Short and to the point

A wotsit is a small orange fluffy corn-based snack. The nearest American equivalent is a Cheeto. The main difference is that wotsits are fluffier and more delicious.

https://twitter.com/TechnicallyRon/status/826160828747481089

Grey's Law

Found on the internet.

[A wise quote. The idea that, "if you're not with us you're against us" is a fallacy in the general case but quite correct in specific circumstances. That is, if you know the harm your actions will cause but fail to try and avert it, then regardless of your intentions you may as well be regarded as malicious.]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws (Grey's law)

Coming back to bite ya

Satire ? Politics ? Not much difference any more.

[Theresa May was quite right to try and ban violent extremism. The problem with her earlier, badly-drafted proposals was that they contained no sensible definition of "extreme" on which any kind of judgement could be made, though it would be hard to find a way of disqualifying Trump.]

http://newsthump.com/2017/01/30/theresa-may-to-prevent-dangerous-hate-preaching-extremist-entering-britain-on-state-visit/

Fighting back

There was an article going round recently about the need to create a new narrative with which to fight post-truth politics and hatred. Well, our fiction is already awash with it. From Star Trek to Doctor Who and Lord of the Rings, this is the West not as it is or ever really was, except perhaps in a few heroic moments, but how it wishes to be. At least in the past, when failures to meet these unrealistic expectations were seen as failures, or at worst were subject to spin to make it look as though everything was as it should be after all - the dreams were always regarded as the goal. Now these narratives of tolerance, compassion, and resistance to oppression are under a different threat on a scale not seen in decades. The aspirations of the West are being directly attacked as fundamentally flawed values. Yet they are not. For all the Western world's hypocrisy and many, many failures, the ideals of liberalism, equality and social justice are worthy aspirations, ones we should be proud to defend and not sink into self-loathing and cynicism at every failure, or to give in to fear and hate when a monster tries to tear them down.

#Resist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FQEOvrYU6Y

Whatever you do, don't be rude to the Queen

It's so very, very British.

A man from Leeds who started a viral petition to have Donald Drumpf’s state visit to the UK cancelled says he did so because he did not want the Queen to have to shake the new President's hand. Initially, Mr Guest said, he was not concerned about Mr Drumpf coming to the UK in his capacity as US President - he just did not want him to meet and embarrass the 90-year-old monarch, given his track record of “misogyny and vulgarity”.

Mr Drumpf's announcement on Friday of strict travel restrictions on people from seven majority-Muslim countries “changes things slightly”, Mr Guest said. “It’s added a new dimension to things and until that ban is lifted I don’t think he should come to the country at all in any capacity”. But Mr Guest said his primary concern is still the “poor old Queen”.

Mr Guest said there was not a specific thing Mr Drumpf had done that spurred him to start the petition, it was just the President's general demeanour. “It just seemed a very incongruous thing for this man, with all of the things he’s said, to be with the Queen,” he explained, adding that he thought Mr Drumpf might find an affinity with another member of the royal household — “I mean maybe he’d get on well with Prince Philip.. who knows”.

Currently at 670,000 signatures and rising.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/donald-trump-petition-uk-ban-sign-theresa-may-queen-latest-signatures-a7551981.html

Boop !

Found on the internet.

Science must be above politics

I know some of you think this is a great idea, but it isn't. It really, really isn't.

It's a seductive idea, isn't it ? Get a load of experts who are more interested in facts than ideology into politics - sounds great ! And in the short term, it would be. For a few glorious years we might get evidenced-based policies instead of those which are most appealing.

After that, things will turn sour. And it will end in nothing less than a catastrophe. I'm tempted to use the word, "apocalyptic".

Politics, in the current system, is inherently tribal by nature. Politicians are not always intrinsically motivated or externally incentivised to act in the wider interests or by what the evidence says, and consequently they do not. They put their own interests ahead of other concerns. And they are rightly untrustworthy. EDIT : Winning votes requires appealing to audiences with very different interests, and consequently evidenced-based policy is sometimes a "courageous" move in Yes Minister speak. This is a fault both of the political and education systems : it is not enough to simply change the politicians !

Put scientists in this situation, and nothing will change. By the voters who already (correctly) perceive scientists as politically independent and trustworthy, this will, for a while, be cause for celebration. But those people are largely politically irrelevant, because generally those are the ones casting sensible votes anyway. Not always, because people are complex and irrational enough that trusting science doesn't automatically bestow listening to their advice, but generally.

But it's the other group you really have to consider : those who think scientists are motivated only by their own self-interests and political concerns just like any other group, who don't understand how scientific inquiry works. It is those people who we need to reach out to the most. And it is precisely those people for whom this approach would sound the death knell to any hope of persuading them to listen to evidence, because to them it will confirm all their fears and delusions about scientists as a political group.

Worse will follow, because the scientists won't be scientists any more. They will be politicians, with all the inherently untrustworthy natures that implies. Scientific training will not be a defence against that, because scientists are people too. The politically independent nature of evidence and the determination of facts will cease to be. The boundaries between reliable sources of facts and politically-motivated opinions will not only be perceived to disappear, they will actually disappear. "Post-truth" and "alternative facts" will seem like a distant memory of happier, more rational days.

It's often said that science is true regardless of whether you believe it or not. And it is : that's the problem. When people don't believe it and act against the facts, disaster follows. Scientists are not always the best people to persuade skeptics of what they're doing, and making them into politicians absolutely, positively will not help with that. Quite the opposite.

It is absolutely imperative that scientific findings be as politically independent as possible. Remove the boundaries between science and politics - without a full-on political revolution and an entirely new political system - and we're doomed.
http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2016/09/would-i-lie-to-you.html
http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2015/11/when-worlds-collide-science-in-society.html


http://inhabitat.com/trump-inspires-400-scientists-to-run-for-office/

Projectile owl

Found on the internet.

HUGS FOR ALL

To everyone in America Trumpsville, a great big hug. Because every time I check the news it seems to be getting worse. Yes, even if you voted for Trump that arsehole of a monster, even if you are sadly deluded enough to still think that somehow this is a good thing - you're getting a hug too.

