Check your car carefully in winter

Found on the internet.

Lord Adonis' eloquent resignation letter condemning Brexit

A very eloquent letter indeed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42515637#

Words as well as actions must be accounted for

Well yes and no.

Yes, because being told to "show more sympathy" for Alt Right Nazi voters is the right's version of political "correctness". We're forever being told to call a spade a spade, but start hating the extremists instead of the minorities and suddenly we have to be sympathetic. We're supposed to call a spade a spade, until we're told not to.

The quote makes that first point well enough : justice would suggest we defend those who need defending, not those who choose the path of hate. But then it shoots itself in the foot and uncovers a potential paradox : we should care about motivations if we're to prevent the spread of extremism of any form; historians certainly do care a great deal. So should we respond to hatred with entirely justified counter-hate, or with a sympathy the extremists by far and away do not deserve ? I'm on the fence, personally.

[Later - much later - I attempted to solve this paradox by generalising the conditions under which persuasion and/or intolerance would succeed. This is not an easy topic and you can read the lengthy exposition here. At some point I will try and condense this.]

Found on the internet.

Non-Euclidean space in VR

Methinks they've probably invented a terrifyingly effective device for sending people insane.

I wanna go !

... but not for very long.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztsi0CLxmjw&feature=share

Christopher Walken has disguised himself as a robot pretending to be Donald Trump

At least that's my interpretation.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/technology-42411586/disney-s-president-donald-trump-robot-gets-mocked

Social media begins to get it together, maybe

Slowly and inevitably imperfectly, social media begins to realise that censorship does not automatically equate with bad. Not censoring some things is far, far worse.

Twitter has suspended the accounts of two leaders of a British far-right group shortly after revising its rules on hate speech. Paul Golding, Britain First's leader, and Jayda Fransen, his deputy, can no longer tweet and their past posts no longer appear. The organisation's official Twitter page has suffered the same fate. It appears that three of Ms Fransen's posts that President Drumpf retweeted have gone from his feed as a result.

Hateful imagery - such as the Nazi swastika - can still be posted, but will initially be hidden behind a "sensitive media" warning, that visitors must disable to proceed. However, such content will no longer be allowed on a person's profile page. Those that featured examples will be asked to remove them. Repeat violators will be banned.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42402570

Annihilation

This looks fun.

Annihilation is based on the first book in a trilogy from author Jeff VanderMeer, and the story involves an all-female research team heading into an environmental disaster zone labelled Area X. Inside they find all sorts of strange creatures and plant mutations, and their sanity slowly begins to crumble the deeper they investigate.
https://youtu.be/89OP78l9oF0

A solar-powered train

Tim Elderton, from the Lithgow Railway Workshop, was tasked with building curved solar panels and a battery system to power the train. "Basically it's electric bus technology that we've re-engineered to adapt to a train," he said. "Of course the major difference is it's got solar panels on the roof so it can recharge itself. For those cloudy days we've also got 30 kilowatts of solar panels in this [station's] roof here so we can also plug it in. On a sunny day like today we can do about four or five trips before we have to plug it in."

Longer trips than this one — 10 minutes to cover three kilometres or so — would require regular recharging stations along the route, but Mr Flannery said the technology might be suited to inner-city trams.

OK, so not exactly nippy, but an interesting start.

Via Ted Ewen.

Originally shared by Lerato Majikfaerie

Fully solar powered train launches in Australia
#solar #environment #Australia
In the beachside holiday destination of Byron Bay, a 70 year old heritage train car has been restored and retrofitted with solar panels along a 3km stretch of disused railway line.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-16/world-first-solar-train-the-brainchild-of-byron-bay-millionaire/9265522

Monkeys engage in bestiality with deer

Japanese macaques are known to ride deer like humans ride horses, for fun or transportation — behavior the deer seem to tolerate in exchange for grooming and discarded food. But these monkeys were up to something different.

Looking at a different set of relationships — adolescent female monkeys and deer, particularly male deer, in Minoo, Japan — the researchers found interactions that definitely seemed to be sexual in nature. (The female monkeys were climbing onto the deer and grinding their genitals against the deer's backs. Yes, there's video.)

Some of the deer shook the monkeys off and fled the situation. But adult male deer, in particular, were likely to just stand calmly as the female monkeys thrusted. In some cases, the male deer kept eating.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/12/15/571175252/scientists-say-japanese-monkeys-are-having-sexual-interactions-with-deer

Nature, red in tooth and claw

Found on the internet.

