In over 40 years of teaching and tutoring Mathematics, and reading lots of studies in Mathematics Education, I have become convinced of the following:
1. Almost (*) everyone can learn more Mathematics than they currently know.
2. There is a fairly clear hierarchy of difficulty in the subject: Arithmetic, Algebra, Basic Functions, Calculus, Advanced Calculus, Real Analysis and the higher level material. Almost (*) everyone has a maximum level that they can achieve, long before the top.
3. The top level for 80% of the population appears to be Basic Algebra or lower, with only about 5% able to pass a standard Engineering Calculus I course.
Understandably, these observations have met with a great deal of resistance, especially from politicians and administrators who have read the studies that performance in college-level Mathematics classes is a good predictor of overall academic success (undeniably true). This leads to the insistence that we pass more students without lowering standards.
The people who insist that this is possible tend to fall into two categories: Those who themselves do not perform well in the subject, but blame all of their experiences on a single bad teacher, and those who found the subject relatively easy.
Large scale experiments, such as the mess in the O- and A-level syllabi in England from 1980 to 2000 show that increased pass rates mean lower achievement. In the US, cases such as the impressive improvement at Georgia State a few years ago were a result of lowered standards, but the people in charge blinded themselves to the fact.
Nonetheless, a higher percentage of jobs are now tied to higher education (including many trades), and most of the degrees in demand require levels of Mathematics far higher than Basic Algebra. We have also built an Education system which treats students as consumers, and the failure rates in Mathematics are unacceptably high to the administrators and political overseers. Never mind that those rates are close to the same across countries and decades, if not centuries.
What to do?
Form the perspective of a politician or administrator, especially one trained outside of the STEM areas, the obvious answer is to increase pass rates, and pretend to be maintaining standards.
This has been happening for decades, but it is getting worse. Be prepared for the majority of college graduates to have the paper qualifications, but not the actual abilities.
They will, however, be full of confidence in those missing abilities, thanks to the Dunning-Kruger
(**) effect, which is all that really matters.
ADDITIONAL NOTE (5 July):
To follow on, I would point out that one of the loudest and all-knowing groups to criticize what we did were the Engineering and Science professors.
Some decided that they could do much better, and tried to create courses which took students with the base competence to start Precalculus, and tried to get them do do Differential Equations in a semester. That did not go well.
Another group decided that our placement process was too restrictive, and insisted that they could tutor and nurture the students with weak backgrounds. Those students simply couldn't get through.
Yet another group thought that we were just too harsh, and were not getting students through to their courses. They believed the famous 'Calculus is a weeder course' meme. They encouraged students to take their Math courses at online places, or local institutions who were known to have higher pass rates (i.e. lax standards). Those students got great grades in those courses, and then couldn't pass the higher-level Engineering courses.
In short, we Mathematicians generally know what we are doing.
__________________________________________
(*) Excluding mathematical greats such as the late Paul Erdos, Terence Tao and the like.
(**) 'The Dunning-Kruger effect is a type of cognitive bias in which people believe that they are smarter and more capable than they really are. Essentially, low ability people do not possess the skills needed to recognize their own incompetence.'
https://www.verywellmind.com/an-overview-of-the-dunning-kruger-effect-4160740
Tuesday, June 30, 2020
Sunday, June 28, 2020
Energy and Liberty
As the statue-rollers do their bit to help capitalism collapse under its self-contradictions, one should have thought the PC response to energy issues is 'renewable/small is beautiful'; but it seems Greenery has its own conundrums. Even Greta Thunberg is not immune from Left criticism, as witness Cory Morningstar's series on how 'Joan of Aargh!' is part of a plan to cash in on eco-investment and the charity/quango gravy train; this is a revolution that, like the French one and pace vegetarianism, threatens to eat its own children.
Nick Drew, writer at Capitalists@Work, here discusses another campaigner's idea that renewables may be a Bad Thing because of a 'power struggle' in two senses...
An important line of thought in energy matters is how coal transformed the entire world by being a very dense (and fairly convenient) form of energy. Oil is even better. (Google ERoEI for quantified approaches to these thoughts.) Cheap coal and oil were the basis of industrial civilisation, and cheap electricity the basis of the modern way of life. Oooh-errr, missus: isn't "green energy" going to be of much poorer ERoEI, and much more expensive? ... and hence, the end of civilisation as we know it?
When allied to the obvious observation that activist "greens" are generally ignorant to the point of causing despair; and those that aren't daft romantics are often outright malcontents (sometimes anarchists and sometimes malevolent & motivated anti-capitalists) - oh, and add China to the mix, because they ain't falling for this crap but we are! - there's scope for some fairly apocalytic visions. Oooh-errr, missus ...
For a well-written example of this thesis my attention was drawn by our good host to a piece by one John Constable, a name that will be familiar to those who get their kicks from the very peculiar output of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. His article is here.
Now I understand this "intellectual" line of thinking, and it's always nice to have something theoretical to worry about: but I'm deeply skeptical of it, on three immediate grounds
So whom does Constable imagine has been controlling the energy system** up until now (in the open-market era, i.e. post 1990)? The nearest UK candidates are, in broad coalition, (a) National Grid (b) Ofgem (c) HMG. The CCC helps a bit and snipes a bit, from the sidelines: other related quangos are either more helpful (being more closely directed by government and industry) or more snipey (being "greener"). Similar in most countries. With most aspects of detailed development / delivery / execution outsourced to private companies (and/or municipal utilities in some countries), small and large (EDF is an egregious counter-example, but doomed in its present form). Any serious signs it's about to be handed over to Greta? What does she know about constructing anything more weighty than a tweet?
No: as I keep saying (C@W passim): net zero carbon has gone completely mainstream now (since 2019, specifically, in my assessment). So - it's in the hands of the engineering companies, the traditional energy companies (who ain't volunteering to go the way of the dinosaurs) as well as a rash of really creative newer engineering / technology companies, and the banks.++ Right now I'm working on a project for a gigantic "traditional polluter" whose products are vital for our way of life, whose efforts to go green up until last year were next to nil, and who now are throwing all their excellent people into really bold schemes to go zero carbon! And when you see real, competent people working these Big (very big) Problems, it makes the idea of "handing things over to parish councils" look utterly, utterly absurd. And despite RLB's talk of the unions taking a controlling stake in all this, whose side do you think a practical GMB man is on? (Or Kier Starmer?) For reasons both of jobs, and keeping the lights on, nobody in the real world will do anything other than let the big corporates do what they're doing.
Now: will our 2050 energy end up being more expensive? Not sure. Yes, there are huge upfront capital costs - but right now, that's surely going to be spent on Something Big, on Keynsian grounds at least, so it might as well be building clean & useful stuff. (Plus adaptation / mitigation, of course - a key part of the 2019 breakthrough-to-mainstream.) And the beauty of wind and solar is that once the (substantial, but fast declining) capital expenditure has been taken care of, the operating costs are wholly unburdened by the fuel costs that dominate "conventional" energy. (Don't fret about the details like grid balancing, over which Mr Constable frequently hyper-ventilates - and I used once to worry myself, see this blog a few years ago. It's just an engineering problem: the Grid is very good at it; lots of clever people are beavering away at it - and the costs of all that will fall, too.)
But let's suppose, as seems possible, that Chinese coal+wind+solar beats western hydrogen+wind+solar+batteries on cost. So what? Globalism is over! We ain't gonna be buying our stuff from them on the same scale anymore, anyway. Are we ..?
Nick Drew
_________________________________________
** the whole point about the gas industry is that methane is INCREDIBLY low in energy density, (even when you freeze it to put it in ships, it's still quite poor) - but an exceptionally useful form of energy. And so, highly specialised infrastructures (physical, financial and commercial) have long since been established to cater for this. In many respects (although the technical analogies aren't easily mapped for non-scientists), the electricity situation is even more extreme. Neither of these massive industries are in the hands of the Green Blob. Anywhere. Whatever daftness sometimes surfaces in the legislation under which they conduct their resolutely practical business.