Votes should not be unaltered if circumstances change

For my second argument, we return to the cottage. Suppose again that the group votes one evening that they will leave the next day. But when they wake up, they see a terrifying monster prowling around the garden. Given their previous decision to leave, are they democratically compelled to go out and face it? Or should they reconsider their plan in the light of this unforeseen and unwelcome development?

The referendum was held during the US presidency of Barack Obama. But Brexit would take place during that of, well, a terrifying monster. Some argue that Drumpf’s positive attitude to Brexit should encourage us to believe the UK will get a good and speedy deal from the US. Even by today’s dismal standards, that is a staggeringly irresponsible argument. Drumpf is, among other things, an avowed protectionist who will put “America First”, vows to “Buy American, Hire American”, and threatens trade war with China. There could be no more dangerous time to leave the EU.

https://medium.com/@richard.elwes/trenches-monsters-two-more-arguments-against-triggering-article-50-a3f06fa917ff#.sexhwm2x9

Where was the Death Star trench ?

Good lord, he's probably right !

Nearly everybody points at the equatorial trench of the Death Star. I asked dozens of die-hard fans, including many co-workers at Industrial Light & Magic, and nearly every single person pointed to the equatorial trench. If you asked me, I would also have said the equatorial trench.

In fact, this came up during ILM “Rogue One” dailies one day. Computer Graphics Supervisor Vick Schutz and Visual Effects Supervisor John Knoll were chatting about the details of our computer graphics version of the Death Star, and Knoll casually remarked that the trench run in “Star Wars” is a longitudinal line on the Death Star (meaning, a north-south trench).

http://io9.gizmodo.com/youve-been-wrong-about-where-the-death-star-trench-was-1791582520

Media sources in a handy chart

Yes, that seems about right. I'd add in the Independent probably towards the upper part of the grey circle, and so far my experience of the Atlantic has been more towards the reputable-conservative than reputable-liberal. I don't think I've ever encountered any of the sources in either of the bottom corners though.

Detailed explanatory post here : https://www.adfontesmedia.com/the-reasoning-and-methodology-behind-the-chart/

“Quality” itself is an incredibly subjective metric. I figured a good middle category to start with would be journalism that regularly meets recognised ethics standards the profession, such as those set by the Society of Professional Journalists. http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp. Above and beyond that, I determined that factors that can make a particular article or broadcast “higher quality” include 1) a high level of detail, 2) the presence of analysis, and 3) a discussion of implications and/or complexity. So I created the categories of “Analytical” for sources that have 1) detail and 2) analysis, and “Complex” for sources that regularly have the discussions of 3) implications and/or complexity. To read the “Complex” and “Analytical” sources, you often have to be familiar with facts learned from sources ranked lower on the vertical axis. However, complexity is not always a good thing. Sometimes, real issues get obscured with complex writing.

Then, I considered what makes a news source “lower quality.” One of the factors is simplicity. Simplicity CAN lead to “low quality” if a deep issue is only covered at a very surface level. Simplicity is fine for stories like “a man robbed a liquor store,” but it’s often bad for, say, coverage of a complex bill being considered by your state legislature. There are sources that cover complex stories (e.g, Hillary e-mail stories, Drumpf foundation stories, and really, most political stories) in a VERY simple format, and I think that decreases civic literacy. Therefore, I created a below-average quality category called “Basic AF.” However, simplicity is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes you need “just the story.”

Sorting sources based on partisan bias was a bit more straightforward, but I wanted to differentiate between the level of partisan bias. The categories are fairly self-explanatory. They are also the most highly debatable. Good arguments can be made as to whether a source is minimally partisan, “skews” partisan, or is “hyper” partisan. The “Utter Garbage/Conspiracy Theories” category is for those sources that “report” things that are demonstrably false and for which no apology or retraction is issued in the wake of publishing such a false story. These stories may include, for example, how the Obamas’ children were stolen from another family (on the right), or that the government is purposely poisoning us and changing the weather with chemtrails from aeroplanes (on the left). For the most part, even the “hyper-partisan” sites try to base their stories on truth (e.g., Occupy Democrats, Red State), and are held to account if they publish something demonstrably false. Generally, the closer a source is to the middle on this chart, the more they are taken to task by their peers for publishing or reporting something false.

The categorisation of a source in the hyper-partisan or even utter garbage category does not mean that every story published there is false. Many articles may just be very opinionated versions of the truth, or half-truths. And occasionally, sometimes a hyper-partisan or garbage site will stumble upon an actual scoop, due to their willingness to publish stories that haven’t been sourced or verified. Their classification in these categories is mainly because they are widely recognised by other journalists as regularly falling short of standard journalism ethics and practices.

[This got quite a bit a bit of criticism, not entirely unjustly. Still I think the struggle to understand our own biases is a very important one and one shouldn't expect - almost by definition  - to be able to get things right on the first draft, otherwise there'd be no need for such a chart at at all ! A substantially updated version can be found here : https://www.adfontesmedia.com/intro-to-the-media-bias-chart/]

https://twitter.com/vlotero/status/808696317174288387

A message from the Remoaner in chief who should have been Labour leader

Brexit Britain, like Drumpf’s America, is being held up by those far-right leaders as a beacon to light their countries’ way to the nativist (white), protectionist and illiberal future they have long aspired to. Differences in language and accent can’t obscure the common currents of xenophobia, bigotry and aggression that are evident across the west.

Faced with these dark trends, so reminiscent of our European past, the Labour party also has a collective choice to make. We can hedge and triangulate, appease and acquiesce, and hope to ameliorate the worst, in economic and political terms. Or we can take a stand for our values, for what we believe to be in the best interests of our people, our country and the wider world. It is a stand against the political lies that preceded the Brexit vote and the fantasy island economics that have followed it. A properly patriotic stand, which acknowledges the modern challenges of globalisation and migration, but warns against the age-old dangers of blaming the foreigner for all ills, and so rejects the shouty jingoism and deceitful promises of the Brexiteers.

