Category Archives: science

current affairs, science, thoughts

10 Things We Didn't Know Last Week

Every week the BBC News website posts an item called 10 things we didn’t know last week. I just happened to look at this week’s and was struck by some of the oddities therein …

1. The UK’s national time signal is accurate to within 1,000th of a second of Coordinated Universal Time.
2. Drinking, drug-taking teenagers are in the decline in England, according to a survey by the Information Centre.
3. The average water temperature of the UK’s rivers and lakes is 5C in winter, 18C in summer.
4. Eight of the 10 most crowded train journeys in the UK are outside London. [That did surprise me when I saw it earlier in the week; but then note they are measuring overground trains, not the London Underground.]
5. The average duvet is home to 20,000 live dust mites. [I’m surprised that’s all; I would have expected the number to be 100 times bigger!]
6. Designer discount retailer TK Maxx is called TJ Maxx in the US. [Try to understand the importance of this.]
7. Having a baby can cost you up to two months sleep in the first year. [I would have thought that continues for something like 20 years, doesn’t it? Though never having been selfish enough to have children I wouldn’t know.]
8. Chimps and bonobos differ from humans by only 1% of DNA and could accept a blood transfusion or a kidney. [I knew the 1% difference in DNA, but hadn’t realised the implications for transplants. But why a chimp would want a human kidney baffles me.]
9. Britain’s peat bogs store carbon that is equivalent to 20 years’ worth of national industrial emissions.
10. Dogs can seemingly perform the Heimlich manoeuvre (a technique for helping someone who is choking). [I have this bizarre picture of a coiffed miniature poodle trying to do the HM on an 18 stone rugby player!]

personal, photography, science, thoughts

Twittering about New Technologies

The other day I came across a new (to me, anyway) expression: “declarative living”. You can find a quick explanation of it on Squidoo. The example of this to which I was introduced by Kelly is Twitter.

Let’s say it again: “declarative living”. I’m sad to say I’ve never heard so many round things in my life. And me who is so often a second-wave early adopter of new technology too. I really cannot see the point, with a passion. Please someone explain to me the purpose of living in the pockets of someone the other side of the globe who I’ve never met (and likely never will meet) 24/7?

It seems to me this is all about depersonalising and dumbing down everything — the modern opium for the masses — and selling us crap we don’t want or need to keep us occupied and not thinking or meddling with what the “great and the good” want to get up to next. (Iran, anyone?) It is false progress. [There’s a whole new topic on “false stuff”, but that’s for some other time.]

What worries me (possibly even more) is that in the last few months I seem to be turning into a Luddite like my father before me. Only father (who died last year at the age of 86) started being a Luddite before the age of colour TV. [How he never had apoplexy I don’t know as I discovered going through his papers after he died that he had belonged to an organisation against the introduction of digital computers — and this back in about 1970! Then I went on take my career in IT.]

Don’t get me wrong. I love things like flickr, weblogs, conferencing (ah the good old days of bulletin boards; been there since before PC was born!) and IM. I just don’t get this “let’s wear our whole lives on our sleeves all the time” stuff. I mean, why am I interested in real time that Kelly is cooking spaghetti or looking for her boots? Why would anyone be interested except Kelly and maybe the dog? Where does all this stop and privacy start?

But debating this with Kelly and others on her Kellypuffs weblog has made me think more about this. Indeed that is the good thing about the passion being expressed: it does make us think about what we are doing, what we really believe in and what is actually important. And each one of us will come up with different answers to those questions — none of which are intrinsically right or wrong; they’re just right or wrong for us at this time.

I guess where I’m really at is: just because we can do it, doesn’t mean it is worth doing or that we should do it. Developing the technologies may be an interesting (even useful) research exercise, but that doesn’t mean it has to/should be unleashed on the great unwashed as if it were the next best thing to sliced bread.

For me it would be more to the point if the effort the IT industry is putting into all this pseudo-progress-stuff was focused into something actually useful for humanity rather than just generating more CO2 to no purpose.

medical, memes, science

Friday Five: Plague

1. How are you feeling?
Grumpy. I’ve had this horrid fluey coldy virus on and off since last November (see here); can’t shake it off. Now on the second round of antibiotics in the hope they’ll kill off the edges so I can kill off the rest.

2. When is the last time you went to the doctor?
Yesterday. See above. But then as I have type II diabetes I get checked up on by the medics far too often.

3. Ever broken a bone?
Nope, but come pretty close a couple or three times.

4. Ever had surgery?
Yes, several times, tho’ nothing horrid or really major: appendectomy, sinus operation, arthroscopy on both knees (at different times), bladder exam, fingernail removal, vasectomy. Didn’t enjoy the appendectomy ‘cos it was a long time ago and anaesthetics weren’t so good so I felt grim afterwards. Most of the others have been interesting experiences though. Now how sad is that?! 🙂

5. When is the last time you were in a hospital?
Last August when I had a fingernail permanently removed, although it was only day-care and under (heavy) local anaesthetic.

