Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Year: 2005

  • Teaspoon Research

    Here’s a prime candidate for a mention in the Annals of Improbable Research: a longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute, published in the British Medical Journal this week.
     
    (hat tip to Nicey over at NiceCupOfTeaAndASitDown)

  • Warning – Pedant Ahead

    I’m afraid this news story brought out the pedant in me. It began with the headline – "New Aluminum Windows Stop .50-Caliber Bullet". And no, it’s not the fact that Americans use "aluminum" and "caliber" instead of the proper English words of "aluminium" and "calibre" – I’ve long given up on those sort of battles.
     
    No, what irritated me was the suggestion that scientists have been able to make aluminium as transparent as glass. That would be astounding, if true, and, of course, it isn’t. It turns out that they have made a material – aluminium oxynitride – and this happens to be transparent. This is rather like saying that scientists have been able to make a food flavouring out of the highly reactive metal sodium and the extremely poisonous gas chlorine – when all that is being described is sodium chloride – common salt.
     
    The story also contains another possible push to my pedantry. The head of the research team is quoted as saying: "The substance itself is light-years ahead of glass". Now, it may be that he genuinely meant this in terms of metaphorical distance (miles ahead), but I suspect that he meant it as an even more impressive-sounding version of the common phrase: "it’s years ahead of its time". In which case, he really should be rapped on the knuckles with a ruler. A light-year is a measure of distance, not of time.  

  • 100 Things

    Courtesy of the BBC – here’s a roundup of 100 things that we didn’t know this time last year.

  • Just One Question…

    …why?

  • Is The Lid Coming Off?

    It would appear that the story that the UK government uses intelligence that has been acquired via torture in Uzbekistan has just been turned up a notch or two higher. Documents in the possession of the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan have been re-published on multiple sites in the blogosphere in an attempt to beat what is allegedly the UK government’s attempts to suppress the information.
     
    Justin McKeating over at The Chicken Yoghurt has a good summary of this story, including the alleged documents, and I recommend reading it.
     
    One thing that caught my eye was a supposed quote from Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary. He apparently said:
    "One of the things that is done with intelligence that comes from liaison partners, obviously an assessment is made about its provenance.
     
    Because it does not follow that if it is extracted under torture, it is automatically untrue. But there is a much higher probability of it being embellished."
    Embellished!? I am appalled that he could choose this word. It means "to add incidents or imaginary accompaniments so as to heighten a narrative". In other words Straw is assuming that the information obtained under torture is basically true. He apparently refuses ever to consider the possibility that the information could be false in every respect. I find that sickening, and morally repugnant.

  • MyLifeBits

    I see that the Guardian carried an article earlier this week on the Microsoft Research project: MyLifeBits. Gordon Bell, a computer pioneer, is the guinea pig who is having his every waking moment recorded for Posterity – although whether Posterity will be pleased is probably a moot point.
     
    The article carries a sentence that seems to me to put its finger on the weak point of the project:
    If he wants to recall something, he switches on and picks his way through days and months of information until he finds what he is after.
    "Picking one’s way" through reams of information hardly seems to me to be the most efficient manner of information retrieval. What I think the MyLifeBits project is so far is a "write-only" data vault. Until ways can be found to retrieve information quickly from all that data, then I would classify this as an interesting, but so far a sterile, piece of research.

  • Britons’ Ignorance of Classical Music

    The Guardian reports today on a survey that apparently shows that more than half of Britons polled did not know that Elgar was English, or that Beethoven was born in Germany. But before I get too worked up about this appalling ignorance and start tut-tutting about the state of knowledge today, I should perhaps reflect that my knowledge of today’s pop music is practically non-existent. Pot, kettle, black. 

  • Odd Books

    Courtesy of the Improbable Research blog, I have been pointed to OddBooks – a web site devoted to odd books. I look forward to many happy hours of browsing.

  • Windows Vulnerability

    There’s apparently a vulnerability in the graphics rendering engine of Windows that’s being exploited in a new series of attacks. No fix as yet, but a security warning has been published by Microsoft. Be careful what websites you visit.

  • Japanese Beauty Aids

     
    (hat tip to Zapato Productions intradimensional for the link)

  • Charles Socarides

    I see that Dr. Socarides died last Sunday. I can’t say I’m sorry – as the obituary says, he inflicted enough pain and suffering on gay and lesbian people in his time, and the organisation he founded (NARTH) continues to do so.

