Silent Running: Electric and Hybrid Cars Too Quiet ?

 General, Media  1 Response »
Nov 032009
 

You know I was going to jump up and down shouting I told you so … except I cannot find the post from ages ago where I pointed out that this might be a problem (extra points to anyone who finds the link!). The BBC has just had a story about the dangers to visually impaired people from “quiet cars” – hybrids and electric vehicles. Actually of course it is just about everyone who finds it helpful to hear cars coming – indeed I will listen to my iPod on “mono” in certain situations to ensure I get an early warning from the noise of approaching vehicles.

Whilst loud vehicles are an enormous pain and I certainly would not want to encourage their use. The person who invented car stereos loud enough to cause nearby buildings to shake – and yes they can get that loud – needs to be tied down and forced to listen to my choice of music for a few weeks. So called silent cars do also cause problems; in fact a certain amount of noise results from the tyres running along the road. We are used to relying on sound to assist us in locating moving vehicles; in some cases it is the only sense we can rely on.

Apparently Lotus engineers have come up with a nifty system that generates noise that varies according to the amount acceleration the driver is applying. Sorry guys, you’ve been sniffing petrol fumes too much. Whilst the driver may be impressed by the feedback he (or she) gets when they press the acceleration pedal, the rest of us are more interested in the speed of the vehicle. Sound effects for the driver are all very well (when played inside the car) but rather out of scope for this discussion.

It would not be difficult to make hybrid and electric cars generate a noise when they are moving nearly silently. And the most sensible thing to do is to standardise the noise generation before we end up with a confusing variety of different sounds and volumes. The simplest is to have a tone generated when a vehicle is moving that starts low in pitch at low speeds and rises in pitch as the speed increases. Think old-fashioned milk floats.

Professor Nutt’s Attack on UK Drugs Policy

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Nov 012009
 

It is now clear that the UK’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs is in danger of disintegration as additional members seem to be considering (or have) resigned in protest at the sacking of Professor Nutt and the seemingly arbitrary decisions made by the Government on the use of recreational drug use.  There has long been a suspicion that the Government’s (all UK governments and not just the most recent one!) decisions on which drugs should be legal and which ones illegal, is based more on which ones are acceptable to the establishment and which ones are not.

The UK’s system of drugs laws is based around three classes of drugs (A, B, and C) with a decreasing scale of punishments for misuse from the harshest for the use of the most harmful drugs (class A) to the lightest punishment for the least harmful (class C). Or rather it should be.

Both the classification of Ecstasy (as class A) and the re-classification of cannabis (from C to B) were made by ignoring the scientific advice and paying more attention to media hysteria. Both are classified higher than the risk of taking them justifies. What other drugs have been classified inappropriately?

If the government wants to make arbitrary decisions on drugs classifications, they need to get honest and get rid of the whole classification system. And they need to stop taking advice from scientists – taking advice and then ignoring it wastes a great deal of time on those who formulate the advice, and if the advice is ignored there is no point in getting it.

Alternatively, the government needs to accept the advice of the experts and get the politicians out of the loop. Even to go so far as to include legal drugs into the classification system. For instance why are not alcohol and tobacco not classified appropriately ? They could be classified according to their harm with a special note that they are legal for practical reasons.

Over the weekend, the criticisms of Professor Nutt can be split into two.

The first criticism is that he shouldn’t have said what he said as a government advisor. Well I’m sure Professor Nutt knows this, knew he would be sacked for saying what he said, and felt that he had to say it anyway. He has certainly managed to ignite a debate on the subject.

The second criticism is that he is wrong that drugs such as cannabis are less harmful than the drugs they are classified with. First of all Professor Nutt was not saying that cannabis is harmless; he was saying that it’s harm does not justify it being classified as class B (it should be C instead). Secondly those criticising him seem to think that their personal (bad) experience with cannabis invalidates the scientific evidence.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Scientific evidence (on drug use) is about moving beyond personal experience both good and bad, and getting to the truth on the level of risk. There are many who would claim that cannabis is harmless because it hasn’t caused them any harm (man), and some who would claim it is very harmful because it has harmed them. Both are wrong – cannabis is harmful, but the amount of harm considering the number of users is very low.

As an analogy, the use of aspirin can cause stomach ulcers, stomach bleeding, and tinnitus. Rather extreme for curing a little headache! Perhaps aspirin should be banned ? Of course not – the benefit far outweighs the risk.

