A friend mentioned recently that he was thinking of buying a Nissan Leaf 2.0 and it got me to thinking what the running costs are. For this communication I’m not worried about purchase or servicing costs so this comparison isn’t a very good one but it is somewhere to start!
My car, Bora Horza Gobuchul, is a petrol/electric hybrid. Just your standard hybrid NOT a plug in hybrid. So it’s battery is charge either through regenerative braking or excess energy being produced by the engine, when at a standstill for example. My average fuel consumption rate is 55 mpg. Current petrol costs are about £1.20 per litre. This means my current driving costs are:
£6.20 per 100km
This is a variable though. The price of petrol is subject to many factors and changes constantly. The mileage achieved driving Bora Horza Gobuchul depends on how well it is driven!
The Nissan Leaf 2.0 is currently the latest ALL Electric vehicle developed by Nissan. It is a plug in car and so runs using electricity only. The manufacturer claims a range of 168 miles and a battery capacity of 40kWh. My current electricity tariff charges me 15.3 pence per kWh and the driving costs for the Leaf are:
£2.26 per 100km
The Tesla Model S claims a range of 220 miles with a battery capacity of 60kWh. This produces a driving cost of:
£2.59 per 100km
This comparison is VERY basic. It covers just the cost of charging the vehicle. I have not taken ANYTHING else into consideration but I am quite surprised at how much cheaper the electric cars are in terms of cost per 100km for driving. This alone would tempt me greatly if I had a garage where I could park my car. However, somewhere, a space, to park my car every day next to my house is my current dream. That is what happens when you live in a crowded Victorian street.
Just another minor comparison: energy consumed per 100km:
50kWh – Bora Horza Gobuchul
14.8kWh – Nissan Leaf
17.0kHw – Telsa Model S
This just shows the inefficiency of petrol based engines for transport. So, my current plan is: get house with garage, buy Tesla, save the planet.
Foremost, be warned I am struggling with this one. I have spent the last 18 hours wondering what rating to give it. I’m concerned I’m in a bad mood but don’t think so, I’m just puzzled by this film. But first, there are routines to get through.
I went, on a glorious sunny day, to sit in the dark at the Cineworld cinema in [not] Rochester. I now comment on the tide, as the river is tidal, at this point. The tide was in and I took a pretty picture to confirm that. If you look carefully you can see the historic Rochester castle and cathedral.
High Tide Rochester
I rated this film on IMDB and you should read this communication about the scoring system. This is where the controversy starts I think:
So, I should now go ahead and explain my rating and thoughts.
Bad Thing
This film started by playing “Jump” by Van Halen. This is a good song, it’s iconic, but I was instantly reminded that a good soundtrack does not make the film. Suicide Squad was a shit film but had a great soundtrack of classic 80s songs that everyone knows. So, let’s ignore the music.
Bad Thing
I don’t think the voice over was necessary. Films are made better without exposition. Build your explanations into the film, release the details slowly. Make the audience earn the story. Let’s ignore that.
Good/Bad Thing
There were so many 80s cultural references, along with a glaring one from 1991 and Terminator 2, that these were unsubtle. They were rammed into your retina. I guess I missed many as I’m not a massive 80s whore, but my mate Pom would get more. I think he’d like that part of the film. This film is like a greatest hits of popular culture.
An Aside
If pop-culture is the stuff that is popular does culture mean all that upper class shit that critics like? The stuff that isn’t popular? Should that be called culture?
Impressive Thing
The CGI was hugely impressive. We have been at the point of photo-realism for years now and there are many parts of films that are CGI but I don’t think people realise. It’s a cheap way to lend credibility to a film by adding small details. So, the virtual world looked and felt fantastic. Well done [although it’s not outside the realms of technology or new].
Annoying Thing
The avatars of the characters were remarkably like their IRL characters. Their facial features were quite Cameron’s Avatar like. This is probably to avoid the uncanny valley. The oriental characters were played in-game by oriental builds. The large kid chose to be an over-modded large character and the lead turned out to be white kid. They all played their own gender and they all kept their real life features. This was bollocks. It was Hollywood.
