Winding Down
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology, science and other news
by Alan Lenton
23 October 2022
I’m back! (Again). Sorry about the absence last week – various programs that I normally use stopped working together following a Microsoft and an Alienware update.
I’m still playing catch up, but I have a number of things for you to read and (hopefully) enjoy this week. In the essays section we look at how we mentally process numbers, and the so-called ‘Review Bombing’. In energy a geology professor pours cold methane over Liz Truss’s fracking ideas. Health has a piece on face blindness.
There are no less that four very classy pictures to look at covering hot metal, a sequence of photos taken from space, The Pillars of Creation’, and an amazing view of the Niagara Falls. In the quotes section we have a quote from a Brit general whose breakfast was interrupted by Boer shelling, an analogy for the Musk/Twitter saga, and a suggestion for how to rotate your password!
Finally, Scanner offers up some URLs to a few other topics you might find interesting: virus killing plastic film, an unusual auction house, solar farms help wildlife, the youngest antibiotic, judges and Wikipedia, math models and policy makers, and finally a round-up of Europe’s shortest serving prime minister, of which Liz Truss is by no means the shortest. That ‘honour’ belongs to Sweden’s Magdalena Andersson who was in office for just seven and a half hours!
Enjoy!
Alan Lenton
Publishing schedule: Next issue 30 October
Credits: Thanks to Fi for editing, correcting errors, etc.s
Essays:
There is an interesting piece in Science Alert about how we process numbers. If you think about it, we normally process, and write, numbers in a row ascending from left to right. but why left to right? Research indicates that we are faster and more accurate at processing numbers if they are in ascending order.
That was already known. But recently a group of scientist wondered if writing the numbers vertically would make a difference. (Wondering what would happen if you did something differently is one of the key distinguishing marks of a true scientist!) They tried it and lo and behold it turns out that humans process vertical groupings of number faster in vertical groups – with the smallest number at the top.
The essay also looked at birds, and it includes an explanation of how they tested the theory. A nice piece of work!
https://www.sciencealert.com/researchers-say-theyve-found-a-new-better-way-for-humans-to-use-numbers
Well, I guess it was going to happen sooner or later! ‘Review bombing’. A number of restaurants in New York, Chicago and San Francisco have reported demands for money or gift certificates unless they want to suffer an outbreak of one star reviews.
The Conversation has an interesting essay taking a look at the problems with online reviews and some suggestions for fixing them. I’m not sure that the suggestions will work, if only because they need a lot of coordination between the different players with an interest in the issue, and probably money up front.
See what you think
https://theconversation.com/online-reviews-are-broken-heres-how-to-fix-them-188386
Energy:
The Conversation has an interesting little piece on fracking, authored by a professor of geology. Our late prime minister might have done better if she had checked out with an expert before promising bonanzas based on fracking. The article has the intriguing title of ‘Fracking: if Liz Truss wants a major shale gas industry, she is 280 million years late.’ It’s an interesting read in its own right.
https://theconversation.com/fracking-if-liz-truss-wants-a-major-shale-gas-industry-she-is-280-million-years-late-190421
Health:
I think I’ve mentioned before in this newsletter that I am partially face blind. It took me a long time to discover why I had difficulty identifying people I had met before. I just thought I had a bad memory. People ask what face blindness is like. It is almost impossible to explain. However, the New York Times has made a video to help people understand.
Try it, you might then understand how I once managed to walk past my mother in the street without recognizing her!
https://boingboing.net/2022/08/30/man-describes-what-life-is-like-being-face-blind.html
Pictures:
Playing catchup, we have four pictures for you this week.
The first is a hot chunk of metal – hot in more than one sense – it is part of the remains of the Chernobyl reactor meltdown. It’s made of a substance known as corium. When it was first created by the meltdown, the radiation it produced would have killed you in a mere two minutes if you had been in the same room. The article is worth reading too.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/elephants-foot-chernobyl
Next we have a sequence of images of the northern Tigray, a part Ethiopia where there is a war going on. The photos are taken at night from orbit and start in November 2020, and show the human habitation in the area. By the time they end in August 2022...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-63315388
On a far less depressing note the astronomic objects is the one known as the Pillars of Creation. I used to have an A2 sized version of it, taken, I think by Hubble. The new version has been imaged by the new Webb telescope and is even better – it’s superb. Be sure to scroll down to see the bigger/fuller version of it and also the comparison of the Hubble and Webb versions. Of course, it probably doesn’t look anything like that any more, since this is a picture of what it was like 6,500 years ago!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-63319814
Astronomy pictures of objects like the Pillars are nice, but we have some pretty amazing natural features here on Planet Earth, just as magnificent, but somewhat smaller. One such thing is the Niagara Falls, and the Smithsonian Magazine has a stunning panorama photo of the falls, featuring both the Horseshoe Falls and the American Falls. A clever picture.
https://photocontest.smithsonianmag.com/photocontest/detail/niagara-falls-panorama-1/
Quotes:
The first quote this week is from the British Lieutenant-General Sir William Penn Symons at the Battle of Talana in 1899. The battle of Talana was the first battle fought in the Boer War.
‘How impudent of the Boers to start shelling before breakfast!’
As History commented: Take a pompous general who objects to fighting before breakfast, 200 cavalrymen who disappear into thick mist, Irishmen shooting at one another on opposite sides, and British infantrymen shelled by their own artillery – and you have the tragicomic ingredients for the Battle of Talana.
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Battle-of-Talana-1899/
“[It’s] like you bought a new car, you decided you didn’t want it, and then you crash it,” the person said. “And then you’re like ‘I’ll keep it.’”
Anonymous quote from a potential investor on Musk’s on/off bid for Twitter. Reported in the Washington Post.
Seen on Twitter: ‘Regularly rotate your password by using the name of the current UK Prime Minister.’
Scanner:
A plastic film that can kill viruses using room lights
https://phys.org/news/2022-09-plastic-viruses-room.html
Greasby’s: The South London Auction House Selling Lost Property And Police Evidence (not an advert, it’s fascinating!)
https://londonist.com/london/features/greasbys-auctioneers-tooting-visit
Solar farms a ‘blight on the landscape’? Research shows they can benefit wildlife
https://theconversation.com/solar-farms-a-blight-on-the-landscape-research-shows-they-can-benefit-wildlife-191222
‘Youngest’ antibiotic kills bacteria via a new two-step mechanism
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-youngest-antibiotic-bacteria-two-step-mechanism.html
Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior
https://news.mit.edu/2022/study-finds-wikipedia-influences-judicial-behavior-0727
Number-crunching math models may give policy makers major headache
https://phys.org/news/2022-10-number-crunching-math-policy-makers-major.html
Liz Truss lasted just 44 days — who are Europe’s other shortest-serving prime ministers?
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/10/20/liz-truss-lasted-just-45-days-who-are-europes-other-short-term-leaders
Footnote:
Please send suggestions for stories to alan@ibgames.com and include the words Winding Down in the subject line, unless you want your deathless prose gobbled up by my voracious Thunderbird spam filter...
Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
23 October 2022
Alan Lenton is a retired on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist (among other things), the order of which depends on what he is currently working on! His web site is at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/index.html.
Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.
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