Global warming – the silent killer*

Regular customers are the life-blood of any bike shop. The shop where I work takes most of its actual revenue from tourists throughout the Summer months but it is the regulars who send them to us and who recommend our services. For this reason we like to take good care of our loyal customers and we take great interest in their wellbeing. One in particular, who hasn’t been around for a while, was in the shop today. He competes in triathalons at world level and is a keen road cyclist. With an international coming up soon he has been training and competing regularly in preperation. On one weekend a small while ago now he had a race to attend of a Sunday and so the preceding Saturday had been assigned as a day of rest. Unfortunatly the ever-increasing threat of climate change had other ideas, taunting the poor man with sunshine through the lounge window and beatiful warm, dry tarmac snaking off into the distance.

What can it hurt? Thought the poor hapless gentleman, I’ll stretch my legs for a little bit and just take it easy in the sunshine. So thinking he whipped the training bike out and, without all the normal pre-ride preamble rolled mellowly off down the road. With perfect conditions the ’slow’ (by his standards!) ride was a welcome distraction and going well unti, heading down a hill at speed, our hero was surprised to find, around a blind corner, that there was water streaming across the road. As a professional cyclist he knew well enough that the front brake, usually the major slowing force, would result in a traumatic loss of front wheel traction so the rear brake was slammed on and his weight shifted well back. Textbook. Unfotunatly not enough to see him around the next corner, with the hedgerow approaching fast he very, very cautiously and gently applied the front brake. Then woke up in a helicopter.

Due to a, shall we say, unfortunate, wardrobe choice he had overlooked putting on the helmet he always wore. He had, however attired himself in his brand new, £60 cycling jersey. When he awoke he was therfore greeted by the sight of a paramedic cutting this into 4 of the most expensive rags he has ever had in his shed. Luckily, after an extended stay in hospital and many stitches he is back on the bike and still on target for his international race. The saddest part is that of all the thousands of miles he has accumulated on his Giant roadbike all of them bar the last 10 or so have been with a helmet on. If it wasn’t such a very nice day on that Saturday. And they say climate change will be dangerous in the future?

Always wear your helmet kids.

*sorry about the dramatic title, I know he didn’t actually die.Could of though.

Creationism for Dummies.

Sometimes I get annoyed. Not very often these days but sometimes. If I may grossly generalise there are three things that annoy me, these are:

a) Things that don’t work for no apparent reason whatsoever! Which then take hours to put right when I could be doing something useful. Like eating bread.

b) Things that don’t work or are awkward to use through bad design. At least I can see a cause here but that hardly makes it better. I have a mental hit-list of designers who need a good hiding for such shoddy thinking. Seriously annoying things here.

Finally c) Creationists. I did say I would be grossly generalising. Some of these people, let us say the ‘misguided’ ones who have been misinformed merely irk me. The hardcore who spread it around with no reasoning whatsoever annoy me. The clever ones, however, the ones who dress this garbage up in pseudoscience and market it to children make the red mist descend. The sort of red mist that usually is only brought on by a front mech limit-screw situated directly beneath a huge aluminium swing-arm that makes what should be a10second adjustment take an hour. The sort that sends spanners through windows and involves bus tickets to the designers house so that I can beat him with a monkey wrench. In short, they make me quite angry.

For this reason I shall be starting to post on the subject of evolution vs creationism. This could go on for several posts as I keep stumbling across so many of these arguments and to tackle them all at once would be a book, not a blog. My first target shall be a bebo page I found. Whoever wrote this page has seriously annoyed me. I am currently trying to get him to change the most outrageous bits (which have already been up for weeks) for which reason I shall cut and paste some here. Here we go.

“It is unscientific to say living matter can come from nonliving matter.” In response to this I enquired how to define living matter, the response I was given was; “Any thing with GM with exception to virus’s” Where GM is genetic material. When asked if God was composed of living matter the author did not know. I assume, however he must be. as otherwise he could not create living matter. This leads, rather obviously to the old ground of ‘where was God made?”. Onward.

