JUNE 04
pharmacologically inappropriate
We all make mistakes. We can’t help it. In fact it’s essential to make mistakes. Without experimentation and fumbling-inquisitiveness there could never be any progress – mistakes are very valuable to us - in certain fields . . .
Not so helpful if you’re on the receiving end of a medical prescription though. Current figures suggest that in the US, a shocking 25% of hospital admissions in the over 60’s are caused by ‘drug errors’
http://agexted.cas.psu.edu/docs/21600650.html
A more hopeful Norwegian study found 13.5% of all prescriptions for the elderly were , ahem . . . ‘pharmacologically inappropriate’.
Things seem a little better in the UK , where only around 3% of 16,000 prescriptions which were re-checked in a study – were wrong.
( See: ‘threats to patient safety’ at : http://www.publichealth.bham.ac.uk/ )
Much of the problem, it seems, is at the ‘organisational’, i.e. system end of healthcare, rather than the human, face-to-face end. In other words, the mistakes happen with the patient’s records – or lack of them.
But help is at hand. A new global healthcare strategy ! It’s called the BBM. ( i.e. the Brown Bag Method. )
A recent study by the Penn State University has shown that when new drugs need to be prescribed for a patient, it’s generally more accurate to ask them to bring-in a brown paper bag with all their current medicines in it - rather than trusting the medical records in the hospital/medical system computer database. Doh !
A grindingly obtuse abstract of the report, in this month’s ’The Gerontologist’ magazine, can be seen here.
http://gerontologist.gerontologyjournals.org/
To clarify things a little, Really Magazine can reveal that the report’s conclusion is :
"We believe the brown bag method provides a reasonable substitute for pharmacy records as a measure of current medications."
‘Insultingly stupid movie physics’.
Is an excellent sub-site which has been rating blockbuster movies for scientific daftness for several years now. They’ve even got their own rating system, so for example PGP-13 means “Children under 13 might be tricked into thinking the physics were pretty good; parental guidance is suggested”.
Not content with just rating the movies, they also have extensive scientific explanations for many of the physics gaffs commonly emanating from Tinseltown. Like, for example, the deafening sound of an explosion as an alien spacecraft gets zapped, in the near vacuum of deep-space. Or a visible satellite-based laser beam, again in a vacuum.
They also have a hall ( ok, more like a panel ) of shame – for the worst understanding and portrayal of not-physics in any movie ever – you’ll just have to visit the site and take a look . . .
http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/
on a positive note
It’s still a way off yet – millions of kilometers in fact, but the Huygens space probe is well on its way to Titan - the largest moon of Saturn.
It’s been travelling since Oct 1997, so it will have clocked up about seven year’s journey when it lands on the peculiar moon in January 2005. ( currently pencilled-in for the 14th ). Perhaps ‘lands’ isn’t the right word though, because it now looks as though it might be more likely to ‘splashdown’ instead. Even ‘splashdown’ doesn’t quite describe the probable outcome – because it’s now thought that the recently discovered ‘seas’ of Titan are actually composed of hydrocarbons. Perhaps ‘gloopdown’ might be a more descriptive word.
If the probe makes it – it’s going to have a hellish time on the way down - the results will probably be very revealing. It’s pretty unlikely that the oily seas of Titan were formed by decaying vegetable matter, so they may well point to possible other theories for the ‘abiotic’ origins of oil here on this planet (see www.Really Magazine/meme_05.htm )
The Huygens probe is also hoping to break another record. This time a musical one – for onboard, is a 12 minute recording by French musician Julien Civange. If all goes well, the four tracks ‘Hot time’, ‘Bald James Deans’, ‘Lalala’ and ‘No love’ will gloopdown too. At that moment, they will grab the record for the - ‘furthest from Earth that any music has landed on another celestial body’. Groovy Baby !
Mr Civange has a site where you can review the project – but oddly – unless I missed it, there doesn’t seem to be a page where you can listen to the tracks . http://music2titan.com
The European Space Agency’s Huygens probe ( named after the Dutch astronomer who is credited as the person who discovered Saturn’s rings ), is part of the Cassini/Huygens mission, and is currently maneuvering for Saturn orbit – waiting for instructions to detach from the Nasa probe and then descend alone to Titan itself.
( You can see spectacular images currently being sent back by Cassini at the Nasa site here: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm )
The Emmenthal syndrome ( revisited )
Well, it is true that Switzerland volunteered to join the EU in 1992 - but only if the country’s population agreed. A referendum was held. They said “No”.
Now that ten new countries have joined up, the ‘hole’ in the middle of the EU looks more obvious than ever. So, is the country’s government still itching to join up ? Er, no not really, this is what they said about the last public consultation in 2001 . . .
“the Federal Council and Parliament recommend to the People to reject the initiative ‘Yes to Europe’ ”.
And how about the rest of the EU ? Is there a constant clamour from all the member states to admit the straggler to the fold ? Oddly, no, in fact there’s a deafening silence. Not a peep from any of them – did I miss it ? Please let me know if I did . . .
So the ‘hole’ remains – and will do for quite some years it seems. But what could it possibly benefit the Swiss, and also the EU to have them remain separate ? Let’s follow the money. Perhaps it’s down to lucrative duties and concessions on, say, chocolate ? watches ? cheese ? cuckoo clocks ? Surely that wouldn’t account for it . . .
