Brian Clegg's Blog, page 119

Do you supper?

Last week I gave a talk at the University of Bath and afterwards was invited to supper. I don't know about you, but generally speaking, I don't do supper. The word is not part of my everyday vocabulary.

Of course, being a northerner*, when I was young we used to have dinner as a midday meal and tea in the early evening - but these days it's more likely to be either lunch and tea or lunch and dinner. (The distinction between tea and dinner being primarily timing and/or where you have it. Tea is earlier than dinner, and you have tea in a tea room/the Ritz, but if you go out to a restaurant it is dinner.)

So what is this 'supper' thing? I think the origins were when some households had a quite substantial afternoon tea - 'high tea' - sandwiches and cakes, for instance - and then topped up in the evening with a light meal, perhaps a bowl of soup. But then we come across something like Colley's Supper Rooms, where 'Supper' appears to be a seven course meal. (Or rather used to be as Colley's seems to have gone bust in its original form.)

I am at a loss. Supper just doesn't work for me as a concept. (I don't like the word, either - it is too close to suppurate.) It's dining confusion. Or should that be supping confusion?

* Someone (Amanda) asked recently on Facebook whether they were still a Northerner after living down south longer than they had up north. Simple answer, yes.

Great customer service requires great recovery

In my book Capturing Customers' Hearts I emphasize how important recovery is. It's not good enough to give excellent day-to-day customer service, when things go wrong (and sometimes they will) you have to be able to recover from the problem in a way that leaves the customer thinking you are brilliant. And it's entirely possible to do so if you go about it the right way.

I've just had a great example of how not to do it at Asda. Asda (the UK Walmart) is generally on top of its day-to-day service standards. Its staff are amongst the most helpful in any UK supermarket. However they clearly haven't been trained to cope with things going wrong and to make the most of the situation. This became clear when at approximately 13.22 yesterday their EPOS system went down in our local superstore. Every single till, human-operated and automatic, stopped working.

First failing: it took too long to get announcements out about what was happening. And they ought to have got an extra person on each till lane immediately to manage the irritated queues, preferably with a nice tin of sweets.

Second failing: the system came back pretty quickly on the operative tills, but the self-checkouts got confused. In the lane of six where I was trying to check out, three of the tills (including mine) decided to reboot, two froze just after apparently taking payment but without issuing a receipt or confirmation of payment and one continued operating normally. Here there were multiple failings:
The staff member in charge of the tills spent most of the down time on the phone, asking what to do. It was fine for her to do a get a quick 'get a manager here now!' call, but her focus should have been on the customers.The customers at the two tills that had apparently taken payment should have been given the option to leave with their goods, if they didn't mind not having a receipt. Okay, the store might have taken a £10 loss, but it would have been worth it a) to please 2 customers and b) to reduce the number of irate people in a concentrated space.The three tills that were rebooting were going to take 10 minutes or so to become functional again. This should have been made clear, but wasn't.The till that was still working was initially ignored. It was only because I said 'Can I try that one, it seems to be working?' (and it was) that the staff member started routing people through it.The people queuing to enter the lane were being ignored. They should have been warned that only one till might be operating for some time.I would also have offered people a voucher (£1 would be enough) as compensation for being messed around. Easily done, cheap, helps ensure people come back.This is top of the head stuff. There's more they could have done. But the main problem is that the staff had no training in what to do if things did go wrong, nor any discretion to sort the problem out. Without those two keys there is no good recovery, and customer service goes down the plughole.

How not to write a TV series

I have just finished watching the new Netflix originated series, Hemlock Grove. As I had really enjoyed their previous (and first) attempt at a home-grown series, House of Cards, I was looking forward to HG. Admittedly it is a horror show, and I am rather averse to gross horror (though clever, funny horror makes Buffy my favourite TV show ever), but I was willing to make allowances.

By about half way through the 13 episodes I thought that watching was a good move. The show was genuinely mystifying, very atmospheric and though leisurely in the extreme, there was enough complexity in the plot to keep the viewer interested - plus some genuinely intriguing characters. Ok, some aspects (Shelley's appearance, particularly) were trying too hard to be weird, but that was forgivable.

But then I watched the last two episodes and it all fell apart. Entirely. [ALERT - Spoilers coming.]

