New England Order

So, it's goodbye to Fletcher after the World Cup, and hardly surprising given England's recent performance. Fletcher had brought England up from the worst Test team to the second best, but had never really done anything for their one-day game.

Some of the more recently discarded England ODI players appear to have chosen a good time to assert themselves in the County games, then - I see Tim Bresnan has scored his maiden century.

How weak are WIMPs?

Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, or WIMPs to the scientists looking for them, are one of the particles proposed to try and solve the problem that we don't seem to be able to find 90% of everything (the Dark Matter).

In an experiment running for 58.6 days, the Italians have reported that none of these particles have interacted strongly enough for them to see them. Their plan now is to scale up their 5.4kg detector to a 100 kg one to run in 2009, in the hope of finding these feeble particles.

With the rival MOND theory also having had a limit on its strength proven recently, the search for the solution to the fact that galaxies just don't rotate in the way we expect them to continues.

Cast those clouts.

English is full of relatively well-known but slightly obscure sayings. One of these is

Ne'er cast a clout till May is out

One of the suggested derivations for this is that it doesn't refer to the month, but to the May tree, more widely known as Hawthorn. This traditionally blossoms near the end of May, so even if you did misunderstand the meaning of the saying, the timing was much the same*.

Not this year. It's out already.

*The next trick is to know what a clout is, and how to cast one. The OED suggest among other things that "clout" is "Applied contemptuously to any article of clothing". People generally interpret the saying as meaning winter clothing, such as vests.

England's feeble crumbling

England's never-firing World Cup campaign has effectively ended with a noise so pathetic it doesn't even deserve to be called a whimper.

Oh dear. Oh very, very dear.

There will definitely be at least one victim of a purge after this, and I'd suspect it'll go further than the chairman of the selectors. The whole winter has been pretty dismal, and what has now been shown to be a few fluke matches when the Aussies relaxed their guard isn't going to change things. OK, I thought fifth would be a reasonable position coming in to the World Cup, but I thought fifth with matches like the one against Sri Lanka. A new coach looks increasingly likely.

Ireland will be wondering how they managed to lose to this shower. On the plus side, this should reduce the chances even further of any of their team thinking of following Ed Joyce's footsteps...

Managers vs Academics

THES has an article on a leaked draft document from Birmingham University (not my employers, I work for another UK university) which shows rather a management obsessed viewpoint -

The (Birmingham University University and College Union) branch calculates that while the words "manager" and "management" appear 119 times in the document, "researcher" appears five times, and "teaching" appears six times. The word "academic" appears twice after its removal from the list of threats.

Yes, that's threat. Academics were apparently perceived as a threat to the strategic goals as defined by managers. The document goes on to detail the pay rewards for hitting targets (not that hitting targets equals a good job, as has been shown in many cases in the past, but it's easier to judge).

If I had to name a major threat to my university, I'd say "target-driven management schemes" were the worst - not that we have much say in the matter, given how the government allocates the money.*

Which reminds me, I must try and wring one more paper out of the desiccated remains of a not-so-recent research project. Once I hit the target, I can get on with something more scientific.

*I don't view managers as a threat, as trying to manage academics and researchers has got to be a thankless task, but some of the modern management trends definitely are unhelpful.

Blazing bogs

I've been to Japan with work a couple of times now, and their high tech toilets have always seemed slightly disturbing from the point of view of an Englishmen who thinks of toilets as mechanical devices with at best the option of two levels of flush.

I hadn't realised that Japanese toilets can actually catch fire...

Ireland win again

Good scenes at the cricket last night - firstly, the ICC showed some sense and realised that empty stadiums make bad television, so they opened the doors and made entry free (given that they'd sold a lot of tickets in advance to people who thought the fixture was going to be India vs Pakistan, they'd probably made their money already). Secondly, Ireland's win over Bangladesh means that Ireland are now officially a ODI team. This means that teams touring England in future will now probably be arranging a few ODI matches against Ireland - good news for the Irish game (although possibly bad news for some English counties, as the touring teams may reduce their warm-up fixtures)

Simple guide to climate change

The Royal Society is the latest to make an attempt to at least persuade the climate change delusionists* to ask some new questions rather than continue to hurl the same repeatedly answered questions again and again.

Nothing new here, these have all been answered in the past repeatedly, but since they are still being asked, they need another airing.

*I'd consider a sceptic to be someone who asks questions that haven't been answered, and questions whether the extent of climate change is going to be significant enough to warrant certain actions. A sceptic could even go so far to say that there is still a possibility, albeit slim, that due to the various unknown factors, anthropogenic warming isn't going to be significant. However, given the current level of understanding and widespread opinion among scientists who have looked at the issue, insisting that anthropogenic climate change just isn't happening is delusional.

Sartorial wittering

Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day, as the narrator said in Withnail and I, so it shouldn't be a complete surprise to discover there is one respect in which the theologically-hampered Iran, saddled with grandstanding leaders who manage to make Tony Blair look sane, have landed on a sartorial trend which I would personally agree with, albeit for completely different reasons.

They don't wear ties.

The reasonings are, as I say, very different. Apparently, they don't wear ties because they contribute to the spreading of western culture (not sure why the rest of the suit doesn't do this). I don't wear ties because they are the part of a suit that has no practical purpose whatsoever.

They exist only for the cultural reason that we have decided that having a pointless bit of cloth dangling from your neck makes you look smart, rather than slightly bonkers.

British sporting success (yes, really)

We now have the clear answer to the lament on watching the failure of the English team to get any further at cricket/football/rugby union, the failure of the Scottish teams to even get that far etc. of "are we good at anything?" (apart from rowing, anyway)

Track cycling. Britain is good at track cycling. Very, very, very good.

In all, Britain won seven gold medals at the latest World Championships. The next best? Australia, on two.

Tideway tribulations

Talking about my own sport for once - down to London today for the Head of the River Race. My crew were starting somewhere in the lower half, and boating from Thames Tradesmen, so we had to row up a bit, turn downstream and go through Barnes Bridge, then turn into the marshalling area.

That was, shall we say, interesting. The wind had been blowing all day, but the marshalls had looked at the water and thought it was rowable. As the tide changed, we went through the bridge, and the conditions were, shall we say, rather interesting. Despite having throroughly taped up the riggers to hopefully reduce the amount of water that splashed up from them and landed in the boat, we were still left with an inch of water in the bottom of the boat when we reached our marshalling area. Rowing is hard enough as it is without having to haul an extra load of weight down the course, as Cambridge showed in the Boat Race last year.

Never mind, though, we bailed out the excess water (with the help of a polystyrene cup that floated past, along with some boats numbers). Then the race started - with the light shining behind them, the splash of water flying up from the riggers as Leander charged through Barnes Bridge was quite impressive. The crew from Italy and Molesey followed - the Italians losing ground as they looked to be having more trouble with the water than the Londoners. Indeed, rather a lot more - I expressed the opinion that they might sink.

After a few more boats went past, there definitely were sinkers. Pavia CUS from Italy definitely went down (edit - no they didn't. I'd thought that it was crew 26 that went down, someone else had said it was a foreign boat), followed shortly by two more top 40 crews. Further up at Hammersmith Bridge, I later heard, many of the other crews were also suffering, either sinking or being forced to switch crew members from rowing to bailing (at least one of Leander's crews swamped [Leander III], the crew being forced to abandon the boat as the rescue launch had to get them to land and then rescue another crew), with as many as ten crews rumoured to have swamped.

Needless to say, the Marshals stopped the race. One marshal boat went past us announcing the abandonment. I shouted to him asking for marshalling instructions - nothing came back. The crews around us all decided the same thing - they wanted to get back to the boat houses, fast. The boat houses were on the other side of the river - turn and go now.

Suddenly there are 300 plus crews on this stretch of the river heading in all directions. Our novice cox, thankfully, is an instinctively good steerswoman, and somehow threaded us through the carnage into the landing area - we were about the fourth crew back. Our clubs top boat, who were in the top 40, were probably very annoyed at the cancellation, as they hadn't swamped or even had to bail, so had got nearly all the way to the finish. And then had to row back.

