Science – Page 3 – Fooyah

September 29 2019September 29 2019

Youthful Revolution

There used to be a time when protesting caused changes. When a massive show of anger by the people caused politicians to stop doing what they were doing. I wouldn’t say they changed their minds because I honestly don’t think that’s what happens. Politicians cow down to massive disruption because they fear for their own futures and it makes them look as though they listen.

In 1981 there was the Brixton Riots. I remember the news of these. It scarred my impression of Brixton for a long time. But at then end of the riots there was an inquiry and things changed. The racist policy of stop and search was covered with a new code of conduct for the police. It didn’t do enough and nearly twenty years later the Macpherson Report pretty much said that lots of the previous recommendations had been ignored and the police were still institutionally racist. I guess change is slow, but it does happen.

The Poll Tax riots of 1990 caused the eventual downfall of the Thatcher government and the Poll Tax was removed by John Major and replaced with the council tax. In this situation the riots changed the direction of the government.

On the 15 February 2003 easily over one million people marched through London to protest the imminent Iraq war. Those people were right. But it did fuck all. Look at the shit we are in now with the middle east.

On 10 November 2010 over half a million people marched against the conservative policy of austerity [which has killed thousands]. It did fuck all.

On 20 July 2019 London’s streets were filled with people protesting the imminent leaving of the EU by the UK. Regardless of the fact that pro-Brexit marches can only get a few hundred people together this march has done fuck all.

When the political class is as entitled as they are [consider Rees-Mogg lying on the benches] then they don’t give a shit about what they are doing to the country. They will carry on with their idealistic policies whatever happens because there are no consequences to them. They don’t give a flying fuck about the poor, about the weak, about those struggling. They have a complete lack of empathy. They just don’t understand what actual real fucking life is like.

So. The world and this country needs to change. Radically. We can look after everyone while at the same time making sure that things will work for the future. It is possible. But it isn’t possible with the current political leaders in power. Revolution is needed. A fully written constitution and a decent respect for all people must happen.

Time to be revolting.

September 28 2019September 28 2019

What The Future Looks Like

Dead. I hope I’ll be dead before the Water Wars start. That’s what I spend a lot of my time thinking about. There’s an impending doom heading for this planet and I’m just hoping I’ll miss the worst of it. I’m scared for my kids and the shit they are going to have to face. I feel helpless about it all and would rather live on in ignorance. But, I can’t, I probably should do what I can. But it’s too late.

I don’t have hope.

At this time I think the world is just past the positive-feedback-loop of climate change. Maybe forty years ago we could have made changes that would mean we could have stopped the current warming and saved the world. But I honestly think we’ve gone too far. Humans have known the problems of climate change for all of my life time. But no one has really done anything about it. My evidence that we’ve known comes from rock band Testament. They wrote a song for their 1989 album Practice What You Preach called “The Greenhouse Effect”. I learnt about this stuff when I was at school in the 1980s.

Fair use, Link

See the burnt earth and the figures crucified by the inaction of the older generation. I am part of that generation now. I’ve done nothing. I’m not sure I can do something. Our world is ruled by short-termism politics and individual gain. Those in charge don’t give a shit about the future. If they did they wouldn’t keep the ruinous policies of today. We have cars, planes, lorries, ships all burning carbon based fuels. We have homes where electricity is from carbon sources. Heating is from carbon sources. This world is slowly dying and those in charge can’t or won’t see it. It’s actually beyond them.

We Are Fucked — We Are Killing Ourselves

Unfortunately for the population of this strangled planet anything done now is likely too little too late. I’m convinced we have already passed the point of no return. There are no noises of politicians actually doing anything to solve this. They sit there probably thinking the same as me – “hopefully I’ll be dead”. Here’s a list of things we can’t solve:

Burning carbon based fuels
Melting of glaciers around the world
Ice sheets melting
Thawing of the tundra
Plastics getting everywhere
Ocean life dying
Reefs dying
Acidification of the oceans
Warming of the oceans
Increased storms
Fresh water supplies dwindling

By Me (Intgr) – Own work, Public Domain, Link

The positive feedback has started. Any actions we take now will only mitigate the changes. We might be able to slow it down. We might be able to stop the warming at a level that means only a billion dying but I suspect that’s not going to happen. I am not hopeful about the future of humankind.

Even that megaband Metallica wrote a song in the early 90s about how the world was fucked. It’s called Blackened.

I suspect we all like to think that in the future we will live in a lovely village:

Or maybe our future is more Blade Runner? Living in massive urban areas with amazing culture and increased wealth extremes?

Unfortunately I honestly think our future looks more like Mad Max.

Now it’s time for the young to rise and claim the Earth as their inheritance and remove the ruling classes from power. To save the world needs complete revolution. A massive change in the politics. A move to more future planning and doing the right things.

My parents’ generation did nothing and they’ll be dead soon.

My generation did nothing and I don’t think I can tell you how sorry I am for that.

Worldwide revolution is needed. Government for the future.

I don’t have hope.

September 21 2019September 21 2019

Inverted Layers

As mentioned previously in these hallowed communications I do feel privileged to live in this area. I don’t really live here by choice but the countryside is lovely and quite varied. The view out the back of my house is open and wonderful. I can see over the fields, down to the river Medway and then the rising hills of the northern edge of the Weald Of Kent.

I try to make the point of looking out over the fields first thing in the morning and last thing at night. I get to see the world change colours through the seasons and every now and then I see some amazing things; hot air balloons, satellites, Spitfires, migrations etc.

Yesterday there was a phenomenon I hadn’t seen before. A layer of mist had gathered over the fields in the hollow just north of Bushy Wood and looked spooky. That wasn’t the strange thing.

