Monthly Archives: October 2008

What’s the point of Economics

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What’s the point of Economics was tonight’s talk in the new Cambridge University Festival of Ideas series,   a trioka of economists pontificated on the subject.

Michael Kitson, Evan Davis, Willy Brown

Evan Davis was first on, causing a  small cry of dissent from the packed lecture theatre  when he suggested that somehow economists should be treated like seismologists that is seismologists are not blamed for causing volcanoes – worryingly I think he thought it was a reasonable comparison (Maybe he should have gone to Ben Goldman’s talk on How the media promote public misunderstanding in science), then he suggested that economists are life’s reasonable people so perhaps he was joking after all.

Moving on he suggested that we all familarise ourselves with the wikipedia entries for:-

Then moving on to suggest that economics is studying the world through a prism of simplicity with currently to much emphasis on precision and forecasting & comparing economics to the stylised London Underground map simple but not geographically accurate. An excellent speaker with no powerpoint back up!

Next up was Michael Kitson who started up with the quote on economics by Thomas Carlyle -Dismal Science. He  then moved into audience participation with the  The Ultimatum Game, the most popular figure chosen was £50 whereas  apparently economists would predict 1p. Then he moved onto protectionism arguing that it is needed quoting from Kicking away the ladder by Chang then an interesting slide showing that Wal-mart was the biggest engine for growth in the USA (not the hi-tech industry). A good speaker with good use of powerpoint.

Finishing with Willy Brown outlining the effects of the National minimum wage in the 10 years of its operation in the UK. The most amazing for me was that the gender wage gap in low paid workers has been eliminated and that two million employees have benefited directly without any measurable impact on employment levels (contrary to the doom mongers on its introduction). A nice observation in his work at the minimum wage commission is just how badly managed most workers are.

In question time Evan Davis replied to one questioner with the rather good expression “The government should be a referee not a player”

A good evening the theatre was 100% full with a good mixture of people.

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Rambling and geotagging

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Another great short walk of 13miles , this time ably led by Chris of Newmarket Ramblers. Here is the track with photographs:-

Newmarket Ramblers – Stetchworth Walk

Widget powered by EveryTrail: GPS Geotagging

For anyone interested I’m using the Garmin Etrex Legend HCx. Reading the track stored on the Garmins datacard by using its USB interface attached to XP (I’m using Parallels on the iMac as the Garmin software is PC only)

with the Garmin Mapsource software (6.14.1).

The software allows you to edit the track and shows the track as a crude map to make the editing easier.I then export the file as a gpx file to the HoudahGeo software on the iMac  where I can import any pictures previous captured from the camera using iPhoto. Before setting out I have carefully set the camera date and time to the GPS!

HoudahGeo can then embed geotags into the photos and export them to Flickr.

I can then upload the gpx file to Evertrail and import the geotagged images from Flickr to give the trail shown above. A bit tedious but it does incorporate three of my interests, Internet, walking & photography. Today was also my second anniversary of meeting Sally on one of her walks so I guess that four interests!!!

Interestingly HoudahGeo also allows direct export to google earth so maybe Evertrail and wikiloc will get crushed under the google juggernaut.

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Autumnal Observations

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A few notes from my walk around Cambridge today. The guy I know who runs a tiling warehouse store (I was his first customer 15 years ago) said the bottom just fell out of his market 3 weeks ago. He is a loyal Barclays customer with a 40K overdraft, without warning or for any reason they suddenly decided they want him to pay 11% for his overdraft! Impossible for him to change banks, the other banks are not taking on new business customers!

The gym I joined , to get a decent clean swimming pool, gave me 15months membership for the price of 11 plus I got loads of visitor passes for Sally to use. The gym seemed very busy.

The queues at the tills in White Stuff for their midseason sale where humungous and the shop was heaving.

The outdoor shop Open Air was totally deserted…

The Apple store was packed, as usual.

The streets were busy with the new students and it is a glorious autumnal day.