“first law of Thermodynamics which is Energy and mass CANNOT originate from nothing.” Not exactly what it says. It says rather that “In any process, the total energy of the universe remains constant.” Now what our author has tried to do here is disprove the big bang with the first law. An admirable goal. Unfortunatly the big bang relies on this law as the universe’s energy is what caused the expansion in the first place. Not to be picky but his God saying ‘let there be light’ would somewhat violate this law of course.

“Second law of thermodynamics states that nothing comes from noting.” Actually, most of this blog here came from noting, I shall assume however that what was meant is ‘nothing’. This definition has apparantly been plucked from the air! If I were to capsulise the second law in laymans terms I would say that “In an isolated system all things tend towards disorder” To explain why this is irrelevant would take an essay. Luckily someone has one ready here.

“Cause and effect requires that an observed event can be traced 2 an advent that preceded it.” This is certainly true. If the author would like to apply it to his own argument we end up with the same logical brick wall of ‘what made God?’. I shall make a note to help both arguments however that the universe is space and time. therefore before the universe there was no time. No time leads to an absence of cause and effect as we know it. Brilliant. (Edit: It has also been pointed out that I should mention cause and effect doesn’t always apply even in the universe. There is no traditional causal explanation for the quantum ‘jitters’ of the electron for example. Thank you clever man.)

This blog only covers the authors opening statements. for brevity I left the other gems out. I shall list them below, uncommented. Enjoy.

“the number of electrons in the universe is believed to be 1080“(Edit: This statement has now been removed. Thank his God. It was too silly for words.)

“if the probability of something occurring is less than one in 10150, it has no possibility of happening by chance at any time by any conceivable process throughout all of cosmic history“

“it is after-all impossible to correctly interpret the physical evidence of a supernatural event from a naturalistic perspective“

“mutations harm or kill rather than improve as evolutionary theory demands“

“Fossils all show complete specimens. They were not changing into any thing“

“When i say evolution i am refuring to macroevolution not microevolution“

(Edited on April 26th)

Mucking about with RSS

Just a quickie, pub quiz in a bit. I have found myself interested in RSS feeds of a sudden. Does anyone out there have any recommendations on how to quickly and easily set up an aggregator so that I can find news on some quite narrow channels of interest? I am a comblete noob to this and should be treated as such so I shall tell you what I want and hopefully one of you can tell me what is possible and how to go about it. Or even a link to a website that can tell me how to go about it. Essentially I am too lazy to look and need to get away, as mentioned.

Essentially what I want is something which is easy to use, either sits on my desktop or, even better, plugs into firefox and automatically updates me with things I am interested in. These things include climate change, general UK and world politics, happenings in the world of bikes, the world of gadgets and the world of students and any blogs I may like to add as and when I stumble across them. I have briefly mucked around but setting things up seems to be about as easy as not weeing on the toilet seat when drunk. Where do I even find feeds!? Am I missing something important or will I need to just spend an hour getting set up then reap the rewards later?

Someone better informed than me please comment! Oh, and add me to your aggregator! If that’s possible. It is I think. Isn’t it? *sobs quietly into his shiraz* It confuses me!

The nature of proof

I was just being infuriated by ‘Dr.’ Kent Hovind. Again. This time through the medium of the Ali G. show. In this clip Hovind explains that he is offering $25,000 to anybody with ‘real, empirical, testable scientific evidence for evolution’. So why has no-one claimed it? Is it because evolution is not ‘true’. Or is it more to do with the nature of the challenge?

Here’s an interesting parallel for you, I shall give a prize to anyone who can prove to me, without any doubt remaining, that they are real. By which I mean, that they actually physically exist and are not just projections caused by a matrix-style piece of software from a supercomputer wired into my brain. Of course this challenge would (and should!) be dismissed as ridiculous but it holds up nonetheless. We all assume each other to be ‘real’ as it is the hypothesis that best fits the facts. Inventing a complicated scenario whereby an unnesacary third party (in this case a supercomputer) is introduced would seem to be stretching the evidence somewhat. That being said I think my prize is safe for the forseeable future. Anyone want to try to prove their own reality?

