Remember the Blitz; Remember Gernika!

 Politics  No Responses »
Sep 072010
 

Today there has been a lot of coverage of the London Blitz that started 70 years ago today; where the Nazi’s war machine began waging total war against civilians in London. But perhaps we should look a little deeper than the media’s claim that this was the beginning of a new era in total warfare.

Pcasso's Gernica

Picasso’s Gernica.

Despite the media’s claim that the London Blitz was the dawn of a new era of warfare against civilians, the terror-killing of civilians had been practised earlier by the Nazi’s during the Spanish Civil War – at Gernika (note that I use the Basque spelling which seems more natural to us odd-ball English people). This happened three years earlier than the London Blitz in 1937 and in retrospect was clearly a honing of tactics by the Nazis.

The scale of course was quite different – between 400 to 1600 people were killed at Gernika whereas the London Blitz killed around 20,000 civilians with even more killed in other cities in the UK. We should remember the victims of the Blitz both in London and elsewhere, but we should also remember the Basque victims of the Nazi terror bombing and their other victims too.

Perhaps we need to have a national day of mourning for the victims of all such terror bombings of civilians.

Science’s Blunders – Not !

 Media, Science  No Responses »
Sep 072010
 

I happened to come across this piece of garbage blaming a whole bunch of things on science. Turns out that almost everything in their list is due to things other than science. In order :-

Challenger

Whilst unfortunate, and in fact inevitable – something like space would eventually result in deaths because it is an inherently risky activity – there is nothing about the Challenger disaster that can be blamed on science. The engineering of the O-ring seal wasn’t up to scratch and poor decisions allowed Challenger to be launched in weather conditions that encouraged the O-ring seal failure.

No science in sight. There is a school of thought that anything big and shiny is science, whereas in truth it is big engineering.

Darsee and Slutsky and Fraud, Oh My!, The Debendox Debacle, Nuclear Winter of Our Discontent, Piltdown Chicken

Here we have four separate “sins” of science which boil down to the fact that some scientists have fabricated results. Whilst that is definitely bad, and in the worst cases these “scientists” can cause the deaths of numerous people, science itself isn’t in the wrong here. What is at fault is a tiny handful of scientists. Which just goes to show that scientists are human and just as fallible as your neighbourhood plumber.

If your neighbourhood plumber turns out to be a bit of a crook and in the habit of overcharging for work done, do we blame plumbing ? No we do not.

Statistics for Dummies

Here we have an example of statistics being used incorrectly and incorrect conclusions being made from those statistics. This is hardly the first example of such a mistake in using statistics and statisticians have been growling about such foolish things for probably several centuries.

Notice I haven’t mentioned science in that paragraph. There’s a good reason for that – whilst scientists may well (and hopefully do) use statistics as an analytical tool, statistics itself is not science. It’s not a branch of science; it’s a branch of mathematics.

Blaming science for poor use of statistics is hardly fair!

Skipping over “Very Cold Fusion” section as it concerns yet another couple of so-called scientists rather than science itself, we get to …

Chernobyl

So we have a situation where people who do not follow the operating procedure for a nuclear reactor and unintentionally cause a run-away chain reaction. No science here either.

Just your standard poor decision making.

Currents That Don’t Kill

Ah! Here we actually have an example of science! A number of studies into the effects of living close to power lines shows that there is no significant effect from living close by.

So where is the poor science here ? Scientists did exactly what they are supposed to do – when presented with a theory (“power lines generate electrical fields that are dangerous”) they tested that theory and found it false. Whether it was true or not, here we have an example of science doing exactly what it is supposed to do.

Sure it cost quite a bit – mostly because there was an apparent need for multiple studies in different parts of the world. But I cannot see any bad science here except possibly the initial hypothesis.

Mars Meltdown

So NASA had a problem with a probe that one group used metric units on and another group used traditional US units? That’s an unfortunate issue with the engineering management. Science isn’t responsible here – yet again.

Rock Of Life

At last! We’ve found something that is science. Scientists decided that their rock from Mars contained signs of life on Mars, and other scientists eventually decided that it was a false alarm.