Spooky Mist - wide (ish) angle — Spooky Mist

When you look more closely at the layer of mist you can see another layer hovering above. It’s clearest to the right in the picture this side of Bushy Wood.

If it’s still not clear enough for you then I’ve circled the thing below:

It’s quite fascinating and I guess I was impressed enough with it to go and take a photo and then write about it on here. I don’t think it’s something I’ve observed that often because it stuck out at me and really made me try and think about what is going on. I didn’t come up with any answers to that. I did want to get out there and walk through to see what it looks like from within though, but I didn’t. I’m saddled with things like work that I’m required to do.

One day this view will be gone because, as far as I know, then entirety of what you can see in the pictures will become houses. The local area council have a requirement for houses and rather than put them anywhere near the more expensive areas of the borough they have decided to build on fields at the northern tip of their area. The bit no-one cares about.

From the above diagram you can see where the development is planned relative to where all the money is within the borough. Anything south of the M20 has plenty of money, it’s the posh bit. The area within the circle is mostly working class small villages filled with Victorian houses. The road connections are poor and they plan to build ALL OVER THE FIELDS. There are plenty of brown field sites around where the local industry has died but I guess that’s more expensive than developing fresh green fields into housing.

Now, this is where I struggle a bit because I know that development is needed. I know that these things are required. I’m happy for changes. If they wanted to put wind turbines in those fields I’d be happy. If they wanted to make a small development I’d be happy, I mean it might improve the parking around here. But they plan to put in 1,514 dwellings. I suspect there are only a couple of hundred in my village at the moment. Have a look at the following map:

That little pink bit in the middle is the existing village. That purple bit? It’s all the development area. Fucking huge isn’t it? Also, the lower part is flood plain. As I said earlier I don’t want to be a NIMBY but it needn’t be that large. This is a lovely area of the countryside. Not in twenty years I fear. The character will be altered beyond belief. It’ll change the whole feeling of the area. I want to point out that a small development, maybe even doubling the size of the village would be more acceptable. Not this monstrosity.

The area of land is owned by Trenport. Want to know how you know they could be dodgy? They don’t have a website. Google it. There isn’t a Trenport website. There are some other development sites but nothing about the company itself. The registered office address is:
2nd Floor 14 St George Street, London, W1S 1FE
I suspect the company is into some clever tax planning because there are another seventeen companies based at that single address. Trenport is a private entity. I suspect it’s a cleverly structured company to reduce its “tax burden”. The company seems to be owned by that Barclay family who live on Brecqhou and have ruined the politics of Guernsey. Please see the magazine Private Eye for more information about the Barclay brothers and what they do to locals.

I have very little faith in the borough plan and that any company behind the development will pay its fair share of tax.

September 14 2019September 29 2019

Advertising

In my few years as a skeptic I have started to make complaints about false advertising. It’s important that someone does this as advertising is a self regulated industry. Adverts aren’t checked before being shown, they are only investigated if someone complains about them. This is why Ryan Air have made outrageous claims and then been told to remove adverts, but by that point the adverts have done their job.

The Advertising Standards Authority “regulates” advertising but they only check something out if there’s a complaint about it. I’ve seen Virgin Media complain about BT Broadband adverts and vice versa.

Virgin Media rulings here.

BT Broadband rulings here.

You can see it’s like inter-ISP warfare with each company making outrageous claims and the other deciding to take them to the ASA.

In principle the ASA covers things like TV, print media, and internet advertising. Also they cover any claims made on websites and posters and leaflets. The cover the UK. There can be some issues where a website based in another country fails the basic standards of human decency but the ASA can’t do a great deal about it except inform their counterparts in the host country. Other countries sometimes don’t give a shit about the quality and factualness of advertising.

If there are specific claims in an advert then the company must have specific evidence to back those claims up. So, if I make ethically sourced soap then I must have the evidence to back up that claim or I risk censure by the ASA. I can still make those claims, I just need to worry about a complaint being made. You might argue it would be unethical for me to make false claims but you obviously don’t understand “marketing”.

Some words have no real meaning in term of advertising:

“wellness” isn’t defined in law and means nothing
“nutritionist” isn’t a protected term and anyone can call themselves one
“health balance” is bullshit terminology
“natural” doesn’t mean shit
“energy” doesn’t mean what you think it means
“traditional” isn’t
“good bacteria” it depends

And so on. When products or companies use certain words you might think they mean something specific but they don’t. The companies rely on the fact that you will think they mean a very specific thing but in law and advertising they don’t. How often do you hear the term “energy-balance” or similar? You might think it means something specific but it is a bullshit term and so advertisers can use that whenever they want.

Advertisements can’t make specific medical claims unless they have specific medical evidence and this is how the ASA became the arbiter of what is and what isn’t science in this messed up world. Let’s start with an hypothetical:

Suppose I had magical healing hands. I might use a radio advert to claim I can improve your energy-balance [means nothing] and that you will feel more relaxed and ready to take on the world [also means nothing].
Healing Hands Therapies

None of the claims in that advert mean anything specific in terms of advertising. It is perfectly ok to use that advert. I haven’t made any specific claims and I haven’t used any protected terms that mean real things. Now imagine if I made the following advert:

Healing Hands Therapy will improve your life-balance and also cure your arthritis. Our therapies are so powerful they can cure colic and even remove cancers.
Healing Hands Therapies

Those are some very specific claims and so I need to have evidence to prove that those things can be cured with the healing hands modality. If I can’t provide evidence to the ASA for the claims I have made then I will be expected to remove the advert from circulation. Meanwhile thousands of people may have heard the advert and be gullible enough to think it works.

