MAY 04
let's play tag
Mr. Blunkett would love it, but, as pointed out several times here on the site ‘ID-tags the size of a rice grain’ don’t exist yet. Well, OK, they do, but their range is only a few metres. That’s not at all what Mr B’s interested in. What he wants is this . . .
http://www.onguard-plus.com/english/
Considerably larger than a rice grain, but, nonetheless, teched-up in the fairly obvious way that governments / military worldwide have been dreaming about. That is to say, a gadget which uses GPS, ( so that it knows where it is ) and the mobile phone network ( so that it can tell a control centre ).
Curiously though, after decades of development by various companies, the current practical solution has evolved as a device which appears to be, in essence, not overly different to a mobile phone without a keypad.
The only other major difference seems to be that the ‘mobile’ is strapped to one’s ankle, and should the ‘offender’ cut the strap ( fairly easy apparently ) then of course the device will immediately send an emergency ping to the control centre.
Why not give the ‘offenders’ a real mobile ( presumably cheaper ? ), programmed to periodically check-in to the control centre in the same way as the current tags, but strapped to their wrist instead ? That way the ‘offender’ will be more than happy with their free, year 2004, GPS enabled mobile - and the control centre will also have the added frisson of listening-in to their ( possibly revealing ) chats too . . .
Not surprisingly, specialty mobiles which are programmed in this way already exist for security applications, ( I don’t understand Swedish, but for those who do, see: http://www.multicomsecurity.se/) The phones check-in every 60 secs and tell the controller where they are. The only thing missing is the wrist strap..
( Note 1* Several countries already have legislation in force which insists that all newly manufactured mobile phones must be GPS equipped, so that they can be tracked down to a few metres or so )
(Note 2* One or two fundamental technical problems with the whole electronic
tagging idea do spring to mind. If the Home Office would like to e-mail me,
I’d be happy to point out the potential Achilles Heels ( for a reasonable
consultancy-fee of course ))
'The Handover'
( on the 'handover of power' in Iraq )
You’ve heard of ‘Songs without Words’, ? So, why not ‘Cartoons without Pictures ’ ? . . .
“Well son, you’ve finally come of age ”
“Er . . yeah Dad, I guess . . . “
“So I’ve decided to give you ‘Full and Complete transfer of power’, regarding my 4.5L Turbo-charged 4x4 SUV with chrome fittings and specialty bichromic paint – It’s all yours son. Enjoy.”
“ Wow ! Dad, That’s fantastic ! Cool ! Thanks a million ! . . . Er, . . . so . . . can I have the keys then ? “
“Don’t be a jerk son . . . “
almost carbon
Steel prices are on the rise. There’s a global shortage, blamed by most commentators on massively increased demand from China, which has more or less stopped exporting its own steel, and is grabbing all it can find on the international market.
But there’s another, less publicised reason. It’s dirty, black, and smells of sulphur. It’s called coke. Thousands of tons are needed by the global steel industry every year to help refine the metal from iron ore. Over the last three years, it’s price has skyrocketed.
If you’d bought £1000 worth in 2001, you could sell it today for £7500. Not a bad R.O.I.?
Which raises an interesting conjecture: After the UK and most of ‘Old Europe’ has been spending the last few decades deliberately running the coal industry ( & workforce & unions ) into the ground ( sorry ), perhaps a new opportunity is on the horizon ?
The UK, for instance, has trillions of tons of pristine coal reserves, still lying down there as it has done for millennia. Now, it seems that, all of a sudden, those subterranean stocks are beginning to look nice and shiny again. And presumably, any new coke-plants which could be constructed nowadays could be made vastly more enviro-friendly than they were say 50 years back ? Plus of course, a by-product of coke production is coal-gas – which can power cookers, heaters, even cars *.
Will the anthracite pits of South Wales soon be in for a spot of re-working ? I feel a song coming on . . .
p.s. The author appears to be rambling on the hillsides of Glamorganshire again, and doesn’t necessarily think that going back to reliance on coal is a ‘good idea’. Coal is unfashionably filthy stuff - though not much more filthy than oil.
Note * In a strange twist of economics, UK coke used to be a largely unwanted by-product of coal-gas production ! In the early part of the 1900’s, it was often given away for free, to anyone, if they turned up at the local gasworks with a wheelbarrow.
It
occurred to me that some readers might never have seen a piece of coke. It’s
almost 90% carbon, is oddly light and has a bizarre ‘brittle-frothy’ look
and feel. It burns very well, a bit like charcoal, and is largely smoke free
( that’s to say, the unwelcome gases which it produces when burning
are mostly transparent . . . )
all square?
The Recording Industry Association of America ( RIAA ) is
continuing its controversial battle to recover damages from people whom, they
claim, have downloaded music files and illegally shared them on the internet.
The RIAA reps some 1000 music companies, and looks after their interests in the US. They say that when songs are illegally downloaded, the record company, the retailer, and of course the artist, loses money.
According to a recent report on SiliconValley.com
http://www.siliconvalley.com/
the RIAA has sued some 3000 people since last september, and has already ‘settled’ with
around 480 of them – for about $3K each. Hmmm. That’s about $1.4Million
. . . ( so far )
A
fair bit of cash ?
Presumably, if the money had been earned in the traditional way, i.e. through sales of CD’s etc, it would have been divided up to pay the label, shops and artists, but now things have got a bit complicated . . .
Concentrating for a moment just on one of the usual recipients - the underdog artists – I’ve been wondering, purely as a thought experiment, what’s happening to their share ?
In the US, recording artist’s royalties are collected, in the main, by three organisations, - ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. So the question is - are they going to get a percentage of the ‘damages’, which they will then divvy up and pass on to their deserving composers and performers ? Or, will all the money, and more, be consumed by the cost of the RIAA’s litigation in the first place ?
