Category: Science

Posted on

The Imitation Game

I went to see The Imitation Game at the Cineworld cinema in Rochester, except the cinema is in Strood and not Rochester. It actually located at the intersection of four main transports links through Kent! It’s almost as if these were ley lines [made-up shit] that indicate that the confluence of these lines are important!

cinema ley lines

In this map you can see that the numbers correspond to the numbers below, like it was planned!
1) M2 Medway Bridge. Two parts. Four lanes each way. Interesting construction.
2) High Speed Rail Link, Paris to London, River Medway Bridge.
3) Strood Railway line, I’m not sure where it goes, I’ve never used it!
4) The River Medway. Used to be used lots. Not so much now. The bricks that made parts of Buckingham Palace were crafted at Burham Brick Works and then transported along this river, see here for more information.

Anyway, I digress. I should mention the film. As ever I rated this on IMDB and I broke my rules which can be viewed here.

I shall explain a little. But first, The Prologue . . . .
[bit of a tribute to a classic television series there]
The Film.

I already knew quite a bit about Alan Turing, his work during the second world war, his death and his work on computers and nature. He was a titan of modern mathematics. It was such a shame that he committed suicide at 41 years old.

I liked this film. It was filled with humour. You couldn’t help but like Alan Turing, which was odd because he pisses off everyone in the film. The cinema was reasonably full and I hope that everyone there realises just how much he contributed to our society and the world as a whole. The guy was stupendous. There were some obvious points of “dramatisation” and I am willing to forgives these. I guess when you make a film you have 120 minutes at most to get across certain stories and sometimes you have to compress what would really happen. Some parts felt a little clunky but it didn’t matter too much. This film is well worth seeing.

I rated this film a 9. This doesn’t fit into my rating scheme. This film is worth more than just its value as a film. It shows how mathematics and mathematicians change the world. Everything out there is influenced by our use of mathematics. It’s such a shame that mathematical ignorance is admired and boasted about in this country. “I can’t do maths” or “I was never any good at maths” are common things that people I meet say. What sort of society boasts of being innumerate?

This film highlights what our country did to homosexuals over the time it was deemed illegal by our society. We see this treatment and we should be rightly horrified. Yet, this treatment and far WORSE is going on in our world today. There are plenty of countries where homosexuality is illegal. I get angry when I think about this and the ignorance of people who run these countries. My solution? Education. Society and everyone needs to be educated to at least secondary level. The problem with that? An educated society tends to be a more liberal society, a less religious society. This causes control issues for leaders and governments. Notice how bigoted and mostly religious countries refuse to educate their populations. Currently the main offenders of religious leaders happen to be Muslim in our current time, however, Christianity and other religions have been equally guilty of repressing their populations in the past. All governments should be secular, giving their populations the choice of religion [or not].

A good education and free access to ANY books leads to equal rights for all.

Education leads to a wealthier country, greater life expectancy, lower population growth, lower fertility, greater stabilisation, higher GDP. Nothing in this list is bad. It just also happens to lead to people wanting more say in the rules that govern them.

Cracking the enigma code was kept secret for over 50 years as explain by the film. I already knew this. In fact we [the UK] didn’t tell anyone because there were plenty of governments still using the enigma machine for years after the second world war and we just quietly listened over all that time. Remarkable.

I thoroughly suggest that you read anything you can find about breaking the enigma code and Bletchley Park. It is a fascinating story.

Posted on

Akira

A few days ago I went to see the film “AKIRA” at the National Film Theatre on the South Bank. It was part of a Sci-Fi series of films they are showing. I have already rated it on IMDB because it is of my favourite films.

By the pure definition of my IMDB rating system Akira gets 10. This was the first time I have seen the film in a cinema but I have purchased it in many formats, VHS, DVD and Blu-Ray. I have the books. It is a film I have watched many times.