SINCE THE 1930s NO ADVERT, by law, IS ALLOWED TO CLAIM TO BE ABLE TO CURE CANCER.

I have made two complaints to the ASA. One was a product advertised in a magazine and it claimed to help with teething issues with babies. It was a necklace for the baby made from amber beads. Now, I’m pretty sure putting something around the neck of a baby is pretty bad but then claiming the vapours it releases as it is warmed by bodyheat calm teething pains is utter bullshit. Like this one on a page I just found:

Amusingly on this page, just before the reviews section, the company makes clear that they aren’t responsible for any claims made in the comments. This is a lovely get-out clause but I think they are wrong. The company is publishing the comments on that page and so they are responsible. The comments clearly imply that people buy this shit for teething issues with very young children. Don’t put things around a baby’s neck.

My complaint to the ASA about the original company was upheld and they were told not to advertise in that format again. But, as we know with Goop, there’s an awful lot of bullshit out there and plenty of people unaware of how sciencey sounding claims might be bullshit.

I also made a complaint about a leaflet I found in a children’s nursery. It was for the John Wernham College of Classical Osteopathy in Maidstone. They made specific medical claims about osteopathy and they are wrong. I complained to the ASA and the College had to provide the medical evidence for their claims. They could not because Osteopathy is bulshit. The ASA told them they had to remove the leaflet from circulation. However all those leaflets were already out there.

The “College” still runs. I’ve just browsed their website and I can’t find any dubious claims, only a rather large amount of bullshit non-specific language.

A few years ago the British Chiropractic Association [chiropractic is like osteopathy but even more bullshit] sued Simon Singh for a minor comment he made. Eventually the BCA lost the case and had to withdraw all the claims they make. At the time they sent an email out to their members saying that chiropractors shouldn’t make any medical claims on their websites and to remove those claims. A computer specialist created a program to scour the internet for chiropractic pages, search them and look for certain medical claims. There were plenty. That person then reported all those chiropractors to local trading standards. Here’s The Guardian article about that issue.

It is only by having astute members of the public that harm within adverts can be defeated. Please be aware of the problems with advertising and please take take anything you see advertised as legitimate.

September 11 2019September 11 2019

Hyper

A while back I started listening to audiobooks in the car. It started with books for the whole family and for long journeys. I pay a monthly fee to Audible to use the service and from that I get a “credit” each month to buy a book or audible title.

I have listened to the Percy Jackson series of books after the recommendation of a friend from Coventry and I just about tolerated those books. I am not a fan of the writing style of the author and really struggled to keep interested in those books. By the way, a friend from Coventry is just that, a friend, from Coventry.

I thought it worthwhile to start listening to books when I’m on my own in the car to compliment my podcast selection. I wasn’t really sure about what to read until I heard an advert for The Great Courses on the Scathing Atheist podcast. That made a lot of sense. I don’t necessarily have the time to keep reading books about sciencey stuff but I do tend to have quite a while driving the car. I have a yearning to keep learning, to keep trying to understand the world, all the while safe in the knowledge that when I die all that knowledge and learning will be made pointless from a universal perspective.

I chose to listen to a series of lectures on a subject I knew about to see if I could work with the audio medium. It was a trial series for me to decide if it was worth going with other lecture series.

Einstein’s Relativity and the Quantum Revolution: Modern Physics for Non-Scientists, 2nd Edition
By: Richard Wolfson, The Great Courses

I really enjoyed the lecture series and I learnt quite a bit about the history of the laws of mechanics. My knowledge from this has even informed my day job. This series of lectures is about twelve hours long in sections of thirty minutes. The whole system worked well.

For my next choice I decided to go for something with world history and also economics. If I could find a series that covers the world’s economy then I would also learn about the history of the world as the two are so perfectly entwined. A long while ago I had listened to the History Of The World In 100 Objects from the BBC and I was fascinated by how much trade is a central part of human success and history. Searching Audible I found the following:

An Economic History of the World since 1400
By: Donald J. Harreld, The Great Courses

It’s a series of lectures just over twenty four hours long. It took me a while to get around to listening to it and then months to get through the whole thing. It was well worth it though. Totally fascinating and perfect as a brief history of humankind along with plenty about the interconnectedness of economic success. I would suggest everyone listens to it. I don’t know enough about economics to know if the lectures are unbiased towards particular policies but my feeling is that all discussions were balanced.

My latest book is:

Hyperion
by Dan Simmons

I have read the paper copy of this book and it amazed me at the time. The whole Hyperion series was a massive operatic exploration of space and humans. I can’t wait to visit the stories again.

Dan Simmons is an author who has really made his mark on me. The first book of his I read was Carrion Comfort. I was in a real horror book phase as a late teenager and his book was a distraction from the standard Stephen King books and the scope of this book amazed me. From this I then read Summer Of Night. At some point I read Hyperion and then the sequels and they are a brilliant selection of science fiction.

Dan Simmons along with Stephen King and Iain M Banks are a few of the authors whose work has made me really challenge myself and think about the grander things in life. All of them are well worth reading. I shall probably devour the rest of the Hyperion series once the book is complete.

The Prologue [cue Up Pompeii sniggers] of Hyperion brought back so many memories and the horror of listening to descriptions of the Shrike! For many years the Shrike was such a figure in my conscious that a tattoo was considered, perhaps that will happen again?

August 31 2019August 31 2019

Over-Acting Joystick

Do you ever watch action movies and wonder where reality ends for them? It’s always the little things for me. Those small aspects of controlling mechanical objects that films like to exaggerate and mess up. But, it’s not just film, I see this sort of thing in kids cartoons and other media.