The best way to explore a pyramid

How do you explore mysterious voids inside the Great Pyramid ? With a tiny inflatable blimp. Obviously.

"Once inside, the blimp is inflated with helium and unfolds to a diameter of 80 cm. It then undocks and floats off with a 50-gram payload of motors and sensors, including lights, cameras, and assistive navigation systems. Once its mission is finished, the blimp returns to its dock, deflates and refolds, and comes right back out the same hole."
https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/drones/robotic-blimp-could-explore-hidden-chambers-of-great-pyramid

Blue Origin continues its run of success

Very cool !

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos says his space venture, Blue Origin, launched the latest version of its New Shepard suborbital spaceship today for the company’s first test flight in 14 months, with an instrumented test dummy seated aboard. “He had a great ride,” Bezos said tonight in a tweet.

Between November 2015 and October 2016, Blue Origin put an earlier version of the New Shepard through five successful flights to the edge of space and back. Then that spacecraft was retired, and the company’s team in Kent, Wash., turned its focus to building a version of the crew capsule that’s closer to what passengers would eventually be riding. For example, the updated version has actual windows rather than painted-on facsimiles.

In addition to the dummy, which was nicknamed “Mannequin Skywalker,”...

Slow. Clap.

...the New Shepard crew capsule carried 12 commercial, research and educational payloads, Blue Origin said.

The company’s fact sheet said the flight lasted a total of 10 minutes and 6 seconds, starting at 10:59 a.m. CT (8:59 a.m. PT). The booster went nearly three times the speed of sound on the way up (Mach 2.94) and even faster on the way down (Mach 3.74). The capsule’s maximum altitude was listed as 99.39 kilometers, just shy of the internationally accepted 100-kilometer boundary of outer space.

If the current series of flight tests goes well, Blue Origin could start taking people up on suborbital space rides as early as next year. The company isn’t yet taking reservations or publishing its ticket prices. Would-be riders will have to wait until the tests are complete.

https://www.geekwire.com/2017/blue-origin-launches-updated-version-new-shepard-suborbital-spaceship-test-flight/

WHO COULD HAVE FORESEEN THIS ?

Dead tree of bigotry the Daily Express has published the journalism equivalent of when a retro cartoon character runs off a cliff through the air – and then plummets when it looks down. The newspaper is at the looking down stage.

Yes, the mouthpiece of Brexiteers, Ukippers and anachronistic portrayals of St George, has discovered that Brexit might not be such a good idea.

“Brexit SHOCK warning: Britain will be WORSE OFF out of the EU under ALL Brexit scenarios,” it tweeted yesterday afternoon, linking to an article reporting with a note of terror the words of an expert saying all Brexit scenarios would hurt Britain.

MY GOD WHAT ?!?!? DID NO-ONE WARN US ABOUT THIS ?!?!?!?! BLLLLALAAAAAAAARRRRRRGHHHHHH !!!!!!


head assplodes

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/media/2017/12/shock-daily-express-discovers-brexit-bad

They're not having it all their own way

Doug Jones has become the first Democrat in 25 years to win a US Senate seat for Alabama, after a bitter campaign against Republican Roy Moore. His unexpected victory deals a blow to President Donald Drumpf, who backed Mr Moore, and narrows the Republican majority in the Senate to 51-49.

Mr Moore has so far refused to concede, saying "it's not over". He fought a controversial campaign, in which allegations surfaced of sexual misconduct with teenage girls. Mr Moore, a firebrand conservative who has said he believes that homosexual activity should be illegal, has repeatedly denied the claims against him. The contest was for the seat vacated by US Attorney General Jeff Sessions earlier this year.

Oh wow, some half-decent news for once. That's a precious as unicorn tears these days, even if the vote was close and nearly half of Alabama thought "credible candidate" rather than "mad racist paedophile".
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42333712

Sleepwalking on a motorbike

Consciousness is really weird.

Shortly after moving to the UK from Canada, Jackie was lodging with an elderly woman. "One morning she asked, 'Where did you go last night?'" Jackie says. Jackie said she had not gone anywhere. "Well, you went out on your motorbike," the landlady replied. Jackie was shocked. She immediately asked if she had been wearing her helmet. "Oh yes, you clomped down the stairs and you had your helmet and you went out," the landlady said, adding that she had been gone for about 20 minutes.