In other words, who, if anyone, stands the best chance of benefiting from the legal action so far ? Er . . . . Singing lawyers perhaps * ?
Note* According to a Google search for “The
Singing Lawyer”, this is a surprisingly common vocation . .
. and includes, for instance Bob Mortimer of Vic & Bob fame.
patience
“Nah, that one’s rotten. Try another. No that’s rotten too. Hey, that one looks ok. No, not ripe enough. Look, over there, that one’s pretty good. Hmmm, nah, been eaten-away on the other side look. Let’s try some roots. There were some here yesterday. No, all gone. Maybe over there, under that bush. Wheyhey ! a nice juicy root.”
That’s how we’ve been trained over the last few million years. When it comes to browsing, we are, by nature, very, very, very patient creatures. Perhaps that’s why we put up with the www.
Every day, it gets bigger and bigger – and potentially more interesting. It also gets slower and slower – and crashes more and more. A bit like traffic in a big city. The ‘sheer volume’ is always going to end-up at the level where most commuters and businesses can just about begrudgingly stand it without busting a bloodvessel. And, as mentioned, because we are so astonishingly patient, the level automatically self adjusts to #11 on the frustratometer.
How many attempts would you put up with to get through to a world-class, blue-chip, centre-of-excellence, portal site – where your e-mail happens to reside ? 5 ? 10 ? 50 ?
How many times are you prepared to be led up the garden path to your mailbox – only to find that the key won’t open it at the moment. “Funny, did yesterday. Doh, well, try again later.”
So, how patient are you ? Or rather, how patient should you be ?
Perhaps a touch of empiricism is required ? By way of example, here's an i.s.p. which can test your patience for you ( for free ).
As the welcome page says, “Start your trial now . . .“
only sleeping
Space agencies around the world have a problem. In the unlikely event that they are given the budget, they would all like to be able to send astronauts on long term missions – to Mars and beyond. etc etc. But the human difficulties are manifold. Here’s the Really Magazine take on the subject.
Firstly, there is the well researched problem with muscle atrophy and bone wastage. This will almost certainly be overcome with exercise regimes, electrical muscle stimulation, dietary supplements etc.
Second problem is the radiation dose the astronauts would receive during their journey. A 6Hr flight in a normal 35,000 feet passenger jet gives you a radiation dose more or less equal to a chest x-ray – but in deep space you’d get well and truly fried after a couple of months. The spacecraft can be shielded of course, 3Mtrs of concrete would probably do the trick, but the agencies are not going to be overly keen on launching the equivalent of a small block of flats into orbit. A much better solution would be to surround the craft with a powerful electromagnetic field of some kind to deflect the radiation. After all, the Earth very successfully uses exactly the same technique – the magnetosphere.
Now we come to the third problem. How can you survive being cramped up, for a year or so, in a tiny ‘cell’ with a bunch of other bozos without strangling them. Ask the Navy. They know all about the effects on the crews of nuclear subs, which frequently spend six months or so underwater. The subs themselves could stay submerged more or less permanently - but even hand picked ‘psychologically-stable’ crews can’t stand more than six months. And, compared to a space crew, they live in amply spacious surroundings with all mod-cons.
Hmmmmm. This third problem is without doubt the hardest nut to crack. Sci-Fi books and movies always use a ‘hibernation chamber’ of some sort. The crew are put into a hibernation state and are woken by the computer as the craft nears its destination. Which is a great idea. Unfortunately, a viable technique hasn’t been invented yet. Not for humans anyway.
But there are plenty of animals ( and insects ) which are experts at it. Bears, squirrels, and, of course, the aptly named dormice. So, there’s nothing for it, we are going to have to find out how they do it. This is the area of research where the space agencies should be putting all their cash, right now. Forget the clunky robots.
(
Either that, or let the squirrels go instead. They’re highly intelligent,
can be trained to do almost anything, and they’re very good at digging
and climbing. )
So, I guess we’ve arrived at the real problem - until we learn how
to hibernate, there won’t be any long-term space missions. Nobody wants
to be upstaged by a squirrel.
The day after yesterday.
The following article was filed under the ‘argument’ section by the Independent - very appropriate . . .
http://argument.independent.co.uk/
The author, Prof.James Lovelock – the person responsible for the ‘Gaia’ hypothesis, has come to the conclusion that the only hope for humanity is nuclear power. He says that “nuclear energy from its start in 1952 has proved to be the safest of all energy sources”
Hhmmm. I think perhaps the prof might be suffering from a touch of logical dodderiness on that one ?
As an example, take the case of the popular sport of ‘blindfold skydiving’. Blindfolded parachutists jump from a plane and decide when to pull their ripcord - just by counting. The closer they are to the ground when they pull the cord, the more points they score. If you interview an enthusiast, they will tell you that the sport, though exhilarating, is hazard free. In fact, they have never, ever, had a nasty accident. Every single time, without exception, that they have jumped, things worked out fine – so the sport must be 100% safe . . .
The point which the prof seems to be missing, is that when things do go wrong with a nuclear station there’s a good chance that the result will be absolutely catastrophic. So far, there hasn’t been a catastrophic accident * – as luck would have it.
But there have been at least six extremely serious ‘incidents’, all of which featured a partial meltdown.
