Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act on it.
[Pablo Casals]
The following is from the Feedback column of the current issue of New Scientist …
The $500 cable
EAGLE-EYED readers have pointed us to an intriguing offer. The US website for Japanese electronics giant Denon is inviting consumers to pay $499 for what appears to be a 1.5-metre network cable of the type that usually costs only a few dollars. So what’s so special about Denon’s AK-DL1 patch cord?
According to Denon’s website it has “woven jacketing to reduce vibration” and the cable structure is “designed to thoroughly eliminate adverse effects from vibration”. In addition, “signal directional markings are provided for optimum signal transfer”. Plus, the AK-DL1 is made from “high purity copper” which “will bring out all the nuances in digital audio reproduction”.
As puzzled as our readers, we emailed Denon via the website to ask for an explanation of what causes vibration in a network cable, what the adverse effects are, why signal directional markings optimise signal transfer, and how high-purity copper wire brings out the nuances of a digital signal.
Within minutes an email winged back that failed to answer any of our questions. Although the AK-DL1 may look like an ordinary ethernet cable, it told us, “the similarities end there… the cable is designed in such a way that vibration is all but eliminated so that sound being passed is as pure as possible… That being said, this cable is not going to provide you with much of a difference unless used with top of the line equipment across the board.”
Denon helpfully gives some examples of such equipment, including a DVD player that costs $3800 and an amplifier costing $7000. So all we have to do to check Denon’s claims for the $500 cable is pay $10,800 for something to plug it into. Isn’t that nice?
Shortly after this exchange with Denon, we came across an item on the BoingBoing gadget site at www.cablereviews.notlong.com. It quotes “brilliant” reviews of the Denon cable from what BoingBoing describes as “perhaps the best Amazon [reader] reviews page of all time”. Our favourite is this: “A caution to people buying these: if you do not follow the ‘directional markings’ on the cables, your music will play backwards.”
The current issue of New Scientist has a 13-page series of items on “Reason” with the title “Seven Reasons Why People Hate Reason” from authors as diverse as the Archbishop of Canterbury, mathematician Roger Penrose and linguist Noam Chomsky. Taken as a whole – indeed even taken individually – the short articles are philosphically incredibly deep and quite difficult. They bear reading and I think probably re-reading. As New Scientist doesn’t make its full material; available online except to subscribers, what follows is a cherry-picked selection of what are (for me) soem of the highlights and insights. I offer them without commentary, and without the attribution to their specific authors, as food for thought.
From the 16th century, reason came to be seen as opposed to tradition and authority. Faced with the expectation of believing something just because a particular sort of person said so, the reasonable person was now the one who asked: “What are the arguments for this?”
This focus on rationality doesn’t speak to how people usually understand their lives and so they reject it for homeopathy, diet pills and […] stories about planes on Mars. People understand the world in stories, not dry rationality.
Do we know for certain that 2 plus 2 equals 4? Of course we don’t. Maybe every time everybody in the whole world has ever done that calculation and reasoned it through, they’ve made a mistake. Maybe it isn’t 4, it’s really 5. There is a very, very small chance that this has happened.
[There are] people saying we shouldn’t turn on the Large Hadron Collider experiment because a small probability exists that it might create black holes that would annihilate Earth. Sensible scientists say that this is ridiculous, there’s no chance. On the other hand, there’s a small chance that accepted theory is wrong, so there is a chance!
The central question here is about trust. What do you put your faith in? The kind of faith that Nehru expresses in science is absolute. It is not at all the qualified, provisional acceptance that might suit actual scientific findings. It claims to answer not just factual questions but every kind of social and moral dilemma. It offers general salvation. This sort of unconditional, general reliance on a single authority is never sensible, whatever god it may invoke. No system provides an infallible oracle; different problems need different ways of thinking.
Reason is “dangerous” because it leads you to question faith, not just faith that the world was created 6000 years ago but faith in the secular religions that lead to state power.
[…] governments and big corporations have hijacked the language and methods of reason and science in their PR and advertising to subvert the ability of people to judge for themselves – an end directly opposed to the Enlightenment values we supposedly hold dear.
[…] the concern that science and reason are increasingly seen as providing not just scientific, technical and military fixes, but answers to everything that matters in the world. This alienates people […] because it leaves no room for morality, art, imperfection and all of the things that make us human. Is it really surprising that so many turn to pseudoscience?