Jackie had no recollection of her moonlit ride because she was asleep at the time. And there were no other clues to indicate she had been out, as she had returned the motorbike to exactly the same place it had been before.

What explains this incredibly complex behaviour, apparently arising in deep sleep?

We have known for years that certain animals like dolphins, seals and birds can sleep with one half of their brain at a time, allowing them to swim or fly while sleeping. In humans, this does not occur, but we do now know that sleep and wake can exist in different parts of the brain at the same time. When sleep-deprived, our brains show small areas of the cerebral cortex, the outer surface of the brain, exhibiting "local sleep" - electrical activity consistent with sleep.

Studies of sleepwalkers show that the parts of the brain controlling vision, movement and emotion appear to be awake, while areas of the brain involved in memory, decision-making and rational thinking appear to remain in deep sleep. These findings to some extent explain why sleepwalkers may appear to be awake - with eyes open, speaking and performing difficult tasks like riding a motorbike - but behave in an odd manner, and have no (or only limited) recollection.

For the most part, behaving like this is inconvenient or embarrassing. People may make phone calls or send texts in the middle of the night, find themselves wandering outside incompletely clothed, or cook meals in their sleep. "I know one person who every night would get up and sing the national anthem and then go back to bed," says Prof Meir Kryger, of Yale University.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-42267790

Max Clifford's unflattering obituary

Good riddance.

Clifford claimed to be a lifelong socialist. But he made millions of pounds by exploiting people often desperate for money. He deluded himself that it was his story about the Tory MP David Mellor having sex in a Chelsea kit (a lie) that tarnished the Tories' reputation for probity. In other words, that by associating them with sleaze, he got them out of government. But Clifford's motivation wasn't cleaner government - it was a bigger pay cheque, for himself.

He claimed to be a champion of women's dignity, giving a voice to the voiceless and ensuring that their story was heard. But he died in jail after being convicted of sexual abuse, in crimes that were they committed later might have been considered rape.

It would be hard to overstate the extent to which Clifford grew wealthy by making stuff up. At least he acknowledged it.

"I learnt early on that by colouring [adding spicy details to stories], you get the big coverage… I was always instinctively good at lying," he once said. Another time, he told the Oxford Union, "Every day, every week, every month, a lot of the lies you see in newspapers, in the magazines, on television, on radio, are mine."

For Clifford, however, evidence was a costly distraction. He spent his entire career fabricating stories in service not of truth, or justice, but his own bank balance. In that way, he helped create a culture in which you could boast "don't believe everything you read" - and be right to say so, because liars like Clifford were preying on your attention.

We're not meant to speak ill of the dead. But if you believe in journalism, the integrity of the public domain, or the very idea of truth at a time when it is becoming unfashionable, you have to see that in this supposed king of spin you had a lifelong enemy. And that's assuming you're not one of the women he exploited sexually as a teenager.

Max Clifford was no friend of journalism.
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-42310431

Resolution is not the improvement needed to make VR take off

Well that's cool, but I think what VR needs more is to become lighter, cheaper, and more convenient. Pixel density is icing on the cake.

Earlier this year, Clay Bavor, VP of VR/AR at Google, revealed a “secret project” to develop a VR-optimised OLED panel capable of 20 megapixels per eye. The project was mentioned during SID Display Week 2017 but has gone largely under the radar as little information has surfaced since....“We’ve partnered deeply with one of the leading OLED manufacturers in the world to create a VR-capable OLED display with 10x more pixels than any commercially available VR display today,” Bavor said. At 20 megapixels per eye, this is beyond Michael Abrash’s prediction of 4Kx4K per eye displays by the year 2021. “I’ve seen these in the lab, and it’s spectacular. It’s not even what we’re going to need in the ‘final display’” he said, referring to the sort of pixel density needed to match the limits of human vision, “but it’s a very large step in the right direction.”
https://www.roadtovr.com/google-developing-vr-display-10x-pixels-todays-headsets/

Trump's perversions are of the most literal kind

The White House said on Monday: "These false claims, totally disputed in most cases by eyewitness accounts, were addressed at length during last year's campaign, and the American people voiced their judgment by delivering a decisive victory."

That's right, decisively giving the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by ~3 million votes.

"The timing and absurdity of these false claims speaks volumes and the publicity tour that has begun only further confirms the political motives behind them."

Ummm, hold on :

Ms Leeds, Ms Holvey and Ms Crooks originally went public separately with their allegations a month before last year's US presidential election.