Last night I was watching a submarine based film. It was terrible and had loads of parts to it that I hated. But in it they had a small rescue sub piloted by two submariners. While driving this craft along they, on more than one occasion, had to turn “harder” and then ever “harder”. So, what did they do? They pulled harder on the joystick and made grimacing faces to show that this took more effort than normal to turn this tight. What shit.

Here’s some explanation. When we [humans] first made mechanical devices we had rigid linkages to the control systems and if it was going to take more effort to move the control system then we would have to put in more effort to our hand sized device be that a control column, wheel, or pedals. There used to be a direct mechanical connection from one end of the system to the other. This is fine for objects requiring little force to move control systems as humans can provide that force for a limited time.

Then, over time, our mechanical devices became larger and required more force input to move the control systems. Engineers and designers soon realised that the pilot/driver/controller couldn’t provide all the force [push or pull] required to move the control surface and so they needed help. Also, if large effort was required over a long period of time the pilot would become physically tired very quickly. So, powered control systems were invented.

When a pilot/driver/controller moves the control stick/wheel/pedals they actuate a motor which helps to turn the control surface or device. Now, it starts to get a little complicated. There is required a certain level of feedback force to the pilot through the control column so that they can “feel” what is going on with the aircraft/sub/car etc. This amount of feedback is controlled very carefully to ensure that the pilot can understand what’s happening to their craft while also allowing them to maintain a high level of work without becoming over-tired.

So, in the submarine movie they had the pilots obviously physically straining trying to turn this craft but that would not be the case in real life. Once the control column is moved as far as it will go there is nothing else you can do. It wouldn’t take that amount of effort to maneuver and you can’t turn a little tighter by grimacing. It’s bullshit.

This trope is similar to driving fast in a chase. It always seems the vehicles have another gear to change in to or the driver can put his foot down more. If you are being chased why aren’t you going as fast as possible from the very start. It’s lazy filmmaking because they could do other things to make the action interesting. The producers just settle for the easy.

So, as a rough guide to powered control systems and feedback devices I would suggest that anything before 1950 would require effort to move a control surface. That is a very broad brush. Many bombers had powered control systems and so it’s not the absolute guide but it does set a rough idea of how to spot the crap in a film.

August 5 2019August 5 2019

EM Warnings

You know how it is. You are having a short break on a motorway drive and pop into the service station for a drink and a comfort break. It is the adverts directly above the urinals which seem to show the worst of mankind. I’ve written about this before in a communication about shaming farts. This time I was at Southwaite Services just south of Carlisle. I saw this advert above the urinals:

You are very welcome to go and read the stuff from the following links if you wish:

I have some things to say about all this. Let’s start off with some science about electro-magnetic radiation. This is a form of energy that extends from long wave radio waves to gamma radiation. It is a very large spectrum and our visible light takes up part of it.

Long wavelengths can travel a long distance and through lots of stuff. We use them for communicating with submarines and ships a long way away. Radio waves we are familiar with and they carry information like TV or audio signals. Infrared we feel as heat radiated from objects. Visible light humans can see, some animals can see higher frequencies but not us. All of the wavelengths/frequencies mentioned so far are called NON-IONISING RADIATION. Each photon doesn’t have enough energy to knock an electron out of its orbit in an atom and so up to violet light can’t caused any molecular changes, they, by definition, can’t cause cancer. They might warm you up a little but that is all.

All the stuff in the ultra-violet and beyond is the nasty stuff. It can cause cancer because each photon contains enough energy to knock electrons out of their orbit and therefore could cause molecular changes. This could cause a DNA change in your cells and, if it happens right/wrong, then could cause cancer. Here’s the easy bit:

UV Rays cause cancer. UV is BAD for you.

When you get an X-Ray at the dentist or hospital the radiographer or dentist will leave the room when the photograph is taken. Why do they do that? Because being exposed to X-Rays is bad for you. Each X-Ray you have increases your chances of cancer by a little. But, the information gathered from the X-Ray can do far more good than the increase in risk of cancer and so we elect to have them done. It’s similar to going somewhere by car – you know you will get there in a short time and in comfort but we balance that with the risk of being involved in an accident, the benefits outweigh the risks.

Right. Point number One. Radio and Micro waves can’t cause cancer. The worst they might do is cause a very slight heating which is less than what you get by exercising and is easily carried away by your blood.

Next, the slightly tougher issue. EM sensitivity. This is the situation where people are convinced that their health is detrimentally affected by EM radiation enough for them to notice. I have to be quite specific in the language I use here because the illness that people feel from this is real. The cause of it is not. I do not want to be dismissive of their illness, they feel what they feel and they blame it on all the EM in their surroundings. People with EM Sensitivity do feel what they report and so the illness is real. It’s just not caused by electro-magnetic radiation.

There have been studies completed where patients who claim EMS have been put in a shrouded room and then told when a wi-fi transmitter is turned on and off. They then report their symptoms in line with when they know the transmitter is on. Here’s the thing: they report symptoms even when the wi-fi transmitter is NOT turned on but they are told it is. Their symptoms are psychosomatic. This is not to belittle their illness but to point out that the cause is not what they think it is. Read this over at Science Based Medicine.

The people who claim that 5G will ruin lives are wrong. They are scaremongering and therefore adding to a problem that doesn’t exist. They are pushing ideas out to people who are sensitive to suggestion and causing more problems than they can fix.

I am still quite convinced that the amount of EM radiation humans absorb is mostly from natural sources, the sun and radio waves from stellar sources. Being in the home means that you will absorb a certain amount but go outside and this home-based absorption is insignificant. See this page from the World Health Organisation.