There was a lot left hanging for the next season. Well you expect that from a US series - they love their cliffhangers. That wasn't the end of the world. But first there was a senseless sacrifice, when it would have been perfectly possible to destroy the main killer of the series without any loss on the side of the good guys. Given the choice, which would you go for? Kill a werewolf before it turned (as it was actually asking you to do), or wait and let it bite your face off? So you could turn into a werewolf. And then have it kill you again. Limited on the logic front, to say the least.

And there was a sudden and senseless sequence of killings of most of the strong female characters. It isn't done all at once, so the sexism was not totally obvious, but women were dying left, right and centre. This was confusing, ruined any feeling you might have for the show and really left the viewer floundering. Add to that a decidedly unpleasant move from one of the (admittedly fairly weird) male sort-of-heroes and the revelation that the thing that has been striking terror throughout, carefully concealed to build its importance, is just an update of a Bodysnatchers pod person and it was a huge anti-climax.

The TV series is based on a book, and it's possible the book originated many of these problems. But as it was, what happened was there was great mystery and atmosphere built up... that all collapsed when the reveal showed the whole basis to be a sham. Bad choice of story, I'm afraid - and I'm not sure I will be bothered with season 2.

Image from Wikipedia

And the prize for head in the sand goes to...

This won't replace an iPadThe whole history of computing is littered with people making wildly inaccurate predictions. Famously Thomas J. Watson, Mr Big in the early days of IBM, believed that there was only a worldwide market for about five electronic computers. If we ignore things like washing machines, but include smartphones, games consoles and PVRs, we must have around three times that in our house alone.

Even so, you would think by now that some computing bigwigs would learn their lesson. But no. The head honcho of struggling mobile manufacturer BlackBerry, Thorsten Heins has announced that tablet computers - iPads and Kindle Fires and all those other Android equivalents - will be dead within five years. A flash in the pan. A short term craze that will go the way of hula hoops (the toy, not the crisp) and clackers.

Apparently Thorsten said 'In five years, I don't think there'll be a reason to have a tablet anymore... Maybe a big screen in your workplace, but not a tablet as such. Tablets themselves are not a good business model.'

No, Mr Thorsten, BlackBerry tablets - the much derided 'Playbooks' - were not a good business model, because they weren't very good tablets. But to expand your experience to the whole market is ridiculous.  Thorsten sees mobiles like their latest, the BlackBerry Z10 (which is basically BlackBerry just about  catching up with Apple and Samsung) replacing tablets. I'm sorry, they won't.

The fact is I have a very nice smartphone, and I can read books and PDFs on it, or do spreadsheets or Word documents - and I do when all else fails. But I don't most of the time, because it's so much more practical and productive on my iPad. I can see it's quite possible that laptops will only still exist for power users as they are replaced by tablets for most people - but not tablets replaced by phones. I have now abandoned laptops and only use my iPad for mobile computing - and I know increasing numbers of people who do this.

Tablets are taking the domestic market by storm, but inevitably they are slower to penetrate in business, BlackBerry's heartland, because business IT departments are (often sensibly) very conservative, but they will come. Of course there will always be power business users who do serious graphics, or write all day who will want a 'real' computer, but I can see an awful lot of business computing eventually done on next generation tablets.

I don't know if there is a head-in-the-sand award for business, but if there is, I know who should get it.

An elegant folly

There was a time when any rich landowner worth his salt would build himself a folly, a bit of architectural madness designed to improve the view from his house or garden. Some of them are absolutely stunning - a fake castle built on the hills above or a bizarre three-sided tower looming at the edge of the grounds. The are all about appearance. They don't do anything apart from sit there and look wonderful. But this doesn't detract from their value.
I would say that a book I've been sent for review recently is the literary equivalent of one of those follies. It is magnificent, if practically hollow. The Resurrectionist is the first book by E. B. Hudspeth. It is a book of two parts. The first is the fictional biography of a late Victorian medical man, who starts as someone with a brilliant reputation as a surgeon helping to repair deformities. But over time he comes to believe that birth defects hark back to earlier forms of life now lost, forms that we retain in folk memories as mythical beasts like centaurs, harpies and satyrs. As this idea takes hold we see the surgeon, Spencer Black, descending to become a sideshow artist in a carnival, displaying first preserved freaks of nature (common enough in sideshows of the time), then creating his own fake corpses of hybrid creatures before finally plunging into the abyss of attempting to create these creatures alive. It is a dark and often unpleasant history.