How about the main Swiss industry – banking ? Hmmm. The Swiss banking system entertains some 30% of the so-called ‘offshore’ accounts for the entire planet. ‘Offshore’ perhaps isn’t the best term, since the country is very obviously landlocked – perhaps ‘offlimits’ would be a better word.
None of those accounts is subject to any of the strict EU financial system laws – in other words, if any company, individual or government body was after a ‘safe haven’ for their cash – Switzerland wouldn’t be a bad place to look.
If Switzerland announced it was suddenly joining up tomorrow, astronomical sums of money would be withdrawn from the secretive accounts quicker than you can say ‘fondue set’. It could trigger a mountainous financial meltdown – and a lot of very very very rich, powerful and influential people ( and organisations ) across the world might get very very very unhappy.
red card
I know almost nothing about football. I don’t know which teams are in
the championships, I don’t know which players are in which teams , and
I don’t know what the offside rule means. Ignorance is bliss , they say,
and I admit to being quite happy about the situation. But there’s one
thing I do know about the game, and that is it’s very broadly trans-national – as
far as the players go at least.
Any team worth it’s salt nowadays is going ( to have ) to have an astonishing ethnic mix of players. Cynics may say that the situation has come about purely for economic reasons – the powerful teams just buy the best players they can get - they don’t care what their passport says.
And it’s also true that there are still racist murmurings from die-hard nationalistic football fans when a ‘foreign’ player gets brought into their ‘squad’ – but the same fans shut up p.d.q. when the newly acquired player starts punching in the goals. The end result of these racial blendings is, it seems to me, extremely modernistic - way ahead, of, for instance, European politics . . .
I may be wrong, but I don’t think there is any law which prevents, say, a Portuguese person becoming a minister in the British parliament. Or the French president from being a Latvian. Any sign of that kind of thing happening ?
Nope, not even the tiniest glimmer. ( Please e-mail if you know otherwise ) How long will we have to wait for the politicians to get elected on the same basis as football players get bought – because they are supremely good at their job ?
Politically speaking, the game hasn’t even kicked-off yet. In fact no-ones bought a ticket yet. In fact the stadium hasn’t even been built. In fact at a guess, I’d say that in terms of transnationalism, the European political setups are at least forty years behind the football teams, their managers and their shareholders.
Red card !
Fahrenheit
There’s a old music biz saying ( probably pinched from theatreland ) “ Where there’s a hit, there’s a writ ” . . .
Things haven’t quite got to the writ stage yet, but Ray Bradbury is not at all happy about what he says is an unauthorised allusion to his famous book entitled ‘ Fahrenheit 451 ’ . . . read a version of the story here : http://www.foxreno.com/entertainment/
Unless there have been some mistakes in the translation ( from an interview with the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter ) it really does seem as though the author is well and truly miffed that Michael Moore chose to entitle his latest film ‘Fahrenheit 9/11 ’.
The problem is though, that it’s phenomenally difficult to title any artwork with just a couple of words ( ok, a word and a number ) without finding out – if the work is a hit – that someone else used something similar before you did . . .
For some examples, let’s have a look at the works of a famous author, and see if we can find, with the benefit of hindsight, any examples. Let’s choose, say, the works of Ray Bradbury . . . http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Ray_Bradbury
‘ The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair’ (1988)
( They wouldn’t have minded, would they ? )
‘Another Fine Mess’ (1995)
(errr . . wasn’t that Oliver Hardy’s catch-phrase ?)
‘The Messiah’ (1971)
( Didn’t Handel use that one ? )
‘Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby's Is a Friend of Mine’ (1966)
( Would Dickens have objected ? )
‘The Best of All Possible Worlds’ (1960)
( Pangloss’ catch-phrase from Voltaire’s Candide ?
)
‘The Time Machine’ (1955)
( Same title as the H.G. Wells book ? )
‘The Shape of Things’ (1948)
( Wasn’t there an H.G. Wells book ’The Shape of Things
to come ?’ )
‘Invisible Boy’ (1945)
( . . . and the H.G. Wells novel ‘The Invisible man’ ?)
‘Perchance to Dream’ (1948)
( from Hamlet, act three, scene one, perchance ? )
See how difficult it is ?
Notes *
According to the ‘Internet Movie Database’, a film version of ‘Fahrenheit 451 ’ is in pre-production, due for release 2005 . . . see:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0360556/
Michael Moore’s film ‘Fahrenheit 9/11 ’ opens
nationwide in the US on Friday 25th June, and in the UK from 9th July .
. .
Comment: It went rather well. Most scucessful documentary
film ever.
Depressed at work ?
It might make you feel better to know that a war against depression is being waged. Because it not only causes suffering amongst the , errrr, sufferers, but also – and this is the important bit – loses money . . .
Important, that is, if you are an employer. For you can be sure that at any given time, a significant proportion of your workforce can be classed as ‘clinically depressed’ – and needless to say, not working to their full potential.