++ OK, yes, and a bunch of chancers, con artists and would-be 'war profiteers' at the margin
Nick Drew, writer at Capitalists@Work, here discusses another campaigner's idea that renewables may be a Bad Thing because of a 'power struggle' in two senses...
An important line of thought in energy matters is how coal transformed the entire world by being a very dense (and fairly convenient) form of energy. Oil is even better. (Google ERoEI for quantified approaches to these thoughts.) Cheap coal and oil were the basis of industrial civilisation, and cheap electricity the basis of the modern way of life. Oooh-errr, missus: isn't "green energy" going to be of much poorer ERoEI, and much more expensive? ... and hence, the end of civilisation as we know it?
When allied to the obvious observation that activist "greens" are generally ignorant to the point of causing despair; and those that aren't daft romantics are often outright malcontents (sometimes anarchists and sometimes malevolent & motivated anti-capitalists) - oh, and add China to the mix, because they ain't falling for this crap but we are! - there's scope for some fairly apocalytic visions. Oooh-errr, missus ...
For a well-written example of this thesis my attention was drawn by our good host to a piece by one John Constable, a name that will be familiar to those who get their kicks from the very peculiar output of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. His article is here.
Now I understand this "intellectual" line of thinking, and it's always nice to have something theoretical to worry about: but I'm deeply skeptical of it, on three immediate grounds
- ad hominem: Constable is a deep fellow but always leaves the indelible impression he's pursuing an unacknowledged agenda
- "Attempting to reverse this process by returning much or all of the energy system to low density flows means handing over to those who control the renewable energy sector the majority of the potential for change available to our society. The political implications of this are terrifying, and not even public ownership of those resources could avoid the concentration of power and constriction of human freedom that would result."
- he's dramatically (and, given his considerable knowledge, wilfully) wrong when he talks about "low density flows" as if that's anything remotely new**
So whom does Constable imagine has been controlling the energy system** up until now (in the open-market era, i.e. post 1990)? The nearest UK candidates are, in broad coalition, (a) National Grid (b) Ofgem (c) HMG. The CCC helps a bit and snipes a bit, from the sidelines: other related quangos are either more helpful (being more closely directed by government and industry) or more snipey (being "greener"). Similar in most countries. With most aspects of detailed development / delivery / execution outsourced to private companies (and/or municipal utilities in some countries), small and large (EDF is an egregious counter-example, but doomed in its present form). Any serious signs it's about to be handed over to Greta? What does she know about constructing anything more weighty than a tweet?
No: as I keep saying (C@W passim): net zero carbon has gone completely mainstream now (since 2019, specifically, in my assessment). So - it's in the hands of the engineering companies, the traditional energy companies (who ain't volunteering to go the way of the dinosaurs) as well as a rash of really creative newer engineering / technology companies, and the banks.++ Right now I'm working on a project for a gigantic "traditional polluter" whose products are vital for our way of life, whose efforts to go green up until last year were next to nil, and who now are throwing all their excellent people into really bold schemes to go zero carbon! And when you see real, competent people working these Big (very big) Problems, it makes the idea of "handing things over to parish councils" look utterly, utterly absurd. And despite RLB's talk of the unions taking a controlling stake in all this, whose side do you think a practical GMB man is on? (Or Kier Starmer?) For reasons both of jobs, and keeping the lights on, nobody in the real world will do anything other than let the big corporates do what they're doing.
Now: will our 2050 energy end up being more expensive? Not sure. Yes, there are huge upfront capital costs - but right now, that's surely going to be spent on Something Big, on Keynsian grounds at least, so it might as well be building clean & useful stuff. (Plus adaptation / mitigation, of course - a key part of the 2019 breakthrough-to-mainstream.) And the beauty of wind and solar is that once the (substantial, but fast declining) capital expenditure has been taken care of, the operating costs are wholly unburdened by the fuel costs that dominate "conventional" energy. (Don't fret about the details like grid balancing, over which Mr Constable frequently hyper-ventilates - and I used once to worry myself, see this blog a few years ago. It's just an engineering problem: the Grid is very good at it; lots of clever people are beavering away at it - and the costs of all that will fall, too.)
But let's suppose, as seems possible, that Chinese coal+wind+solar beats western hydrogen+wind+solar+batteries on cost. So what? Globalism is over! We ain't gonna be buying our stuff from them on the same scale anymore, anyway. Are we ..?
Nick Drew
_________________________________________
** the whole point about the gas industry is that methane is INCREDIBLY low in energy density, (even when you freeze it to put it in ships, it's still quite poor) - but an exceptionally useful form of energy. And so, highly specialised infrastructures (physical, financial and commercial) have long since been established to cater for this. In many respects (although the technical analogies aren't easily mapped for non-scientists), the electricity situation is even more extreme. Neither of these massive industries are in the hands of the Green Blob. Anywhere. Whatever daftness sometimes surfaces in the legislation under which they conduct their resolutely practical business.
++ OK, yes, and a bunch of chancers, con artists and would-be 'war profiteers' at the margin
Friday, June 26, 2020
FRIDAY MUSIC: Brittany Howard and Alabama Shakes, by JD
Outstanding performances from Brittany Howard and her band Alabama Shakes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabama_Shakes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabama_Shakes
Saturday, June 20, 2020
SATURDAY ESSAY: Faked images and the arrival of Photoshop, by Wiggia
Faked or staged images have been around since the beginning of photography. Politicians were quick to seize on the possibility of promoting themselves in a more favourable light from the start of film and photographers soon got the hang of creating a ‘better’ image.
In those early days photography being in its infancy had an almost magical appeal. The use of images as in today's world was not something the man or woman of the period could have comprehended; as with the magic lantern a forerunner to cinema it was indeed magic and image makers were soon quick to take advantage of that belief.
Even today it is easy to get sucked in. The reason for this post was I emailed on a volcanic explosion viewed it was said from a CCTV camera only for me to be ‘corrected by JD who pointed out the fake was in fact a simulation video. What gave it away if I had bothered to delve a bit deeper was the fact that the volcano, Sinabung in Idonesia, was in fact a land-based volcano, and of course claiming to be from CCTV footage explains the rather surreal ending.
Some of the first fake or staged photos came from events like the American Civil War. The one of General Ulysses S. Grant is a classic:
It came from three separate negatives:
These early’fakes’ were much more enduring than those of today as general knowledge to what was going on in photo manipulation was simply not out there, seeing was believing.
The Cottingley Fairies is when you look at the images almost laughable to us today, kid's work, and it was kids who created the picture using paper fairies straight from a children's fairy tale book, yet adults believed it !
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies
William Mumler's ghost photo using two images was another early attempt - and a successful one - to deceive.
These early deception pictures fall into the same category as bearded ladies at the fairground and eight legged dogs: most were fakes, but the public fell for it.
The one photo that is not faked but is staged, that of the workmen having lunch on a girder 840 ft above the Rockefeller Plaza in 1932, has survived as an icon of the age. The bigger mystery is who actually took the picture: two different photographers claimed or are cited as having taken it, but there is no evidence they ever did; as to the real photographer, no one knows !
Robert Capa is renowned as being one of the best war photographers of all time (and for many the best), yet one of his best known images from the Spanish civil war has always been surrounded by controversy. It depicts a man falling backwards after being shot, but again many have doubted its authenticity saying it was staged. No one has ever really proved it was fake though a local historian has years later given the background landscape to a different area to that claimed for the photo, yet again he doesn't show the alternative.
Capa answered later to charges it had been staged by saying “In Spain you don’t need tricks to shoot photos.The pictures are there, and you just make them.Truth is the best picture.” It was his first great picture.
