Brian Clegg's Blog, page 6

Electric cars and government revenue

Many decisions that a government takes have unwanted side effects. For example, while everyone surely thinks it's a good idea to stop people smoking, the government takes £6.50 plus 16.5% of the retail price from every packet of cigarettes: tobacco duties raise about £8.8 billion a year at the moment. 
The response is often 'yes, but if we can get people off cigarettes it would reduce costs to the NHS'. It would - but only by an estimated £2.6 billion. So the exchequer would still be £6.2 billion a year worse off if we got everyone to stop.

There is a similar issue with electric cars. At the moment, the fuel duty on petrol (gasoline) and diesel in the UK raises an eyewatering £28 billion annually. If we could wave a magic wand and switch everyone overnight to electric vehicles, that income would currently disappear. And though drivers might cheer, the government would certainly not be happy. So for some time there have been schemes afoot to recoup these potential losses. I gather from a press release that an organisation I was unaware of called the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport UK (CILTUK - who pays for these bodies?) is 'urging the government to start talks with experts to tackle the impending black hole in the income from fuel duty.' Don't politicians love a good black hole?

CILTUK has produced a detailed report, but here are the headlines. Although the report's primary recommendation is that the government needs to consult with industry experts and stakeholders (perhaps even motorists?), which is hardly a result that needed a lot of thought, there are some specific-ish proposals. The report's authors suggest we need an approach that 'motorists will view as reasonable and balanced... and [is] simple and easy to understand, inexpensive to collect and resistant to fraud.' So far, so good.

What they don't do is give us any picture of how such a revenue-raising scheme would work in practice, though the report does mention the London congestion charge. Reading between the lines, they appear to be advocating a mix of congestion charging for cities and pay-per-mile, with encouragement for car-sharing or using alternative transport. 

I sort of agree with this. I'm quite happy not to drive into cities and I do see that we need to reflect road usage to have a fair form of taxation - but the devil will certainly be in the detail, and I find it hard to see how it will be possible to come up with a combination of 'reasonable and balanced', 'simple and easy to understand' and 'inexpensive to collect'. That feels like a recipe for a messy system.

After all, what you might regard as balanced if you are, for example, a single person driving from a village to the supermarket (because it's the only way to get there) versus a potential car-sharing collection of people commuting to work (when they arguably should be working from home) might be difficult to achieve. Similarly, systems requiring every vehicle to carry a GPS black box would be expensive, so the most likely approach would be numberplate recognition. The good news is that such systems are well-established, but the downside is that a universal spread of them would both impinge on civil liberties - privacy would become almost impossible - and would be worrying as they aren't infallible.

The flaws aren't so obvious with something like a camera used to register crossing a toll bridge, because it's a one-off measure. But if the system measures distance travelled by catching you going into and out of a stretch of road, there is a danger it will suffer from the same issues we see in our local shopping centre car park. You are allowed to stay two or three hours. But people regularly receive fines if they visit in the morning, then again in the afternoon because the cameras missed their exit in between. This would scale up massively with road charging based on numberplate recognition.

It may be possible to devise something fair and equitable, taking into account different needs. I hope it is. But I'm not convinced the suggested measures of success are achievable. For the moment, I enjoy every electric, fuel-duty-free mile with my plug-in hybrid.

Image from Unsplash by Chuttersnap

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No super cars for me revisited

REVISIT SERIES - 

An updated post from March 2015

Every now and then I get a semi-spam email (i.e. something I probably accidentally signed up to receive, but never really wanted) offering me the opportunity to buy cut-price 'treats', like a super car experience. I know some people love this kind of thing, but I just don't get it.

I've got three problems with the whole 'super car experience' thing. But before that, I need to distinguish this from the early Gerry Anderson series, which I loved as a boy. Here in the UK it was a black and white series, but it appears from the DVD that it was shot in colour. For primary school me, the best thing about it was that our Ford Anglia was excellent for playing Supercar, as the heater controls (the heater was an optional extra) made an excellent substitute for throttles, and it even had little fins on the tail, though they aren't visible in my picture below. However, I am not referring to Supercar, but rather an 'experience' day where you get to drive something like a Ferrari or an Aston Martin. My first issue is that I wouldn't actually want one of these cars as they are incredibly impractical (anyone remember the Top Gear where the presenters tried to get three out of an underground car park in Paris?), they're ludicrously expensive and they make a silly noise. I've never understood the appeal of the sort of noise that boy racers try to imitate by having a dustbin in place of an exhaust pipe on their Ford Fiesta. It sounds loud, nasty and industrial. My favourite car noise is an electric car - but that's a different story.

