Brian Clegg's Blog, page 145

Not happy with Holiday Inn

See, we have culture in SwindonYesterday I had to hang around for about an hour on the outskirts of Swindon. I know you are thinking that sounds a bit like some sort of 'outer circle of hell' joke, but you are cruel, and indulging in a malicious stereotype. Swindon is really quite nice. There wasn't time to go anywhere with a nice little coffee shop or even Starbucks, so I popped into the nearby Holiday Inn for a quite acceptable if rather expensive cappuccino.

Out came the iPad (in fact I am writing this blog on it in the Holiday Inn coffee shop right now, yesterday, if you'll pardon the time mangling). When I know I'm going to have time to kill I always take my iPad with me and that does everything I need. In fact, thanks to the ubiquitousness of free Wi-fi I don't even bother to download anything as I know all my latest work will be there on Dropbox ready to access.

So I hit the Wi-fi button and up pops 'Holiday Inn Swindon Wi-fi' as you would expect. I click on 'Lounge Access'. (Does this make me a lounge lizard? Who remember the Larry game?) And I'm told it will cost me £5 for an hour. What? I can get free Wi-fi in Starbucks. I can get free Wi-fi in my local independent coffee shop. I get it free in pretty well every hotel I've stayed in for the last two years. But Holiday Inn want to charge me £5 for an hour. Giving free Wi-fi is a no-brainer.  It doesn't usually cost the business much on top of their Internet connection and it has become an expected essential. Charging for it is a bit like charging for a chair.

It's not even as if the coffee was particularly cheap. As I have said previously, I'm prepared to pay a premium for a nice place to sit. But I expect it to have the basic amenities. A chair, a table, access to a toilet, heating and light where necessary. And Wi-fi. I really don't think it's too much to ask.

(In case anyone is worried for my efficient use of time, I still had plenty to do offline, what with writing this post and reading an ebook I had already downloaded for research. But it's the principle of the thing.)

Image from Wikipedia

Ooh, er, bishop

A Lord Spiritual, not in the HouseI am not an atheist or a rabid religion basher like our good friend Dr Dawkins. In fact, like Martin Rees I am very fond of the Church of England. But I am afraid I wholeheartedly disagree with the idea, apparently supported by all the main political parties, that the reformed House of Lords should retain a built-in set of bishops.

The main argument seem to be that there have always been 'Lords Spiritual', ever since the House of Lords was founded over 700 years ago. So what? Until it was banned there had always been dog fighting and bear baiting. Tradition is only a useful argument when it has some bearing on morale or makes a good profit, which hardly seems to be the case here.

It's not that I think bishops should be excluded from the House. I'd be happy to see them there. I just don't think they should have reserved places, they should be elected (or whatever the mechanism) like everyone else. If they are to stay, I think we should have lots of other places prescribed for specific occupations. Seriously - I would be very happy to take one of the places allocated to science writers. But if we don't get a set of reserved slots (and there are more of us than there are bishops) I don't see why they should.

Image from Wikipedia

Why are online festival bookings so rubbish?

On Sunday I kindly offered to attempt to make my children's bookings for Radio 1's Hackney Weekend. It was an experience all too familiar to anyone who has attempted to make an online booking for a ticket for a major festival.

To begin with, the site simply crashed with the sheer weight of people trying to get on it, producing error messages that suggest it didn't like your IP address, but I think were simply just its way of saying 'I can't cope!'

For the next hour, every attempt put you through to a holding page that said the booking page was too busy. What was mildly fascinating about this (you take fascination where you can when you are spending an hour repeatedly clicking the refresh button) was that the design of the screen seemed to change several times. I'm not just referring to the times when it only half-loaded and you got a text version, but even when you got the whole thing there seemed to be at least three different versions of it.

Then - joy, oh, joy, the buying screen came up - only to time out before all the information could be input.

For the next 20 minutes elusive sightings of the buying screen would disappear with dashed hopes, especially when over-enthusiastic clicking meant that the refresh button was clicked when the buying screen was on its way, returning me to the holding screen.

But finally, finally, I did manage to get them both a ticket. One and a half hours of mind-numbing tedium. Were they grateful? That's another story.

What I was struck by, though, was the sheer awfulness of a website for this sort of task. If you were designing a real computer system to deal with this, an entry module would hand out queue numbers (behind the scenes) - you'd go into a queue. While you were waiting you would gradually bubble up the queue and your position could be shown on screen. When you reached the top of the queue you could join the however many people the buying screen could cope with and have (say) 5 minutes to complete your transaction. It would be painless, there would be no fiddling about and crashing as 50,000 people tried to access the same web page simultaneously.

In the real computing world this should be relatively easy. Booking systems are not exactly a new idea for computing. Is it really beyond the wit of web programmers to embed some sort of queueing system into a web database? A lot of brownie points would go to the people who sort this out.

The candidate dilemma

Political parties are anything but scientific (and let's face it, many politicians are totally ignorant about science). In one way, at least, it's rather good that they are so scientifically naive. If they weren't they could be even more devious.

