OCT 04
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Shameless plug of the week.
We first flagged ‘ The Corporation ’ back in May – and now it’s finally opened in the UK.
How
is it that the workers who produce a shirt which retails for $178 get paid
$0.74 to make it ?
The Canadian-produced film explains all. And more. Corporate pathology laid out and dissected on a celluloid slab for 2hr. 45m.
Not for the squeamish.
Mega-Corp funded PR machines across the developed world would pay $Millions to stop this film getting publicity – if they knew how . . . But the train, as the saying goes, has left the station . . .
It’s now playing in the US , the UK , Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and, of course, Canada.
http://www.thecorporation.com/about/
We like to support the little guy.
The degree of openness which research teams embrace with regard to their sources of funding varies markedly. In general though, things seem to be improving slightly, and many papers’ authors, especially in the US, now print exact details of where the money came from.
Regular readers will know that Really Magazine never tires of pointing out that the source of research cash will, in the majority of cases, explain the results which get fed into the PR network.
With regard to the research which is currently being undertaken into autonomous robotics, it doesn’t take much investigating to find out that the bulk of university projects are being funded for the benefit of ‘The Warfighting Community’.
So, we’d like to draw attention to an autonomous robot project which, as far as we know, has nothing whatever to do with the arms industry. It’s fairly difficult for us to figure out what it does have to do with – because we, to our shame, can’t understand Japanese.
As far as we can tell, the project is the work of one person, Katsuhisa Ito, who has produced SILF-H2. The acronym stands for Super Intelligent LiFe, and Ito seems to have been single handedly making far more admirable progress in mini-robotics than many a taxpayer-funded university project.
Here’s a link to an impressive 2003 video of his creation. Note that there are no cables supplying power – this bot has onboard batteries.
Please note that the 1 minute video file is an .mpg, and is around 12Mb in size – to speed things up, we’ve re-compressed it into .wmv format, and this one’s only 317K. ( the original is here )
There are two things we’d like to point out:
1) Someone should create a music track for this clip – anyone up
for it ?
2) You could tell that the ‘bot is Japanese just by the way it moves – how
does he do that ?
Here's a link to Ito's info page :
http://www02.so-net.ne.jp/~itou/Silf-H2.html
if anyone can figure out more details for us, we'd appreciate it.
Trick or visit to an ophthalmologist.
“ Freeze ! We have reason to believe that you may be carrying
a significant number of ‘decorative contact lenses’ which you intend
to distribute without the appropriate involvement of a qualified eye-care professional
! ”
Since
it’s nearly Halloween again, the FDA has issued another warning
( it appears every year ) about the dangers of wearing ‘decorative
contact lenses’. These ( potentially ) illegal devices can cause problems
such as “corneal abrasion ( due to poor lens fit ) “, and even “ reduction
in visual acuity (sight) ”.
It appears that large numbers have been turning up at US ports – destined for their ( rather short-termed it seems to us ) market over one weekend. Where are they coming from ? We don’t know. But we think it’s an important international security determinant which has implications that should be investigated with some urgency.
If you have any information about this reprehensible influx, or see any for sale at a 'flea market', you are encouraged to contact the FDA and report it by phone ( toll free in the US).
You have been warned :
http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/news/
Three ‘other’ stories.
While the rest of the media concerns itself almost exclusively with Hobbit Related Activities (see yesterday), we’d like to point out that there are other important stories around too – today, there is a plethora. So many, in fact, that we simply can’t cover them all in depth. So here’s an overview of three of the most significant.
If you happen to be in Brussels on the 9th November, why not trot along to the ‘Eurobot 2004 ’ Awards Ceremony in the Yehudi Menuhin Room at the European Parliament. There’ll be a film as well as a ‘Tropical Island Coconut Rugby’ match between the bots – with entries from 20 EU countries. As if that wasn’t enough, there will also be “The Presence of High-level Politicians” Ooooooh ! Pity they can’t combine the politicians in the techno-rugby brawl - even so, an interesting day out is guaranteed.
Dr. Danielle Gunn-Moore, the Nestlé Purina * senior lecturer in feline medicine at the University of Edinburgh Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, has just completed the first part of a study into stress. Cats can apparently become stressed-out by a variety of external pressures, such as moving home, or the appearance of strangers on their patch. The biggest stressor though, is, needless to say, the presence of other cats. A fair number of anxious moggies go on to develop FLUDT – a type of feline cystitis. Luckily, the condition can be ameliorated by encouraging intake of extra fluid. The team recommends providing the cats with " tuna-flavoured ice-cubes in their drinking water ".
Sorry, but . . . Bleccchhhh !
* A brand of cat food.
http://129.215.67.86/pressreleases/
Audio technology has improved by leaps and bound over the past few decades. So, as time goes on, the opportunity to ‘re-master’ old recordings constantly re-presents itself. Sadly, sometimes the temptation to remix the old tapes results in new versions which are, frankly, not as magical as the originals. Sir Paul McCartney famously 'enriched' most of the Beatles tracks, and Sir Frank Zappa did the same with his extensive catalogue. Given the right technical know-how though, and avoidance of the temptation to ‘improve’ on the original mixes, it is possible to squeeze out even more detail and subtle nuance from old recordings. One such example is the brand new suite of digitally re-mastered tracks from Yorgi Golyarevsky. Almost his entire catalogue, spanning more than thirty years, has been lovingly spruced-up by his label Clubbo Records. You can hear some samples of the pristine tracks here ( and also get bang up-to-date with Yorgi’s fascinating career )
http://www.clubbo.com/YorgiBio.htm
Mini (wo)man.
We can’t keep up with this ! First scientists discover a New Giant Ape – and now they’ve found a New Tiny Person !
As the story is bound to be covered everywhere, and Nature has a ‘special’ on it, we’ll leave it at that. As they say . . .
“This, is not, a hoax”
http://www.nature.com/news/specials/flores/
Oh, and here's a picture of Peter Jackson.
Killer Phrase of the day :
If you’re leaning another language, it should be possible, we reckon, for an adult to learn a couple of new words or phrases every day. ( providing you don’t eat too much trans-fat – see below )
Ohpureese is trying to learn ‘PR Speak’ - and today’s phrase is :
“The Warfighter Community “
We’re not quite sure as to its accurate meaning as yet, we’ll have to ask Boeing for an exact clarification .
Here’s an example of the phrase, in context, from a recent press-release :
“The warfighter community is always extremely positive about SLAM-ER . . . “
( Boeing’s SLAM-ER is a missile that can be guided onto its target within 8 feet - apparently )
The company, which has just reported a 78% jump in quarterly profits is currently managing to make around $2.5Billion per year by satisfying “The Warfighter Community “.
If you thought they just made aircraft, check out their product list - http://www.boeing.com/ids/sitemap.html
Since we’re in the mood for phrases, here's a few we've come across recently . . .
"Da wo own terrrrr"
“It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.”
“Where there’s muck there’s brass”
Hey! You! gimme another cookie – what’s yo' name again ?
