Must try harder

Last night my lovely wife Elvira of Castille took me out for a birthday meal. It was splendid. We saw some massive bottles of champagne in a special room...

Now, the normal sized cork in a bottle the size of a dustbin was interesting, but it's the names that interest me the most.

These bottles were probably Nebuchadnezzars or Methuselahs. Biblical characters, right?

So (...drum roll...) where in the Bible does Magnum appear?

Lo, he did drive around the walls of Jericho seven times in his red Ferrari, and he did smite the Midianites before turning to the camera and raising an eyebrow. (Higgins, 3:16)

I'll get my coat.

Eco-Warriors of Genghis Khan

Apparently, Genghis Khan was good for the environment. So say researchers at the Stanford University Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology.

Now, of course, this is just the sort of ridiculous headline one expects on a "scientific" press release which will get it mainstream media exposure – and I'll leave that whole line of discussion to experts like Ben Goldacre.

No one who wouldn't already have done so will actually read the study, and the majority of us who come across it at work or at home will shake our heads at the ridiculous things people get paid to write about.

Anyway, the argument goes that by laying waste to Asia, Genghis Khan cut carbon emissions by the same amount as current global CO2 output from burning petrol each year. This was achieved by depopulation resulting in the regrowth of cleared forest over previously cultivated land.

Well, I for one am relieved that "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" was fictional, because if Genghis Khan had been lured by means of a Twinkie into travelling through time to 1980s San Dimas, we might all be living in a barren dystopian wasteland by now.

I don't know if the researchers took into consideration the amount of carbon released by the inevitable degree of village burning which Genghis Khan's towering achievement entailed. I'm also fairly certain that rotting corpses – of which there must have been a fair few, unless the Mongols were keen home-composters – release greenhouse gases.

What does the Carnegie Institution amount to? Well, presumably the argument goes that slaughtering 40 million people would be good for the environment – which would be a difficult political programme for any party to sell, particularly if burning villages along the way was out of the question. Some researchers also suggest that Genghis himself may have 16 million direct male descendents living today as a result of his antics, which is quite a major offset. Naughty naughty!

It seems to me that to attribute carbon reduction to reforestation that occurred as a side effect of depopulation brought about by mass murder is fairly tenuous. I think everyone can agree that anthropogenic global warming would come to an end if humanity was wiped from the face of the earth. But so what? That insight doesn't give you anything you can act on.

The subtext of this study casts Genghis Khan in Attila the Hun's "Scourge of God" role.

Attila was widely viewed as the antichrist - an unstoppable nemesis coming to destroy mankind for straying from the righteous path. Ironically, much like some people view climate change today.

People: science is one thing; faith in millenarian eschatology is quite another. Let's keep them separate. Don't waste time repenting – just get on with dealing with it.

There is a snake in my pocket

I know I promised an article on baby poo when I next returned to the matter of science, but that has fallen by the wayside after I discovered this (pictured) on coming into my office this morning.

My iPod headphones had somehow wrapped themselves around one of my chair's wheels. It took me quite a while to extract them.

This is an extreme example of a phenomenon that has been troubling me for some time:

How is it possible that you can put headphones into your pocket in some degree of good order, only to take them out moments later a gigantic, tight mess of knots?

I can only conclude that they are living entities, which start moving as soon as you take your eyes off them so as to entangle themselves (sort of) like the ourobouros of legend.

Or perhaps alternatively, there are unseen pocket-forces at work, causing the cable to tie itself up?

On the train, I see a lot of people wearing headphones. I don't see them wrestling with them like I have to every day. What am I doing wrong?

Miliband=Portillo

I have a personal issue to declare with David Miliband.

I was at a Labour conference fringe meeting years ago in Blackpool for work purposes, and I won a raffle prize which he presented. Miliband Major - pictured here as he then, as a mere education minister and quintessential nerd, appeared - got my name wrong. Despite my having written pretty damn clearly on the piece of paper. He made me sound like my name is a kind of pus-filled bubo.

Maybe you should have got your contacts or had your eyes lasered or whatever it is has stopped you needing glasses a little earlier David?

So it fills me with delight to realise that he's now turning into the late, little-lamented Michael Portillo.

1. They both bottled their big chances to take over his party – Miliband against Brown, Portillo against Major.

2. They both failed miserably in contests they ought to have won when they finally deigned to stand – Portillo against Iain Duncan Smith FFS, Miliband against his little brother.

3. Portillo is now not a politician, but a TV personality (maybe next year for Dancing on Ice, Michael!). Well, Miliband may struggle on the "personality" front, but oh look here he goes.

I've got a few TV ideas for the former foreign secretary as well:

1. "New" detective drama - "Miliband". He's a loner, he's a genius, he has issues, he loves bananas. Based on the series of novels by Ralph Miliband.

2. Full-time panellist on "Loose Women". Self-explanatory really. His discomfort is already palpable.

3. Post-midnight ITV2 phone-in poker host.

4. QVC jewellery demonstrator.

David, let me give you some advice. If you go into TV, you'll have to learn to read things put in front of you correctly. Imagine if on Loose Women you introduced Michael Ball as "Michael Boyle". All hell would break loose.

And while you're at it, how about representing the good people of South Shields who elected you as their MP back in May 2010 for a little while longer yet?

Trouser physics

January is a time for reflecting on your life. Specifically, for pondering the question "how did I put on half a stone in ten days?". A corollary of this important question that perennially bothers me, however, is the following.

How can the natural position that my trousers want to assume be simultaneously (i) tight as hell round the front and (ii) constantly falling down to reveal an inch or more or bum crack at the back?

The trouser waistband is a flexible loop. From my limited understanding of physics, it should fall naturally to a point where outward pressure is equal on all points, right?

Now, for someone of my non-standard shape, that may well not be perpendicular to the floor around something I believe other people have called a "waist". But how can it possibly be that I have to take a deep breath in to do my trousers up and then ten seconds later be pulling them back over my arse?

I know I'm not the only person this affects. I've seen you. And your arse.

Next time from the "Oh Dear. How Sad. Never Mind." science channel: the hydraulic applications of baby poo.

Dear Amazon...

I only received one email on Christmas Day, and that was from my dear friends at Amazon.co.uk, telling me about all the Boxing Day bargains they were offering.

This seemed the height of optimism, considering all the millions of parcels Amazon had failed to deliver prior to Christmas, thanks to the completely unprecedented combination of bad weather and a rise in usage of postal services during December.

Whether the backlog is cleared now, I suppose we'll never know as the media tends not to follow problems up once they start to be resolved.

And while I was grateful for that lonely Christmas Day email – having dropped my phone down a toilet on Christmas Eve, I was delighted to see that it was still working – I must admit to getting a bit sick of Amazon's endless torrent of spam into my inbox.

Where they get the idea that I am interested in pet carriers, Brita water filters or Evans Lichfield cushions – just a selection of today's offers - I don't know.

And are Kindles really that popular? Amazon seems awfully keen on them. Oh hang on, they manufacture them as well as selling them.

I used to think Amazon was awesome for its ability to recognise visitors and make intelligent recommendations, but like the rest of the internet – especially Google – its clamouring for attention just makes less inclined to visit.