So this week we've had a Big Huge Scare about bombs in cargo. And two comedians held the sanest rally for a long time in Washington (complete with some excellent banners).
The two are linked in my mind: Over there, in the land of black and white and who shouts wins, there appears to be a growing movement that's saying: "Wait, I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that. We'll need to think and act rationally to get past this". Over here, we've got the land of Swinging Cuts and We're All In This Together But Some Of You Are More In It Than Us. And the reverse side of that is: oh please cut them, but not me. Which goes all ways.
Far be it from me to question either the media or our beloved masters in power, but I know that if I was genuinely interested in defeating terrorism, I'd stop letting bastards and twerps terrorise me. Sure, bad things happen and bad people cause them. But we *found* these bombs, and I guarantee you it wasn't a lucky search - someone somewhere said something to someone who could do something about it. This is the way intelligence works in the real world - it's very very boring and we normally only ever find out about it when it goes wrong (which, being a human institution, it's bound to every now and again). This feels different: this feels like someone *else* has taken a deliberate decision to let the populace know just how much danger they're in, and how much they need more security blankets passing out. I note even now that our beloved Home Secretary has announced "a review" and I'm damn sure it won't come back with a "meh, bad things happen, we caught it, it's good enough" conclusion.
Oh no, not now. When the choice is between behaving rationally and refusing to be frightened or to cause others to become more fearfull, and shouting loudly at the top of our voices how terrible things are and how you must give more money and power to those trying to stop it, I know which way the wind is blowing.
On this side of the pond we've still got a way to go downhill into shouty polarising idiocy before we can think about rallying our Sanity.
2010-10-26
Having Something To Say
Prestadidwicks Angina. Do you know someone who suffers? What a terrible affliction...
2010-10-15
My car Lies to me
I was inordinately pleased, like a small child with a new toy, to discover this page on Teh Intarwebs the other day. It gives childishly simple instructions for turning one's VW Climatronic system into a diagnostic interface to the ECU and other sub-systems, and then on interpreting what 2 little numeric LCDs are telling you.
What I found most interesting about this wasn't a dynamic update on the AirCon's refrigerant pressure (2.8 bar rising to nearly 6 as the system got up to speed) but that the diagnostics provides a readout of values you can see on the main dials - RPM, Speed, water temperature etc. The speed one was *most* interesting.
As a matter of law, all speedos are required to *never* under-read speed. Because nothing's ever absolutely accurate, in practice this means that when your car says you're doing 70, you're probably doing something between 66-69 MPH (there's a 10% variance allowed provided the speedo is over-reading). This is fine, we can all accept this from a safety perspective. Those of us nerds with external speed measuring devices - or GPS / SatNavs as they're more commonly known - have observed this effect for years. My car's speed is adjusted such that 74MPH indicated (and set on the Cruise Control if I wish) is 70MPH true, according to the (accurate to ~1MPH in steady-state conditions) Sat Nav I've got on the dash.
But here's where it gets interesting: The car's diagnostic screen, value 19-1 gives current speed in MPH. And from observation this *exactly* matches SatNav. So with cruise at 74, speedo at 74 indicated, this diagnostic shows 70. In other words, the sensors in my car (it's all electronic these days) go to the trouble of picking up an accurate external speed (by wheel rotation speed no doubt), which is probably recorded and used against me internally, but then goes to the trouble of adding on 10% or so for display on the speedo dial.
Or put it more accurately: My car is actively lying to me about how fast I'm going.
What I found most interesting about this wasn't a dynamic update on the AirCon's refrigerant pressure (2.8 bar rising to nearly 6 as the system got up to speed) but that the diagnostics provides a readout of values you can see on the main dials - RPM, Speed, water temperature etc. The speed one was *most* interesting.
As a matter of law, all speedos are required to *never* under-read speed. Because nothing's ever absolutely accurate, in practice this means that when your car says you're doing 70, you're probably doing something between 66-69 MPH (there's a 10% variance allowed provided the speedo is over-reading). This is fine, we can all accept this from a safety perspective. Those of us nerds with external speed measuring devices - or GPS / SatNavs as they're more commonly known - have observed this effect for years. My car's speed is adjusted such that 74MPH indicated (and set on the Cruise Control if I wish) is 70MPH true, according to the (accurate to ~1MPH in steady-state conditions) Sat Nav I've got on the dash.
But here's where it gets interesting: The car's diagnostic screen, value 19-1 gives current speed in MPH. And from observation this *exactly* matches SatNav. So with cruise at 74, speedo at 74 indicated, this diagnostic shows 70. In other words, the sensors in my car (it's all electronic these days) go to the trouble of picking up an accurate external speed (by wheel rotation speed no doubt), which is probably recorded and used against me internally, but then goes to the trouble of adding on 10% or so for display on the speedo dial.