1952 Chalk River, Ottawa, Canada
1976 Greifswald, East Germany
1979 Three Mile Island, USA
1986 Chernobyl, nr. Kiev, Ukraine
1999 Tokaimura, Japan
And of course, not forgetting the UK’s contribution :
1957 Windscale - Pile One, Cumbria
Perhaps he doesn’t know that Windscale ( renamed ‘Sellafailed’ by the government in an attempt to befuddle the public ) is currently sitting on top of a half-melted reactor core - which is still in danger of catching fire again some 50 years after the accident which shut it down. The final clean-up completion date is set for 2037 ( barring accidents )
( original link now moved to subscription only )
now see : ( subscribers only )
So here's my idea for an argument :
Is Gaia going gaga ?
* Even the horrendous problems caused by the Chernobyl
accident are far from the potential for contamination inherent in all fission
reactors.
Shiver me timbers !
Greepeace ‘Sailor Mongering’ case thrown overboard .
As reported here on 15th Oct, Greenpeace was keelhauled before the federal courts because they decided to protest against ( what they said was ) the importation of an illegal shipment of mahogany.
The authorities reckoned they could nail Greenpeace under an 1872 law which forbids anyone to board a ship without permission as it is ‘about to arrive’ at a US port. ( The law was originally drafted to prevent pimping by owners of portside brothels, who were in the habit of boarding ships before they arrived in the hope of securing customers ahead of their rivals. )
On 15th Oct, Really Magazine helpfully recommended the following
:
“Tip for Greenpeace. Next time,
why not board the ship outside territorial waters instead of inside ?”
Wouldn’t you know it but that’s exactly what the judge picked up on last Wednesday ! Well, almost. What he actually said was ''Because of fortuity,'' viz. the fact that the APL Jade was about six miles out of port when boarded, it did not fall under the expression ''about to arrive'' . He then kicked the case out of court . . . and, because the case never reached the jury stage, there can, apparently, be no appeal.
So that’s the end of that. Er, not quite. The other Really Magazine prediction - that the litigation would inevitably reveal whether there was, or wasn’t, any illegally harvested mahogany on board – was wrong. That didn’t happen - because the case was sunk in midstream.
So, was there or wasn’t there ?
Depends who you ask. ‘No’ according to the owners of the ship, a Singapore company called NOL. Their fleet of American President Lines ships carry containers for many different customers, and the two containers in question, apparently didn’t belong to APL. A spokesperson for the company informed Really Magazine that, anyway, they “contained certain types of permitted lumber from Brazil on the vessel, but no mahogany”.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/
weighing the Mona Lisa’s smile
It seems to me that trying to mathematically analyse music, to determine why it makes us feel the way it does, is a bit like trying to weigh the Mona Lisa’s smile, or dissect the smell of freshly baked bread.
That hasn’t stopped people having a stab at it though. The latest attempt comes from the University of New South Wales, and was performed by the music department’s Dr. Schubert. ( no, I’m not making this up – check the link )
He has discovered, among other things that “ . . arousal is associated with a composition's loudness and to a lesser extent its tempo. “ Perhaps I could suggest a counterpoint to the doc’s findings, viz. that if the most important factor in a musical piece is its loudness, then the ‘Ramones’ would definitely rate above Ravel, and we could all make ourselves happy simply by turning the volume up.
He also draws attention to the familiar concept that minor chords tend to sound ‘sad(ish)’, whilst major ones, in general, sound ‘happy(ish)’. Even that is debatable though. A few hundred years back, the musical interval of a major third, ( the main factor in musical chords with a ‘major’ vibe ) was considered a discord, to be avoided at all costs in harmonious compositions of any worth.
Still, the antipodeans should know a thing or two about classical music, after all, just take a gander at this glittering list of world-famous composers :
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Johann Strauss Jr. (1825-1899)
Johann Strauss Sr. (1804-1849)
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951)
Not forgetting
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
All born in Australia.
Er, sorry, no, my mistake, that should be Austria.
http://music.arts.unsw.edu.au/aboutus/research/
*note server appears to be (upside)down at pres.
Advanced condtional-loop programming tutorial in ‘Politicon’ ( version 2004 )
10 IF
_____20 There was a country . . . Which had defied / ignored ten separate UN security council resolutions condemning its actions since the 1960’s.
_____30 Which had clandestinely developed and stockpiled various types of weapons of mass destruction.
_____40 Which had refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty.
_____50 Which had passed laws specifically to allow torture in its prisons.
_____60 Which had invaded and permanently occupied land belonging to neighbouring countries.
70 THEN
_____80 George, Tony, and the ‘coalition for democracy and freedom’ would do something about it P.D.Q.
Run
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Stop/error : illogical statement at line 80
So, what’s going on here ? It’s a commonly made mistake.
The Global variable “Spineless_Political_Hypocrisy” had not
been declared before the loop was executed. A value of around 90% should
be enough.
‘Global Dimming’ ?
Not surprisingly, the amount of light falling on the Earth’s surface has been dropping over the last few decades. It was first quantified in the 1950’s, when researchers worked out that it was diminishing by about 2 – 4% per decade. A quick back of a napkin calc compounds that to around 15% (ish) up until now . That’s a lot.
The current research, which was done in Australia, backs-up the findings. The air is full of particles ( er, that’s called smog isn’t it ? ) which are diffusing the light. Not an enormous shock really. If you’re lucky enough to get the chance, look out of the window ( towards the horizon ) on any passenger-jet flight * , just about anywhere on the planet, and you can see the stuff. It’s everywhere. It’s brown.
Gargantuan factories and motor exhaust pipes are belching out gunk on a 24Hr basis just about everywhere – halfheartedly regulated by governments who know intuitively which side their bread is buttered – things are getting decidedly murky.
Given time of course, the smog would settle back to the surface, just as all the zillions of tons of dust has done in the past ( dust kicked up by volcanic eruptions, meteor impacts etc ).
Anyway, let’s look on the bright side. The sunsets are getting more spectacular every year . . .