Trans-Fats are all over the news at the moment because food regs in the US are going to force manufacturers to list them as from 2006.
Do a Google for “trans fats” to see the state of the furore.
Also known as ‘hydgrogenated fats’, it’s now generally considered that there is no ‘safe level’ in foods. They are firmly linked to heart disease, cancer, high blood pressure, and diabetes – hence the food regulator’s concerns.
But now a new study, just announced at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, has revealed yet another problem - eating trans-fat makes you stoopid – well, it does if you’re a rat.
Prof. Lotta Granholm , of the Medical Univ South Carolina , decided to give rats a diet containing trans-fats ( hydrogenated coconut oil ) - and a control group food using soya oil instead. After six weeks, they were tested in Psychology’s favourite lab equipment – a maze. The trans-fats-rats faired far worse than the control group.
Two relevant factors : The trans-fats-rats weren’t overweight, and secondly, they had only been fed amounts which were comparable with ‘average’ human diets.
( Good news for the sugar industry though. Similar studies also tested rats on a high sugar diet – and they did fine at their maze IQ test.)
We’re not sure what the implications are. As far as we know, it’s the first time that anyone has claimed that a certain kind of food can make you more stupid. ( Drink ? yes, obviously. )
See: ( registration required . . . yawn . . . )
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news
Editorial – arms industry.
I wasn’t going to write anything about the ‘missing explosives’ in Iraq. But this is a huge story. To put it into perspective, enough ultra-high-tech explosives have gone missing to perform a ‘Lockerbie ’ style outrage 700,000 times over.
But there’s something else missing - from every single report I’ve looked at so far. In the form of hard, and probably highly embarrassing, facts. Like - where did this 370 tons of devastating material come from in the first place ?
Somebody, somewhere, must have produced it *. Maybe it was made locally. Far more likely though, it came from the EU or the US. Hundreds of sleepy towns across ‘the west’ have discreet production facilities which are, right now, busily churning out these formidable explosives as though they were cheese.
As I’ve pointed out a few times, every single firm engaged in the production of such materials is sanctioned and supported by the government of the country where they reside. Without fail, they are propped up by lucrative taxpayer-funded contracts. It’s true that many provide explosives for mining and road-building – but show me one which doesn’t also supply materials for weapons systems and I’ll show you a hen with teeth.
As long as the ‘civilised world’ continues to allow – encourages, in fact - the production of such materials for weapons sytems, we all, sooner or later, end up paying for it. Possibly twice.
One thing I can predict with 100% confidence. One way or another, the missing material will show up again.
* The IAEA, who inspected the material, will of course know exactly where it
originated - chances are, the packaging still had the makers stamps on it.
Failing that, a lab test can show its origin in a day or so. Check their
website today (26 Oct ), and you won’t even find a mention of the story – let
alone a transparent and detailed report .
Update 28th Oct: Here's a link to a Minneapolis based TV channel which took footage in the area at the time. As they point out, at the moment, they're not sure if these pics are of the explosives - or some others. Either way, as we might have guessed, the cases are clearly labeled in English. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be a maker's ID visible on the boxes.
Link of the day ( a bit late - sorry )
And you thought you had a **** job . . .
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/press.office
Hot Obsidian.
Here’s an algorithm that must be as old as humanity itself.
Got something very unpleasant to get rid of ?
Dig a hole, chuck it in, and bury it.
There is an important modifier we should add to the algorithm, that is :
The nastier it is, the further away ( from yourself ) you should dump it.
The Dalai Lama has recently been complaining about ( no, that’s the wrong word, the Dalai Lama doesn’t complain he – ‘draws attention to’ ) the fact that China is apparently continuing to get rid of its nuclear waste by dumping it in Tibet.
See:
http://www.phayul.com/news/
The problem for the US, the EU and Japan is that they don’t have ‘ a Tibet ’ to dump things on. So they are desperate to come up with ways to safely dispose of nuclear waste ’in their own back yards’ so to speak.
The scale of the ‘Intermediate level’ nuclear waste problem is awesome. As Tim Radford, the UK Guardian ’s science editor put it in a recent BBC interview : “ We’re producing this stuff at a rate of 7000 tons a year “ and “ In 24,000 years it will only be half a poisonous as it is right now ”
One possible disposal method, developed in the 1980’s is ‘Vitrification’. In essence, the basic tech behind the process is very simple. You mix the waste with silica-rich soil, and then pass a gargantuan electric current through it. About 3.5 Megawatts, for a week or so, should do it. Not surprisingly, the soil heats up to around 1,800 degress C. If you’re lucky, and you don’t experience an MEE ( Melt Expulsion Event ) then you’ll be left with a block of glass-like material which encapsulates the waste.
The world leader in this type of vitrification process is a company called Geomelt , a subsidiary of the UK’s AMEC Plc. For an overview of the tech, see their site http://www.geomelt.com
We don’t want to be picky, but what would be the first question you would ask yourself if you were thinking about disposing of some ‘Intermediate level' nuclear waste ? . . . Perhaps, ‘How long will the containment last ?’ . . . Maybe we missed it, but after searching high and low through the Geomelt site, we can’t find any mention of the life-expectancy of one of these glassy blocks. Could it be that they are hesitant to specify it for some reason ?
Depending on who you ask, it’s generally reckoned though, that the lifetime of such encapsulations, which can weigh up to 1000 tons, would be ‘ thousands > millions ’ of years – providing, of course, they don’t crack in the meantime. Bearing in mind that they may contain products which produce heat for tens of thousands of years, that would seem, to us at least, a distinct possibility.
To sum up, we’d like to ask the question : If there are any humans around in, say, ten thousand years, will they be overjoyed that their ancestors managed to safely store away all their mega-toxic nuclear waste in highly durable and manageable obsidian monoliths – or, will they be cursing us to hell and back for dumping the stuff all over the place in slowly deteriorating 1000 ton blocks - when it must have been obvious that there was never any real possibility of foreseeing the ultra-long-term consequences ?
For an overview of the tech, see:
http://tech.inel.gov/documents/PlanarISV/
or, for really in-depth info ( large .pdf file )
The ‘ultimate battery’.
We’d love to know who first came up with the phrase ‘The hydrogen economy ’ . . . Anyone know ? ( Maybe it came from a university academic, but we’re more inclined to guess that it was coined in a government-funded PR office somewhere.)
Peering decades into the future, we’d like to make a quantum–leap in H2 spin, and coin a new phrase ourselves. ‘The Anti Hydrogen Economy ‘
Back in 2002, the CERN particle accelerator managed to make 100,000 anti-hydrogen atoms - and now there is a new scheme afoot at NASA to use anti H2 to power spacecraft. In theory, it’s the ultimate fuel ( ok, the penultimate – dilithium crystals are of course the most potent, as Star Trek enthusiasts will know ). Vastly more efficient than fission / fusion reactions.
The author’s of the recently released paper “Controlled Antihydrogen Propulsion for NASA's Future in Very Deep Space ” point out that in practical terms such a space engine might be around 50 years away.