And yet, for all that :

On NBC News on Monday, Ms Holvey said Mr Drumpf had ogled her and other competitors in 2006 at the Miss USA beauty pageant, which he owned.

Yeah, ummm, really.... ? The way people look at each other is offensive now ?

Ms Crooks said she was kissed on the lips by Mr Drumpf outside a lift in Drumpf Tower when she was a 22-year-old receptionist at a real estate company there. "I was shocked," she said. "Devastated."

Depends a bit more on context, though I'd be pretty devastated if he tried to kiss me on the anywhere. But the third allegation is much more serious :

Ms Leeds, now in her 70s, says that when she was 38 she sat next to Mr Drumpf in the first-class cabin of a flight to New York and he sexually assaulted her. Ms Leeds said: "He jumped all over me." She said she came forward because: "I wanted people to know what kind of person Drumpf really is, and what a pervert he is."

Oh, we already know he's a real-life Joffrey Baratheon. Anyone still doubting this has deep psychological problems (and no, I'm not going to "show more sympathy" to Nazis, as some insist, because that's utter bollocks). And a fourth allegation is also contained herein, in video form :

Speaking in 2016, Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos accuses Donald Drumpf of 'thrusting his genitals' at her.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42313637

Oops, the wheels have fallen off again

Earlier, the EU said that although the agreement was not strictly legally binding, the two sides had "shaken hands" on it with a "gentleman's agreement" between David Davis and Michel Barnier. On Sunday the Brexit Secretary David Davis said guarantees on the Northern Ireland border were not legally binding unless the two sides reached a final deal. But he told LBC Radio on Monday they would be honoured whatever happened.

For about 35 minutes the other day, I might have actually given this [deal] some credence (or to be strictly accurate I would have said the news is "not disastrous", which counts as good news in the current political state of the world). But then Davis and Gove both said that we can undo the deal in various ways before we even enter into the real stage of proceedings. The whole thing has already fallen off the cliff edge, they just don't seem to realise it yet.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-42303059

How many robotic arms would you like ?

Strange to think that we're in a world where robotic exoskeletons are a thing.

Some Ford assembly line workers lift their arms up to 4,600 times a day - that's about a million times a year. That sort of repetition leaves many suffering from back-ache and neck pain. Now, though, the company has equipped staff at two US assembly plants with a device called the EksoVest, from California-based Ekso Bionics. It helps take the strain by giving workers an extra 5-15lb (2.2-6.8kg) of lift per arm.

"Incredible is the only word to describe the vest," said Paul Collins, an assembly line worker at Ford Michigan assembly plant. "It has made my job significantly easier and has given me more energy throughout the day." The company says it's already seeing a dramatic decline in work-related injuries and is now planning to introduce the exoskeletons at facilities in Europe and South America.

Other companies are producing powered industrial exoskeletons that are rather more like the suits from the movies. Sarcos, for example, offers three models, with the biggest - the Guardian GT (pictured) - handling more than 450kg with its 2m (7ft) arms.

Other augmentation technologies are even stranger. Researchers at Cornell's Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, for example, have developed a robotic "third arm" that attaches to the user's elbow. The group says it sees applications in package handling, warehouses, and even restaurants. "A third arm device would enhance a worker's reach, and allow them to access objects without having to reach or bend. This would be useful in pick-and-place tasks where the worker is moving, such as retrieving packages from warehouse shelves," says researcher Vighnesh Vatsal.

I withdraw my comments on that super-expensive two-handed motorised cosplay toy.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-42136519

Children concentrate more if they pretend to be Batman

Perhaps it would help if we dress up David Davis and continuously ask him through a loud speaker, "Is Batman working hard ?". Well, it's worth a shot. Nothing else seems to work.

The 180 kids were assigned to one of three conditions: a control group, which asked the children to think about their thoughts and feelings as they went through the task... The second group was asked to think of themselves in the third-person... In the third condition, the kids were asked to think about someone else who is really good at working hard. The kids got to dress up as the character they picked.

For 10 minutes the kids could move between the “work” and iPad. They were reminded every minute, through a loud speaker, of their “condition” (“Is Dora working hard?”). All the kids were told, “This is a very important activity and it would be helpful if you worked hard on this for as long as you could.” Perseverance was measured as time spent on the ‘work’ task.

For 10 minutes the kids could move between the “work” and iPad. They were reminded every minute, through a loud speaker, of their “condition” (“Is Dora working hard?”). All the kids were told, “This is a very important activity and it would be helpful if you worked hard on this for as long as you could.” Perseverance was measured as time spent on the ‘work’ task.