In an ideal world, the current fuss over Professor Nutt’s lecture and drugs policy will result in seeing some sanity in drug prohibition – perhaps even we would see the legalisation of drugs (prohibition probably causes far more harm to society as a whole than the harm resulting from drug use). However it is more likely that we will see more gross stupidity.

Human Rights, Human Wrongs

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Oct 312009
 

Just been watching a certain episode of Battlestar Galactica involving the attempted rape of a prisoner. A machine prisoner – a “toaster”, so that’s alright isn’t it ?

Well perhaps not.

Considering the morality of a bunch of mythical rapists in a TV programme set in a mythical universe with technology that is impossible at our current understanding of science is kind of kinky, but it does cover something that we will have to consider sooner or later. Quite possibly sooner than we think.

Are people making robotic sex toys ? Quite possibly. How “intelligent” are these possible robots? Not intelligent at all according to the current state of the art. But if machine intelligence is possible (in the future), will someone ever make an intelligent sex toy ? Almost certainly.

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At what point do we start to consider whether it is right to use an intelligent sex toy that has decided it doesn’t want to ? Before it is possible, or after it has happened ? I would say we need to consider such things now before they happen.

To me it is perfectly plain that anything that is sufficiently intelligent to understand what is happening and to express a wish that it not take place, is entitled to have their wishes respected. Or to put it another way, anyone who is capable of ‘raping’ a machine is not the kind of person many would feel safe around.

We are used to the idea that we need to respect the rights of other humans and that anyone that does not is sick in some way. But are those rights given because the subject is human or because they are sapient (by which I mean intelligent to the level of humans) ? Not an easy question to answer because almost by definition, the terms are current interchangeable. But that may not always be the case.

At present, either an intelligent machine or an intelligent alien presumably has no rights on this planet – it is perfectly legal to rob, kill, or rape them. This is analogous to the situation in the past where some people were under the impression that some segments of the human race were less deserving of rights than others. Whilst denying non-human sapients rights is not racist, it still feels wrong.

Of course such an entity would have to respect our rights in addition to us respecting their rights. Perhaps that should be the condition of full sapient rights – the ability to respect the rights of others.

I say full sapient rights because there are another category of rights that we need to consider and be aware of – sentient rights. For more information on this, see the very worthwhile Great Ape Project.

Cross Apogee Pen

 General  No Responses »
Oct 282009
 

So I decided to treat myself to a decent pen for a change. A Cross Apogee rollerball (specifically with gel ink which I’m a very big fan of) …

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It is a little fatter than I’m used to but it is already feeling pretty comfortable. It is a heavy pen, enhancing the feeling of quality. If you are considering getting a decent pen, the Apogee could well be a decent candidate.

A Quick Look At The Q Accoustics QTV-2

 General  No Responses »
Oct 282009
 

I am not an audiophile – perhaps indicated by buying a QTV-2 rather than something more “serious”. I certainly did not want some sort of complicated setup that required tons of wires and another complicated remote control. So the QTV-2 looked like a fairly simple way of improving the audio on my TV without going to a great deal of effort.

So I took a chance and bought one. It’s a large box when it turns up, and unpacking it reveals the speakers themselves – packaged in a flat array designed to bolt onto the back of the TV, various accessories including a bewildering array of bolts, washers and “spacers”. I instantly thought “Uh oh! Looks complicated”, but it turns out that most of the bolts and washers are unnecessary – they’re provided to allow the speakers to be strapped to the back of a range of different TVs. So why cannot TV manufacturers come up with a standard fixing mechanism ?

After spending about 30 minutes connecting the speakers to the back of the TV – fairly easy, although I would have one of those TVs whose connectors are a little obscured by the speakers! After a brief attempt to use the the RCA connectors (unsuccessful because I could not be bothered to hunt down the TV manual!), I resorted to the headphone connector and managed to get the sound working.

For a while I was listening BBC News 24 (or whatever we are supposed to call it now), and immediately noticed that I could lower the volume and still hear the talking much more distinctly than with the TVs speakers. In addition the sound seemed to fill the room much more.

Switching to a film (2001 on Blueray), started to show the benefit of the subwoofer  much greater bass; probably a touch too much, but that will be because of the sound adjustments for the TV speakers. But the overall effect was far greater detail in the sound and a greater ability to speech even when mixed in with other sound.

Overall, worth having if you are not interested in a full home cinema system. It greatly increases the clarity and quality of sound over standard TV speakers. In fact in a noisy environment such as my flat (with a high volume of traffic outside the window), it is possible to decrease the volume and yet still hear the sound from the TV clearer than before.

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