  • The Citizenship Test

    Both the UK and the Netherlands are toying with the idea of introducing a citizenship test for immigrants. Last night, one of the Dutch TV channels had a programme: De Nationale Inburgering Test (the national citizenship test). It was the same format as the BBC’s "Test The Nation" – two presenters introduce a series of multiple choice questions for those watching at home and in the studio, and there are six different groups in the studio audience plus a group of celebrities. So the Dutch version had groups such as Chinese (from Chinese takeaways in the Netherlands), Antilleans (from the Netherlands Antilles in the Caribbean), royalists, students, Zeeland (a province of the Netherlands) and workers with asylumseekers.
     
    The 36 questions were in three main categories: Dutch life, norms and rules, and Dutch history. If you answered at least 80% of the questions correctly (i.e. 29 correct answers), then you could consider yourself as having passed the citizenship test.
     
    Well, despite having lived here for 23 years, I only managed 24 correct answers – so I’ve failed the test (does this mean I get deported, or am I going to be put on a list of potential terrorists, because I clearly don’t fit in with the Dutch way of life?). At least I know that Martin didn’t do much better – he only got 26 correct answers, and he’s Dutch!
     
    However, the real kicker was that none of the studio groups, on their group average, managed to pass the test – even those consisting of native Dutch people. That also went for the viewing audience who followed the test on the Internet, or who texted in their answers via SMS. And the group that did the best (while still not passing)? The Chinese, of course. Only one slice of the studio audience managed to actually pass the test – the older women – everyone else failed. Let’s face it, it’s clearly just too difficult to live here…
     
     

  • Dr. Crippen’s Cautionary Tale

    I’ve started reading Dr. Crippen’s NHS Doctor blog. He seems to be another fellow soul; close to having a Victor "I don’t believe it!" Meldrew meltdown like me at the foibles of today’s modern world, infested as it is with management consultants and others of their ilk. The good doctor tells another cautionary tale today about the state of cleanliness in the NHS. I fear that something similar is happening in the Dutch health system, but so far, touch wood, I haven’t yet had to sample it at first hand. My time will surely come, though.

  • Managing Photo Libraries – Part 4

    Time to return to another hobby horse of mine – using computers to manage libraries of digital photos. I’ve been here before – starting back in February 2005 when I berated Microsoft for insisting on having a proprietary scheme of managing image metadata instead of adopting the industry standard of IPTC/XMP.

    Well, I muttered about this here and there, and I see I was not the only one to mention to Microsoft that their upcoming Vista operating system really should support IPTC metadata.

    Today, I installed the latest Beta version of Microsoft’s Vista (build 5270) on one of my PCs to take a look at it. And, of course, it does NOT support IPTC metadata, but carries on using its own proprietary metadata.  What is it about Microsoft? Do they never bloody listen?

  • Brussels Sprout Bidding

    People do the strangest things. Such as bid for a single cooked brussels sprout on eBay. But at least the proceeds are apparently going to charity, so I can turn my disbelief back a notch or two. While we’re talking about eBay, the Banterist has an updated version of "A Partridge in a Pear Tree" that is appropriate for the occasion.
     
    (hat tip to Tom Reynolds at Random Acts of Reality for the sprout)

  • The Algebraist…

    …is the title of a science fiction book by Iain M. Banks. I’ve just managed to get around to reading it and finished it today. Banks did not disappoint.
     
    This is big, glorious space opera – hard SF that nonetheless is written by someone who understands human foibles only too well. So it’s not just flashy machines and mind-blowing ideas, it’s also about the things that we do that have impact on others; about power that corrupts, societies that revolve around the most pointless of things, and about religion that dulls the mind (the "Truth"). It’s also full of memorable characters – mostly non-human. And it’s about a journey taken by one human – a complete circle from a quiet conversation in a garden to a similar, and yet utterly different, conversation in the same garden between the same two characters – but between these conversations, the universe has changed, and a new set of possibilities have arisen. In his control of the science, and his command of truly outrageous ideas and visions (an alien society living in the atmosphere of a gas-giant planet similar to Jupiter), Banks reminds me of John Varley. Where I think he goes beyond Varley is the fact that he is a political writer. The political voice of his alter ego, which is given full reign in novels set in our world, such as Dead Air and Complicity, is present in this SF book. Gas-giant planets or Margaret Thatcher, Banks’ voice is very much one that deals with politics, and its impact on people. His voice is the stronger for it.

  • Christmas Greetings

    To one and all – Merry Christmas and Yuletide Greetings.
     

    051223-1932-02

     

  • Mealbox

    A spiffy-looking set of dining table and Japanese-style chairs from a Norwegian company. Although the lack of any indication of price is never a good sign in my opinion.

  • Lenovo Concept Tablet PC

    This concept Tablet PC by Lenovo has won an award. I hope that the award spurs Lenovo on to actually manufacture and sell it. I’m already lusting after it.

  • The In Terror Bang

    I’m sorry, I know it’s in appalling taste, but the headline just popped into my head when I read this news item. I hope they catch the person that did it.