The Book of the Year Read online

  Also cashing in on the breezy conditions, a British firm is planning a massive wind farm to be powered by giant kites flying higher than London’s Shard building. As they pull at a tether, they will generate power by rotating a drum on the ground.

  In Germany, scientists built what they called the ‘world’s largest artificial sun’: effectively 149 film-projector spotlights that can produce light 10,000 times as intense as the sun. When all the lamps are swivelled to point at a single spot, temperatures of up to 3,500°C can be generated. It is hoped that such power will one day produce hydrogen fuel. The project manager, Kai Wieghardt, said, ‘I had tears in my eyes today. It’s my baby.’

  In other energy news:

  Waitrose introduced trucks fuelled by rotten food.

  A smartwatch was invented that is powered by body heat alone.

  The pop group Gorillaz created the first music studio powered entirely by the sun.

  ESPIONAGE▶

  China offered a cash prize to catch spies.

  In April, Beijing’s government promised 500,000 yuan (about £60,000) to anyone who could expose a foreign agent. And in what state media described as an attempt to mobilise young people into ‘a huge, counter-spy force’, publishers inserted a game called ‘Find the Spy’ into school textbooks.

  While China was recruiting child spies, German children were allegedly being spied on. The My Friend Cayla toy doll was classified as ‘illegal espionage apparatus’ and banned. Cayla responds to user’s questions by accessing the Internet via a bluetooth connection embedded in her body. A German government watchdog ruled the connection could be hacked and used to eavesdrop on, and speak directly to, the user via the doll’s microphone system.

  Even more surprising than a children’s doll, the late Richard Whiteley – former host of Channel 4’s Countdown – was accused of top-level espionage. Ricky Tomlinson, star of The Royle Family, alleged that Whiteley worked for the intelligence services in the 1970s, when he was involved in a plot to jail Tomlinson and other trade unionists. Whiteley’s partner insisted the allegations were nonsense, not least because he was terrible with technology and ‘very indiscreet’.

  The most unexpected piece of spy-thwarting this year came courtesy of a boatload of farm animals. In April a merchant ship carrying 8,800 sheep in the Bosphorus inadvertently collided with a Russian spy ship. The spy ship sank. Fortunately, no one aboard either ship – human or livestock – was harmed.

  EVEREST▶

  Climbing Everest may have got easier: by nearly one inch.

  Indian scientists mounted an expedition to see whether an earthquake in 2015 had taken an inch off the height of Mount Everest. The potential height reduction may be good news for tired climbers, but the bad news is that tectonic plate movement makes Everest (and the rest of the Himalayas) 3–4 millimetres taller each year – so even if it has lost it, Everest will be back to its old height by about 2022.

  In May, Indian mountaineer Anshu Jamsenpa became the first woman to climb Everest twice within a week. A week later, 29-year-old Spanish mountaineer Kilian Jornet Burgada also climbed Everest twice within a week, without oxygen, and while suffering food poisoning. He modestly said it was ‘a mountain like any other – albeit taller’.

  Unfortunately, the less dedicated have now started cheating their way up Everest. Last year an Indian couple photoshopped their faces on to someone else’s photo from the summit, to trick the Nepal authorities into giving them their official Everest completion certificate. They were banned from climbing mountains in Nepal for 10 years. The authorities are now considering giving GPS belts to climbers to track whether or not they’ve told the truth about their ascent.

  The downside of all the people climbing Everest (at least, those who do actually climb it) is the huge mountain of litter they leave behind. So much rubbish, like abandoned tents and supplies, has been left on the mountain that this year the Nepalese government had to recruit sherpas to fill huge canvas bags with 80 kilos of waste each. They were then taken by the ‘bin men’ – helicopter pilots – who winched it away. The Sherpas received a bonus of $2 for every kilo of rubbish they brought back to camp.

  The entire country of Estonia will get up to 9 inches taller next year, after deciding to change the way it measured its height above sea level. The country will now be on a European-measured system, rather than a Russian one. As a result of the change, the highest peak in the country will grow 20 centimetres to 317.4 metres above sea level – about 3.5 per cent the height of Everest.