* You
can reduce your contribution to ‘CO2 emissions
per passenger mile’, by at least 50% by taking a train instead.
But your journey will take five times as long – you might have to stay in a hotel overnight – ask them to disconnect the heating / air conditioning and turn off the lights.
‘Global Dimming’ ? I just have to twist things : I can’t help
it . . .
http://www.geocities.com/kurtodrome/
How can you review a film you haven’t seen
( and maintain your credibility ) ?
You can’t, as Michael Moore has recently been explaining on his site. But what the hell, I’m going to stick my neck out and give a plug to a documentary film which I haven’t seen yet, because I really like the main premise – viz., if you were to think of corporations as people – the majority would be declared insane. “The Corporation- the Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power” is coming to a screen near you soon ( fingers crossed ).
With interviews featuring Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Howard Zinn and many others, the film looks at whistle-blowers, brokers, gurus, spies, players, pawns and pundits - it can’t fail to be interesting.
As George Monbiot recently pointed out in his book “Captive State”, the corporations were originally very heavily controlled and regulated by governments. Now, the transnational corps tell the governments what to do. In the interests of commerce ( and the directors ) virtually every country in the world has drafted laws specifically to try to disconnect large companies ( and the directors ) from serious liability. After all, that’s what the word ‘Ltd.’ means.
I can’t wait for the film to arrive at my local cinema ( some chance ) so that I can give it a post-viewing review.
http://www.thecorporation.tv/usa/index.php
unconnected supplemental sobering thought for the day . . .
Just over 250 years ago, Voltaire wrote the following in his novel 'Zadig'
" Then he [Zadig] pictured to himself men as they really are, insects devouring one another on a tiny fragment of mud. [the Earth] "
Surely that's going a bit far, don't you think ? Well, here's the news
http://www.dw-world.de/english/
and
http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGA03IIYFUD.html
( link now off line, was 'wedding party bombing' )
Ever been woken by a smell ?
Unlikely, according to Rachel S. Herz, visiting assistant prof of psychology at Brown University, Rhode Island.
In an olfactory experiment, sleepers were exposed to the smell of peppermint – and not one of them woke up. The conclusion being that “Human olfaction appears insufficiently sensitive and reliable to act as a sentinel system”
Which is shame. But perhaps the researchers didn’t choose the right smells ? For example, it’s pretty clear that most people will wake up if subjected to the sound of a pneumatic drill - but what about a cat’s purr, or Debussy’s ‘Arabesque No. 1’ ? ( To be fair, the university also used pyridine, a coal-tar derivative, and that didn’t work either. )
Personally, I’m firmly convinced that I have often been woken-up by a smell, so perhaps I can volunteer some odorous ideas for follow-up studies. If the university cares to contact me, I’ll be happy to post them some in hermetically sealed sample containers.
Or perhaps readers have their own suggestions ?
http://www.brown.edu/Administration/
p.s. As an aside, I’ve often ‘dreamed’ a smell. And it’s
every bit as convincing as the real thing. Oh, what an enigma the human brain
is – I think.
flipping earth
It’s been known for a very long time that the Earth’s magnetic poles flip every now and again. In the 1950’s the Visionary / Sillyfool* (* delete as appropriate ) Immanuel Velikovsky proposed that the flip might be caused by passing comets. Not a bad theory, but it turns out he was wrong. They just do, on a regular basis – and no-one has any idea why.
For our education, Nature has conveniently made a recording of the Earth’s past pole-flips in the seabed of the Atlantic. As the continental plates drift apart, molten rocks slowly ooze to the surface, and form, in effect, a continuously expanding strip. The alternating magnetic flips have been frozen into the solidifying rocks like a giant geological barcode. Since geologists can estimate ( roughly ) how fast the plates are separating, it’s not difficult to calculate that the magnetic poles are wont to reverse every 200,000 years or so – a mere blip on the geological timescale. The field is, in effect, oscillating.
And, as has been pointed out recently – we’re due for another flip. The magnetic field is failing rapidly, and there are now some parts of the globe ( e.g. regions in South Africa ) where a magnetic compass just doesn’t work anymore . . .
So, what’s the damage ? If current theories are correct, there will be an awful lot of lost birds, newts and turtles wandering around in circles. But from the human, mag-blind, point of view – so what ?
During the pole-flip, there will inevitably be a period ( a few hundred years ? ) when the magnetic field will be chaotic – or nulled. There has been a niggling worry that if ( i.e. when ) the magnetic field around the Earth collapses, dangerous radiation from the sun will be able to reach the surface. ( currently, most of the dangerous flavours are deflected by the so-called ‘magnetosphere’ ). If that were to happen, we’d need considerably more than a few tubes of SPF50 to survive.
No need to panic as yet though. Researchers at the University of Munich have computer-modeled the scenario - and predict another mechanism will come into play. The ‘solar wind’ itself, a million-kilometre-an-hour stream of hydrogen and helium nuclei, will ‘wrap itself around the Earth’ ( presumably due to gravitational forces ) and this will act as shield in the same way as the magnetosphere currently does. We hope.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/
Objects in Earth orbit however, might find themselves grilled by the full force of the sun’s radiation. In other words, satellites might get fried. In an ironic twist, not only will surface-bound magnetic compasses fail to align, but there's a good chance that the arrays of Global Positioning Satellites will be pretty unhappy too. We might have to go back to navigating by the stars for a few years.
The EU is soon to launch dozens of medium-earth-orbit positioning sats monikered ‘Galileo’,
which will ‘provide an alternative’ to the US GPS network ( and
the Russian Glonass system ). Of course, the European Space
Agency will have foreseen the sleeping magnetosphere problem, and will
have designed them to permanently withstand the full force of the Sun’s
radiation and solar wind . . . I expect.
