Saw one a few days ago..... Totally classic motor.

Just Finished Reading: Chavs – The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones (FP: 2011)

You don’t have to look far – newspapers, political speeches, comedy shows on TV. These days the once powerful and respected working class, the very salt of the Earth have become the scum of the Earth. In other words – Chavs. These are the remnant, the non-aspiring working class who are either unable or unwilling to move (along with everyone else apparently) into the only class worthy of mention – the middle class. According to politicians both from the Right and Left we’re all middle class now. To which the author says: nonsense!

For one thing survey after survey shows that over 50% of the British population regard themselves as working class – so hardly a left-over rump then! Not everyone it seems aspires to be comfortably in the middle of things. The image of things, rather than the reality, is something quite different. Those who don’t aspire are feckless, scroungers, criminal and racist – at least according to the right-wing press and the right-wing politicians who feed the flames of class war (which they believe they’ve won). Ever since Maggie took on and defeated the union shock troops made up of the miners in the early 80’s things have gone from bad to worse for the workers – with ever growing restrictions on union activity and ever loosening constraint on businesses in their hiring and firing practices leading to abominations such as zero hours contracts and so called internships where young people work for months without pay in the hope (rather than the expectation) of a job at the end of it. Inevitably only those whose parents can support them through their university and internship (not the working classes by the way) have any hope at all of progressing in this way leading to the not unsurprising finding that the vast majority of top jobs are occupied by often privately educated children of the upper middle class. Is it any wonder that they look down on their social inferiors?

Time and again, with facts and figures to back up his arguments as well as an impressive array of interviews from the man (or woman) in the street to the so-called great and good who made decisions that affected millions of workers the author successfully debunks myth after myth and lie after lie. Not only does he show that the so-called ‘sink’ estates are products of government policy – particularly the right-to-buy scheme coupled with heavy restrictions on council house building programmes leaving the most run-down areas as the only affordable place to live for the very bottom strata of society but the reason for so much poverty (not unsurprisingly linked to chronic unemployment or underemployment) is again deliberate government policy which eviscerated the very industries that working class areas depended on for their economic and psychological wellbeing.

About the only thing I disagree on, in this otherwise very readable political polemic, is the author’s fixation on Margaret Thatcher as the instigator of the Class War still raging in this country. The war against the working class has its roots in a time before that class existed. It is a war that has been raging since before the Industrial Revolution and it’s not over yet. The rich may think they’ve won and that the workers have been finally put in their place but we’ve been here before and it didn’t go too well for the rich back then. Workers of the World unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains….

Cartoon Time.

April breaks global temperature record

From The BBC

16th May 2016

April was the seventh month in a row that broke global temperature records, Nasa figures show. Last month smashed the previous record for April by the largest margin ever, the data show. That makes it three months in a row that the monthly record was broken by the largest margin ever. But in terms of its departure from the 1951-1980 temperature average used by Nasa, April was equal with January 2016. February and March this year showed greater departures from the norm. The new record for April trounced the previous one, set in 2010, by 0.24C. "The very unfortunate circumstance we have now is the overlap of a very intense El Nino that has been magnified by climate change," said Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

[You know, I’m starting to think that maybe Global Warming isn’t such a myth after all – especially with the record breaking temperatures in India…… ]

I've just registered over 400,000 hits on this Blog! Yet another milestone....... Here's to the Half Million! I'm as excited as a boy who's just met Tinkerbell..... Well, almost!

All I need is a ship, and a star to steer her by.........

Just Finished Reading: Maritime Dominion and the Triumph of the Free World – Naval Campaigns that Shaped the Modern World 1852-2001 by Peter Padfield (FP: 2009)

This was definitely a book of two halves – or more accurately two sections. One the one hand we had very good/excellent discussions on seminal naval encounters mostly in the 20th century, whilst on the other we had some serious axe grinding and quasi-triumphalism pitting the ‘evil’ continental powers against the free and, by extension, virtuous maritime powers – the Dutch, British and American capitalist democracies. After the first such tirade I honestly went into skim mode whenever he strayed from talking what I wanted to read about – naval warfare. Of course what makes this even more irritating was that, when he concentrated on the actual military side of things (rather than slagging off the Germans, French, Russians, Japanese and, later, the Chinese for their many faults) he was really good. His discussion on British naval global strategy in WW1, coupled with a very good description of the joined battles of Coronel and the Falkland Islands was very good indeed and I learnt a number of new things which always pleases me. Likewise his two chapter discussion of the strategically decisive battle of Jutland almost 100 years ago is honestly gripping even if he didn’t produce any new information I was unaware of.