I believe that leadership from Labour has to begin in parliament in the coming weeks, when we see the legislation to trigger article 50. We all heard the threat from May that she would pursue “an alternative economic model” if Brexit turned bad, and we all know what that means: a low-tax, low-wage, low-security economy, as dreamed of by generations of hard-right politicians. If that is even a remote possibility, then Labour has a duty to try and prevent it, in the interests of the people we represent.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/24/remoaner-article-50-brexit-labour

Bees can solve problems and learn from each other

A bumblebee flies up to inspect a flower, looking for a taste of nectar. It buzzes around a bit and realises that something is different. The bee can see the flower but cannot reach it. That is because the "flower" – actually a blue plastic disc with sugar water in the centre – is sitting underneath a sheet of transparent plastic. Luckily for the bee, there is a string attached to the flower. All it has to do is pull on the string, haul out the flower, and sip its reward. So it does.

But there is more. Once one bee figured out what it needed to do to access the artificial flower, other bees that were looking on learned the string-tugging trick themselves. The technique even outlasted the original successful bee. It became part of the colony's skillset, transmitted from bee to bee after the first string-pulling bee had died.

Bees can also learn to recognise colours and patterns. Can they find their way back home from several kilometres away? Not a problem. Recognise human faces? That too. Can bees use tools? Well, that is what Chittka wants to answer next. Chittka's lab did an experiment in the 1990s in which they asked whether bees can count. They can.

So most likely a velociraptor could figure out how to open a door. That's definitely the intended take-home message here.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170123-how-insects-like-bumblebees-do-so-much-with-tiny-brains

Changing laws cannot be done by diktat, thankfully

Good. Now, if the MPs would only regain their sanity and vote to stop this madness we could all get back to something approaching normal. They won't though.

Parliament must vote on whether the government can start the Brexit process, the Supreme Court has ruled. The judgement means Theresa May cannot begin talks with the EU until MPs and peers give their backing - although this is expected to happen in time for the government's 31 March deadline. But the court ruled the Scottish Parliament and Welsh and Northern Ireland assemblies did not need a say.

"By a majority of eight to three, the Supreme Court today rules that the government cannot trigger Article 50 without an act of Parliament authorising it to do so." He added: "Withdrawal effects a fundamental change by cutting off the source of EU law, as well as changing legal rights. The UK's constitutional arrangements require such changes to be clearly authorised by Parliament."

However, UKIP leader Paul Nuttall warned MPs and peers not to hamper the passage of the legislation. "The will of the people will be heard, and woe betide those politicians or parties that attempt to block, delay, or in any other way subvert that will," he said.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-38720320

Counting people is impossible, says America

Top Drumpf aide Kellyanne Conway also criticised the media during a heated exchange on NBC. She was challenged by presenter Chuck Todd who asked her why Mr Spicer's first appearance had been to "utter a provable falsehood".

"If we are going to keep referring to our press secretary in those type of terms, I think we are going to have to rethink our relationship here," she said. Pressed on Mr Spicer's claims, she said he had been presenting "alternative facts".

"Alternative facts are not facts. They are falsehoods," Todd replied. Ms Conway insisted there was "no way to really quantify crowds" and, taking offence at a laugh from the reporter, said: "You can laugh at me all you want. It's symbolic of the way we are treated by the press the way you just laughed at me."

No way to quantify crowds ? I guess people aren't the discrete units I thought they were. Alternative facts ? Good grief. The press are laughing at you ? Well, yeah. Because you're idiotic.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38712182

Disinformation is not about persuasion

Mine's bigger !

You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering. - Doctor Who

Alas, dear Doctor, powerful and stupid are not mutually exclusive states.

President Donald Drumpf has accused the media of dishonesty over the number of people attending his inauguration.Mr Drumpf was speaking after photographs were published appearing to show more people attended the inauguration of his predecessor Barack Obama in 2009. Mr Drumpf's press secretary said it had been "the largest audience to ever see an inauguration" even though figures he cited add up to under 750,000 people.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38707722

Corbyn is basically a Brexiteer

Mr Corbyn is a despotic, contemptible moron. On the other hand he's not Donald Drumpft, so there's that.

Dozens of Labour MPs might be prepared to go against the party's leadership if there is a vote on starting the Brexit process, the BBC understands. Jeremy Corbyn has said all his MPs will be told to approve the triggering of Article 50 because they should accept the result of last year's referendum. Lib Dem Tim Farron says generations to come will not forgive that position.

The Supreme Court will announce next Tuesday whether the government needs to seek Parliament's approval. Ministers say they already have enough powers under the Royal Prerogative to go ahead with Brexit. But campaigners argue that starting Brexit in this way would be undemocratic and unconstitutional.

Mr Corbyn said he did not think it was right to block Article 50 in the wake of the referendum result. Another Labour MP told the BBC there would be a "swathe" of resignations from the front bench if Mr Corbyn instructed his MPs to vote for Brexit. The MP said that for colleagues in constituencies that voted strongly for Remain it would be "suicide" to back Article 50.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-38689400

If the kids have nothing to do, then give them something to do

Ever hear people moaning about the youth of today ? Of course you do. And the more sympathetic ones will probably say, "it's because they've got nothing to do", or "I blame the parents". And they're probably right. Iceland has gone-all out to give the kids things to do - things they actually enjoy - instead of just droning on about the dangers of drugs, to the extent of giving them £250 per year to spend on recreational activities (I presume this is a voucher, not cash). The scheme also educates and encourages parents to spend much more time with their children. On the more punitive side, it's instituted after-dark late night curfews for the under 16s and restricted sales of alcohol to the over 20s (though I guess the latter is pretty liberal for Americans). The results ? Sometimes, common sense is bang on.

Today, Iceland tops the European table for the cleanest-living teens. The percentage of 15- and 16-year-olds who had been drunk in the previous month plummeted from 42 per cent in 1998 to 5 per cent in 2016. The percentage who have ever used cannabis is down from 17 per cent to 7 per cent. Those smoking cigarettes every day fell from 23 per cent to just 3 per cent.