“Nuclear energy has a big role to play in the expansion of freedom”
Eh?
Well that’s the opinion of U.S. Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans,
as quoted in a press release from the Nuclear Energy Institute a
few days back. Here’s the link.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/
Mr. Evan’s heart is obviously in the right place, because he wants to expand the US nuclear power industry ‘to help the three billion people across the globe who have to survive on less than $2 per day’. Quite how he makes a logical link between building more multi-billion dollar nuke power stations, and assisting the poor of Namibia isn’t all that clear. But surely he must know what he’s talking about ?
The Nuclear Energy Institute does point out though, that the ‘production costs’ for nuke energy are below that of oil or coal. That’s true. The ‘production costs’ are lower.
Only a few slight accountant’s oversights - they don’t take into account the ( as yet incalculable ) costs associated with the disposal of the radioactive waste which the reactors produce. Or the crippling decommissioning expenses for the reactor when it’s too unsafe to keep using. Or the insurance premiums to indemnify the owners of the reactor against any Chernobyl-sized accident. ( Not surprisingly, no independent insurance company would touch a nuke power plant with a 50Km pole – so, in the UK for example, a body called British Nuclear Insurance takes on the cover. Guess who underwrites them ? It might just be the UK taxpayers. ).
Mr. Evans also forgot to mention that, to this day, there’s still no agreed safe method for disposing of the past thirty years-worth of extremely dangerous radioactive toxic gunk - but Hey !, if it’s going to ‘expand freedom’ maybe that’s a risk worth taking. Meanwhile, thousands of tons of the stuff are currently festering in rad-hot ‘temporary’ dumps across the ‘developed world’, waiting for someone to come up with an idea. If, and when, some bright spark figures out a viable clean-up and disposal method – you can place bets that it’s not going to be cheap.
p.s.. Oh, bearing in mind the current political climate, there are one or two slight security risks associated with operating nuclear power plants – like a 747 dropping on top of one - but we’ll have to assume Mr. Evans has them all covered. Hasn't he ?
spuds
The low-carb diets which are so in vogue at the moment are causing people to shed the pounds pretty rapidly. Or more accurately the dollars. They are being lost by the companies whose business it is to produce products rich in carbohydrates. Take for example the potato industry. They are in trouble. In the US, prices have fallen about 14% from last year, while labour and transport costs have risen.
But the spud industry is not taking things lying down. No suree. The state of Idaho, for example, has just launched a statewide TV ad campaign explaining the benefits of potato eating. And, at a federal level, the National Potato Promotion Board has embarked on a $4.5Million multimedia PR blitz to ‘educate consumers’ about the healthy aspects of spud consumption.
But there’s another way to get the prices back up again. Viz. putting the excess potatoes back in the soil again. No, not planting them silly! choppin’ ‘em up and using ‘em as fertiliser. The US Natural Resource Conservation Service ( who says American’s don’t have a sense of irony ?) oversaw the deliberate destruction of some 30,000 tons of potatoes this March . . .
They could have been:
Boiled
Roasted
Fried
Sautéed
Made into crisps
Used for animal feed
Turned into Vodka
Fashioned into ad-hoc printing blocks for children
Used as armatures for Mr. ( or Mrs.) Potatohead™
Oh well, what can you do? Even the US National Potato Board admits
that “96 percent of Americans don’t know the main attributes of
potatoes” That, I can believe.
Come to think of it though, I'm not sure I do either . . .
http://www.pressherald.com/business/
also see
http://www.healthypotato.com/nutrition.asp
and
Now we’re lost.
It can be niggling when you come across somebody who can do something you can’t. Even more annoying if you can’t figure out how they do it. Triply aggravating if that ‘somebody’ is a newt.
The talent in question is an accurate sense of direction - and although some people have a rudimentary, and easily confused version, no-one comes close to the skills of newts, hundreds of species of birds, or even the humble fruit-fly.
There have been numerous theories which try to explain the creatures’ sensory gifts. It’s a very fuzzy subject, but what is known for certain is that the animals can use the Earth’s magnetic field to navigate. In other words, they have a bio-magnetic-compass of some sort.
In the case of migratory birds, which very visibly demonstrate their accuracy in navigation, the flavour-of-the-decade explanation was that they may have crystalline magnetic particles in their beak which are somehow linked-in to the nervous system. How likely does that sound ?
Not
very, according to a study published two days ago in Nature magazine.
Researchers at the University of California tested 12 unlucky robins
by immersing them in low-level broadband radio noise aligned ( or not ) with
the Earth’s magnetic field*. Wouldn’t you just know it – depending
on the alignment, they got confused and couldn’t orientate properly.
The most refreshing and interesting part of the study was not the findings themselves - rather that the academics concerned apparently blew the current explanation out of the water – but didn’t provide a competing theory.
In the refreshingly honest words of the Prof. responsible, commenting on how the birds actually do navigate : “ . . . We’re not sure.”
That’s more like it.
*The researches claim that the radio frequencies were carefully chosen to
eliminate the possibility that small magnetic particles were the crucial
operating factor. Quite how this was done is not made clear in the press
release: so you’ll have to buy a copy of Nature, May 13th.
"Yes Mr. Smith, Robodoc will see you now".
They have swiveling LCD screens for heads, their eyes and ears are cameras and microphones, and they are doing the tele-rounds right now at various hospitals in the US.
The
robots are five feet tall, weigh-in at a healthy 200 pounds, and can roam
the wards at about 2 mph. They also ‘interact’ with the nursing
staff and patients.
According to the manufactures, InTouch Health of California ( where else ? ) They perform a ‘remote presence’ function for doctors – who, in other words, don’t have to actually ‘be there’.
