Some shocking comments from the Archbishop of Westminster. If atheists aren’t human, what are they? Animals?
Via Derren Brown.
Archive for May, 2009
I saw something quite odd this morning and I can’t quite explain it. When I woke up, there was what appeared to be a diffraction pattern projected on my wall, resulting from a small gap between the curtains (a single-slit diffraction pattern). But as far as I understand, single slit diffraction only occurs when the slit width is roughly the same order of magnitude as the wavelength of light.
In addition to that:
- the light source is reflected sunlight (which should consist of lots of different wavelengths) from the building opposite
- it was hard to see a whether the different bands had different intensities
- there were two bands which were red (why?)
- too many bands to be a diffraction pattern? Given the wall is probably ~5m from the window, the angle between each “slit” is actually tiny.
Here’s the curtain & slit:
If anyone could shed any light on this, it’d be appreciated 
photo: Un ragazzo chiamato Bi
There is a fascinating article over at Wired, “Brain Scanners Can See Your Decisions Before You Make Them”. It seems like researchers can predict people’s decisions seven seconds before they were even aware they made them.
It’s an interesting article and food for thought. As far as I know, science doesn’t really give us much evidence that free will does exist. At the level of physics, everything is generally deterministic. Of course, you get down to the quantum level and determinism doesn’t really exist there: but that’s randomness rather than free will. If free will was a quantum phenomenon, we would expect it to be totally random.
However on an evolutionary point of view, the perception of free will is probably something that would be selected for. After all, if you don’t believe in free will and people’s autonomy to make their own decisions, you can no longer hold people accountable for the things they do and the decisions they make. That’d totally undermine the whole system of law and order in our society today.
The Cost of Milk
May 7
photo: law_keven
Everybody knows that it costs 45p for a pint of milk - wherever you are in the country or whichever supermarket you go to. No supermarket dares to increase the price of milk: it makes them look expensive. Nor will they dare to reduce the price to look cheaper than the rivals - they know that the other supermarkets will price cuts of their own. If all the supermarkets cut the price of milk, none of them gain any customers but they all make less money. So in essence, the price of a pint of milk is “fixed” at 45p.
Sainsbury’s 1% Milk
As someone with a bit of a background in economics, it’s absolutely fascinating seeing how companies deal with restrictions such as these. As a supermarket, how can you reduce the price of your milk without reducing your profitability? How do you design a pricing scheme that allows you to be competitive at pricing milk without starting a price war?
Sainsbury’s have dealt with this problem by introducing 1% fat milk (orange label). The qualitative difference between this milk and semi-skimmed is virtually zero. Yet 4 pints of this milk costs just £1 (25p a pint).
How does this arrangement help Sainsbury’s?
- First off, most people will continue buying the same milk that we’re used to. We notice when the price of milk changes, but it’s something that we buy on such a routine basis we would never compare the prices of different types of milk. So most people will continue to pay 45p for a pint of milk - no profit lost for Sainsburys.
- The only people who are likely to notice that you can get a new type of milk for 25p per pint are people such as students who do look after the pennies. But then, students don’t typically buy 4 pints of milk a week. If this offer can encourage students who normally consume 2 pints of milk @ 90p to now buy 4 pints @ £1, there’s additional profit in there for Sainsburys. Not to mention sales of complementary goods such as cornflakes would go up.
- Rival supermarkets won’t respond by cutting their own milk to 25p. The reason being that the “headline milk price” at Sainsbury’s is still 45p. This way, Sainsbury’s avoids a price war.
This stuff could easily be a textbook example for price targeting and game theory with regards to how monopolistic companies set prices.
According to The Sun, Freema Agyeman (Martha Jones) has been axed from Doctor Who for weak performances in later episodes.
DOCTOR Who actress Freema Agyeman has been axed from the next series, The Sun can reveal.
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And they are planning a storyline where the Doctor, played by David Tennant, will lose her and travel through the universe searching for her.
The decision to dump Freema comes as a bolt from the blue after her performance for the first couple of episodes was praised.