A similar iconic picture was the raising of the US flag on Iwo Jima in WW 11 by Joe Rosenthal. It was actually the second flag to be raised, the first was considered too small to be seen from another US strongpoint and a larger flag was then put up; this is the photo that resulted from that moment:
But even this caused a lot of controversy. Was it staged? Many said it had to be, 'too perfect in so many ways' was the most heard comment. Again the photographer denied any staging, and in war with so many hundreds of thousands of photographs taken occasionally someone gets lucky and it all falls into place. Staged or not, it has endured the test of time.
A more light-hearted picture was the Loch Ness monster of 1934. This was accepted as probably genuine for 50 years, until the truth that came out that it was a toy submarine with a hand-made and grafted-on neck, which destroyed the public's belief that a monster had ever existed. People did then, now less so.
It was known as the surgeon's photo as the owner (he did not take the photo) was a London gynaecologist, Robert Kenneth Wilson; the rest can be found here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loch_Ness_Monster
The use during war for propaganda purposes of fake or doctored images was fairly common. The likes of Stalin and Hitler would regularly issue pictures with individuals removed and in many cases those removed were removed permanently; but few are memorable other than for the unfortunates.
In more modern times the use of photoshopped pictures has become quite common. With modern image editing software anything is possible and it becomes increasingly difficult to tell if something is genuine or not. A combination of staging and photoshopping has been used in the recent ‘refugee’ arrivals from the middle east to the near shores of Europe.
In cases such as those the pictures are altered to an agenda, one to promote sympathy for an aggrieved people. They are shamelessly political, something any journalist photo or otherwise should not be part of, yet photo journalism is no longer the realm of the professional - and even they are swayed these days - but of also the opportunist. Digital imaging has reached the masses and alteration and photoshopping are all too easy when an agenda is to pushed.
This one is typical of a whole swathe of the type - this one, for a change, is from Georgia:
Already during the BLM protests images that are not telling the whole truth have been published, many show injured police from riots or protests from previous years and a video depicting alleged EDL thugs shouting 'f*** the police' was added on from a Chelsea football supporters' video from a couple of years back.
Even I with limited skills have faked holiday snaps. Unlike professional photographers I do not have the time to wait for the right moment or the right light or conditions; often the hour or so I have in a particular place will be the only time in my life I will be there so that moment has to do, and who would know when I show a sunny scene from far away that I have changed the sky, turned up the colours, given more sunlight to an area of gloom?
As the illusionist said ’now you see me...’ and should add 'and as never before.'
In those early days photography being in its infancy had an almost magical appeal. The use of images as in today's world was not something the man or woman of the period could have comprehended; as with the magic lantern a forerunner to cinema it was indeed magic and image makers were soon quick to take advantage of that belief.
Even today it is easy to get sucked in. The reason for this post was I emailed on a volcanic explosion viewed it was said from a CCTV camera only for me to be ‘corrected by JD who pointed out the fake was in fact a simulation video. What gave it away if I had bothered to delve a bit deeper was the fact that the volcano, Sinabung in Idonesia, was in fact a land-based volcano, and of course claiming to be from CCTV footage explains the rather surreal ending.
Some of the first fake or staged photos came from events like the American Civil War. The one of General Ulysses S. Grant is a classic:
It came from three separate negatives:
These early’fakes’ were much more enduring than those of today as general knowledge to what was going on in photo manipulation was simply not out there, seeing was believing.
The Cottingley Fairies is when you look at the images almost laughable to us today, kid's work, and it was kids who created the picture using paper fairies straight from a children's fairy tale book, yet adults believed it !
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies
William Mumler's ghost photo using two images was another early attempt - and a successful one - to deceive.
These early deception pictures fall into the same category as bearded ladies at the fairground and eight legged dogs: most were fakes, but the public fell for it.
The one photo that is not faked but is staged, that of the workmen having lunch on a girder 840 ft above the Rockefeller Plaza in 1932, has survived as an icon of the age. The bigger mystery is who actually took the picture: two different photographers claimed or are cited as having taken it, but there is no evidence they ever did; as to the real photographer, no one knows !
Robert Capa is renowned as being one of the best war photographers of all time (and for many the best), yet one of his best known images from the Spanish civil war has always been surrounded by controversy. It depicts a man falling backwards after being shot, but again many have doubted its authenticity saying it was staged. No one has ever really proved it was fake though a local historian has years later given the background landscape to a different area to that claimed for the photo, yet again he doesn't show the alternative.
Capa answered later to charges it had been staged by saying “In Spain you don’t need tricks to shoot photos.The pictures are there, and you just make them.Truth is the best picture.” It was his first great picture.
A similar iconic picture was the raising of the US flag on Iwo Jima in WW 11 by Joe Rosenthal. It was actually the second flag to be raised, the first was considered too small to be seen from another US strongpoint and a larger flag was then put up; this is the photo that resulted from that moment:
But even this caused a lot of controversy. Was it staged? Many said it had to be, 'too perfect in so many ways' was the most heard comment. Again the photographer denied any staging, and in war with so many hundreds of thousands of photographs taken occasionally someone gets lucky and it all falls into place. Staged or not, it has endured the test of time.
A more light-hearted picture was the Loch Ness monster of 1934. This was accepted as probably genuine for 50 years, until the truth that came out that it was a toy submarine with a hand-made and grafted-on neck, which destroyed the public's belief that a monster had ever existed. People did then, now less so.
It was known as the surgeon's photo as the owner (he did not take the photo) was a London gynaecologist, Robert Kenneth Wilson; the rest can be found here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loch_Ness_Monster
The use during war for propaganda purposes of fake or doctored images was fairly common. The likes of Stalin and Hitler would regularly issue pictures with individuals removed and in many cases those removed were removed permanently; but few are memorable other than for the unfortunates.
In more modern times the use of photoshopped pictures has become quite common. With modern image editing software anything is possible and it becomes increasingly difficult to tell if something is genuine or not. A combination of staging and photoshopping has been used in the recent ‘refugee’ arrivals from the middle east to the near shores of Europe.
In cases such as those the pictures are altered to an agenda, one to promote sympathy for an aggrieved people. They are shamelessly political, something any journalist photo or otherwise should not be part of, yet photo journalism is no longer the realm of the professional - and even they are swayed these days - but of also the opportunist. Digital imaging has reached the masses and alteration and photoshopping are all too easy when an agenda is to pushed.
This one is typical of a whole swathe of the type - this one, for a change, is from Georgia:
Already during the BLM protests images that are not telling the whole truth have been published, many show injured police from riots or protests from previous years and a video depicting alleged EDL thugs shouting 'f*** the police' was added on from a Chelsea football supporters' video from a couple of years back.
Even I with limited skills have faked holiday snaps. Unlike professional photographers I do not have the time to wait for the right moment or the right light or conditions; often the hour or so I have in a particular place will be the only time in my life I will be there so that moment has to do, and who would know when I show a sunny scene from far away that I have changed the sky, turned up the colours, given more sunlight to an area of gloom?
As the illusionist said ’now you see me...’ and should add 'and as never before.'
Friday, June 19, 2020
FRIDAY MUSIC: Anne Harris, by JD
The musical river never runs dry and this week's 'star' is violinist Anne Harris, another lesser known gem of a musician. I don't know much about her except to say that she is very good and seems to be at ease in so many different styles of music.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Harris_(musician)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Harris_(musician)
Saturday, June 13, 2020
Smashing the heathen’s idols
It is not enough to believe; you must eliminate the
unbeliever. Nigel Farage’s defenestration from LBC shows how the tide of totalitarianism is flooding in ‘through creeks and inlets.’
His sin was to obey the Catchphrase maxim ‘say what you see.’
See this from the Wail, for example...
… but please don’t notice the ethnicity of the five hands-on
destructors (and almost everyone else there), even though it’s much the same as
the suspiciously well-prepared Umbrella Man’s. Otherwise you might think there’s a deeper agenda at work.