If there’s an emergency in the cardiac unit at three in the morning, the specialist doctor still has to be woken – but now he/she doesn’t have to drive in to the hospital – the consultation can be done from the doctor’s bedroom.
The whole system runs via the hospital’s intranet and is then connected via broadband to the doctor’s office/residence. Hopefully, the system is running via a thoroughly encrypted link-up, or it could give a whole new meaning to the word ‘hacking’.
http://www.detnews.com/2004/health/
‘Reality’ TV raises a few eyebrows.
It’s a bit late to apply as a contestant now, but you can still be a spectator of ‘The Swan’ on the Fox™ channel. Featuring a set of ladies who are undergoing a ‘makeover’ – to transform them into, er, ‘swans’ – the name of the show presumably chosen to imply the obvious, and somewhat unkind comparison with pulchritudinously-challenged ducklings.
In this case, the makeover consists of life-coaching, exercise regimes, dentistry, oh, and, of course, plastic surgery ( if deemed necessary ). Highlights to be televised for the viewer’s entertainment.
Here’s the link to the show. http://www.fox.com/swan/home.htm
The programme is currently feathering the nest of it’s producers, Freemantle TV, ( formerly Pearson ).
Here’s a pic of their CEO.
http://www.rtlgroup.com/images/
Draw your own conclusions.
People like coffee.
The global coffee market is reckoned to be worth around $50Billion per year. It works. It tastes fabulous and, allegedly, helps one perform better – largely by combating the urge to doze.
Who
would have thought that after thousands of years of coffee consumption, we
haven’t been using it correctly ? At least that’s the opinion
of researchers at the Harvard Medical School and their colleagues,
who reveal in the May issue of the journal Sleep, an ‘an entirely
new way to use caffeine’.
Their idea? - We should get a shot of caffeine once an hour instead of the usual large hits just in the morning. Viz. we should drink it in moderation all day long.
“Most of the population is using caffeine the wrong way . . “ says Dr James Wyatt sleep researcher at the aptly named Rush University Medical Center.
So, thert wav nodf sfbb jjggggggggggggggggggggg
Oh, sorry, dozed off there for a second.
Digital cameras are cheap.
OK, not the high end pro versions, but the low end ones, good enough for a holiday snap, or an e-mailed pic, can now be mass produced for a few dollars a shot. It won’t be long before they are being given away in packets of breakfast cereal.
They can be incorporated into phones, pens, clothing, bags etc etc. The driving force behind the manufactures’ strategy and the consumers’ wants, is simply that it’s fun to take pictures - but, it seems, that the digi-cam phenomena is way, way, more important than might have been imagined a few years back.
The output from a handful of cheapo cameras is now in the process of demolishing a multi-billion dollar PR campaign which has been running over the last three years or so. ‘Detainees’ at a military prison being tortured, abused and humiliated? No – surely not ? Who would have thought it ?
Is it likely that the kind of practices, which have been revealed, never went on in the past - or is it just that nowadays, there’s always going to be some cheap / small camera around to record the events and distribute the results without the authorities’ knowledge ?
There’s very little doubt that without the appearance in the media of a series of unhappy snaps, the powers that be would have happily kept the details under the carpet.
It’s kind of ironic that CCD arrays, the devices which make digital cameras a possibility, were originally developed by the military . . . In the meantime, as one commentator has put it, ‘The politicians are busy re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic’
( refering to the Agub Braib [in Bushspeak] 'problems'
)
Appalling figures
According to the International Obesity Task Force http://www.iotf.org/ there are now around 312 Million people worldwide classed as obese. Their website doesn’t go into much detail as to how the figures were arrived at, but, if they’re right, the statistics are astonishing.
Perhaps it’s time to re-consider where the ‘normal’ level of human fatness lies. There are, for instance many examples of extremely fat mammals ( sealions, manatees etc ), they store the fat as a defence mechanism so that in times of food scarcity, they will have a much better chance of survival ( they also float better and can resist cold more easily ). Maybe the bodies of the 312Million have simply opened a fat ‘savings account’ for a rainy day? If an asteroid slams into the Earth tomorrow, and there’s no food available for two and a half months – we might see the survival of the fatest.
There’s one problem about revising the figures for the ‘normal’ level of fat upwards though. The governments of the world will fight the idea tooth and claw – because presumably they would have to reclassify another 312Million of their citizens, at the other end of the bell-curve, as ‘undernourished’ – from their point of view, a PR disaster.
Personally, I’m all for an upwards classification, because the airlines
will have to install bigger seats.
c0mp4tible ?
Sony Music have launched a music download service called ‘Connect™’. So now you can have access to an astonishing half a million tracks by Sony artists from “A1” to “Zebrahead” . An entire album will cost you around £5.50, or individual tracks from about 55p.
Noting the huge success of the Apple I-Pod service, which reckons to have sold around 70 million songs in its first year of operation, Sony have naturally been very keen to get their own system up and running.
So now you’ll be able to download any of the huge Sony Connect™ catalogue to fill up your I-Pod . . . er . . well actually no.
All the songs are encoded in the company’s Atrac3 format, which is currently incompatible with other brands of ( non Sony ) players . . . . Doh!
You can however, download special software from the site which will enable you to burn your own CD’s.
File-sharing not ( necessarily ) illegal shock.
Worldwide, hundreds of otherwise squeaky-clean citizens have been fined, jailed, or even bankrupted by legal sledgehammers wielded by the music industry’s legal reps. But there’s one facet of the problem which does seem to get overlooked by the media, the legal teams, and the unfortunate recipients – music downloading and file sharing is not necessarily illegal per-se.
