JULY 04
Excess of tropical gasses.
Forests are very complex. Far too complex, it seems, for our limited technical ability to fully grasp. After many decades of study, there is still a ‘healthy debate’ ( a.k.a. complete confusion ) about whether large forests are a nett absorber of CO2 – or a nett emitter.
Last week Reuters released two stories, two days apart, which outlined two viewpoints of two different study groups - one says the Amazon rainforest absorbs greenhouse gases - the other says it emits them.
Is it really that difficult to measure ? Well, ok, it probably is – and computer modeling techniques fall way short of adequacy on systems of this scale – which shows, in effect, that they are very much more complicated than the most sophisticated hardware and software we can yet devise.
Throw
into the mix a high level of the all too familiar ‘who stands to benefit
?’ political levering, and maybe it’s not so surprising that
we can’t get a straight answer to the question.
To be on the safe side, perhaps it’s best to assume, for the time being, that the forests are neutral.
Also see : www.Really Magazine/meme_10.htm
What happens when they get to spaghetti junction ?
With regard to homing pigeons , no-one knows yet. But there’s growing evidence that one of the tricks they have in their navigational portfolio is - to do just what you or I would do . . . they follow roads and railways. Duh !
A just-released three year study from the University of Zurich fitted experienced Italian homing pigeons with ultra-miniature GPS flight loggers. Analysis of the results showed that the birds very often just flew alongside roads or railtracks which were heading in the general direction of home.
When the track deviated significantly from the required direction, the birds would often fly on just that little bit further, until they reached a junction going the right way, and then turn off.
They
even have their favourite roads too. The study, which was carried out in
Italy, showed that the birds had a marked preference for the SS Aurelia (
a main road dating back to Roman times ) but weren’t at all keen on
the more modern A12. Very sensible.
Are we any closer then to knowing how they can get home reliably from places hundreds of kilometres away from their roost – when taken there in a light-proof box ? Not really. But we do know they like to do things the easy / efficient way – which, in the view of Really Magazine, is undoubtedly a sign of high intelligence.
See:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/
Antiblog.
Errrr. . . what exactly is the point of a weblog. Well, it’s a ‘log’ isn’t it? A log in the sense of a daily entry describing the current status of, er . . . mundane things in general.
In the old days, the very old days, a log was a ship’s diary, making a record of all the occurrences which happened abored aboard, on a daily basis, for legal purposes - and also so that the ship’s owner, safely ensconced ashore, could keep track of his venture.
So the log would go something along the lines of :
Day 57 “Opened a new barrel of biscuits today. All rotten. Weevil damage. Opened second barrel. All damaged as well. Tomorrow will open third barrel. “
Day 58 “Opened third barrel today, all biscuits in good state. Weather rough.”
Day 59 “First mate desultory regarding biscuit situation. Have issued reprimand “
and so on and so on and so on and so on and so . . . on.
The point I’m making is, bluntly, who cares ? In the ‘old days’, the ship’s owner cared, but now ? Nothing personal, but how many people in the world , connected to the other side of the www from where you are, really care that your new setter puppies have been chewing the carpet again ? Or that your bike has a puncture ? Perhaps three or four immediate friends and relatives ? Why not just pick up the phone and tell them ? Because the rest of us really don’t give a ship’s monkey one way or the other : OK ?
Oh dear, that maybe a little harsh ; but the point I’m making is that who, aside from the author, is really interested in what M.I.T.’s Nicholas Negroponte coined a phrase for nearly a decade ago - “The Daily Me” ?
Don’t get the wrong idea though, this isn’t a rant against blogs per. se. – but it’s a rant against the content of the great majority of ‘em.
The blog is not dead. But the blog is unwell. The blog has some personal problems it needs to sort out.
Get over it, ( but purleese, don’t tell us about it. )
No-ware
The UK government cares about scientific Research & Development. No, really,
it does. Here’s what Tony Blair recently said in a speech to
the Royal Society about one cutting edge field – biotech :
"Biotechnology is the next wave of the knowledge economy and I want Britain to become its European hub,"
We may be able to measure the actual level of care by equating it with some real-world hard-cash scenarios : like this one.