But, as always, help is at hand, because now there is an on-line ‘depression calculator’ which will enable you to work out, with great accuracy, how many of your employees will be despondent at any given moment – and more crucially, how much cash they are losing you . . .
http://depressioncalculator.com
What can be done about it ? Well, it’s pretty straightforward – it must be treated, d’you see ? And the same site will helpfully calculate the cost of medical ( i.e. drug-based ) treatment for your employees. You may ( or may not ) be amazed to find that the cost of treatment will be less than the losses you’d incur with a depressed workforce.
There ! You’re feeling better already aren’t you ?.
Notes*
The site is provided by ‘PhRMA’ which is a P.R. / lobby group working on behalf of nearly fifty pharmaceutical companies . . .
You may find it interesting to read what those irrepressible persons at Disinfopedia have to say about them:
http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=PhRMA
The market for antidepressants in the US alone, is reckoned to be around $12Billion per year . . . and rising . . .
99 tips
Happy with the amount of time it takes your PC to boot up ? You are ? Errrrr, congratulations then.
If, however, you’re not entirely contented with waiting around while a bloatware behemoth decides it might as well wake up – if it really must – then you might want to tweak your system to be a little more – errrrr – with it.
There’s a very helpful site run by pcstats.com http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?
Which is providing 99 tips and tricks to force things to work a little more pronto.
A few possibilities you might want to bear in mind before you start tweaking though . . .
a) To go through all 99 tune-ups is going to take you a good long while.
b) If you’re not an expert, there’s a fair chance that you’ll
accidentally graunch some settings and make things worse.
c) When ( not if ) your hard drive crashes and you have to re-install the operating
system, you’ll have to do the whole lot all over again.
All things considered though, anything, a n y t h I n g, which helps to alleviate delays will be worth a try if you have to use your machine for more than a few minutes a day.
Best of luck.
papers and tunes
First it was coffee shops, then fast food outlets, and now it’s newspapers. All rushing to provide music download services for their punters. See :
http://www.newmediazero.com/lo-fi/
Perhaps it’s worth a try, but it’s far from clear ( to me anyway ) whether the two very different businesses really can be dovetailed in that way. It will be interesting to see how the downloads pan out though, Newspaper readers tend to be fairly polarised towards their journal of choice – so perhaps their musical tastes will be too ?
Arrange this list of UK papers with the music tracks it’s readers might want to download . . .
Newpapers:
The Guardian
The Independent
The Times
The Telegraph
The Sun
The Mirror
News of the World
Sunday Sport
Tracks :
“Who let the dogs out?” Baha men
”Mr.Blobby“ Mr. Blobby
“What a picture” Tommy Steele
“LoadsaMoney” Harry Enfield
"The enigma variations” Edward Elgar
“Götterdämmerung” Richard Wagner
“Hearing mud dry” GX Jupitter-Larsen & The Haters
“Ideology” Billy Bragg
Desertification isn’t a pleasant word
, or a pleasant subject. The UN is holding a ceremony in Bonn today to mark “World Day to Combat Desertification”. They say that around 1,400 sq miles of land are turning to desert each year, due to a combination of irresponsible farming methods and climate change – and the trend is speeding up.
Here’s the full story.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/
Hmmmmmm. You might also want to take a look at this – from the UN’s very own ‘Environment Programme’ (UNEP) just three months before . . .
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3577031.stm
Summed up, it says that data from 1982 to 1999 is showing an "apparent greening of the biosphere" . . . In fact there has been an increase in plant growth reckoned at about 3% per decade worlwide ! Not only that, but the UN acknowledges that farming advances and successful conservation methods have contributed to the de-desertification . . . and the trend is, apparently, speeding up !
Errrrr . . Whaaaaaat?
Perhaps what they mean is that some parts of the planet are getting drier, and others wetter - so why not say so ? Nowadays 24hr satellite monitoring, of every square metre of the planet, can spot the wallflowers growing in your back garden no problem. Plant growth data, planet-wide, must be available on an almost realtime basis. Why not collate the data sensibly and then tell the real story - instead of the current contradictory bio-waffle ?
Maybe there are unseen political leverages at work in the conflicting reports, or – perhaps more likely, and in my view more interestingly – no one really has a clue as to what on Earth is happening.
invisible
Sometimes Really Magazine tries very hard not to cover stories. And then, sometimes, the pressure – the noise if you like – gets so annoying that there’s nothing for it – something has to be said. Like aaaaargggh !
Step forward the man in the invisible cloak. Yes, that one, the one that’s been in every other newspaper, tech mag, and tv ‘science’ reports since it surfaced ( again ) at Wired’s NextFest show in mid May.
There’s nothing wrong with the idea. It works – at the level which has been demo’ed. What’s wrong is the coverage – the half baked, wrong end of the schtick old baloney that the media have been regurgitating . . .
Take for instance the BBC’s lame coverage. The invention, they say, revolves around a crucial “new material called retro-reflectum “ which renders objects near-invisible . . . Helllllooooo! This is the real world here ! Pay attention Beeb ! Even the university’s own website-report on the project says, perfectly straightforwardly, that “you can find a lot of [the same] reflective material around you, traffic signs, bicycle reflector etc etc “ Yep, that’s 100% right. And that’s exactly what the invention uses. The idea of these tiny ultra-reflective beads has been around for more than six decades ! You can buy the stuff by the kilo from 3M ( Scotchlite™ ). See: http://www.3m.com/about3m/pioneers/heltzer.html
OK, I’ll be honest, I haven’t seen the ‘invisible cloaking’ demos. ( sorry for the oxymoron ) But what I have seen is this :
http://projects.star.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp
A pretty forthright description of the invention by the university dept which came up with it. The inventors also describe, very straightforwardly again, applications which could sensibly use the idea. And they are not, not, a hundred times not, the daft ones which the media are wallowing in.