If mobile phones and wi-fi caused lots of issues with human health then where is the epidemic? Mobiles phones and wi-fi is everywhere and I don’t see the epidemic anywhere. For around thirty years these technologies have existed and we aren’t getting ill.

5G will be safe.

July 28 2019July 27 2019

Poe’s Law

https://t.co/qsoINefE6L
— Ian Parish (@iparish) July 26, 2019

I keep thinking back to this news item from ITV. I mean ITV is a trusted source isn’t it? It seems ridiculous to me that a new member of the government in our current times would insist on a particular style guide for his staff.

The problem with this news article is that it’s so ridiculous that it could be true. It might have been made up but we all know Rees-Mogg is a prick of the highest order and so this could be true. I’m just not sure. This news article could be a case of Poe’s Law in action.

Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won’t mistake for the genuine article.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

While Poe was talking about creationists being fucking stupid his views have been converted into a law stating that in some cases extreme sarcasm is indistinguishable from the real thing. This is what I think has happened here. Someone has cleverly taken the concept of Rees-Mogg being a fucking prick and gone extreme. Seriously, let’s look at the things he wants done:

All non-titled males are Esq. – fuck you, what a singular stupid fucking thing to say. Jesus Christ, this is fucking entitled bullshit in the highest.

No comma after “and” – of course you use the Oxford comma, it’s there to make sure you have clear intentions in your language. We’ve developed this wonderful thing called language to be able to communicate clearly and we can make our words mean the correct things. For an example – Rees-Mogg is an entitled prick.

Check your work – this man is really telling his staff of professionals to check their work? Really? Does he employ monkeys or something? You would think that people already know how this type of stuff works. Arrrrrgh.

Could someone please stop the planet, I want to get off.

July 24 2019July 24 2019

Marginal Error

Aside from the fact that the news this country has a new Prime Minister who is a racist liar I was bothered by the phrasing on BBC News last night. I haven’t really watched TV news for a long time, I find it patronising and reliant on the personal story rather than the facts, I don’t enjoy watching it. I viewed a little on catch up last night just to see what they said about the tory party leadership result.

Boris Johnson won by a MARGIN of two to one.

Now, what the actual fuck does that mean? I mean, I’m not happy Johnson won but that’s the shitty system we have. I’m really asking what does the phrase “by a margin of two to one” mean?

Does it mean that Boris got around 66% of the vote and Hunt 33% [or thereabouts]? In which case the margin is 1/3 of the electorate or you could even say the majority was 100% of Hunt’s vote. What you can’t say is the MARGIN was a ratio of 2:1 without DEFINING what the other side of the ratio is. Fucking hell, people need to understand that maths and words have meanings.

My instinct is that these numbers are the relative share of the vote, but the news chap doesn’t say that. He says MARGIN. The margin is the majority? I don’t know. How is margin defined in this case. A quick inspection of Wikipedia has the definition that MARGIN is the percentage of the difference relative to total turnout.

So, I think it would be best for the BBC and other news outlets to have used the phrase:

Mr Johnson won with a margin of around 33% of the turnout.

July 18 2019July 25 2019

Cold War Jets

In around the year 1988 my friend and I travelled to the back garden of someone in the village of Mildenhall to camp for the weekend. The purpose was to spend the weekend at the Mildenhall airshow, which I had been to before but was important for a few reasons:

Aircraft
Military aircraft
Military might
Blackbird
More planes

When you are a plane nut then airshows are where you get your kicks. I can’t help what I like and planes have troubled me all my life. It’s possibly due to growing up underneath the flight path of Stansted Airport in Essex. It could be because of my dad who was involved in the industry when I was young or it could just be that an aluminium tube filled with people and fuel doesn’t really have any business being six miles up off the ground.

Somehow Alan and I had found the number of someone who lived near a walk-in entrance to RAF Mildenhall [actually a USAF base] and we had booked to camp in her garden. Then, each day of the show we walked in. My memory of the charges is not great but I seem to think we got in for something like £5 each whereas a car for the day was £40. I suspect those prices are wrong given what prices were like in the 80s but I can’t remember. I do know it was dirt cheap to walk in to the show rather than drive.

There’s only a few things I can remember from the airshow. I sort of remember the Blackbird flying, it was a privilidge to see that. I also remember both AB and I watching a helicopter display, possibly an Apache, when it did a form of a wing-over or loop. Both, AB and I were amazed and clapped. There weren’t many who joined in the clapping, only those in the know.

The Red Arrows were there, of course, I I’m not sure if this was before or after I had been to Cyprus, porbably before and so I was still excited by them. The above photograph was beautifully timed by me.

My father must have found the original negatives of these photographs as he has scanned them inot his computer. I suspect there are some more picture lurking in a box somewhere and I’ll have to keep scanning his computer to see what I can find.

Here are some more photographs from those days. They aren’t very good but them photographs weren’t back in the 80s. I wasn’t great with a camera and with only 24 or 36 shots on a reel of film you were very limited in what you could take.

Sea King @ Mildenhall
Harrier, A-10 and A7 [?] @ Mildenhall
F-5, F-16, C141 and AB @ Mildenhall
EF-111 [?] @ Mildenhall
SR-71A @ Mildenhall
Phantom @ Mildenhall

AB and I had a great time at the airshow. It was a really good experience and well worth the camping and entrance fees. I do feel it’s a bit of a shame that the number of airshows has decreased over the years, but these beasts were probably also a show of strength during the cold war. They were interesting times and maybe I should be glad we don’t currently need massive forces to prevent mutual destruction [it feels like it’s heading that was again though].

