Brian Clegg's Blog, page 3

Meaningful MPG

As I've mentioned elsewhere I have recently moved to a plug-in hybrid car. The other day, when fiddling with the information system I accidentally got to a screen that showed miles per gallon (MPG) and the number - 174 made me think.

Firstly, isn't a bit weird we still refer to miles per gallon when we buy petrol or diesel in litres? The only justification I can come up with is that I have better mental reference of what's a good MPG - maybe more than 40 - than I do MPL - I would have to do the conversion, rather than thinking in semi-metric.

However, the main thing is whether or not this is meaningful. Traditionally MPG would tell you (roughly) how much petrol you would use for a specific journey. I can divide the distance by the MPG and get a feel for the fuel needed. But I will never do a journey where this is the case with an MPG of 174. What is really happening is that all my local journeys are done on electric with a nominally infinite MPG, while my longer journeys are done in hybrid mode where I certainly get more MPG than I would on petrol alone, but nowhere near what 174 suggests.

I was initially inclined to dismiss the number entirely. But thinking about, it does have a kind of value - it does show how much travelling I'm doing against the amount of carbon-producing petrol I'm using, which I suppose is a kind of useful guide to how green I'm being. Confusing? That's the joy of statistics...

This has been a Green Heretic production. See all my Green Heretic articles here.

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Marianna in ConfirmationBiasLand

I'm interested in why people believe odd things (and ignore the science), so I thought I'd give the podcast Marianna in ConspiracyLand a try. This is the work of Marianna Spring, the BBC's 'disinformation and social media correspondent', who has the cringe-making habit of referring to herself as 'A.K.A. Miss Information.'

The first series follows the rise in support for conspiracy theories in the West Country town of Totnes, boosted by a conspiracy-spreading newspaper called The Light. Despite a certain naivety in the interviewing, I found the series interesting for two reasons. The obvious one is the nature and danger of conspiracy theories, particularly around subjects like vaccination and climate change. I'm always looking for ways to get scientific views across and (as demonstrated so well in the book I recently reviewed, Science with Impact), it can be really hard to get past conspiracy viewpoints. When someone can claim, as they do in one of Marianna's interviews, that there is no evidence for the effectiveness of Covid vaccines you really have to wonder how to get through to someone like this. The series portrays well the response of conspiracy theorists to questioning their beliefs and the dangers that arise from the spread of these theories.

But the other interesting aspect was the way that Marianna herself displayed confirmation bias. (I must admit to being particularly on the lookout for this having just read Alex Edmans' May Contain Lies.) Her assumption was clearly that conspiracy theories were right wing affairs and was struggling to understand why the people of Totnes should be particularly susceptible, given that many of them apparently have a hippy-dippy new age viewpoint, which gives off more left wing vibes (man).

For me, it seems obvious that this would be an ideal breeding ground for conspiracy theories because these are people who already have a tendency to soak up misinformation and disinformation on the likes of alternative medicine, crystals and goodness knows what. The show's text description even says 'The small town of Totnes in Devon is known for its warmth and open-mindedness, gong baths and healing crystals', hardly a recipe for rationality. But Marianna's confirmation bias doesn't allow her to see the evidence - she can't resist the model that such conspiracies should come from the socially conservative right wing.

At one point she is talking about the content of The Light and says 'It's a mixture of wellness-type articles: "How to detox naturally" and "Pioneers of frequency medicine" which Peter [local paper editor] says go down well with some locals. But its content feature a lot of disinformation.' She seems entirely oblivious to the reality that these 'wellness-type articles', used as a contrast to the bad material, are potentially dangerous themselves: at best misinformation and sometimes definitely disinformation. 

Until presenters of this kind of programme can be more aware of their own biases it's arguable that all they do is act as freak shows - 'Look at these nasty people!' - if the programme makers want to encourage listeners to have a more rational, evidence-driven view of the world, they need to employ a little more self-reflection.

You can hear Marianna in Conspiracyland on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts.

Image from BBC: fair usage

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There Are Doors - Gene Wolfe *****

One of Wolfe’s specialities is to keep the reader unsure of what’s happening - and this 1988 novel is probably his greatest example of this particular fantasy mode. The central character (we don’t even discover his name until well through the book) has fallen deeply in love with a woman he has only known for a few days - but she has disappeared leaving behind a mysterious note about doors he should avoid (or back out of if he accidentally goes through one).

Inevitably he goes through such a door, into what appears to be an alternate USA, where there are references to people and even dolls who resemble the missing Lara, who he is obsessive to find. But is any of this real or is he mentally ill? This is an idea that isn’t pursued enough in real world fantasies (though done beautifully in Buffy).