Forms and frustration

Following on naturally from my last post I wish to talk about the student loan. Firstly, I don’t like it. I never liked it. I wouldn’t like it if I wasn’t a student and I doubly don’t like it because I am going to be one. Essentially my dislike stems from the fact that I am a greasy haired liberal type who feels that, for the country to function fairly and be self sufficient things like health-care and education should be free. Call me Mr. Weirdy but that’s my view. There seems to be a huge outpouring of tax monies on ‘defence’ as we help and encourage the US to invade the world, and even more spent on middle management types wrapping everything in red tape with very little being spent wisely. Someone should do something about it all. Maybe I’ll switch to a politics degree and fix things. Or maybe I shouldn’t. Bear in mind I can hardly run my own finances. One of you should do it though. Onward.

Aside from the political nonsense of a loan from the government to pay fees to the university via a third party company (This years budget involved selling off £6bn of student debt to third parties) the whole process is incredibly tedious and awkward. I’m sure this is done solely with the intention of annoying and frustrating people like me leading to late applications and a whole pile of last minute work for some poor people in a stuffy August-sun heated office. First I had to find which form to fill out as I am going to university this year, but I am a deferred entry student (I applied ages ago.) Is it the straight entry or deferred entry form? (It’s the former, PN1) Now I can either download and print the form, write off for it to be sent to me or apply on-line. Save some trees, apply on-line. Except that, no, I can’t do that. You see to do so involves setting up an on-line loan account. Since I already have a loan account (from last time around) I have to transfer that to an on-line one then add a new loan to it. For which I must ‘phone a number given on the website. Unfortunately, upon ‘phoning the number given, all I get is a machine telling me ‘for anything else, try our website. Blah, blah, blah.’ This back and forth lasted me three days before I twigged that this was going nowhere. I still have no idea how to get a person on that number. I don’t even know that it is possible. So, plan b, I download the pdf and hit ‘print’. Elementary mistake made here, I forget to check the number of pages. 28 high-colour pages later and now I need to buy ink for my printer as well. As if things weren’t expensive enough! Why do you people think I need a loan?! Now all that remains is to fill in the form and post it off, no doubt costing a small fortune in postage given the ton of printer paper it is inked upon.

So much have I ranted that there is now no time to write about how ludicrous it is to ‘means test’ an adults loan (99% of students are over 18 I imagine) on what their parents earn. Even more ridiculously they include no check-box that says ‘Are your parents tight as arses? yes/no’ or how remarkable it is that you now need even more money every year due to the earthly delights of ‘top-up’ fees. Introduced by a supposedly labour government no less. Happily though the constant polluting of our only planet and home has lead to another gorgeously sunny day. I can’t stay annoyed with that view out of my window. I’m off to play on a bike.

Fiscal frolics

It may be time to reveal that I have ‘done’ university before. I don’t think it would be an unfair to say that I was not a good student. In fact diabolical is a term that would not be out of place. I did not attend lectures, I missed practicals and I was responsible for some empty seats during examinations. I also hemorrhaged money. Of all my worries for my return this is the one that troubles me the most.

I am interested in the subject, I want a degree and, not to blow my own trumpet, I am intelligent enough. For these reasons attendance and exams should not be an issue. On the flip side I have historically lacked self control. I have an intrinsic desire to be a part if things. During my last visit I was constantly worried that something great would happen and I would miss out on being there so I went everywhere. I arose at 5pm, ate, drank and went out until 4 or 5am, mostly having a wonderful time. After 18months of this debauchery I retired to Cornwall a staggering £15,000 indebted.