But the spacecraft will, of course, need a source of anti H2 - and a new machine, capable of producing reasonable quantities of the exotic atoms is proposed for 2010. It will be called FLAIR* ( Facility for Low-energy Anti-proton and Ion Research ) and will may be built at the GSI accelerator in Germany.
Quite how ‘containers’ of anti-H2 could be transported around on Earth - to fuel-up the spacecraft - isn’t really made clear by the paper.
If you thought transporting common hydrogen was a dangerous procedure . . . Hah!
Here’s a link to the paper ( .pdf file )
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0410511
Note* Strictly speaking, that should be FLAPIR – but
it doesn’t sound as good does it ?
Smoker's droop.
Yesterday, the EU department which regulates tobacco sales unveiled 42 new photos and graphics – described as ‘horrific or humorous’ – which may be appearing on cigarette packs near you soon. Some of the photos are especially hard hitting, depicting mortuary slabs and cancerous growths.
Tobacco now accounts for 25% of all mortalities in the EU – and is the single biggest cause of “avoidable death” ( we’re not quite sure what that means – but it equates to around 650,000 a year )
The commission also announced a €72Million media campaign against smoking, and, from June 2005, newspaper, magazine, radio and internet based tobacco advertising will be banned in the EU.
( We’re not sure though, about ‘advertising blimps’, direct mailshots, tele-marketing calls, and cards stuck up in phonebooths. Wouldn’t it be simpler just to ban all tobacco adverts ? )
Here’s a sneak preview of the packshots :
http://europa.eu.int/comm/mediatheque
Editors note: Astonishingly, the EU has not managed ( despite its best efforts ) to “identify the authors and rights holders for some of the images.” If you believe that you may be a rights holder, contact the C A Library of the European Commission.
Voting in Florida
from our correspondent TB
We must all try to keep up with advances in technology and it is fortunate
that the technologists are assiduous in providing us with audio-visual aids
to help us to understand what they can do for us.
Here, then, sent to me by a friend in Baton Rouge, is a simple demonstration
of the system of electronic balloting which is coming into use in Florida.
It is a large(ish) (1.8MB) .wmv file which (after a little delay) will show
you how it works. Click HERE.
Sweet nightmares.
That makes two things we’ve learned to today ( the Degree Confluence Project – see below ) and now :
' Mad Honey '.
Nineteen people ( at least ) have suffered poisoning symptoms caused by eating honey in Turkey. Bees which make their honey from nectar collected from ' ericaceous ' plants ( like rhododendrons, azaleas etc ) can inadvertently lace the honey with andromedotoxins ( a.k.a. grayanotoxins ) which, to mammals at least, are highly . . . errrrr . . . toxic.
Symptoms include sweating, salivation, dizziness, weakness, blurred vision, chills, emesis, diarrhea, muscular weakness, impaired vision, bradycardia, hypotension (caused by vasodilation), atrioventricular block and cyanosis (turning blue).
One teaspoonful can floor you apparently. Nasty business.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/
also see:
http://cal.vet.upenn.edu/poison/plants/
See the world.
Well, it’s hardly hot news – the project was started in 1996. But, with apologies to all www users who’ve known about it for years, we’d like to draw attention to the ‘ Degree Confluence Project ’. ( We’re working on the basis that if we didn’t know about it – there’ll be plenty of others out there who don’t too . . .)
The idea is to collect photographs from every single ' latitude and longitude integer degree intersection ' in the world – very much like a high-res satellite picture of the entire planet, but with the pictures taken horizontally !
The resolution of the ‘grid’ is roughly one picture every 50 miles. You can mouseclick on any photo to see a blowup.
Anyone can send in their pictures – but you’ll need to back them up with GPS evidence that you took it at the required spot ( most people take a snap of the readout on their GPS gizmo ).
This list of pictures, which are overlayed on a giant map on the website, is growing almost daily – but there are still 12,669 gaps to be filled in.
Here’s the work-in-progress.
Tip: Start with the 'small' maps – the 'large' one is very large - and the 'huge' one is absolutely vast, and will take several hours to download.
http://www.orbitals.com/dcp/dcp3a.htm
here’s the info pages about the project :
http://confluence.org/infodcp.php#goals
Get paid to stay in bed . . . ( again )
Back in early August last year, we posted details of a ‘get paid to stay in bed’ project organised by the European Space Agency. The idea is to try to simulate the effects of weightlessness so that it can be assessed here on Earth.
Similar studies have been carried out before – but only with male volunteers. This one is strictly ladies only.
Since the call for volunteers went out, they have had around 700 applications. But the organisers are not happy with the response. Too many were from France apparently. They want more from other parts of the EU, so the chance to apply is still open, and today the call has gone out afresh . . .
The ESA site fails to mention three very important details :
1) You’ll have to stay laying-down in bed for 60 days, without be able to get up – for any reason ( other than an emergency of course )
2) There is ( as we understand it ) a payment of around £10K. We e-mailed the oganisers to confirm this – but they never replied . . .
3) They 'forgot' to include the URL of the site where you can apply : here
it is.
http://www.medes.fr/Clinic/Experiments
Hey ! ESA ! Wake up !
Editor's comment :The Guardian have now picked up the story, but they don't mention the ten grand either - kind of an important detail ? - have we got it wrong ?
Poverty, Oil, and Corruption.
Transparency.org (TI) have just published their ‘Corruption
League Table’ again. Not all that much change from last year.
Finland ( as always ) is apparently the least corrupt country, Brazil is about half way down the list ( or up the list – depending on whether you are an optimist or a pessimist ) – and this year’s corruption basket-case is Haiti.
TI draws attention to two possible trends / linking factors . . .
It seems that in general, the poorest countries are the most corrupt. Begging the questions ‘Does corruption cause poverty ?’ or ‘Does poverty cause corruption ?' ( or both ? )
The second trend is that ( again in general ) the more oil there is sloshing about – the more likely you’ll be able to find a corrupt regime getting their hands dirty.
TI estimates that the amount lost due to bribery in government procurement is getting on for half a Trillion $ per year worldwide.
For the full shameful league table see :
Coming to a small screen near you . . .
You’ll soon be able to watch and hear MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 MPEG-4 HE-AAC on your PDA.
K3WL !
The prestigious Fraunhofer Institute have today announced a new combined Codec ( COmpressor / DECompressor ) which handles the playback of moving images and audio on handheld devices. According to a spokesperson “ - every [ PDA ] can become a small movie theatre which you carry around in your pocket.”
The Fraunhofer Institute have a very impressive track record when it comes to establishing and capitalising on media compression formats ( they are co-owners of the .mp3 patent ) – so they’ll probably succeed in their quest to establish pocket theatres.
Bear in mind though, that the keyword is ‘ small ’ . . .
The image format is 320 x 240 pixels. If our maths is correct, that’s about 1/100th of a 70mm cinema screen frame . . .
Perhaps better suited to watching “Honey I shrunk the screen Kids” than “King Kong II“
http://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/pub_rel
Media feedback sytems.
www.monbiot.com doesn’t update everyday – but when
it does it’s certainly worth the wait. Today, George M. has posted
a 5000 word essay ( actually a speech given in South Africa ) titled “No
Longer Obeying Orders ”.