Photos have already started appearing of Flickr - here

Also the abandoned Italian boat

Cricket Super 8s

Despite their mounting injury list, which will probably prevent them from winning the whole tournament, New Zealand are still a class side. They overcame the West Indies fairly comfortably in the end, the in form Scott Styris hitting 80 off 90 balls as New Zealand reached the target with over ten overs to spare.

The West Indies are, I fear, in the same league as the already departed Pakistan and India and, I have to say, England. While they have players capable of winning any match on the day, those days are not sufficiently consecutive to put them in with a chance of overall victory.

I'd unimaginatively pick Australia, South Africa, Sri Lanka and New Zealand for the final four. One BBC journalist fears this result will result in the semis and final being played in front of nearly empty stadia - the pricing policies of the ICC are looking increasingly flawed.

Was this becoming a snake?

Interesting to see that one of the genuine missing links in the fossil record (where an intermediate form has not been found, as opposed to the artificial borders set up by nomenclature) may have been found - Nature reports on a paper (J. Vertebr. Paleontol. 27, 1–7 (2007)) describing a Slovenia fossil shows evidence of a creature descended from four-legged lizards, but with reduced forelimbs and an elongated neck. In other words, it is part way to becoming something like a snake. Whether this genuinely is how snakes became snakes still isn't that clear - this needs more fossil finds. Unfortunately, snake skeletons aren't the sort of thing that fossilises well.

Ape rights

I see the ape rights issue is back again.

In the BBC report, I liked Prof. Steve Jones' comment

"Rights and responsibilities go together and I've yet to see a chimp imprisoned for stealing a banana"

I continue to believe that while animal welfare is a good thing to campaign for, and I certainly agree with the UK decision ten years ago to put strict restrictions on what experiments are allowable on great apes (i.e. it is unethical to treat them as expendable for research), but trying to give individual rights as humans have is not justifiable.

In short, King Louie was wrong - An ape like him can't learn to be human too.

Clone Wolf

Ten years after the Scots did it with sheep, a South Korean team claims to have cloned a wolf.

As many articles in Western sources have pointed out, many of this research team formerly collaborated with disgraced researcher Dr Hwang Woo-Suk. Doesn't mean it isn't true, though. It does remain to be seen how healthy the wolf is through its lifespan.

Don McPhee

The Guardian has an audio slideshow of the works of Guardian photographer Don McPhee, who died recently of cancer.

As a long time Grauniad reader, many of McPhee's photos became almost icons of the time, particularly his shot of the miner in the party police hat facing up to the line of policemen at Orgreave. But his black and white photos were also particularly good at showing up the stark beauty of the northern landscape, particularly the mix of water, light and buildings.

Ribena Rumbled

The problem of making scientific sounding claims in your advertising is that it is always possible that someone would actually go ahead and test them. Ribena's statement that blackcurrants contain four times as much vitamin C as oranges has now landed them in trouble down under, after two schoolgirls measured the vitamin C in Ribena and found there basically wasn't any. Parent company GlaxoSmithKline state the problem only affected Ribena in Australia and New Zealand

I'm also glad someone somewhere appears to be teaching science to teenagers, rather than just teaching them to pass science exams.

Swing low, sweet Pedalo

England finally manage to squeak through into the next stage of the Cricket World Cup, where they'll face Ireland.

As the BBC pointed out, England have only won three matches against Test playing opposition at the World Cup since 1992. On the other hand, I think New Zealand are good enough to win the whole thing (or at least get to the finals against the Aussies), so losing to them in the first round isn't *that* disasterous. So complete humiliation (i.e. 8th in the Super 8s) should be avoided...

BSc in mumbo-jumbo

Complaints again at what the new universities are giving degrees for.

Nature have an article (subscription required) on subjects regarded by many scientists as pseudo-science being taught as BSc courses.

The BBC have picked up on the story, and quote Prof. Colquhoun of University College London for his dislike of these courses:

He said the teaching of complementary medicine under a science banner was worse than "Mickey Mouse" degrees in golf management and baking that have sprung up in recent years as "they do what it says on the label".

The good Prof is using the freedom of information act to find out what these courses are actually teaching.

There may be an argument for keeping these degrees to one extent - as with the management of golf courses and the knowledge needed for running a large scale bakery, these are work-related levels of knowledge required to run businesses that bring in a significant amount of money - someone needs to do this sort of training, and because John Major got all classless about them being regarded as less rigorous than University degrees, his lot decided to make all the places that used to teach that sort of thing universities as well.

So arguably, if there is a market in something (and there certainly is a market in people wanting mumbo-jumbo to make them feel good), then in a purely business sense people should be trained to exploit this market, and since universities are expected to fund themselves, they should be free to offer courses in exploiting people's gullibility.

But then that's business, not science.

Cricket continues

I had suspected this stage of the cricket World Cup would be rather uneventful - fat lot I know then. Of course, Pakistan's ability to self-destruct is well documented, but even so you have to be able to put at least some pressure on them, and at that Ireland did very well, for a deserved victory.

The news that Bob Woolmer died the next day was shocking. With England subsiding after the 2005 Ashes, I quite liked the idea of a Woolmer-Vaughan combination in charge of England (although Woolmer-Flintoff would have been disasterous - Woolmer was never an authoritarian, and Flintoff needs someone to lay down the rules, as the pedalo incident showed, and Vaughan appears to be the man laying down the rules)

Those hoping that the British Isles would somehow squeak the full contingent through to the next round (Wales being part of England and Wales, as Northern Ireland is part of Ireland) were always more on the delusional than wishful side (apart from the fact that England could still find a way to lose to Kenya), as South Africa are chokers, not self-immolating exploders. They'll probably find some way to throw it away in the semis or final, but asking them to lose to Scotland - well, it seems the Saffers have decided to treat their batting session as part of a 20Twenty match. As I write in the 13th over, it's all over for Scotland barring the greatest cricketing miracle of the century.

The spectre behind a cricket match

Watching the cricket scoreboard update yesterday evening as Ireland snatched a tie with Zimbabwe - quite a good result, even if Ireland's cricketing problems (England&Wales will pinch any genuine international quality players they produce) pale into insignificance compared to Zimbabwe's (there are easily eleven international quality Zimbabwean cricketers who have fled the country for political reasons).

It's hard to separate the sport from the politics when it drives the players - such as Tatenda Taibu (compare his Test batting average to England's recent wicket-keepers) - into exile.

Then this morning there is the news of Mugabe telling his critics in the West to "go hang".

He also accuses the MDC of being sponsored by western countries keen to see him removed from power. Given that Mugabe has turned into a despot, and has turned his country from breadbasket to basketcase, it would be hardly surprising if responsible countries start thinking it would be nice to see Mugabe removed from power in a political fashion.

His anti-western rhetoric isn't going to save him - Africa has noticed. The Southern African Development Community have asked Tanzania, Lesotho and Namibia to mediate the crisis, Mbeki of South Africa has urged Zimbabwe to respect the rights of opposition parties, Zambia's president has expressed concern, and Ghana's president says he is "embarrassed" by the situation in Zimbabwe.

A place that doesn't exist - Somaliland

Looking at international news, it appears that the representatives of the small northern part of Somalia have at least achieved international media attention of a sort, which is some going for an African country in their current situation. e.g. here, here and here

The northern part is known as Somaliland, and the situation is - actually quite good. peaceful, functional, not much of a problem really. Not a bad news story, which is normally all we hear from Africa. And certainly no thanks to us, as we've pretty much ignored them. They've run themselves as a separate country since the south fell apart, and are now looking for international recognition as an independent state.

However, apart from the dangers of IMF and World Bank money changing a stable system should they get recognition, there is the possibility of a bigger sudden change to the system - and such an outside jolt has caused problems for many countries in the past. The geography of Somaliland may not look particularly promising on the surface - something that led the British to take over in the 19th century just to stop anyone else doing so but otherwise pretty much not consider the place worth interfering with - but underneath it appears that it may be lying on a regional oil window reaching south across the Gulf of Aden.

Is this a chance for a stable but poor African country to become as wealthy as, say, the UAE? Or is the interference of the international community going to plunge them into the morass of their southern neighbours?