So some scientists made a poor study of the rock in question and made a mistake. Just goes to show (yet again) that scientists are human and fallible. And note how the mistake was corrected by other scientists – which is much the way that science is supposed to work. If one scientist produces a result, other scientists try to duplicate that result, and if they fail there’s a problem somewhere.

All Abuzz

Yep, this one was definitely a poor decision. Cross-breeding bees to produce a particularly aggressive strain wasn’t the brightest idea. I guess this one does count as a scientific blunder.

Here They Come To Save The Day

So scientists came up with antibiotics and they have been misused by doctors and the public (and industry!) for 50 years or so. As a consequence, drug-resistant ‘bugs’ have evolved and antibiotics have a harder job of killing off these ‘superbugs’.

So what blunder has science made here ? Particularly where it is pointed out that average life expectancy has increased from 47 to 76 in the US thanks to antibiotics. Sure multi-drug resistant ‘superbugs’ are a problem, but how is science to blame for creating those ?

Wrong call. Again.

The Sky Is Falling Again

In this section we learn that an early approximation for the trajectory of an asteroid was not as accurate as it could have been so what was a near miss of 30,000 miles becomes a near miss of 600,000 miles.

It might be nice if the earlier approximation had been a little more accurate, but ‘forewarned is forearmed’ as they say, and it is better to make a mistake along these lines than to miss the asteroid all together.

I wouldn’t say this is a scientific blunder at all.

Evolution? What’s That?

In this section we hear that sections of the US education system are run by mindless drones of extremist christians, who have decided to stop teaching the theory of evolution or to stop testing the knowledge of the theory. Scientists are outraged by this.

How on earth can this qualify as a science blunder ?

Fen-Phen Fiasco

A researcher discovers that a combination of two drugs can be used to combat obesity, but later it is discovered that those tow drugs interact poorly and themselves can cause health problems. Ignoring the fact that science was used to confirm the cause of  the health problems, we can probably put this one down as a scientific blunder.

Assuming of course that the original researcher who introduced the new wonder treatment for obesity wasn’t distracted by the dollar signs from doing some proper hard science first.

To Be or Not to Be, Thanks to MTBE

Ok, I guess we can put this one down as a scientific blunder.

Earth To Iridium

So a telecommunications company who produced an early satellite phone went bust because nobody wanted the produce.

Did the product work ? Yes, so the engineering and the science behind the engineering was fine. Sounds to me more like an entrepreneurial blunder.

Chest Say No to Silicone Implants

Curiously even the writers of this list of “20 Scientific Blunders” admit that this was not a blunder of science, but a blunder caused by lawyers.

So why does it appear on the list then ?

Y2K

This is quite possibly the most ridiculous entry on the list. I was there on the eve of Y2K watching everyone else celibate the false millennium. This was (as pointed out) firstly a programming blunder where programmers wrote software using two-digits as a date format ignoring what would happen when 99 become 00 (or 100). And secondly a bonanza for legitimate contractors, and less legitimate doom-mongers and snake-oil salesmen.

No science anywhere near Y2K

Summing It Up

So out of the top 20 Science blunders in that article, we actually have just 2.5 (I’m counting the Fen-Phem as 0.5 as science was used to correct the blunder). That’s an accuracy of 12.5%; a pretty poor showing by journalism!

Police Sergeant Mark Andrews Assulting A Prisoner

 General, Media, Politics  1 Response »
Sep 052010
 

There are several things that occur when watching this video :-

  1. Anyone can be arrested for no real reason whatsoever. So everyone has an interest in ensuring that the police or others who have power over us are prevented from abusing us, or punished for doing so after the event. It is too common to hear comments along the lines of “well, they probably deserved it”; maybe they do, but the police are not the ones who should be dishing it out. That’s what the whole criminal justice system is for.
  2. Stand on your rights if arrested by all means, but don’t do so physically. Whilst the Sergeant in this video is totally in the wrong, Ms.P. doesn’t help matters by being awkward about being “thrown into a cell”. She shouldn’t be there as she hasn’t done anything wrong, but refusing a breathalyser test and physically resisting being put into a cell was foolish. Understandable perhaps, but foolish.
  3. Whatever the police are doing to screen candidates to prevent mindless thugs from joining the police is obviously not working. Whilst many of the police are undoubtedly hard working, conscientious, and fully aware that abusing prisoners is wrong, it must always be remembered that a certain kind of thug will want to join the police as a way of getting power over people. These must be excluded.
  4. It seems blatantly obvious that two police officers should be the minimum for putting a prisoner in a cell. No matter how frail a prisoner may be, they can make considerable difficulty for a single police officer tempting the officer into using unreasonable force.