The second part of the book consists of multiple anatomical drawings of these 'real' mythical beasts, with detailed skeletons, partially muscled cutaways and complete images of what they may have looked like when they roamed the Earth. I was a little disappointed there wasn't more narrative here. The problem, for instance, with flying horses and people is that they have far too much weight for the size of wing/musculature to ever lift - but there was no explanation of how this was got around.

However, there is no doubt that the drawings are beautifully done, with a totally straight face on the part of the author. It is truly a magnificent folly - but for me it doesn't quite work. The problem is that, unless you are into anatomy, once you've seen one detailed drawing of a skeleton, you've seen them all. So the second half of the book is worth little more than a quick flick through.

As for the first half, it is very neatly done with faked up posters and newspaper cuttings and sketches - but the problem here is that is almost too well done. What we have is a sober short biography of a Victorian character - but because this is how it is presented it has none of the dramatic drive of a good bizarre novel. I had to force myself not to skip some bits, because it was just a bit, well, worthy. Of course it isn't really - like the folly it is a cunning, intricate fake - but the trouble is it is a cunning intricate fake of something which is, despite the bizarre subject, rather dull.

Overall then, a brilliant idea, superbly executed, it just doesn't quite work as a piece of fiction for me, and I'm afraid the anatomical section, while briefly entertaining, did not hold my attention.

Find out more at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.

Science in a pub? What can possibly go wrong?

Science festivals are great. A brilliant opportunity to hear about exciting science with similar minded people - which is another way of saying fellow geeks. (Don't worry about this, by the way. Ever since Buffy the Vampire Slayer it has been okay to be a geek. Embrace your inner geek.) The only thing is they tend to be rather pompous, formal affairs in venues that would otherwise be used for events like weddings (think marquees and town halls) or for dull university lectures. However there's a shiny new festivalette that is putting the science in possibly the best conceivable place - the pub.

It's called 'Pint of Science' and the organizers proudly say 'We are bringing science out of labs, seminars, lecture halls or classrooms to a place where everyone feels comfortable voicing their opinion over a pint.'

Another innovation is that it is on in three venues simultaneously: London, Cambridge and Oxford and in total there are 75 speakers and 15 pubs involved. What's not to love?

You can find out more at the website, imaginatively named www.pintofscience.com (if, like me you get a blank page, try a different web browser. The site seems incompatible with Safari). There are three strands: the brain, the body and biotechnology. And best of all it's free! (Though don't get too excited, you will have to pay for drinks.) It's important you book online as some of the events (in fact most of the London ones) are already sold out.

And the dates? Tinglingly soon as it's 14-16 May. Go forth and sciencify! And mine's a pint.

Sexism watch

A prison. Or possibly Barad-dûr.I am highly averse to sexism in any form. I confess I tend to watch out particularly for sexism that influences men, a) because I am a man, and b) because there are far more people ready to highlight sexism aimed at women.

There is still work to be done in worming out existing sexist rules and regulations. But what I can't understand is why anyone would possibly introduce new sexist regulation.

It has just been announced that from November, male prisoners in England and Wales will be required to work harder for their privileges. What about female prisoners? Well, 'Officials are still working on possible changes to the privilege scheme for women prisoners.' I'm sorry, that's not good enough. What I find hard to believe is that the BBC doesn't comment on this, or that it can arise in the first place.

There is no excuse for any new policy being discriminatory. There should be no exceptions. As soon as anyone suggest a policy that specifies only one sex it should immediately be thrown out. Surely it wouldn't be hard to have this as a legislative protocol?

Of course there will be circumstances when something will have to be done to the rules applying to one sex to bring it into line with the other - that is desirable from the point of view of defeating sexism. But there is no way that something new and discriminatory should be allowed to go forward.

Image from Wikipedia

Triple dip recession? Dip schmip.