More Annoying Thing
All the clan in the game came from pretty much the same area of the USA?? What utter rubbish. The idea that online players in this game would be anywhere near each other was appalling.
While We Are At It
The girl didn’t think she was “pretty” in real life. She didn’t want to meet the lead character. Well, it turns out she IS pretty. All she has is a birth mark that covers here eye. IT’S NOT EVEN A BAD BIRTHMARK. What bollocks, this was very annoying.
Slums
The futuristic slum area was essentially just a trailer park made futuristic. Do you know what? I’m happy with that. I liked it.
VR
There has to be a point where developers decide whether to include force feedback into suits and movement or not. I suspect it will go ahead because: porn. So, the IRL people have walkways so that their movements are mimicked in the game. But, how does the flying and dancing work? What about INERTIA? Why are people in the streets playing the game? Are they walking form one place to another? Can they see the real world while they are in the game? I don’t understand.
Being in a computer game doesn’t give you superhuman reactions. You just can’t run, race, fight, fly, drive at those speeds and still react as a human. It might be that the apologetic is that the game avatars have extra modifications that allow them to react within the game to threats. This I guess is a good explanation but the speed of the gaming and fight scenes along with the driving section was implausible.
Beating The Game
When you are facing a bigger opponent in a game and you are going to lose all your coin why don’t you just quit and leave the game. That makes sense to me.
Story Arc [SPOILERS]
White american kid takes on a corporation with his friends. He gets the girl. Wins riches beyond his dreams and frees the world. Such bullshit.
It was nice to see Hannah John-Kamen again.
Now, I’ve been writing this stuff down I can see that I just wasn’t impressed. Yes, there are great songs and brilliant references to other films but once you remove that stuff the overall story and ideas are just pretty poor.
I was using my favourite aircraft tracking site 360Radar when I noticed that they have built in the terminator into the view:
Sunset
In this picture you can see the lines of the terminator, the line of the end of sunlight across the globe. But, it’s more complicated than that isn’t it? There are two lines and I suspect that one is the onset of sunset and the other is when the sun has dropped below the horizon. Rather, what happens is that the Earth rotates more so the Sun drops below the local horizon.
That gets you to thinking about sunset and when it is. According to Wikipedia, which is a perfectly good reference for most things scientific, sunset is the moment the sun dips below the horizon. After that there are different types of twilight!:
I hope this doesn’t over complicate issues too much for you all.
One of the things that humans like to do is have simple black and white answers for all problems. We can’t live in a society without rules. We need them to ensure we give everyone a similar set of values and guidelines. We use heuristics all the time. These are brain shortcuts so we don’t have to think about things from the very start. Stereotyping is an heuristic. It allows us to make quick judgements about people so that we don’t have to think too much. The problem is that stereotyping is wrong most of the time and our brain is wrong. Heuristics while brain efficient are mostly wrong.
The question “when is twilight” leads to a multitude of different types and times. Most things in society aren’t really black and white. There are always complications. There are always times when other factors seem important. We love these rules but often they need to be tempered by knowing the circumstances. The media like forcing that black or white notion, they like to implement simple thinking in society to make everything simple. Most people don’t want to think about things or over complicate them. Most people want a simple life where they don’t have to think or consider others.
It’s good to learn that we should always spend extra brain power thinking about the issues are reasons more. As the author Ben Goldacre put it:
I think you’ll find it’s more complicated than that.
A trend I have noticed more and more in the news these days is the use of quotations in a headline. This is probably because of two reasons. The first is that it is incredibly expensive to defend “libel” accusations in the English court system. This gags publishers to a certain extent. The second reason is that it makes headline writing easy and removes controversy because the publisher can say “we were using quotes”. Here are some examples from the best UK news organisation the BBC.
Quotation Marks Excuse
In the Toby Young article the term “regret” is used in quotation marks because it’s a feeling that an organisation is having. It’s obviously a bullshit term for the fact that the Office for Students’ were WRONG, but rather than admit to being wrong they claim the organsation has “regret”. Let’s face it, they were wrong.