For the invention to work, the ‘viewer’ has to be very carefully positioned behind a half-silvered mirror * – through which they peer. So for example, when the BBC says “there are massive questions of potential misuse too, particularly surrounding the huge crime implications” Oh yeah ? We should remember that any potential teched-up criminals will have to persuade any bystanders / witnesses to - “Errrr. . . please look over here through this mirror please – or you won’t get the full effect. Oh, and don’t move about please – because if you lean to one side the perspective gets trashed.”
Perhaps one takes things too literally. Perhaps the reports are ‘just a bit of fun’ - the mentions of ‘retro-reflectum’ etc are just a tease . . .
Hmmmm, perhaps. Or perhaps the reporters, and the editors who approved the story aren’t back from a very very long lunch yet . . .
Don’t get me wrong, it’s really, really, really hard for any inventor to come up with a truly new idea – and the inventors in this case have been more than careful to explain just what it is that’s novel about their gizmo – viz. projecting a video image ( of what’s behind an object ) through a half-silvered mirror * onto the object, which is covered in Scotchlite™, or similar, beads.
They must be more than a little bemused, by the meeja flap.
see BBC website 14th June 2004 . . .
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3791795.stm
or, if you prefer, the same story, from Feb 2003 !!!!
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/TECH/02/07/
Note* the mirror isn’t strictly necessary, but using one
means that you don't see the projector, and the observer’s shadow isn’t
cast onto the scene – which would considerably detract from the trick illusion.
Tilting at windmills
Non-UK readers might find themselves asking ‘Who is David Bellamy anyway ?’ So, here’s the answer . . .
http://www.speakers.co.uk/Retro/5138.htm
He’s a very committed conservationist who works hard to raise awareness on environmental issues, at a local, national and international level. Prof. Bellamy is as Green as they come. It might seem odd then, that he is a fierce opponent of the Green’s energy production favourite method number one - Windfarms.
He really, really, really doesn’t like them. And he’s been campaigning against them for some ten years or so now. Here’s what he thinks.
http://www.davidbellamyconservation.org.uk/
If you go through his essay with a fine toothed comb, you’ll be hard pressed to find any serious technical errors – all ( ok, most ) of what he says about windfarms is true. He draws attention to the problems associated with windpower in a pretty convincing way, but, unless I’ve missed it, he doesn’t seem to offer any solutions or suggestions as to exactly where the planet’s electrical energy requirements should come from instead ?
Does he think burning coal / oil / gas / rubbish is a better method ? Or perhaps he feels the same as Prof. James (Gaia) Lovelock ( see 25th May ) that nuclear power is a lovely idea ?
Anyway, time for the usual question . . Why mention him now ? Well, take a look here :
http://www.thisislincolnshire.co.uk/
The newspaper quotes him as saying :
“The first of the most outrageous claims made by the Government and the wind industry is that carbon dioxide emissions are responsible for climate change”
And yet, here’s what his own website says about fossil fuels:
“ . . . burning them releases millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide, the main gas responsible for climate change.”
( http://www.davidbellamyconservation.org.uk/ )
Ehhhhhhh ? . . . Now I’m confused Prof., very confused . . . Oh well . . . .
http://www.smokecds.com/play/54994
superstitious information
You might not be aware, as I wasn’t, that there are now around 80 million people with internet access in China. Half the homes in Beijing are hooked up. The ‘authorities’ are trying to keep the lid on things though, and every now and again introduce measures to tame the beast that is the www.
They recently closed some 16,000 unauthorised internet café’s , and have just launched an online-denunciation facility – meaning that anyone can report China-based dodgy websites to the ‘authorities’.
Via the site, http://net.china.cn , you can denounce any local netizens who’ve set up unsuitable sites – for instance ones which contain “superstitious information” . . .
The overriding philosophy seems to be . . . OK, let the people open Pandora’s box – but only a little bit.
Here’s the story . . .
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/
living clones?
Really Magazine is pleased to say that it has readers from counties all over the planet. The last server logs unmistakably showed their tracks - from Australia, France, Netherlands, Japan, South Africa, Czech Republic, Brazil etc etc - which is why I’m slightly hesitant to mention a truly London-centric event – namely the re-election two days ago of the city’s mayor, (red) Ken Livingstone. An event which must have been as welcome as a f**t in a spacesuit with the P.M. – but fine with the people evidently – Heh!
Ken L. is no ordinary mayor. In fact he‘s no ordinary politician. There’s something very, very, peculiar about him – specifically, he uses the tube. The tube, a.k.a. the London underground rail system for our Latvian readers, is a hideous place to find oneself. It’s dirty, overcrowded, inefficient, hot’n’stuffy ( oddly, at just about any time of year ), and it stinks.