Meanwhile both the description of the Russian defeat in 1905 at the Battle of Tsushima by the newly industrialised Japan gave the author an ‘in’ to criticise the Japanese commercial class for not exerting greater influence over the burgeoning Nippon culture and turning the Samurai spirit away from aggressive war and more along the path of aggressive marketing. Japan, the author freely admits, is an anomaly that doesn’t fit his idea of maritime powers dependent on trade inevitably becoming more open, freer and more democratic. This anomaly is never adequately explained. His later discussion on the Pacific war and the Battle of Midway in particular allowed the author to show his deep distaste for everything Japanese if the reader hadn’t already picked up on that.

Finally we had the rather bizarre chapter on the ‘Cold War and After’ allowing more deep seated criticism, tinged with the usual distaste of all things ‘continental’, of the Soviet system followed by a head shaking and tutting condemnation of the European Union. I can guess which way he’s going to vote in the referendum next month.

Despite the very good chapters outlined above, as well as those on the battle for the Atlantic in both world wars, the fact that the author couldn’t stay objective about regimes he found objectionable for various reasons ruined the book for me. This is a real shame as he obviously has a very good grasp of the battles themselves and the historical context in which they took place. If only he left his axes at home rather than needing to grind them in public and had kept his political prejudices in check this could have been an excellent history of 20th century naval conflict. Unfortunately it wasn’t. If you still want to read the good bits I recommend you get this from a library and go into fast-forward whenever you see him going off the reservation.

Cartoon Time.

Last surviving Casablanca actress Madeleine Lebeau dies

From The BBC

15th May 2016

French actress Madeleine Lebeau, the last surviving cast member of the classic 1942 film Casablanca, has died at the age of 92, her family says. Her stepson, filmmaker Carlo Alberto Pinelli, told the Hollywood Reporter that she had died on 1 May in Spain. In Casablanca, Lebeau plays Humphrey Bogart's spurned lover. In a famous scene, she tearfully shouts "Vive La France", after the clientele in Rick's Café sing La Marseillaise to drown out singing by German soldiers.

Born in 1923 near Paris, she fled Nazi-occupied France with her then husband, prominent actor Marcel Dalio, in 1940. The couple ended up in Hollywood, and both played in Casablanca.

In the film, Bogart plays an American cafe owner in Morocco, a territory controlled by France's Nazi collaborationist regime. He must choose between his love for a woman and helping her husband escape Casablanca to continue fighting the Nazis.

Lebeau played in two more US films before returning to France after the war. Her subsequent work includes the role of a temperamental French actress in Fellini's 8 1/2 (1963).

[Casablanca is one of my Top 10 movies of all time. I just love it. The scene where Lebeau aids in the drowning out of the Germans singing their own anthem is brilliant – and still brings a lump to my throat. Imagine the reaction of any French ex-pats watching it across the world! I feel motivated to watch it again this weekend….. Vive La France!]

Cartoon Time.

Roads.....? Where we're going...... Oh, and this was my 6,000th post!!!!

Flight delayed after passenger becomes suspicious of equation

From The BBC

8 May 2016


An Italian economist says his flight was delayed after a fellow passenger saw him working on a differential equation and alerted the cabin crew. Guido Menzio was taken off and questioned by agents who did not identify themselves, after the woman next to him said she felt ill. He showed them what he had been writing and the flight eventually took off - more than two hours late. Mr Menzio told the Washington Post that the pilot seemed embarrassed. He wrote on Facebook that the experience was "unbelievable" and made him laugh.

