inkycircus

Newsflash - London not so filthy after all!

It's official! London really isn't that dirty anymore! Well, the wetlands around Greater London aren't anyway. Squacco herons haven't been seen in the vicinity of my home town for a century and a half, but one was spotted in Crossness Nature Reserve in Bexley on the 29th of May. More importantly, the bird didn't take one sniff of the local sights and hotfoot it home again, it's been there ever since. The nature reserve has recently spend a hefty wedge on regenerating their wildlife zones, so they're understandably delighted.

The heron was last seen in London in 1866. For a little historical perspective, that was the middle of Queen Victoria's reign, the year after Abraham Lincoln died, and the year (according to wikipedia) that Darwin decided to grow his fantastic world-beating beard. 1866 was also the year the urinal was patented, the year that the Canadian Parliament met for the first time, and the year that root beer and dynamite were invented. But all of those events are frankly boring compared to the last known sighting of a squacco heron in north west London. So the arrival of one of these small beige birds (it's London, of course the bird would be beige, no hot pink flamingoes for us) after such a long time is big news for British twitchers (and anyone who cares about a nice clean environment).

Via BBC News.

Goin green. Or not.

I admit it, I wanted a G-wiz. Small, cute, electric, no congestion charge, free parking, no road tax, what's not to love? And as a scooter user, I loved the idea of a green vehicle that was covered and wouldn't expose me to the elements. From the sounds of things they don't go that fast, but my scooter has a top speed of about 37.5mph so speed is not of the essence to me. They're moderately expensive, but that's manageable if they're efficient and safe. I've just gone right off the idea now that I know what happens to them when they crash. Experts at the Transport Research Lab crashed a G-wiz at speed, and the thing just flew apart. Turns out they're only subject to the same safety regulations as a quadricycle, which means they're not very safe at all. The car's maker GoinGreen emphasised the safety record, but from now on in their reputation will probably be about as dented as the crash test dummies legs are. I still like the idea of an environmentally friendly vehicle, but I don't like the idea of being squished. I'll just have to keep saving up for that Prius.

More via Top Gear Magazine. Official statement from GoinGreen here.

The sound of silence

If you live in a big city like London, you have to get reasonably good at ignoring sound. I usually don't realise how loud my city is at night until I go somewhere that's extremely quiet, and I only notice when I can't sleep because it's too quiet. To truly keep out the sounds of the night in a city, you need to double or even triple glaze your window, which is fine really, it's not so expensive and it doesn't look that bad. But if the team from the Fraunhofer Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability LBF in Darmstadt, Germany , could figure out a way to make their noise canceling window device commercially viable, they could have a huge city rat client base on their hands. The device is a piezoelectric patch which detects sound-generated vibration and then vibrates at a phase that cancels out the sound. Before I can get my silent night, though, the team need to make the patch transparent, minimize the cost of maintenance, and boost the effectiveness of the patch against intermittent noises - which could take a while. Good job I've just invested in some ear plugs.

ABC News Australia. (PHOTO: LOCOSTORM)

Solar barbeques are a nice idea, but...

Before I start, let me just apologise to the vegetarians among you, because I'm about to talk about meat sandwiches again. But this time it's the king of the meat+bread equation, the hamburger. No matter how skillfully you cook a burger in a frying pan or under a grill, it will never taste as nice as if you'd barbequed it. However, I live in England, where the number of days sunny enough to fire up the barbeque is severely limited. So we hardy British folk are resigned to cooking our meat outside in those 'summer days' also known as overcast days, mild breezes, freezing rain and icy fog. So a solar powered barbeque is a neat idea, but not one that will cut the mustard in our cloudy isle. I like the funky design, I like the idea of cooking my hotdog or drumstick with the power of the sun rather than coal or gas, and the image of dining al fresco in the beaming sun is tempting. But. There aint no smoke without fire and there aint no solar barbeque without sunshine. Sorry Gizmodo, try California.

BBC + Youtube = Good stuff

YouTube and the BBC have just got into bed with each other to create two new channels, which will hopefully mean lots of lovely free corporation content splashed across the net. Hooray. At the moment, I think the clips are viewable in the UK only. This is because of our delightful license fee - the argument being that we pay so why should the world get our stuff for free. Fair enough I suppose, if a little sad. But if the BBC's commercial arm BBC Worldwide figures that's the way to make money out of this little partnership, then it's us Brits who'll benefit in the end as all profits go back into programme making. So I can't really complain.

One thing though, even though I've watched plenty of content on YouTube, I've never looked at the channels feature before.  And when I started looking I still couldn't quite get it. I couldn't see a BBC channel, only two YouTube users called BBC and BBC Worldwide. Both seem to have lots of clips that were added weeks or even months ago, but all with very recent comments. The comments all say things like "great to see the BBC doing this" and have been added in the last 12 hours so I figure I must be looking in the right place. There aren't many clips up there at the moment, but that's sure to change very soon.

A good example of why it's about time that Auntie did this, is a David Attenborough clip of a lyrebird 'singing'. I found it on YouTube some months ago as an illegal upload, and it's now up there as an official kosher BBC Worldwide clip. It's superb - it features the lyrebird imitating a camera shutter, a kookaburra and a chainsaw - and is exactly what the BBC does best. There's also now lots of comedy content, news clips and more up on Youtube officially, and I think it's great. More please.