The second problem is that on an experience day they wouldn't just give you the keys and say 'Have fun,' they would expect you to drive it around a track, with experts looking on and sniggering at your inability to 'take the correct line' or brake at the sweet spot, or G spot or whatever it is. I did once accidentally go to a track day, and quite enjoyed being driven around by an expert (scary though it was), but there was no way I was going to do it myself, in front of others.

Most importantly, though, if I did have a drive in a super car (and if I did, it would be an Aston Martin, no question), it would have to be my own vehicle. I don't understand the envy-driven gratuitous excitement of having a go at something you can't actually have. It's a phenomenon that's quite closely related to pornography, perhaps most closely in those house porn 'Escape to the Country' style house programmes where people who are selling a 3 bed semi in London look round 10 bathroom mansions in the country, which normal people could never afford, so they watch the programme to drool instead. It's one of the nastiest aspects of capitalism.

So there you have it. Super car experiences are for those whose existence is unsatisfactory. Get, as they say, a life.
The Supercar DVD set is available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com. Anglia photo by the author
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Tuesday's child is... downright confusing

Having recently revisited the Monty Hall problem, I thought it was worth also taking a look another, arguably even more mind-boggling probability problem that also got Marilyn vos Savant a lot of complaints when she included it in her column.

The problem sounds trivial enough, and comes in the form of a statement for which we have to predict the probability. It reads ‘I have two children. One is a boy born on a Tuesday. What is the probability that I have two boys?’

It sounds trivial. The Tuesday bit is just window dressing, so we are looking at ‘I have two children, one a boy. What is the probability I have two boys?’ So with one child a boy, surely there is 50 per cent chance that the other child is a boy and a 50 per cent chance it’s a girl. Which makes the probability of having two boys 0.5, or 50 per cent. There’s a one in two chance. 

But unfortunately that is not correct.

The reason we get confused is that when trying to imagine the situation we think of the ‘first’ child we come as a boy, then look at the options for the second child being a boy. However the description of the situation would also work if the first child is a girl and the second child is a boy. The only way to be absolutely certain is to work through every possible combination:

These are the four possible combinations, each equally possible. Of these, three are situations that match my initial statement ‘I have two children, one is a boy’. In all but case 4, one of the children is a boy. But only one of those three combinations with a boy also makes the second child a boy. So the answer to ‘I have two children, one a boy. What is the probability I have two boys?’ is not 50 per cent, or one in two, it is one in three. This part of the problem is probably on a par with Monty Hall in the difficulty of getting your head around it. But there is a more fiendish part. We were wrong to discard the Tuesday. Saying the boy was born on a Tuesday changes the probability.

To see this we need a much bigger table. It starts like this:

In total we have 196 entries in this table. We go through every single sex/day combination in the first column combined with a girl born on Monday (fourteen of them in all), then every single sex/day combination in the first column combined with a girl born on Tuesday (fourteen of these too) and so on until we have cycled through every option for the second child.

Now we need to know two things. How many of those pairs feature a boy born on a Tuesday (like option 2 above) and how many of those have a second boy? We are going to have one combination of child A as a boy born on Tuesday with every possible child B – fourteen of those, plus thirteen other combinations where child B was a boy born on Tuesday, but child A wasn’t (we have already counted the instance were both child A and child B are a boy born on Tuesday). So there are 27 rows that match our circumstance of having a boy born on Tuesday.

We now need to pin down how many of those rows had two boys. The first set of fourteen all had a boy as child 1, and half of those – seven also had a boy as child 2. Of the thirteen additional rows where child B was a boy born on a Tuesday, six would have child A also a boy. So of the 27 rows with a boy born on a Tuesday, thirteen of them have a second boy. The answer to ‘I have two children. One is a boy born on a Tuesday. What is the probability I have two boys?’ is 13 in 27 – almost, but not quite, one in two.