I think I first saw this film in around 1990 or 1991 or so. I remember John had a copy and we must have watched it one evening. I was instantly fascinated. It was a cartoon, hand drawn, but it was violent, it was futuristic, it had biker gangs, it had teenage angst, it looked bloody brilliant and I didn’t understand what the fuck was going on. Until that point cartoons had always been childish, happy, Disney and Looney Tunes. They left me nostalgic for my childhood and growing up. Cartoons used to be innocent, but incidentally full of violence. Akira changed all that. It, whatever it meant, was DIFFERENT.

I went and bought it on VHS.

Akira – the story of a post world war Tokyo where the government struggles to maintain power, religious sects rebel, biker gangs fight each other, the military experiments on telekinesis subjects and it all goes to shit-town. Who is Akira?

Every time I watch this film I see new things. I notice new stories. I am amazed by the ending. There aren’t many films that do this. I thoroughly recommend watching this but be prepared to be shocked and freaked out.

My next main memory of the film was living at Winchendon Road with the Fulham Five. Rich and I must have watched Akira at some point, it’s always worth seeing once every few years. This ANIME thing was rare, different, exciting and “underground”. Rich had read the story when it was released in magazines and we quite likely spent a while discussing the film, while wearing sunglasses in a dark room and with Megadeth playing. So, we found other Manga films, most notably

Urotsukidoji

It is at this point that you realise that Anime and Manga is different. It is great stuff but is quite likely to mess your head up a bit. None is the sort of film to show your parents.

Here’s a problem: Akira was my first Anime film. Akira is probably one of the best Anime films. Therefore, most films I see after that always fall short. I love the Japanese animation films. They still excite me and simultaneously make me question everything and I struggle to understand what it happening quite often.

A good Anime film leaves you stunned at the action and amazed by the story.

Posted on

Switching The Blue Sky

A short while back I wrote about changing broadband supplier. This is an update to that communication.

It is a few months since the new broadband internet connection started. It appears that my network has settled down tremendously since those early days.

All streaming, file sharing and music systems within the house seem to be working well. Large upload files are no longer causing connection issues.

Bandwidths seem to be approaching 650KB/s which translates to 5.2 Mb/s. This is not bad given my quite rural location and the aging connections within the village and house.

The Wi-Fi provided by the Sky router is pretty good. The signal dips a bit at the extremes of my house (top front room) but otherwise it is fine. The router connects everything that I need to be connected and my initial worries about a lack of “user” options have dissipated. This router and also the free EE one I had before both do a better job of routing that the £100 Netgear router I bought and have since sold on eBay.

Essentially, so far so good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So what.

Posted on

Newts

Went for a run earlier today. Coming up Rotary Hill I noticed some plastic fencing. It turns out that this is to catch newts and then relocate them away from an area where there is going to be a new water main. Here’s a picture in case you see some around your area, you’ll at least know what they are.

IMG_7523.JPG

Here’s a map showing where the fencing is and also the path that is Rotary Hill.

Newts Map

Posted on

Summer Time

In a room with a screen our main character speaks, a typewriter annoyingly clackers in the background not in time with his words.

IAN PARISH: I dislike the summer. I can cope with the standard two weeks of quite hot that we get. I can cope with the mugginess. I can cope with the grey overcast but sweaty days. I can cope with (mostly) men driving with one arm hanging out of the car window (normally t>22C for this). What really bothers me about summer is British Summer Time.

IAN PARISH (adopting a superior tone): I was raised to understand that when the sun is highest in the sky it is midday. Midday is also the time 12pm or 12:00 for most people.

NARRATOR: It was at this time that Ian Parish remembered moaning about midday some point in the near distant past. He opened another window on his browser and searched Fooyah.net for “midday”.

(On a screen the page entitled British Summer Time appears.)

NARRATOR: Ian Parish realises that he has written about this before. He wonders what he can add. Then he remembers. He remembers the best part of the Wikipedia page on British Summer Time.