Via MSNBC, among others.

PS I wanted to embed the BBC Worldwide version of the lyrebird, but the clip has 'embedding disabled by request' instructions on it. So this is the unofficial one. At least it's viewable worldwide... Sorry BBC.

Fund science or bail out MG Rover?

Last year, the last British-owned mass-production car manufacturer MG Rover, went bust. It was a sad and expensive day when MG Rover went under: thousands of people lost their jobs, national pride was dented, a huge hole was burnt in the UK taxpayer's pockets, and it turns out another huge hole is about to be burnt in UK science funding.

The government agency responsible for mopping up after the collapse of MG Rover is the same agency that holds the purse strings for science research, the Department of Trade and Industry. "Ongoing costs" relating to the carmaker going bust mean that £68m earmarked for science research is being taken back. See this BBC News article for a full list of who will lose out. An official spokesperson has said that the money represents a small percentage of the total amount spent on science research, but it still means that bodies like the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Medical Research Council will get tens of millions of pounds less than they were expecting.

I'm all for supporting British industry, I really am. And also for responsible employer behaviour and honoring a committment to the workforce. But I'm also all for investing in the future of science and technology. That backup pot of free money the government has just dipped into wasn't free, it was waiting to be given as grants to scientists and researchers across the country. There also seems to be a whiff here of anachronism, a throwback to when a job was for life and the government was responsible. It's incredibly sad that MG Rover has died a death, but it died because it just wasn't commercially viable anymore. Science shouldn't have to suffer as a result.

(PHOTO: MERGEMIND)

We didn't kill Napoleon after all

HOW DOES IT FEEL THAT YOU WON THE WAR? (PHOTO: FDECOMITE)
Even though millions of people pour through Waterloo station each day, I'd bet many of them would be hard pushed to explain the significance behind the name. It's named after the 1815 Battle of Waterloo, last stand of French ruler Napoleon. This very un-English crowing has not gone unnoticed on the other side of the Channel, the French have several times requested that Waterloo be renamed. They seem think that the name of the station that is the gateway between England and France is insulting rather than simply historic.

Anyway, as well as thinking we're slighting them with our choice of station names, the French also apparently think we poisioned their great leader when he was living in exile in St Helena. This is, apparently, an 'enduring French myth'. Well, let it endure no longer. Wasn't us, guv. According to a team at the University of Texas, Napoleon died of a stomach tumour, and a pretty nasty one at that. To add insult to injury, scientists think that the high concentrations of arsenic found in his hair came not from poisoning but from his excessive use of hair tonic, and that his over-rich diet of the fancy cuisine the French are so proud of may have helped hastened his demise...

Via ABC Australia.

Happy New Year from inkycircus

Due to a tactical balls up (some berk pulled the passenger alarm on the Bakerloo line at 11.45pm) I was on the tube at midnight rather than watching the really rather lovely London Eye fireworks as shown here. Ah well. I suppose the year can only get better! Here's wishing you a happy and prosperous 2007.

For we all like foggy pudding

In the last few days of this week before Christmas, London (along with much of Britain) has been cloaked in a freezing fog. It has turned Heathrow into even more of a massive disaster than usual, which has had a knock on effect on the roads and rail networks, because everyone knows if there is one thing we Brits can't deal with it's 'adverse' weather.Everything grinds to a halt. Because I have no plans to go anywhere, I quite like the fog. It gives the city a Sherlock Holmes, Victorian kind of feel, largely thanks to the triangle of orange light under each streetlamp. And it makes it doubly cosy being inside.

The only effect this fog has had on me is to make me pick up a bit of meteorology, as every other news bulletin carries an item on the subject. The fog is apparently being caused by a large area of high pressure over the UK, coupled with weak sun and no wind. The high pressure traps moist air near the surface, which then cools, the water condenses and forms a fog particle. The more fog particles, the worse the visibility. Clearly there are a fair few particles in the air over London tonight.

Slightly off the subject, I looked up London fog in Wikipedia to find out about London Pea Soup fogs and what made them so bad,  and discovered that there is a drink called a London Fog that is made of steamed milk, vanilla syrup and an Earl Grey teabag. According to Wikipedia its very popular in Vancouver of all places...

(PHOTO: GWIRE)

You cut I'll choose

OF COURSE THE BEST WAY OF BEING FAIR ABOUT DIVIDING UP CAKE IS TO GET CUPCAKES....
Every now and then when my brother and I were small, our parents used to give us a cake or a cookie or somesuch sugary snack and say "split that between the pair of you". Each time this happened, my brother would say "you cut, I'll choose". And I'd think, ha ha, I know, I'll make one much bigger than the other and then I'll have that one and he'll get the stingy one. It took an embarrassingly long while to realise that if I made one bigger than the other that logically he'd pick the big one. If only I'd started studying maths earlier on, then I'd have known the mathematical method of cutting cakes fairly so that everyone ends up happy. But, I have to say, only mathematicians would think about perimeters, triangles and icing density when slicing up a victoria sponge...