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Flash bangs the Cambridge way

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Last nights lecture here in Cambridge was given by the redoubtable Peter Wothers, a superb talker & experimentalist, Its title was “Gods, Devils and Alcohol – Their Influence in Chemical Nomenclature” a sub title might be “With reference to shampoo ingredients accompanied with assorted explosions and fiery happenings”.

The lecture theatre was totally packed, Peter gets rave reviews as a lecturer, you can see why if you do a search for him on YouTube

He got into his stride with the fascinating history of The seven metals (and how embarrasing it was for the later folks when it was discovered there were more than 7). Plus how Newton was so obsessed with 7 that the rainbow was made to have 7 colours.

Each metal in the ancient world had an associated planet and symbol.

Metals of Antiquity with their planets and signs.

We then moved on to the unfortunate monks who were fed Antimony, anti (against) mony (monks). Then all the confusion from the area of Greece that gave us Magnesium and the lode stones Magnes. Then Lavoisier’s mistake when discovering Hydrogen (Hydro – gen – producer of water) and Oxygen which was mistakenly thought to be the acid producer. Cobalt (Kobold – mine spirits), The Nile giving as Nitre, Ammonia from sal-ammoniac – salt of Ammon-where the camels urine was collected from which it was made. Alcohol (Al- kohl Kohl is a powder which somehow gets converted to spirit ), Methyl same root as Mead.

Plus the unfortunate tale of Hamburg where Phosphorous was discovered (1669) only to be bombed with 200 tons of the stuff in 1943.

Selenium is interesting named after Selene the sister of Eos (whose lover got eternal life but not youth see my post). Interestingly Selenes lover Endymion did get eternal youth. However, he was always asleep! but still sired a good few children :-)

We were then treated to his demonstration of a hydrogen balloon being ignited – an almighty bang! a river of flame from allowing Ether fumes to descend along a metal channel, almighty flashes from Sodium in water and his signature flash bang of a nitro cellouse coated devil being ignited – all with warning to the students on how to do them in classrooms once they graduate.

Hydrogen filled balloon about to explode

A trail of Ether vapour burning

A fantastic evening and I must say a brilliant clear lecturer. Chemistry students in Cambridge are lucky to have him!


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Apple screws it up.

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MacBook Oct 2008

MacBook Oct 2008

In the beautifully illustrated tear down of the new MacBook at iFixit there is the discovery that the new MacBook contains an astounding 96 screws of which 56 hold down the keyboard. It must be an assemblers / BOM nightmare with 13 different types of screw mentioned in the break down. Plus it must add to the machining costs all those blind tapped holes in the casing. Lets hope the poor Chinese women don’t strike for better wages :-(

Just had a play with one in the Apple store here in Cambridge. I found the new mouse pad quite hard to use as the downwards force to activate the switch seems quite hard, obviously designed that way to stop inadverent pressing when using the glide pad.

The machine does look beautiful though. :-)

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The Google monopoly!

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Just looking at my Google Analytic figures for the past 30 days:-

Search Engine referrals Sep15 - Oct15 2008

Looks like Google has a bit of a monopoly to me!

The real reason for looking at my analytics was to see if the link Steve Pavlina gave me has made any difference to my readership.

Referrals from stevepavlina.com

Looks like about 160+ folks wandered over to see my Wordle review of Steve’s new book. So not as many as I thought would.

Will be interesting to see if the link from such a high PR (Page Rank not PR like Ellee does) page will make any difference to my Google rankings for Geoff which has been suffering lately :-(

Here is the  corresponding data from Sally’s site. She gave me 7 links last month resulting in 47 visits.

Referrals from SallyInNorfolk.com

Referrals from SallyInNorfolk.com

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Be careful what you wish for!

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Last night I went to a couple of excellent talks here in Cambridge. The University talks are one of the big reasons for living in Cambridge, Here is my personal list of talks. Top notch speakers excellent bright youthful audiences and free drinks afterwards whilst chatting with the leading experts of the day.