Cost:$300 Worth: $100,000

The NY Times reports on a teenager who built a spectroscope for $300.

If she wants to do a PhD in the UK after she gets her degree, she may well be eminently qualified...

This is also the sort of competition I'd like to see have a higher profile in the UK. May well exist already, but I'm blowed if I can recall seeing a news story on one.

Lovelock at it again

For every person out there trying to claim that global warming isn't happening at all, or that it has nothing to do with humans, there is at least one out there claiming it will be the worst thing ever. James Lovelock probably cancels out a few PhDs of the former opinion on his own - he apparently believes that the continental US, mainland Europe and China will all become utterly uninhabitable and we'll all end up in the arctic.

As with many of the critics - I really need to see an accurate model that could explain the phenomena he's predicting. And why would the plains of Germany being eight degrees hotter turn them uninhabitable? Tunis is more than eight degrees hotter than Berlin for the vast majority of the year, it doesn't stop the population of the greater Tunis area topping two million. Is there a reason why increased evaporation from the soil won't be compensated at least partially by increased rainfall due to increased evaporation from the sea?

I may not normally agree with Bjørn Lomborg's views on climate, but the quote attributed to him in the NY Times recently is something I can agree on:

Climate change is a real and serious problem that calls for careful analysis and sound policy. The cacophony of screaming does not help.

Gervais like levels of embarassment

Some conversations you shouldn't have where someone can overhear part of the conversation and possibly not get the context.

Yesterday, I was talking with some friends and the discussion got around to people who have said things that may or may not have been discriminatory against one minority or another but got in trouble (or in the case of politicians, had to resign) because they sounded like it. I told the anecdote of a man who nearly lost his job for shouting at a cat - the cat was black, and the man, having found the cat using his hat as a kitty litter, shouted a three word phrase of abuse at the cat that included its colour. The question was, was the man racist for using the colour of the cat in his otherwise generic abuse (he also questioned the likelihood of the cat's parents being married, which on the face of it is probably an accurate reflection of the situation), or is it quite possible for someone to view cats as not deserving of respect but automatically give it to all humans? The problem was - someone heard me say the phrase the man used and thought I was telling a racist joke - I know this because he threatened me before leaving.

So then this sparked off my levels of angst worthy of one of Ricky Gervais' tactless characters - does my telling this anecdote mean that I am also racist, and hadn't realised? Should I have been as unable to bring myself to use the phrase used in the anecdote as I am unable to say out the full name of the hip-hop group NWA? Or am I just tactless, thoughtless and socially inept (which I pretty much knew anyway)

The man in the anecdote, by the way, wasn't sacked, but had to attend sensitivity training. Perhaps I ought to do the same.

I am currently listening to Swedish reggae.

No, stop laughing. It's actually rather good. Found them (them being Kultiration) on the music blog Aurgasm, and extra tracks on Last FM. Pity Amazon don't seem to have heard of them, I might have to go to a European website to buy their album.

Wikipedia and universities

Another academic persuading their students to use Wikipedia the right way - write it, don't reference it.

It's actually a reasonably good idea - a lot of students are actually rather lacking in confidence (although there are some who have far too much of it), so persuading them to write something that, to be honest, doesn't really matter that much, but equally could give them feedback quite quickly is a good thing*. Plus it'll mean Wikipedia has a few more in depth articles about things that are actually of some importance, along with the long discussions about the fifth episode in the third season of Pokemon.

*Well, as long as they don't come up against one of the editors who believes a page they've written is theirs alone, and keeps reverting any changes.

Step 1: Collect Underpants Step 2: ? Step 3: Profit!

Or alternatively, get made to look very, very silly indeed in a BBC news story...

Boris on Universities

Boris Johnson in the Grauniad doing the modern-day touchy-feely hug-a-hoodie Cameroonian Conservative thing regarding Universities and funding - say very nice things about us, hint that they'd like to do very nice things for us, suggest it would be good if other people did nice things for us, but above all don't promise anything (and openly admit as such, since everyone knows that's what he'd do anyway).

Comments on the general thing - a promise to stop carping on about "mickey mouse" courses is a good thing. After all, you can't sit there demanding the universities cater for the free market and then promptly kick up a fuss when they cater to the free market. Besides, the vast majority of mickey mouse courses are from the old polytechnics who shouldn't have been turned into Universities in the first place, and left to do good work in the field of niche training courses (such as surfing studies, golf course management, etc - there's a lot of money in the leisure industry after all)

The top US universities have done quite remarkable things with their endowments. Only Oxford and Cambridge have endowments of any size at all compared to the average US university (indeed, only those two from all of Europe would figure). I rather suspect if the stupendously well rewarded Goldman Sachs brokers did decide to chuck their money at the universities rather than on expensive frivolities (or the retreat in the south of France that they can run away to after their 19th nervous breakdown) then it'll pretty much go to those two anyway.

Smashing the jam jars - well, science is a medium to long term process. If smashing the jam jars then means a bout of politically motivated merry go rounds with the money then it will indeed be a bad thing, as a project could have the cash pulled out from under it part way through. On the other hand, I think one could suggest that there could be better co-operation between certain funding bodies without scaring the horses (or stating anything that wasn't blatantly obvious).

Sale of assets - grief, surely Labour have sold everything that wasn't bolted down, then unbolted things to sell them, then sold the bolts.

And finally:

I still think the main point of a university education is to achieve a personal intellectual transformation

Does this include dressing up in fancy clothes and getting pissed, I wonder?

Too good for them

Some people just don't deserve to have rare cars.

(Yes, I know it's an environmental nightmare at full speed, but I still appreciate the engineering that went into it)

Sunday reviews

A busy day for a Sunday - rowing training in the morning, cinema in the afternoon, gig in the evening.

The River Trent is still high (has been all winter - but will this stop them enforcing a hosepipe ban somewhere in the UK in summer? I doubt it), so no water training, particularly since half the trees in Derbyshire seem to be floating past.

Say the film Blood Diamond at the cinema (has been out for a while, but I rarely get to go to the pics these days). A good film, and I have to admit my inherent antipathy for actors who get more famous for being famous rather than being actors (i.e. Mr DiCaprio) got rather over-ruled by the fact that the man can actually act. In some cases, as with this one, rather better than the role is provided - I got the sense DiCaprio was fighting to provide a more realistic portrayal than the Hollywood script would like, trying to portray a man who isn't necessarily having a major change of heart, he's just sticking to the deal he made. Djimon Hounsou has the rather less interesting task of being the noble African - the real hero is often less interesting than the scoundrel. Meanwhile, just about everyone else is getting gunned down in the background, and there are some plot holes that could have done with being filled in.

Musicwise, I went to see the Howling Bells at the Rescue Rooms. The support were a one-man with a guitar act (who's probably very annoyed with his manager for handing him a thankless task - a quiet act to open for an indie-pop/rock band? Who's dumb idea was that?) and a fairly generic seeming indie-rock band of three skinny men with guitars in skinny shirts, with a drummer behind. Howling Bells are in one sense immediately more interesting, even without being less generic with their guitar work, in that they have a female singer who sounds a bit like PJ Harvey. Once the sound engineer sorted the sound (the mics were drowned by the guitars for the first couple of tracks), they took advantage of their most interesting feature, in that you could actually hear her voice - she's not quiet, but against amplified guitars, she needed the mics. There are a couple of good tracks there, nothing astoundingly great, but not bad for a tenner. And they finished early enough that I could get the bus home, rather than fork out another tenner for a cab (hey, I'm in my mid-30s and it was a Sunday).

Newspaper reports on newspaper report on penguin on dope

The Guardian, using that standard tactic of the broadsheet press - waiting until the guttersnipes report it, then reporting that they've reported it - get to gossip about how celebrity druggie Pete Doherty (who was once in a band, briefly) decided to get some penguins stoned with cannabis.

Now, penguins are, it has to be said, inherently amusing. Many people, it appears, find the idea of stoned penguins amusing. I am not sure exactly how one would tell a penguin is stoned, given that they tend to waddle and fall over anyway. I suspect penguins can get stoned, since cannabis has very deleterious effects on a spider's ability to make webs - Spiders on marijuana made a reasonable stab at spinning webs but appeared to lose concentration about half-way through. Which isn't really a surprise.