This really upsets common sense. Just by specifying the day on which one of the children was born we change the probability of both children being boys from one in three to 13 in 27. Yet our minds rebel at this. Surely we could have chosen any day? The only way I can see to make some sense of this is to point out that in any particular real circumstance, you can’t choose that day at random; it is extra information that depends on the circumstance. The boy will have been born on a particular day and the result of that is that it cuts down the options, just as Monty Hall did when he opened a door and showed a goat. The reality is even harder to accept in this example.

There's lot's more on the beguiling nature of probability in my book, Dice World.

Photo by the author

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Confusing metaphor and physical reality

There's nothing the right-wing newspapers like more than a touch of wokeness-gone-mad - and back in February this was trumpeted by an article in the Daily Telegraph headlined Lego can be anti-LGBT says Science Museum (this is behind a paywall, but I was able to access it via Apple News). The story has since been picked up by many other news outlets.

The outrage in the press is based on a self-guided tour called Seeing Things Queerly telling visitors that 'Like other connectors and fasteners, Lego bricks are often described in a gendered way. The top of the brick with sticking out pins is male, the bottom of the brick with holes to receive the pins is female, and the process of the two sides being put together is called mating. This is an example of applying heteronormative language to topics unrelated to gender, sex and reproduction. It illustrates how heteronormativity (the idea that heterosexuality and the male/female gender binary are the norm and everything that falls outside is unusual) shapes the way we speak about science, technology, and the world in general.'

A starting point here is to make it clear that, as is often the case, the headline gets it wrong. The same applies to many other outlets, for example The Times (Lego is anti-LGBT and promotes only two genders, says Science Museum). Perhaps surprisingly, Fox News gets closer with 'Science Museum claims Legos push a "heteronormative" agenda in LGBTQ tour'.

However, there remains a significant issue with the tour wording. It is true that it is common to use male-female terminology to lots of things (plugs and sockets, for instance), with 'male' as the sticky-out bit and 'female' as recessed-in bit. And, these are indeed 'topics unrelated to gender, sex and reproduction.' But I have never heard the process of joining two Lego bricks described as mating. And no evidence is provided that the use of male/female illustrates the idea that heteronormativity is the norm and everything that falls outside is unusual. It is simply a useful metaphor. 

The objection is a bit like claiming that having a paint shade called 'swan white' involves cygnusnormativity because some swans are black. We still know what it means. The male/female thing is a useful metaphor, reflecting the majority of gendered organisms. The authors of the tour seem to confuse metaphor with reality. It seems, then, despite those misleading titles, there is something a little worrying about the wording used.

Image from Unsplash by Xavi Cabrera

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The joy of dodgy studies

As a science writer I get sent lots of press releases about scientific studies. Some describe serious research, but there is always a smattering of studies sponsored by companies with entertaining PR in mind (think the ones that give the formula for making the perfect sandwich, or some such thing), rather than any scientific outcome. I've just received the most entertaining one I've had in some time, which I feel needs sharing. The press release opens with:

Born in August and named John or Mary? You might be a genius.A new study analysing more than 1,000 of history’s greatest minds reveals common traits among the world’s smartest people—from birth month to name. Could you be one of them?

You might think this study was performed by a publicist with a degree in dog grooming (say), but unlike many such press releases, it does refer to an original paper. Admittedly they get that a bit wrong, saying it was 'published on ResearchGate' which is a portal - it was published in Current Psychology, which is a Springer Nature journal. It is also from 2022, so not exactly new, but this is because the company behind the press release, World of Card Games, has apparently conducted 'an original analysis of the 1,000+ historical figures to identify patterns in names, birth months, and zodiac signs among geniuses'.

The ResearchGate link is a systematic review of studies that attempt to show 'how a name influences its owner’s personality, decision-making, and life outcomes.' I haven't been able to obtain a full copy of the paper, but I do have a slight concern about its quality when I read in the introduction 'To give the new coming to a survey of the forest, not the trees, we concluded the current literature to three approaches...'. It is, of course, possible that the review concluded all this stuff is timewasting nonsense, but the abstract gives no clue as to whether or not there was any critical analysis of the sources reviewed.