The first talk was The Business of Fairtrade . by. Ms Harriet Lamb CBE Executive Director (She graduated from Trinity Hall were the talk was given – Silly folks at Trinity Hall have taken down the web page! so no links). An excellent speaker explaining how they have now increased public awareness to over 70% with £480m sales in the UK. Apparently Sainsbury’s saw a 6% uplift in banana sales when they moved over to 100% Fairtrade. Another fact more coffee was sold in cafes than from retail for the first time last year.

I hadn’t appreciated that for a producer to be involved they first need to find a buyer, intriguing that small farmers co-ops are dealing direct with Sainsbury’s! they also need a bank account, register as a co-op, get export licences and the worst of all get a loan to support to them until the first harvest. Any of these is quite a problem.

Fairtrade coffee bean prices

However, for those who get in the effect can be tremendous as Fairtrade acts to give a guaranteed base price for their crop. Here is a graph demonstrating this for Arabica Coffee beans.

Tremendous discussion afterwards, especially regarding Cambridge City’s Fairtrade status (Public meeting at Friends Meeting House on 20Nov 2008).

I skipped the drinks and hurried onto….

Who wants to live forever? Exploring the impact of extreme ageing

I was easily the oldest one here!. We were first reminded that ageing may be curable but it hasn’t been cured!  and the difference between development and ageing is that Development means functions improve with time whereas ageing is about functions dimiishing with time :-)

Thymus reduction with age

A suitable gasp went up when Klaus Okkenhaug after explaining the role of The Thymus in producing T protector sales and then pointing out the Thymus starts reducing in size from when you are born and in fact at 40 is already 1/2 its original size.

Aubrey de Grey pointed out that ageing is very bad for you in fact 90% of deaths in the West are due to ageing! Interestingly the biggest cause of deaths in the  audience demographic is suicide.

Guy Brown pointed out that death is now preceded by 10 years of ill health and that currently 25% die with dementia by 2050 this will increase to 50% (dementia is strongly age related hence as we live longer more will get it).

Which brings me to my post’s title – the story of Tithonus who wished for eternal life to spend with his beloved goddess Eos in Greek myth. However, he didn’t get eternal youth so progressively withered away to be eventually made into a cricket (the crickets chirping is meant to represent old mens grumblings!).

A really excellent evening, especially listening to Richard Faragher afterwards reciting his experience in killing the worlds oldest living creature, some mollusc which apparently was in excess of 450 years old and smelt like a rotten tooth! Another factoid is that whales are now dying naturally which were  tagged with harpoons from the whaling days – the harpoons apparently were date stamped by their manufacturers.

A great Cambridge evening and nice to know what awaits me in 20 years if I’m lucky!

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iPhone external battery test run

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Tomorrow is the big day for trialling my new external iPhone battery pack, that I recently purchased with the gift voucher that Euan gave me for loaning him my old iPhone :-)

iPhone with external battery pack

I will be at Be2Camp 2008 during the day and then, hopefully, meeting up with Annie Mole at the Photography.Book.Now London Meet-up in the evening plus the rail journey both ways. An impossible challenge for the standard iPhone, especially with all the calls and emails going on about the office and house sales :-)

The story so far is that the pack makes the iPhone increase in weight from 134gm to 246gm and in size from 115 X 60 X 10mm to 130 X 65 X 26mm.

The pack is rated at 2200mAH the internal battery appears to be 1400mAH

Worst problem so far is that the external battery total blocks the camera! So, to take pictures I will have to remove it from the pack. The pack doesn’t seem to charge the iPhone on its own, charging only takes place when the unit is plugged in.

Lets hope the phone doesn’t get into its toasting mode, where the internal battery is depleted in 30mins or so, with the pack in place it will probably burn an hole in my trousers!

Update:

The unit worked well, once I had discovered the small button next to the LED :-) I survived a whole 12 hours of intensive surfing, twittering, picture taking (alas no music as I had lost the earpods) in London and still had some power left once home. It can work as a iPhone mini base station charger so you can still use the iPhone as normal then just plug in to recharge or use it in the battery pack. Seemingly a good buy! so far

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