It’s perfectly legitimate if the owner of the music ( or their representatives ) say it is. In other words, it’s completely ok to download and share music providing you have permission to do so. There are thousands of websites from the most unknown and obscure bands to the megastars, who have placed their files on the internet with full permission for anyone to download them and share them - for free.
There’s an old legal trick, which is used on a daily basis by law-firms the world over. When the ‘other party’ ask for information, you give it to them – all of it – and more. You flood them with hundreds of times more info than they actually asked for, knowing that their legal reps will have to sort through the whole lot to find what they want. It will cost the client so much in legal fees to find all the relevant info that they give up ( you hope ).
As time goes by, there will be more and more music tracks available on the web which have been authorised for free download. Tens of thousands of them. It would get awfully confusing if they got mixed up with all the non-authorised ones – wouldn’t it ?
‘Bird–Brain’ no longer an insult – official.
It’s recently been discovered ( i.e. admitted ) that some birds are very intelligent, particularly, it seems, crows and parrots. ( more later ) The investigating animal psychologists now rate the I.Q. of the common crow, for instance, at more or less that of a four year old human child, ( If you happen to be a parent, you may - or may not - want to dispute that ) . They use tools, and create new tools when they need them. They also help each other, even when it’s of no obvious immediate advantage to themselves. In short - they’re p.d. smart. Not bad when you consider that they have a brain the size ( and, oddly, with the appearance ) of a walnut.
To give a real world example - ( highlighted by David Attenborough in his excellent BBC prog ‘The life of birds’ ) , some Japanese urban crows have developed a new technique for cracking their favourite nuts. They carry the nuts and leave them in the middle of an urban street, *next to a traffic-light junction* . The traffic moves on – and , obv, crushes the nuts. When the lights go red, the crows swoop down again and eat lunch – until amber shows again . . .
How can it be that a bird with a brain the size of a walnut can be as smart as a child ? – no-one has any idea. To confound things further, there are some famous medical examples of some very unfortunate human individuals who have had genetically malformed brains - or have been damaged in accidents – and yet managed to live utterly ‘normal’ lives – despite having only ten percent or less, of functioning brain . . .
The hackneyed old Hippy mantra which runs ‘ . . . er, like, you know, you only ever use ten percent of your brain – right ? – yeah ? – Wow, it’s like, really spooky ? Like you don’t ever use the other - ninety percent ? – yeah ?’ might hold some truth yet.
If it is true, then what the **** is the other 90% for? What is it doing ? Nothing ? Thinking round in circles? Locked in an algorithmic loop? Not hooked up yet ? Waiting for a ‘ping’ from some cosmic server ?
There’s a great sarky variation to this question in the form of a joke – I’m not sure of the origin, but whoever it was ( sounds like Steve Wright ) – thanks !
Patient wakes up in hospital. The doctor says “ Aha! Mr./Ms. Smith, You’re back with us again! Jolly good. Now, I have to tell you, you had a very nasty accident ! Your brain was severely damaged - in fact, 90% of it was destroyed ! . . . But I’m pleased to say – You’re going to be fine ! “
Digi-logue.
The other day I was trying to explain to myself the difference between analogue systems and digital systems – and I got stuck. The glib answer is that digital signals have been ‘quantised’ - in other words chopped up into a series of ‘snapshots’ that represent the analogue values of the original signal at a particular instant in time. In the case of CD quality music, it’s 16 Bit – which is equivalent to 65000 or so different loudness levels – more than accurate enough for most people’s ears. But it’s not perfect. Recording studios use 20 Bit or even 24 Bit sampling. But that’s not perfect either. Every time you add another Bit , the resolution doubles ( in theory anyway ) , but, however many bits you add to your system – it will never quite reach perfection.
Looking at it from the other direction, the analogue signals – which might be expected to be perfectly clean – aren’t. Firstly because system noise ( i.e. low–level errors ) is built-in to the laws of physics and can never be avoided – not in this universe anyway. And secondly, because if you can build an accurate enough analogue system, the very lowest level signals will be quantised anyway ! . . .
Again, the laws of physics. For example, an accurate enough optical system can detect just one photon – but not ‘half a photon’ . Similarly, an accurate enough microphone could detect one atom of gas hitting its detector in the form of acoustic noise – but it can’t detect ‘half an atom’.
So, like I said – stuck.
Having said that, there is a difference, and here’s a real world example. On the same day there was a particularly spectacular sunset. The light was, for a few moments, cutting the underside of the clouds in a sensational textured orange pink. I decided to photograph it – digitally natch. The camera I use has an auto-focus function, but it tends to get confused with amorphous views, especially in low light levels. Better set it to manual then. Then adjust the focus to infinity. Oh, and disable the flash. And set the ISO sensitivity high – for a nice grainy effect. By the time I’d worked my way through all the menus – the light had gone.
With my old 35mm analogue Ricoh I’d have had ten shots no
problem.
lifespans
All life-forms , it seems, have a lifespan. Not a lifespan in the sense of ‘how long does an individual live’, but rather the species itself has a lifespan.
DNA is incredibly stable and long lasting, but the system for copying the genes is, it seems, not 100% perfect. Over many generations, the copying mechanism can break down, largely due to erosion of the gene-end stops, known as telomeres. The theory that the telomeres can degrade, and thereby form a kind of ‘biological clock’ was first proposed in the 1970’s. Now, new research by Reinhard Stindl at the Institute of Medical Biology in Vienna is appearing to consolidate the therory.
http://www.meduniwien.ac.at/user/
Biologists currently estimate that the vast majority of species which have ever inhabited the planet are now extinct. But, of course, this ‘species lifespan’ can vary dramatically. Some, like the crocodile, have been around for at least 80 million years. Others, especially bacteria, have very much shorter spans. Because they reproduce so quickly they can become extinct in just a few hundred years.