So a penguin on dope is probably one that waddles about, forgets what it was doing, and then feels hungry and goes off looking for fish (which is what it was doing anyway).

Should Zimbabwe be a top cricket team?

The BBC have an article on Zimbabwe's decline as a top cricket team, and that it wouldn't be a surprise if they lost a game to Ireland.

Zimbabwe still have full member status, unlike Kenya, but a loss to Ireland may start people questioning - should they automatically keep full member status in 2009, when Kenya lose theirs? Should they even be playing, given the political pressures put on their cricketers? Or would abandoning the country be even worse?

Europe's new funding agency

The BBC today have an article hailing the arrival of the European Research Council, the new EU-wide funding body for fundamental research.

Later on in the article, it notes the contribution by Lord Sainsbury, then the British Science Minister, who changed policy midflight on the way to a meeting having read the critical views of civil servants and decided to support the agency instead.

Sainsbury was described by Nature as being "simply good at his job". Unfortunately, he quit for reasons of politics, not for science. It's a shame the post tends to go to the best politician, rather than the best person to be Minister for Science.

How many scientists does it take to change a lightbulb?

More on the lightbulb situation.

The Australians are likely to be followed by a number of other countries, for the simple fact that incandescent lights are so inefficient, and lighting is so widely used. The effect of this is huge: Global CO2 emissions from lighting were 70% of that from all the planets cars (International Energy Agency report, 2006)

95% of the energy from a tungsten light bulb goes in heat - and that is largely heating just the ceiling. And these make up 79% of the global lighting sales.

Compact fluorescent lightbulbs are better. Slightly - they're only 85% inefficient.

So what's the alternative? One is solid-state lighting. The US Department of Energy calculated that if US households were able to use GaN-based LEDs instead of incandescent lighting, they could close 41 power stations.

So what's stopping them? Well, to be commercially viable, GaN-based white LEDs have to be high efficiency, high quality, long life and low cost. At the moment, commercial LEDs get up to around 10% efficient, not even beating fluorescent lamps. Lab produced LEDs have managed to match high-pressure Sodium lamps for efficiency.

Lifetime and reliability is a problem - I've heard rumours that the Chinese had decided to use large numbers of white LEDs for lighting for infrastructure connected to the 2008 Olympic Games, and they are already having to replace large numbers due to failure. Manufacturers claim 100,000 hours lifetime, but tests by Cambridge University have shown this isn't true - the problem often isn't the LED itself, but the wire bonds. Basically, you get what you pay for - expensively produced, well sealed white LEDs (e.g. in silicone) do last a very long time. Cheaper epoxies put more stress on the wire bond, and fail quicker.

So, what's the cost? For widespread adoption of white LEDs, you need about $5 cost per 1000 lumens. The current cost of quality white LEDs? Around $100.

There's a long way to go yet.

Current Earth status update

Well, that's a relief.

A picture is worth a thousand lies

...but only if they don't catch you.

Dartmouth Professor Hany Farid writes in Nature (subscription required) on the problem of faked and manipulated pictures being used in journal papers -

It's an arms race, and I can tell you how it will end: they'll win. ... But we can take it out of the hands of the amateurs.

updated 21/02/2007

Aussies turn out the light

No, not on their suddenly dysfunctional cricket team, on incandescent light bulbs.

Since they generate more heat than light (and you don't need much more heat down under), many have called for an end for Edison's product.

Now the Aussies are the first nation to announce they will be phased out.

Glad I'm not an Aussie

It might have seemed the height of improbability that I'd be saying this in January when England were crashing to a 5-0 Ashes humiliation, but right now I'm actually starting to feel just a little bit sorry for Australian cricket fans. The problem they have coming up to the World Cup is that anything other than victory is a failure (while with England, only getting to the semis would be viewed as more of an improvement but a missed opportunity rather than outright calamity, not that I don't think they *can* win, given that they have Pietersen, Collingwood and Flintoff). But right now, Australia have to reverse their form distinctly if they're even going to get to the last four - five losses in a row, six out of seven, and yet another injury.

Injury-ridden, can't stop losing one-dayers, media calling for changes...

Wonder if any Aussie fans are regretting putting the verbal boot in to the English fans a couple of months ago?

Destruction down under

Turns out England were just softening them up - the Aussies have just been humiliated by New Zealand, losing by ten wickets. At this rate they won't be the world number 1 team by the World Cup.

The Aussies are noting that they were missing some key players, but that's not an excuse, is it? Maybe the Aussies just peaked too early in the season...

Sarcasm in journalism

I do like it when journalists respond fairly, but sarcastically, to comments by some PR spokesperson who is clearly talking complete rot.

Adrian Pitches' response on BBC News online to a suggestion that wild birds might be to blame for the Bird Flu outbreak in Bernard Matthews' Turkey gulag is priceless:

Presumably, a kamikaze duck had plunged head-first down a ventilation shaft into the sealed hangars containing turkeys.

How do they sleep?

Sometimes you see examples of the sort of low life who manage to stay within the law, despite dooming hundreds, thousands even, to misery, disease and death.

Vulture Funds - those who snap up the debts owed by African countries and then demand full payment - often as much as ten times what they paid for the debt - are taking money that countries have planned for the schools, hospitals, essential infrastructure. Any "charitable" donations these vultures make in return go in large sums into the hands of individuals - probably titled "campaign contributions". They are taking from the poorest on the planet.

How do they sleep?

Tim Sparke is an idiot. And that's a scientist's opinion.

Tim Sparke is executive producer of Loose Change Final Cut. And he's a complete and utter idiot. As his response to Moonbat's review of his inane documentary shows.

MOMENTUM DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY, MORON!

Momentum is conserved, yes. But the theory states the tendency of an object to continue to move in its direction of travel, unless acted on by a net external force

Gravity is a force.

I really can't be bothered with the rest of it, I'm just depressed these idiots are allowed a say when their arguments are so utterly, patently pathetic.

You're entitled to your opinion. You are not entitled to your own laws of physics. And if he can't even get that right, why bother with the rest of it?

Shame on you, Guardian. Shame. You've probably given poor Dr Goldacre a fit when he's seen this rot.

Slim Shady to pot the black

Now, this is very weird. What on earth possessed anyone to try it? And... why does it seem to work?

Number 10 petitions

I've noticed the fuss about the number 10 petitions thing.

Unsurprisingly, the majority of the petitions are about people wanting the government to tax them less, or be less restrictive towards them. The next highest number are those people wanting the government to go more after people who are not like them (see the justified persecution of toerags who don't have insurance or selfish people with bullbars*, or the less justified ones against 4x4 drivers, or School Run Mums, or cyclists**)

Petitions are easy, you see. Policy is difficult

Basically, people would like to petition the government to provide them with a congestion free road and lower tax. And not have to pay for it. Throw in the moon on a stick while you're at it.

How do you make everything pay its way? Roads might look like just a chunk of tarmac, but they genuinely are fairly expensive things, and have to be paid for some way or another. If you don't tax car drivers to pay for roads then you either have increased council and income tax to pay for roads, or you have really bad roads (which means all the money you saved goes to the garage instead). So then why should others pay for your driving?

The other reason for having taxation on cars is that it is a case of market failure - the car driver does not pay for all the costs caused by their driving, which include the effects of pollution (local as well as global, noise as well as gases) and time loss caused by congestion. Anyone saying such a thing has no place has morally given up their right to complain if someone wants to build anything in their back yard.

And finally, I'm wealthier than average, so it'll price the paupers out of my way. Oh bliss! O Poop poop!


* They designed crumple zones on the front of a car for a reason - to save lives. They designed bullbars to save your life if you run into a kangaroo in the Australian Outback and need a working car to get you to the next town before you die of thirst. People are unlikely to run into large marsupials and die of thirst in suburban England. You don't need bullbars on well-lit urban roads. Besides, they're on the front - if you're such a bad driver you keep running into things you shouldn't be on the road. The only things likely to jump out on the road suddenly are large mammals, and in suburban UK those tend to be children***.
** One note about cyclists - It's February. It's dark. Get lights. Seriously. I mean, you remember to recharge your mobile phone and mp3 player, how hard is it to recharge something that'll help keep you alive?
*** Or cyclists you can't see because they're dressed like ninjas, I suppose.