A week or so ago, a recruitment ad appeared in New Scientist magazine. A job vacancy, for a ‘Bioinformaticist’. You can’t get a much more cutting-edge flavour-of-the-decade topic than bioinformatics ! The vacancy , which is a government funded post, is ( or was ) appropriate for someone with a doctorate in a related subject, and ‘advanced expert knowledge’ in all the following software areas:
Relational Databases
SQLserver
MySQL
Oracle
Networking
TCP/IP
Internet security
Web Development
ASP
Servlets
JSP
CGI
Perl
JavaScript
Webservers
IIS
Apache
OO and components
Java
C++
Net
And one or two others + well developed communication skills etc etc etc.
Strewth ! Sounds like they’re after someone with the 2004 equivalent computational skills of Alan Turing.
Being a Phd. The person concerned will have had to spend the best part of a quarter of a century ( maybe more ) educating and mentally preparing themselves for the prestigious challenge.
Because it’s government funded, you might imagine the salary for a hot-science ultra-high-tech post like this could well be ‘attractive’.
Oh yeah ? The cash on offer is actually around £23K a year ( before taxes ). Roughly the same as a middle-range city secretary might command. If the lucky Dr. who gets the job would like to apply for a loan to buy a house in which to live, close to the Research Park, they might expect to be able to borrow around £80K , ( to be paid back over 25 years )
A quick search of five estate agent’s websites revealed just what
that will get you in nearby Norwich . . .
“ Sorry! We Could not find any Properties that match your criteria.
Please refine search and try again”
Really Magazine is very much aware that in other parts of the world £23K would be the equivalent of a vast family fortune, but the reality is, in the UK, a single person is going to find it just about possible to lead a frugal lifestyle on that sort of cash – providing they don’t overdo things – like aspiring to try to buy a penurious property to live in.
So, now you know exactly how much the UK government cares about scientific R&D. Enough to buy one 25th part of a lock-up garage in Norwich each year.
Well I’ll be yardanged
Really Magazine has looked up the word ‘yardang’ in
the O.E.D. and it’s not listed – so we’ll just have to
take the European Space Agency’s word for it – they
are, apparently, the upstanding hard bits which are left behind when sandy
soil is eroded by wind.
The
ESA has a spectacular hi-res picture of yardangs on it’s site at the
moment. Not just any old yardangs mind, but yardangs on Mars ! It was taken
with the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) aboard the Mars
Express probe.
The full photo shows an area about 40 Kilometres across in the foreground. The site hosts dozens of equally spectacular and astonishing shots of the planet – to download the high-res versions, click on the image, then follow the new link at the bottom of the pic.
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express
here’s a high-res version :
http://esamultimedia.esa.int/images/marsexpress
Not to be outdone, NASA has also released today pictures of it’s own Martian yardangs.
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=13410
A right pain in the arm
Really Magazine has just re-equipped the entire newsroom with ‘mini’ keyboards. What a difference – should have done it years back ! The keyboards, which cost about £8, don’t have that ludicrous number pad on the right hand side. ( ok, for specific uses, like data entry accounts etc , we concede that maybe, just maybe, it comes in handy ). The result is that the computer user can now sit with the keyboard centred in front of the screen, instead of offset to the right.
With
the hideously designed ‘normal’ P.C. keyboard, one’s right
( mouse) arm is stretched over to the right, encouraging it to get strained.
As many journalists ( and other professionals who have to use a computer
all day long ) know to their cost, R.S.I. is a highly unpleasant, and in
some cases career-ending condition. Left handed people don’t suffer
anything like as much mouse-induced R.S.I., simply because their left arm
isn’t stretched way out to the left.
Many right-handed people have discovered that they can avoid the R.S.I. symptoms just by forcing themselves to use their left hand for mousing. ( They often start using their left arm after finding that the right one hurts too much to continue with – and then discover that the left arm doesn’t get affected ! )
If you’re right handed, don’t even think about it, get one today.
http://rsi.websitehosting-services.co.uk/index.asp
1984 just round the corner ? Nah ! Can’t even see it from ‘ere !
When it comes to public demos, Really Magazine doesn’t get out much, so you’ll have to forgive the mag for being slow on the uptake with regard to ‘Free Speech Zones’. In fact, Really Magazine had no idea they existed until today. Nostra Culpa.
But exist they do, and UK readers might want to brush up on the subject by doing an internet search on the phrase. Because we can guarantee they will be arriving in your backyard any day now ( if they haven’t already ).
Originally proposed by George Orwell ( oh, allright, they weren’t - but he would have done if he’d had a sufficiently wild imagination ) ‘Free Speech Zones’ are designated areas in which ‘protesters’ can be cooped up near likely trouble spots.
