With this being what I think is a snap of the twin flumes of the ultimate abyss on 'Symphony of the Seas', billed as the largest cruise ship in the world. See references 3 and 4. Not only floating care homes (a old designation with a newly topical ring), but floating climbing walls.
Rather wet, so I chickened out of walking down to the station, where there was just one young lady in full Friday evening war paint. I thought that getting out at Vauxhall, given the crowds of the evening before might be a mistake, so after with some battle with my mobile phone and the Southwestern Trains wifi, I established that one could indeed travel from Waterloo to Green Park on the Jubilee Line. To think that I once had more or less the whole tube map off by heart.
Out at Green Park to inspect the not very old building at the bottom of Dover Street, the bottom of which used to host a branch of Caffè Nero, but which now in the throes of a major refurbishment. Not too clear what is happening to the club next door. A club which appears to be mixed up with something called Guestlists, which seems to function both to provide clubs with celebrity visitors and to drum up paying visitors from the wider world. A whole industry of which I had only been dimly aware - and of which I imagine that reference 5 is a fair sample. I also imagine that as an older gent who was never was much good at the party scene, I would have to be able to exhibit a very healthy bank balance to be allowed to sample the delights on offer.
Arrived at the Goat in Stafford Street in good time to take a beverage before the talk. Very crowded but the service was very efficient - possibly substance enhanced - and we were lucky enough to get some seats upstairs, also crowded, which was unusual. The bright young things that mostly use the place usually seem to prefer to stand around outside, even when they are not smokers.
Professor Walker turned out to be both well prepared and a good talker, although he perhaps went on for a little too long. Too much to take in in one go. The master of ceremonies for the evening was the interim director of the Institution and I thought she did a good job of taking questions, nearly all from children. Another lady who did not think that the occasion was about her. But a lady whom I cannot find on the Institution website. Whatever happened to Shaun Fitzgerald, who did not seem to have been there very long, perhaps since 2018?
Walker was a chap who started out as an engineer working on military airplanes and who then jumped sideways into both the world of fairground rides - particularly of the big dipper variety - and performance art. A chap who likes to dabble in all the science around the world of thrills. He was proud of some genetic modification to his Dopamine machinery, possibly something to do with a gene called DRD2, which meant that he was more into thrills than the average man in the street. The same stuff which figured in reference 6.
I offer a few other snippets.
Presumably the place at reference 7, snapped above: 160007 Crenshaw Boulevard if you please. I always like to track down the places one has never heard of that second hand books I have bought on the Internet come from!
Jumping ahead he was also into bio-feedback, with people's state and feelings as the ride (or experience) progressed feeding back into the control of same. With modern VR headsets meaning that one could provide a lot of thrill without needing to spend £20m. A playground swing and a headset sufficed.
This last used to principle known to the Victorians, that modest vestibular input from the ears when one is riding a relatively tame swing, if supplemented by appropriate visual sensations, can be made into something much less modest. One can, for example, by appropriately moving the room in which the swing is located, make people believe that they are looping the loop. Sadly neither Bing nor Google turns up the picture of the Victorian swing boat involved.
There was talk of the seven degrees of freedom of the human vestibular system (yet another magic seven), which one could much more easier exploit with the help of VR than one could in real life.
He showed us some pictures of a playground slide which looped the loop. It certainly worked, but it seems that it never made it to the playground.
He liked to measure thrill by integrating a quantity thrill-one times delta thrill-one, where thrill-one is arousal (how worked up one is) times valence (pleasure-pain) and where delta is the change in unit time, to give thrill-two. In essence, you want lots of change to arousal and valence - with the big dipper at Southend doing very well because, while not being world beating in terms of the size of individual bits of thrill, it packed a lot of it into a small compass. He observed in passing that the ethics people at his university took some persuading that it was OK to conduct experiments in which one set out to frighten people. Similarly, if you go on a fairground ride, you are implicitly agreeing that the showman can frighten you, within reason.
He had done quite a lot of work on rides involving vertical drops. How long should such a drop go on for? It seems that the way to get a good bang for your buck is to prime people with a short drop shortly before you gave them the real thing. That way you really got them going.
He talked about the g-forces on rides. Its seems that in the olden days at Coney Island they went up to 12g - with nurses on hand in case of trouble - whereas now you are only allowed 5g real - ranging up to 7g virtual with a bit of sensory trickery. And talking of nurses, it also seems that when incubators for babies were first invented, they went on show at Coney Island too. Sufficiently novel for people to pay to look at them - and their occupants. DPLA knew nothing about this - but Bing did, turning up lots of snaps, one of which is that included above.
Just missed the 2116 at Vauxhall, which gave me time to think that I should have put a bit more in the collecting bucket of the knife crime people on exit from the tube; maybe something folding rather than something clinking. A worthy cause, but no idea which one, with Bing turning up quite a few charities in this area.
We still made it to the Marquis at Epsom by around 2200, which was busy with lots of young people. Some evidence of pick-up action. Some evidence of older men leering. Not that we could talk! Thinning out by 2300, when presumably the young people were moving off to one of the two or three clubs on offer.
PS 1: Bing has now tracked down the interim director, one Lucinda Hunt, a lady with a background in education rather than in science, although she does have a degree in physics. Not to be confused with a US luvvie of the same name. While Shaun Fitzgerald is stepping down a touch early to spend more time with his other interests.
PS 2: a couple of days later: I might add that a three year old girl granddaughter has an interesting relationship with fear, seeming to like being pretend frightened by pretend monsters - which might be old people suitably acting the part or suitably activated soft toys - cats, crocodiles and so forth. And who is to say how close being pretend frightened is to actually being frightened? In any event, one might reasonably say that this three year old likes to be frightened, within bounds. Likes the thrill of it.
Reference 1: https://thrilllaboratory.com/.
Reference 2: https://aerial.fm/?page_id=90.
Reference 3: https://www.royalcaribbean.com/cruise-activities/ultimate-abyss.
Reference 4: https://www.royalcaribbean.com/cruise-ships/symphony-of-the-seas.
Reference 5: https://www.guestlist.london/.
Reference 6: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2018/12/awakenings.html.
Reference 7: http://www.elcamino.edu/.
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