IAN PARISH (slightly embarrassed): I can’t keep writing about the same things. My audience will think I’m crazy. Mind you, this BST-GMT thing really does annoy me. I’ll justify the communication with some NEW information.

IAN PARISH (striding around the room with purpose): There appears to be a bill to be put before the UK Parliament proposing an investigation into changing the clocks. The Bill looks to be about looking into the possible evidence for changing the clocks, then trialling clock changes to see what the benefits may be and then implementing whole-scale change.

IAN PARISH (working into a stupor): This is an excellent incident of scientific parliament and laws. The idea of trialling a particular policy to see what the REAL changes are and then following what the evidence says is almost the exact opposite of dogma driven government that we see at the moment. Thank goodness a very small minority of parliament understand how to get the best results. It’s a shame the bill will probably never pass.

AUDIENCE (following the words appearing on the screen): While we understand your point we don’t care enough. These things don’t bother us.

Fin

Posted on

Chin Strap

Chin StrapThis really is a headline on the BBC News website. There’s a picture below this of a piece of chewing gum.

Apparently two engineers have taken a pre-existing material and attached it to a chin strap. It then produced some electricity when the user used their jaw and it could feasibly be used to charge a device.

I don’t even know where to start being annoyed at this. While I am nearly impressed with their idea it seems ludicrous to me that you would wear something on your FACE that then required you to use your jaw constantly. SURELY there are other parts of a body that move further and more often. This would only work if you have to wear a chin strap for safety reasons anyway [definitely not Sikhs].

Most of my anger remains directed at the BBC. They are the premier news reporting service in the UK and yet they constantly produce shit like this. Is it really someone’s job to read science journals and then EXTRAPOLATE wildly to make some form of headline that will attract readers. I hate it. It’s lazy and not what a NEWS service is for.

Let’s see what the final line of the article is:

“This is just a proof of concept,” Dr Voix emphasised. “The power is very limited at the moment.”

If you have to include this in your story then it is NOT a story. Report on real science responsibly.

Posted on

Continuum

I intend for this to be a short communication. It is something that I often think when faced with many headlines proclaiming things to be wrong or right trying to give a sense of black and white.

A good simple lesson to remember for pretty much any issue you could face is:

It’s probably a continuum

Murder is wrong. Yes, most often, but there are grey areas, it could be argued that it is justified sometimes and the law takes account of that.
Stealing is wrong. Yes, but there are grey areas, the law takes account of that too.

As humans within a social structure we like to have rules and laws and we think we need them to maintain a cohesive structure. However, we do not apply these rules blindly. We use our sense of right and wrong (not given to us by god) and we decide on a case by case basis. It’s what our court system or individual judgement is for.

As an example:
I will set a detention if someone does not complete their homework to a good standard and on time. I would, however, be considered a bastard if that student had just lost a close family member and still punished him. I use my judgement to decide whether the punishment is morally correct to be applied.

Another example:
I might want to wear a political badge at work. Maybe it says “Save the NHS”. I don’t think that should be too much of a problem. Now suppose I was backing a slightly harsher political view “Stop All Immigration”. Should I be allowed to wear that? You can see there is a line or at least a point where the message says too much. That line might move from time to time. It’s hard to quantise where the line stands, it comes to judgement and it may be the case that one type of message is allowed and another similar isn’t.

The application of the rules is carefully considered and applied with a sense of fairness. We can not have fairness if we apply the rules rigidly.

Sometimes the rules are applied differently from time to time and each case is judged on its own merits. We like to “draw a line” we like to have hard and fast arrangements so we know where we stand but life isn’t like that and we should all appreciate that there is no “line” and even if we could say there was it would be wobbly and move around.

I think most about this argument when I hear of racism or discrimination. Let’s say there are counties where a black person isn’t allowed to sit at the front of the bus. How black do you have to be? How white do you have to be? The colour of us is a CONTINUUM. If I am white but have a black grandfather does that mean I can’t sit near the door of the bus. What an utterly ridiculous and pathetic way to classify people.