Repaying this colossal sum has taken years and is still not finished. I currently owe somewhere in the region of £2,000 which it is my aim to be rid of by my first term. Not only this but I wish to have saved some money for the occasion also. (Last time I went with £700 already withdrawn from my £750 overdraft facility). To this end I am putting away 60% of my wages each week in repayments and savings. The rest covers rent and food with an entertainments budget of £25 a week. Sticking to this is proving to be a nightmare and I am not even there yet! I have somehow managed to obtain a large circle of friends and aquintances, all of whom are out on the town for various events on various nights. Saying no is proving traumatic although so far I am sticking to my guns. One week down.

It’s not all trouble and doom though. Some good news arrived this week in the form of refunded bank charges. £480 for the cost of two letters and three stamps. Brilliant. If you’ve not heard already and have paid charges to your bank anytime in the last six years check out the guide to reclaiming bank charges on the ‘this is money‘ website. I also have some unwanted bike parts to sell which I may attempt to dispose of in the shop in which I work or, for speed of sale, I may ebay them despite the probable lower sale price. This should generate around £500 of capital. In addition I am using my skills as a bicycle mechanic to supply handbuilt bike wheels which gerates a little extra, all of which gets tucked away. In such a way shall I be prepared. So long as I can remember to say no more. Hmmm.

Educational Embarkation

There are many things outside of physics that I am interested in. One of these is the educational process itself. As I have already stated part of my reasoning for this blog is that if I can explain things, I can understand them. In fact this is useful on another level as I am seriously considering going onto teaching after university. There seems to be a growing trend within teaching to ‘teach to exam’. For example you could be asked on an exam ‘What is Brewsters angle?’ and answer, from rote, ‘Brewsters angle is the angle at which light reflected from a medium with an index of refraction is completly polarised.’ (1) Without ever knowing what it means or even what something as simple as ‘a medium’ is. So you have hundreds of kids who can pass exams really well and then do absolutly no real world problems. This is obviously something to be avoided. Personally I find it very hard to remember facts and statistics cold, however once I understand something it’s there for life. For this reason if there is anything in my future posts which you, the illustrious reader, feel is unclear, comment on it. You may save me from making a big error come examination time.

Another thing I am interested in and also, I don’t think it would be out of place to say this, quite heavily invested in on a survival level is global warming or, more accuratly, climate change. It fascinates me how we can go about continuing to spew out emissions when there seems to be a large body of evidence suggesting that this practice could very easily kill us all. An interesting article on the subject was brought to my attention today by Jon (Hello!). It is written by Monbiot and can be found here. So concerned am I over climate change I have withdrawn my car driving rights. As a healthy 24yr old there is nowhere I cannot get to through public transport or by bike. Also I couldn’t afford the insurance. Next time, a blog on financial struggles!

(1) This reference is lifted from ‘Surely you’re joking Mr Feynman’. A very good book and well worth a read.

Hello world!

Welcome to my new blog! Want to know what it’s all in aid of? Why not check out the ‘about me’ page? If it enlightens you at all, congratulations! You must rock at word puzzles! Hopefully this will be an interesting read for my friends, for anyone, like me, embarking on an educational journey and for anyone with far too much free time on their keyboard-fatigued hands.

As well as rocking the Physics tip on here I shall endeavour to tell you what I find to be good and wholesome (Family Guy, P.O.S etc.) and what really grinds my gears. Prizes will be awarded for noting, in the comments, where I have plagiarised one liners from. I am a culture vulture I’m afraid. I have some limited blogging experience on such social network sites as myspace but I’m trying to quit all that nonsense now that I’m well over twenty. Hopefully having my own ‘proper’ space will encourage me to up the tone a little. For this reason I will not be filling my archive here with things I have already posted elsewhere. Though it would make my site look more full! If you want to be amazed by what I have already achieved, and can stomach the happy, friendly feel of it all you are welcome to click here.

Thats enough for today. Setting things up tires me out. I shall abed.