  EXCUSES▶

  To find out why an alt-right commentator forgot basic information about his children, see Divorce; why some employers don’t pay their staff fairly, see HMRC; why the residents of Nashville were late for work, see Mayors; why a ‘thunder master’ lost a fight in 10 seconds, see Martial Arts; why Kentish commuters were delayed, see Railways; why almost 900,000 litres of alcohol mysteriously went missing, see Rats; and why a real-life Jaws made someone late for dinner, see Shark Attack.

  EXTINCTIONS▶

  If the Chicxulub asteroid had hit the Earth 30 seconds later, we’d all still be speaking dinosaur.

  Chicxulub was the asteroid that landed in present-day Mexico 66 million years ago and obliterated the dinosaurs. Theoretically, it shouldn’t have been able to do so – it was only 9 miles across, the equivalent of a grain of sand hitting a bowling ball. But this year, geologists finally worked out how it caused such devastation: it hit the Earth in ‘the worst possible place’.

  Scientists drilled into the crater where the asteroid struck, and found that the rock there was full of sulphur. At the moment of impact, this would have vaporised, exploded upwards and turned into a cloud that reflected all the sun’s heat back into space, cooling the Earth to temperatures dinosaurs couldn’t handle. Since the asteroid struck at 40,000mph, matter from the Earth’s crust would have flown higher than the Himalayas, and a 10,000°C fireball would have formed and incinerated everything within 600 miles. It would also have made a hole 111 miles wide and turned the surrounding sea into steam. Had Chicxulub arrived 30 seconds later, it would have met the Earth at a different point in its rotation, avoiding that sulphur-filled spot, and the dinosaurs might still rule today.

  NASA carried out a computer simulation to see what would happen if a giant killer asteroid approached the Earth, and concluded that there wouldn’t be time to stop it before it wiped out the whole of humanity. However, there would be time to send up a satellite to take photos of the event. NASA researcher Dr Joseph Nuth said, ‘The biggest problem, basically, is there’s not a hell of a lot we can do about it at the moment.’

  FACIAL RECOGNITION▶

  A Ming-dynasty temple started using robots to ration toilet paper.

  China is on a massive face-recognition drive. Some traffic junctions now spot jaywalkers and display their faces on giant video screens to embarrass them; companies use facial recognition to let customers access vending machines or make deposits; and this year a Beijing marathon installed scanners to make sure people didn’t take short cuts.

  What’s more, the lavatories at Beijing’s 15th-century Temple of Heaven are scanning visitors’ faces to make sure they don’t take too much toilet paper. The change was instituted because the authorities had found that people were stealing huge lengths of toilet paper by stuffing it into backpacks. Customers now have to stare for three seconds at a machine outside the cubicle, which then spits out a single two-foot length of paper. If customers want more, they have to wait nine full minutes, then return. A temple spokesman told a local newspaper, ‘If we encounter guests who have diarrhoea or any other situation in which they urgently require toilet paper, then our staff on the ground will directly provide the toilet paper.’

  The technology behind face-recognition software is good – it can even tell if you’ve had plastic surgery. But it’s not yet perfect. Last year, Wang Yuheng, a Chinese man with a photographic memory, defeated a face-recognition machine in a trial that involved mat
ching women with their childhood photos. Wang’s skills are extremely rare: on a TV show he once successfully identified a specific glass of water out of 520 identical glasses of water.

  FAILURES▶

  Sweden’s Museum of Failure was a huge success.