Stolen Images

 General, Photography  No Responses »
Aug 232010
 

I am hardly a sought after photographer … I have fun making images, sure. But I don’t really expect my images to be stolen – even in the form of embedding my images in other web pages. Just on the off-chance, I went through my server logs to see what there was.

Much to my surprise, it is happening to me!! The following embed one or more of my images in their pages :-

Not exactly a huge list, but somewhat disconcerting.

Is The Use of Unpaid Interns Illegal ? …

 General  No Responses »
Aug 212010
 

Or just morally corrupt and a contemptible exploitation of the enthusiasm of youth ?

What is an intern anyway ? Well as I understand it, an intern is a sort of trainee; somewhat analogous to an apprentice, but used in somewhat more high-faluting professions such as the medical profession, journalism, advertising, etc. An intern gains experience in a particular industry with the hope that sooner or later they will be employed as a “proper” whatever on a suitably high salary.

But what does an intern do ? Well if they’re unlucky they will be doing nothing but the dogsbody jobs :-

  • Making the tea and coffee.
  • Passing out documents at meetings.
  • Running down to the local shop to pick up lunch for the “boss”.
  • Picking up the bosses kids from school and keeping them entertained  until the end of the working day.

Most interns find a position with considerably more training value than this of course. But even in such a position, the intern could well pick up considerable experience just from being ‘around’. After all an intern is quite likely to be a recent graduate in the right area and probably knows quite a bit of theoretical knowledge.

Because of that training element, there are those who feel that the value of an intern’s position is sufficient that people should be grateful for the experience and should not expect to be paid. Bollocks.

First of all, whilst the intern gets some value from being in a training position, the company providing that position also gets value by adding some additional training to recent graduates because those who start in the profession will have sufficient experience to get up and running far quicker. Balancing these values quantitatively is difficult, so let us agree that the two values are equivalent.

Secondly, all those dogsbody jobs (getting the coffee, etc.) are not part of training. They are merely a way of keeping an intern busy and effectively freeing up those with high salaries from performing mundane tasks. Nothing wrong with it, but because it allows those doing ‘real’ work to make more effective use of their time, those interns are of value to the company.

Not a great deal of course, but still some value. Enough that it can be said that those interns are actually performing a real job which should be paid at least as much as the minimum wage.

Can’t afford to pay that minimum wage ? Let me tell the story of a job I once had which could effectively be called an interneship – I once had a summer job working with a software house running around doing a wide variety of different tasks. I was paid a pretty trivial amount – such an insignificant amount that when the software house was rapidly running out of money towards the end of the summer and beginning to let people go, they carried on paying me because my wages would not make any difference to whether the company survived or not.

If a company cannot afford to pay minimum wage to an intern, then it is probably in such a poor state that it is probably going out of business.

There is a more sinister aspect to unpaid interneships. It is a conscious or unconscious means to keep certain professions to those of a ‘suitable background’. To survive, an intern needs a place to sleep and enough money to buy some food occasionally. Without a salary, an intern has to turn to other resources to survive – a friendly Uncle with a flat in central London, handouts from relatives and friends. Not everyone has those resources, which effectively increases the barriers of entry to certain professions to those whose background is of more limited means.

Of course it is possible that some interns may be able to survive in these positions on handouts from the government – income support, or whatever the benefit is called – effectively meaning that those companies ’employing’ interns are sponging off the government.

Companies that make use of unpaid interns are in the same category of employer as those backstreet sweatshops that pay under the minimum wage. And should be condemned as much as possible. Perhaps ’employing’ unpaid interns is not illegal, but that is only because these companies are exploiting loopholes in the law; it doesn’t excuse them from the moral position.

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