It has been a long time since I last read this book, but I’ve always remembered it as one of Wolfe’s best. I was disappointed when I’d got well past halfway through and nothing was becoming clearer - it was all feeling too random. If you get that feeling too, don’t give up. The final few chapters are a brilliant resolution to it all, transforming the way things seemed to be turning out. It's a very risky approach, but remarkable. 

At last, one of Wolfe's classic fantasies that's still in print from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Bookshop.

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AIer, AIer, pants on fire

I've already mentioned my own experience with artificial intelligence hallucinations when Google's AI got the facts wrong about the BICEP2 telescope, and when ChatGPT made up an entire industrial accident when asked to provide details of one at the BBC. But if an article by Amanda Guinzburg is true, the ability of AI to mislead and directly lie is even worse that many of us thought.

I use that 'if an article... is true' format because I don't know Guinzberg and have no way of verifying the truth of the experience she describes - but if it is real it surely should put a significant nail in the coffin of using generative AI for many text-based purposes where an accurate response is essential.

In the article, Dialbolus ex Machina, Guinzberg describes asking ChatGPT to select from a number of online articles she has written to include as examples in a query letter. ChatGPT makes suggestions with explanations as to why it has chosen these articles. So far, apparently so good. But confused by one of ChatGPT's responses, Guinzberg asks if it is really reading the articles. ChatGPT says 'I am actually reading them - every word.'*

Guinzberg points out quotes that aren't in her piece, and ChatGPT admits that it 'messed up'. As it couldn't access the full piece it made assumptions about what was in it. After another total miss, ChatGPT confesses 'I didn't read the piece and I pretended I had.' And so it goes on.

You can read the full article, with alleged screenshots of the conversation here. As mentioned, I have no reason to suggest that this item is made up (other than one reading of the subtitle 'This is not an essay'), other than that I don't know the author and have no way of checking the validity of the evidence.

[UPDATE - 14:48, 23 June 2025]

Thanks to Sally Bean for pointing out this equally blatant example of lying. What is particular fascinating is the comments on Sam Coates' X feed, blaming him for being shocked when this is what he should expect an LLM to do. The commenters, I would suggest, entirely miss the point that such models will remain pointless and dangerous unless this can be avoided:

* Emphasis in original. Incidentally, ChatGPT uses that classic generative AI giveaway the m-dash, rather than a hyphen.

Image from Unsplash by Payal Asthana. 

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Coffee Time?

My posts on the Popular Science website and here on my blog Now Appearing will always be free, but if you'd like to help keep me going please consider using the 'Buy me a Coffee' link below to support my online book reviews, science, and writing life articles.

I've also introduced a membership scheme that makes it possible to give a small monthly contribution (and potentially get rewards).

There are three levels:

Bronze - £1 a month (or £10 a year), like the individual coffee purchases, this will help me be able to dedicate the time to writing these posts and reviews, but makes it more secure.Silver - £3 a month (or £30 a year) - by moving up to a coffee a month, I'm adding in additional posts and messages just for silver and gold members, plus discounts on signed books. Membership also includes the option to suggest books for review. There will be still be as many free posts for all readers, but there will be some tasty extras for members.Gold - £5 a month (or £50 a year) - in addition to the Silver benefits you will get a free, signed hardback book (or two paperbacks) at the start of the year if paying the full year, or at the end of the year if paying monthly. You will be given a choice from at least five titles each time, with the book(s) posted to your chosen address.I hope you will consider helping support my online writing - just click the 'Buy me a Coffee' button below.
Image from Unsplash by Justin Bhalla.

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The joy of covers

Authors have mixed relationships with book covers. Some publishers give us full right of veto on what a cover looks like, others simply show us what it's going to be. Some covers are great - others are, frankly, dull. There have been covers I treasure (for example, when I was still writing business books, the Spanish translation of my book Capturing Customers Hearts took the title literally, featuring a scarred chest with the heart removed), while others I'd rather ignore.

It is also possible to be misled by the appearance of covers on well-known online bookshops. I've recently had published a book called Navigating Artificial Intelligence - a highly-illustrated overview

book that gives you (I hope) a good introduction to the topic and its significance: and let's face it, there isn't much that is as significant as AI at the moment. To go along with some fun illustrations inside (who wouldn't want to see a dog dressed as Henry VIII?), the cover is impressively striking, if perhaps a little busy. It's not entirely clear from the selfie above, but the cover features the kind of fluorescent orange that makes you reach for the sunglasses.

But take a look at the book on Amazon (left) and, while it's still eye-popping it's now a deep pink (the little known Deep Purple/Pink Floyd crossover cover band). Then pop over to Bookshop.org (right) and there's yet another version, this time also pink but with different colours elsewhere, including a brain that pretty much obscures the title. 