The University of Pennsylvania associate professor boarded the Philadelphia-Syracuse flight on Thursday on his way to Ontario, where he was due to give a lecture. Before the flight took off, the woman sitting next to him passed a note to a member of the cabin crew. She initially told them she was feeling unwell but then voiced her suspicions about Mr Menzio's scribblings. He wrote: "It's a bit funny. It's a bit worrisome. The lady just looked at me, looked at my writing of mysterious formulae, and concluded I was up to no good. Because of that an entire flight was delayed." He told Associated Press that the crew should have run additional checks before delaying take-off. He said: "Not seeking additional information after reports of 'suspicious activity' is going to create a lot of problems, especially as xenophobic attitudes may be emerging."

American Airlines, whose regional partner Air Wisconsin was operating the flight in question, said the crew followed protocol to take care of an ill passenger and then to investigate her allegations. It was established that they were not credible. The woman was re-booked on a later flight.

[Ok, once I stopped laughing I became quite annoyed. In a world where writing down mathematical equations is ‘suspicious behaviour’ I couldn’t help but wonder what next? Holding an intelligent, but to the general public, unintelligible conversation? Reading a book that isn’t a bestselling novel – especially if in a foreign language? Just reading a book? Or just reading – anything? Are we really that far gone? Are we really that paranoid that anything ‘out of the ordinary’ or outside of people’s general day to day experience is now ‘suspicious’ and a cause of security alerts? What kind of world are we creating here?]

So that's what the plug-like thing does...............

Just Finished Reading: The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker (FP: 2012)

Julia is just about to turn 12. Returning to school after the summer break she is expecting miracles in the year ahead when girls suddenly become women and boys inexplicably become men. But something even stranger is happening – the Earth’s rotation is slowing. First by unnoticed seconds and then by minute piled on minute both the days and nights are getting longer. By the time it becomes easily noticeable the scientific community go public and the government tell everyone to remain calm. So the panic buying starts and half of Julia’s schools student fail to turn up for class. But humans are adaptable creatures and we begin to adapt. Timetables are re-written on a weekly basis to keep pace with the lengthening day until they can no longer keep pace – so ‘clock-time’ is created and the fact of day or night is ignored at least by the majority. The minority – real-timers – plan their day by the sun rising and setting quickly claiming that the lengthening days are lengthening their lives. With days now hours and then tens of hours longer the consequences start piling up – millions of birds drop from the skies dead from unknown causes, people become ill with a range of symptoms presumed to be caused by circadian rhythm irregularities, ocean currents and tides change beaching hundreds of whales on shores across the world – and still the rotation slows a little more each day. Soon nights are cold enough to have snow in Julia’s Californian suburb and days are hot enough to kill all unprotected vegetation. Then, as the slowing continues, the tragedy gets worse as the magnetic core itself falters are the Earth’s magnetic field start to collapse. Is this the end of humanity?

For a first novel this is a highly accomplished piece of work. Everything is told and experienced from the narrators point of view – an 11 year old girl just beginning to make sense of the world, who wonders about the mutability of friendship, the fickleness of adult relationships and the mystery of boys. Meanwhile around her everything she thought she knew is slowly, very slowly being brought into question and almost imperceptibly falling apart. I honestly think this is one of the reading highlights of the year. One of the comments on the back calls it a ‘beautifully wrought novel’ and I definitely can’t disagree. It is simply a delight to read and beautiful is most definitely a word that comes to mind when reading it. Julia is a great, and more importantly, believable character full of her own hopes and fears for the future even before the world started ending. Seeing the events through her eyes and her experiences was a brilliant idea which works really well. We see the world end through ordinary, simple and trusting eyes rather than through the usual heroes, scientists or plucky survivor types. This grounds everything in place and makes the whole thing much more believable and, therefore, all the more emotionally intense. The feelings generated by this book stayed with me for days afterwards and I still find myself thinking about what I, or anyone, would do in this kind of situation. Beautifully haunting and a most definite recommendation.

Cartoon Time.

...and that's Star Wars Week (to celebrate Star Wars Day last week) over and done with until next year. Normal postings - or what passes for 'normal' here - will resume from tomorrow. May the Force be With You!

