Scargill

The Times and other newspapers, eager to report Vodafone’s current elimination of overseas roaming charges for mobile phone calls and text messages – seems to have missed the plot a little here. Yes, you can now phone for normal UK charges overseas (conditions apply), hurray… though I could not get my head around whether that came in under “inclusive minutes” or not – and IF NOT then that is still REALLY a roaming charge… but what the papers DIDN’T report is that the excessive DATA charges for overseas use are NOT being reduced.

Vodafone along with others have been merrily pushing 3G dongles for data transfer, with “unlimited access” which really means a 3gigabytes or thereabouts monthly limit – which for many uses is adequate – most modern phones will allow data use or at least allow your laptop to use the data.  It has been the case now for some time that overseas use of Vodafone data incurs a £9.99 additional daily charge for a mere 50 Meg of overseas use + £9.99 for each additional 50 Meg thereafter (indeed until recently I was paying this for a daily overseas cap of 3Gig – but that has now disappeared). This is NOT being reduced – indeed in some cases depending on the country such charges can be as high as £4.99 for each megabyte!!! 

Worse, Orange when last asked had NO intention of even matching the ridiculously high Vodafone charges. A single video or fancy Powerpoint transfer could easily eat up more than 50 meg.

A short number of years ago it was a novelty to see a laptop on a train, today they are commonplace and mobile phones with data access are MUCH more common. Millions of us make daily use of Facebook, Twitter, BBC news and a million other data services – BEWARE that these charges are NOT going away and excessive overseas use of data will empty your wallet! Until we get some real competition in this area, they can charge what they like.

Just a quick note for those of you who like me have seen at one time or another most Star Trek movies and TV shows (though I never really got into the soap opera “Deep Space 9”)…. the new Star Trek movie is IMHO the best movie of the year BY FAR.

HEROES fans will of course be aware of the superb actor Zachary Quinto who play Silar (Gabriel Gray) the baddy so well he almost runs the show… well, no exception in Star Trek –his relationship with Uhura (Zoe Saldana who is to say the LEAST, STUNNING in the movie) really does fit in well – and the whole thing is superb.

Kirk (Christ  Pine) was great… Simon Pegg was hilarious as Scotty and Anton Yelchin played a better Chekov than the original by some way.

To single out people is really unfair – ALL of them did really well in the parts and I would not be surprised if we see a TV series of a bunch of extra movies come out of this. Maureen and I smiled and laughed a lot and everyone came out feeling quite refreshed by the look on their faces.

As you might expect, Wikipedia has something to say on the subject for anyone who wants to go more deeply but the best thing you can do is get out there and go see the movie!

10 out of 10 – ABSOLUTELY MARVELOUS.

Peter Scargill.

Maybe I’m just getting old but I wonder if I’m right to have utterly and totally lost any faith in the British government whatsoever. As if it’s not bad enough that one of their “solutions” to the massive dept that they and what used to be called the “respectable” banking establishment have gotten us into (interestingly when renewing your PASSPORT, people in BANKING are still considered “respectable”), is to suggest that we now work until we’re 70… as if it is not bad enough that having collected massive amounts of data they keep losing it through incompetence almost daily… we now have confirmation (not that we needed it) that fiddling expenses is absolutely the done thing – £25k for home security?  Come off it. Having just read the Saturday Telegraph on the subject – I’m beginning to think we should just take all of our politicians, put them all up against a wall and have them SHOT.

The idea of working until you’re 70 is fine from a government perspective, several years LESS pensions to pay, several years more TAXES to pay… but for one thing – despite medical advances (if you call our persistent inability to handle arthritis and the flu etc  “advancement”)  there remain a lot of issues with employing people at that age – not everyone can settle down to a quiet life at the checkouts… there are not that many jobs around –  in technology-related companies  for example does anyone really think that a software company is going to take on someone at 60 or 65 for any meaningful job? People’s attitudes, desires and needs are very very different in that age-group compared  to for example someone in their 20s or 30s. That might work ok if you’re in charge or in a people-handling position – but have you noticed that most of the leading hi-tech companies employ VERY young people?  Today’s young think nothing of living in and divulging their life history into social networks that most 60+ year-olds have never heard of – and conversation is more likely to be about the latest computer game than the latest statins – I’m just not seeing this working AT ALL.

Any hope we had of pretending that this goverment are actually responsible and capable of looking after the best interests of the nation has long-since gone and we’re left with a bunch of incompetents on the take and we appear for now to be able to do very little about it but sit back and watch Britain PLC go down the toilet.  I’m sure the government was hoping that swine flu would keep us so occupied and even that’s not worked for them.

Wouldn’t it be nice to return to youth when everything seemed much more organised and simple…. it probably wasn’t – it just seemed that way – and bankers really WERE called “merchant bankers”.

Here’s a thing. I read somewhere that when asked the question “While standing on the moon and you were holding a pen – if you let go of the pen – what would happen to it?”

Apparently 50% of people tested got it wrong!