How about a place where homosexual people aren’t allowed. How homosexual do you need to be? How can they tell? Sexuality is a scale from strongly heterosexual to bisexual to strongly homosexual [it’s a CONTINUUM]. If you have had sex with someone of the same sex once does that make you gay? How many times would make you gay? This is another ridiculous way to classify people.

Nationality is another of these. If I am Scottish and live in Scotland I can vote in the upcoming referendum. How far into Scotland do I have to be born? If I was born in Longtown I would be English. If I was born in Gretna I would be Scottish. Where is the line. If my mother was giving birth and she straddled the border where would I be born. The matter of a couple of miles or even inches determines my entire identity? What a load of rubbish. Just ask the people of Alsace.

When this sort of argument is used it is called a FALSE DICHOTOMY. In mathematics answers are generally correct or not [although there ARE grey areas in mathematics]. On the whole your answer to a mathematical problem will be a dichotomy – correct or not. Whether you are blue eyed or you are not is a FALSE DICHOTOMY. How blue do your eyes need to be? What if one is not blue but the other is? What if you have specks of green in your eyes? It’s a ridiculous concept.

We seem to spend so much of our energies defining things using black and white statements and yet most of the time we ignore the grey areas. Every time we do humanity struggles.

Posted on

The Worst Reason

This communication deals with some ideas I have been having recently and I hope I put my argument across well.

In life and society we sometimes give people special dispensation from our general rules because we see there are special reasons. We allow disabled people to park closer to shops, we allow single dwellers to pay less council tax, we allow the poor to pay a lower rate of tax, we allow the young and the old to have cheaper travel. You get the idea.

It is right that we have varying rules and that we shouldn’t treat everyone the same. I think this is right because of my moral structure and that there is evidence to show that these actions improve the quality of life for those people. The justification for these dispensations is good.

If you are reading this you are probably aware that I don’t “believe” in a god or gods and therefore do not follow any form of religion. See the communication directly preceding this one. As there is no god everything that hangs on this premise is mistaken. All of the rules and societal requirements we have are unjustifiable using religion, holy books or holy men’s rantings. Some religious ideas are good but they can be derived from a general principle of “do good” and “do no harm”, principles which are humanistic rather than from a sole religion. If your argument for behaving a particular way ends with the line:

It says so in this good book

Or

My preacher/imam says so

then it’s time for you to appraise what else the book says.

I think it is wrong to make dispensations from our normal laws and rules for religious reasons. In fact, I think that dispensations for this reason are the worst form of dispensation and incongruent with a liberal society.

This communication and my view on these things was formed from the following events:

  • On a run one day I passed a building site. There were 4 people working on the site at the time and three of them had bright yellow safety hats on. The 4th person had a turban on. It would appear that he had special dispensation to wear this turban, probably for religious reasons. I do not understand this argument. If there is good evidence to show that wearing a turban gives as good protection as wearing a safety hat then I am ok with that but if the evidence doesn’t exist then why does religious requirements get a “free pass”?
  • In some places of work people ask for special dispensation to go to prayer at certain times during the day or they have rules about certain types of food. I do not understand why these religious reasons are special and can’t be questioned. Could I ask for dispensation from the canteen to avoid serving any form of pasta because I follow the Flying Spaghetti Monster? My argument for this is just as robust as any other religious argument.
  • I think it is morally wrong that dispensation is given to some abattoirs to avoid our rules on humanely  slaughtering animals because a religion requires animals to be killed in a certain way. If I can show you two slabs of meat, one slaughtered normally and one slaughtered using religious requirements and IF you can tell them apart then I would be seriously impressed. Mind you this still would not justify your reasons for wanting animals slaughtered inhumanely.