In the photo above, a 125-year-old statue of a man dead 300
years is rolling on its way to Bristol harbour. It was made and erected not
because of his connection with slavery, but to commemorate his benefactions to the city, worth c. £15 million in today’s terms. How embarrassing it must be to find that even villains may have their good
points.
That leads us to the next stage in the process: destroying
records and symbols. Our mother remembered going into her East Prussian
school’s library one day after the National Socialists had taken over, and
seeing gaps in the shelves where all the Jewish and socialist writers had been.
It’s an ancient strategy. At the back of every believer’s
mind is the awareness that there may be an alternative belief, or none at all;
this is so threatening that all such evidence must be erased. Look in Deuteronomy12: 2-3, after the conquest of Canaan:
2 Destroy completely all the places on the
high mountains, on the hills and under every spreading tree, where the nations
you are dispossessing worship their gods. 3 Break down their altars, smash
their sacred stones and burn their Asherah poles in the fire; cut down the
idols of their gods and wipe out their names from those places.
Much later, but before the founder of Islam had even been
born, two giant statues of Buddha were being constructed in Afghanistan;
the Taliban (Islam’s equivalent of our seventeenth-century Puritans) blew them
up in 2001. All that’s left of them is the holograms set up five years ago; perhaps something like that is the coming fate of Western liberal
civilisation.
Now there is a distinction to be drawn between the
statue-smashing in the UK and the USA. Many set up in the States were, so my
American brother tells me, deliberate provocations by segregationists who hated
the advancement of black civil rights. He refers me to James Loewen’s 1999 book
‘Lies Across America.’ I’m not surprised, then, that so many call for such monuments to be pulled
down.
Here, though, it’s different: we offshored our slavery and
only the profits came home. In my naivety, I long thought that Britain outlawed
the trade in 1833 because of the moral force of the abolitionists’ arguments; I
didn’t know about the massive financial compensation paid to estate-owners who
had until then struggled to waste on architecture, art, drink, whores and
gambling the annual fortunes it had brought them. It took the Treasury until 2015 to extinguish the debt for that payoff.
Having said that, what’s taught in schools about the slave
trade is myopic. I remember the horror of a nice black girl in a class I was
teaching when I explained to her that the slavers didn’t simply hunt down their
prey, they bought them from West African chiefs. Even now, not all West African nations have apologized unreservedly for their part in this atrocious business.
Also, schoolchildren need to be aware of Thomas Sowell’s startling statistic that
‘More whites were brought as
slaves to North Africa than blacks brought as slaves to the United States or to
the 13 colonies from which it was formed. White slaves were still being bought
and sold in the Ottoman Empire, decades after blacks were freed in the United
States.’
… and that slavery still goes on around the world, on a big
scale.
Yet, how fast have the current protests spread! It is almost
as though some people have been preparing for revolution for a long time.
They have. I recall from the Seventies a graduate student at
Oxford, living from one Social Sciences Research Council grant to another,
telling me obvious things about society’s power structures. Another college
acquaintance went to work at the Cowley car plant after graduating, to spread
the Marxist message to fellow workers on the production line – they beat him up
several times, but he persisted and they started to listen, he told me. Some
Communists held that political action betrayed a lack of faith in the
inevitability of the classless society, so I remember one who contented himself
with local good works like a mediaeval limitour, such as fixing plumbing for a poor householder. Later, a trainer on my
teaching course in Birmingham made some comment about social change and my not
wanting to get my hands ‘dirty’, which even then I interpreted as ‘bloody.’
When it is over, when the Republican Calendar begins and the
Cult of Reason is celebrated, the world will be made anew and all the evidence
of the old will be annihilated to save us from the danger of relapse. As
Orwell’s O’Brien says, ‘It is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought
should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be.’ Roll that statue, smash that altar, pull down that sacred pole.
Friday, June 12, 2020
FRIDAY MUSIC: Caravan Palace, by JD
By way of an introduction; what is electro swing music?
According to Wiki; "Electro swing, or swing house music, is a music genre that combines the influence of vintage or modern swing and jazz mixed with house, hip hop, and EDM. Successful examples of the genre create a modern and dance-floor focused sound that is more readily accessible to the modern ear, but that also retains the energetic excitement of live brass and early swing recordings. Electro swing groups typically include singers, musicians playing traditional jazz instruments (e.g. trumpet, trombone, clarinet, saxophone) and at least one DJ."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro_swing
And, as mentioned at the end of the above video, one of the most popular exponents are Caravan Palace.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravan_Palace
Zoé Colotis seems to have unlimited energy to be able to sing and dance the way she does and in the final video the dance choreography and microphone handover is brilliantly executed (you may need to watch it more than once to see it!)
According to Wiki; "Electro swing, or swing house music, is a music genre that combines the influence of vintage or modern swing and jazz mixed with house, hip hop, and EDM. Successful examples of the genre create a modern and dance-floor focused sound that is more readily accessible to the modern ear, but that also retains the energetic excitement of live brass and early swing recordings. Electro swing groups typically include singers, musicians playing traditional jazz instruments (e.g. trumpet, trombone, clarinet, saxophone) and at least one DJ."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro_swing
And, as mentioned at the end of the above video, one of the most popular exponents are Caravan Palace.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravan_Palace
Zoé Colotis seems to have unlimited energy to be able to sing and dance the way she does and in the final video the dance choreography and microphone handover is brilliantly executed (you may need to watch it more than once to see it!)
Wednesday, June 10, 2020
Pic of the week
![]() |
Black Lives Matter protesters rolling a statue of British slave trader Edward Colston. Photo by Giulia Spadafora/NurPhoto via Getty Images. |
A mob of black people, their faces contorted with rage at the killing of George Floyd 3,900 miles away, spontaneously pull down a 125-year-old statue and roll it into Bristol harbour.
Monday, June 08, 2020
Is the real problem - plenty?
"a researcher named John B Calhoun made a world for mice in which everything they could ever want was provided and they did not have to work for any of it. ... male mice, without a reason to defend their territory or food source (since both were plentiful) became dejected, forming cliques that randomly attacked one another for seemingly no reason. In the lead up to this, certain of the male mice began continually mating with whatever mouse happened to be around, be it male or female. Many of the mice also began to simply kill and eat one another, despite the abundance of other food sources; mothers abandoned babies, mice would crowd together in groups of 50 or more in pens designed to hold 15 individuals, while pens with plentiful bedding sat empty inches away."
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2020/06/why-it-sucks-to-be-rich/
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2018/12/that-time-a-guy-tried-to-build-a-utopia-for-mice-and-it-all-went-to-hell/
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2020/06/why-it-sucks-to-be-rich/
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2018/12/that-time-a-guy-tried-to-build-a-utopia-for-mice-and-it-all-went-to-hell/
Friday, June 05, 2020
FRIDAY MUSIC: Michael Maier and unity through song, by JD
Dr Iain McGilchrist in his book 'The Master and his Emissary' explains that music predates language. Human communication began with music which developed into language, first as sung poetry and then as the spoken word. [1]
"What is music?" Dr Jason Martineau in his book 'The Elements of Music' answers that question- "Music is a mother's lullaby. It gives sound to our feelings when we have no voice, words when we are silent. In it we praise, love, hope and remember. The breath of the soul....music shapes and shivers into endless colours, nuanced and diverse, and eternally creative. It is spirit taking form" [2]
"Before there were any stars or galaxies, 13.8 billion years ago, our universe was just a ball of hot plasma -- a mixture of electrons, protons, and light. Sound waves shook this infant universe, triggered by minute, or "quantum," fluctuations happening just moments after the big bang that created our universe." [3]
Pythagoras introduced the notion of the 'Music of the Spheres' incorporating the metaphysical principle that mathematical relationships express qualities or "tones" of energy which manifest in numbers, visual angles, shapes and sounds – all connected within a pattern of proportion. [4] And it was Pythagoras who invented/discovered 'music' [5]
McGilchrist and Martineau have both written of the spiritual and metaphysical 'core' of music and one man in history incorporated such idea in his writings and that was Michael Maier (1568 - 1622) who was a physician and a councellor to the Hapsburg Emperor Rudolf ll [6]
Maier wrote a small book called Atalanta Fugiens based on the Greek myth of Hippomenes and his courtship of Atalanta [7] The book is subtitled 'New Emblems concerning the alchemical secrets of mature' and on the title page Maier writes 'the book is designed in part for the eyes, the intellect...and for the ears' - The eyes can see and study the arcane emblems; the intellect can read and follow the Latin maxims and mottos; the ears can hear and follow the music.