Something cool (and useful) for the Star Wars Geek who already has everything..........

Just Finished Reading: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter (FP: 1962)

This is not an easy book to precis. For one thing it covers a lot of largely unfamiliar ground (to me). My knowledge of American history – to say nothing of American political and educational history – is….well, patchy. For another I was, again largely, unfamiliar with around 75-80% of the people mentioned throughout the book. It did not make it an easy read. However, to say that this book was difficult, obscure or simply unfamiliar would to miss the point. As a winner of the 1964 Pulitzer Prize in Non-Fiction it is, understandably, very well written. Anything less would, I think, have made this unreadable – at least for me.

Focusing initially on the recent (to the author!) excesses of McCarthyism and its attacks on Communism and Intellectualism (often conflated as the same thing) the author contended that this was far from a new phenomenon and that it had actually existed throughout American culture almost from the very beginning. Although the Founding Fathers were arguably intellectuals almost to a man those who followed them were anything but and, far too often, the very opposite. There developed a thread, which ran throughout American life that the Intellectual was at best unnecessary or a distraction from the work needed to be done in the New World, and at worst a subversive or questionably element that might undermine the very fabric of the new society being built on the new continent. Indeed the intellectual was tinged with the smell of European corrupt values that many had come to America to escape. What was needed now was hard work and common sense not deep thought and pseudo-European elitism.

This is not to say that America turned its back on intelligence – far from it. Even more than before intelligence was needed to grow the economy, manage the republic’s Manifest Destiny and plan the bright future clearly ahead of them. What they didn’t need was perverted intelligence produced in the elite schools, colleges and universities (at tax payers expense no less!) that thrived on criticism of the status quo and called common sense solutions into question. The irony was, of course, that as the economy grew and technology became more and more pervasive these very intellectuals became more and more needed to help run things. Business was still in the driver’s seat though – and intellectuals became generally low paid and underappreciated, if not actually invisible, hired-help brought in to fix problems and propose practical solutions to real-world problems rather to spout theory in their cloistered ivory towers. Once the crisis passed they, more often than not, returned to their universities to write books and argue esoteric points with other, even more out of touch, intellectuals. Even more ironic was the effect of anti-intellectualism on the American education system which, over the decades, slowly abandoned the idea of training the mind (thereby producing useless elites) and instead concentrated on training the body and more closely integrating a diverse population and inculcating democratic values on a whole generation.

The paragraphs above do scant service to this very interesting book. Although, as mentioned above, the personalities and some of the cultural nuance went straight over my head, I do feel I understand the often perplexing American psyche a lot more than before reading this book. I’m even starting to appreciate why some people can see the idea of President Trump as a ‘good thing’ rather than a joke in very poor taste. It also helped to explain (or at least hint at) why any kind of claim to specialist knowledge, rather than simple hard won experience in the ‘real world’ is often characterised, by Americans in particular, as unacceptably elitist. Rather than having the best qualified person in post there are those who would rather have an untrained amateur instead – no matter what the consequences. It’s weird but at least I’m starting to appreciate where that ideas comes from. Recommended and definitely worthy of a Pulitzer.
  
Coming next – Three books on the Working Class.

Cartoon Time.

Planetary Scientists Find Meteoritic Evidence of Mars Water Reservoir 

From NASA

December 18, 2014

Recent research provides evidence for the existence of a third reservoir that is intermediate in isotopic composition between the Red Planet’s mantle and its current atmosphere. These results support the hypothesis that a buried cryosphere accounts for a large part of the initial water budget of Mars.

NASA and an international team of planetary scientists have found evidence in meteorites on Earth that indicates Mars has a distinct and global reservoir of water or ice near its surface.

Though controversy still surrounds the origin, abundance and history of water on Mars, this discovery helps resolve the question of where the “missing Martian water” may have gone. Scientists continue to study the planet’s historical record, trying to understand the apparent shift from an early wet and warm climate to today’s dry and cool surface conditions.