Or put it more accurately: My car is actively lying to me about how fast I'm going.
2010-10-11
Ad Hominem
Andrew Marr's got big ears.
And getting all up the in the face about one constituency - Bloggers - is completely disingenuous. 90% of everything is crap (Sturgeon's Law), including his own field. See Nick Davies' "Flat Earth News" for an excellent if thoroughly depressing explanation of why.
Anyway, Do Not Feed The Troll.
And getting all up the in the face about one constituency - Bloggers - is completely disingenuous. 90% of everything is crap (Sturgeon's Law), including his own field. See Nick Davies' "Flat Earth News" for an excellent if thoroughly depressing explanation of why.
Anyway, Do Not Feed The Troll.
2010-10-08
Tokenism
Stories like this one on the BBC website set me off something chronic. Let us not dwell on the particular details in this case, but focus on the wider concerns.
We live in a very, very shallow world. Complex issues must be brought down to black & white, right & wrong, in an instant to capture the fleeting attention of the fickle masses before moving on to the next story.
But we're adults, we're intelligent beings. We can observe the world and what goes on and understand that most things don't have simple yes/no, right/wrong positions. There's a bit of truth in both sides of a position; positive things to be said even for the views of those most unlike us.
And yet we've taken this yes/no 5-minute-debate-and-the-problem's-sorted, boiled-down-to-a-10-second-soundbite presentation of all the world's various troubles and it's become institutionalised. If the problem's only presented as a shallow face-value issue, then we only need to take shallow face-value steps to resolve it, right?
Bankers take risks and get big bonuses? Oh, legislate the bonuses away and the problem's solved. Never mind tackling the risk-taking culture that underlies the industry, or the fact that the industry is able to take such rewards without contributing much back to the society that enables it in the first place, that's hard and requires thought and effort. The news picks out a 1-in-a-million brutality and blurts it at us for days? Well, all adults are suspect and we'll legislate their access to minors at all times. Never mind that most bad things that happen to kids are caused by people they know and trust - that would require a functional society to support families in trouble and provide guidance and assistance instead of blame and hate.
And then we get to the fluff. Population Sub-Group X are under-represented in Power Structure Y. So we'll just mandate that there must be "n" members of X promoted / appointed to Y. Never mind whether there are better candidates with more appropriate skills & experience. Never mind whether Group X has been empowered and given access to the resources necessary to make a good fist of being in Y.
Never mind what the longer term consequences are for a society which is learning that you don't need skills, or experience, or intelligence to solve complex problems. You just need a transiently plausible Issue, a loud voice, and access to Media to sort it out.
I really, really should know better than to let this get to me. Aren't I old enough and cynical enough to just let it pass me by and get on with my taudry life?
We live in a very, very shallow world. Complex issues must be brought down to black & white, right & wrong, in an instant to capture the fleeting attention of the fickle masses before moving on to the next story.
But we're adults, we're intelligent beings. We can observe the world and what goes on and understand that most things don't have simple yes/no, right/wrong positions. There's a bit of truth in both sides of a position; positive things to be said even for the views of those most unlike us.
And yet we've taken this yes/no 5-minute-debate-and-the-problem's-sorted, boiled-down-to-a-10-second-soundbite presentation of all the world's various troubles and it's become institutionalised. If the problem's only presented as a shallow face-value issue, then we only need to take shallow face-value steps to resolve it, right?
Bankers take risks and get big bonuses? Oh, legislate the bonuses away and the problem's solved. Never mind tackling the risk-taking culture that underlies the industry, or the fact that the industry is able to take such rewards without contributing much back to the society that enables it in the first place, that's hard and requires thought and effort. The news picks out a 1-in-a-million brutality and blurts it at us for days? Well, all adults are suspect and we'll legislate their access to minors at all times. Never mind that most bad things that happen to kids are caused by people they know and trust - that would require a functional society to support families in trouble and provide guidance and assistance instead of blame and hate.
And then we get to the fluff. Population Sub-Group X are under-represented in Power Structure Y. So we'll just mandate that there must be "n" members of X promoted / appointed to Y. Never mind whether there are better candidates with more appropriate skills & experience. Never mind whether Group X has been empowered and given access to the resources necessary to make a good fist of being in Y.
Never mind what the longer term consequences are for a society which is learning that you don't need skills, or experience, or intelligence to solve complex problems. You just need a transiently plausible Issue, a loud voice, and access to Media to sort it out.
I really, really should know better than to let this get to me. Aren't I old enough and cynical enough to just let it pass me by and get on with my taudry life?
2010-10-05
Cough Cough Cough Cough
Cough cough cough cough.
Thanks, youngest daughter. And thank you, education system, for giving her the opportunity to bring this cold home to her family.
That is all.
Thanks, youngest daughter. And thank you, education system, for giving her the opportunity to bring this cold home to her family.
That is all.
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