The music is set out in the form of 50 fugues and there is an obvious linguistic link to the book's title in that 'fugiens', fleeing, is from the same root as 'fugue', to put to flight. Fugue also means a loss of awareness of one's identity, often coupled with flight from one's usual environment, associated with certain forms of hysteria and epilepsy.(OED definition)
And so after that long winded introduction, to the music!
Adam McClean of Alchemywebsite.com [8] has set his hand-colored renditions of the Atalanta Fugiens emblems to midi renditions of the music and assembled all 50 fugues in the following video. (29m 30s)
According to Maier in the book the fugues are intended to be sung and so here they are in sequence sung by Rachel Platt, Emily Van Evera, Richard Wistreich and Rufus Müller.
In summary and extracted from McGilchrist's book [1] -
"....that we should use non verbal means such as music to communicate is hardly surprising.... we in the west have lost the sense of the central position music once occupied in communal life, and still does in most parts of the world today. Despite the fact that there is no culture anywhere in the world that does not have music and in which people do not join together to sing or dance we have relegated music to the sidelines of life. We might think of music as an individualistic, even solitary experience, but that is rare in the history of the world. In more traditional societies, performance of music plays both an integral and an integrative role not only in celebration, religious festivals, and other rituals but also in daily work and recreation; and it is above all a shared performance not just something we listen to passively.It has a vital way of binding people together, helping them to be aware of shared humanity, shared feelings and experiences, and actively drawing them together. In our world, competition and specialisation have made music something compartmentalised, somewhere away from life's core: Oliver Sacks writes - The primal role of music is to some extent lost today, when we have a special class of composers and performers, and the rest of us are often reduced to passive listening. One has to go to a concert, or a church, or a music festival, to recapture the collective excitement and bonding of music. In such a situation there seems to be an actual binding of nervous systems."
============================== ============================== ======
According to Maier in the book the fugues are intended to be sung and so here they are in sequence sung by Rachel Platt, Emily Van Evera, Richard Wistreich and Rufus Müller.
In summary and extracted from McGilchrist's book [1] -
"....that we should use non verbal means such as music to communicate is hardly surprising.... we in the west have lost the sense of the central position music once occupied in communal life, and still does in most parts of the world today. Despite the fact that there is no culture anywhere in the world that does not have music and in which people do not join together to sing or dance we have relegated music to the sidelines of life. We might think of music as an individualistic, even solitary experience, but that is rare in the history of the world. In more traditional societies, performance of music plays both an integral and an integrative role not only in celebration, religious festivals, and other rituals but also in daily work and recreation; and it is above all a shared performance not just something we listen to passively.It has a vital way of binding people together, helping them to be aware of shared humanity, shared feelings and experiences, and actively drawing them together. In our world, competition and specialisation have made music something compartmentalised, somewhere away from life's core: Oliver Sacks writes - The primal role of music is to some extent lost today, when we have a special class of composers and performers, and the rest of us are often reduced to passive listening. One has to go to a concert, or a church, or a music festival, to recapture the collective excitement and bonding of music. In such a situation there seems to be an actual binding of nervous systems."
==============================
References:
1] https://www.goodreads.com/ book/show/6968772-the-master- and-his-emissary
2] https://www.goodreads.com/ book/show/4262706-the- elements-of-music
3] ] https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/ spaceimages/details.php?id= PIA16881#:~:text=Before% 20there%20were%20any%20stars, bang%20that%20created%20our% 20universe.
4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Musica_universalis
5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Pythagoreanism#Music
6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Michael_Maier
7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Hippomenes
8] https://www.alchemywebsite. com/atalanta.html
1] https://www.goodreads.com/
2] https://www.goodreads.com/
3] ] https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/
4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
8] https://www.alchemywebsite.
Sunday, May 31, 2020
Aermacchi, by Wiggia
Aermacchi is not a name that instantly springs to mind in the UK but in the 1920s it was on many people's lips as the great competitor to Supermarine for the Schneider Trophy, that seaplane race with those incredible and beautiful machines that continually set speed records for aircraft of the period.
The Supermarine variant went on to win the Trophy outright and much of that knowledge built into that aircraft and the Rolls Royce engine subsequently found its way with the same designer R J Mitchell into the Supermarine Spitfire which needs to no introduction from me, but this is about the Aermacchi.
I also have a tenuous personal connection to the marque as my oldest friend raced, among other motorcycles in the early sixties, an Aermacchi 250cc racer, a mainstay in the class at that time.
Firstly I would like to lay out how all this came about. The Schneider Trophy was the brainchild of Jacques Schneider who wanted a competition to advance development of commercial seaplanes. He was an enthusiastic power-boater and hydroplane driver and the son of a wealthy industrialist.
He could not envisage that the Trophy would morph into a flag-waving competition between nations, until 1923 the competition remained as the author intended but after the first world war it was not long before the developments of WW1 shone through in the form of the American Curtiss biplane that was in competitions in the US. A separate US Navy team with a float plane version entered and won the 1923 competition and the race was transformed into an international race for racing seaplanes.
They won the ‘24 race uncontested for various reasons on home ground but cancelled, fortuitously for the competition as three wins would have ended the race in ‘25. The US government then withdrew funding for the ‘military’ project and that was that.
This then started the era of Aermacchi and Supermarine, a rivalry that was to end in Supermarine winning the trophy outright after three wins, though the final win was uncontested.
The first win for Macchi was in the US in ‘26. The Curtiss bIplanes were at the end of their design period and without funding had become unreliable. The Macchi had not the time for a fresh design and they brought in heavily on the Curtiss and Supermarine layouts and engines. The first trials did not go well and the single seaplane was not expected to win but it went well in the race and did win: Mario de Bernardi brought the M39 (designed by the brilliant Mario Castoldi) home at 246 mph.
The French government ordered a seaplane to be built in 1928 from the Nieuport – Delage and Bernard companies with new engines from Hispano – Luiz but the work was too late for the ‘29 race and the 31 was a target they failed to make. Slow development and two crashes with one pilot killed saw the plug pulled on the effort and the French withdrew, leaving the final races between Britain with Supermarine and Italy with Macchi.
The ‘27 race in Venice saw a very fast but temperamental Macchi M52. The Italians' hopes were dashed when a crash in testing at Lake Varese killed the pilot. The race was a one-two for Supermarine: the S5 won easily as the Macchi had engine troubles with all three of their planes. The Trophy was now a battle between two countries for supremacy, both teams being backed heavily with government money.
The Italians licked their wounds and went back to the drawing board for the ‘29 race. There was also competition from other Italian manufacturers for this race: Fiat, Piaggio, and the spectacular Savoia- Marchetti; none made the race as all had various serious problems so the field was clear again for Macchi. Macchi were not at all happy with the Fiat engines they had been using and turned to Isotta-Fraschini and their V12 supercharged engine. Still things went badly: exhaust fumes in the cockpit were a major problem and the loss of another pilot at Lake Garda meant they arrived in England for the race rather more than dispirited. The Supermarine had with the S6 turned from Napier to Rolls Royce for the engine; the R was reputed to put out 1900 hp and took only 9 months to develop.