The reservoir’s existence also may be a key to understanding climate history and the potential for life on Mars. The team’s findings are reported in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

“There have been hints of a third planetary water reservoir in previous studies of Martian meteorites, but our new data require the existence of a water or ice reservoir that also appears to have exchanged with a diverse set of Martian samples,” said Tomohiro Usui of Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan, lead author of the paper and a former NASA/Lunar and Planetary Institute postdoctoral fellow. “Until this study there was no direct evidence for this surface reservoir or interaction of it with rocks that have landed on Earth from the surface of Mars.”

Researchers from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington and NASA’s Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division, located at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, studied three Martian meteorites.

The samples revealed water comprised of hydrogen atoms that have a ratio of isotopes distinct from that found in water in the Red Planet’s mantle and current atmosphere. Isotopes are atoms of the same element with differing numbers of neutrons.

While recent orbiter missions have confirmed the presence of subsurface ice, and melting ground-ice is believed to have formed some geomorphologic features on Mars, this study used meteorites of different ages to show that significant ground water-ice may have existed relatively intact over time.

Researchers emphasize that the distinct hydrogen isotopic signature of the water reservoir must be of sufficient size that it has not reached isotopic equilibrium with the atmosphere.

“The hydrogen isotopic composition of the current atmosphere could be fixed by a quasi-steady-state process that involves rapid loss of hydrogen to space and the sublimation from a widespread ice layer,” said co-author John Jones, a JSC experimental petrologist and member of NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover team.

Curiosity’s observations in a lakebed, in an area called Mount Sharp, indicate Mars lost its water in a gradual process over a significant period of time.

“In the absence of returned samples from Mars, this study emphasizes the importance of finding more Martian meteorites and continuing to study the ones we have with the ever-improving analytical techniques at our disposal,” said co-author Conel Alexander, a cosmochemist at the Carnegie Institution for Science.

In this investigation, scientists compared water, other volatile element concentrations and hydrogen isotopic compositions of glasses within the meteorites, which may have formed as the rocks erupted to the surface of Mars in ancient volcanic activity or by impact events that hit the Martian surface, knocking them off the planet.

“We examined two possibilities, that the signature for the newly identified hydrogen reservoir either reflects near surface ice interbedded with sediment or that it reflects hydrated rock near the top of the Martian crust,” said co-author and JSC cosmochemist Justin Simon. “Both are possible, but the fact that the measurements with higher water concentrations appear uncorrelated with the concentrations of some of the other measured volatile elements, in particular chlorine, suggests the hydrogen reservoir likely existed as ice.”

The information being gathered about Mars from studies on Earth, and data being returned from a fleet of robotic spacecraft and rovers on and around the Red Planet, are paving the way for future human missions on a journey to Mars in the 2030s.

[As much as I admire the time, effort and money that has gone into the very successful probes orbiting Mars as well as those trundling across the surface I still think that we could have a major leap in understanding the Red Planet if we had some people up there. I’m pretty sure that for the cost of a small war or a year’s purchase of pet treats we could have 6-10 scientists based on Mars for a year or so. Just imagine what they might find! Maybe they’d even find life – we’ll never know as long as we depend on robots, no matter how good they are.]

How they did it back in the old days before CGI.

Just Finished Reading: Coldbrook by Tim Lebbon (FP: 2011)

It was the greatest scientific achievement of the modern age. After 20 years of trying and 20 years of setbacks they had finally done it. They had broken through to another universe, to another Earth. For three days they had been staring through the door way into an alternate Earth so like our own and yet strangely different. Little by little they begin teasing out the changes as bugs and other wildlife stumble through the hole between worlds and are captured for later more detailed analysis – and then the unexpected happens. A humanoid figure steps through and looks around the room. It appears ape-like but with distinct human features. One of the researchers approaches to get a better look only to be attacked and bitten repeatedly by the creature which is shot dead by a security guard. Then the impossible happens. The clearly dead researcher sits up, still covered in her own blood and attacks the guard who has just come to her assistance. Within moments there is pandemonium, screaming, blood and more blood. In the chaos one of the research team breaks containment protocol only thinking of his family not knowing or not caring the danger he is putting the world in. Within days he realises what he has done, what cannot be undone and must watch as his single act of selfishness condemns the world to a fate it cannot understand.