Rules of politics

One of the major rules of politics you often hear is "pick your fight" - make the arguments something that your party can succeed on.

This week, David Davis has managed to pick one doozy of a fight - one that can portray them as fiscally responsible, protecting civil liberties and democracy and, most startling of all, not being nasty.

The cartoon bad guys in this one are the IT industry, in the form of the director general of the umbrella body "Intellect", one John Higgins.

The story is this - Davis has reiterated that a campaign policy of the Tories would be to scrap the ID card. Therefore, the IT industry would be sensible to bear in mind that should Labour not win the next election, then contracts for ID cards will not be required.

Mr Higgins comes out with the full evil-business-lobby mode, stating that IT companies could build in extra costs to cover this risk - basically insisting that corporate contracts and profits should come ahead of the democratic process.

One question that springs to mind over this - if the IT business lobby is this blitheringly inept, is it because they don't lobby that much, or because they've previously had everything handed to them on a plate?

They haven't, surely. They have?

A morning of rowing, getting ready for the big race next week (except today was the first time we got the whole crew together), which first entailed me taking off my shoes and socks and wading into the river to pull the stages in, as everyone else is too wimpy to wade into a muddy English river in February which has been swelled by snowmelt. For some reason.

Anyway, this meant that I wasn't following the cricket, so imagine my confusion followed by immediate delight when after we'd finished training for the morning, we go to the pub to see on the screen a rather unhappy looking Ponting (I assumed it was Ponting as Ian Hislop doesn't tend to wear green caps or appear on Sky Sports), followed by a distinctly happy as soon to be drunk Freddie Flintoff.

So, I'll be catching the highlights tonight, and enjoying thinking about how all those gloating Aussies who have been declaring England to be hapless and pointless and doomed to defeat forever are now not *quite* so verbal.

Still, pity about the Ashes. Would be nice if one year the Aussies let us warm up with the pointless all-important one-dayers before the Test matches begin. As they get to do when they come to us.

Open society

The latest accusations over whether the increasingly authoritarian Labour government are persecuting muslims - regarding the arrest of Abu Izzadeen, reminded me of a quote from Karl Popper

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them… We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."

Is this Labour government being overly authoritarian? Yes. Are they arresting Muslims on flimsy reasons? I suspect so. Are they doing this for political reasons? I don't think so, but I believe they are taking advantage of the arrests for political reasons.

Does Izzadeen have the right to call for terrorist acts, and expect nothing to be done to stop him?

No.

Why should I fight to the death for someone's right to say something when what they are saying is that I should be killed?

My feeling is this - you have the right to live how you wish to live. You even have the right to say how I live is wrong. But you don't have the right to declare that I should die, and that you call for someone to kill me, because of the way I live.

That's why he's got an MBE...

Hooray for Collingwood!

I'd imagine a lot of big-talking Aussies have gone very quiet today.

Oh, and England did it without their captain and our best two batsmen.

Now, if we can just win one of the next two...

Should physicists spin, or just electrons?

Interesting post on Nanopublic, discussing what means should scientists resort to to get their message across to the public - are the means used by advertisers and PR companies automatically unacceptable, will using them damage our message, or are we neglected a useful tool to get important information across to sections of the public who are increasingly "scientifically illiterate"?

A number of fields, particularly medicine and ecology, already use celebrities to get their message across to the wider public. But certainly, we need to know where the public is. There's no point continuing to lecture in a fashion that would have worked in the early 20th century and thinking that will get the message across. Or, indeed, thinking if you can get a slot on the TV then that is job done.

The problem in some ways is the same as the advertisers have - the market is fractured. In the old days, it was hard to get a slot on TV, but if you got to explain your work on Horizon, that's several million BBC viewers covered. Now Horizon is dumbed down, and the viewers are watching dozens of channels, or even worse looking at any one of millions of websites.

And if I knew how to find them, I'd be a rich advertising executive with a ferrari, not a scientist with a pushbike.

Nanomyths

Nanotechnology is a field that has, over the last few years, has attracted a great deal of hype, advertising, fearmongering and random declarations of one or another, ranging from promises of wonderful new inventions to a grey goo mass devouring the planet.

So good to see someone getting a debunking of a few myths into the business press (Steven C. Currall in the Feb 1 BusinessWeek).

From a scientist's point of view, I think the critical one may be myth 2 - that the public need to know what something is to form an opinion. As the recent cases over GM food and the Brent Spar furore (where Nature ended up lamenting that "Shell Oil's decision not to sink a used oil-rig at sea is a needless dereliction of rationality") have shown, the public don't need to understand anything to fear something - lack of knowledge and someone else saying it is scary is more than enough. Unfortunately, reasonable estimates based on accurate scientific and commercial knowledge is not as interesting to a journalist courting readership than sci-fi promises and terrifying threats.

Look! Up in the Sky!

Pigs! Herds of pigs, sweeping majestically across the sunlit sky! The Devil going to work on a snowplough! My diary says "Sunday" for the rest of February!

Yes, it's true. England have beaten Australia in a game of cricket.

Did I say beat? Beat, thrashed, stomped, wiped the floor with, stuffed solidly, bowled them out! Our opening batsmen gets a century, theirs gets a duck.

Finally, a set of cricketers turn up in England gear. So, as the Aussies would say, Where the bloody hell where you?

Memo to PR department: you're fired.

I suspect someone is going to have trouble at Amyris Biotechnologies, who were set up with a grant from Bill Gates foundation to look into a malaria cure, after this article came out.

To quote:

"This was technology that was really great for the current application of making an anti-malarial drug and we said, great, pharmaceuticals, that's a wonderful model and then we realized, our market is in Africa and they make less than a dollar a day."

So they decided to aim for a more lucrative market as well

Does that give you any negative opinions on the company at all?

X doesn't mark the spot.

Various articles in the UK media getting over-excited about the possibility of the UK government putting X-Ray machines on the street to spy on people going past.

Don't be so bloody silly, they're not going to do that.

They're going to use millimetre wave imaging.

It's safer you see. Well, for health anyway. Privacy is irrelevant.

... if it's physics, it doesn't work

The problem with science, from the viewpoint of a scientist, is that thing invariably go wrong. If it's Biology, it dies. If it's Chemistry, it explodes (or goes 'phut' if you meant it to explode) and if it's Physics is just doesn't work.

Having spent the afternoon battling a recalcitrant piece of vacuum kit - the pumps are sucking as hard as ever, but there's a huge leak somewhere in the main sample chamber - I really needed a break. But although my kit isn't exactly designed for ease of maintenence, at least I can get to it when it breaks down, rather than have to sit there and watch it doing nothing 600km overhead. Hubble isn't due another servicing visit until September 2008. The replacement, the James Webb Telescope, isn't going to be ready until the middle of the next decade.

All-England self destructing team

Yes, they're still at it.

Let's change the subject. Rowing! We're good at rowing! Even if you don't count adaptive rowing, Britain got as many golds as Australia at the last World Championships (or at least, we have now), and more than Germany. If you count adaptive, we got five in total to the Aussies four.

That would be an ecumenical matter

I've been reading on the BBC about the fuss over a Father Ted festival, and the list of events amused me.

Then I wondered if I'm a bit odd in thinking that Buckaroo Speed Dating actually sounds quite entertaining?

Aargh! White stuff! Falling from the skies!

I suspect this BBC article wasn't written by a southern softie.

I can just hear the sarcasm in the line "A small layer of snow and ice has led to travel disruption on roads and railways in the South East of England."

I know we've had a series of mild winters, but really, it was a pathetic little dusting of the stuff. Which has now melted.

Kitchen tips from scientists

I'm not the biggest fan of microwave ovens when it comes to cooking - I tend to prefer to have some sort of control over the cooking of things (even if I do still tend to burn things occasionally). But now, the BBC report, a study from workers in the University of Florida, published in the Journal of Environmental Health suggests you should be using them to sterilise your sponges. It only takes 30 seconds to kill E Coli, and two minutes to wipe out 99% of all bacteria.