_Not surprisingly to anyone who has kids, and iPads, the kids spent 37% of their time on the ‘work’ task, and 63% on the iPad.

But those kids pretending to be superheroes ‘worked’ more than those who thought of themselves in the third person, and both of those groups did better than the kids who just thought of themselves as ‘me’.

But how much ? Come on people, quantify things ! Do you want to grow up to be like David Davis or Batman ? Your choice.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/12/new-research-finds-that-kids-aged-4-6-perform-better-during-boring-tasks-when-dressed-as-batman

A stupid man admits his own stupidity but is too stupid to realise why that matters

"What's the requirement of my job?" he asked LBC's Nick Ferrari. "I don't have to be very clever. I don't have to know that much. I just do have to be calm."

Keep calm and please just will you please sod off, you twit.

http://uk.businessinsider.com/david-davis-does-not-have-to-be-clever-to-be-brexit-secretary-2017-12?international=true&r=UK&IR=T

Narwhals lower their heart rate when more active

Anti-clickbait : when the article is more interesting that the headline suggests.

The researchers worked with the hunters to find narwhals already entangled in nets. They released each animal, attaching a tag to its back with a suction cup, before pushing it into the deep water of the East Greenland fjords.

"The very first heart rate measurement was - as you would imagine fairly high," recalled Dr Williams. "When the animals were just sitting there, it was about 60 beats per minute - about the same as our resting heart rate. But the moment those animals took off, their heart rate immediately plunged down to three or four heart beats per minute - 15 to 20 seconds between each beat."

This reduction in heart rate, the scientists suggest, could help explain some whale strandings. If animals are moving quickly to escape a threat, but their heart rate is very low, this could deprive their brain of oxygen and leave them disorientated. Long periods of this low blood flow and reduced oxygen supply to the brain might even cause permanent damage.

So presumably the animals are "fleeing" after being released from the nets, but for how long can they monitor the heart rate ? How does it change while hunting or moving at high speed for other reasons ? Is is normally at 60 bpm while stationary, or was this artificially high caused by the stress of being trapped in a net which then drops when they're released because the stress level drops ?
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42259289

Apocalypse averted ?

PM Theresa May has struck a last-minute deal with the EU in a bid to move Brexit talks on to the next phase. There will be no "hard border" with Ireland; and the rights of EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens in the EU will be protected. The so-called "divorce bill" will amount to between £35bn and £39bn, Downing Street sources say. The European Commission president said it was a "breakthrough" and he was confident EU leaders will approve it.

Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party, whose opposition on Monday led to talks breaking down, said there was still "more work to be done" on the border issue and how it votes on the final deal "will depend on its contents". Mrs May depends on the party's support to win key votes in Westminster.

The agreement also says "no new regulatory barriers" will be allowed between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, and that Northern Ireland's businesses will continue to have "unfettered access" to the UK internal market - a passage thought to have been added to meet DUP concerns.

But it also sets out a fallback position if the UK fails to agree a trade deal. This could prove controversial because it says there will continue to be "full alignment" between the EU and Northern Ireland on some elements of cross-border trade, as set out in the Good Friday Agreement. The DUP would have preferred this not to be in the agreement, says the BBC's Chris Morris, and there could be some hard negotiating to do further down the line.

[How interesting to see that what was initially perceived as an important but minor sticking point eventually became by far and away the biggest point of contention !]

I don't believe it's possible to have a good Brexit, but there's Brexit-lite and then there's Brexit-Apocalypse. Currently, this is much more toward the former. We stay in the single market and the rights of EU citizens are protected. We defer (to some as yet unknown degree) to the ECJ on certain issues. A hard border of NI is avoided. We have to pay a hefty £40 billion over 4 years, but that's unavoidable, whatever Nigel may think. And Nigel hates this deal, which is a pretty dang reliable indicator that it's not that bad.

And yet... so much remains undecided, that the risk of the whole thing collapsing remains high. Praising May for this makes not a lick of sense : she bravely gave the EU everything they wanted, because there's just no other way to make progress. She remains weak and feeble and basically useless, but she's bought herself a stay of execution. There's no reason at all that these conditions couldn't have been agreed right from the start, so I wouldn't hold out much hope that the next phase of negotiations will be anything particularly brilliant.