I'm reflecting on some remarkable information in an equally remarkable book, Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind (take a look at my enthusiastic review of it). In one of those lovely bits of research that psychologists delight in doing, a group at Princeton discovered that when people were shown pairs of photos of candidates for various political roles (the participants did not know the people, or what party they stood for) and were asked to assess which was the more competent of the two, around two thirds of the time they picked the person who actually won the political contest.

It wasn't that they were always picking the most attractive person - snap judgements of attractiveness did not predict victory so well. They were picking the person who looked most likely to do a good job. And the amazing thing is that they could do this in one tenth of a second.

That's it. Forget all your campaigning and policies and goodness knows what. Pick the more competent looking candidate, get their image widely seen, and you're there (two thirds of the time). I can only assume from the look of many of our politicians that they are not currently chosen this way. But how long will it be...?

Imaginary friends

The only writer's block I haveI saw a lovely quote a couple of days ago (thanks to Lynn Price of Behler Publishing). It was along the lines of 'Writer's block - when even your imaginary friends won't talk to you.' It's partly such a clever line, but also, for me, emphasizes the fictional nature of writer's block. You can always write - not necessarily at your best, but that's what editing is for.

However, the reason I brought it up here was a completely different reason. A few weeks ago we went to see the comedian Chris Addison (the one behind the desk in the Direct Line adverts for UK readers). I'd never been to an evening of pure standup, so wondered if it could hold up for a whole show (after all, the likes of 'Live at the Apollo' are heavily edited so you only see the best bits). In fact it could, and he was great.

Addison seemed particularly lucky with his audience. He asked the audience a couple of questions and hit rich seams both times. On one of these occasions he asked if anyone had lied to their children. The story that emerged, about an imaginary friend, is just wonderful and worth repeating.

The woman who answered said that one of her children had an imaginary friend, and his younger sister was upset because she too wanted an imaginary friend, but hadn't got one. The mother switched into 'lie' mode and said 'That's not a problem, darling. I'm going to give you an imaginary friend.' And she put out her hands and picked up a chunk of air and passed it to the little girl.

She had expected a postive reaction. But the girl stared at the space in front of her and burst into tears. 'What's the matter?' asked the mother.

The girl managed to speak through her sobs. 'But I didn't wan't a parrot!' she said.

You really couldn't make it up.

Newspapers and science

Among the mystery guests in our bodies
covered in the articleI've got a piece I wrote on a science subject in one of the national newspapers on Sunday. It might be a little surprising to learn that it's in the Mail on Sunday.

I'll be honest, the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday aren't the newspapers that spring to mind immediately when it comes to science. The Mail has a reputation for having a constant programme of announcing that different foods and drinks either cause or prevent cancer (or both). But I have to say that with newspapers, the reality is often quite different from the caricature.

I'm reminded of many moons ago when I attended the Microsoft Windows 95 launch. (As an aside, I got the best giveaway I've ever had a product launch - a Windows 95 shoulder bag that I'm still using today.) It was at a venue in Leicester Square and the audience were all sitting round tables for a meal before the event proper. I was sitting next to the Sun's business editor. We all, I suspect, have an image of people who work for a red top like the Sun. Brash, Jack-the-lad types. Kelvin Mackenzie and Piers Morgan clones. In fact, said business editor was urbane, clever and personable. And rather shy.

Similarly, my experience with the Mail on Sunday has been very positive. They ran a superb review of my Inflight Science written by Alain de Botton last year - and this piece I've just done for them has been a delight to write. What's more, there was no attempt to dumb it down - it fact they asked me to put more science in it than my first draft had.

So if you want to see what I'd modestly have to say is a rather interesting piece about the various invaders in our body that help us rather than cause us problems (a non-trivial number of them when you consider we have ten times as many non-human cells in our bodies than we have human cells), take a look at the Mail on Sunday this weekend (25 March 2012).


Image from Wikipedia

Save NASA's robots

I gather from the Beeb that 'swingeing cuts' have been proposed to NASA's robotic exploration budget. It seems that there is going to be a change in priorities away from unmanned explorers as 'The FY2013 budget proposal shifts funds to human spaceflight and space technology...' This is madness.

If you think of what NASA has achieved over the years, we get far more value from its satellites and robotic missions than from human spaceflight. Manned exploration is primarily a political showcase. Of course there are always things a human being can do better - but when you weigh up the risk in human lives and the vastly increased cost to support human beings against all the benefits that we've had from satellites and probes it's a no-brainer.

If they really want to seriously trim NASA's budget - and science needs to accept that it can't be exempt, even though I would argue that R and D, science and creativity are things you really don't cut in a recession if you want to get out of it - then they should discard all spending on human spaceflight and focus on the stuff that really delivers. It's time space science stopped being a way of showing off who as the biggest willie and started being a truly scientific venture that has a proper grasp of costs and benefits.

Image from Wikipedia

The tax morality dilemma

It's all about the money (money, money)It's budget day in the UK and there is much headscratching about taxation and its avoidance. There was a fascinating discussion about the morality of tax avoidance on yesterday's Channel 4 News between representatives of a conservative think tank and UK Uncut which calls itself 'a grassroots movement taking action to highlight alternatives to the government's spending cuts'.