“Intorlerance” is written because someone said it and the BBC don’t want to put any form of objective fact into the reporting. Also, this article relys on what MPs and Peers said rather than any form of what does and will work. It’s entirely opinion and therefore possibly wrong. Hence the quotation.
“Down to privilege” used in the third article is ammusing. Being in quotes means that it’s treated as an opinion rather than a potential objective truth. This saves the BBC from having to defend their wording for the article because all they are doing is quoting a scientific study, or maybe they are putting their own spin on it. It doesn’t really matter. What the BBC have done is shy away from stating an objective truth.
The world these days doesn’t seem to like the idea that some things can be known for sure and they are truths. We can test them. Hell, you can test them if you want to study for long enough. Other things are opinion. I’m not sure opinion belongs in headlines.
Not Risking It
Look at these headlines. The BBC aren’t claiming the welfare system is at critical point. They aren’t being objective about it. They haven’t looked at the evidence and declared it is fucked. They have been lazy and just written down what someone said. It weakens the argument being made for investment.
“Lots to do”, if we were honest and objective then we could clearly state, without the need for speech marks, that there is a ton of stuff still to do on Brexit. Once again the quotation weakens the argument being put forward. It lends a sense of opinion rather than reality.
“Cheating”, yeah. They were lying weren’t they. They spent more than they were allowed and yes they cheated. It doesn’t have to be in quotation marks. We know that’s what they did.
“Sexism”. This headline says that although someone accused Boris, the sexist, of being sexist, we aren’t sure and are really relying on the speech of someone else rather than declaring our foreign secretary a rascist, sexist idiot.
Just look at the US press. They accuse their president of telling “untruths” or being “misleading”. Bullshit. He’s a liar. Let’s call him that.
News agencies have a duty to report the objective truth as much as possible. The rising use of quotations means there’s less chance to offend people who can’t cope with objectivity.
On Saturday I went with a friend to BAHFest London. The Bad Ad Hoc Hypothesis Festival is a celebration of bad science presented as good science with graphs and everything. The London version is held at Imperial College and so this seemed fitting to spend my birthday in the grounds of a place I have spend previous birthdays.
After dinner out with Mazza we arrived in the Great Hall to be seated in the second row as we were running slightly late. I’ve not been to one of these before but I have been a fan of Zach Weinersmith for a long time as he writes the SMBC online comic. There are quite a few of these printed out and on the wall in the maths office. BAHFest was slated to start at 19:00 and so, this audience is one of the nerdiest I have ever been part of. An event about science in a science university at 7 on a Saturday! You have to go some to beat that for qualifications and jokes about i.
The host was Matt Parker and the judges are below, but Tim Harford was the one I recognised the most although only his voice. I have listened to his radio 4 show More Or Less for many years. The other judges were Lindsey Fitzharris, Dr Jen Gupta and Sydney Padua.
BAHFEST London
There was a keynote speaker, a cartoonist from France, Boulet, once the six bad ideas with good science were presented the crowd voted on them and the applause was rated using a sound meter. It was lovely to spend time in a geeky environment and have intelligent discourse.
For an example about the presentations one of the plans was how to mitigate or reverse the current global warming trend line of increasing temperatures by inducing a small nuclear winter. The discussion was then based on where to explode the nukes and it turns out that the middle bit of Canada where no-one lives was just perfect, forest with a low population. This idea was backed up with graphs and diagrams and calculations.
After the event the panel were available to sign books they had published. Mazza and I didn’t go to that. I’d already bought a couple of the books and have ordered another. The rational part of my brain tells me that having a squiggle of ink added to a book doesn’t change that book. The financial part of me is aware of the actual value people place on such objects.
Mark and I then went to the Student Union Bar. It’s just over Prince Consort Road inside Beit Quad. Both of us have Life Membership of the SU, mine is Honorary, I can’t remember if Mark’s is. I hadn’t got my HLM card though and Mark signed me in. Our purpose was to have a drink using one of the pots / tankards that live in the Traditional Bar. I had a choice:
Aerosoc Chair
Departmental Society Officer
Spanner Bearer
Deputy President Clubs and Societies
My tankard of choice would be Spanner Bearer but it wasn’t there! I’m not sure what has happened to it but I was a little saddened. So, I chose DPCS. I had a lovel ypint of an IPA and it was good. As far as I could tell the Traditional Bar hadn’t changed. The main bar was quite different and as we walked through it I can tell you there is nothing to make you feel old as walking through a student bar when you are in your mid-forties.