But once again problems for Macchi meant both seaplanes retired from the race and Supermarine won, leaving only one win needed for the outright retention of the Trophy.
Castoldi for Macchi designed what many thought was the ultimate racing seaplane, the MC 72, for which Fiat had produced a monster engine: basically two AS5 engines together creating a V24 in a unit 11 feet long. Both were upgraded versions, supercharged and gave out 3000hp to the RRs 2300 but the RR was reliable.
For Macchi the problems persisted. The engine was magnificent on the ground while testing but in the air backfired violently at speed. Testing was a disaster losing two planes and two pilots so with the Italian government not wanting to continue the project they had to withdraw.
This left Supermarine with a walkover. the two seaplanes without opposition were split into one that would complete the seven laps of the race and one that would go for the speed record over a timed three kilometre run. Both were successful, the speed record of 379 mph was a world record for any aircraft, Rolls went one better with a ‘sprint’ version of the engine and managed to get the Supermarine over four hundred mph two weeks later, the first aircraft to break the 400 barrier at 407.5 mph.
The Italians didn’t give up. With no Trophy to race for they brought over Englishman Rod Banks, a fuel and carburettor expert, who mixed a fuel the engine liked and in 1934 the MC72 broke the world speed record and pushed it to 440.681; it still stands as a world record for float planes.
It must also be remembered these aircraft had the aerodynamic disadvantage of having to carry the floats through the air. What difference that made to outright speed is difficult to analyse, but it would be substantial; it would have been interesting to have seen a ‘clean’ unencumbered version of these seaplanes going for the record.
Much in aviation progression came from these seaplanes. Aerodynamics changed dramatically, engines advanced with the Rolls Royce Merlin owing much to the R, from bi plane to mono plane the achievements were huge and the Spitfire owes much to the S6.
For Macchi, not so much: the Macchi fighters in WW11 were good but Castoldi forsook Fiat and went to Germany for the engines; but the era was over. Macchi supplied more planes to the competition and was considered the most innovative design wise and lost more pilots, seven, during the competition's years.
After the war Macchi turned to making motorcycles as a way of providing cheap transport and then started in aircraft manufacturing again with civil and military training aircraft but in 2003 was integrated into Finmecannica group and Macchi disappeared.
The motorcycle business was a separate arm and continued with Harley Davidson acquiring 50% of the business in the early sixties and 100% in ‘74. It continued until sold off to Cagiva in ‘78.
Their racing successes were to be 250cc World Championship in 1974, '75, and '76, and the 350cc World Championship in 1976. The rider for all was Walter Villa. These were twin cylinder two stroke machines as opposed to the earlier single cylinder horizontal engined four-strokes of the sixties.
The Supermarine variant went on to win the Trophy outright and much of that knowledge built into that aircraft and the Rolls Royce engine subsequently found its way with the same designer R J Mitchell into the Supermarine Spitfire which needs to no introduction from me, but this is about the Aermacchi.
I also have a tenuous personal connection to the marque as my oldest friend raced, among other motorcycles in the early sixties, an Aermacchi 250cc racer, a mainstay in the class at that time.
Firstly I would like to lay out how all this came about. The Schneider Trophy was the brainchild of Jacques Schneider who wanted a competition to advance development of commercial seaplanes. He was an enthusiastic power-boater and hydroplane driver and the son of a wealthy industrialist.
He could not envisage that the Trophy would morph into a flag-waving competition between nations, until 1923 the competition remained as the author intended but after the first world war it was not long before the developments of WW1 shone through in the form of the American Curtiss biplane that was in competitions in the US. A separate US Navy team with a float plane version entered and won the 1923 competition and the race was transformed into an international race for racing seaplanes.
The M7 Bis, winner of the 1921 race. |
They won the ‘24 race uncontested for various reasons on home ground but cancelled, fortuitously for the competition as three wins would have ended the race in ‘25. The US government then withdrew funding for the ‘military’ project and that was that.
This then started the era of Aermacchi and Supermarine, a rivalry that was to end in Supermarine winning the trophy outright after three wins, though the final win was uncontested.
The first win for Macchi was in the US in ‘26. The Curtiss bIplanes were at the end of their design period and without funding had become unreliable. The Macchi had not the time for a fresh design and they brought in heavily on the Curtiss and Supermarine layouts and engines. The first trials did not go well and the single seaplane was not expected to win but it went well in the race and did win: Mario de Bernardi brought the M39 (designed by the brilliant Mario Castoldi) home at 246 mph.
Macchi M39, 1926 |
The French government ordered a seaplane to be built in 1928 from the Nieuport – Delage and Bernard companies with new engines from Hispano – Luiz but the work was too late for the ‘29 race and the 31 was a target they failed to make. Slow development and two crashes with one pilot killed saw the plug pulled on the effort and the French withdrew, leaving the final races between Britain with Supermarine and Italy with Macchi.
The ‘27 race in Venice saw a very fast but temperamental Macchi M52. The Italians' hopes were dashed when a crash in testing at Lake Varese killed the pilot. The race was a one-two for Supermarine: the S5 won easily as the Macchi had engine troubles with all three of their planes. The Trophy was now a battle between two countries for supremacy, both teams being backed heavily with government money.
The Italians licked their wounds and went back to the drawing board for the ‘29 race. There was also competition from other Italian manufacturers for this race: Fiat, Piaggio, and the spectacular Savoia- Marchetti; none made the race as all had various serious problems so the field was clear again for Macchi. Macchi were not at all happy with the Fiat engines they had been using and turned to Isotta-Fraschini and their V12 supercharged engine. Still things went badly: exhaust fumes in the cockpit were a major problem and the loss of another pilot at Lake Garda meant they arrived in England for the race rather more than dispirited. The Supermarine had with the S6 turned from Napier to Rolls Royce for the engine; the R was reputed to put out 1900 hp and took only 9 months to develop.
Macchi M67, 1929 |
But once again problems for Macchi meant both seaplanes retired from the race and Supermarine won, leaving only one win needed for the outright retention of the Trophy.
Castoldi for Macchi designed what many thought was the ultimate racing seaplane, the MC 72, for which Fiat had produced a monster engine: basically two AS5 engines together creating a V24 in a unit 11 feet long. Both were upgraded versions, supercharged and gave out 3000hp to the RRs 2300 but the RR was reliable.
The MC 72 |
For Macchi the problems persisted. The engine was magnificent on the ground while testing but in the air backfired violently at speed. Testing was a disaster losing two planes and two pilots so with the Italian government not wanting to continue the project they had to withdraw.
This left Supermarine with a walkover. the two seaplanes without opposition were split into one that would complete the seven laps of the race and one that would go for the speed record over a timed three kilometre run. Both were successful, the speed record of 379 mph was a world record for any aircraft, Rolls went one better with a ‘sprint’ version of the engine and managed to get the Supermarine over four hundred mph two weeks later, the first aircraft to break the 400 barrier at 407.5 mph.
The Italians didn’t give up. With no Trophy to race for they brought over Englishman Rod Banks, a fuel and carburettor expert, who mixed a fuel the engine liked and in 1934 the MC72 broke the world speed record and pushed it to 440.681; it still stands as a world record for float planes.
It must also be remembered these aircraft had the aerodynamic disadvantage of having to carry the floats through the air. What difference that made to outright speed is difficult to analyse, but it would be substantial; it would have been interesting to have seen a ‘clean’ unencumbered version of these seaplanes going for the record.
Much in aviation progression came from these seaplanes. Aerodynamics changed dramatically, engines advanced with the Rolls Royce Merlin owing much to the R, from bi plane to mono plane the achievements were huge and the Spitfire owes much to the S6.