I suspect what tends to happen is that publishers set up listings in online bookshops before the final cover has been printed and forget to make changes. Incidentally, there's also distinctly dodgy content in the Amazon listing which says 'Review' and then has a quote from Alain de Botton: 'He still manages to surprise me with something new on every page'. While this is indeed something de Botton said in a review of one of my books, it was Inflight Science , not this one.

They say 'Don't judge a book by its cover' - but sometimes it's hard not to. Personally, though, if it's an author I like, I pretty much ignore the cover... which in some cases it's just as well.

You can get Navigating Artificial Intelligence from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Bookshop.

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Pandora by Holly Hollander - Gene Wolfe ****

This is a real oddity - in my quest to re-read my Gene Wolfe collection and review the books I hadn't covered so far, I'd mentally pigeonholed this 1990 book as urban fantasy, but it's actually a murder mystery. Being Wolfe, things aren't as straightforward as you might imagine, though. The book is allegedly written by the seventeen-year-old Holly, just edited and smartened up by Wolfe.

It's set in the 1980s, but the feel of the place (and this teen's viewpoint) is very much not post-punk - it's more like something from the Mad Men era. Trivial example: Holly and her friends never cuss (as she would probably put it). Like Castleview this is a slice of small town American life, but here seen through the eyes of a young would-be author.

The Pandora reference is to a mysterious box, to be opened at the town fair, with a prize if anyone guesses what's in it. At this point there's a sudden transition to murder mystery, with Holly both injured and acting as amateur sleuth, assisted by her new friend, the unlikely-named Aladdin Blue a twenty-something who styles himself a criminologist as (having been to jail) he can't be a private eye.

Although some of Holly's writing is cringe-making, she can be refreshingly blunt and bitchy, for example describing the sister-in-law of her best friend as follows: 'Basically what she had was one of those thin poor-li'l-me hillbilly faces, with lots of yellow hair as puffy as cotton candy (and sticky, too, I'd bet) piled up on top, and a shape like a sack of grapefruit.'

The mystery is suitably convoluted in what's probably best described as a long novella, and though Aladdin Blue is a little too capable, the indirect approach of making this Holly's book works pretty well, if you bear in mind she may not always be an entirely accurate witness.

You can buy Pandora by Holly Hollander (used on paper but still on Kindle) from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.

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These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee or taking out a membership:Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Why I don't use OpenOffice revisited

REVISIT SERIES - 

An updated post from June 2015

Recently (this is 2025 recently), I moaned on X and Bluesky about the bizarre way that Word (the word processing software - and doesn't the term 'word processing' look old fashioned?) was incapable of opening earlier versions of its own files. Science/SF writer John Gilbey responded 'Go directly to LibreOffice,' as apparently it's extremely accurate for opening old formats. This may be true, but the concerns from 10 years ago below about OpenOffice would also apply. It may be IBM's old weapon of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) in action, but I am still wary of abandoning Word because of the usual interplay with the vast majority of publishers and magazine which do still use that software.

Broadly speaking, most professional writers either use Word or a specialist program like the much-praised Scrivener, which is apparently excellent for fiction work. However, every now and then, someone asks me 'Why do you spend all that money on Office, when you can get OpenOffice for free - and you can just export a Word file when you need it?' (For that matter, as a Mac user, I could use the excellent free Pages app that comes with it.)

People have been saying this kind of thing to me ever since I ran the PC department at British Airways, and my answer has always been the same. If all you are doing is handling lightly formatted text, cheap and cheerful is fine, but as soon as you use the more sophisticated aspects of a word processing program, this kind of transfer becomes risky, and simply isn't worth it.
I've just had a good example of how things can go wrong using OpenOffice. I was sent a document to check as an ODT file - the file format from OpenOffice. It had a series of appended comments. The file doesn't open in Word or Pages, but I tried it in both Google Documents and Textedit and neither showed the comments. No problem - the person who produced it exported a Word document from OpenOffice for me. And, yes, it did have comments - but they had been bizarrely scrambled. The image above shows some of the actual comments, rendered utterly unreadable - and none of them pointed to the right bit of body text. It was garbage, pure and simple. (Incidentally, I deny writing something 'very matter of fact, trivial'...)
In the end, I had to download a copy of OpenOffice and work on the original with that. As it happens this was fine, because it was this way round - OpenOffice happened to be the standard used by the company I was doing some work for. But almost all publishers, magazines etc. expect material in Word format. And if you are working in OpenOffice, you will have to export your document to Word. Potentially with the kind of result I just experienced.
By all means use OpenOffice for printed documents, or those for internal use. But if you intend to share anything more sophisticated than straightforward text with a publisher, say, in a professional capacity, then think twice about turning up your nose at Word.

