More Zonkyness

Author: Mike Meredith

  • Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science

    First of all, a little apology … I’m no expert Mathematician, was pretty dire at Physics, and I’m no great name in Computer Science. In fact the “physics” here could be any science that makes use of mathematics as a tool. Now for the really scary part … I’m going to be talking about equations.

    At least some of the unpopularity of Physics has something to do with the equations that can be found in it. There is no getting around it, Physics and other sciences cannot be really called “science” without equations. But I do believe that physicists do make their equations a little too mysterious :-

    e = m c ^ 2

    (apologies for not using real symbols there)

    Now that is one of the better known equations from physics, but were it one that was less well-known the general reaction would be “eh?”. Does the obscurity of the variables here help ?

    When I was learning to write programs, I quickly came to the realisation that using descriptive variables was the start of writing understandable code and went some way to documenting what was going on. It is all very well writing a piece of code with less expressive variables but it makes understanding what you wrote some weeks (or months) ago much harder.

    The use of obscure variables come from Maths where you start with equations like :-

    x ^ 2 = 9

    Now Maths (as I understand it) is basically a set of puzzles that have to be solved using the techniques of Maths; those techniques and the puzzles are divorced from any real problems. The use of deliberately inscrutable variables is by design.

    Which way should sciences that use equations go ? The way that Maths goes with inscrutable variable names, or the way of software engineering with descriptive variables ? Historically sciences have gone down the route in common with Maths; understandably enough, but why not try descriptive names. Isn’t an equation like :-

    Energy = Mass * Speed of Light ^ 2

    … far more understandable, and possibly just a little bit less scary to those put off by equations ? If changing to descriptive variables brings a few more young people into the study of science, is that a good reason for using them. I think so.

  • US Writer’s Strike: Something A Little Odd …

    There is something a little odd about the Writer’s Guild Of America’s strike for a better deal on “residuals”. In fact there are a couple of odd things about it. Not that I am against what they are trying to accomplish … anyone who wants to fight the big studios for whatever reason has me at least half on their side before I’ve started to think. And what they are trying to get sounds more than a little reasonable.

    The first odd thing is that the workers are trying to get a bigger share of the profits. Not a share but a bigger one! Now there are other industries where workers can sometimes get a share of the profits, but it is very rare. Now why is that ? It would seem both sensible and fair to give the workers a cut of the profits … after all profits cannot be made without workers to make a ‘product’. But perhaps the bosses are too greedy to cut their workers in.

    I am sure an apologist for the corrupt capitalist system will claim that entrepreneurs deserve to be rewarded for the great risk they are taking when starting an enterprise, and that share-holders also deserve a reward for the risk they take. Maybe so, but workers also deserve some of the reward.

    Of course the writers of the WGA are already more successful than many other workers; one suspects this is because they are on the “posh” side of the pool of workers. Can you imagine coal miners getting a similar deal ?

    The other odd thing about the whole issue is just how much support the WGA seems to get in their strike action. The US is not the first place one thinks of as places sympathetic to organised labour. In fact you would expect to see large numbers of US citizens frothing at the mouth with outrage at cheek of the workers. Perhaps this is again something to do with how writers are perceived as opposed to coal miners ?

    Or perhaps the bosses in this particular case are so widely hated that even their natural supporters in politics (the Republicans) do not want to be seen supporting them.

  • The Modern Celebrity World

    ‘I met the well connected, the powerful and the rich; I saw little to envy or, indeed, much to admire; we were being lionised by a class of society with which we had little in common’ — Edmund Hillary

    I recently read Ian Bone’s blog (a good place to go for some fresh ideas) entry on Edmund Hillary and space exploration. I was particularly taken with the quote above, and wondered about how many ordinary people have been given a glimpse into the inside of the celebrity world and recoiled with the kind of exclamation that might pop out when you lift a foot for inspection to realise that you’ve trodden in something from the bowels of a particularly unwell dog and that it is busy climbing up your jeans towards your knee.

    Note that I am not talking about those who have dived head-first into the trough of the celebrity world only to discover that there are disadvantages in being a celebrity … such as a constant ‘tail’ of paparazzi busy taking photos of you when you would rather they were taking photos of someone else. Such people almost deserve their treatment although the existence of paparazzi is a symptom of some sort of disease.

