A Walk Around Britain

I actually stumbled across these guys a while ago, and have been meaning to write some incomprehensible mumblings about them for ages. However, what with the thesis reaching its inevitable conclusion I haven't been doing a great deal of anything except typing furiously into a LaTeX document! Now that the beast is finally finished I have time to waste, so there should be many more comments appearing on this wee collection of random drivel in the near future.


Walk Around Britain is a little jaunt being undertaken by three brave souls: Ed; Will; and Ginger. These three minstral are spending their time hiking around Britain, literarly singing for their supper. The idea, as I understand it, is very simple: to travel the length and breadth of the land with nothing but the clothes in their packs, a good solid walking stick, and an ability to turn a tune.

To quote the men themselves:

'A Walk Around Britain' is not a project, nor a grand plan, or any kind of national event. It is some people who are walking around, and learning in the oldest and most intensive way known, on a simple footbound journey.

The journey started back in 2004 when they followed the Pilgrim's Way from Winchester to Canterbury. Out of this simple exploration of an age-old path that has been trodden by hundreds of thousands of feet, the grander undertaking occupying them today has grown. Starting in February of this year near Canterbury, they have presently covered much of southern England, learning all manner of songs and stories along the way. At present, according to the website, they are in Wales, aiming to spend the summer slowing making their way northwards through the Lake District and Yorkshire, until they finally finish up in Scotland, just in time for winter. The last bit may sound like madness (it certainly doesn't sound like my kind of fun), but they are planning on constructing their very own roundhouse within which they will spend the winter. Then, with the bluebells of springtime, they plan to be up and off again for another year of walking and singing.

I love the idea of this. Particularly from the point of view of the simplicity and freedom of simply wandering wherever your feet take you. So much of our lives today are driven by the tightly controlled schedules imposed upon us, either by ourselves or others, that this freedom to wander is a welcome breath of fresh air, and might serve as a reminder of just how irrelevant the lack of shredded marmalade in the supermarket (or whatever) really is.

I also think there is another, more culturally important part of what Ed, Will, and Ginger are doing. Britain undoubtedly represents a treasure trove of information on the history of the human race. Archaeologists and historians have been able to reconstruct the settlements, industry, and battles from remnants left behind by the people of these islands over more than 3000 years. However, the culture of these people is very poorly understood. With the rapid advance of modern technology (such as this very blog), however, the traditional ways of recording the culture have equally rapidly dwindled away. Hopefully, through the book(s), cd(s), and other chronicles of their adventures, at least a part of this cultural record might survive a little bit longer.

Geoengineering

Today a very good article was published in the Guardian newspaper on this most emotive of subjects.

The Climate Engineers - John Shepherd

Personally I'm not a big fan of the idea of geoengineering. A lot of the ideas being bounced around (such as carbon sequestration) are short term fixes to what is clearly a long term problem. Equally, a lot of these methods are likely to have side effects that we don't fully understand, since the vast majority of them involve manipulating extremely complex ecosystems (e.g., ocean fertilization). If there is one thing we really have to learn is that we cannot mess with existing ecologies and expect to get away with it scot free. For example, look at the way Austalia and New Zealand have been forever changed by the introduction of European species by western settlers.

Although John's article does not go into the particulars of the subject, it is encouraging to know that the Royal Society has decided to do something about this. It is also encouraging to hear that John will be chairing the committee. Although I cannot claim to know him well, our paths have crossed several times and he has always come across as an extremely clever and very level headed. Just what the doctor ordered!

The End of Mr Y

In this superb book, Scarlett Thomas throws together the concepts of modern scientific thinking and physiological reasoning regarding consciousness into a thoroughly gripping yarn. To describe it simply as a novel is doing Thomas a great disservice. In truth it is really a very clever thought experiment in the classical sense of Schrodinger or Maxwell, all nicely encased in a fast-paced, entertaining adventure story. Although there are a number of reviews out there(e.g., bookslut or Katrina), here's my two penneth.

The story follows disillusioned Ph.D student Ariel Manto. Her supervisor vanished some 12 months prior to the begging of the tale, and as we begin her University is falling down. Through a series of strange events she ends up finding a very rare copy of the book 'The End of Mr Y' by Thomas Lumas, a supposedly cursed text of which there are only a couple of copies known to exist. Contained within this valuable work is the recipe to make a drug which allows one to access the Troposphere, a extra set of dimensions where all consciousnesses interact. Obviously, being the plucky young heroine in a modern adventure novel, she goes straight out to get the necessary ingredients and have a go herself. Needless to say, all hell breaks loose and and we're led on a merry old romp.