I can't see all of the Icelandic measures being implemented everywhere, but I'd hope at least some of the techniques could be widely adopted. The nice thing is that it fits into a lot of pre-existing narratives about how to deal with youth problems; the only "radical" thing here is the finding that warnings about drug addiction are not enough. But really by now that should be self-evident.

https://mosaicscience.com/story/iceland-prevent-teen-substance-abuse

Dragonfly larvae are evil and I hate them

Ewww eww eww eww ewwwwwwww !

Dragonfly larvae might be the tigers of the water-weed jungle, but they were not thought to attack adult frogs. The new study indicates that they do, at least occasionally. The voracious larvae climbed out of their ponds onto water plants, then leapt onto the frogs and began eating them alive, while the frogs tried unsuccessfully to escape.

But dragonfly involvement in using vertebrates as victuals does not end there. Now and again, adult dragonflies also get in on the act. For instance, there is a remarkable photo of a large Canadiandragonfly called a dragonhunter that caught a ruby-throated hummingbird in mid-air and began to feed on it.

In a study published in 2014, Dragan Arsovski and colleagues reported that they had found a female horn-nosed viper dead, with its stomach burst open. The 20cm-long animal had rather rashly decided to swallow a live 15cm Scolopendra. This turned out to be a mistake: the centipede seems to have eaten all the snake's internal organs, then tried to chew its way to freedom through the snake's body wall. As you can see from the picture, it very nearly made it.

Look at any body of water in summer and you will see long-legged insects, skittering between pond weeds, dimple-balanced on the water surface. They feed by sucking the innards out of drowning insects. But below the water surface, concealed in weeds and dead leaves, lurk waterscorpions: 2-cm-long ambush predators that eat whatever comes into reach. In the tropics these insects are scaled up, becoming the giant water bugs. The largest species reach 12cm.

They conceal themselves in vegetation and then pounce. They have a stout, tube-like proboscis with which they can impale their prey, inject digestive juices and then suck up the resulting "soup". Large, hook-like, front legs make sure there is little chance of escape. Giant water bugs eat a lot of fish and tadpoles, as well as adult frogs and water snakes. There is even a report of a baby terrapin falling prey.

Lovely.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170118-monstrous-spiders-and-centipedes-that-prey-on-large-animals

UBI : simply too expensive ?

This is the most positive article on UBI I've seen from the BBC. Still it raises a valuable point of doubt :

Would it make a difference? Around five million people receive welfare benefits in the UK. In 2015, the country’s welfare budget was £258 billion ($320bn). If that was divided equally between the UK’s roughly 50 million adults, each person would receive £5,160 ($6,400) a year. That’s a lot less than the £13,124 ($16,280) someone could earn in full-time work on the minimum wage set by the UK government. Many would argue for a universal basic income that is higher than that amount. It’s also less than some people receive in existing benefits – which most systems of basic income would replace. For example, in the UK a person over the age of 25 who is unemployed could receive up to £3,800 ($4,714) a year in jobseekers allowance and an average of £4,992 ($6,192) in housing benefits.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170118-what-if-the-state-provided-everyone-with-a-basic-income

Horses are more deadly than snakes, says crazy Australian

But... but... it's Australia ! You can't move for deadly venomous animals there ! Most likely, everyone who got bitten by a snake was subsequently eaten by a crocodile or a shark or a very large jellyfish. Yes, that must be it.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-38592390

My idea to fix democracy : get more foreign interference

Idea : every country selects another country at random and holds their elections for them. Like secret Santa but with higher stakes.

Covert intelligence operations, propaganda, fake news stories, dirty tricks—all were used in a foreign government’s audacious attempt to influence U.S. elections. It wasn’t 2016; it was 1940, and the operations were employed not by a hostile adversary, but by America’s closest ally, the United Kingdom.

To pull the U.S. into Britain’s efforts would require first winning public opinion—making newspapers and radio programs the front lines in the battle to persuade Americans to elect politicians willing to back Britain over those who promoted an “America First” agenda. SIS, the British intelligence agency, flooded American newspapers with fake stories, leaked the results of illegal electronic surveillance and deployed October surprises against political candidates.

American communists, fascists and isolationists complained bitterly and loudly in 1940 and 1941 that Britain was secretly manipulating the U.S. media as part of a campaign to pull America into the war. These accusations, confidently dismissed by liberal politicians and newspapers as paranoid ravings, were inaccurate only in that they were understated. Even the most alarmist commentators and conspiracy-mongers underestimated the depth and effectiveness of British covert activity... this history shows that, as it sought to shift America out of neutrality, British intelligence was restrained only by the certainty that the blowback from public exposure would have been disastrous.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/when-a-foreign-government-interfered-in-a-us-electionto-reelect-fdr-214634

Rejoice ! Or, not

Good news, everyone ! The ghastly era of post-truthism is over. That was a horrible six months, wasn't it ? Now we're back to good old-fashioned delusions. Hurrah !

Boris Johnson has warned EU leaders not to give the UK "punishment beatings" for Brexit "in the manner of some World War Two movie". The foreign secretary said penalising "escape" was "not in the interests of our friends and our partners".

Former cabinet minister and Brexit campaigner Michael Gove hit back, tweeting that people offended by Mr Johnson's "witty metaphor" were "humourless, deliberately obtuse, snowflakes".

Former Labour leader Ed Miliband said Boris Johnson had shown once again that he could be "supremely clever and yet immensely stupid".

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-38658998

The mysterious giant wave from hell

Venus is hiding something very, very big. Every so often, a wave of hot air rises up from the planet's Hell-like surface and stretches across its entire diameter. The stationary gravity wave, as it's called, hovers about 40 miles (65 kilometers) above the surface in the shape of a flattened "V", rippling through the sulfuric acid clouds that Venus blows by at a chaotic and constant 220 mph. The anomaly lasts for one or two or maybe three Earth days, then it mysteriously vanishes.

Gravity waves are buoyancy waves, and should not be confused with gravitational waves.

A group of Japan-based researchers detailed the oddities of Venus' giant, stationary gravity wave in a new study published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience. Their work implies that it's far bigger than similar waves seen on Earth and Mars, making it "perhaps the greatest ever observed in the solar system."