    I don’t particularly begrudge those with genuine talent being rewarded for doing what they do, although one does tend to worry about a society that values someone who makes people laugh greater than someone who saves their life. But these days the celebrity world seems to be populated not only by those with some level of talent, but also by those who are famous for no real reason I can figure out. I am not talking about those whose talents run in directions I don’t like … such as business or architecture, but those who really lack any form of talent whatsoever except possibly the “talent” of picking the right people to sleep with.

    Mind you the world of celebrity does seem to be heavily loaded in favour of those who are good at proclaiming how important they are, rather than with those who genuinely deserve the respect of the rest of society. Some of those in the celebrity world are there because they work in industries that thrive on publicity … I am thinking specifically of actors. Perhaps those who end up being celebrities because they are actors or musicians should try to bring more normal people into the celebrity world … those who deserve to be honoured but who are unlikely to trumpet their own worthiness.

  • Facebook And Online Privacy

    Today the UK’s Information Commissioner announced that today’s young (and in some cases not so young!) are putting their future careers at risk with some of their ‘riskier’ posts on social networking sites such as Facebook. In addition they pointed out that they were risking identity theft by putting so much personal information online.

    It is worth mentioning that information can live online for a very long time … forever if the people behind Archive.Org have their way. This is not necessarily a bad thing although it can come as a nasty shock to realise just how shallow one was as a youth!

    But do employers really care what people put on their Facebook profiles ? Well I dare say some do, but they probably should not. I’ve had more than my fair share of ‘youthful excesses’ in the distant past, but I’ve been a reasonably productive employee for all of that time. Now some more conservative companies may be worried about people making an association between their Facebook profile and the company they work for … fair enough. It seems perfectly reasonable to have a policy to say that one’s Facebook profile should not be linked to one’s place of work.

    But not to employ someone because their Facebook profile looks a little wild ? That probably counts as cutting off one’s nose to spite your face! And quite possibly may count as age discrimination!

    Now I come to identity theft. It is true that having too many personal details online may well make you more subject to identity theft which is a serious problem (although not a new one!). But is eliminating personal details online the right way of tackling the problem ? We have also seen this week that people can be subjected to the risk of identity theft through no fault of their own. Those who do not follow computer security news closely, may not realise that this is a story that is regularly repeated although not usually on such a scale.

    Whilst being careful about putting personal details online is undoubtedly good practice (because no other solution is going to arrive quickly) we need to think about better ways of defending against identity theft other than hiding personal details. I have no ideal how this might be done in detail, although one obvious thing occurs … to have multiple ‘keys’ which serve different purposes … perhaps a government ‘key’, a financial ‘key’, a ‘social networking key’ (for things like Facebook and online forums), and a ‘key’ to be used for employer identity purposes. Seperating these ‘keys’ would limit the damage if a leak did occur … essentially you would need to steal multiple ‘keys’ to steal someone’s identity.

    The problem of identity theft is only going to get worse unless we do something better in the future. Basing one’s identity on things like address, birth date, etc. is not going to be anywhere near like secure enough. It has always been possible to steal someone’s identity if you have these details, but the pervasiveness of IT systems makes it easier.

    In the computer security world there is a truism that ‘security through obscurity is no security at all’, and what we are currently doing to protect our identity is attempting to practice security through obscurity.

  • Japan To Start Slaughtering Humpback Whales

    It has recently been announced that the Japanese government has decided to start killing humpback whales for ‘scientific’ research.

    Of course nobody with more than half a brain cell really believes that any kind of serious research takes place with the whales that Japan catches. Ignoring all the other whales than Japan catches, what kind of research needs fifty humpbacks?

    The truth is that the Japanese government is lying through it’s teeth when it claims that their whaling boats are slaughtering whales for scientific research. It is really just commercial whaling by another name. Which of course is banned by international treaty.

    Strangely the Japanese government has to publicise the ‘benefits’ of torturing whales to death for food because there is not as much demand for whale meat as their existing ‘scientific’ research supplies. So why do they need to add humpback whales to the larder ? Seems that Japanese politicians can give politicians everywhere a good challenge when it comes to knuckle-dragging stupidity.

    The Japanese government has labelled those who protest against the hunting of whales ‘environmental terrorists’ which is a bit rich considering the protesters do not try to kill anyone! But if we’re going to start splattering the ‘terrorist’ label around wildly, the phrase ‘environmental terrorists’ works quite well for the Japanese government.