The essay explains the almost irresistible pressures which face journalists who feel the urge to tell the truth ( in this case about environmental issues ).
In our own small way we’d like to echo George’s views with an example or two on a more general level. . .
Imagine a national publication which appears to be utterly independent from big business, government, and banking pressures. An impossible entity of course, but imagine it for a moment.
The publication’s journos are invited to a press junket organised by the PR company who represent a very large film studio. There is an opportunity to interview ‘insert name of megastar’ . If they write a reasonable review of the current product on offer they’ll be asked back next time. But if they destroy the reputation of the star – assuming they deserve it – then the newspaper will no longer receive invitations from the film studio. They will be off the junket list p.d.q. And the readers will turn to competing journals for the next batch of star-info.
The political lobby system works in more or less the same way. When we see quotes from ‘Sources Close to the Foreign Office’ or ‘Sources Close to the Prime Minister’ we can be (almost) sure that the journalists have been fed a story via the governmental spin-meisters. If the publication goes against the grain and writes a highly critical piece, they’ll simply be cut out of the loop. They won’t receive the next batch of up to the minute titbits that their rivals have access to. To the readers it will seem as though they are out of touch.
The publication publishes a damning report in their weekend edition revealing ‘fraudulent’ activities at a car manufacturing plant. The manufacturers ( a multinational household name ) have been deliberately failing to produce new models from their UK plant so that they can claim falling sales. The poor sales figures allow the company to close the plant and sack 12,000 workers. At the same time, the company is organising the construction of a new plant in Lithuania – where the tax regimes are far less punitive and the non-unionised workforce will happily work for one-tenth of the UK hourly rate. On Monday morning the manufactures will call the publication and withdraw their ten-week series of double-page colour-spread car ads. – budget £0.35Million.
Etc Etc.
Of course none of the above, or any of the pressures mention in George Monbiot’s essay even come close to the forces exerted by totalitarian regimes. Journalists from the EU, US and Japan etc don’t ( very often ) get thrown in jail for their writings. ( the current record holder is Cuba – with 26 journalists currently in prison for what they've written. source: http://www.rsf.fr ).
But, given the conditions for a reasonably free press, the following rule still applies ( apologies to readers who’ve seen us quote it before – but we’ll probably carry on quoting it too )
“ News is when somebody, somewhere, doesn’t want the public to know – the rest is advertising “
http://www.monbiot.com/archives
Quest for engage-ability.
What is NM2 ? We’ll be 100% honest here – we’re not quite sure.
The EU funded ( €7.5Million ) project ( full title: New Media for a New Millennium ) will run from now until Aug 2007.
What we can tell you though, is it has ‘Objectives’. They are :
Vision Objectives,
Project Objectives, and
Enabling Objectives.
Not only that, they will create a ‘realisation engine’ and facilitate ‘media ingestion’.
But what exactly will the NM2 be doing ? Well, here's how they explain it . . .
“ At the production side a lot of ‘Atomic’ parts of content are available or are created “
then
“ narrative presentation of the moving image media is personalised to suit the preferences of the engager ”.
If we’ve understood today’s press-release correctly, the idea seems to be that consumers ( sorry, ‘engagers’ ) of the future may be able to construct a personalised version of their favourite film / TV prog / show ( whatever ) by accessing a digitised database of pre-recorded material stitched together by custom software.
We can see how this could be an attractive idea for the engagers – a kind of “TV-Me ” or, realtime “ Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid – II “.
But we can’t help thinking about the enormous amount of work which would have to go into the ‘atomic’ parts from which the personalised version could be assembled.
There would seem to be little doubt that it’s technically possible, but :
The production companies would have to output several times their normal amount of material in order to provide the variation. Not only that, but each chunk would have to incorporate very carefully designed ‘in and out points’ so that it could easily edit to almost any other part . . .
In short – a hell of a lot more production work. At a wild guess, we’d say that in order to provide a convincing array of possible programme variations, there would have to be about ten times the usual amount of source material that would go into a normal film or TV prog. Bearing in mind ‘economies of scale’ let’s guess that would multiply the production budget by a factor of five or so . . .
We’ve carefully read NM2’s disclaimer at the bottom of the page : and we agree with it.
http://www.ist-nm2.org/pressreleases
Aircraft-carrier Yorkshire ?
The day after the APS ( see below ) released a 424 page report carefully explaining why ‘Son of Star Wars ’ won’t work - the UK’s Independent has broken a story claiming that some of the ‘Interceptor’ missiles will be stationed in Yorkshire under a ( up until today ) ‘ secret deal ’. . .
http://news.independent.co.uk/
and
By the way – The ‘I’ - word seems to be creeping back into the news again – ‘I’ for ‘Intercept’ ( we used it four times ourselves yesterday )
With reference to the news revelation above, we’ll all undoubtedly be hearing a lot more of the ‘I‘ word over the next few weeks and months. We guarantee it.
Each time you hear a politician use it, it might be worth bearing in mind that after Gulf War One, the US army claimed that they -
“ - intercepted 96 per cent of the Scud missiles engaged - “
But the real figure, subsequently confirmed by MIT and others – was, depending who you ask, between zero and four . . . ( source: New Scientist )
A bit wide of the mark statistics-wise ? It all came down to an argument about ‘ exactly what is meant by the word 'Intercept' ‘
Here’s how our dictionary defines it “ To seize, catch, or stop …”
Others apparently think it means “ passed reasonably close-by to “
Still, when there's a cool $10 Billion per year up for grabs for the developers, things tend to get a little fuzzy round the edges . . .
Practically impossible no obstacle.
Ooops. The American Physical Society ( the professional society for physicists in the US, with more than 40,000 members ) says that ‘intercepting’ enemy missiles won’t work. At least not on its presently projected scale.
Their analysis, which looked at all the known available ways to ‘intercept’ missiles, found that there’s just not enough time to reach a missile in its ‘boot phase’(sic) ( i.e. with the engine burning ). A solid fuel rocket can get into orbit in six or seven minutes. The ‘window of opportunity’ for hitting it would be just two or three minutes.
It could only work if the ‘intercepting’ missile was based pretty close ( say, within 40 km ) to the enemy launch site. A touch impractical. Even an ‘intercepting’ laser based aboard a plane would also have to be fairly nearby, because the beam would be rapidly dispersed by the air it has to travel through.
Satellite based lasers won’t work either, they say: their calculations show that there would have to be thousands of orbiting satellites just to destroy one missile.
They also point out that even if destroying an enemy missile in flight was possible – it would then shower the atmosphere with whatever the missile happened to be carrying . . . Not good.
The first, ‘Star Wars ’ defence system, as favoured by Mr. Reagan, was ( as predicted at the time by many scientists ) subsequently shown to be pure fantasy. Before it was abandoned, it did however, get the chance to provide uber-luscious tax-derived funding for a few years - for the usual companies.