What's of interest here are the key findings from the 'original analysis' undertaken by World of Card Games, which, according to the release, are:

Key findings:John is the most common name among geniuses, appearing 18 times (1.60%) among history’s most acclaimed inventors, scientists, mathematicians, and entrepreneurs.Mary leads among female names with 15 occurrences (1.33%). Other top names linked to intellectual and entrepreneurial success include Margaret (14, 1.25%), Maria (13, 1.16%), and Elizabeth (12, 1.07%).August is the top birth month for brilliant minds, with 117 renowned figures (10.41%) born in this month. February (101, 8.99%), November (101, 8.99%), July (96, 8.54%), and April (94, 8.36%) follow closely.Leo is the most common zodiac sign, with 114 notable figures (10.14%). Taurus (101, 8.99%), Aries (101, 8.99%), Aquarius (97, 8.63%), and Scorpio (96, 8.54%) round out the top five.

If we ignore star signs per se for the obvious reason that astrology is baloney, but simply consider the birth dates (that's all star signs tell us, after all), we see relatively little variation in the lower rated months/signs - certainly too little to be statistically significant - but the tweak up for August/Leo is slightly interesting, even though it is almost certainly just the scale of outlier we might expect. It is worth noting that around this time of year (September more accurately) tends to have a birth peak, due to the celebrations 9 months earlier. I did find it odd that May doesn't come in the top 5 months, despite Taurus (two-thirds of which is in May) being second equal - that feels dubious. 

What is absolutely hilarious, though, is the names part. Here we have to dig out that old trusty statistical mantra that correlation is not causality. Just because A (name) and B (genius) appear to be linked does not imply that A causes B. It could be pure coincidence, or equally it could be the other way around that B causes A (admittedly, unlikely here) or a third factor causes both (very likely here). In a good quality, real study, you would control for obvious 'confounding' factors - something else that linked A and B. 

A particularly obvious such factor jumped out to me, and with all of 2 minutes research it appears to be highly likely to be the main cause. Historically, popularity of names changed much slower than it does now. If we look at the most popular boys' and girls' names in the UK, for example, 100 years ago, they were John and Mary. Hmm. Do they look familiar? 

What have we discovered, then? Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

Image from Unsplash by Andrew George. Of course, Albert was not one of the top names, and Einstein was born on 4 March, making him an apparently less than high-performing Pisces.

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Not Monty Python... the other one

A book I'm currently reading ( Proof by Adam Kucharski) starts by introducing the Monty Hall problem and adds a piece of info I wasn't aware of. It's my favourite example of the counter-intuitive nature of probability, featuring at some length in my book Dice World, so I thought it worth revisiting here.
The problem (of which more in a moment) gained worldwide fame when it featured in the 'Ask Marilyn' column in Parade Magazine in 1990. The column was written by Marilyn vos Savant, whose claim to fame was appearing in the Guinness Book of Records as the person with the highest IQ in the world.  (She was born Marilyn Mach, but despite appearing to have a phoney attempt to get the word 'savant' into her name, vos Savant was her mother's surname.) What was remarkable about the problem was that  so many people - some of them mathematicians and professors - got it wrong. It is fascinating now to look back and see some of the letters published in Parade saying what a terrible mistake vos Savant made.
The thing I discovered in Proof is that that the great mathematician Paul Erdós would not initially accept the correct answer because the person describing the problem to him could not adequately explain why it is the correct answer. The mathematician believed that for something to be proved it had to be explained too. I've tried various explanations over the years, but I added one in my book Game Theory, so I wanted to bring that into the mix - and also to make use of a live version of the game for your entertainment. 
If you already know the problem, you might like to skip the next bit. It is based on the game that ended the quiz show Let's Make a Deal, hosted by Monty Hall. In the version described by vos Savant, the winning contestant is given a choice of three doors. Two have goats behind them, one has a car. It's a purely random choice, so when the contestant picks a door - say door 2 - there is a 1 in 3 chance they are right and a 2 in 3 chance they are wrong. The game show host now opens one of the other doors and shows a goat. Finally the contestant is given a choice. Would they like to stick with the door they have, or switch to the other unopened door? The question is, should they stick, should they switch, or does it not matter (probability wise) which they do?
Here's the game in action:
My audience was unusual, but the vast majority of people can see this is very simple. There are two doors available (because we can discount the one the host opened with a goat behind it). One has a goat, one has a car. So it's 50:50 which will be right. This means it doesn't matter if you stick or switch.
The vast majority of people are wrong. You will double your chances of winning if you switch.
Here's one explanation of why. Remember at the start, there was a 2 in 3 chance the car was behind one of the other two doors. All the game show host does is show you which of those two not to choose - but there is still a 2 in 3 chance the car is there. So you ought to switch. This only works because the game show host has information you don't. He selected a door he knew to have a goat behind it.
Here’s the game theory take on the Monty Hall problem, assuming that the player initially selects door 1, which is how the problem was first posed. If the player switches, they will always switch to the door the host didn’t open, as otherwise they are definitely switching to a goat:

If, despite these arguments, you don't find it convincing you are not alone. I remember when the problem was first publicized many of us wrote little computer simulations to prove the outcome. And it's right. Switch and you have a 2 in 3 chance of winning. But, as I mentioned, the most fascinating thing were the irate letters vos Savant received and reproduced. Here are some of my favourites (I have replaced names with initials to avoid any blushes). I particularly love the last one:I'll come straight to the point... you blew it! [repeats the problem] Let me explain: if one door is shown to be a loser that information changes the probability to 1/2. As a professional mathematician, I'm very concerned with the general public's lack of mathematical skills. Please help by confessing your error and, in the future, being more careful. - R. S. PhD, George Mason University, Fairfax, Va.You blew it, and you blew it big! I'll explain: After the host reveals a goat, you now have a  one-in-two chance of being correct. Whether you change your answer or not the odds are the same. There is enough mathematical illiteracy in this country, and we don't need the world's highest IQ propagating more. Shame! - S. S. PhD, University of FloridaI have been a faithful reader of your column and have not, until now, had any reason to doubt you. However, in this matter, in which I do have expertise, your answer is clearly at odds with the truth. - J. R. PhD, Millikin UniversityMay I suggest you obtain and refer to a standard textbook on probability before you try to answer a question of this type again? - C. R. PhD, University of FloridaYour logic is in error, and I am sure you will receive many letters on this topic from high school and college students. Perhaps you should keep a few addresses for help with future columns. - W. R. S. PhD, Georgia State UniversityYou are utterly incorrect about the game show question, and I hope this controversy will call some public attention to the serious national crisis in mathematical education. If you can admit your error, you will have contributed toward the solution of a deplorable situation. How many irate mathematicians are needed to get you to change your mind? - E. R. B. PhD, Georgetown UniversityYou're wrong, but look at the positive side. If all those Ph.D.s were wrong, the country would be in very serious trouble. - E. H. PhD, US Army Research Institute

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Should science writers (and scientists) be globe-trotting?

In their The Studies Show podcast The Science of Johann Hari, the excellent Stuart Ritchie and Tom Chivers point out the entertaining way the blurbs for former journalist Hari's books boast about his epic journeys to interview scientists. These include 'Confused, he set out on a three-year, thirty-thousand mile journey to discover what really causes addiction - and how to solve it.' (Chasing the Scream) and 'Finding the answer to this high-stakes question led him on a journey from Iceland to Minneapolis to Tokyo...' (Magic Pill). Ritchie and Chivers also include a claim for another book with a forty-thousand mile journey, though this seems to have disappeared.

The podcasters point out that these 'epic journeys' seem to have consisted of flying to a few places to interview people. But I think there's a more worrying issue in a globally heating world - what was the point of making the journeys in the first place? All he appears to have done was interview people. I have interviewed people around the world, but I have not flown for over 25 years. For example, back in 2013 I interviewed the late Steven Weinberg for a piece in the Observer. No flying was required. It may be a surprise to epic journey takers, but we have these amazing devices now called telephones and video calls. 