Don't microwave dry sponges though. They should be damp.

So now I'll just have my cooking skills to blame if I give myself food poisoning...

Update: Shropshire Fire Service say they have already attended one fire which involved a dishcloth in a microwave. While burning things does tend to be my cooking technique that prevents food poisoning, setting fire to the kitchen is probably taking that rather too far.

Reasons to be cheerful

OK, so you get the drongo Aussies rubbishing the English for a fundamental lack of ability of our cricket team, as if 2005 never happened (I actually can stand losing to Americans more than I can Australians, because the Yanks all jump around yelling "woohoo! Number one! We're the Greatest!" etc, which at least indicates they believe they needed some talent to beat you, some Australians (note the some) have the immediate response to their rivals of "you're shit, mate!", which they seem to take beyond the "haha we beat you" response of many sports fans.

Possibly this is because the Yanks fundamentally believe they have no reason for lack of self confidence whatsoever, while some Aussies *still* manage to have an inferiority complex about the British (such as how they haven't even managed to work out how to take the Union Jack of their flag, something the Canadians did ages ago). It's always the men as well - I've never come across an Australian woman who showed any signs of it.

Anyway, reasons to be cheerful if you're English -
1. Three blokes from Gloucestershire have just reached the Pole of Inaccessibility. Yes, no point on the globe is further away from an Aussie telling you your cricket team is crap.
2. OK, Britain is being rather windy at the moment, but Australia is on fire and full of deadly snakes. A large tree branch hitting you across the chops at 70mph isn't nice, but is it really worse than being bitten by a poisonous snake while burning to death?

England have won a game of cricket!

OK, it's against the Kiwis. I suppose when resistable force meets moveable object then something might give, and this time it means England just about scraped home with one ball to spare in the One Dayers. Good batting and bowling from Flintoff - is it freedom from the shackles of captaincy, or not facing the Aussies? Vaughan fielded athletically - and picked up a hamstring injury.

So anyway, we're not the worst in the world, which is the way you might start thinking after being stuffed regularly by the Aussies, no matter how many of them retire or sit out matches. I suppose that's something.

At least I'm not from Yorkshire

The title says it all really: "England may be tragic but Yorkshire are pure farce

The shadow over Naples

Report on the BBC about vulcanologists looking at Mount Vesuvius, which has 3 million people living within 20km.

Apparently, the eruption that destroyed Pompeii in 79AD may have named the type of eruption (Plinian), but it wasn't that big. Not compared to a stone age eruption they have been investigating

"Within the city of Naples they found deposits of this ash up to 3m (10ft) deep".

Um.

Now, admittedly you should get more warning than the US did about Katrina hitting New Orleans, but still - that's three million refugees. Who won't want to go back to homes that are 3 metres under ash.

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse

Now Pietersen is out for the rest of the series.

Well, that's pretty much it then. Our only ODI player with any form - gone. Nixon managed to field worse and bat worse than either Read or Jones managed, Flintoff appears to have lost form with the ball, Anderson is still expensive, nobody else is getting off the mark with the bat. How about we hand the Aussies the world cup now, and the rest of us play a competition where the result might actually be at stake? Or better yet, make the buggers split up. We might manage to give Tasmania a good game. If we're on form.

Crushing inevitability of a crushing

Oh yes, we got stuffed again at cricket. Huge Aussie score, some England batsmen get going, but not for long, tail order collapse, etc. etc. etc.

On the plus sides - Nixon did well, but by the time he came out to bat the Aussies had it in the bag anyway. Vaughan came back OK and played reasonably fluently with the bat, four boundaries before some Brummie dressed up as Papa Lazarou got him (it's the white sunblock that makes the resemblence I think).

The "la-la-la" files

Latest to stick his fingers in his ears and deny loudly anything scientists and economists tell him that he doesn't want to hear is Chrysler's chief economist Van Jolissaint

Mr Van Jolissaint is apparently surprised by how much support there had been in the Daimler office in Stuttgart for these "quasi-hysterical" policies that smacked of "Chicken Little" politics

So this rather strongly suggests that any "green" policies such US companies come up with are merely part of window-dressing to get extra sales (or in Chrysler's case, forced on them by Daimler)

Oaths

Just commenting because this interested me - US congressman Keith Ellison is the first Muslim to be elected to the US Congress, and so wanted to take his oath of office on the Quran. How to do this while ensuring that mad reactionary bigots only look like mad reactionary bigots (seriously, people *have* criticised him for this!) Simple - take the oath using Thomas Jefferson's copy.

One criticism - in the pictures I've seen, he doesn't appear to be wearing gloves. It's an old and historic book, I hope he used a sterile wipe first to remove the oils from his hand.

England down under - the Test aftermath.

Well, apart from "Oh dear", what to say?

It wasn't *quite* as bad as I'd feared - England did at least manage to bowl out the Aussies once in the 5th Test, but a combination of better batting, better bowling, and just actually wanting to be on the field meant the Australians cruised to a fifth win - and a final one for McGrath, Warne and Langer.

So, what are the pluses? Well, apart from a load of England's past tormentors now having retired, Read did very well with the gloves, becoming the first ever Test player to take six dismissals in consecutive innings. He isn't quite as bad with the bat as Jones was. Just. But I'm not that sure that Read will have much of a Test career ahead of him either now - I wouldn't be completely surprised if the ageing Paul Nixon is given the chance to take the position in the short term (after all, having people on the wrong side of 35 in the team didn't harm the Aussies that much) and in the long term - well, if Worcestershire's Steve Davis carries on doing well in the county championship, they may turn to him sooner rather than later.

Also Vaughan is now back. Albeit probably rusty, so I'm not expecting much from him with the bat (and possibly the field), but in terms of motivation and giving Flintoff less to worry about, his presence should be a plus. I hope.

It's now Twenty-20 time - can England relax and enjoy it (knowing half of them weren't in the Test team anyway)? Or should I just console myself that at least we can't lose this one by more than 10 wickets?

One other positive note - as a 30 something bloke, I should at least take some heart that the 30-somethings drubbed the 20-somethings...

Dead ends in Science

In the latest edition of the Institute of Physics' Physics World magazine, Dr D Jason Palmer lightheartedly suggests a new journal entitled Journal of Close But No Cigar to detail all of the rational, scientific, but ultimately pointless dead ends in science - "putting up roadblocks at the end of dead end streets".

This isn't a new idea, though - indeed, it's a fairly obvious one when you think about it, and people (springing to mind are the editors in Nature back in 2003 - I think and of course the publishers of the Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine) have lamented the lack of publishing the results of failed experiments in the field of medicine, but I haven't heard that much of a suggestion for it in the field of Physics. I suppose this is because in medicine, you're dealing with complicated organs and organisms that can react in completely unexpected ways, thus throwing out statistical anomolies that suggest your theory is right until it is discovered that nobody else can replicate them at all sometime after the original paper is published, while in Physics things tend just not to work so you give up and try something that will, so nothing gets published. The first can confuse science (and indeed the public, as both Nature and Guardian journalist Ben Goldacre have lamented), the latter just wastes scientists time.

I've done the same - most failed experiments I've just ignored, or given at best a brief mention in a conference presentation (and then only because the failure was in the growth of the samples, and I was characterising them, and they failed in an interesting way), but I haven't made any attempt at all to submit these results to a "proper" journal.

So yes, Dr Palmer, Your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter journal

Science to celebrities - don't shoot your mouth off

The BBC News reports that the charity Sense about Science has a new campaign to get celebrities to check the facts with scientists before lending support to campaigns.

No word on whether Phil Collins has commented.

5th Test, day two

I suppose an England batting collapse was just inevitable, really. Read got a mere two, so no abatement in slowly increasing viewing of Davis as the new wicketkeeper-batsman messiah. England bowlers haven't done too badly, so the Aussies are only just ahead, albeit with Hussey and only-good-against-England Symonds at the crease. So, is this going to be a slow death for England, a huge Aussie first innings lead (Hussey 200 not out, Aussie declaration...) followed by an England collapse, or dare I hope for an echo of 2005 with England just edging it?