The APS, between them, must know just about all there is to know about new-millenium physics – but how about psychology and economics ?
Rampant paranoia meets rampant capitalism – works every time . . .
All details, including the full report ( 424 pages ) and summaries, available
from this page :
http://www.aps.org/media/pressreleases/101504.cfm
Don't miss it.
Editor’s comment: It should be noted that laser-based interception systems have already been built and successfully tested. Under ideal controlled conditions it works.
It’s also possible to shoot fish in a barrel apparently.
Reader's comment from Doug S. <NITPICK>Missiles
don't have a boot phase-
they have a boost phase.</NITPICK>
Editor’s comment: I did wonder about that, but the word came from the APS report - it sounded strangely plausible.
Load of old doorlocks.
The building where Really Magazine’s prestigious office is located has a remote-operated door entry system. There’s a 24 Hr security person, and when he/she sees someone ( they know ) via the cctv link they press a button to remotely release the door lock. It’s a pretty good system in theory – but the door release mechanism has a recurring problem.
So, at the moment, for instance, the security person has to press their door-release button several times to get the latch to open. Sometimes they have to make ten or twenty attempts at it before the door finally opens. ( in the meantime, the person outside usually pushes and pulls at the door handle in a vain attempt to ‘help’ )
As it happens, our in-house tech-expert has diagnosed the problem. The power supply – which pulls the bolt – is not up to the job. But the owners of the building don’t know that. Neither do the security staff, or the people who struggle with the door. So, every day, the same door-struggle scenario is seen – again and again. In fact, it usually goes on like this for weeks – until one day the power supply finally gives up the ghost.
Then the security person calls the maintenance firm - who turn up in an hour or so and fit a new one *. The lock then works perfectly for about a week - before the new power supply starts to weaken, and the cycle starts over again . . .
Most of the time then, the visitors to the building – and the security persons, are putting up with a frustrating and unnecessary farce.
Remind you of anything ?
Yep. It’s your computer system. It kind-of just about half-works most of the time if you’re lucky. If it broke down completely every day, you’d junk the entire system and find one which works properly. But if it just manages to struggle along in a frustrating, inefficient, and infuriatingly half-baked sort of way – you’ll put up with it. We all do.
We won’t go so far as to call the software authors / suppliers fraudulent. But it’s very definitely a scam.
When the man comes to fix the door lock, he never installs a proper no-nonsense industrial power supply which he knows will last for twenty years. He wants to come back every six weeks or so and get paid all over again. But he can only get away with the scam because the owners of the building don’t understand what the problem is.
Operating systems, and software in general, will always be doomed to remain shoddy goods until the users get wised-up and demand change, or else sue the suppliers for selling junk. ( or preferably both )
It’s a wasteful imbecilic travesty. If it were possible to measure - and put a cost to – the software-induced personal frustration felt by hundreds of millions of people across the planet every day – the number of zeros after the $ wouldn’t fit on this page.
* a.k.a. ‘an upgrade’
Blink and you still won’t miss it.
Researchers from the UK’s Cambridge University have made a discovery. Things which flash - grab our attention better.
The finding came as part of a study into the effectiveness of cockpit displays in aircraft ( military ones of course ). During landing, say, for instance, on a moving aircraft carrier, pilots have to rely very heavily on their instruments, and a warning signal which is overlooked may spell disaster.
The results showed that stimulation of the brain's magnocellular-dorsal process ( sensitive to flashy things ) ‘significantly enhances performance for multi-object displays’. In other words flashy displays stand out more on a complicated control console.
What the research didn’t investigate ( unless we’ve missed it ) was how much flashing displays can distract and annoy the viewer. Summed up – if it’s not mega-important, it damn-well better not be flashing.
One other, slightly less blindingly obvious apparent finding, was that monochome displays appear to stand out better than multi coloured ones.
When
the ‘perceptual psychologists’ working for the world's giant
ad agencies catch up with this research, we can all look forward to austere-looking
monochrome flashy ads on websites instead of the usual cheesy candy coloured
ones . . .
Oh joy, oh joy.
The full study will be published in the Dec issue of the cryptically titled “Phil.
Trans. A” from the Royal Society.
Here’s an abstract :
http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk
Quick, pass me my glass Watson !
Steganography, the art of concealing codes in writings or pictures, is as old as the hills. But now there is a high-tech new twist. It’s a suggestion from the Purdue University.
We’d like to call it ' Reverse steganography ’.
Reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes and his cigarette ash, researchers have discovered that they can tell which make of printer produced a document – just by looking at minute imperfections in the print. But, in the interests of Homelayned Security – they'd like to go a step further.
They’ve realised that nefarious document forgers may be able to circumvent detection by doing simple things like changing the printer cartridge after producing their ‘dodgy dossiers’ – that’s where the reverse steganography comes in. Their new idea is to deliberately add software-based imperfections to the printouts.
A unique code, stored in the firmware of every single printer, would be imperceptibly embedded in every hardcopy the machine produces. Thus allowing any forgeries to be traced back to a single printer – and hopefully to its owner.
CBS would presumably have been grateful for such a technique a few weeks back.
We can’t help thinking though, that professional forgers, who, as we all know from the Film Noir’s, pride themselves on a superb job well done, will find a way round it p.d.q.
As Sherlock himself once remarked - “What one man can invent, another can discover.” ( a way around ).
Like swapping the firmware ROM.
Elementary.
http://news.uns.purdue.edu/UNS
With ref to the preceeding article . . . Maybe . . .
Somewhere in a tent in North Africa - about three years ago.
[Minister] Well, thank you Colonel. That was simply delicious. I particularly
enjoyed the pickled lychees.
[Colonel] Lychees ? Oh. The eyeballs. Yes they’re very good.
[Minister] ahhh . . . oh . . .um . . . Shall we get down to business ?
[Colonel] Yes why not.
[Minister] It’s like this Colonel. We don’t want you to stay ‘outside the loop’ for ever you know.
[Colonel] I do not want to stay outside particularly.
[Minister] Exactly, and so we would like to make a proposal.
[Colonel] Go ahead.
[Minister] We would like you to do two things. Firstly to compensate the coalition for those atrocities which you carried out on our defenceless civilians ; and secondly to give up any WMD programme which you may be engaged in.
[Colonel] Who says I have a programme ?
[Minister] Colonel, we know perfectly well what’s going on. We built half the technology you know !
[Colonel] FrrrrrrrrrFrrrrrru p pup p !
[Minister] Really ! Colonel !
[Colonel] It is just my way of showing appreciation for the cook. Why don’t you do the same ?
[Minister] I’d rather not if you don’t mind.
[Colonel] I can stop the WMD programme. It’s no ‘big deal’ as you say.
[Minister] No big deal ? – It is to us Colonel !
[Colonel] Look, I may dress differently to you and live in a tent, but I’m not an idiot. I know that if I ever used such devices I would be crushed like a fly within half an hour.
[Minister] Well, I wouldn’t have put it quite so bluntly, but . . .
[Colonel] So, I pay the compensation – give up my WMD programme – what do I get ?