Although the basic skeleton of the story isn't something insanely creative and new, the concepts Thomas discusses along the way are what make it. Some pretty complex and very thought provoking issues are introduced, all in a manner that leaves the reader interested and wanting to know more. Somehow, Thomas manages to strike the perfect balance between being complex and engaging, without also being confusing.

The basic idea revolves around the principle that thought (i.e., consciousness) is matter, thereby enabling consciousness to take the form of a higher dimensional space. This Troposphere therefore allows you to gain access to other peoples mind and their memories. In principle, the statement that thought =  matter is true, thoughts can be observed as increased electrical activity within the brain. For me, how this ties with an extra 'consciousness' dimension is probably a step too far. But, one idea Thomas discusses along the way, is the belief that consciousness evolves in a similar way to physical traits.

This I find immensely emotive. As is pointed out, under this principle there is nothing to stop machines developing consciousness, indeed it could be thought of as being unavoidable. So, HAL or Skynet mightn't be that far off!

In conclusion, The End of Mr Y is a great book, and doesn't feel anywhere near the 506 pages in length it is. If you have an interest in the philosophical sciences then you'll find it extremely engaging, and well worth curling up with one sunny spring afternoon.

Hunter S Thompson

'Too weird to live, too rare to die,'

Hunter Stockton Thompson (1937-2005)

On Saturday I welcomed in the New Year by going to watch the film 'Gonzo: The life and works of Dr Hunter S. Thompson'. This new documentary by Academy Award and Emmy winning filmmaker Alex Gibney, is a humorous and thought-provoking ride into the mind of one the most iconic journalists and writers of the 20th century.

Concentrating mainly on his most productive and, arguably, most influencial early career throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, it follows his development from a bit-part, freelance writer riding round California with Outlaw motorcycle gangs, through into becoming the most notorious journalist of his era (probably any era), punching, tearing, and slicing chunks off any authoritarian figure who dared stand in his way. One of my favorite parts of the documentary was Thompson's reply to a TV interviewer asking about the comments made in his 1972 Rolling Stone article that Senator Edmund Muskie was hooked on the obscure drug Ibogaine:

'I said there was a rumour going round Milwaukee, and I should know. I started it!'

Given my most recent post (Social detritus) on journalists stretching the truth, it may appear somewhat contradictory to now be applauding Thompson for driving a wrecking ball through someone's campaign just because he didn't like him. However, this is where I think there is a big distinction between Social Journalism and Science Journalism.

In the former, facts and figure are considerably hazier, being largely governed by one's own social and economic view point. So, when covering events such as political campaigns and policies, it is important for all the different view points to get aired because what is good for one social group will invariably be bad for another. In this manner, having journalists who are willing to take a stand against things they don't believe in (such as Thompson did against the Vietnam War) are an important way of balancing the status quo, otherwise the politicians (who represent a very small portion of the overall social demographic) would have far too an easy time of it, and we would likely see policies favorably cantered toward their peers.

With the latter, facts and figures are considerably less hazy. Indeed, one could quite easily argue the opposite, that, in fact, there is too much information out there at the moment as the number of peer reviewed journal swell in ranks, each demanding larger wads of money from increasingly cash-strapped academic libraries. The main problem with this area of journalism is that the increasing trend towards sensationalism has lead to several radical theories that do not represent the consensus of scientific opinion (e.g., The Day After Tomorrow) getting blown completely out of proportion, and/or articles completely misunderstanding the fundamental science (e.g., LHC).

However, I think that, given the times in which we live, it is unfair to point the finger solely at journalists saying that they should use one approach for one type of article, and a completely different approach for another. That bold articles standing proudly in the face of authority should be confined to only certain subjects. A good proportion of the blame for the public misunderstanding of science is the poor communication skills of most scientists. Lets face it, we are terrible at explaining what the hell we do all day - even to each other!

Social detritus

'The daily press is the evil principle of the modern world, and time will only serve to disclose this fact with greater and greater clearness. The capacity of the newspaper for degeneration is sophistically without limit, since it can always sink lower and lower in its choice of readers. At last it will stir up all those dregs of humanity which no state of government can control.'

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher and theologian, expressed this opinion in The Last Years, a collection of his journal entries between 1853 and 1855. How apt they were in the middle of the 19th Century, I do not know, but now, over 150 years later, they can have rarely resonated with such truth.

During the course of the last year we have, as always, seen a number of examples of journalists taking their journalistic license just a little bit too far. But, what we all witnessed thoughout the summer regarding the end of the world as soon as the LHC was switched on at CERN, made feeding time in the lion enclosure look like the height of hout-couture!