  The museum, which opened in June in the small town of Helsingborg, contains over 70 exhibits, all of them commercial products which turned out to be disastrous failures. They include:

  ▶ A rejuvenating face mask that gave the wearer electric shocks

  ▶ The Bic for Her: a range of pens with floral patterns on them

  ▶ Heinz’s experimental green ketchup

  ▶ Coffee-flavoured Coca-Cola

  ▶ Colgate Lasagna, from the 1980s

  ▶ A cologne by Harley-Davidson called Hot Road

  ▶ The TwitterPeek, a handheld device whose sole purpose was to show Twitter messages, but that could display only the first 20 characters of any given Tweet

  ▶ Trump: The Game*

  The museum also hosted ‘Nights of Failure’, such as a renowned classical pianist performing the early, ‘far from perfect’ versions of Beethoven’s 5th.

  In press terms, the Museum of Failure was a massive success. Explaining the reason for the museum, director Samuel West said that he was ‘tired of all the success stories … failures never get any attention and they are so much more fascinating’. When he first registered the domain name for the website, West managed to misspell the word ‘museum’. He later said, ‘That could happen to anybody after a few beers.’ When asked why the museum was located in the town of Helsingborg, he said, ‘It’s where I live.’

  The Mexican Museum in San Francisco was informed by a team of independent inspectors that 96 per cent of its oldest exhibits could be fake, and that only 83 items out of 2,000 in the museum’s pre-Columbian collection were definitely genuine. The other 1,917 will now probably be given away to local schools or smaller museums. ‘I was surprised,’ said the chair of the museum’s board. ‘I thought we’d have more that are of museum quality.’

  FAKES▶

  People in Britain have unwittingly been buying fake fake fur.

  People who thought they’d been responsibly buying fake fur in British shops found that they had actually been purchasing fake fake fur – in other words, real fur. Sky News bought items labelled as artificial fur from multiple shops, and found the fibres came from such animals as rabbits, foxes, raccoons and cats. One father told the BBC, ‘You don’t want a raccoon pom-pom on your daughter’s head.’

  As well as fake fake fur, this year saw fake fake food. People in Nigeria were warned to be careful after police seized 2.5 tonnes of artificial rice made of plastic. Similar stories cropped up elsewhere in Africa, and in India news reports said more than 30 people had been arrested for selling plastic rice and eggs. However, all this news of fake food was itself fake. There is such a thing as ‘plastic rice’, but it’s something that is used in shipping and it’s never found its way into the food chain. For one thing, so-called fake rice is more expensive than real rice.

  Both the fake fur and the fake rice turned out to be fake fakes, but one real fake that made the news was an entire US embassy in Ghana. Late last year, news broke that for 10 years Ghana had had two US embassies – one real and one fake. The fake one, complete with a Stars and Stripes flag outside, was a money-making scam which sold people a range of false ID documents, fake visas and fraudulently obtained real visas. Possible giveaways included the fact that the ‘embassy’ was located in a shabby two-storey building with a corrugated iron roof, and that it was staffed by Turkish people pretending to be Americans. The organised crime ring that ran the embassy was so confident that it advertised it on billboards across West Africa. It also ran a fake Dutch embassy in case anyone fancied visiting the Netherlands.

  FAKE NEWS

  Andy: Fake news is about to get much worse.

  Anna: How?

  Andy: Researchers from the University of Washington have worked out how to make fake news videos. So in future, instead of seeing a made-up newspaper headline, you’ll see videos of people saying things they haven’t said. They’ve just made an artificial Obama.

  Dan: A robot Obama? A Robama?

  Andy: Well … nearly. They’ve taken footage of Obama and used software to make him say whatever they want. Essentially they’ve trained software to ‘watch’ videos of people speaking, then it learns the mouth shapes they make to go along with particular sounds, and they’ve taken his voice from previous words he’s said.

  Dan: So it’s like one step up from wearing a party mask of Obama and impersonating him.

  James: Well, it’s more like four normal steps up. Or one enormous step, I suppose.

  Anna: Facebook has recently circulated ways to spot fake news. Have you guys read their ten-point checklist?

  James: One: It’s on Facebook so it’s probably fake news.

  Anna: Not far off. It’s all very obvious stuff. Points include: ‘Check the evidence’, ‘Check for unusual formatting’ – I’m not sure what that means – and then ‘Is this a joke?’