Addendum: I have had confirmation of aircraft types from a US source:

A7 is indeed an A7D and it will have been a Lynx you saw display rather than an Apache.
— Richard O (@richouss) July 25, 2019

July 15 2019July 14 2019

Forts Position

On Saturday I went to visit the Redsand Forts. There are a couple of things I’d like to note for you.

Firstly I use the opportunity to calibrate the altitude on my Garmin Instinct watch. I usually give it a go each month, just to make sure it’s working properly. While out near the forts I used the calibrate with GPS option and I got an altitude of -2m. Initially this confused me but then I realised that I was close to the sea but during low tide, therefore I was likely negative AMSL, so -2m seemed about right.

The above picture is my position as saved by the Garmin Instinct. I didn’t even know that was an option but I noticed it while I was calibrating the altitude. I saved the position and then was able to display it on my phone. There’s a Garmin app called Explore and I like the functionality.

While out on the sea I also used Google Maps to see where I was.

I took this screen shot a bit before the Garmin one and so you can see I am slightly further east than the previous picture. I don’t think either of these was taken at the Redsands Forts complex as I was too busy watching.

July 14 2019July 14 2019

Cranes On Boats

While walking along the wharf before I went to the cinema to see The Matrix I happened upon some cranes on boats. Now, I know technology and science stuff but cranes on boats still amaze me. They shouldn’t but they do.

Above is a crane on a boat. That’s pretty impressive. What could be better than a crane on a boat? Well, surely a boat being held by a crane on a boat:

Also, as a bonus there are two cranes on two boats. I think this could turn into a minor fascination along with my occasional series on safes! Having glanced through these esteemed communications I can see that my series on safes didn’t even mage these pages. I’ll try and correct that.

July 13 2019July 15 2019

Kurtz Got Airbourne

This photo shows me in the rear seat waving at the crew room as the Juno helicopter taxied past before landing. I’ll thank OM for this photo. The Flight was easily the best fifteen minutes of the year so far, I can’t see it being outstripped either.

Fg Off Parish waving at the crew room of the DHFS — DHFS – Wave

The DHFS uses two types of helicopter and both are pretty much Eurocopter versions painted similar to all others! I’ve found it hard to tell them apart but after examination the easiest difference is the engine intakes. The Juno has intakes flush with the bodywork whereas the Jupiter has intakes mostly vertical in shape and they stick out more, the engine exhaust is more pronounced. There might be a slight difference in the landing skids too.

Juno and Jupiter — This was stolen from the MOD RAF website.

May 30 2019

Untruth

There’s been quite a bit of moral outrage recently at the Jeremy Kyle show and that it should be removed from television permanently. I haven’t really paid attention to what has happened, as I understand it someone died and the show has been stopped from broadcasting for a while. Newspapers and social media have been very loud about how the show should be pulled completely.

Why does it take something bad to happen for people to be open about what they think is right and wrong? All of this moral outrage wasn’t there two weeks ago when the Kyle show was still on television. There wasn’t anyone loudly calling for it to be stopped. It took the death of someone for the media to declare that they thought it was a bit shit all the time. They did fuck all for many years.

This is strange. This effect that it takes a large news cycle for the media and opinion makers to declare something as bad even though it’s been around for years. What sort of behaviour is this? Where was all the complaining before something terrible happened? I’ll tell you what, it wasn’t bad enough for the media t give a shit, but that someone died before they spoke was terrible.

I have, in the past, watched a lot of Jeremy Kyle. I used to think it did some good. I thought that it helped people to talk to each other in a safe space when the rest of the world didn’t give a shit. It allowed the chance for people to communicate. I was probably wrong to think this. We shouldn’t forget that Kyle is a television show. It’s there to entertain and make money at a basic level and it probably did little to help its stars.

My biggest problem with the Kyle show was the use of a lie detector. Here was have a television show with a purported “helping people” theme and they relied on the utter bullshit that is a lie detector. The polygraph doesn’t work. It’s incredibly difficult to tell when people are lying. The TV show used the lie detector to try and solve family issues, people’s future relationships relied on the results of a flawed piece of equipment. Families will have been broken up because of the reliance on the polygraph and its results.

The idea that the show declared the truth or lies as fact was an appalling use of a bullshit piece of theatre – the polygraph. It doesn’t work. I guess the show tried to disclaimer the use of the detector with an on-screen caption saying that “it doesn’t work but some people believe it”. That’s what religion does. It’s horrific the hurt and separation using this device caused.

Do you know why polygraph results aren’t permitted in UK courts? It’s because they don’t work. It’s incredibly difficult for humans to tell when other humans are lying. I’ll let you into my reasoning.

Humans learn from toddler age that lying works. The individual will receive rewards for lying, as long as they can keep that lie going. Humans have spent their entire lives lying at times. This behaviour is learnt and used almost constantly. Little lies are easy. Larger lies are more difficult but they get easier with time. It’s amazingly easy to convince yourself that something happened when it didn’t. Human memory is terrible. Eye witnesses shouldn’t be allowed in courts but that is for another time.

I’ll give you an anecdote, which isn’t evidence, but it personalises the story and allows you to connect rather than just concentrate on the plain facts.

Years ago I ran over a pothole on a bend in the road near my village. The weather had been incredibly poor and there were potholes all over the place. The sudden compression on my left front suspension broke the spring and by the time I got to work the other spring had broken through excessive weight on it.

I tried to make a claim through the local council for the damage, claiming that the road was in poor condition. However, I didn’t want to take photographs in the road where the pothole was, it would not be safe to take measurements on that corner. So, I took photographs of a pothole just inside the village, it was of a similar size and depth and along a route that I drive. To ensure that, if questioned, I referred to the nearer pothole I kept going over the story in my head. I also visualised my driving the car over that pothole over and over. I talked through the story while walking the dog and basically formed a memory of me breaking the car by driving over the pothole near the village.