For Macchi, not so much: the Macchi fighters in WW11 were good but Castoldi forsook Fiat and went to Germany for the engines; but the era was over. Macchi supplied more planes to the competition and was considered the most innovative design wise and lost more pilots, seven, during the competition's years.
After the war Macchi turned to making motorcycles as a way of providing cheap transport and then started in aircraft manufacturing again with civil and military training aircraft but in 2003 was integrated into Finmecannica group and Macchi disappeared.
1961 Aermacchi Ala d'Oro 250cc |
The motorcycle business was a separate arm and continued with Harley Davidson acquiring 50% of the business in the early sixties and 100% in ‘74. It continued until sold off to Cagiva in ‘78.
Their racing successes were to be 250cc World Championship in 1974, '75, and '76, and the 350cc World Championship in 1976. The rider for all was Walter Villa. These were twin cylinder two stroke machines as opposed to the earlier single cylinder horizontal engined four-strokes of the sixties.
Friday, May 29, 2020
FRIDAY MUSIC: The Sparks Brothers, by JD
The Sparks brothers: Ron and Russell Mael.
Probably best remembered as 'one hit wonders' for "This Town Ain't Big Enough For Both Of Us" in 1974. Most others who have one hit song promptly disappear and are rarely heard of again. But Sparks continued, albeit away from the limelight, and over the years have made over 20 albums and fortunately they are as eccentric/weird as ever in their musical exploration even writing an opera about Ingmar Bergman. And a song about lawnmowers.....?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparks_(band)
Probably best remembered as 'one hit wonders' for "This Town Ain't Big Enough For Both Of Us" in 1974. Most others who have one hit song promptly disappear and are rarely heard of again. But Sparks continued, albeit away from the limelight, and over the years have made over 20 albums and fortunately they are as eccentric/weird as ever in their musical exploration even writing an opera about Ingmar Bergman. And a song about lawnmowers.....?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparks_(band)
Monday, May 25, 2020
NHS, heal thyself! by JD
"The NHS has many problems but money is not one of them."
Those were the words of my GP about 15 years ago.
Shortly after that I was looking at the news pages of the GP's practice (there is no longer a news page after an amalgamation of three practices in the area. Bigger is better seems to be the mantra.) On those pages there was an item about their budget coming under strain following an increase in the rent payable for the surgery building. The increase was substantial and surprised me because it was something in the order of 300%.( Unfortunately I did not keep a record of it, I thought I had but if I did I can't find it.)
Surely an increase like that must have been illegal under the terms of the rental agreement? I couldn't understand it and then I found that the owner of the property was NHS Property Services Ltd. https://www.property.nhs.uk/about-us/
So the Government gives money to my local GP with one hand and takes it back with the other. Reading that page of NHS Property Services I recognised all the usual jargon common to Estate Agents everywhere. And then I looked at this page:
https://www.property.nhs.uk/about-us/executive-and-board/
Count them: Ten people who are, and I quote, "... striving to help the NHS transform." Transform into.....what exactly? Nothing specific that I can find on their page so it is just more of the aforementioned jargon. The ten 'leaders' will no doubt have an office full of staff doing administrative things. Is this necessary and how much does it cost? Why does this remind me of Jim Hacker and the empty hospital in the BBC series "Yes Minister" - The Minister (Hacker) is concerned when he learns that a brand new hospital has been open for 15 months and has yet to admit a patient despite having over 500 administrative personnel on staff.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0751815/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl
I can understand the need for a department to deal with such things as the maintenance of the many NHS properties but not to add the unnecessary layer of administration which deals with 'internal' rental charges. I wonder do the NHS trusts pay rent for the hospitals?
And now this story on 2nd April this year has me confused - https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2020/04/02/writing-off-nhs-debt-of-13-4-billion-is-a-charade-what-is-required-instead-is-the-renationalisation-of-the-nhs-nothing-less-will-do/
So the NHS had debts of £13.4 billion but these have now been written off? I do not agree with the conclusions of Tax Research UK who ask for renationalisation of the NHS. It would be far better to go back and start again with Henry Willink's 1944 proposal for the NHS. https://www.conservativehome.com/highlights/2018/01/profile-henry-willink-the-conservative-who-proposed-a-national-health-service-before-bevan-created-one.html
My local GP used to be excellent. When I fell down one morning a couple of years ago I rang the GP and went straight there where she put two stitches in my eyebrow. Since then there has been a change, the senior GP having retired and the new man in charge seems to have turned the whole thing into a ‘production line’ with long waits for appointments etc.
I suspect this is Government inspired; the last time I saw the nurse for a blood pressure check it took about 30 minutes. Filling in forms about life style, diet, exercise etc and weighing me and measuring my height blah blah – preventive medicine blah blah —I am not a machine! There is no such thing as preventive medicine. Any change in any condition can only be predicted in general terms and is useless without treating the patient as a real living breathing organism, a human being in fact!
Super fit sportsmen die from heart attacks. Athletes who are continually monitored for fitness and performance. What happened to their ‘preventive medicine’?
I could fill the space here with the difficulties I have had recently with cancelled appointments (cancelled by the NHS not me) or my differences of opinion with the Practice Manager over my annual 'health check' (the preventive medicine thing) or with the new wonderful electronic precription service which often forgets to send prescriptions to the pharmacy or the speaking clock nature of their telephone 'service' which in my case has messages which are more or less inaudible; no point in listing them because I suspect most people will have similar tales to tell.
And now in our time of 'crisis' with the whole nation cowering under their beds and afraid to leave, in facr forbidden to leave their homes, we find that all GP practices are closed until further notice. If you need to see your GP or the nurse or use any of the other services on offer, you can't. Which raises the question - what are they doing all day in their closed offices? Administrative things perhaps: yes of course, that seems to be one of their most important functions these days. Even the pharmacy now has to do a 'mini' health check on me and during the last one he told me he has other administrators checking his work to ensure he has filled in all the forms correctly!
Conclusion: this is one 'sacred cow' which needs to be sacrificed as soon as possible in order that the country can start again and create something that really is 'the envy of the world' which is what we are told by people who do not rely on it.
Friday, May 22, 2020
FRIDAY MUSIC: Robert Plant, by JD
Robert Plant, singer with Led Zeppelin, heavy metal rock and roll; right?
Well, not quite because they began as a folk/rock group and were originally called The New Yardbirds. "Bron Yr Aur" or "Battle of Evermore" or "Going to California" are a long way from heavyweight rock and roll.
As a solo artist Plant has never lost contact with his folk roots or with other genres of music which he has explored over the years and what follows is a small selection and it is notable that his voice is still as good as it was all those years ago, it might even be better.
For me his best work came from his collaboration with Alison Krauss and the album called "Raising Sand" The last video here is a very tongue in cheek blugrass version of Black Dog. The quality is maybe not so good and why American audiences insist on squealing like stuck pigs is a mystery to me and probably everyone else. But if you can ignore that it really is worth while.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Plant
Well, not quite because they began as a folk/rock group and were originally called The New Yardbirds. "Bron Yr Aur" or "Battle of Evermore" or "Going to California" are a long way from heavyweight rock and roll.
As a solo artist Plant has never lost contact with his folk roots or with other genres of music which he has explored over the years and what follows is a small selection and it is notable that his voice is still as good as it was all those years ago, it might even be better.