OK. Now this was more than a little surprising. I knew about the portal and the death that following its opening. But I had no idea (and I’m really not giving too much away here) that this was a zombie apocalypse novel. Indeed I was unaware that I even owned such a book! But I know this author, he’s good – really good – so I persevered. Not that I needed to try very hard. You’ll realise how much I enjoyed it and how much the story gripped me when I tell you that I started and finished it over a weekend – from around 5pm on Friday till just before 7pm on Sunday. That might not sound like much of an achievement until I tell you that this was a book of 632 pages. Even by my best standards that’s pretty special. What gripped me was, as always to be honest, good characterisation and a bloody (ha!) good story, well told and at pace. Honestly the book is breathless. There are pauses here and there for the characters to catch their breaths as much as the reader but they’re only short pauses between more action, more death and even more destruction. Be warned this is a full on, in your face, no holds barred end of the world story that pulls few (if any) punches. As you might very well imagine there’s lots of tension, lots of death (and post-death!), quite a bit of blood – though not as much as you might expect – and lots of heart in the throat moments (and not always in a good way).

This is also, again without giving much away, definitely not your standard zombie story. Yes, there’s dead people attacking living people but there’s much, much more going on than that simple fact. It’s also not just a survival story – although inevitably there’s lots of that going on (completely with obligatory biker gang) – there’s a deeper backstory that only a handful of people ever find out about. The zombie plague unleashed on the Earth wasn’t an accident and nor was the breakthrough to another world. There’s movers behind the scenes with motives of their own and this Earth isn’t the only one fighting for its life. Highly recommend even to those who are not zombie fans – as long as you have a fairly strong stomach at times. Oh, and a final warning. If you’re anything like me this book will spook you for days afterwards.

Cartoon Time.

Happy Star Wars Day! Have a Beer to celebrate.....

2014 Arctic Sea Ice Minimum Sixth Lowest on Record 

From NASA

September 22, 2014

Arctic sea ice coverage continued its below-average trend this year as the ice declined to its annual minimum on Sept. 17, according to the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Over the 2014 summer, Arctic sea ice melted back from its maximum extent reached in March to a coverage area of 1.94 million square miles (5.02 million square kilometers), according to analysis from NASA and NSIDC scientists. This year’s minimum extent is similar to last year’s and below the 1981-2010 average of 2.40 million square miles (6.22 million square km).

"Arctic sea ice coverage in 2014 is the sixth lowest recorded since 1978. The summer started off relatively cool, and lacked the big storms or persistent winds that can break up ice and increase melting," said Walter Meier, a research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

“Even with a relatively cool year, the ice is so much thinner than it used to be,” Meier said. “It’s more susceptible to melting.”

This summer, the Northwest Passage above Canada and Alaska remained ice-bound. A finger of open water stretched north of Siberia in the Laptev Sea, reaching beyond 85 degrees north, which is the farthest north open ocean has reached since the late 1970s, according to Meier.

While summer sea ice has covered more of the Arctic in the last two years than in 2012’s record low summer, this is not an indication that the Arctic is returning to average conditions, Meier said. This year’s minimum extent remains in line with a downward trend; the Arctic Ocean is losing about 13 percent of its sea ice per decade.

To measure sea ice extent, scientists include areas that are at least 15 percent ice-covered. The NASA-developed computer analysis, which is one of several methods scientists used to calculate extent, is based on data from NASA’s Nimbus 7 satellite, which operated from 1978 to 1987, and the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, which has provided information since 1987.

In addition to monitoring sea ice from space, NASA is conducting airborne field campaigns to track changes in Arctic sea ice and its impact on climate. Operation IceBridge flights have been measuring Arctic sea ice and ice sheets for the past several years during the spring. A new field experiment, the Arctic Radiation – IceBridge Sea and Ice Experiment (ARISE) started this month to explore the relationship between retreating sea ice and the Arctic climate.

[But we have to remember, boys and girls, that Global Warming is a MYTH.]

Cartoon Time.