ICU DPCS Pot
There’s another tradition that if someone named before you on the pot comes into the bar then it is your duty, as the junior, to finish your pint and then buy that person a fresh pint and relinquish the pot. As I am the second person on this pot, the post being new a year before, there is very little chance that I get “potted”.
I just wanted to see how the rain/snow fall was going to be over the next few hours, to see the general direction the weather system was moving. But, no, we broke the Met Office.
I clicked on a click-bait type link on Twitter a few days ago and watched a video for the Light Phone 2. It’s a lovely looking basic phone that does phone calls, messaging and alarms. This has got me thinking [a rare event I know!].
Perhaps it would be good to just have a phone. A device designed to make phone calls. Send the odd text message. Not a lot else.
This morning as I thought these things I felt a sense of release from the pressure of modern communication. There was a release growing. The freedom to be away from connections. The freedom to not know what is going on.
So, I’ve been looking at basic phones. I have a plan to use a basic phone. To get one and leave the smart phone at home and just have the basic phone. Get rid of the connections to the world. A chance to be free when I want to be.
I can edit this website at home. I can use a camera to take photos. I can read a book. I can removed myself from the constant drivel and pain that following the news brings at the moment. This is looking like a very real prospect for me. A chance to recapture my freedom and to learn to live my life again. And I say that as a committed tech follower.
While visiting Lincolnshire it’s hard to avoid RAF bases and do some aircraft observation. So I spent some time at RAF Coningsby, one of three fighter bases, hosting squadrons of Typhoons. I also visited the air museum at Newark, which I had driven past a few times before but never stopped at. Here’s a selection of the best photos for you.
Typhoon Coningsby
Typhoons Coningsby
Display Typhoon
Display Typhoon
Display Typhoon Going To Bed
Fairey Gannet
Mig 27
Saab Viggen
Avro Shackleton
Phantom Cockpit
Shackleton Cockpit
Vulcan Nav Unit
Before this weekend I had seen Typhoons just twice before. Once at RAF Marham performing a touch and go and once at a Duxford air show. The noise was marvellous.
The name of this communication represents the fact that both Coningsby and Newark are 53.08 degrees north and pretty much forty kilometres apart.
In a previous communication about Tattershall I said that I had heard that the RAF Typhoon display pilot was going to practice his display. This sort of information is publicly available through NOTAMS, Notices To Airmen. There are websites that give this information in map form. Basically if a crane is erected or there are runway issues or events coming up that might affect flying then information about that thing is posted to NATS.
Typhoon NOTAM
This is the Typhoon NOTAM with information about where and when. That way, if you are planning to fly there you can avoid CGY.
Here’s what the pilot had to say about his display:
Well another great #phoonfriday for me to end the week. The fighter didn’t fancy it this morning despite the perfect weather but the family model was very keen this afternoon so that’s 1500ft complete! Roll on 1000ft next week….. 🤞🏼☀🚀 happy weekend all! 😎
He went up in a two seater so I wonder if he was being assessed. I remember being at Linton-On-Ouse when the Tucano display pilot was having his assessment to get his display ticket for the season, you could hear the engine pulling the plane in high-g turns just above the airfield. It was very impressive.
Mathematics is used everywhere from telling us whether a drug’s effects are significant to calculating routes in satellite navigation devices. It also exists in the abstract, within the human mind and without practical use.
When will I use this mathematics I am learning?
In some ways if you feel the need to ask this question then you probably won’t. Arithmetic and basic number work will suffice for you.
However, we learn these things because they expand our understanding of the universe, because mathematics is a challenge and because we should learn for learning’s sake not because we are expected to. We learn for ourselves.
If you plan on becoming a scientist or engineer or similar then mathematics will be the language of your every minute’s work.
If you want more detailed examples and discussion about why there is mathematics then click here.