Still wonder what Mahmood is meant to be in the team for. Doesn't do that much with the bat (a first ball duck today), and they don't appear to be letting him bowl that much - four overs out of 55 today, and I wouldn't be completely surprised if Petersen ends up bowling more overs than he does.

Car ads

Lunch time ramblings (I had breakfast too early, so it's lunchtime now). About the only time of year I'm really exposed to adverts is over the holiday period, where someone else may have the control and not hit mute the moment someone interrupts to try to sell me something.

So I noticed the ads. Car ads in particular (I'm thinking of giving up and getting one). Where once upon a time they may try and show you something of the car - its performance, reliability, whatever - now they seem to be making it up in a lifestyle sense. One car goes through Busby Berkeley style somersaults, leaping hundreds of feet in the air and driving on serenely. Another makes a metallic transformation into giant robotic spiders, big cats, crocodiles, snakes. Both resorting to ludicrously implausible CGI animations to try to give a lifestyle message - this little car is fun, this big SUV is unstoppable.

Oh well, at least it's better than the car advert which has a truly terrible cover version of Dylan's "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall". How much did they pay him for that? Or is it perhaps Bob thinking "you say I can't sing? They won't after they've heard this..." Unfortunately, they don't put up the name of the car until the end, so I've no idea which brand I need to avoid FOR ALL ETERNITY.

Thieving Gets

The problem with being a member of a sports club is they're such targets for thieving scumbags, not all of whom look like central casting's idea of a thieving scumbag. This time I lost my jacket with house keys in (fortunately he was scared off by someone else coming in to the changing rooms before he got down to my wallet).

Why he took my top, I don't know - it needed a wash (I'd cycled in wearing it. It really needed a wash). Apparently he abandoned it shortly after, as a punter at an evening do at the club said he'd seen it earlier that day. Pity the punter didn't pick it up, as by the time I heard where it had been seen it wasn't there any more, and hasn't been handed in to the police either.

So, that's 60 quid for a new jacket, and 150 to change the locks. And the git got away with about 7 quids worth of Euros. If I ever catch him in the club again, he'll have to run very fast. If I'm really lucky, I'll scare him into trying to run away so fast he ends up falling down the stairs (you see, I'm law abiding. I don't want to push him down the stairs, but I'm still human so I'd like to see him fall down the stairs.)

5th Test

It's not gone horribly wrong yet. Not wonderfully great either, though. Still no great opening partnership, Bell has got another 50 but not converted it into a good score, and we're now down to the last two proper batsmen. While we don't have Jones the duck in the team anymore, I'm not expecting great achievements from Read with the willow (although getting 50 would be nice, particularly to shut up a certain Guardian journalist who kept supporting Jones after it had become clear his batting was going backwards), so it's up to Flintoff and Collingwood to establish a decent score. And dare I say it, a good score from Read might reduce the tendency for people to start getting over-excited by Steve Davis, who's averaging 36 in First Class games. He's not 21 until this year, and frankly it's too soon, I'd want him to have at least a couple of seasons before we consider making him face the press, who'll turn on him in an instant if he fails (as they did with Read seven years ago).

I'd be more confident if England had put up more of a fight in the earlier matches, as at least that would have tired out the Aussies who are even older than me. Instead - well, we'll need heroics from Panesar, it seems.

Train unfairs

Rail prices in the UK are going up by more than inflation yet again. But will this mean there will be more discounted advance tickets? Less damaged seats? More seats in general? Will it heck. They've failed to deal with overcrowding by improving the service, so they're dealing with it by pricing people off the rail and back onto the roads.

Drugs and age

I see the UK government is planning on increasing the age limit for smoking to 18 this October.

Which has given me an idea - why not legalise cannabis and set an age limit for it? Since the stereotypical image of a pot-smoker is a slacker who doesn't want to work (you can see how seriously I'm taking this), then I'd suggest an age limit of 65 would be suitable.

Think of the advantages of this - it has many medical uses, pensioners are less likely to use it as a "gateway drug", it's hardly going to cause problems with it being more easily available as it appears to be readily available anyway, and best of all it'll give marijuana an immediate image problem. "Pot? That's for old people"...

Happy New Year

Hello. I'm quite incredibly drunk.

Eventually, I'm sure I will learn that it is not a good idea to drink an entire bottle of whisky all by myself. Part of that is needing friends with enough taste to realise that Laphroig is really high quality stuff and does not smell of Savlon (you'd think a bloke who's half Scottish would have the sense?). Anyway, with people like this sneering at my choice of beverage, I drank the whole thing myself. Which isn't good.

Anyway, if any of this is insensible or just plain bizarre, don't criticise, just marvel that someone as sloshed as me can even work out how to turn one of these computer things on in the first place. In the meantime, I shall drink water in the hope it will make me less eager for death tomorrow morning.

Don't say the g word

It's a favourite ploy of right wingers like the journalists writing for the Daily Mail to make up stories about liberals. The thing is, it's quite easy to write scare stories about conservatives when you have ones like a number of the Republicans in the US, particularly when it might just be true.

The latest is that political appointees are banning geology, as it disagrees with their fundamentalist point of view. You can't have Creationists going and being told geological facts about the Grand Canyon, such as how old it is can you?

4th Test

I would say something, but the depressing inevitability of the whole thing isn't something I feel like facing, so I'll do something more cheerful instead.

Jabs for 12 yr olds

Another of those stories you can just hear the outraged Daily Mail headlines already.

The problem is the jab must be given before a girl becomes sexually active. So giving it at 12 is pretty safe to assume they haven't become sexually active. But the complaints are - "if you give them the jab, then they'll be more likely to have sex!"

Uh, right. So, are you saying the only reason some 13 year olds aren't letting their boyfriends into their knickers because they are afraid they'll get cervical cancer? Don't think so somehow.

Entropy

Once again, the creationist lobby are trying to give the impression that science is divided, this time in the letters pages of the Grauniad.

The thing is, the ability of a couple of people to hold down jobs in mechanical engineering departments at British Universities while simultaneously being incapable of comprehending the concept of entropy doesn't mean science is divided. It means some people are capable of doing engineering while deluding themselves.

In truth, thanks to the continued output of energy from the sun, complex organisms have no harder a job of evolving in the face of entropy than a surfer has in riding his surfboard towards the shore, despite the surfboard having no engine or sail. But these creationists are like someone standing on a beach and insisting to a surfer that he couldn't *possibly* have pulled off any stunts at all, as his surfboard hasn't got an outboard motor on it, and so he *must* have been lying on it and paddling all along.

Christmas songs

Ah, Christmas. Where all the old songs come out again. The problem is most of them should just have stayed buried - they were simple cash-in attempts at the time, and they still are now with little redeeming features (and too many jingling bells as backing support).

So what ones can I stand?
"Fairytale of New York", of course, a modern classic
"Christmas Sucks" by Peter Murphy and Tom Waits - a couple of misanthropes declare how the holiday season is all the more reason to die. Hilarious.
"Wassailing Song" by Blur. It's a traditional wassail (Gloucester Wassail, I believe) done traditionally. A very obscure track, they released it as a special at a charity event, so not a cash in.
Greg Lake's "I Believe in Father Christmas" - nicks the tune from Prokofiev, complains about what a fairy-tale Christmas is, with an accurate desription of the weather ("But instead it just kept on raining")
Jona Lewie's "Stop the Cavalry" - soldier sick of fighting just wants to go home to see his girlfriend

And one reversal of my early rant - I have to admit a liking for "Sleigh Ride" by The Ronettes - yes, it's a cash in with loads of jingling bells, but it's a well-made cash in with loads of jingling bells that never actually mentions Christmas.

Dreaming of a white Christmas?

Seems there is not much chance of anything other than a grey/green/brown Christmas this year. It's not even going to be a White one in Oslo...

Read in, Jones left out

... of the ODI squad. Mind you, it probably does show what the third Test team will be like.

Panesar also picked (hooray- an attacking spin bowler in an England ODI squad), but Stuart Broad left out in favour of Chris Tremlett. Broad has experience down under, but is still only 20, so they may well be slightly cautious about rushing him. Hopefully the decision is also based on seeing promising things from Tremlett, who's only played three ODIs so far (two against Bangladesh, one against the Aussies).