[Minister] Well Colonel. You will be welcomed back into the international community. We will buy as much oil as you can pump, and you’ll be able to stock-up on as many of our conventional weapons systems as you wish.
[Colonel] nnnnngh - FFFff rrrrr urrrrrrr u rrrrrrrr ppup . .
[Minister] Really! Colonel !
[Colonel] I will not admit liability for the unfortunate ‘incidents’ – but I could make some payments. How much ?
[Minister] We estimate into the high hundreds of millions . . .
[Colonel] No ‘big deal’. Just a few weeks oil.
[Minister] Well I can assure you it would mean a great deal to us, and of course to the victim's families – and it would open the door for a permanent return to the international community for you and your people.
[Colonel] And I would be able to buy anything I want from Farnborough ?
[Minister] Absolutely.
[Colonel] OK. Deal.
[Minister] That’s excellent colonel ! I will convey your response immediately. Naturally you won’t have to put anything in writing. But you have my government’s solemn word of honour !
[Colonel] Likewise . . . . FFFfrrr p p p FFFF pup.
More on ethics.
The Earth isn’t growing, so it’s very unusual for companies whose trade is already truly global – to find any new markets. But as from yesterday, arms manufacturers in the EU suddenly have a big new customer.
EU ‘Ministers’, meeting in Luxembourg, decided that Libya will, from now on, be able to buy any type of arms it wishes - from anywhere in the EU. ( Not WMD’s of course – because ‘The Colonel’ has promised that he’s definitely not interested in those anymore.)
The excuse given by the ‘Ministers’ is that ‘The Colonel’ needs to buy some fast patrol boats and infra-red night-vision gear to help control the flow of ‘illegal immigrants’ coming through his country ( they usually head for Italy ). But the ‘Ministers’ could have simply made a special allowance for those items – they didn’t.
So now the dictatorship can buy any amount of WmD’s ( Weapons of minor Destruction ) as he it sees fit.
Libya is the eleventh biggest supplier of oil in the world. As fast as oceans of oil flow out of the country – mountains of cash roll in. We are willing to stick our neck out and say that ‘The Colonel’ will be ordering some new chequebooks from his bank(s) right away – because he’ll be going on a high-tech spending spree. And yesterday, miniaturised symbolic explosions ( champagne corks ) will have been popping in the boardrooms of certain state-supported weapons-making companies from the UK and France in particular.
Jack Straw – the UK’s Foreign Secretary said yesterday -
"This is a very good day... for peace and security across the world," ( source: BBC )
Rrrrrright . . . Yeah , thanks Jack.
for general info see :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libya
p.s. Really Magazine Prediction: The Colonel will be visiting London’s ‘Docklands’ area next September.
More monkey business.
Preliminary research at the Kansas State University might slowly be removing the lid from a large - and very powerful - can of worms.
K-State’s Prof. Swanson has discovered what appears to be disturbing data on top-ranking business execs. . . She’s finding that ‘executives who downplay ethics and values in their decision making may also be the ones who prefer extraordinarily high salaries for themselves’.
Not only that, Prof. Swanson is also saying that the very same executives who are more likely to ‘downplay values in decisions’ are also the ones who have received more business education. She doesn’t pull any punches. "It seems the more business courses they take, the more myopic they become". Ouch.
Summed up, it’s beginning to look as though – dare we say it– perhaps business schools are teaching them to be unethical ! No, dear God, no !
It’s almost as if they’ve been encouraged to repeat the mantra - ‘ Make money for the shareholders - grab as much as you can for yourself – and **** everyone else ‘
Surely things can’t be that bad can they ?
Ok, there have been some fairly high-profile cases recently – in Germany, Italy, US, UK, Japan etc etc – involving fraud, false accounting, sweeteners, slush funds etc etc. And it’s true a few hundreds of $Billions have been ‘mislaid’ – and many thousands of ordinary employees have unnecessarily lost their jobs -
But some of those ‘oversights’ could have been accidental - couldn't they ? Blaming the top execs for all that ? Honestly.
Perhaps the best way of gauging the current level of ethics in the corporate / governmental world is simply to look at the numbers of top execs who actually end up with a jail sentence and a criminal record after unwelcome investigations into their corporate 'mega-scandals' . . . How many can you name ?
Prof. Swanson will be speaking on the subject at the 2004 Japha Symposium on Business and Professional Ethics Friday, Oct. 29.
http://leeds.colorado.edu/japha
Also see :
http://www.mediarelations.ksu.edu
Monkey business.
The BBC is running an extraordinary story today claiming that a “ ‘new’ giant ape“ has been discovered in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science
Anyone reading the story could definitely be forgiven for assuming that . . . errrrr . . . a new giant ape has just been discovered.
It hasn’t.
( By the way, the BBC 's photo is a gorilla - not the new ape. )
There are a couple of subtle clues in the report which made us do a double-take. Firstly, the primatologist mentioned in the report, Shelly Williams, apparently made a video of the animals two years ago. Two years back ! . . . Why haven’t we seen it yet ? Secondly, she was ‘tipped off’ as to their location ‘ by a wildlife photographer ’. . . rrrright . . . A photographer ? Where’s the photos ?
Sure enough, a quick Google check reveals that the report is not exactly hot news. In fact CNN ran a much more detailed item over a year ago !
http://www.primates.com/misc/mystery-ape.html
And, as luck would have it, we also stumbled over this even more revealing report from National Geographic - April 2003 ! this time with the requisite picture.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news
That’s more like it.
The BBC report lamentably fails to mention that DNA tests on the animal’s droppings were carried out last year- and they are definitely very closely related to chimpanzees. Possibly a hybrid.
So why is the BBC running the story now ? Because the ‘real story’ - the whole point of the item in fact - is that New Scientist will be printing an in-depth article on the apes in next week’s issue.
To which we look forward.
There aren’t any factual inaccuracies in the BBC item – and
they’ve been more than scrupulous with their use of apostrophes – but
we’d like to ask , dear readers, what you think - marks
out of ten for the BBC’s report ?
Leave it Mar'in, ‘e ain’t wurf it !
Editors comment : Apologies to our non-UK readers, who, quite understandably, won't have a Danny La Rue what we’re on abaht - and also for the non-technological nature of this item.
It's the weekend, and we are experiencing technical problems with our irony-meter which has just gone off the scale and pie 'n mashed.
Totally cream crackered in fact.
Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.
In case you happen to be in the East End of London in early November, you might want to take the chance to go and see some exhibitions / events – about ‘Eastenders ’.
Los del Este/Eastenders (a modest proposal) will be showing at the Lawrence O’Hana Gallery in the achingly hip Charlotte Rd.( 4 - 12 Nov). The artist responsible, mexican Pablo Helguera, will be examining how ‘Eastenders ’ ( a TV ‘soap’ which is was regularly regularly watched by about 25% of the UK population ) could be more profitably adapted for 'export' to other countries.
Specifically, he will be showing four ‘architectural models’ which ‘makeover’ the soap for Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
Can you Adam and Eve it ?