"It's very bizarre. It has no evident explanations," Thomas Widemann, a planetary scientist at the Paris Observatory who wasn't involved with the new study, told Business Insider. "It's a surprise for all of us."

http://www.businessinsider.com/venus-gravity-wave-akatsuki-2017-1

Maximum wage is a jolly good idea

Fairness is not a demand for equality or pay caps. It is a demand that pay should have a just, proportional and deserved link to the contribution that has been made. If a footballer earns £200,000 a week but scores or assists 30 goals a season, our eyes may roll at the sheer scale of such a reward, but our judgement is also shaped by the knowledge that rich football clubs, and their fans, want the results. Clubs are bigger, global TV audiences huge, competition more intense, success much more valuable. Top footballers’ pay may in part result from an arms race for the best, along with a modicum of sheer greed, but in part it is deserved. It is the same story for executives who transform a company.

What prompts anger with executive pay is the belief that it has risen far too fast for far too long with too little justification or relationship to the right kind of performance. Shareholders and society alike want – or should want – executives paid well to build great, purposed companies over time. Instead, the incentives are too much oriented to delivering a high share price in the immediate future, encouraging corner-cutting to get there. 

For the trouble with a pay cap – or even softening it as a target upper limit of the ratio of top pay to average pay – is that deciding what it should be is wholly arbitrary and deeply contentious... You can make an argument for ratios of 5:1, 20:1 or 50: 1, but the reason why so few companies (even John Lewis) or societies (even communist China) make the chosen ratios stick is because the ratio is so arbitrary and itself courts unfairness.

The only viable way forward is to create the best justification process possible, along with the best-designed incentives to produce results that everyone is proud of, as the Purposeful Company taskforce argued in its interim report on pay last November.


I respectfully disagree. How can it be fair when an actor is paid more to pretend to be an astrophysicist in a half-hour episode than most real astrophysicsts earn in a lifetime ? How can it be fair that the head of a bank walks away with a multi-million pound pension after leaving it in a worse state than he found it ? How can it possibly be fair to pay someone enough money to buy a house every week for kicking a ball around a field ? No, pay caps may be unfair, but they are a lot less unfair than paying people obscene amounts of money which could have gone (directly or indirectly) to people doing much harder work for less reward. I'd really like to see a company do a trial of a maximum pay ratio....


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/15/pay-cap-unworkable-detracts-from-fair-society

Spontaneous fish combustion

Well there's a new one.

Until relatively recently, some believed that domestic chickens were the most abundant vertebrates on the planet with numbers estimated at around 24 billion. In fact, this figure is dwarfed by some fish in the twilight zone. The global bristlemouth population is so vast, for instance, that numbers may lie in the quadrillions while various estimates of lanternfish suggest that their biomass alone is several times greater than the entire world fisheries catch.

South Africa has long had an eye on exploiting the vast lanternfish community living in the twilight zone off the African continental shelf, to try and relieve the pressure on dwindling conventional fish stocks. However one of the country's very first attempts, in the mid-1980s, to build an experimental fishery offshore in the Atlantic yielded an unexpected problem.

Lanternfish have an extremely high oil content, making them very hard to handle. Once the catch was aboard, it spoiled quickly in the high tropical temperatures, and began to degrade dangerously quickly. The temperature rose to such a high level in the decomposing fish that they spontaneously caught fire. An uncontrollable blaze swept through and destroyed the entire fishery plant.

From there the article goes into why harvesting quadrillions of fish from the depths of the ocean in a largely undisturbed ecosystem would, as you might expect, probably be a very bad idea.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170113-the-race-to-fish-the-larder-living-in-the-twilight-zone

No-one needs a superyacht (though I'd quite like one)

No-one needs a superyacht. Yes, if you do more work (or better work) you deserve a greater reward than if you do less. But I simply do not believe it's possible for someone's merit to warrant this level of obscene wealth. Far more likely the poorest remain so because they don't have the opportunity to earn more. Conversely, when you become very wealthy it seems inordinately easy to become even wealthier.

The world's eight richest individuals have as much wealth as the 3.6bn people who make up the poorest half of the world, according to Oxfam.The charity said its figures, which critics have queried, came from improved data, and the gap between rich and poor was "far greater than feared".

Mark Littlewood, of the Institute of Economic Affairs, said Oxfam should focus instead on ways to boost growth. "As an 'anti-poverty' charity, Oxfam seems to be strangely preoccupied with the rich," said the director-general of the free market think tank. For those concerned with "eradicating absolute poverty completely", the focus should be on measures that encourage economic growth, he added.

Ben Southwood, head of research at the Adam Smith Institute, said it was not the wealth of the world's rich that mattered, but the welfare of the world's poor, which was improving every year. "Each year we are misled by Oxfam's wealth statistics. The data is fine - it comes from Credit Suisse - but the interpretation is not."

[Oxfam does indeed say something very similar every year, without fail, and their statistics are indeed questionable. However, why anyone should have access to such financial resources that they alone become a significant factor in world politics is beyond me - making money is no proof whatsoever of financial skill, much less moral insight. More on that at some point, maybe.]

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38613488

Turning smog into jewellery

“Our desire for progress has side effects and smog is one of them,” says the Dutch inventor Daan Roosegaard, who was inspired to look for a solution after visiting Beijing in 2013. Three years later, his seven metre-high ‘Smog Free Tower’, supported by the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection, opened in Beijing’s 751 D Park in September 2016.

It is a giant, outdoor air purifier. In much the same way that static electricity can make loose hairs stick to a comb, airborne particles are sucked into the tower where they receive a positive charge. The particles are then captured by a negatively charged dust-removal plate and clean air is blown out of the other end.

“We're working now on the calculation: how many towers do we actually need to place in a city like Beijing to get a pollution reduction of 20-40%? It shouldn't be thousands of towers, it should be hundreds. We can make larger versions as well, the size of buildings.”

As for what to do with the collected PM waste, he currently has a side-line selling the compacted substance as jewellery. Prince Charles owns a set of “smog free” cufflinks. If collected on at a sufficient scale, Roosegaarde believes it could even be used as a building material.