The best news from this is that the government is not, despite appearances, wholly determined to get the worst outcome possible. The bad news is that the government are still a bunch of clowns.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-42277040

David Davis' wise words on referenda

From 2002, back in the days when devolution was a thing. My conclusion is that David Davis is a hypocritical idiot and any honourable things he may have done have been solely due to luck rather than judgement.


David Davis :

"There is a proper role for referendums in constitutional change, but only if done properly. If it is not done properly, it can be a dangerous tool. The Chairman of the Public Administration Committee, who is no longer in the Chamber, said that Clement Attlee—who is, I think, one of the Deputy Prime Minister's heroes—famously described the referendum as the device of demagogues and dictators. We may not always go as far as he did, but what is certain is that pre-legislative referendums of the type the Deputy Prime Minister is proposing are the worst type of all.

Referendums should be held when the electorate are in the best possible position to make a judgement. They should be held when people can view all the arguments for and against and when those arguments have been rigorously tested. In short, referendums should be held when people know exactly what they are getting. So legislation should be debated by Members of Parliament on the Floor of the House, and then put to the electorate for the voters to judge.

We should not ask people to vote on a blank sheet of paper and tell them to trust us to fill in the details afterwards. For referendums to be fair and compatible with our parliamentary process, we need the electors to be as well informed as possible and to know exactly what they are voting for. Referendums need to be treated as an addition to the parliamentary process, not as a substitute for it.

Major constitutional changes justify the use of referendums because the constitutional rights of our citizens are owned by the people and not by politicians. However, it is important that referendums are not misused simply as a snapshot of volatile changes of opinion, perhaps as a result of pressure of Government propaganda.

The concept of settled will is that of an idea that has taken root in the minds of the people, has resonance in their daily lives and is a stable part of the way in which they think the country should be run. Because referendums are supposed to reflect the settled will of the people, we need to have thresholds below which they do not carry the day."

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmhansrd/vo021126/debtext/21126-17.htm

Politics is now too undignified for clowns

This says a lot about the state of the world.

A professional clown in Brazil who ran for congress and won by a huge margin says he will not stand again in 2018. Francisco Everardo Oliveira Silva, better known as Tiririca, is coming to the end of his second term in the Chamber of Deputies. He complained that he was one of only eight out of more than 500 lawmakers who regularly turned up to sessions. Tiririca said he was "ashamed" of his colleagues' behaviour and would return to being a full-time clown.

In his first speech since he was elected in 2010, Tiririca, whose stage name means Grumpy, said he was saddened by what he had seen in the lower house of congress. "Everyone knows that we're paid well to work, but not everyone does work. There are 513 deputies, only eight come regularly. And I'm one of those eight, and I'm a circus clown." In his eight-minute speech, he admitted that he had "not done much" during his almost seven years as a lawmaker, but he said: "At least I was here."
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-42264157

Pseudogooseasaurus

"That doesn't look very scary. More like a six-foot goose."

H. escuilliei, called Halszka for short, was part of the dromaeosauridae, a group of feathered theropods that included velociraptor and that were not birds or bird ancestors, but closely related to them. While no feathers survived on this specimen, Halszka probably sported plumage and it had a somewhat bird-like bill that was still not a true beak (in part because it housed several teeth).

Halszka had a long, swan-like neck, was the size of a goose, and it probably spent much of its time in lakes and rivers eating small fish, crustaceans and small animals such as lizards, Cau said. In this dino-eat-dino world, its predators may have included fellow theropods like velociraptor.

This dinosaur did have a curved sickle-like claw on the second toe of the foot that is typical of dinosaurs like velociraptor, but it was not especially long and probably wasn’t used that much for hunting, Holtz said. Meanwhile, its “arms” were small and appeared to have been modified for use as flippers, which could have helped it paddle through the water. Unlike penguins and other aquatic birds today, Halszka would not have been a diver, Holtz said. Instead, it probably would have used its long neck to dart out and grab prey close to the water’s surface.

The overall result was a sort of “pseudo-goose … something that could wade out into the water and dab around for some small-bodied prey,” Holtz said.

Pseudogooseasaurus !

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-duck-like-dinosaur-20171206-htmlstory.html

Schrodinger's Brexit studies

Compare and contrast :
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-davis-theresa-may-brexit-reports-not-read-secret-detail-uk-economy-impact-leave-eu-a8022946.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-42249854

Honestly the thing that really gets me is the statement in the latest report that Davis doesn't care about models. We are deep in the post-truth era of rejection of facts, disdain for experts, and sheer bullshitting. Grrrr.