[Brought to you courtesy of Friday Fiver]

amusements, memes, quotes, science, thoughts

Zen Mischievous Moments #124

From New Scientist, 3 March 2007 …

Viral notices

At the end of last year, we voiced the fear that we are being exploited by viral notices for the purposes of propagating themselves (16 December 2006). Lindsay Brash observes that the notice we mentioned then — “Please do not remove this notice until 23rd July” — “demonstrates the rapid evolution of viruses and the sophisticated tricks they can employ on their hosts. By stating a date, the notice fools humans into thinking it must be legitimate, and they let it be.”

In fact, Brash goes on, it’s even cleverer than that: people “are so gullible that they are not likely to remove it until some time after the stated date. But by then they will forget when they first saw it and, to be safe, leave it until the next 23 July. Fantastic!”

And in James Penketh’s school there is a notice with an even more subtle survival strategy: inducing complete cognitive breakdown. It reads “Take no notice of this notice. By Order.” If he took no notice of this notice, he asks, “would I know to take no notice of it?”

Justin Needham, meanwhile, has found an example of the suicide notice: “Please leave these facilities as you would wish to find them”. Every time he spots one, he writes, “I am tempted (and sometimes succumb) to tear it down. That’s better, just how I wish to find the facilities — with no patronising notices.”

photography, science

Eclipse of the Moon


Moon, originally uploaded by kcm76.

Here’s a picture of the full moon I took last night about an hour or so before the eclipse started. I was spectacularly unsuccessful with the shots I took of the early phases eclipse, and I didn’t then try the totality as I couldn’t get a good clear view.

However here are a few good shots of the eclipse from various of my contacts:
From fotofacade: www.flickr.com/photos/fotofacade/409230083/
From andyp_uk: www.flickr.com/photos/andypiper/409225738/
From Colin Barnes: www.flickr.com/photos/collicky/409277977/.

Enjoy!

amusements, beliefs, current affairs, science

Worst Inventions

According to BBC Focus magazine the 10 most loathed inventions of all time are (in reverse order):

10. Religion
9. Speed cameras
8. Fast food
7. Television
6. Cigarettes
5. The car
4. Sinclair C5
3. Nuclear power
2. Mobile phones
1. Weapons

Do not ask how they arrive at this conclusion. I can see why most of these things get on the list, even if I personally wouldn’t have nominated them. However I wouldn’t even have thought to mention the Sinclair C5, it was so pathetically a no-hoper, let alone put it in the top ten most loathed. I’d far rather see things like politics, the aeroplane, the iPod, non-essential plastic surgery and fireworks on the list. But what do I know: I’m an educated thinker!? 🙁

amusements, science

Zen Mischievous Moments #122

From last week’s New Scientist:

Patent protection for jokes

“YOU cannot be serious,” tennis ace John McEnroe famously shouted when the umpire ruled one of his shots as “out”. Reader John Mulligan suspects that the patent officer felt the same way about Timothy Wace Roberts’s patent application for a “Business method protecting jokes”.

The abstract of his US patent office application 200602593306 opens: “The specification describes a method of protecting jokes by filing patent applications therefor, and gives examples of novel jokes to be thus protected. Specific jokes to be protected by the process of the invention include stories about animals playing ball games, in which alliteration is used in the punchline; a scheme for raising money for charity by providing dogs for carriage by Underground passengers; and the joke that consists in filing a patent application to protect jokes.”

We don’t know what the first jokes referred to are, but suspect the second relates to notices beside London Underground escalators saying “Dogs must be carried”. As for the third – does this mean Wace Roberts’ patent application is evidence of “prior art”, making itself invalid – or is it valid and in breach of itself?

amusements, science

Instructions?

I just love weird instructions for appliances so here’s another piece from Feedback in this week’s New Scientist, which I have slightly shortened:

… [X] does not tell us how he came to be in possession of a Fibre Optic Musical Animated Fairy “of unknown provenance”, but he does tell us that, despite being a retired professor of modern languages, he is baffled by the instructions that came with it for changing its bulb. …

“Operating Synopsis. If the bulb not brightness, make use of the reserve bulb elucidate as follows: 1. Turn off electrical source. 2. Fetch out the lampholder. 3. Troll the broken bulb, fetch out of it. 4. Setting in reserve bulb, troll the bulb without a reel or stagger. 5. Revert the lampholder.”

amusements, science

Alien Postcards (2)

This week New Scientist printed some of the runner-up entries in their New Year Competition. The challenge was to compose a text message of no more than 160 characters, sent home by an alien who has just arrived on our planet. Of this batch I especially liked:

Too late. Another one overrun by Starbucks.

Humans are not conscious beings but remote-controlled by little boxes pressed to the head or wires plugged into their ears.

This planet, mostly harmless, is chiefly remarkable for providing the best evidence so far that the limit of 160 characters on SMS messages is a universal const

Natives wonderful. Send ketchup.

Full article here. Enjoy!