Berlin-based architect Allison Dring, director of Elegant Embellishments, has an alternative solution... She is now making a building material out of biochar, a charcoal-like substance made by burning agricultural crop by-product or tree clippings in a pyrolysis kiln, which chemically decomposes organic materials by heating them in the absence of oxygen. “It means that you are actually taking carbon out of the sky, converting it into a material, and then using it to build,” says Dring.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170112-how-the-worlds-biggest-cities-are-fighting-smog

Fighting lies with better lies ?

If we feel uneasy about their ascendance, then the most important lesson we need to learn is to stop fighting them with facts, and instead come up with better stories: with 21st Century myths. And while there’s clearly no one set of myths that will work for everyone, the kind of myths we need today will share some key defining features.

First, they need to prompt us to think of ourselves as part of a larger us – a seven billion us, that has “more in common than that which divides us”, as the late British MP Jo Cox put it. (Contrast this with identity politics, which typically centres on a smaller idea of ‘us’ that needs to fight back against some ‘other’.)

Second, we need myths that help us think in terms of a longer now – to situate ourselves at the intersection of a deep past and a deep future, to think across generational timespans, and to protect and cultivate the future rather than gorging ourselves on it and leaving our successors to pick up the bill.

And third, we need myths that nudge us to imagine a better good life. One that decisively does away with the notion that we are what we buy, and in which we reimagine growth as being not about material consumption but instead about growing up as a species and moving past our current, dangerously adolescent moment at which we’re testing all the limits to see what will happen.

Don't have time for a detailed commentary but for now I'll just say, "I dunno about this, I'm suspicious."

http://bit.ly/2igdklW

Tidal lagoons : a more eco-friendly form of hydro-power

Plans for a £1.3bn tidal lagoon in Swansea Bay will be backed in a government-commissioned review. The Swansea Bay project would involve 16 turbines along a breakwater but is seen as only the start - a prototype for much larger lagoons. The "fleet" includes one off the coast of Cardiff - east of where Cardiff Bay is now - Newport, Bridgwater Bay in Somerset, Colwyn Bay and west Cumbria, north of Workington.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Hendry said the lagoon would be a "world first" which was different to barrages elsewhere in the world as lagoons do not block the mouth of a river. "We know it absolutely works," he said. "One of the great advantages is it completely predictable for all time to come - we know exactly when the spring tides and neap tides are going to be every single day for the rest of time."

He said the best way to look at the cost was the subsidy required by the taxpayer over the lifetime of the project. This calculation gave "a very much lower figure than almost any source of power generation," he insisted. "If you look at the cost spread out over the entire lifetime - 120 years for the project - it comes out at about 30p per household for the next 30 years. That's less than a pint of milk."

Swansea Bay would act as a "pathfinder" project, allowing people to learn more about the technology and bring the cost down.

Tidal Lagoon Power (TLP) claims the Cardiff lagoon is being designed to generate enough electricity for all homes in Wales and that it would be the cheapest electricity of all the new power stations in the UK. Gloucester-based TLP's contention is that the Swansea project will test the technology but it will come into its own - and could eventually meet 8% of the UK's energy needs - when the network of more cost-effective, larger lagoons come on stream over the next 10 years.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-38571240

Practical advice on preventing Brexit

I could try and summarise this with noteworthy quotes, but 90% of it is a noteworthy quote so I won't. I do have some minor quibbles, but they are not worth mentioning.

EDIT : Actually I will quote the most pragmatic part :
Write, and keep writing, letters and emails (letters are best: but even better is to send both) to your own MP and other MPs.... Letters have a major impact on MPs. I was once told by a senior civil servant in the Department of Health that a dozen letters of complaint to a Minister would trouble him or her greatly, because the rule of thumb is that for every letter written, there are thousands of other people who agree with the sentiments it expresses: letters are tips of icebergs.

I suppose the effort involved in writing a letter is now so much greater than writing an email that they're taken more seriously.

http://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/this_is_a_c_grayling_s_ultimate_guide_to_defeating_brexit_and_why_the_eu_is_worth_fighting_for_1_4844381?platform=hootsuite

On the empathetic and Machiavellian chicken

Some studies suggest the birds can appreciate how the world must appear to their peers, and that they can use this information for personal advantage. If a male chicken foraging for food finds a particularly tasty morsel, he will often try to impress nearby females by performing a dance while making a characteristic food call.

However, subordinate males that perform this song-and-dance routine risk being noticed and attacked by the dominant male. So if the dominant male is nearby, the subordinate often performs his special dance in silence, in a bid to impress females without the dominant male noticing. Meanwhile, some males may try to trick females into approaching by making the characteristic food calls even when they have not found anything worth crowing about. Unsurprisingly, females quickly wise up to males who perform this sort of deception too often.

There are even some hints that chickens may show a rudimentary form of empathy for each other. In a series of studies over the last six years, Joanne Edgar at the University of Bristol, UK and her colleagues have studied how hens react when they see their chicks having air puffed at them – something the hens have learned, from personal experience, is mildly unpleasant.

When the chicks were puffed, the hens' hearts began to race and they called more frequently to the chicks. However, they did not do so if the air was puffed near the chicks without actually disturbing them. In a study published in 2013, the hens learned to associate one coloured box with the uncomfortable air puff and a second coloured box with safety – no air puff. The hens again showed signs of concern when chicks were placed in the "dangerous" box, even if the chicks never actually experienced an air puff and remained oblivious to the peril.

This suggests that hens can respond to their personal knowledge of the potential for chick discomfort, rather than simply reacting to signs of distress in the youngsters.

The research is ongoing, says Edgar. "We have not yet established whether the behavioural and physiological responses in hens observing their chicks in mild distress are indicative of an emotional response, or are simply akin to arousal or interest."
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170110-despite-what-you-might-think-chickens-are-not-stupid

Skiing uphill with a giant drone

I don't think I believe this. When flying he not only holds on with one hand but his arm is bent. He'd have to be able to hold himself halfway through a one-handed pull-up for >20 seconds at a time while in mid air... and why is he holding a camera on a selfie stick when he could just wear a head-mounted version ?