I am not using this communication to ridicule individual beliefs, oh, damn, I am! Oh well. Societies’ laws should be based on humanistic consensus and that is why we have a government and democracy here in the UK, for all its flaws. Over the last thousand years we have produced a decent liberal society even though we are a constitutional theocratic society because people who make the laws understand that religion should play no part in creating laws. As soon as laws are created for religious reasons we have lost our way [just read Leviticus].

If you want to use a religious reason to excuse a certain behaviour or to allow you to break the rules of our society then I will use the Church of the FSM to justify the rules I want to break. The argument is precisely the same. If you want to claim the FSM is not a REAL religion then I ask you to define what you mean by REAL religion.

Religion should play NO part in dispensation from laws and rules. It’s not an excuse.

Religion – Not An Excuse

Just in case some of you become offended at this then please consider what I have said. I haven’t called you stupid, I haven’t said you are wrong and I haven’t ridiculed your religion. I have said I don’t believe. My argument is that religion is not a reason for dispensation. Oh, look! I have given special dispensation to religious people in this post script. Tell you what: Your religion is wrong. It is not the truth. It is not the path to eternal life. Your preachers are wrong. It is not a reason for doing anything. There is no god. Get over it. You shouldn’t get special treatment because you believe in Zeus or whatever you call your god. Join our society and behave within its rules or leave.

Posted on

Evidence – How To Change My Mind

Let’s take something that is quite obviously a load of rubbish: Homoeopathy. I will now state the following:

Homoeopathy does not work

My reasoning for homoeopathy goes as follows:

  • Implausible (there is no prior plausibility that suggests HOW it should work)
  • No good scientific evidence to show it works

I want to make the following clear:

I would love for homoeopathy to work. It would revolutionise medicine and curing people and it would also create whole new areas of physics for us to learn about.

However, the evidence does not show it works. The gold standard of medical trials, double blind random controlled, all show negative. See my “discussion“.

If you can show me the evidence and it needs to be good evidence then I would be willing to change my mind. I will shout it from the rooftops and I will become your cheerleader. I will work tirelessly for your cause because it would be so wonderful.

If you can show me the evidence I will change my mind.

I think that’s quite a simple rule to live by. It does mean I have to be able to evaluate the quality of evidence and I could make mistakes there, but I am willing to correct myself.

If what you are suggesting is a quite remarkable “new thing” then the evidence needs to also be quite remarkable to persuade me. If what you are suggesting adds to my current understanding then it will take a normal amount evidence. This is not to say I am closed minded. I would love to be wrong about many of the things I currently know are not true. It would be a brilliant and happy thing to be shown good evidence for something you say is true. As I mentioned earlier I would happily change my mind. Here’s a list of types of evidence ranging from very bad to good:

  • Anecdote [NOT evidence. NOT even interesting]
  • Testimony [NOT evidence. Human memory is remarkably poor at recalling what happened]
  • Human Experience [NOT evidence. We can only explain the world within our understanding]
  • A single experiment or non-blinded medical trial [an interesting start but NOT fact]
  • Results of single experiment reproduced by teams working separately [Good evidence]
  • A medical trial which is controlled [still more interesting]
  • Results of different reproducible experiments leading to same conclusion [this can go in stone]
  • Results of large scale double-blinded placebo controlled medical trial NOT paid for by pharmaceutical company [expect the results to lower efficacy a bit over time but this is a good treatment]

The wonderful thing about this process of requiring evidence, oh I know, let’s call it the scientific method, is that it does not rely on me believing. The truth is there whether I believe it or not. A scientist working in Japan should come to the same conclusions as a scientist working in Brazil. The scientific method leads us to knowledge whatever our social and cultural background.

A good place to start when faced with something you understand to be quite fanciful is to ask for the VERY BEST evidence for the thing. If this is poor, then walk away. Do NOT accept the following argument:

Oh, the effects are subtle and can’t be measured.