E's avin' a bubble bath in'e ?
Accompanying the exhibition will be a performance ( without anaesthetic ) at the Old Operating Theatre at St. Thomas’ Hospital, entitled Theatrum Anatomicum or How to Dissect a Melodrama (2 November).
The project has been organised by final year students on the MA Curating Contemporary Art course at the prestigious Royal College of Art.
We’d like to tell you more about the goings–on but, unfortunately, the ‘Events’ page of the website says <this page is under construction>, the images page <this page is under construction>, and the website for the gallery which will host the show http://www.ohanagallery.com/
( which features this highly artistic light violet menu-text on a light grey background . . . . )
just tells us that
<No Future Events are scheduled at this time>
Doh !
Here’s a tip for the Royal College ‘MA in Curating’ course team . . . Maybe it’s not such a great idea to press-release details of an upcoming exhibition until you’ve finished the websites ?
see: http://www.cca.rca.ac.uk/losdeleste/
In the meantime, look on the bright side. In Brazil, viewers of TV Globo ( until recently the biggest network TV channel on the planet ) are treated to no less than three, freshly recorded, mega-budget hour-long soaps – one after the other – every single weekday evening.
Same shouting, same arguments, same violence – but with sunshine and the occasional earthquake.
Jackson Pollock's in'it ?
iatrogenics shock.
It’s fairly common to come across medical or psychological studies which only have a few tens of participants. There’s always a concern that the results might be skewed – simply by random effects – when the sample size is that small. So, when you come across a study which involves 10,000 randomised patients across 49 countries, it’s probably a good idea to take the results fairly seriously.
The ‘Crash 1 ’ study has just published its results in today’s Lancet.
The study looked at the practice of administering ‘steroid’ type drugs (methylprednisolone) to people who had severe head injuries. This type of injury is the second biggest killer ( after AIDS ) in people under 40 worldwide ( the clue is in the study’s title ). Steroids have been used in this way for some thirty years to reduce inflammation, although its use has declined in recent years due to doubts about its efficacy.
Half way through, the trial was stopped. It became clear that the steroid drips, far from helping the crash victims, was actually helping to kill some of them. About 3% in fact. The implication is that tens of thousands of patients have been unwittingly killed in this way over the past decades.
Setting aside these appalling statistics for a moment – we’d like to ask “ How on earth did such an idea come about in the first place ?, why was it never properly verified as being safe ? and how could it possibly have gone on for so long ? “
If anyone knows, please let us know.
10K steps in the right direction
The oldest and largest health insurance corporation in the US has had a good idea. They want to encourage people to get fitter ( and lose weight ) by walking.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield have just launched the scheme, called ‘Walking Works ’. It seems like an excellent idea – because everyone wins. Their customers win because they get fitter, and the company wins because fitter clients means fewer payouts.
Here’s a couple of sample ideas from their website :
“Get off the elevator below your destination and walk a couple of flights of stairs”
or
“ Park at the opposite end of the mall from where you need to shop”
In all, they reckon, that if possible, you should be walking about 10K steps per day* . . . and the site even has links to suppliers of ‘reduced cost’ pedometers ( step counters ).
We’d like to add a couple of our own tips and tricks for auto-increasing your daily exercise . . .
1) Take the batteries out of your TV remote.
2) Follow the ‘triangle rule’ i.e. place your TV, refrigerator, and microwave as far apart as possible.
In fact we’d like to go a hop further. Call it ‘vision’ if you will. We have recently discovered that there are now car insurance companies in the UK and US who are operating on a ‘how far you drive basis’. The cars are fitted with a GPS transponder which constantly sends details of any movements to the insurance company – if you don’t use the car – you don’t pay. The same idea ( in reverse ) could be applied to health-insurance customers. They could carry a pedometer with a GPS chip. The insurance company could log any walking that shows up on the data – and discount the insurance premiums as a result !
Editors note: The proposed scheme needs some fine tuning. For instance, a group of clients could simply pay another person to walk about with their pedometers ( as per ‘dogwalker’ ) and thus fraudulently claim the discounts. Perhaps then, the transponder could be permanently attached to the client ( as per offender tagging ) – or even, in the future, embedded under the skin ? Even so, the clients could simply drive very slowly around the block, or across the park, in their SUV.
Hmmmm . Needs more work.
* 10,000 steps per day sounds rather a lot to us, you might want to check this with your personal health mentor . . .
Ooooh . . . I just gotta have that !
Researchers from the Ohio State University have made a discovery. Their new study focused on the buying habits of people who like to watch TV ‘shopping channels’ (a lot ). They found that - the longer viewers spend watching the channel, the more likely they are to make a purchase !
Not
only that, but they also discovered that the viewers, who filled out a questionnaire
for the university, tended to form ‘pseudo-relationships’ with
the show’s hosts. They were asked to rate statements on the form such
as - “The hosts are almost like friends you see everyday.” and
- “I decide what to buy after I watch television shopping programs.” by
ticking boxes to show how much they agreed ( or not ).
The study appears to confirm what the show’s producers may have suspected for a long time. It seems that ( in a commercial sense at least ) they have been doing the ‘right thing’ all along, by creating friendly programme hosts and getting them to endorse the products on offer.
The TV execs' shot-in-the-dark wild-guess is paying-off it seems.
See:
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/tvshop.htm
Editorial re critical systems security.
The discussion rolls on as to the wisdom of using ‘off the shelf’ Operating Systems (OS's) to control vital systems. The very same OS's as you might find your young son or daughter using to watch “Three little piggies” on their bedroom PC., are now routinely being used by governments and mega-corporations across the world - to control things like hydroelectric dams, electricity grids and even nuclear weapons systems.
Even more amazingly perhaps, debates like “ Automation Systems - An Achilles' Heel to our Critical Infrastructure ? ” yesterday at ISA EXPO 2004 - are still going on.
There’s no big mystery to it is there ?
Here’s the Really Magazine guide to reasonably secure critical control systems :
1) Don’t build a computer-controlled system unless you absolutely definitely cannot avoid it.
If you really, really, really, have no choice then :
2a) Write your own operating system. The simpler the better. ( Tip: although this will be very labour intensive, you can save a lot of time by not bothering to write the code for, say, 'animated .Gif files' , 'talking paper clips', or Dingbat fonts)
2b) Whatever you do, resist at all costs, the temptation to plug the system into the ordinary phone network.
If you follow those simple rules, you’ll end up with a system that’s several orders of magnitude more secure.
Choosing an ‘off the shelf’ O.S. to control a system which must not, in any foreseeable event, go wrong or get hacked, is about as sensible as building an impenetrable castle wall out of polystyrene foam.
The reason, as ever, is just down to cost / risk perception ( a.k.a. gambling ) It might cost a few hundred thousand dollars to get an ‘off the shelf’ system to run, and will only take a few months. The other way - the way which will work properly - will cost $Billions and take years to debug.
So, in the end, the equation is a simple – “ Do we do it cheap, quick, and risky – or expensive, slow, and secure ? ”.