Whilst inside the fenced-in zone, they can say, ( and wear * ), what they like - and they won’t be arrested. If they step outside the zone, however, and wander in the general direction of the place where they’d like to be, normally half a Kilometer away or so - they might just get a blunt reminder – and a criminal record.
So, all is made well in one fell swoop. The ‘security services’ have all the ‘activists’ nicely penned-in, and the v.i.p.’s won’t have their fragile sensibilities offended by catching a glimpse of the great unwashed in their slogan emblazoned T-shirts, exercising their rights to free speech, and doing all that nasty shouty / protesty stuff.
Nice one George.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2004/07/23
* Also see :
http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/
Approved for public consumption.
Sometimes second best just won’t do. And the US Army Research, Development & Engineering Command should know all about that. Well, they do, and they have produced a document which you may want to peruse in order to keep things shipshape – sandwich-wise. Pay attention at the back dammit !
The following report describes the proper way to prepare a sandwich. Well, not all sandwiches, obviously, but types 1 to 4 anyway. There are around 7,500 words, so, as of now, no-one can claim they lack information on the subject.
To give a flavour flavor of the paper , here’s what they have to say about :
Sauce – Worcestershire [ that’s pronounced ‘Woostersha’ Ed.
]
“Worcestershire sauce shall be brown to dark brown liquid and
shall possess a pleasant, tart, peppery fruit-spice flavor with a typical
heavy viscosity”
Got
it ? Jolly good.
In case - just in case - things go wrong, there is also a list of error codes to be used in case of an insufficiently excellent sarnie. So, for example,
Error 105: Sandwich bread texture dry, crumbly, or excessively moist or gummy.
Error 122: Beef not shaved or thickness less than 1/32 inches or greater than 2/32 inches.
Error 208: Total weight of skin, cartilage, coarse connective tissue, tendons or ligaments, glandular material, discolored meat, and bone or bone fragments more than 0.09 ounces.
Ok ? Now make lunch ! ( not war )
You can access the entire report from this : link
Comment: You might think, since the sandwich was invented
in the UK, ( well, the word sandwich was anyway ) that the UK’s
own M.O.D. might well have published a similar authoritative treatise. Really
Magazine has searched diligently, but has been unable to turn it up.
Typical! So much for ‘freedom of information’ in the UK !
First they found the Saddled Prickleback
. . . then the Orangeflag Blenny, and now it’s the Stout Infantfish. We are, of course talking about H.J. Walker of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, and William Watson of the Southwest Fisheries Science Center, National Marine Fisheries Service, in La Jolla.
At first, they didn’t realise what they’d caught when they identified a previously unknown species, which they dubbed the Stout Infantfish – but they did think is was pretty damn small for a fish. ( 8mm long ) In fact, it turns out to be the smallest fish known to science. Not only that, but investigators soon pointed out that it’s the smallest creature on the planet with a backbone. In other words, our smallest ( reasonably close) relative.
We
have to bear in mind, of course, that only a small percentage of marine species
have so far been catalogued. As the saying goes ‘we know more about
the moon than we do about the deep oceans’ . So, there’s
a fair chance that there are even smaller vertebrates somewhere down there.
The deep oceans could well become the ‘flavour of the decade’ location for research – money is beginning to flow in from the big-pharmaceutical industry, who are keen to capitalise on any newly discovered creatures, processes, or chemicals. They’ve had a good snoop round the Amazon and Africa – patented a swathe of life-derivatives – and now they fancy a spot of diving.
From the human standpoint, the Stout Infantfish has no known use as yet however, other to amuse us and cause us to wonder.
Joined-up-jounalism.
We all make mistakes, very often, big ones, small ones – some don’t matter – others do – big time. Human driven engines like newspapers are especially prone to errors because ‘market forces’ urge them to exaggerate. Readers just don’t like headlines such as “ We’re not sure, but it looks as though Saddam may or may not have perhaps been stockpiling wmd’s – possibly – maybe – let’s try and find out ”.
Newspapers do seem to suffer from a childish syndrome, however, in that they don’t like to admit their mistakes. That, in itself, is another mistake. Very few readers are going to object if the paper has a front page which screams “We got it wrong ! - and here’s why !”. In fact, they’d be more than happy with an apology like that – along with an explanation, a promise to try harder, and a teaser with the updated ‘factoids’.
So, thanks go to the Guardian group for publishing this refreshing and illuminating piece by George Monbiot. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story
More please.
Outsourcing meets robotics ?
Transnational companies love outsourcing. It’s almost become the norm in fields such as customer support centres. So, a telephone enquiry to a UK bank may well be answered by someone in a call centre in New Delhi.