So it’s very unusual, to say the least, to see any politician using it. But Ken does. Not every day perhaps – but he’s a fairly regular passenger on the southbound Jubilee Line on his way to work of a morning. Even more bizarrely though – his mayoral department has a dutiful responsibility with regard to the tube system ! Sorry, but that does not commute compute.
It’s the equivalent of the minister for education sending their children to Crapville on Thames comprehensive school. Or the minister for health being treated for alcohol-induced liver damage at a National Health hospital. That kind of thing just doesn’t happen.
And yet, there he is, apparently, on his way to work, on the Jubilee line. What’s going on?
My theory is simple, and so farfetched it just might be true. I think there may be more than one ‘Ken’. Well, Churchill did it didn’t he ? And, more recently, so did Saddam. He employed a bunch meticulously chosen lookalikes. ( One of whom may be currently undergoing a ‘debriefing’ ( probably literally ) at a secret location in somewhere in the middle east. ) These Ken clones are the ones who are seen on the tube - while the real Mr L. simply strolls to his office from his discreet pied-à-terre in St. James’ ! Sorted !
There is, I admit, a flaw in my conjecture. For, each morning, on the Jubilee line, one of the Ken ‘clones’ is often heard engaging in conversations with his fellow passengers – usually on the subject of public transport, needless to say. And that’s the tricky bit. For not only do the doppelgangers have to look identical, but they have to sound like him as well. ( Mr. L. has a very distinctive sarf London twang all of his own ).
OK. It’s a bit too much to credit really isn’t it ? Anyone got any better ideas then? A Mayor on the tube ? Honestly ?
Well, if it really is him, he’s got my vote . . .
Close encounters with Phoebe
The NASA site which is covering the Cassini/Huygens mission should have some breathtaking images of Phoebe today. The 5 ton (!) probe, which was launched in 1997, passed as close as 2000Km to Phoebe yesterday, which is one of Saturn’s 31 (known *) moons. It’s not the most photogenic of celestial bodies, being a misshapen and battered lump of – no one knows as yet.
As
the probe passes nearby, it will be slightly deflected by the moon’s
gravity – this nudge will enable astronomers to work out the moon’s
mass. Since its size is already known, it will be possible to work out its
density – giving a fair clue as to what it’s made of – or,
more accurately, what it’s not made of.
Oddly, this 220Km wide moon orbits Saturn in the opposite direction to all 30 of the others - so there’s some speculation that it might have been ‘captured’ by the planet’s gravity some time in the distant past. In other words, it may have been a free-travelling asteroid / comet which happened to stray too close to Saturn – and has been there ever since.
The images which are being sent back by the probe are nothing short of spectacular. The same site also has many downloadable medium-res photos of Saturn itself, along with a very clear and extensive explanation of the mission so far - in .pdf form.
Cassini has, without doubt, provided the clearest and most amazing views of the planet which any humans have ever seen.
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm
comments : The probe has since discovered two new 'moons' bringing the total to 33.
Stamps & R.C Rip
First things first -
B a a a a a d N o o o s that Ray Charles isn't around any more. He passed away after what the media are saying was a 'hip operation'. . . Damn ! the man was cool to the very last wasn't he ?. Oh well, only one thing for it . . . here
And now -
This entry might seem a little vague – because I don’t really understand Finnish too well – oh all right, not at all. But the I gather the Finnish Post Office have come up with a wonderful new scheme whereby anyone – yes anyone – can put their ( as in 'any belonging to them' ) photos onto official postage stamps.
The scheme works like this. You upload the photos you’d like to use to the Finnish Post Office website. The PO vets the pics ( as you’d expect ) , and then sends them onto a specialist photolab called IFI. Three or four days later, you receive ( through the post, naturally enough ) a sheet of stamps which you can use as-per normal . . . A sheet costs around €24, ( but I’m not sure how many you get for the money – or how much they are face-value wise.) What a great idea !
If the scheme is a success, presumably all the Post Offices on the planet will be doing the same thing pretty sharpish – Her Majesty might just get sidelined. Thinking about it, she’d probably send hers in as well . . . corgi group-shot, natch.
If, on the other hand, it’s a hopeless flop and is cancelled, then presumably all the lucky ones who’ve already received their special sets will be in possession of a philatelic jackpot . . .
Endless possibilities. If only I knew how, I’d order some.
http://www.posti.fi/postimerkkikeskus/omakuva/
also see the wonderfully named:
http://www.ifi.fi
think before opening
Every year, thousands of children in the UK are poisoned - by medicines which they find after adults have ‘decanted’ them into ‘easy to open’ packages. Many adults simply don’t like the childproof packs – or find them too difficult to operate. ( arthritis sufferers for example )
A UK company have come up with three new packs which they claim will get round the problem. See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/
Rather than making the packs physically difficult to open, they’ve made them mentally difficult. The new packs have deliberately puzzling features.
The company’s website doesn’t have any details of price – not that that would worry the consumers if they knew the packs would protect their kids – but the manufactures might well baulk at it. The packaging of many medicines already costs many times the value of the contents. ( The new packs are, however, reusable, so the cost would be negligible after a few months.)
But, since the packs rely, in the main, on the premise of "thinking before opening" – perhaps the medicatees could think long enough to simply put their medicines in a high place where young children can’t reach ? Or even better in a locked box or cabinet to which only they have the key ? Doh !