Even now, after more than ten years, if asked I would immediately respond that the pothole was in the village. I would then question myself and remember what had actually happened. With just a little understanding of human memory it is easy to adjust what we “know”. Memory is fascinating and terrible. Humans are terrible.

May 16 2019

It’s Dying

We all need distractions I guess and maybe laughing at the poor on the Jeremy Kyle show was one of those. It was a way to feel better about ourselves, a way of looking at people who suffer and try but ultimately are just a passing fad for those of us who are OK at the moment, thank you very much.

Perhaps that’s why people watch bollocks like Eastenders and other soap operas where everything happens to everyone because if everyone tried to get along and be nice to each other it wouldn’t be worth watching and it wouldn’t provide escapism.

I’m certainly clear in my head about why I like science fiction. It’s nerdy and requires a little science knowledge but space type stuff often provides a glorious distraction to the mundane. It gives me the chance to live elsewhere and think about the implications of travel and technology that won’t happen in my lifetime.

In reality it’s all fucked isn’t it? Brexit, politics, the planet, it’s fucked. It’s dying. The single GREATEST threat to the human population wherever you live at the moment is the fact that the world is on fire. It’s really depressing. I’m hoping I’m dead before the Water Wars start. They are going to be terrible.

All those politicians worried about maintaining power and trying to get your vote using short-term gains and short-term give-aways. Not one of them is standing up for the planet. We need RADICAL change to society and how everything works. We need to save this planet. I’m not normally pessimistic about things but the planet is dying through human abuse and it’s going to kick us the fuck back and quite rightly too.

I’m scared for the future of my children and the fears that they will face as they get older. I’m scared for my unborn descendants because it’s all going to be shit. Take a look around the world and see where the action is to provide a future for people on this planet. It’s not there. Consumption-capitalism is driving this world to ruin while at the same time killing those who are poor and have little. It’s disgusting. We should be promoting a social-environmental-capitalism. Governments need to incentivise social and environmental good-doing.

It’s not like this is new. We’ve known about climate change and carbon emissions for over forty years. NOT a thing has been done in my life time that will drastically alter the way the planet is going to react. It’s all a nightmare. I’m not sure humans are mature enough to do anything about it either. I’m hoping that the generation after me, once they assume power when the baby boomers and generation X die off can cope and end up being nice to each other and working to create an Earth for the future.

I see the newer generation of politicians kicking back against the obscene capitalism of the last one hundred years and are now talking about social responsibilities and they seem to be speaking a more gentle kind of politics trying to go after the aging fuckers who have taken everything they can and created personal wealth beyond necessity. Here’s hoping that people like AOC can start to change the world to actual care about each other.

In the mean time the Daily Mail and other institutions that gain their power from the want and blinkered view of the older generations print articles implying that solar farms are wrong and will ruin your view.

The headline should have been “locals fight planet saving solar farm (stupid cunts)”. But then the exact people fighting this farm and the ones who read the Mail because they are all old and white. Fuck the Mail.

More amusingly, in thirty years the Hardy countryside won’t look like that at all because the climate will have changed so much it’ll be barren and all the locals will have died of malaria.

April 21 2019April 21 2019

War Machinery

Took a few hours out of the busy schedule the other day to visit the Historic Dockyard at Chatham. This is one of the places this country built and serviced warships for over four hundred years. I found the positive spin put on it all in the introduction video to be full of cognitive dissonance but I guess that’s how it goes. It was rather “Great Britain ruled the seas and controlled the world” it was kinda a Brexiteer’s wet dream with promises of glory and power. It completely ignored the human aspects and damage this country has done around the world. Anyway, enough from this old lefty, let’s have some pictures.

I like the way the light enters this room. It’s part of a building that contained the first smithery. There were a few buildings like this where all the metal work was completed. It’s quite impressive.

HMS Ocelot is a spy submarine and the last Royal Navy ship to be built at Chatham [they built more afterwards, but for other countries’ navies]. It’s quite impressive being given a tour around this beast. I think I’d love to see a more modern submarine, the whole concept of living under the sea is rather freaky.

HMS Cavalier is a destroyer now permanently moored in wet-dock at Chatham. I would have liked to have seen the engine rooms and murkier areas of the ship, but that would probably need specialised tour guides and so this one is a self tour.

It’s a great place to visit and I have been here a few times in the past. I’m not sure if I’ve written about it before though. I’ll go and have a look! well, my cursory search has highlighted no references within this website to the dockyard, that seems strange but there you go. This is the first. It’s a lovely day out.

April 17 2019April 17 2019

Early Air Pioneers

Until about four days ago I didn’t know that the first powered flight of an aircraft in the UK occurred on the Isle Of Sheppey. The island isn’t that far from here and so I went to have a look at a beach.

Upon some investigating it turns out that the first purpose-built aircraft factory was on Sheppey and built by the Shorts brothers. Then it turns out that they then build the first airfield nearby in 1909. This is amazing and I don’t know why I didn’t know this before this week.

I had previously known that Shorts used to make aircraft at Rochester and used the Medway there as the aerodrome. It is here that they made the Sunderland and other famous planes.

Eventually they moved production to Belfast and now the company is known as Bombardier. It would have been magnificent to see sea planes taking off and landing on the river Medway, such an age of exploration and adventure. This would have made Rochester such a target during the second world war as there was a Royal Navy shipyard and also an aircraft manufacturer there.

On Sheppey I drove to the old RAF Eastchurch site which is now three prisons built on Crown land. It was strange driving to the museum as there was lots of security along a public road. It felt like entering an RAF base. Two of the prisons there are high security and the walls were impressive. The third prison is an open prison and the museum is on the land of that prison with a cafe nearby run by inmates.