Were you thinking it would float? Did you then think to yourself that there is no gravity on the moon? That’s what the ones that got it wrong said! When it was pointed out that men jumping on the moon don’t float, the response was generally “they’re wearing heavy boots”.

Someone close to me said EXACTLY the same thing – now, in the scheme of things this isn’t earth-shattering but it demonstrates how BADLY western science schooling has failed us.

If you’re wondering what I’m on about… the moon’s gravity is simply less than ours – so everything is much lighter. It is lower because the moon as less mass than the Earth. The pen would drop to the ground. If it didn’t… the dust wouldn’t stay down either!!

On the one hand we’re building the James Webb telescope (see this stunning video) and on the other…

Solar power in Lorca
When last heading back to the airport after a trip to Spain in April 2009, I took the opportunity to visit LORCA  – a rather large city part way between Galera and Murcia airport. One of the benefits of carrying a sat-nav is that you don’t have to worry about getting lost – so I took a diversion off the motorway and found myself in an industrial estate behind which appeared to be a rather large solar farm…. just how large wasn’t apparent until I found myself wandering along a dirt road that would be well placed in a desert somewhere.

The “farm” turned out to be the largest collection of solar arrays I’ve ever see and after ditching the car in favour of an on-foot reconnoitre I have to say…. MOST impressed – the Spanish really DO take solar power seriously – this is a VAST collection of massive photovoltiac solar panels though no-where near as impressive as this 20MW solar collector in Sevilla, however – if you look in the photo, the panels go almost as far as you can see. According to the blurb it chucks out 2,000,000 KWH annually or put another way about enough to run maybe 100 homes as long as they don’t all run the kettle at once. I’m sure anyone sufficiently interested can Google Lorca and get some more information – suffice it to say it’s well worth 5 minutes out of your journey to take a look. 

Apologies for the obvious photo glitch on the large panel – my camera could not cope with this scene so I had to panorama it from 4 photos.

I’m in the process of applying for a new passport, having put mine in the wash (don’t laugh, it’s easy to do).

In the process of filling out the two forms to get a replacement I noticed that you have to get the form countersigned by “a professional person or a person of standing in the community (for example bank or building society officials, police officers, civil servants…etc)”

Bankers… they’re kidding, right?

For believers it’s probably easy… God created the lot – end of story. For the rest of us, the choices are simple – either don’t think about the origins of the universe and “get on with  life” – or occasionally come back to thinking about the absolute absurdity a big bang, with all the matter in the universe popping out of no-where – “just like that” . How can something “pop out of no-where” – you may as well just say “God created it”.

There IS a better way to at least start thinking about all of this but it does take a little effort. You and I live in a 3-dimensional world – and most of us can’t think outside of that – except perhaps to grudgingly admit that time is the 4th dimension of a sort. So how is it that current theories demand 10 dimensions and how can we possibly imagine that?

“With difficulty” – just as imagining “infinity” can only be done with difficulty – because we are simply not biologically wired to handle such things – what would be the point… Thankfully there are some tools out there to help you get a glimpse of what this might all be about even if they are not perfect. One such example which really has proven an eye-opener for me is “Imagining the 10th dimension”.  Here is a 2-part video I recommend watching twice, or more.. it really does answer some questions.

Pay particular attention to the 2-dimensional flat-lander.

Interesting… the government cut VAT from 17.5% to 15% to help boost the economy. No-one thought it would make any difference. The FSB (Federation of Small Businesses) did a survey in which 97% of firms questioned said the cut had made “no impact at all” (I happen to know that stat was accurate as I sent the survey out and saw the incoming results), meanwhile the Centre for Economics and Business Research insisted it led to 2 billion in additional sales.

So it the sales didn’t go to the small businesses… where did they go?

Eh… what? Has Peter lost the plot? Biology lessons?

No actually. As someone who long ago gave up hoping I’d ever learn anything sensible on TV, it’s become a bit of a hobby scouring the web for stuff that makes me think, that gives a new perspective – on the other hand I’m lazy – it has to do this without too much effort.

As someone who took biology for, erm a year I think, I’ve never really thought too much about bacteria – phrases like “single-cell gloop” come to mind generally – responsible for diseases – and also keeping our guts in good order… but that’s about it.  But some time ago when sitting in a hotel, bored, I started to wonder how something as simple as a bacteria actually managed to do such orchestrated damage… and so out came GOOGLE and I ended up as I so often do, looking to see what’s on offer at TED… and hit pay dirt.

Bonnie Bassler has managed to explain in a short talk how bacteria communicate. It’s not technical, not gobbledegook and if you take the time to listen to her short talk, it is INCREDIBLY enlightening and offers hope for the most amazing developments in the future.

REALLY worth watching…

When I started watching this (and having just learned all about Obama’s lack-lustre plan for so-called “high speed” trains) I must admit I did so expecting it to be another loser – we’ve no intrastructure for electric cars, range is limited etc… but really – this fellow is worth listening to – and it would seem he has the ear of politicians…