Really Magazine is thinking of starting a new company supplying fabric to make recreational parachutes. ( for use on those 'team building awaydays' for exec-suits ) It’s a new process which produces the material from recycled paper towels and teabags. It’s dirt cheap. Our customer-focus is on the directors of ‘recently privatised utilities’, and high-ranking government department managers. Of course, they can still buy that expensive Ripstop™ Nylon if they really want to.
Reader's comment re OS's, from Tony P :
_DON'T_ write one yourself: the more people using a system, the more likely bugs will be found. Even M$ Winblows will be more reliable than something you code up yourself. You want a system that has exhibited its bugs a few times running non-critical apps.
From one extreme to the other…. errrr…. extreme.
Two new electric vehicles have recently been unveiled. One is a dinky 1hp model, the other a ‘sports’ car.
The dinky one is made by the Jülich Research Centre in Germany. It uses a fuel cell running on methanol to provide about 1.3Kw. ( slightly less than you’d need to power a modest room heater ) Even so, the fuel cell, which relies on expensive platinum catalysts, is fairly bulky, about the size of an orange-box. The current either directly feeds the motor, or goes to charge an on-board battery. The battery is the lithium-ion type – beloved by digital camera makers. Take a look at the site for pictures and videos.
The second vehicle ( which we won't name for search engine related reasons ) has somewhat more of what motoring journalists like to call ‘grunt’. In fact it’s about 240 times more grunt-worthy than the above. In this case there’s no fuel cell – just a very substantial bank of lithium-ion batteries and an electric motor. The makers, Venturi, claim it’s the first electric sports car to go into production. Unlike the dinky car though, it has to go in for a three-hour charge every couple of hundred miles.
http://www.rsportscars.com/eng/
Both ‘cars’ definitely represent a bit of progress in the electric vehicle world – but neither, as yet, even gets close to being comparable to the weight/power efficiency of a standard car engine burning, say, methanol.
For the time being, as we see it, the challenge to get motorists to change over to more enviro-friendly forms of vehicle has more to do with persuading them to accept lower performance, than to ‘greening’ the powertrain design. In other words, it’s a sociological rather than technical problem.
Cops get their hands on half a Babel Fish
The police dept. in Burnsville, Minnesota, now have a new piece of high-tech kit at their disposal. It’s called a "Phraselator". The hand held device can translate spoken or written English text into fifteen different languages ( with many more available on flash memory cards ).
The device, made by a company called VoxTec, was originally developed for the military, and several thousand have seen use in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But now the makers are expanding their customer base to include law enforcement agencies. The gizmo can recognise many hundreds of phrases and is equipped with a one watt loudspeaker.
It’s not quite reached Douglas Adams' Babel Fish standard yet though. It only translates in one direction. In other words, it’s good for -
G i v i n g
O r d e r s
or for asking questions which have the answer yes/no.
http://www.voxtec.com/Product1.htm
Editor's comment: It’s notoriously difficult for computer speech algorithms to get accents right. Unfortunately, the VoxTec site doesn’t have any on-line examples of how it sounds. So we can only imagine what a computer-generated " Put your hands up " might sound like to a Somalian. But here’s what a cross-language phrase sounds like on Really Magazine’s own in-house speech engine.
Suspect images stamped out.
Really Magazine has a consistently forlorn record for making predictions. ( see our ‘predictions’ page ). Sometimes, however, we get things right. Back in June we predicted that postal authorities worldwide would soon be copying the Finnish idea to allow anyone to put any images they wish ( errrr . . within reason ) on postage stamps.
Sure
enough, the US govt. followed suit by making the ‘any image’ stamps
legal entities. Here’s a link to the company providing the service
: http://photo.stamps.com/
Unfortunately, it’s been cancelled.
It seems that some audacious customers had been sneaking less-than-squeaky-clean images past the ‘censors’. Nevertheless, during the seven week ‘market test’ ( code for - ‘it couldn’t really work’ ) around 2 Million personalised stamps were issued.
Presumably, anyone in possession of unfranked sheets ( especially, of course, with the images which slipped past the ‘censors’ ) will have a philatelic collector’s item on their hands.
Photo.stamps website is currently asking customers to petition the USPS to re-instate the service. Time for another prediction. Forget it.
P.S. As far as we know, the Finnish service is still going strong :
http://www.posti.fi/postimerkkikeskus/
It wuz there - so I ate it.
A new study from Cornell University has confirmed something which you may think is fairly self-evident – but which apparently wasn’t.
The research paper, published yesterday in the Journal of Nutrition showed ( again) that “ The More Food Young Adults Are Served, the More They Overeat ”
The young adults ( that’s code for ‘students’ ) were given two chances at a free lunch. The second time, the portions were carefully contrived to be "150% larger" [( sic.) the press release should have said "50% larger" ] . On average, they ate 39% more than the first time.
Super-Surprized by the results ?
The study complements findings of earlier research from New York University, 2002, which found that portion sizes have been determinedly increasing over the years. To give an idea, restaurant portions of pasta are now, on average, a stonking 4.8 times the size of the US government’s recommendations.
We prefer those classic psychology experiments from the 1960’s which showed that pigeons do exactly the same thing. When you put more food in front of them, they eat more, ( up to a limit of course ). The unexpected result turned up in the pigeon studies was that, for reasons unknown, they nearly always leave a small percentage of their portion uneaten, no matter how much they’re given.
If we could point out - the new study appears to give a tantalising glimpse that the same mechanism may be at work in students ( depending on how starving hungry they are of course )
Ig® Nobel Prize winners
Needless to say, any of our regular readers will have already checked out this years winners, which were announced yesterday at an awards ceremony at the Sanders Theatre, Harvard University. But for anyone who finds this page by accident -
Here's the official link : http://www.improbable.com/ig/
Of course, we're slightly disappointed that the committee didn't choose any of the items which we stumbled over during the last year. . .
Such as the researchers who found that, when they injected the lips of live unanaesthetised trout with bee venom and vinegar, the trout behaved - in a manner which suggested they were in pain.
or . . .
The study which determined that people with one ear higher than the other were likely to be more aggressive.
or . .
The project which revealed that parrots use their tongues while speaking.
The organiser of the event describes the Ig® Nobel entries as 'found satire'. A description we like very much.
So, if you dont't mind - we have to get back to beachcombing . . .
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Editor's picksThe territoriality of park benches re-appraised using ANT
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BBC Radio 4
"the world's best radio station"
We are currently looking for syndication outlets for the following weekly columns. . .
www and/or print.
If your publication could use them, please get in touch !
De Cecco
"the world's best commercially produced pasta"
The Big Tie Shop
"the world's best Big Ties"
New Scientist
"the world's best weekly science magazine"
OFFER CLOSED
Crooke's Radiometer (virtual)
Duvel
"the world's best beer"
"the world's best Sciencebase"
The "DoDo"
( Cassina )
"the world's best chair"
Firefox
"the world's best web-browser"
Bösendorfer
"the world's best pianos"
! Ltd.
"the world's best
! company"