2009 suddenly looks rosy

England's number one tormentor will only be there to destroy our batting lineup for two more Tests - Shane Warne is to finally retire. Which may also mean that come 2009, we may just have the rare experience of England having a better spin bowler than Australia (hey, a man can dream, can't he?)

It's...

I see the spammers have discovered the apostrophe (Lynne Truss will be pleased). No more "Its Leonora" emails, now my inbox is full of "It's Xerxes", "It's Valentin" and all those other people who have names completely unlike anyone I know.

Back to humbug

I really feel sorry for my family this Christmas. I'm in such a rotten mood this week. Horrible, dark weather, a twisted ankle, a flat tyre, and friends all heading off separately in different groups to pubs (I guess - not invited) means that I'm sat at home already, having had to get a taxi back. Yes, I'm a miserable sod (hence the lack of invite to the pub, probably), but this *really* isn't helping.

Hopefully, once the ankle gets a bit better I'll be able to get a good nights sleep, so being rested and getting some caffeine down me should make me more tolerable in the evenings.

I can be rude about these people, as they can't read this anyway.

Just read something on the BBC about some report (standard LOOK AT ME!!! report chucked out by a pressure group to get attention from the press and bloggers, which I'm now giving them, not that anyone reads this anyway) which claims that those tackling Robbie Williams "Angels" at karaoke need to have reading skills the equivalent of 5 GCSEs.

That's got to be the harshest criticism of GCSEs I've seen all year. Except they also claim 17.8 million adults in the UK are such poor readers they couldn't manage it.

I have to wonder, what are the words these people are struggling with? Are they all there, singing "I'm loving angles" at the top of their voices? Or is it the couple of three syllable words in there somewhere that so thoroughly discombobulates them? I'm sure Mr Williams would be anaspeptic, frasmotic, even compunctuous to have caused them such pericumbobulation. As am I if they are trying to read this.

Ouch,

Twisted my ankle yesterday while training yesterday (nothing like the competitive spirit to make some people push themselves so hard they keep injuring themselves). Coach did check up with me this morning to see how I was, which was nice (nobody else did, possibly because I'm such a nut I got on my bike and cycled home, so they probably thought I was fine already, rather than just stupid)

Oddly enough, now I've actually got something to be annoyed about, I've cheered up.

Anyway, only three working days before Christmas, I have one report and one paper to submit, and a large volume of concrete to check up on. Everyone else seems to have gone on holiday already (people seem to think University staff slack off over summer - it's December we seem to slack off in here).

On the plus side, being quiet means it isn't a problem if I start singing along to music. Have I said what a good music label Bella Union is? If not - they're great, check them out. Especially Midlake. Fionn Regan is touring in the UK at the moment as well, he's good live.

Humbug I say.

Today I'm in an incredibly foul mood. Not sure exactly though, and I don't really have an excuse for being so, it's just that sometimes I become very frustrated by everything, and I'm at my most selfish when I'm being miserable.

It's not the cricket - as an England fan I've had years to get used to them being crap, so I don't think they're being crap is the problem, even though they weren't last year.

It's not *really* work either, even though I'm currently re-writing a paper I should have submitted a year ago. At least. I did the work two years ago. I've got comments in the paper from one co-author that could have been added in a revision he saw at least a year ago. I'm utterly sick of the damn thing. So sick I'm faffing on here rather than actually doing it.

Maybe it's Christmas - yes, I hated the shopping, I hate the fact that I've still got to wrap the presents, that I haven't written any cards, that's it all feels like an obligation rather than something I'm doing because I want to, and the standard fall-out of emotions from Christmas parties (like many single blokes at this time of year, after parties I either find myself regretting something I did do or end up regretting something you didn't - being the more well-behaved/shy sort, it's normally the latter for me) it all adds up to a state of mind where my normal Eeyore-like mood now makes Scrooge look like Santa Claus.

Still, I've had worse. Maybe it's because the last two years have been clearly worse, I've been able to make myself make the effort to actually cheer up. Now it's not really that bad, I can't force myself to lift my spirits, because I don't really need to.

It's all over

England finally capitulate to the Aussie juggernaut on the 5th day. Two predictable things in the second innings - England lose a wicket just before tea, and Jones fails with the bat again. Read in for the next Test, perhaps?

Any maybe Chris Broad instead of Mahmood, since he's got experience of playing in Australia? Having said that, since he got to bowl a grand total of 17 overs, they don't appear to be picking Sajid for his bowling, so maybe they'll pick Ed Joyce instead...

Third Test, Day Two

Damn.

Chinese dolphins

Bad news and not particularly bad news for dolphins in China. Firstly it appears the poor old Baiji Yangtze Dolphin has finally had enough. Apparently, the Yangtze isn't quite as badly polluted as Westerners probably assume it is, but if you're a mostly-blind dolphin relying on sonar to work out where you are, being on the riverine equivalent of the M25 at rush hour isn't good for your long term survival.

On the other hand, the Chinese have developed a new treatment for dolphins that have had an encounter with plastic - get a tall Mongolian to shove his arm down their throat.

The Full Monty

Hurrahs ring out across the land, the Saviour of English Cricket has returned to the team - yes, the Monty panacea that the depressed English fans demanded has finally been granted them.

All right, I'll admit it, he's been completely overhyped. Panesar is good, but not *that* great. The way we've been talking about him you'd expect him to take five wickets in the first innings...

England batsmen remember what the bat is for

Admittedly it's on a batsman friendly pitch (although they said that about the last one, and Collingwood aside we know what happened there), but at least some of the England cricketers have remembered how to bat, including two who will actually get picked. Although I still hold out hopes that Read (worst Test innings in 2006 - 33) will get picked ahead of Jones (no. of test innings in 2006 higher than Read's worst this year - once in 16 innings), as he's still a better wicket keeper (Jones has improved that part of his game) and frankly doesn't appear to be batting any worse these days.

Beware of the squirrels

Think that squirrels are cute? Or rats with furry tails and better PR? Bet you didn't think they're dangerous flesh-eating monsters who hunt in packs like tree-dwelling piranhas.

Nobel Peace Prize goes to someone who deserves it

Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank received their Nobel Peace Prize yesterday. They've managed to go a few years without courting controversy with this prize, and I'd say Yunus' microcredit work has definitely earned recognition.

Oddly enough, Yunus had two reasons for visiting Norway at the weekend - firstly to pick up the prize, secondly to have meetings with Telenor about Grameen Mobile - now the larges mobile phone company in Bangladesh, Grameen Mobile was originally set up with Telenor owning 51% of the shares. Yunus' long term intention was that the mobile phone company would eventually be owned entirely by the poor of Bangladesh. The problem is that the company is rather lucrative, the original agreement was rather vague, and Telenor naturally bought up another 11% of the shares when Grameen Bank didn't buy them.

Dumb spam

One thing that puzzles me about the latest tide of spam is how stupid many of the spam email titles are - those that pretend to be from random names e.g. Barry, Lea, Nigel, etc. but title the emails as if they are emails *to* those people (Read this Barry, Greetings Barry). Even if I was dumb enough to open spam emails, I'd just think "I'm not Barry - delete".

When are they going to give up on the current model of email as broken and move to something where servers have to confirm they are the source of the email?

Bad news for the Ashes (2009)

If England are going to have any hope of regaining the Ashes in 2009 (yes I've given up already. You need to bowl the Aussies out twice to win matches, and with Flintoff showing signs of injury, Harmison misfiring, Anderson no-good, and Giles merely a run-rate restrictor, and Panesar not being picked, that leaves Hoggy doing it on his own, and he's not *that* good), then we might need more promising new players coming through in the next couple of years - Adil Rashid could be one of them. Except he's crocked already from overuse.

Craven bureaucracy

Working at a University, I sometimes suspect that I see some of the most over the top bureaucracy. Stories like Craven council and the mince pies remind me that things could be worse.

As for the nuts problem - people with serious nut allergies must find it impossible to buy things in the supermarket these days, everything seems to say it "might have nuts" to cover their own backs.