For me his best work came from his collaboration with Alison Krauss and the album called "Raising Sand" The last video here is a very tongue in cheek blugrass version of Black Dog. The quality is maybe not so good and why American audiences insist on squealing like stuck pigs is a mystery to me and probably everyone else. But if you can ignore that it really is worth while.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Plant
Tuesday, May 19, 2020
British casualties of WWII vs the coronavirus pandemic
In 1939 the estimated population of the United Kingdom was 47,760,000
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_College
The Second World War killed 384,000 UK military and 70,000 British civilians https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/olympic-britain/crime-and-defence/the-fallen/ - a total of 454,000 deaths
Here is a graph of live births for 1939 - 1948
(from https://www.statista.com/statistics/281965/live-births-in-the-united-kingdom-uk-1931-1960/)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_College
The Second World War killed 384,000 UK military and 70,000 British civilians https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/olympic-britain/crime-and-defence/the-fallen/ - a total of 454,000 deaths
Here is a graph of live births for 1939 - 1948
(from https://www.statista.com/statistics/281965/live-births-in-the-united-kingdom-uk-1931-1960/)
From 1939 to 1944, a total of 3,813,055 children were born - that is, for every 10 people that were killed by enemy action, 84 new ones came into the world.
In every single year of the war, far more Britons were born than were killed in the entire six years of the conflict.
So as with the coronavirus pandemic, the death toll by itself does not explain what the fuss is about.
Sunday, May 17, 2020
Climate Change - or is it? by Wiggia
There is no doubt that the weather in the UK has warmed up,
not always when we want it to but it has. Tthis is not about the long running
and flawed argument that we as humans have created a failing natural world,
this is just an observation on matters gardening, those observations that you
see when you step outside.
This winter has been a classic British mish-mash of , well, weather. From September on it did not stop raining until the lock down started,
you know, just when people wantED to go outside after after a long wet and very
drab winter - Sod’s Law.
But what wasn’t in doubt was the fact it had been a warmer winter despite some snow and with all that moisture in the soil when the sun came
out everything sprang into life, many weeks early in some cases. Tulips were
finished long before the end of May, as were Crown Imperials that started
showing bud colour at the end of February, and my Delphiniums showing bud colour
at the end of April - the first are out fully now.
This is not the first time this has happened of course but it is by
degrees more frequent. The weather is changing as it has over millennia,
hotter, colder that is the way it works and man has to adapt.
What has also happened - and I did write something on these
lines awhile back - is that disease in the plant world is also on the move, both
plant derived disease and animal/insect driven. Much has to do with world trade: however stringent measures are to protect a country's biodiversity, something
somehow will always get through. The real worries are those diseases that
affect agriculture and our natural landscape, but our gardens give a mini
replica of what is going on.
The last few years have seen an unprecedented assault on many
native species, in modern times Dutch Elm disease could be seen as the
forerunner for many more and it has been non stop since, many have not reached
their full doom laden predictions, fortunately, many have become isolated to
areas rather than go national and some have petered out, not unlike viruses
that effect man, no one has been able to predict final outcomes in the plant
world any more than the human world with any accuracy, in fact Dutch Elm is one
of the few to fulfil prediction as it did indeed wipe out the species, or
almost.
This list of tree pests and diseases gives an idea of the
attack on our woodlands; not all are as fatal as is spelt out…..
Ash die-back has so far failed to have the effect that was
prophesied; doesn’t mean it wont, but it hasn't so far. The Oak die-back is a slower
one so again it's difficult to say how far it will spread. Horse Chestnut was
an early disaster, killing trees in a couple of years, but it was selective: stands of Chestnut almost within touching distance of diseased and dying ones
are still healthy and many areas have no visible signs. A similar threat to
London's plane trees came some years back when premature leaf drop looked as though
it would finish the capital's avenues, but the sickness mysteriously died away over a few years,
so we can never be sure as to the final outcome.
The pests are in some ways a bigger problem. Warmer weather has enabled some species to spread at an alarming rate,
establishing themselves in short order and the natural predators that exist in
their ‘native’ homelands do not spread with them. A good example and one that I
have had dealings with (and they are winning) is the box tree moth/caterpillar: now
spreading up from the south of the country it reduces box plants to nothing in
short order; for topiary, where box is the favoured tree, it is the end as the
affected areas never recover and the topiary is to all intents finished. Hedges are the same, I lost all my topiary last year to the moth almost overnight; you can
spray but it has to be repeated many times and if you misjudge that is it - the
natural predator in Japan, a hornet, is sadly still in Japan.
Box tree, and Very Hungry Caterpillars |
I could do a list of pests and diseases that have hit on my
garden in the last few years that would eclipse all that came before in my
lifetime, such has been the increase; undoubtedly the warmer weather has been
one of the factors in this.
Even ants are on the increase. The size of their colonies is very much influenced by the warmer weather and their activity is dictated by the same, so we have more ants and more activity, but we should be grateful that we do not yet get
Argentine ants that have infested the USA; and Asian super ants, 'super' because
they create super-sized colonies not because they are huge, have so far only been located
in a few sites in the UK - but they will prevail as they always do. We live on
sandy soil and the ant activity already this year is way ahead of any previous
and again little seems to have any lasting effect on them, they simply pop up
elsewhere.
Pests are also getting an easy ride. The harsh winters that
helped to kill off many pests and many diseases are fast disappearing and the
resultant early swarms of pests can be seen everywhere; diseases that lie
dormant underground and await warm weather to spring into action are not having
to wait so long, many appear each year now rather than one in ten.
Many reading this will remember the Leylandii hedging dying
all over the country, brown patches appearing and dying back. It killed
thousands of plants. In some ways this was a good thing as the Leylandii
Cypress is in most domestic situations an unsuitable hedge for a normal garden: fast growth yes, out of control also yes. It should never have been sold for
domestic hedging. The disease is caused by an aphid; there are various aphids
that attack conifers and although spray can be effective, it has to be at first
sign of the aphids, not always obvious, and spraying lengths of hedges properly
is expensive and difficult. To achieve trees is nearly impossible as when I lost a
row of Italian Cypress some years ago, there were enormous masses of grey/black sooty mould that
lives off the sugary residue left behind by the aphids.
One of the problems when dealing with these pests and diseases
is the lack of chemicals that can prevent the infestation or stop the spread of
disease. The EU for reasons only they know, removed many items that worked in
protecting plant life and nothing has taken their place; to be fair, some were toxic after many
years of use and some had questionable long term effects on humans but many did
not, so cheap generic chemicals are removed and in many cases very expensive
replacements appear.
Yes there are some natural remedies that have worked for
years, but many of those are contact only, require frequent application and
still don’t do the job or only partly.
Nature has its own way of correcting things, but globalisation
has made things much shorter term; nature can’t respond at that rate of change
and nor can we. We only look at things from a short term perspective; huge
changes have occurred to our landscape world wide over the earth's life - findings locally of fossilised tropical plants show how we in a temperate zone
have gone from glacial freezing to tropical humidity; all has been accommodated
over time.
Even the evil toxic stuff that man pumped into the atmosphere
during the industrial revolution has had the odd plus side: roses, so popular in
British gardens in those pre and post war years were suddenly changed into disease carriers as black spot took hold of
many of the popular varieties. Why? The Clean Air Act of ‘56, passed after the great smog of 1952, cleansed the air of sulphur, sulphur being the best
chemical for the treatment of black spot and some other leaf diseases: by burning coal we
had unknowingly been spraying our roses
with a fungicide for decades.
Arr, the black spot, Jim! |
There will have to be a change in many varieties of plant life
in any case if temperatures go up. Many standard species and hybrids are
naturalised to the current climate, many will adapt, many will not. We will
have to find and breed versions of popular plants and trees that will stand the
new climate, they do this all the time anyway; it will now become a more intense
program or we can simply swap what we grow now for more tropical varieties, that is
already happening and has been going on for many years, in agriculture it is standard
practice and new varieties of staples like wheat that grow in adverse
conditions are being trialled and used on a non-stop program of roll-out.
Climate will always create challenges, it always has. The Earth itself has constantly overcome climate change and so will we. The view of
the English countryside as immortalised in paintings by the likes of Constable
are but a snapshot of a very short period of time, it was very different before
and will be different again; it’s what climate creates.
John Constable's 'Wivenhoe Park, Essex' (1816) - held at National Gallery of Art, Washington, USA |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)