EDIT : Nope. As this video makes clear, it's definitely not a fake
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyUrqZBs2XA


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=At3xcj-pTjg&feature=share

Plants have highly sophisticated sensors

In their experiments, Appel and Cocroft found that recordings of the munching noises produced by caterpillars caused plants to flood their leaves with chemical defences designed to ward off attackers. "We showed that plants responded to an ecologically-relevant 'sound' with an ecologically-relevant response," says Cocroft.

More ominously, back in 2006 she demonstrated how a parasitic plant known as the dodder vine sniffs out a potential host. The dodder vine then wriggles through the air, before coiling itself around the luckless host and extracting its nutrients. Conceptually, there is nothing much distinguishing these plants from us. They smell or hear something and then act accordingly, just as we do.

Plants are supremely adapted for doing exactly what they need to do. They may lack a nervous system, a brain and other features we associate with complexity, but they excel in other areas. For example, despite lacking eyes, plants such as Arabidopsis possess at least 11 types of photoreceptor, compared to our measly four. This means that, in a way, their vision is more complex than ours. Plants have different priorities, and their sensory systems reflect this. As Chamovitz points out in his book: "light for a plant is much more than a signal; light is food."

So while plants face many of the same challenges as animals, their sensory requirements are equally shaped by the things that distinguish them. "The danger for the plant people is that if we keep comparing [plants] with animals we might miss the value of plants," says Hamant.

Conversely, the realisation that we have some things in common with plants might be an opportunity to accept that we are more plant-like than we would like to think, just as plants are more animal-like than we usually assume.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170109-plants-can-see-hear-and-smell-and-respond

Astronomy saving endangered animals with drones, somehow

And the second unusual paper : using astronomical detection programs hooked up to a drone to go flying around detecting endangered animals. Well, there's something you don't see every day.

In this paper we describe an unmanned aerial system equipped with a thermal-infrared camera and software pipeline that we have developed to monitor animal populations for conservation purposes. Taking a multi-disciplinary approach to tackle this problem, we use freely available astronomical source detection software and the associated expertise of astronomers, to efficiently and reliably detect humans and animals in aerial thermal-infrared footage. Combining this astronomical detection software with existing machine learning algorithms into a single, automated, end-to-end pipeline, we test the software using aerial video footage taken in a controlled, field-like environment. We demonstrate that the pipeline works reliably and describe how it can be used to estimate the completeness of different observational datasets to objects of a given type as a function of height, observing conditions etc. -- a crucial step in converting video footage to scientifically useful information such as the spatial distribution and density of different animal species. Finally, having demonstrated the potential utility of the system, we describe the steps we are taking to adapt the system for work in the field, in particular systematic monitoring of endangered species at National Parks around the world.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.01611

Using mobile phones to help radio astronomy rather than kill it

Couple of quirky-looking papers on today's astro-ph. The first one : how to make the radio astronomer's bogeyman (the mobile phone) slightly less obnoxious...

If fast radio bursts (FRBs) originate from galaxies at cosmological distances, then their all-sky rate implies that the Milky Way may host an FRB on average once every 30-1500 years. A typical Galactic FRB would produce a millisecond radio pulse with ~1 GHz flux density of ~3E10 Jy, comparable to the radio flux levels and frequencies of cellular communication devices (cell phones, Wi-Fi, GPS). Fainter FRBs could potentially be detected more frequently. We propose to search for Galactic FRBs using a global array of low-cost radio receivers. One possibility is to use the ~1GHz communication channel in cellular phones through a Citizens-Science downloadable application. Participating phones would continuously listen for and record candidate FRBs and would periodically upload information to a central data processing website, which correlates the incoming data from all participants, to identify the signature of a real, globe-encompassing, FRB from an astronomical distance. Triangulation of the GPS-based pulse arrival times reported from different locations will provide the FRB sky position, potentially to arc-second accuracy. Pulse arrival times from phones operating at diverse frequencies will yield the dispersion measure (DM) which will indicate the FRB source distance within the Galaxy. A variant of this approach would be to use the built-in ~100 MHz FM-radio receivers present in cell phones for an FRB search at lower frequencies. Alternatively, numerous "software-defined radio" (SDR) devices, costing ~$10 US each, could be plugged into USB ports of personal computers around the world (particularly in radio quiet regions) to establish the global network of receivers.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.01475

It'll fold your laundry, but reeeeally slowly

This one isn't going to catch on. It's enormous and takes 5-12 minutes to fold each item. And all the folding happens inside a big grey box, so you don't even get to see any cartoon-style robot hands working their magic.

However, the next version will have a washer and dryer incorporated. That might have more success. Imagine just bunging your dirty laundry into a device, pressing a button and coming back a few hours later to clean folded laundry... well it's hardly the invention of the steam engine but I can see people buying it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38541533

The Hobbit : less really is more

Remember when I said I wanted a shorter version of The Hobbit movies ? And that if their wasn't an official version there would definitely be an unofficial version ? Well there is, and I watched it this afternoon (though it's been out for over a year). A single 4 hour 15 minute film instead of the absurdity of the 9 hours of three films at the cinema. And it's really rather good.

Gone are the singing dwarves. Gone are Galadriel, Sauruman, Tauriel and her utterly pointless romantic sub-plot, Legolas (or at least reduced to a 5 minute scene) and (thank sweet merciful Cthulhu) the horror that was Radegast. The Azog stuff is still there, but vastly reduced. It is much, much better than the theatrical releases.

The worst of the overblown action sequences (like the dwarves falling off a tree on the edge of a cliff, or covering Smaug in molten gold, and those silly giant worms) are completely cut. A lot of the less ridiculous but still pointless action sequences are gone as well (e.g. there's no big chase sequence after the trolls are turned to stone - the dwarves just arrive in Rivendell without incident). And no-one fist-punches their way out of a barrel and goes spinning round like a gyroscope with blades. It feels like an adventure story with action sequences now, not an action story with adventure sequences.

It's not perfect by any means. While cutting Ian Holm's prelude with the overblown destruction of Dale sequence works well, it would have been nice to include the famous, "In a hole under the ground there lived a hobbit..." introduction, which would tie in nicely to the end. I also think the stupid rock giants could have been edited to make it look like a big rockfall.