The new research raises shines an interesting light on the conjecture that diseases also have their own ‘lifespan’.
So, with regard to diseases which mankind has ‘eradticated’, there is now the question as to whether they would have died out on their own anyway. There’s some debate for instance, about smallpox, which was, apparently, beginning to become much less common before the invention of inoculation. But it seems to me that its decline was definitely helped along by Louis Pasteur et al.
There’s a joke abut a country peasant who’s leaning on the gate of his recently-acquired hovel. The local priest comes past and says
“ Ah, Mr Bumpkin, what a lovely garden you have! You and the Lord have done a wonderful job, it’s simply marvelous “
“ Well thank you parson” replies the bumpkin, “You should’ve seen it when he ‘ad it all to ‘imself”
Comment:
According to a recent Ecologist article, polio was also declining before the vaccine was introduced.
rubbish opportunity
We can definitely rely on the fact that the Earth’s oil supply will one day run dry. The jury’s out on how long that will take to happen though. Some are predicting that it's just a question of a few decades – but they are ignoring the possibility that we may develop new ways to find supplies which are currently hidden from us. ( space-based ground penetrating radar for example )
Perhaps by the time supplies are exhausted there will be other means ( biomass / solar / fusion etc ) for generating energy, but what about the actual physical materials that we have come to rely on ? The first example which springs to mind would be plastics. Although there are already a variety of ‘bio-plastics’, none even comes close to the durability an usefulness of, say, Nylon™ ( tights, fishing nets, ropes etc) or Polycarbonate. (CD’s, riot-shields etc)
It’s their durability which raises the possibility of being able to carry on using plastics even after the oil supply has run out. I am of course talking rubbish.
By the time there is no oil left, the Earth will have a plentiful supply of plastic still available. In old landfill sites. The really durable varieties mentioned above will last for centuries in the ground ( on the surface, their main enemy is UV radiation from the sun, which limits their lifetime to a few decades ). Bearing in mind the astonishing quantities of the stuff which is just dumped into holes in the ground on a daily basis, these old landfill sites may become very valuable resources – mines in fact.
Before rushing out to put down an offer on the purchase of a recently turfed-over mega dump, it might be worth bearing in mind that, along with all the useful recoverable plastics, the sites also contain vast quantities of highly dangerous substances. Explosive methane, which can be generated from breakdown of organic waste, can leak to the surface. Toxic heavy-metals which can leach downwards into the water table. Dangerous solvents, pharmaceuticals - the list goes on and on.
So, in the future, these old sites will be a curious mixture of attractive mining opportunity - and dangerous liabilities which might land their owners in the bankruptcy courts.
Here’s just one example of the current culture of wastefulness:
http://news.com.com/
Fathers should talk to their children:
20 weeks before they are born ?
It’s not a new idea. Mothers have been talking to their unborn children for a very, very long time. Presumably, phrases along the lines of “ Will you purleeese stop kicking” must have been pretty common since for ever.
But the pratice has almost reached ritual status in some countries, with mothers reading, telling jokes, and generally chatting to their unborn in the hope that they will be stimulated in the art of conversation as their brains are developing, and, as a consequence, gain a head start in life. And why not ?
But this has left fathers out in the cold to a certain extent, and now there is a movement which hopes to bring the fathers more actively into the equation - with suggestions that they should engage in the so-called ‘belly talk’ from around about 20 weeks and onwards. As well as smalltalk, reading stories and singing is also recommenced.
Is there any evidence that the ‘belly-talk’ idea works ? I’ve no idea. The ‘Center for the Ethnography of Everyday Life’ at the University of Michigan is taking it seriously though, with an ongoing study.
See:
http://pregnancyproject.tripod.com/
p.s. Some fathers might possibly benefit from signing up for singing lessons
at around 5 weeks – who knows what damage out-of-tune, gruff renditions
of ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ after a night at the bar might
do to a delicate unborn’s sensitivities?
Clones are dangerous.
Not in the Hammer Horror sense, but if you are a farmer, you are taking a big risk with your finances by dealing with them. Odd as it sounds, our supermarkets are already full of cloned plants. Bananas, pineapples, satsumas - any seedless fruits in fact.
In effect, bananas could be considered, more or less, as one plant.
So what ?
There’s no problem whatever with vegetative propagation, which is, after all, just an easy way of cloning – until a disease turns up. Because the plants are genetically identical, they will all suffer to pretty much the same degree from the disease. In other words, if it’s deadly, that’s the end of your business – and, in time, the end of that plant breed worldwide. ( In plants propagated by seed, there will almost always be some individuals which, because of subtle DNA variations introduced by cross breeding, are more or less immune. )
So, here’s an idea for the gene industry. Instead of trying to refine the genetics of existing plant varieties to gain some commercial benefit, why not work on the currently seedless pant varieties in the opposite direction. i.e to introduce some more variation into the DNA rather than less ?
I like bananas, and it would be a terrible shame if they were all wiped out by some rogue fungus or virus. According to Steve Jones, it’s just a matter of time.
Plus ça change.
Whether you think it’s a good idea or not, one thing’s for sure, it’s not new. The idea is ID.
A bizarre and fascinating revelation from the history dept of the University of Warwick in the UK , explains that that Britons were subject to the amenity/humiliation ( delete as appropriate ) of having to wear compulsory ID badges in the early 1600’s !
The badges originally started out as a positive affirmation of legitimacy, but rapidly morphed into something similar to today’s ‘Entitlement Cards’ with entirely different, and very negative, connotations.
The article is so interesting that I won’t try to comment on it here, just go and read it. Yes, you too Mr. Blunkett
http://www.newsandevents.warwick.ac.uk/
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