[…] even when we think we are being reasonable, we aren’t. Our decisions are based on gut instinct, then justified post hoc – and they are made better when we don’t consciously think about them. Researchers are also starting to realise that individual judgements they had long categorised as emotional and irrational may actually be beneficial when seen in the context of a group.
Apparently Measles is now endemic in the UK. Well now there’s a surprise — I thought it always had been! But according to an item the other day on ProMED Mail (the mailing list of the International Society for Infectious Diseases) which is interested mostly in emerging diseases, Measles had become a rarity but is once again endemic. To quote from the item …
Measles once again endemic in the United Kingdom
A total of 14 years after the local transmission of measles was halted in the United Kingdom (UK),the disease has once again become endemic, according to the Health Protection Agency (HPA), the public health body of England and Wales. In an update on measles cases in its weekly bulletin last week, the agency stated that, as a result of almost a decade of low mumps-measles-rubella(MMR) vaccination coverage across the UK, ‘the number of children susceptible to measles is now sufficient to support the continuous spread of measles’.
In an earlier update, the HPA reported that all recent indigenously-acquired cases with a genotype in England and Wales had been found to have the same D4 sequence …
In May [2008], a 17-year-old with underlying congenital immunodeficiency died of acute measles infection, the first such fatality in the UK since 2006 … The total number of confirmed measles cases in England and Wales so far this year [2008] is 461. In Scotland, there have been 68 cases of measles reported in 2008, of which 51 have been laboratory-confirmed. All of the cases in Scotland were either not immunised or of unknown immunisation status. Only 2 of the cases were imported from abroad …
The HPA has recommended that health services exploit ‘all possible opportunities’ to offer MMR vaccine to children who have not received 2 doses … Europe is facing a measles epidemic, with large ongoing outbreaks for instance in Switzerland, Austria and Italy.
Why am I not surprised? Moreover I don’t understand this fuss; we’ve always had Measles. Yes, I know it can be nasty, but so can ‘flu. Why do we have this fetish that we must always rid ourselves so permanently of all diseases. Are we not beginning to get evidence that the population as a whole is healthier for being exposed to all these things?
At the beginning of June Noreen and I had two weeks holiday (well time off work anyway). For a variety of reasons, not least that we couldn’t get anyone to feed the cats, not even our local cattery, we didn’t go away. As always we intended to have lots of days out but due to basic knackeration and idleness we failed. So here is what I did done on my holidays …
Such is the stuff of doing nothing.
Something else from our garden. This is Rosa gallica, the Apothecary’s Rose of ancient times. It grows madly in all directions wherever we plant it; apparently it likes clay soil, which being in London is what we have.
This week’s self-portrait: 52 Weeks 16/52 (2008 week 24).
Yes it’s horrible, and I’m seriously over-weight … but not as much as I was; I’ve lost 28kg (almost 4.5 stone) since October. That’s not fast, but it is fast enough considering I am diabetic and while controlling calories also have to be careful to keep my blood glucose stable. Actually losing the weight has helped a lot with my blood sugar levels and my blood pressure, so although it isn’t easy it is worth doing; I do feel lots better for it. But I really need to get rid of at least that much again if I possibly can.
Oh and yes, the tile effect is a shameless abuse of Photoshop – just to save the worst of the blushes of the innocent. Being nude, anywhere, anytime, bothers me not at all ‘cos I was brought up as a nudist! But I know it does bother others, so out of respect for them there is nothing here that you wouldn’t see in a swimming pool.
OK just for something a bit different, here’s a book meme I came across the other day …
One book that changed your life:
Anthony Powell; A Dance to the Music of Time
One book that you have read more than once:
Martin Gardner; The Annotated Alice
One book that you would want on a desert island:
Latham & Matthews; Diaries of Samuel Pepys. That’s apart from Dance!
One book that made you laugh:
Douglas Adams; Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy
One book that made you cry:
Mervyn Peake; Gormenghast
One book you can’t read:
Amongst a number of others: Salman Rushdie; Satanic Verses
One book you wish you’d written:
Almost anything really; I just wish I had the skill and imagination to write a book.
One book you wish had never been written:
Not sure I think any book shouldn’t exist (that’s a variant of free speech), but if I really had to choose I’d pick two books: the Bible and the Koran; they’ve done more damage in the world than possibly all other books put together.
One book you’re reading:
Jennifer Ouellette; Black Bodies and Quantum Cats: Tales of Pure Genius and Mad Science
One book you’re going to read:
John Aubrey; Brief Lives
The usual rules apply: tag a few friends (say 3 or 5), leave then a comment to tell them they’ve been tagged, and leave a comment for the person who tagged you.