Make of this what you will; remembering The Sun was also the source of the rumour that David Tennant was leaving Doctor Who.
Now, there have already been some hints Martha isn’t a proper assistant… you’ve seen how they’ve mentioned shes just tagging along for the ride, and in todays episode he asked some other woman to join him. But anyway, it’s all speculation.
Good news though: Captain Jack is back in the 11th episode!
I just wanted to make a post about the on-demand television services which have recently become popular in the UK. Channel 4’s 4oD service has been heavily publicised over the past few weeks, Sky By Broadband is being promoted to Sky Viewers, and the BBC and ITV are soon set to launch their own on-demand services.
These services use P2P (peer to peer technology), similar to BitTorrent. Be careful when you use these services if you are on a capped broadband service, because as well as downloading the files from other people, you’ll also be uploading to others. If your internet becomes very slow, and pages suddenly time out, this is why! Upload capacity tends to be very low on ADSL so if you’re trading files or several people are trying to access the internet at once, upload capacity may be shared so thinly that there isn’t even enough bandwidth to handshake, etc.
The problem I’ve been having is a slow startup. The computer loads fine, but the Start Menu/Taskbar displays a hourglass for absolutely ages after startup. It turns out that 4oD had installed a KService application from Kontiki which was presumably trying to connect to other people to trade my files. So the loadup time went from about 5 seconds to 2 minutes or so.
I solved this by running disabling the KService application from automatically starting in the Services icon of the Control Panel. To the best of my knowledge, Channel 4, Sky and BBC all use the Kontiki application.
Hope this helps someone :)
Gateworld reports that the third series of Stargate has the working title "Stargate Universe" and that it will deal with the ninth chevron.
The new series has been conceived to be "a completely separate, third entity," Cooper said in an interview — "much more so than Atlantis was. Atlantis was much more of a spin-off seires of SG-1 and was sort of born out of SG-1."
Like many of the producers ideas, Cooper said, the idea for Stargate Universe was originally conceived as a stand-alone movie. "When we originally were sitting around talking about this we were trying to come up with ideas for a Stargate feature — not an SG-1 feature or an Atlantis feature, but a feature that would fit into the Stargate franchise that we feel we have created," Cooper said. "We were thinking, ‘How do we create a third arm to the franchise that is very connective and that fans will feel is born out of the material that has come before, but at the same time is very much something that stands alone?’
What We Know
- Targeted for early 2008
- Ninth Chevron plays big role in series
- Will be separate from SG-1 and Atlantis, rather than spin-offs.
- Will be gate-based rather than ship-based
- Will be set in the present; will not be a prequel or a sequel
- Will relate to existing mythology but will have separate storylines
- Will have a team on adventures (presumably a team from Earth)
The Name
My first reaction when I saw the name "Stargate Universe" was really of shock. It’s a terrible name, almost something you’d expect from a children’s television programme. It doesn’t really seem to capture any of the magic but it is only a working title so may change.
The Ninth Chevron
We know that the show will involve the 9th chevron. It has been hotly debated amongst fans of what this chevron does.
We know that most gate addresses use 7 chevrons. The 8th chevron is used to add an extra distance calculation like a area dialing code; it was required to travel to Atlantis and the Asgard galaxy. The name "Universe" implies that the show will perhaps be set in a much larger area than SG-1 which is set in the Milky Way, and Atlantis which is set in the Pegasus galaxy. The 9th chevron perhaps will add yet another distance calculation - like an international dialing code.
Some have suggested the 9th chevron could account for time or parallel universes. The first is unlikely, as the show is set in the present, and the producers of Stargate have made it quite clear that they don’t want to dabble with time travel, causality.
The second is a possibility. We know that the idea for Stargate Universe originally was for a movie. It’s quite easy to imagine a movie which is set in a parallel universe. However, there is already a quantum mirror to travel between universes. Effects such as the entropic cascade failure have already been established. And the title of the series is Universe, singular, not Universes.
My bet would be on the 9th chevron being an additional distance calculation.