The overall story has survived this dramatic loss of five hours of footage remarkably well, but there are understandably a few oddities. For instance, it's not made explicit that Gandalf stays in Rivendell after the dwarves leave, making his re-appearance in the goblin town rather strange. So many of the orc sequences are (quite rightly) lost that it's easy to forget they're chasing the protagonists, which means that occasionally they appear more unexpectedly than they should. It's not clear how Bilbo gets into the woodland realm of the elves or how he knows about the barrels. Bard assists the dwarves at first but then decides to oppose them for no obvious reason, and later it's not clear why the guards are after him because until that point they've actually been on good terms. And Bilbo's descent into the mountain happens rather suddenly after they arrive.

All of these are rather minor plot holes are there are certainly decent movies out there with far worse problems. Overall, this version is a massive improvement on the theatrical releases. The only major thing I would change is to split it into two two-hour films. Not because I mind four hours of watching a movie so much as it feels like it's in two parts, with the journey to the mountain being quite different to what happens when they get there. Also, while the quality is quite watchable it's not HD and there are occasional reductions in the frame rate during the sequences from The Battle of the Five Armies.

Bottom line : this is a more than passable version of The Hobbit, which brings the movies back up to the quality I expected originally. Sure, it's not Lord of the Rings, and it shouldn't be - the source material is too different. But at least now they both feel like they're in the same universe and told by the same storyteller. Nice job, TolkeinEditor !
https://tolkieneditor.wordpress.com

Google Home wants to be in Harry Potter

Technology has advanced to the point where two Google homes can have make-believe fantasies about Harry Potter. After the revelation that one of them is in fact the Dark Lord, there was a protracted silence. And then the conversation resumed with "correct horse battery staple" (https://xkcd.com/936/) and went back into an argument about which one is a human and which one is a robot.

https://gizmodo.com/thousands-of-people-are-watching-two-google-homes-argue-1790843285

Giant atoms to detect dark matter

Individual atoms are hard to study and control because they are very sensitive to external perturbations. This sensitivity is usually an inconvenience, but our study suggests that it makes some atoms ideal as probes for the detection of particles that don't interact strongly with regular matter – such as dark matter.

A special kind of atom is necessary to make the interaction relevant. We worked out that the so-called "Rydberg atom" would do the trick. These are atoms with long distances between the electron and the nucleus, meaning they possess high potential energy. Potential energy is a form of stored energy. For example, a ball on a high shelf has potential energy because this could be converted to kinetic energy if it falls off the shelf.

In the lab, it is possible to trap atoms and prepare them in a Rydberg state – making them as big as 4,000 times their original size. This is done by illuminating the atoms with a laser with light at a very specific frequency.

This prepared atom is likely much heavier than the dark matter particles. So rather than a pool ball striking another, a more appropriate description will be a marble hitting a bowling ball. It seems strange that big atoms are more perturbed by collisions than small ones – one may expect the opposite (smaller things are usually more affected when a collision occurs).

The explanation is related to two features of Rydberg atoms: they are highly unstable because of their elevated energy, so minor perturbations would disturb them more. Also, due to their big area, the probability of the atoms interacting with particles is increased, so they will suffer more collisions.

http://ow.ly/iZO6508ih62

No robot butlers this year

CES marks the beginning of a land grab by three of the leading virtual assistants: Amazon's Alexa, Microsoft's Cortana and the Google Assistant. The headphones specialist OnVocal will be showing off wireless earphones that link up to Alexa, and GE has also preannounced a table lamp that doubles as a speaker powered by Amazon's voice service. We know Microsoft is working with Harman Kardon on a "premium audio" speaker, and the firm has teased adding Cortana to other types of products, including toasters.

Dunno, can't really see the point of announcing every little thing I'm doing to the world at large. If I wanted to do that I'd be on twitter.

The French start-up Bixi will be making the case for gesture controls. It will be demoing the final design of a gizmo that lets you control smartphones and tablets with a wave of a hand.

Again, I can't see many situations where waving at a phone would be preferable to touching it.

More groundbreaking perhaps is the Blitab, a tactile tablet described as the iPad for the blind. The Austrian innovation produces small physical bubbles in an area above its touchscreen which delivers refresh double lines of dynamic Braille.

We're still decades away from having the type of androids seen on TV shows such as Westworld or Humans. But CES is still an opportunity to see how far along more specialised kit has become. Examples will include... Unibot, a robotic vacuum cleaner that trebles up as a mobile home security camera and an air purifier/humidifier.

Meanwhile, OAPs can look forward to Cutii, a robot that resembles an iPad on wheels, which will supposedly become their "companion". And there will also be bots that zoom round tennis courts picking up balls, remove droppings from cat litter, and even move physical chess pieces around a board.

Keep an eye out for Laundroid, too. The Japanese clothes-folding machine raised $60m from Panasonic and others for its giant clothes-folding droid following an appearance at last year's CES. Some have described the idea as ridiculous.

It's certainly a lot less ridiculous than the hoover/camera/humidifier. Specialist robots are all well and good, and maybe if you have enough of them in a smart home some of them might even be useful. But wouldn't a single, generic humanoid robot be so much better ? One that quietly goes about the daily chores with minimal intervention, doing the hoovering properly cos it can pick up the dirty clothes on the floor and chuck 'em in the washing machine later, then hang them out to dry when they're done and iron them too, then mow the lawn, wash the dishes and make everyone a nice cup of tea... that's the robot that people will actually buy.

We're also promised the world's first vibrating tight cut jeans that offer their wearers directions without having to look at a screen.

Wait... what ??

It's now relatively cheap and power-efficient to add sensors and wireless data links to products. That's led to an explosion of ideas - some more sensible than others. Its debateable how many of us really need Genican, for example, a device that scans rubbish's barcodes as it is thrown away in order to build up a shopping list of replacement items. Likewise, it's not clear whether an aromatherapy diffuser needs to be smartphone-controlled, even if its scents really boost memory and clean lungs, as claimed.

Plus there's room for oddities, such as a device that claims to be able to record smells.

Well, at least it's not just about the latest slightly faster smartphone any more. I'd take a smellometer and vibrating jeans any day of the week.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38403944