It wouldn’t be a bad idea too, if the pharm industry didn’t go out of their way to make their products look like inviting little sweeties . . . Why not make them dull, misshapen, boring and brown ?
Hmmmm. Not sure the marketing departments will swallow that . . .
fuzzy borders
If you were the CEO of a transnational company with offices in 48 countries, would you choose to locate yourself in
A) Bogota ( Colombia) ,
B) Riyadh ( Saudi Arabia ), or . . .
C) Hamilton ( Bermuda ).
Bearing in mind that Bermuda has a very pleasant climate all year-round, world class golfing, fabulous seafood restaurants, sailing opportunities, and one of the highest standards of living on the entire planet ? See: http://bermuda-online.org/
Well quite. And so who can blame the bosses of Accen^ure ( formerly Andersen Consulting * ) for wanting to set up shop on the island ? True it’s only a small office ( it’s rumoured that they only have a dozen or so workers there – and their website doesn’t even list a phone number ), but that, apparently, is where the heart of the 90,000 strong organisation lies.
For it’s there that the $10Billion contract to run the new ‘virtual borders’ security system for the US has just landed. See:
http://www.bermudasun.bm/archives/
We all need to get up to speed with the company’s vision of the future. The idea of solid national borders, barriers, customs officials scrutinising passports etc etc is so passé – d’you see ? Now we have virtual, electronic, fuzzy borders – ones which extend far beyond the physical boundaries.
Honestly, one despairs when one reads comments such as these from the New York Times a couple of years back. Why do they have to be so negative ? Always looking on ‘the dark side’ ?
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/
Can’t they see there are other attractions to the place aside from the highly imaginative tax regimes for ‘foreign’ companies ? What about the pink-sand beaches ? And the unique Bermuda Rock Lizard, once thought to be extinct ?
Notes *
It should be remembered that, since their formal split in 2000, Accen^ure ( formerly Andersen Consulting ) now has nothing whatever to do with Arthur Andersen Inc – see: http://money.cnn.com/2000/08/07/
Arthur Andersen Inc were embroiled with the biggest accounting scandal of all time – Enron . . . http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/
According to bermuda-online.org, Enron was pretty advanced with the ‘virtual headquarters’ concept too – in fact, they liked the pink beaches and seafood cafés of the enchanted isles so very much that they set up no less than seven Bermuda-registered subsidiaries there !
Newsflash - “Dog Bites Man”
You might wonder if Physicsweb, which is part of the Institute of Physics – “a leading international body and learned society” could perhaps be a little more picky about the details and relevance of the articles which they publish ?
See:
http://physicsweb.org/article/news/8/6/3
What am I griping on about ? Well, the opening para for a start. Thomas Edison didn’t ‘invent the lightbulb’ – he did, however, purchase an 1875 patent from the ‘inventors’ Henry Woodward and Matthew Evans. Quite how they had managed to patent the idea themselves is a bit of a mystery, since more or less the same device had been developed and publicised by several other inventors during the twenty years before that !
But the idea for a ‘nanotube’ filament is interesting – possibly slightly maybe oneday.
Bearing in mind that just about all carbonised organic material ( including the charred string and bamboo strips used in the very first bulbs ) naturally contain surprisingly high percentages of nanotubes and buckyballs, it’s clear that the very first lightbulbs were, in effect, using nanotube filaments ( albeit not very purified ). They didn’t last very long. And neither did the ‘new’ invention mentioned in the physicsweb article. It was dead after 360 hours in fact.
While it was working it did, however, get very much brighter if more power was applied – though that cut down the filament life - well . . . er . . . situation normal then.
Ordinary tungsten filament lightbulbs will last for many tens of thousands of hours if you don’t put too much power through them ( e.g. the specialised indicator bulbs for aircraft consoles ) . If you want a very very bright light – just pump some more electrons through the bulb, and you’ve got one. Of course it won’t last very long.
There’s very little doubt that carbon nanostructures have a very bright future – perhaps as electron-emitters in fluorescent structures for example - but as high-tech filaments for lightbulbs ?
‘M'hai’ ( I think that’s the Cantonese for ‘no’ ). ( Ok, I promise to eat my words when you can buy them in Woolworths.)
For everything you ever wanted to know about carbon nanotubes and more, including
where to buy them by the gram ( $50 ish and upwards ) , see:
http://www.pa.msu.edu/cmp/csc/nanotube.html
For the real history of the lightbulb see :
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/
7th June
It is with great regret that we cover the passing of “Dorko” the
turkey after a long battle with xmas 2005. Dorko was known to
millions across the world after he was elected president of the Big
Roost twenty years ago. He surely must be given the credit for almost
singlefootedly kicking down the infrastructure of the so-called ColdTurkey
War - which has resulted in the continuing happiness of millions of
us avians. He had a simple vision of the world, it’s true, but that
was, in a sense, his greatest strength, for he could communicate with his
subjects like no other. And, if anything, this talent for simplicity only
increased over the years. His opponents have said that he never would have
been elected if it were not for his great fame as a crooner, ( who could
forget his 1957 performances of “You’re bootiful you are” ,
or “Just necking” ? ) but they are missing the point. Dorko was,
at heart, ‘one of us’ – perhaps the first ‘one
of us’ to be elected in the history of the Big Roost ? It
is true that his term in office was not without its share of scandals – his
detractors never tire of creating a flap about the fact that he personally
authorised illegal shipments of his favourite soyabeans to the Chicken
Shed. The press certainly gave him a roasting at the time, but we have
to remember that he was, almost singlefootedly leading the entire Big
Roost at that moment. What would those same detractors have done if
they had had to shoulder the burden which he did ? Would they perhaps have
been busy feathering their own nests ? He will go down in history as one
of the greatest turkeys of all time.
