme/idiots). Yours sincerely, XXXX.

Incidentally, in case anyone isn't in the habit of trawling the ASA's complaints and adjudications pages looking for news stories, I do recommend a visit. The pettiness of some complaints and almost incredibly serious tone of the adjudications can be fantastic to behold. Example complaint:

A TV ad, for the Nicer Dicer, stated "Love to cook but hate the time and hassle of preparation and cleanup? You need the Nicer Dicer from JML. Look how perfectly it dices this tomato. And these onions are chopped in no time with no tears.  … A viewer, who believed food to be diced in the product had to be sliced beforehand, challenged whether the ad misleadingly implied that the product could dice whole foods.

And the ASA's response? They took said product to the ASA-super-testing-kitchen-cave and put it through its paces:

The ASA tested the Nicer Dicer. We noted that, while the product was capable of dealing with whole foods, it did not dice the food into cube shapes but merely seemed to slice it; that result was the same for food cut in half. We noted that, for the product to dice food into cube shapes, food would first have to be sliced into roughly the thickness of the desired cube.

Oh no! Surely not. But do go on..

We considered that the composition of the ad, particularly the name 'Nicer Dicer', the claims "Love to cook but hate the time and hassle of preparation and cleanup" and "Look how perfectly it dices this tomato", accompanied by an image of a tomato cut in cube shapes, implied that whole fruit and vegetables, or at least food cut in half, could be diced into cube shapes. Because it could not, and because it did not show that food had to be sliced before it could be diced, we considered that the ad was misleading.

The ad breached CAP (Broadcast) TV Advertising Standards Code rules 5.1 (Misleading advertising), 5.2.2 (Implications) and 5.2.3 (Qualifications).

Fantastic. For the full, thrilling saga, click here, or for gory details of an advert featuring "Colonel Sanders, grinning maniacally whilst holding a chicken by the legs in one hand and a kitchen knife pointing directly at it in the other", here.

Please go to this page and read what is a frankly awesome comic strip about the Panda Research Centre, its staff, its pandas, and what happened there during the recent earthquake.

A recommendation: last night I switched on the TV half way through Rich Hall's documentary "How the West was Lost" on BBC4. It was fantastic - a look at the frontier mythology and its importance in the American psyche as well as a timeline of western films and how they are informed by / reflect / relate to the politics of the era. It's apparently not yet on iPlayer, but if it does show up I'd entirely recommend watching it.

This article is worth reading if only to marvel at the creative genius that caused the writer, when under pressure to produce a credible story of childhood angst within seconds rather than blow his cover, to come up with this:

"Hello," I said, taking a deep breath. "My name is Matt. My father was an alcoholic circus clown who used to beat me with his oversize shoes."

Also, it turns out that there's a demon of handwriting analysis. Who knew?

From here:

The new advertising strategy follows the "Welsh miners" campaign, launched in 2006, which aimed to reposition the seedy image created by the "Slag of all snacks" and "Pot Noodle horn" ads for a more upmarket, health-conscious audience.

That's "upmarket" and "health-conscious" as in "drinking Special Brew and eating kebabs is more upmarket and health-conscious than guzzling four-star straight from the pump and licking grease from the pavement", presumably.

Spent most of today at Infosec, a big trade show for the computer security industry. Did I learn anything particularly interesting about computer security? Not really. Did I learn about some techniques for hypnotising people? Oddly, yes.

The most interesting has to be the handshake interrupt (page includes some good videos of Derren Brown using the method). Apparently - and I say this because I haven't tried it, and nor do I intend to - it's possible to put some people into a kind of trance fairly quickly by making as if to shake their hand and then, while their brain is on a sort of autopilot (take hand, shake up and down, let go) doing something unexpected. Something unexpected such as lifting their hand up to their face where it blocks their field of view, for example, or dropping to your knees (this is the "shoelace interrupt"). At this point, supposedly, one can issue a command with some probability that the other party will obey it. Clever. And a little disturbing.

I should point out really that I'm not a big believer in hypnosis. Or rather I believe that you can make people behave as if they're hypnotised, but that this is merely a decision on their part to, for whatever reason, do what you say. Whether or not this is a meaningful distinction, or even just a view based on a misconception of what hypnotism is, I'm not sure. Would I volunteer to go on stage and behave like a gibbon under the instruction of a stage hypnotist? No. Do I think hypnotism could help rid me of bad habits (like, say, drinking roughly a bathtub of coffee each day)? No. If someone suddenly grabbed my hand, shoved it in my face and told me to sleep, would I obey? Maybe. Who knows. Don't intend to find out. But, like a lot of these subjects (NLP, cold reading etc) it's somewhat fascinating.

Dear thirtysomething man wearing a suit in Broadwick street a few minutes ago,

You may be fascinated to hear that, although my casual attire is undoubtedly less snappy than your businesslike get-up, it is, nonetheless, solid. Westminster council may come up with some strange initiatives, but it has not yet found a reason to produce full-sized hologrammatic journalists and leave them dotted around Soho as some sort of bizarre obstacle course.

So, with that in mind, the next time you feel like barelling down the street in my direction and find that you have a choice between walking into a dustbin, the road, or me, you might want to consider waiting for half a second until I'm out of the way before attempting to pass between the other two hazards. Because, as you just found out, walking into me will only result in you bouncing off and into the path of oncoming traffic. And, no matter how exasperated an expression you choose to pull, don't expect me to apologise politely because you're either too rude to care about other people or too stupid to understand what happens when two physical bodies are propelled into one another at speed.

Finally, an extra word of advice: you may think that your black suit and tie, Brylcream and oversized sunglasses make you look like a movie star and/or one of the characters from Reservoir Dogs. They do not. They make you look like a twat.

Flicking through TV channels aimlessly last night I came across one of those silent movie style caption cards, displaying only the words:

"Potty the pirate has a date with an accountant from Hungary who is taking him to a burlesque night"

That alone makes the license fee worthwhile. Programme info here, Potty the Pirate do be livin' here.