I’ll tag Jilly at jillysheep, Noreen at Norn’s Notebook, Jamie at Duward Discussion.
We’re on holiday, but not away, this week and next. So we are trying to have a few days out, weather permitting which it didn’t on Monday and Tuesday.
Yesterday we went to London Zoo. I’ve not been to the Zoo since I was a teenager (the Snowdon Aviary wasn’t long open) – so over 40 years ago! And Noreen has never been despite having lived in London for over 30 years and done most of the tourist things.
What a disappointment. I’m glad I went, but to be honest I probably won’t bother again. Although we didn’t look at everything, we did see a large proportion. Now I know we’re all used to seeing animals in action in 5 second “vision bites” on TV, and that in reality most animals spend a lot of their day doing very little. But even allowing for that I found the “exhibits” dull. Why?
Many of the indoor enclosures looked drab, dull, unexciting and almost uncared for. Which I know does an injustice to the keepers, as they care greatly about giving their animals the best possible environment. The indoor spaces were frankly rather tatty and in need of a good coat of paint; not really surprising when you look at the number of pairs of feet walking round.
I suppose the thing which struck me most was the lack of variety. Sure there are birds and reptiles; fish; mammals of all types and sizes; insects and bugs. But I felt there was not enough variety of each, although of course space is very limited and one has to provide enough room for the number of visitors as well as the animals and staff as well as having some exhibit spaces empty and being refurbished. Nevertheless I felt that many of the animals are still kept in inadequately sized accommodation – specifically I don’t feel it ethical to keep an owl in an aviary where it doesn’t get a good long flightpath (20 x 30 x 8 feet high really doesn’t feel large enough!).
And the limitations of space, and even money, don’t excuse labels which were uninformative to anyone except a 10 year-old doing their school project. The science content of the labels for people like me was non-existent. OK, I set a high standard because I’m a scientist, but there should be something there to capture me too; I also need to be made to say “Heavens, I never knew that!” And by doing this you stretch other visitors and make them think. It’s a hard task; yes a lot of the labelling has to enthuse the school kids and the less well educated; that doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be some (not all) information at a higher level.
And heavens the number of school kids! The whole place was crawling with school parties – all ages from 5 to 15 (or more). It’s a bit much when the noise of the kids drowns out the local starlings and the London traffic! Don’t get me wrong; it’s great that the kids are there and hopefully showing some interest (especially in a pair of turtles having it off! – the whole group of 8 year-olds had their mobile phones out taking photos!). Yes, they are the future and we need to catch ’em young and get them enthused about science in all forms. But it I would have felt more sanguine about it if I thought they were learning something and not just wandering round ticking boxes on the project sheet or meandering aimlessly. Most of the teachers didn’t seem too interested either, except to try to rein the kids in a bit; they weren’t doing any much teaching.
As a fishkeeper the area I really wanted to see was the Aquarium. Frankly I felt that this was a disgrace. Half the exhibit space appeared to be boarded off, with no word of explanation. Was it because it is being rebuilt; refurbished; closed because unrepairable (the building is old now); there isn’t the money to run it? Why? Nothing; just blank dark blue hoarding in a space so dark one could hardly see where one was walking. The tanks which were in use were to my mind unexciting and all too small. Yes there was a variety of freshwater and salt-water fish, tropical and temperate; but with a few exceptions (like large Tambaqui, fragile seahorses and quantities of anemones and corals) nothing a good amateur aquarist couldn’t keep at least as well. And almost nothing about crustaceans, shellfish, seaweed and no really good biotype displays.
So what was good? The staff were all helpful. The grounds are immaculately kept. Some exhibits were good. The penguins and meercats were an especial and unexpected delight. As was the large tiger dozing against the wall of his enclosure, literally just a foot the other side of the Plexiglas from us. Likewise the two very asleep, and very beautiful, Servals looking like oversized spotted domestic cats. The Lubetkin Penguin Pool is still there (it is Grade I listed) and refurbished but not in use (sad; I hope a use can be found for it other than for wire sculptures of insects). Noreen enjoyed the rainforest displays. The café is decent, even if not cheap (but then where is?). And the loos were spotless despite the hoards of kids.
I’m sure there is more that’s good – we didn’t see everything – but that doesn’t feel like a good return on the almost £20 admission price. Sad, really; very sad.
And there are a few of my photos of the animals over on Flickr; hopefully more to come later.