The wages which the company pays to the employees will typically be five to ten times lower than in the country where the head office is situated. The workers are often highly qualified ( much more so than their equivalent in, say, the EU ), and, although their wages are so much lower than in the so-called ‘first world’ – they are considered very well paid by local standards – often three times the rate they could command in any local industry. It’s not hard to see why the idea has caught on so substantially.
Multinational manufactures can also gain fortunes by shifting their production facilities to areas where the labour rates are lower. A German fridge maker can now open a factory in Lithuania ( probably with an EU construction grant thrown in ) and see their wage bill plummet by a factor of six.
But the companies still can’t find a way of employing cheaper labour in situations where they need a worker to actually face the public. For instance, supermarkets need a checkout person to scan products and interact with the customers. Ideally, the firm would love to be able to replace the worker with a robot, but the technology for this ( despite media hype and Hollywood film scripts ) is way, way, short of being practical. One day, it will be, but for the time being, getting a robot to pick up randomly orientated objects, scan them, fiddle with the barcode when the laser scanner won’t work properly, chat with the customers, receive a credit card, swipe it etc etc , is far too much for the current software to handle.
So here’s an idea. Why not meld the two techniques ? Why not have a dumb, unprogrammed robot, that is in reality just a remote interface for a real human being – based in Sri Lanka or wherever. Such robots already exist for medical applications ( so a doctor can work remotely ). The (poor) worker will ‘see’ the customer via a robo-cam and hear via an audio link. All they need to do is physically work a hands-on model at their end, and all the movements will be carried out by robo-checkout.
The technology to do all this is already well tried and tested. And it cuts away the as yet unsolved aspect of robotics ( the intelligent software ) at one swoop.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating the idea. In fact, it will probably be another nail in the de-humanisation coffin, I’m just pointing out that it may well soon happen. If the cost of the hardware can be offset by the extremely low wages at the ‘person’ end – it will be appearing in supermarkets, banks, and fast food outlets pretty damn soon . . .
And no, I don’t have a *%^^**ing loyalty card . . . .
University computer network 'not secure' shocker.
Two philosophy students from Oxford University have been scalded scolded - for exposing security flaws . . .
They wrote an article for their student newspaper which highlighted holes in the university campus network.
The piece claimed that, using freely available hackerware from the www, it was possible to breach the network’s security, and obtain passwords, eavesdrop on chat, and even access the campus cctv camera network !
The article itself, in “The Oxford Student” sensibly gave no details of the hacking techniques - but that didn’t stop the university authorities handing over the two students who wrote the piece to the local police. . .
You might think that the university would have been pleased to get free consultancy advice on the security weakpoints of their system ? – but instead they chose to turn to the provisions of the Computer Misuse Act 1990.
The students may now face an uncertain future at the college.
A couple of thousand years back, Pythagoras, the inventor of the word ‘Philosophy’, had an unfortunate student boiled alive for daring to disagree with one of his theorems – so, it seems, academic myopia and arrogance has a fine traditional history dating back to the ancient Greeks.
Here’s a full report on the story :
http://www.yorkshiretoday.co.uk/
and here’s the original article:
http://www.oxfordstudent.com/2004-05-27/news/1
Impersonation of the dead
Can be a crime. It certainly is if you use it to steal money. Last year, in the UK alone, there were 16,000 discovered cases. This year, the projected figure is 20,000, according to CIFAS, a financial services funded organisation which is trying to lower the rate of fraud on behalf of its clients ( i.e. banks, credit companies, lenders etc ). We might guess that the true figure, which would include undiscovered cases, would be far higher.
CIFAS recommend, amongst other things, that recently bereaved families should carefully check the pockets of any clothing they are about to send to charity shops, and that birthdates etc should never be included in obit notices. See the full list of recommendations at http://www.cifas.org.uk/July2004a.htm
They also provide helpful advice about avoiding other types of fraud, such as
“Never make any major financial decision or sign anything on the spot”
and
“if an investment or any other opportunity seems too good to be true - it probably is”
- worth remembering next time you visit your bank or building soc.
Back to the subject though, the site doesn’t provide any figures about the cash which banks and building socs gain every year in sleeping accounts - where money is left, unclaimed by the deceased (obv) or their relatives. Sometimes families never discover obscure accounts, and, of course, sometimes there simply are no relatives.
If CIFAS care to e-mail the figures I’ll post them here . . .
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