Tax avoidance is one of those things that it's so easy to have a knee-jerk reaction to - 'We need to clamp down on it!' - but when you start looking at it in detail, it's not all black and white. Tax avoidance is about keeping your personal tax burden to a minimum - realistically, who wants to pay more tax than they legally have to?

At its most morally friendly, tax avoidance is putting your savings in a tax-free ISA. That way you avoid paying the tax on the interest you would otherwise pay. Few would argue this is a problem. Then there's the middle ground. So, for instance, anyone who owns their own company will have some leeway on deciding whether the individual or the company pays tax on various items. For example, the individual could buy a computer and pay the tax on it, or the company could buy it and not pay the tax. If it's for business use, most people would argue it's morally okay to avoid the tax - yet you will hear moans about 'sharp practices.'

Then there are the still (currently) legal, but dodgy feeling things, like setting up a trust to buy your house so you don't have to pay normal levels of stamp duty. That's where things get a little unsure. Finally there's the out-and-out illegal cases that are tax evasion. So, for instance, if you take payment in cash and miss out the VAT.

What was so fascinating about that interview is that the UK Uncut guy was arguing that the absolute morally worst example (taking cash and not declaring it) was okay, because this was just a small person making ends meet, not a rich fat cat or company raking in the profits. That is such hypocrisy. If you decide to bring morality into a taxation issue, then the last thing you can do is let through an example that breaks the law, just because it's not the person you want to hurt. Morals aren't like that. If it's wrong, it's wrong. Make your mind up guys. Do you want tax to be about morals or not?

More ammo for the climate sceptics

The hottest year on record? We don't knowScientists have to be precise. It is their downfall when they try to communicate. The media don't want precision, 'if's and 'but's and error bars. They want black and white 'facts'. It's not a trivial problem. If, as a scientist, you over-simplify then you are in danger of getting a twisted message across (and losing the respect of your peers). If, on the other hand, you apply normal scientific caution people switch off and your political opponents rip you to pieces.

This is a problem that climate scientists face all the time. Every time they revise something or hedge their statements with probabilities, or admit there are competing theories, those with a vested interest in playing down climate change wade in and give it to them with all guns blazing. And it wouldn't surprise me if this happens again with the recent announcement that they've changed their mind about what was the warmest year on record. 'If they can't even decide this,' the professional sceptics will crow, 'how can they possibly say what the climate will be like in 50 years time?'

The trouble is, deciding on the warmest year is not a trivial task. It is all very well to ask how the average temperature on the Earth is varying – but how do you find out the average temperature of such a huge body, with such varied weather at any one time? It isn't actually possible to calculate a meaningful average for the whole world. Apart from anything else, there isn't a good enough spread of weather stations evenly across the Earth's surface to achieve this.

Instead, what they do is make use of 'temperature anomalies.' These compare the average temperature for the required year against long term averages using the same weather stations. That way you get a like-for-like comparison and can understand the way temperature is changing without knowing the 'real' average temperature across the world.

The trouble with this approach, producing those disputes over what is the hottest year since records began, is that the chosen year will vary depending on the spread of years you use for your long term average. Hence the fact we used to think the hottest year on record was 1998, but now it is 2010. So when the anti-climate change brigade leap on this, bear in mind it isn't a mistake, it's merely refining the data. It doesn't actually matter how you cut it - the different averaging processes all say that the decade up to 2010 was the hottest since records began. But it's fairly easy to fiddle around with the specific hottest year.

Not error, just the true scientific process. As I've said many times before, science isn't about 'true and unchanging facts' - dogma should be for religion, not science - it is about our best understanding given the data we have at the moment and will always be provisional and open to change in the future.

Forget the two car family - now we have the two broadband family

Sneaky new router hiding behind the TVIt's several weeks since we acquired our Apple TV box and it is getting very heavy usage. The quality of TV shows and movies from iTunes and Netflix is much better than I expected - generally indistinguishable from ordinary TV.

But a problem has reared its head. Inevitably the Apple TV box takes a hefty chunk of our internet bandwidth. If one person is watching TV this way and someone else wants to download a file or watch something on YouTube, the viewing becomes pretty well impossible, with lots of pauses and hiccups.

Where we live we can't currently get ultra-high speed broadband, because there is neither cable TV nor fibre optic cabling. (I find this bizarre in a yuppy estate built less than 10 years ago, but who can fathom the minds of BT and Virgin?) But luckily there was a solution.

As it happens, we have two phone lines into the house, one for my business, one for home. Our internet has always come off the business line. So I bit the bullet and got broadband on the home phone as well. In one of those rare bits of sensible planning by the housebuilder, there is a phone socket behind the TV, so I was able to hardwire the Apple TV to the new router, while our computer-based internet use still remains on the old router. Web heaven.

As an added bonus, if I want to do two heavy things at the same time, I can always hook up on the new router's wifi - and if my business broadband goes down (which it has twice so far for at least a day each time), I have a fallback. It isn't hugely expensive either... but somehow it does feel decidedly decadent, being a two broadband family.