trash
You may think your computer is a piece of junk. Even if you don’t, it won’t be all that long before it ends up in a landfill somewhere. The average desktop machine isn’t designed to last more than four or five years at best - so even if you don’t get bored with it, or decide that it’s been well and truly left behind in the Moore’s-law race – pretty soon it’s going to get trashed.
When it does, several very toxic ( and very useful ) families of chemicals, are going to start their very very very long journey diffusing into the Earth’s fabric. Toxic elements such as lead, cadmium, tantalum, were of course mined form the Earth in the first place – but they weren’t all found together in highly concentrated purified forms - as they are in a dumped PC.
There are other more exotic chemical compounds, such as the PBDE’s ( poly brominated di-phenyl ethers ) used as flame retardants in plastic casings and printed circuit boards. These chemicals are close cousins of the notorious PCB’s, which are now banned in many countries.
But in Europe at least, there is now a ‘Directive’ which will try to persuade the EU member countries to at least make an attempt at recycling old computers. The directive, unhelpfully entitled WEEE, insists that EU countries ‘should’ be taking in at least 4Kg of recyclable electronic junk from every EU inhabitant by 2006.
You can read the full directive here. It has all the clarity, logic, and firmness you’d expect from the EU legislation-draughters.
http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/pri/en/oj/
There will be highly teched-up ‘treatment centres’ across the EU specialised in retrieving, recycling, or neutralising the toxic substances. In order to help them do this, every manufacturer will have to supply the centres with detailed info on every product they sell – showing which chemicals are present, and, where they are in the equipment.
How is this complex info to be delivered to the treatment centres ?
On CD-ROM of course . . .
Note* There are some exemptions to the directive.
So, Ireland and Greece won’t have to comply as early as the other countries ( because they have a lot of small islands apparently – eh ? no, I don't understand it either ).
Also some items are specifically excluded from the new measures. Notably ‘arms, munitions and war materials’ .
Evidently they’re not considered dangerous.
1$ a shot
According to a BBC news item released yesterday :
Following the lead of Starbucks . . . McDonalds will soon be launching a new music-download service in its outlets. Customers will be able to get hot ATRAC format songs to go, because the fast-food chain have, apparently, finalised a deal with Sony, who are pioneering the format - ( against the .mp3 tide. )
ATRAC songs are of course compatible with Sony players – but not, as yet, with .mp3 devices such as I-Pod. ( It is however, possible to burn them to standard audio CD’s, if you download a beta version of Sony’s software from their Connect™ site. Only for PC’s at present. ( no Macs, Heh ! ))
You might think they would have got the software sorted before launching the service – but hey ! – that’s rock’n’roll.
The songs are going to cost around $1 ( ish ) a shot – but some will almost certainly be available free at the outlets, as promotional items.
Really Magazine is not an overly avid consumer of downloaded music tracks, but there are a few tracks by Sony artists which might go down well . . . like :
Fat City (Shawn Colvin )
The Ketchup Song (Las Ketchup)
Oh, and I quite like the The Jam too. ( caution – contents
may be hot )
A.R.M.
Purleese ! How many more announcements will there be that the record labels are working on ‘a new way to prevent CD copying’ ?
Now BMG have yet again reported that they are testing new ways of protection, this time by limiting the number of copies that can be made from a legit CD. See:
They seem to be under the impression that the measure will stop piracy.
It won’t.
In fact, if a being from another planet with a Phd in the mathematics of Bayesian quantum encryptography 5000 years more advanced than ours, was acting as a development consultant – it still wouldn’t make bean’s worth of difference.
If anyone seriously wants to clone a CD, they just make a new one by recording the disc’s analog output ( which is so very nearly the same audio quality as the digital output as to be indistinguishable ) - and then they clone from the new one, in any quantity they fancy.
If you can listen to it - you can re-record it. It’s not that a difficult concept is it ?
Too difficult for the owners of the Big Five apparently. They’ve been so hypnotised by buzzacronyms like ‘DRM’ ( Digital Rights Management ) that they’ve completely forgotten about ARM ( Analog Rights Management ).
Rabbits in the headlights. Poor things.
catch that !
It’s been a bone of contention for more than a century. Are animal experiments really necessary ? Are they cruel ? Well, here’s one which will befuddle the logical answers to both those questions even further.
In the name of science, two dogs, called Romeo and Lily, were chosen to be the experimenter’s subjects. They both had a PC75WR strapped to their heads, and were wired to transmitters. Then they were encouraged to ‘perform’.
Their task ? Catching Frisbees™.