If I'm honest, I think we can broaden this not just to other science writers and journalists, but also to scientists in general. It feels decidedly hypocritical when climate scientists in particular travel around the world to attend a conference, but the same applies to all scientists. (In fact, all academic disciplines.) Incidentally, it's strange how often conferences are in exotic locations that don't necessarily have any connection to the topic. Of course there are many legitimate reasons for writers and scientists to fly. It may be to get to the right place to undertake an experiment, or to investigate something that is happening, for example. But it is hard to justify doing so just to talk to other people.

I accept that calls and video conferences are not quite as good as being there in person. But this is a matter of balancing the positive and negative impact. When those of us who write about science or undertake it make long-distance travel to have conversations part of our jobs, we are, like it or not, setting a visible example that climate change doesn't really matter. It's surely time that we put globe-trotting behind us if we really believe there is a global heating crisis.

Image from Unsplash by Leio Mclaren
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A Scandalous Affair - Leonard Goldberg ****

This is Sherlock Holmes, the next generation - with Holmes' daughter Joanna centre stage. Despite the cover, where she appears about 12, presumably to appeal to Enola Holmes fans, she is now Mrs Watson, married to John Watson's son who narrates the story. As this is her second marriage and has a 17-year-old son we can assume Joanna is at least in her late 30s. 
Watson senior is still around, if elderly (Sherlock being long gone), while Mr & Mrs Watson live at 221B Baker Street, looked after by one Miss Hudson... and there's even a son-of-Lestrade at Scotland Yard.

The plot centres on an increasingly dubious blackmail featuring the scandalous behaviour of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's granddaughter, which Joanna solves with rather more equanimity than her father, if exhibiting many of his traits. Along the way we are plunged into opium dens, a break-in to a suspect's mansion, theatrical goings on, scientific experiments and more. Leonard Goldberg is a doctor and gives us more medical content that was the case with the original - indeed appropriate, given Watson junior like his father is a doctor (but in his case, a pathologist).

It's a nice idea and an enjoyable light read. Goldberg is American, but puts across a good Sherlockian London vibe. The only slight problem with this is that the setting is now 1918, not Victorian England. The mode of speech feels too Victorian for the period - by 1918, it would have been rather closer to P. G. Wodehouse than Doyle. Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster was in the habit of popping over to Le Touquet to play the casino, which highlights one of a few anachronisms - early on, for example, we hear that they've checked all the major casinos [in London] - that would have been all zero of them, as they weren't legalised in the UK until the 1960s.

Another example of the Victorian theme lingering into the future is that we're told there are many opium dens in London, where actually they had gone by the end of the nineteenth century. Goldberg brings in a Doyle character in opium den owner Ah Sing - he was a real person, but had died, along with his trade, well before 1900. Although Goldberg largely gives us reasonable usage of the period, some Americanisms creep in: for example, calling a barman a barkeep, a fire engine a fire truck, referring to the ground floor as the first floor and calling a bowler hat a derby. Most bizarrely ‘stoker’ is employed as the word for a poker - a usage not in the OED. Though occasionally a trifle disconcerting, these aren't too much of an issue.

The book was compared in a write-up to Anthony Horowitz's Holmes novel House of Silk, which also features opium dens. Horowitz is a slicker writer with an appropriate Victorian setting - I might have preferred his book as a clever piece of writing, but this is lighter, more fast paced and certainly readable.

You can buy A Scandalous Affair from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

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AI and book contracts

Anyone who has ever had a book traditionally published knows the joys of reading through a publisher's contract. There are some bits that make you wince (the part where they throw you to the dogs if they get sued, for example), and others that are quite pleasing (usually involving money). I've seen a good few contracts in my time, both mine and those for other authors who have asked me to cast an eye over them. (If there's anything too complex, I strongly advise authors to join the Society of Authors and make use of their checking service.) Of late, I've seen AI starting to rear its head in new clauses - and it has been a pleasant surprise.

When publishers started mentioning AI in contracts, I assumed we were talking about clauses that banned authors from using generative AI to write their books for them - and, not surprisingly, they have started to appear. (Publishers need to be careful with this one, as the contracts do need to allow the inclusion of content from AI sources as long as it's to illustrate the work of AI and labelled as such.)