The only kind of triple dip that mattersIn my new book, Dice World, one of the subjects I cover is the way that statistics are misused by the likes of politicians and the media. For instance, the way that a politician can get all huffy about a policy having a negative effect on families with just two average earners - without pointing out that having two average earners puts a household in the top 25% of the country. Or the way the media can make a big thing about a statistic by using percentages, where the actual change is negligible. So, for instance, we might hear that pickpocketing has risen by 100%. Outrageous! Sack the chief constable! But if you hear that the number of incidents has gone up by one compared with the previous year (because there was only one instance of pickpocketing last year), the statistic has a rather different flavour.
A rather more subtle statistical misuse comes with all the fuss about whether or not the UK was about to enter a triple dip recession. As it happens we didn't - so the Chancellor could make all sorts of positive political noises about how his policies are correct. If we had, then no doubt the Shadow Chancellor would have jumped in yelling that this showed how bad the government's policies are, and how the country was going to the dogs. Yet either interpretation (and getting all excited about it being a triple dip) is another misuse of the statistics.
To respond this way to these tiny quarterly shifts is similar to sitting on a beach trying to decide whether or not the tide is coming in. A wave splashes onto the beach. 'The tide's coming in!' You cry. Then the sea recedes a little in the post-wave lull. 'No, the tide's going out!' Then the next wave arrives. 'The tide's coming in!' And so on. Very soon you would arrive at a triple tide afternoon.
Any data of this kind has both underlying trends and noise, the noise being random movements that do technically have a reason - but the reason is so complex, a messy mix of factors, that you might as well just regard it as chaotic noise and ignore it. Tiny shifts in GDP from quarter to quarter are just such noise. And should politicians or journalists choose to make much of these 'dips' or 'recoveries' (I was pleased to hear the BBC's Stephanie Flanders avoid this trap on the radio the other day) they are either deluded or trying to mislead us.

Friday brain stretching

There's no day like Friday when we're more in need of a little assistance to get the brain going. So here's a little mental challenge to get you going for the day.


A man stands in the centre of a large field. There four horses in the field, one at each corner - a bay horse, a chestnut horse, a white horse and a black horse. For reasons we needn't go into, the man has to kill his horses.

If he must remain at the centre of the field, the horses stay at the four corners and he is a perfect shot, how can he make sure that none of his horses remain alive using only three bullets?

Don't read any further until you've attempted an answer. If you get one quickly, there are at least three solutions - try for another.

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Last chance to consider your answer.
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One solution is that only three of the four horses are his, so he only needs to shoot three to make sure that none of his horses remain alive. A second is that one of his horses was already dead of the terrible disease that was about to claim the others - hence his need to shoot them. A third is that the white horse was a chalk carving and had never been alive. There are more possibilities too.

Apart from the creative exercise in coming up with a solution, there is an interesting lesson here. We are conditioned from an early age to expect a single right answer to a problem. Often in reality there are many potential right answers, something that those whose careers depend on creativity forget at their peril.

Any thoughts on other solutions to the problem?

Pounding the Scots

'Is there enough cash in here?'It's not often I agree with George Osborne. In fact counting on the fingers of one hand would probably leave a couple over for a rude salute. Yet I have to say that I have some sympathy with the UK government's recent observations on what would happen to an independent Scotland when it came to currency.

The SNP was quick to point out that the Osborne observations were little more than campaigning for a 'no' vote in the upcoming referendum (which I still think should be open the all of the UK, not just Scotland), and they were probably right. And yet I am all in favour of Scottish independence, but I can still see Osborne's point.

There seem to be four options available:

Go into the EuroKeep the pound in some kind of 'Sterling zone'Use the pound without official sanction from the UK Set up a separate Scottish currencyOf course until recently the Euro appeared to be the desirable option to the SNP (if you set aside the possibility that Scotland might not have been accepted) - but it has become a poisoned chalice. No one wants that anymore. The 'Sterling zone' is the SNP's new idea, but I really can't see why the rest of the UK would want it. All the evidence is that currencies across multiple sovereign states produce serious problems. Scotland could go for the unofficial pound, just as Panama uses the US dollar, but I suspect this is considered beneath the SNP's vision of a proud, independent Scotland. As for a DIY currency, the SNP is rightfully wary, because Scotland is sufficiently small for this to be a risky approach indeed. Even so, it may be the only real option.
What I was fascinated by was Alex Salmond's rather petulant 'If you won't go with a Sterling zone, we won't accept our share of the deficit.' It made me wonder just how that would work. Given a national deficit isn't like a building society loan, split after a divorce, how would it work? Who would decide who gets what if both sides are saying 'I don't want this bit'? It's an interesting conundrum.
Stereotypical Scottish image from Wikipedia