I like Comic Sans, but not lawyers should never EVER use it

I've got no idea where or why this anti-Comic Sans meme started, but this is epic.

https://www.boredpanda.com/donald-trump-lawyer-uses-comic-sans-ty-cobb/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=thinkinghumanity

A compilation of fake news about the EU in UK tabloids

Tough to choose a single favourite, but my list includes the ban on corgis, Euro bank notes causing impotence, eggs not being called eggs, and that the Queen is to be forced to get her own tea.

https://tompride.wordpress.com/2017/12/05/see-20-years-of-fake-news-about-eu-by-uk-press-vote-for-your-favourite-here/

"We can't judge how dangerous this is, so let's try it and see", say morons

The government has not carried out any impact assessments of leaving the EU on the UK economy, Brexit Secretary David Davis has told MPs. Mr Davis said the usefulness of such assessments would be "near zero" because of the scale of change Brexit is likely to cause.

Perhaps we shouldn't bloody leave then !

When Mr Benn suggested this was "strange", the minister said formal assessments were not needed to know that "regulatory hurdles" would have an impact, describing Brexit as a "paradigm change" of similar impact to the financial crash, which could not be predicted.

EDIT : Update to the article. From the same group of morons who've had enough of experts :

"I am not a fan of economic models because they have all proven wrong," he added.

Yes, great. Let's just replace everything with "feelings" because numbers don't matter and they're all lies anyway. Woohoo. Thanks so much for that.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-42249854

The internet is inverting the network of trust

The piece that always fascinated me was how technology could enable trust between total strangers over the internet to make ideas that should be risky, such as sharing your home or a ride, mainstream. And so I immersed myself in understanding how trust in the digital age really works. I wanted to understand how we place our faith in things, what influences where we place our faith, and what happens when our confidence is undermined in systems such as the financial system or political system. So I started to wonder whether the current crisis of trust in institutions and the rise of technology facilitating trust between strangers were connected in some way.

That led to what I think is the central idea of this book: that trust is shifting from institutions to individuals. I felt that this was a timely and important book to write because we’re already seeing the profound consequences of this trust shift, from the influence on the presidential election to Brexit to algorithms and bots.

A society cannot survive, and it definitely cannot thrive without trust. For a long time in history, trust has flowed upwards towards the CEOs, towards experts, academics, economists, and regulators. Now that’s being inverted — trust is now flowing sideways, between individuals, ‘friends,’ peers and strangers. There’s plenty of trust out there, it’s just flowing to different people and places.

We’re currently experiencing a trust vacuum that arises when our confidence in facts and the truth are continually called into question. That vacuum is filled by people with agendas, masterfully selling themselves as anti-establishment, and telling whatever lie plays to the anti-elitist sensibilities currently felt by people. The rise of the ‘anti-politician’ — from Nigel Farage to Donald Drumpf — is an indicator that the biggest trust shift we’ve seen in a generation is underway. In a vacuum, we become more susceptible and vulnerable to conspiracy theories, to different voices that know how to speak to people’s feelings over facts, to this new intoxicating form of transparency. Those scratching their heads because the most qualified candidate in history lost [an election] are overlooking a growing distrust of elites, the inversion of influence and rising skepticism about everything — from the validity of news to a deep suspicion of established political systems.

[I'm reminded of a history book I read once that compared Caesar and Sulla. Sulla respected institutions but not individuals, leading to a paradoxical reign of terror in which no-one was safe as Sulla tried to protect the Republic from itself. In contrast Caesar respected individuals but not institutions : there was no monstrous purging but open warfare and the ultimate death of the Republic. I'm also reading Niall Ferguson's book The Square and the Tower, in which he compares the different flows of power and information in vertical hierarchies and flatter networks.]

https://futurism.com/who-can-you-trust/

The other dodo boxed with bony clubs on its wings

It's likely this shrinking habitat caused an increase in competition for food and territory between individuals of the species, and perhaps as a result of this, the solitaire evolved a club-like bone growth on the end of each wing. It used this against other solitaires in territorial boxing matches. These would have been quite a sight, as the males stood almost a metre tall and weighed 28kg while the females were sandy coloured and were half that size.

Leguat described how the birds used their short wings to make a loud rattling sound that could be heard "two hundred paces off". He also described the bone on their wing which grew larger at the end, forming a mass under the feathers "as big as a musket ball". This was used as a club-like weapon, and along with their beak, was "the chief defence of this bird".