Mythology
We also know that the show ties into existing mythology. So the chances are, the Ancients will come into it somehow. The whole Ancients storyline has been done in Atlantis and the Ori have been done to death and finished in SG-1. It’s hard to imagine a series which will be able to relate to the Ancients again, without having it tie in to existing story lines in SG1/Atlantis.
Stargate also has a lot of mythology about the Goa’uld, but as far as we’re concerned they’ve been finished off. But it’s possible there could still be Goa’uld around, who have perhaps worked out how to use the ninth chevron, and escape to another galaxy. Then again, coming back to the Goa’uld could make a very, very tedious TV show.
Movie Tie-In?
The original plan was for one of the SG-1 movies to "dovetail" into the third series. We know of two SG-1 movies at the moment:
The Ark of Truth, where SG-1 travels to the Ori home galaxy in an attempt to stop their onslaught.
Continuum, where the timeline has been altered, meaning the Stargate programme never existed.
It is unlikely a movie could be spun from Continuum. In some ways, it would provide a reset button and allow us to go back to the mythology of the original movie. This is unlikely, and certainly discovering the ninth chevron when the Stargate programme doesn’t even exist. Then again, if the ninth chevron travels between universes…
More likely, a third series could be launched from The Ark of Truth. There would be opportunities for tie-ins with the Ancients storyline, and presumably the Ori will be destroyed, leaving a whole galaxy to be explored.
Just Speculation
Of course, we know very little about the third series, and it’s all speculation.
A little bit of good news and some bad news for television viewers in the UK today. We’ll start off with the bad…
Sky’s Pay DTT Service
Freeview is the UK’s free-tv Digital Terrestrial TV platform. It’s a brand name for the consortium consisting of the BBC, Sky, ITV, Channel 4 and transmission company National Grid Wireless. Freeview was launched after the collapse of ITV Digital (in related news, Monkey and Al are back on our screens).
Freeview is probably the biggest digital television sector in the UK and it’s great for the people who don’t want to pay a subscription but still want to be able to watch television after the digital switchover which begins next year.
Freeview was joined by a pay-DTT service called Top Up TV in 2004. Top Up TV used to broadcast about 8 or 9 different channels for a few hours a day through a timesharing system, as they only had 4 streams. They’ve been subject to a lot of speculation to how successful it is, and many people don’t like it as it causes confusion and some people believe it hinders the growth of Freeview. Paid subscription services have no place on the limited capacity on DTT.
Rupert Murdoch’s BSkyB currently contributes three channels to the line up: Sky Three, Sky News and Sky Sports News. Today Sky announced plans to remove their three channels from the lineup and to replace them with it’s own subscription service.
This is obviously another big blow to Freeview and people who simply want free television. We’ll have a second, incompatible pay-TV service sharing the bandwidth and more pay channels littering the channel lineup. It really seems to be a way for Sky to reduce competition coming from Freeview rather than Sky providing a real alternative. They already provide a pay-TV service on satellite.
Ntl and Telewest become Virgin Media
The two cable companies Ntl and Telewest have now become Virgin Media. The "merger" combines the tri-play services from the two cable companies: broadband, tv and phone with Virgin’s mobile arm. The ISP Virgin.net has also been absorbed under the brand name of Virgin Media.
To promote Virgin Media, Virgin boss Richard Branson has decided to live in a glass box for one day.
The great thing about Virgin Media is that we finally have a rival to Sky. Virgin has some really attractive packages. The 3 for £30 offer gives you 2Mbps broadband, a pretty decent TV service including Sky channels and unlimited free national calls at weekends. Line rental is included in the price (line rental is usually £11 on BT so this package is effectively £19).
If you just want broadband through your BT line, you can get unlimited 8mbps broadband for just £15 a month. You also get evening and weekend calls to UK landlines for free. As a comparison, BT Broadband costs £27 a month. Switching to Virgin saves £144 a year.
Virgin also plan to launch a hybrid interactive television channel.
BT
It’s worth mentioning that BT are also expanding to compete with these new offers. BT Broadband was rebranded as BT Total Broadband with 8Mbps as standard, usage caps have been raised or removed, a VoD-service called BT Vision is being launched and a wi-fi enabled mobile service BT Fusion.