If the effects are that subtle that they can’t be measured by scientific means then they don’t exist. We observe our world and we do our best to understand it and measure it. If you can’t measure it then it deserves to be rubbished. Just because someone believes it dearly it doesn’t mean it’s any more true. Aren’t we doing them an injustice by not educating them?

Posted on

Heuristic

This Fooyah communication is going to deal, on a basic level, with too much stuff. It is part of a series that I have been working up to for a long time explaining the way I think about things and how it is the correct way to think about things. I expect to expand on many of these themes over the coming dark months.

My recent communications including those about Osteopathy, Special K, Multitasking, Losing Mass and my Homoeopathic Discussion have all required a reasonable amount of knowledge and also some research.

I often mention that all claims should be appraised critically. I am not advocating cynicism, merely that we have the right to reserve judgement until we have investigated things ourselves. I think there are some basic areas of life where we can do this with little effort. Most claims on adverts can be investigated to see how they stand up to scrutiny. Claims made by friends can be investigated using the internet and maybe even a library!

I have been listening to sceptical podcasts for about 8 years now, moving from one to another as I hear about new ones. I have heard many discussions about the evidence for certain claims made in all walks of life and I think I have a good grasp of reality. Spending all that time listening to people explain logical fallacies and scientific evidence and how we know what we know has given me a good tool box to use to ask the rights questions and find out for myself. I have also read a number of scientific books explaining the meaning of evidence and the scientific method. Again, these have given me a good understanding of what it takes to be a sceptical thinker. I am, of course, open to biases like all people but I try to use the evidence available to question those and seek what is the real world.

Now, I can’t be an expert in many things, in fact I would argue I am an expert in none. I have developed heuristics. I have tools that I use to shortcut my knowledge process. There are certain people and presenters whom I trust and when they say they have looked at the evidence and come to a certain conclusion then I listen. I understand fully that one day they may be wrong but their credentials are good for now.

I also rely on the self correcting nature of science. About a year ago there was a story that made the news all over the world. Scientists had discovered particles travelling faster than the speed of light. This headline appeared everywhere. I was instantly worried as nothing should be able to travel faster than the speed of light [information can’t if you want to get technical]. The scientists weren’t that sure of their results and had opened the problem out to the press and the world, but it was reported as fact. Over the next year many people investigated it and they found the mistake. The particles hadn’t travelled past Einstein. Was this celebrated in the world’s press as a great achievement of the scientific method? No. It was consigned to page 13 in a tiny paragraph. Science corrects itself, that’s the great thing about it.

If I hear a claim that I think is dubious or not, then I do not pass instant judgement. I will investigate myself if it is approachable and see what the evidence is. If it is beyond my understanding then I will rely on others within the community to offer their understanding of what the evidence is and what that means.

In the case of news reporting around the world it is hard to investigate this myself and so I have to rely on the news organisations. This is why I look at quality broadsheet websites and the BBC website. I often rant about the BBC New service as they are meant to be the best but they fail [in my view] so often. For their “what’s going on in the world” section I have to trust them at the moment. There isn’t really any other news organisation that is comparable. It will be interesting over the next few years as social media tries to form a coherent news machine, but I fear it will be controlled by corporations and governments, restricting the views and news that we see.

We all have heuristics. Mine takes me on a journey of learning to seek the evidence.

The great thing about science is that it is right whether you agree with it or not.

Places to seek the truth:

Read some books:

By Robert Park
Voodoo Science: The Road from foolishness to Fraud (Oxford, 2000)
Superstition: Belief in the Age of Science (Princeton, 2008)

By Carl Sagan
Demon Haunted World

By Ben Goldacre
Bad Science
Bad Pharma

By Michael Shermer
Why People Believe Weird Things

These books will start to give you the mental tools to evaluate and critically appraise information that is presented to you. This is not an easy journey, takes time and is never complete.

Privacy Policy Proudly powered by WordPress