"They never lay but one egg, which is much bigger than that of a goose. The male and female both cover it in their turns, and the young is not hatch'd till at seven weeks' end: All the while they are sitting upon it, or are bringing up their young one, which is not able to provide itself in several months."

Monogamy and shared parental care are common in other pigeons we see today, including close living relatives of the solitaire, the nicobar pigeon and crowned pigeons. Like these pigeons, the solitaire likely fed their chicks "pigeon milk', a nutrient rich soup produced in the walls of the throat pouch of the parent birds. Two parents are able to produce more food, and so a larger chick, increasing their competitive advantage against other birds in the fight for territory.

Parts of the behaviour of the solitaire described by Leguat, including the aggression, can be seen in the crowned pigeons, which will hit anything that approaches them on the nest with small bone spurs on their wing-wrists, but in the solitaire, with its evolutionary cauldron of the shrinking island of Rodrigues, these adaptations were pushed to an extreme.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42057143

Preventing fishing in the Arctic before it even happens

The deal is expected to last for 16 years while research is carried out into the existing marine ecosystem. The moratorium was agreed by Canada, Russia, China, the US, the EU, Japan, Iceland, Denmark and South Korea. It covers an area of about 2.8m sq km (1m sq miles) - roughly the size of the Mediterranean Sea. No commercial fisheries exist in Arctic waters yet. "This is one of the rare times when a group of governments actually solved a problem before it happened," said David Balton, US ambassador for oceans and fisheries.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-42205184

The scallop with square mirrors for eyes

For an animal that doesn't really do much except be delicious, it has an amazing set of eyes.

In the 1960s, biologist Michael Land showed that each scallop eye — it has up to 200 of them, each about a millimeter in diameter — uses a mirror to focus light into images, while most other eyes use lenses. That natural mirror is made of crystals of guanine, Land determined — better known for its job as one of the four nucleotides that make up DNA. Now, cryo-electron microscopy is bringing those blueprints out of their shell, researchers report in the Dec. 1 Science.

For one thing, the guanine crystals that build the scallop’s eye mirror are perfectly square... Guanine doesn’t form crystal shapes that evenly pack together in the lab. That means that, somehow, the scallop is controlling the crystallization process. The square crystals fit together edge-to-edge like bathroom tiles to form a smooth surface that minimizes image distortion.

A single layer of this guanine mosaic is transparent. But each scallop eye stacks up 20 to 30 of these tiled sheets to create a reflective surface. The whole contraption is something like a telescope that pieces together hexagonal mirrors into one giant curve.

And the scallop’s eye mirror isn’t shaped like a perfect hemisphere, the researchers found. Instead, the mirror has an unusual 3-D shape that allows the scallop to focus light on one of two retinas, depending on the angle of the incoming light. One retina is tuned to dimmer light coming from the peripheral vision; the other best captures movement in bright light.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/scallops-amazing-eyes-use-millions-tiny-square-crystals-see

Elf and safety

A council has admitted it was "over cautious" when it installed a widely-ridiculed cordon around a Christmas tree for public safety. Derby City Council said it created the "exclusion zone" in Market Place to "enable people to view the tree at a safe distance". People complained it was "a disgusting mess" and "not festive at all". Most of the metal fencing has now been removed but a smaller barrier remains around the tree.

OK, a few of the "it's 'ealth and safety gone mad !" stories are true. What's particularly bizarre if that you can see other trees in the photo which do not have security zones. Conclusion : Christmas trees are Huorns. Either that or the local council is run by a bunch of complete nutters, but that's just preposterous when you think about it.

[Personally, I tend towards the approach of removing the most egregiously unnecessary health and safety regulations and handing out Darwin Awards more frequently.]

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-derbyshire-42198361

Pray the gay to stay

Too bizarre not to share.

A senior Anglican minister has been criticised for saying people should pray for Prince George to be gay to help the Church of England recognise same-sex marriage. The Very Reverend Kelvin Holdsworth wrote a blog post urging people to pray him "to be blessed one day with the love of a fine young gentleman".

In his blog post, Mr Holdsworth said that if Prince William's four-year-old son married another man in the future it would help the Church of England become more inclusive. "A royal wedding might sort things out remarkably easily though we might have to wait 25 years for that to happen," he wrote. "Who knows whether that might be sooner than things might work out by other means?"
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-42192706