Researches from the Arizona State University West carried out the study, entitled “How dogs navigate to catch Frisbees™”.
The scientists launched the flying discs at a variety of angles, between 2 and 14 Mtrs away from the dogs. They recorded the results from the PC75WR ( a miniature tv camera ) and also video’d the performances with a static camera.
Not content with predictably straight launches, they even threw the Frisbee™ off to one side, with a spin and angle that made it dramatically change direction in mid-flight ! Crikey ! But Romeo and Lily had no problem with that. They lapped it up.
After
the results had been extensively correlated and analysed, the researchers
were able to state, with some confidence, that “dogs utilize the same
strategy to catch Frisbees™ as baseball outfielders use to catch fly-balls”.
Interested caninophiles, sportspersons, and aeronautical engineers can find the report here.
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/
Note* No animals were harmed during the studies, in fact, they
can hardly wait to get started on experiment #2.
For a vision of the future, just take a look at the website of the Palo
Alto based company which funded the research . . . Bow Wow!
http://www.interval.com/info/index.html
sweet nuffings
Sugar doesn’t cause obesity. Not according to the ‘Chocolate Information Center’ anyway. ( http://www.chocolateinfo.com/sr/) Sugar has a much maligned and misunderstood reputation apparently. For instance, contrary to popular opinion, sugar doesn’t contribute in a big way to dental caries either. ( again, according to the site ,http://www.chocolateinfo.com/sr/)
Odd then, that the World Health Organisation seems to think we’re eating too much of it. In fact, their recently published ‘Global strategy for Diet’ is asking ( they can only ask ) that the sugar levels in processed foods be reduced by manufacturers worldwide.
The full WHO draft proposal can be downloaded here ( .pdf format )
http://www.who.int/dietphysicalactivity/
Opponents
of so-called ‘nanny state’ strategies point out that, as long
as adults have access to the correct facts, they should be able to eat what
they damn-well like ( given the opportunity ) – but what about children
? Especially the younger ones ? How they come to a valid decision about what
to eat if they can’t really grasp all the ‘facts’, and
are bombarded by cleverly targeted advertising from every direction ?
Let’s take things one step at a time. The first thing we should do, according to Mars.com, is define what a ‘young child’ is, and that, apparently, depends upon the country where he or she resides. The company helpfully provide a chart so you can work out if you are a young child or not :
It’s worth checking, because it can vary by as much as six years, depending on where you live. A Mexican child, transplanted to, say, Italy, would take 50% longer to ‘grow up’ – Eh?, Well that’s what the chart implies.
So, there you have it, sugar doesn’t really make you fat, it doesn’t really rot your teeth – and Mexican kids mature 50% faster than Italian ones.
I should cocoa.
dontgiveamonkeys.com
Type the phrase “The internet is slowing down” into your search engine, and an interesting result will return ( in 0.39 seconds ). Hundreds of entries, as expected, from 1999 onwards. In other words, people were complaining about swimming in treacle five years back and beyond !
Is it really getting slower every year ? Well, nope. And the test above proves it. You can get a complex query into Google, have it parse the options, and get a reply in less than half a second ! That’s because the owners of the company know what they’re doing and have a massive tech-infrastructure to cope with the demand. But most importantly, they care that their product works. They give a damn.
There are hundreds of huge corporate sites which respond in the same way. Take http://www.bbc.co.uk for example. It very rarely takes longer than half a second to pull up their front page. Ditto the UK Guardian site, http://www.guardian.co.uk. But what about US sites ? There are plenty of lightning fast high-traffic ones there too. Try http://slashdot.org or http://www.tucows.com
OK, all these sites have occasional glitches, and sometime there is a delay, but mostly they can be relied on – so reliable in fact that they can, in effect, test your connection speed for you. If Google pops up in half a second or so, there’s not much wrong with your service provider, or your computer.
So what’s going on ? Why is that a good half of the Global Brand sites which we try to access come back with . . .
Simple. They don’t give a monkeys. The owners of the companies concerned either have no real grip on what the internet is, or much more likely, they can’t stand to see the size of the yearly infrastructure and wages bill for maintaining their web presence. Big company websites cost big bucks.
The same companies, however, won’t blink an eyelid about spending $120Million on a new corporate headquarters building. Or $10Million or a re-branding exercise to change their name to “Accsignetiq”.
The point they are missing, is that their sites, which are accessed ( or rather attempting to be accessed ) by millions of people in a year, are seen by the users as demos of the usefulness of the company concerned. If a potential customer pings a corporation who make say, digital cameras, and it takes them ten minutes to get through to a half-baked, error-riddled site which doesn’t even have the basic info they’re after anyway – they’ll think the company is run by a bunch of divvys. They’ll be right.
The offenders, of which there are legions, should really have figured out by now that if they can’t have a pleasant, fast and informative site running – no matter what the expense – it’s better not to have one at all. Nowadays, it’s a ‘given’ business cost. Like hiring window cleaners for your glossy glassbox HQ, or providing carparks for your employees.
No, the internet isn’t slowing down ( yet ) but many of the large ‘Blue Chip’ corporate websites definitely are. Do them ( and us ) a favour.
Don’t bother with them. But, most importantly, never give the guilty
parties any of your money - they’ll only spend it on rebranding.
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