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Castleview - Gene Wolfe *****

Having recently covered Adam Roberts' Fantasy: a short history , I became aware I'd never reviewed some of my favourite fantasy books. I'm starting with one of Gene Wolfe's masterpieces, Castleview, first published in 1990. This is a booked that is steeped in a particular small town America with a strong mid-twentieth century atmosphere - I can't think of another fantasy novel that does this so well apart from Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes.

We are plunged straight into this when a new family is viewing a house for sale in the town of Castleview. From the very beginning, the cosy, folksy setting clashes with events - a death, the mysterious viewing of what may or not be a ghost castle, a dark horseman nearly causing a car crash - Wolfe piles on the mysterious events while maintaining a small-town-USA vibe. It is masterfully done. Practically every chapter ends with a notching up of the mystery level and tension.

It's a thankfully short book (I really can't be doing with brick-style fantasies, with the inevitable exception of Lord of the Rings): despite having read it at least four times before, I had to keep going to the end as soon as I could. The otherworldly intrusion is a magnificent hotchpotch of English and Irish folklore, including Arthurian legend, where Wolfe has clearly enjoyed piling in everything he can possibly think of.

Only two small moans. There are a couple of foreign accents that these days might be thought a little lacking in political correctness, and Wolfe often has endings that don't entirely satisfy, as he tends not to tidy everything up, though this one does have a fairly clear ending. But neither of these gets in the way of the book's appeal.

You can buy Castleview (used on paper but still on Kindle) from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com - it's appalling this isn't still in print.

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These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee or taking out a membership:Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

TANSTAAFL revisited

REVISIT SERIES - 

An updated post from June 2015

The other day I got a piece of junk mail that made a bit of a change from SEO and diet supplements: 'THE FIRST FREE ENERGY GENERATOR' it proclaimed, and just to rub it in, 'Humiliates top scientists.'

Well, there's nothing I like better than humiliating top scientists* and what's more, apparently this energy generator 'violates all the laws of physics', which is even more fun. So what would this involve? If you look up 'free energy generator' on Google you'll find lots of examples claiming to be just this - but overall it is a worrying concept.

The obvious problem is conservation of energy, one of the most fundamental aspects of physics. You have to be a little careful with conservation of energy - it does require a closed system, and we patently don't live in a closed system, so it's easy enough to get 'free' energy in the sense that the Sun is pumping vast quantities of it in our direction and doesn't expect to be paid for it. Similarly, a 'free energy generator' could just be a way to steal energy from someone else. It's perfectly possible to light a fluorescent strip light by earthing it near a high voltage power cable - but you aren't producing energy from nowhere, you are just acquiring (to put it euphemistically) a small amount from the power company. Which they probably aren't too enthusiastic about.

However, the kind of 'free energy' device being advertised in the spam is usually supposed to get energy from nowhere, so we are indeed talking breaking conservation of energy - and you might as well throw in perpetual motion, because the one implies the other. And that's a bit worrying because things have to come from somewhere... so where is the energy coming from? (You could also get a bit excited about the great German mathematician Emmy Noether's proof that conservation of energy was equivalent to symmetry in time, but that's probably too subtle to be useful here.) Energy conservation isn't always obvious, because energy can change forms and so become apparent where it wasn't obvious before - but in the end, this has to be one of the best established and easiest to support natural laws. At the point, supporters of the concept would probably bring in zero point energy - but the whole point of that is you can't get less, and if you were somehow to extract it, that's what you would be doing.

More dramatic still is the claim that this device violates ALL the laws of physics. I can't even begin to imagine what something that did that would be like. Of course, the concept of 'physical laws' is somewhat fuzzy. It dates back to a time when it was assumed that God was in charge and these were the laws he laid down. A law requires the same thing to always happen in the same circumstances - in practice this can never be proven, but is a good assumption. However if all physical laws are broken, it would seem likely that the universe as we know it would fall apart, which doesn't sound too healthy. I'm not sure free energy is worth that consequence.

In the end, I refer the con persons behind the email to that classic science fiction writer, Robert Heinlein who regularly pointed out TANSTAAFL. This may sound like a shouty Scandinavian delicacy but in reality is: 'There ain't no such thing as a free lunch'.

* Actually there are plenty of things I like better than humiliating top scientists, this was just rhetoric.

Image from Unsplash by Mary Borozdina. I have no idea what a free energy generator looks like (it certainly wouldn't look like this) but it seemed to me the kind of thing a props department might use for one.

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