  Dan: They should have said, ‘Would Obama really be talking about a secret trapdoor in the White House?’ Because that’s one I fell for. I saw a story about an escape route under the president’s desk which he could use to escape.

  Anna: Sounds legit. What was wrong with that?

  Dan: Well, it turned out to be from a site called ‘Not the White House’, and I just missed the ‘not’.

  Anna: Everyone’s acting like fake news is a new thing. But in 1828 Andrew Jackson started a rumour that his presidential rival John Quincy Adams had procured an American prostitute for the Russian tsar to appease him. And that was almost 200 years ago. So it’s always been around.

  James: A lot of today’s fake news came from a certain town in Macedonia called Veles. According to some reports, teenagers in this town were writing fake stories so they’d get more clicks to make advertising revenue. They’ve stopped doing that now, but they have found a new way to make money.

  Dan: What’s that?

  James: They broadcast long silent clips on Facebook that show a question like ‘What do you think of Donald Trump?’ and people click on the smiley face, or the angry face, or whatever, and those clicks turn into revenue. So they don’t have to go to the trouble of writing news, they can just put silence up there.

  Dan: We should get in on that. Would save us having to write this book.

  FARMING▶

  Old MacDonald had a sex change, E-I-E-I-O

  The British charity LEAF (Linking Environment And Farming), which promotes sustainable agriculture, has come up with a new, up-to-date version of ‘Old MacDonald’s Farm’. The first verse of the new version goes:

  Young MacDonald had a farm

  Yo, yo, yo, yo yo!

  And on that farm she had a drone

  Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo!

  She flew it here, she flew it there

  Checked the farm, from in the air

  Young MacDonald had a farm

  Whirr, whirr, whirr whirr, whirr!

  In Kenya, Old MacDonald’s cows probably go ‘clunk clunk clunk’, as farmers there are using giant mechanical cows called anaerobic digesters, which work rather like bovine stomachs. They take plant matter in at one end and fire out manure from the other.

  These at least are real farms, but it emerged this year that in Britain farms are not always what they seem. Waitrose’s ‘British ready meals’ range was found to include lamb from New Zealand farms. The supermarket explained that while the lamb may indeed have been from the other side of the world, the recipe was 100 per cent British. After a storm of outrage, the company caved and relabelled the range ‘Waitrose Classic’. A spokeswoman said, ‘We understand why confusion has arisen.’ Waitrose isn’t the only guilty one: last year Tesco launched a range from the non-existent ‘Nightingale, Redmere and Rosedene farms’. They were all invented by the supermarket, offering food that may so
und British but in many cases has been grown abroad.

  Switzerland relaxed laws governing the sale of insect-based foods. Previously, shops had to have special authorisation to sell grub-based grub; now, they can sell any food that includes mealworms, locusts or crickets. Delighted by the news, the Swiss supermarket chain Coop announced they would be launching worm meatballs and a wormburger.

  FAT LEONARD▶

  US navy officers were bribed with prostitutes by a man called Fat Leonard.

  Malaysian businessman Fat Leonard is so nicknamed because he weighs more than 350 pounds and is called Leonard. He bribed US officials with luxury goods, travel expenses and prostitutes in order to get them to direct their boats to his ports, where he could bill them for overpriced fuel, barges, water, sewage removal and tugs. Twenty-seven people have now been charged over the scandal, and this year one of them, Robert Gilbeau, became the first US navy admiral ever to be charged with a federal crime in connection with his military service.

  It’s not the only waste of US army money this year. The Pentagon spent $28 million on forest camouflage uniforms for Afghan troops. Afghanistan has only 2.1 per cent tree cover.

  FERTILITY▶

  Spain now has a Minister for Sex.

  The Spanish government tackled the country’s low fertility rate by employing a ‘sex tsar’. Edelmira Barreira Diz, the senator who has stepped into the newly created role, has been tasked with reversing the country’s declining population trend. She will be working with communities to help them understand the urgency of the problem and the need to procreate. This year, Spain registered more deaths than births for the first time since 1941.