But the pleasant bit is that I have also started to see clauses where the publishers themselves promise not to make use of AI in various aspects of the publishing. Here are the kind of things I've seen:

The Publisher and the Author have a mutual interest in protecting human creativity and ensuring that their respective interests in the Work are not undermined through the detrimental use of Artificial Intelligence.The Publisher shall not use Artificial Intelligence technology to adapt the Work or create new content within the Work.The Publisher undertakes that the cover and illustration (if any) and cover copy for the Work shall be primarily the creative work of a human. The Publisher agrees not to use AI-generated images, artwork, design, and other visual elements for the book cover or interior artwork without the Author’s prior express approval.The Author will not license the Work for generative AI and development of machine learning models without the Publisher’s approval. The Publisher shall not input, provide or otherwise use the whole or any part of the Work into any Artificial Intelligence technologies for the purpose of training any such technologies or for any other related purpose.Like most legalise, it doesn't feel as simple as it ought to be. Yet it is, surely a step in the right direction. I don't know how my agreeing not to licence AI training in a contract with a publisher would prevent my work being used in this way without my knowledge... but it feels a positive move overall and I hope all publishers will be adopting a supportive approach to their authors.
There is currently a campaign in the UK Make IT Fair to stand against UK government moves to change the law to make it easier for tech companies to use British creative content in AI training without permission or payment. Find out more here, where there's a link to write to your MP.

I intended to illustrate this article with a picture of a computer tearing up a contract, produced by generative AI, which seemed amusingly ironic. But once I did it, it felt uncomfortable, so you'll have to use your own creativity to envision this. To be honest, it wasn't a very good image anyway.

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My hybrid car confusion

No, I know that picture is not a hybrid car: bear with me.
I have just started the process of buying a plug-in hybrid car. In principle, I'd love to go for the full electric experience, but there are still problems, as I had the opportunity to point out on Newsnight recently. Electric cars are still too expensive - but the same is true of plug-in hybrids. More significantly, there are range issues and the charging infrastructure is both far too sparse and pricey.

My driving pattern consists of a combination of local driving, which the electric part of a modern plug-in hybrid can entirely cover, and 300 mileish round trips, much of it spent in places where chargers are very few and far between - which is why I still need the petrol side. 

For the moment, then, I think I've made the right choice. But I embarrassingly realised when taking a look through the manual for the car I am yet to pick up (yes, I'm the sort of person who reads manuals) that I totally misunderstood how most hybrids work. The blame lies firmly with my teenage enthusiasm for trains.

By my mid-teens I'd got past the trainspotting stage, but loved taking train journeys for the sake of it. If I'd been a bit older, part of the enthusiasm would have been steam locomotives - but I was very much of the diesel age, with my favourite engines to travel behind being Deltics (one pictured above) and Westerns. Westerns ran on what had been the GWR - a region of British Rail that retained the eccentric individuality of Isambard Kingdom Brunel by using diesel hydraulic engines. The output of their diesel engines was transmitted to the wheels by a hydraulic transmission. But Deltics followed the far more common mechanism of being diesel electric.

What this meant was that a Deltic's vast diesel engines generated electricity to power its electric motors. When introduced, Deltics were the most powerful single unit diesel locomotives in the world - the rumble of power they made was music to the ear of train lover. The locomotives contained two Deltic diesel engines, originally designed for marine use. 

With my familiarity with diesel electric locomotives, it just seemed obvious to me that hybrid cars used the petrol engine to generate electricity to feed electric drive motors. I even had this model in mind when I test drove one. But reading the manual, I discovered the petrol engine has an automatic gearbox. If the car had an electric transmission there would have been no need for a gearbox. The only possibility was that both the electric motor and the petrol engine drove the wheels. Doh. I still don't really understand why this is the case, as it seems unnecessarily complicated, but on looking into it, most hybrids have such 'parallel' setups rather being series hybrids. It just shows that this 'being greener' business remains quite complicated.

Image from Unsplash by Neil Mewes - the Deltic portrayed (on a preserved railway) carries the thistle emblem of the Flying Scotsman (train as opposed to locomotive), which I travelled on in my teens behind a Deltic.
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