If BT tie up with FON, this could be really interesting.
Pharmaceutical Companies
May 4
Indonesia has refused to share samples of the bird flu virus in Indonesia with the World Health Organization, because the WHO was providing the samples to commercial companies in the West.
Indonesia will not share bird flu samples with the World Health Organization until the U.N. body agrees to stop providing the strains to commercial vaccine makers without its permission, the health minister said Thursday.
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The country hardest hit by bird flu is worried drug companies will use its virus to make vaccines that will ultimately be unaffordable to developing nations.
In today’s world, big pharmaceutical companies will develop vaccines and other medicines and will patent the technology, hold exclusive rights and a monopoly on the product. These commercial pharmaceutical companies make billions every year, whilst holding the exclusive rights on these vaccines - vaccines which if shared could be mass produced around the world, potentially saving millions of lives.
Because of the intellectual property rights and market economics - the vaccines are generally provided to those companies which can afford them - the rich countries in the West. So poorer countries will be priced out of the market.
So these bird flu vaccines using virus samples provided by Indonesia will go towards developing vaccines will allow big companies in the West to develop vaccines which may never even reach the Indonesian people.
Intellectual Rights and Monopolies
Economic theory suggests that for research and development to be cost-effective, there must be barriers such as patents, intellectual rights, monopoly rights. Indeed, why would I spend £100 million on developing a vaccine just to have a rival take my work (without any R&D costs of their own) and to produce and sell it at a lower price?
So I guess we’re left with a bit of a moral dilemma. For a vaccine to be available to everyone regardless of where they live or how much money they have, the technologies and formulas for the vaccines must be open knowledge and available for free.
However if this were the case, there would be no vaccines. There would be no incentive for anyone to invest the money in research and development. There would be no profit to be gained in selling those vaccines; and certainly not enough to pay off those huge R&D costs.
So I suppose there are several questions:
How can vaccines and medicines be made available to as many people as possible whilst still encouraging and maintaining research and development?
Is it ethical for us to have these technologies which could save thousands from diseases or illnesses, but not to provide them on the basis that they can’t pay us for it?
Should vaccines be developed for the public good or for the pockets of shareholders in pharmaceutical companies?
Should the development of medical products be developed by governments for the public good?
Downloadable Coffee
May 4
The Coffee Replacement MP3 file is a sound file which claims to "keep you in an energizing state giving you a ‘caffeine’ energetic boost". There is an explanation to how it works; and it does sound pretty new age to me. I’m not sure if there is actually any scientific proof of how it works. According to the website:
When the brain is given a stimulus, through the ears, eyes or other senses, it emits an electrical charge in response, called a Cortical Evoked Response. These electrical responses travel throughout the brain to become what you "see and hear". This activity can be measured using sensitive electrodes attached to the scalp.
When the brain is presented with a rhythmic stimulus, such as a drum beat for example, the rhythm is reproduced in the brain in the form of these electrical impulses. If the rhythm becomes fast and consistent enough, it can start to resemble the natural internal rhythms of the brain, called brainwaves. When this happens, the brain responds by synchronizing its own electric cycles to the same rhythm.
See the theory page.
Brainwave Generator
You can make your own brainwave sounds using the BrainWave Generator. It comes with built in brainwaves such as creativity increase, meditation, headache control and sleep induction.
If you want, you can also generate your own brainwaves - you can add things such as background sounds (I used the Yes No Yes sound from Even Stephens) and customize all kinds of parameters such as frequency and type of wave.
From the programme, you can then export your brainwaves as a WAV file. The website does make some pretty silly claims such as that it can help you quit smoking or drinking. I’m certainly not a big believer in solutions such as this but, regardless, it’s a bit of fun.
Disclaimer from Website
The following people should not use brain entrainment:
- People subject to any forms of seizures or epilepsy
- People using pacemakers
- People suffering from cardiac arrhythmia or other heart disorders
- People taking stimulants, psychoactive drugs, or tranquilizers
Take note…
Via Download Squad.