The key to the things I have marked in the above photo runs such:

The museum
The first aero hangar in the UK
The RAF base water tower
The original airfield control block
The E-W runway
The N-S runway

There are plenty of features there to see and the person running the museum was really friendly and told me loads about the history. It’s strange to me all these old air force bases that are now re-purposed. I guess I hanker for the old days of aircraft everywhere.

One of the buildings on the site still shows the scars of war with bomb damage on the brick wall:

The museum is based in one of the original base buildings and certainly contains lots of lovely information about the early days of aeronautical exploration in this country.

Inside the building was a photograph taken at Muswell Manor on the east coast of the island and one of the early headquarters of the Royal Aero Club. In that photograph the following people are pictured:

The Short Brothers
Frank McClean
Frank Hedges Butler
Warwick Wright
JTC Brabazon
Wilber Wright
Orville Wright
Charles Rolls

That is an amazing collection of rich people who had the money to start the aviation industry in this country and the world. The Wright brothers had come across the Atlantic with their flyer to try and create interest and also start manufacturing the product. This they managed and the Short brothers built the Flyer under licence. The rest is pretty much history as we know. I hadn’t even been aware that the Wright brothers had come over here!

Near Muswell Manor is a statue to the Short Brothers. It stands as a marker for the start of aviation in this country and the adventuring that started at Shellness.

April 11 2019April 11 2019

Not A Neo Con

I found an advert which, I think, lies! I was looking through the newspaper that my parents read and I found the advert below. Now, let me first explain that I do not agree with the “news”paper that my parents read and given my personal politics it stresses me that they still get this heap of shit delivered to their door. I have offered to pay for a different paper but they have refused. I’m not sure why they still read the Express but it is a vile piece of work.

This advert is along the lines of what started me into this skeptical hole in the first place. Originally my father gave me a magnet that surround the fuel line in a car and then magically makes the car engine more efficient. I’ve written about it here. At first glance it seems reasonable that something might increase the fuel efficiency of an engine, but if it’s that simple don’t you think the manufacturers would do it anyway?

I wrote about a fuel chip I saw advertised in a motorcycle magazine here. It seems that this device is making very similar claims. Notice that if you want, you can get your money back if you aren’t happy with the results. This is a classic scam because no-one cares enough to ask for their money back.

Having looked at the website in this advert and the one for tank chip they both are in association with the same company.

Hamilton Direct

This company is based in Paignton in Devon. They seem to peddle a lot of bullshit. Don’t buy anything from them.

The bike insurance people Bennetts did a proper testing regime on the tank chip and they found it makes no difference. You can see their results here: Bennetts.

If the product seems to good to be true then the chances are that it is.

April 9 2019April 9 2019

Mutability

A few summers ago my project was to build an ADS-B receiver and use the data collected to upload to an aircraft tracking website. If you want to see what I see then go to:

360 Radar

I don’t remember the details about how I found this but the project was good fun and I got the Raspberry Pi in the loft with a decent aerial, filter and pre-amp, and it was all working fine. I was using a lovely piece of software called Virtual Radar Server and was able to use this as a web server and people could see the aircraft on web pages served by the Pi.

360 Radar is good because it using multi-lateration to detect the positions on military aircraft. This is pretty handy for spotters like me and it also works well when I take cadets to RAF Wittering for some Air Experience Flying, I can see where my cadets are in the air.

Over the last few months I’d been receiving outage warnings from the 360 guys. It would appear that my Pi had stopped sending them data and while I live in a flight-busy area of the country and there’s plenty of contributors here every little helps. I had the occasional outage and this seemed to be when the router reset and the Pi wouldn’t re-find the existing wi-fi network. I just had to power cycle the Pi and everything worked fine. The outages seemed to be occurring more over the last while with the Pi stopping feeding every few days.

At first I thought it was a wi-fi issue so I bought some new ethernet-over-power adapters and linked the system into the route via a wired connection. This also meant I could ssh in to the Pi even if wifi was the original problem. I tried to work out how to turn the wifi connection off entirely but just ended up changing the SSID the Pi looked for as a simle way of ensuring the wired connection took preference.

After a week of testing I was still getting outages and my initial thought was that the VRS software was making the Pi work too much. I’m not sure why I thought that but I looked up ways to remove VRS. This was not the easiest as I had installed it years ago and couldn’t remember how it ran within the OS. I eventually managed to remove the Mono service and this stopped VRS running.

It was at this point I worked out how to use the log file of the MLAT client and I could see that all the software seemed to be working fine it was the Dump1090 program that didn’t seem to be sending data internally. I figured that Dump1090 had somehow stopped receiving the signal from the aerial. It all worked fine after a reboot and so I decided to replace the USB dongle that was decoding the ADS-B signals. I ordered a FlightAware USB stick and at the same time decided I would rebuild the Pi OS from scratch to have a “clean” build.

Once the new USB stick arrived I turned off all the systems and followed the excellent instructions from the 360 Radar guys to rebuild the OS of the Pi and just run a lite version of what I had been doing before. This took a while as I mistakenly thought the Pi wasn’t uploading to 360 because I was looking at the wrong server details. After an email to the support chaps it turned out I was contributing and a couple of hours of troubleshooting by me hadn’t been worth it!

So, the Pi sits in the loft, chugging away supplying data to 360 Radar, in return for which I get free access to their excellent tracking site. I’m running dump1090-mutability along with the MLAT-Client from 360. I’d really like to be able to allow you all to see the output of this but Mutability doesn’t have an external feed and I am not opening up my 80 port for the world.