This problem of media attention for all the wrong reasons was similarly faced by astronomers 5 to 10 years ago. Pioneering work on the Cretaceous-Teriary impact by Walter Alvarez and others cemented the idea of cataclysmic asteroid impacts causing mass extinction events, in turn paving the way for enormous summer blockbusters such as Armageddon and Deep Impact. In the wake of these attention grabbers, every discovery of an asteroid with an Earth crossing obit (known as an NEOs - Near Earth Object) gained pages of dedicated coverage in the world's media. The end of the world was, seemingly, at hand.

In the short-term such publicity can be good for the scientists involved, but in the long-term its effect on the science can be disastrous. The general public have a relatively short attention span when compared to your average scientific experiment. Don't get me wrong, this isn't the scientist inside me coming over all pompous and considerably better than thou, rather simply stating the fact that the public struggle to grasp the immense timescales involved in most scientific project, nor the general scientific adage of 'so-and-so being correct within errors'.

With the NEOs this is particularly apparent; when was the last time you saw a newspaper report of an asteroid getting all snugly with the Earth in a couple of hundred years time? Just because the press coverage has died down doesn't mean the chance of us being wiped out by a lump of rock and metal hurtling towards us from the icy depths of the solar system have diminished, quite the contrary. One will hit us sooner or later, and chances are we might not even see it coming as it approaches us from perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) and is therefore lost in the blinding glare of our dear, little star. The lack of news is simply a reflection of the rapidly waning interest.

I, for one, hope that CERN and the LHC does not suffer a similar fate. Although it will, in all likelihood, take some 5+ years to get meaningful results the team are confident enough to publish, the questions it could answer are enormous. However, somehow, sadly, I think it has already begun. Indeed, one could say it had already begun the moment the world didn't end...even if that was just a rediculous piece of journalistic fiction.

Alternative famine remedy...

Recently I came across a paper published in the September 1920 issue of the journal Nature under the rather presumptuous title; 'The Drying up of South Africa - and the Remedy'. This interesting paper (more of a comment, really) talks about the eternal struggle between Mankind and Nature (as in the hippy-ish force, not the journal!), opening with the paragraph:

'Whilst Man of all races and skin-colours is once more involved in fractricidal quarrels - how Superior Intellegences in more advanced spheres must grin as they watch our wars against one another through super-telescopes or by aethereal telegraphy! - Nature is making one more effort to get rid of man. This time through Drought. She has seemingly hated everything that rose above the mediocre on this planet, whether it was in fish shape, or the fish-saurian, the dinosaur, the struthious bird, the ungulate mammal, or the brain-worker, Man. She tried to nip us in the bud by reviving the Ice ages which she had used for other destructive purposes in the pre-Cambrian, Devonian, Permian, and Jurrasic periods. But this succession of cold spells only braced Northern Man to greater efforts and greater triumphs, and sent Southern Man to grapple with the tropics, and to digest and partly overcome their germ diseases. Now the tropics, and above all the sub-tropical regions are being threatened by drought. The desert is spreading in sub-tropical North America, in tropical South America, in temperate and sub-tropical Asia and eastern Europe, in northern and north-central Africa, and in that prolongation of the African continent which lies beyond the Zambezi and Kunene Rivers.'

Quite a rant, I know! Wait until you see the last paragraph:

'Man must give up internecine warfare and unite all his forces to defeat his arch-enemy, Nature. He must melt the ice at the North and South Poles, and put a stop to the spread of desert conditions in Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Americas.

H.H. Johnston'

'...unite all his forces to defeat his arch-enemy, Nature.' For some reason I now have an image of Nature in my head that's a cross between Brittania and the classical Victorian image of Queen Boudica.

Well, whether by design or not, we seem to be trying to do what he suggests, although somehow I don't think it's working quite how he imagined...

Talking ourselves into a recession

This morning I had an interesting conversation with a work colleague regarding the dubious present state of the financial system over our usual mug of ultra-strong coffee. I have always tried to shy away from writing social criticisms and keep my blog purely science based, but for this I'm going to make an exception. As a vaguely scientific side note, however, our coffee would normally make a good high school science experiment since it behaves more like a glass than a liquid. I'm not sure whether this is purely a factor of the percolation time, or a combined effect with the obscene amounts of sugar vigorously stirred into it, but, either way, this coffee could quite easily go undercover as treacle.

Today's caffeine fueled discussion stemmed from an article published on BBC News yesterday. Entitled 'UK economy already 'in recession'', it is one of the millions of stories being run on news websites and in papers around the world regarding the impact of the present economic crisis on society at large, i.e. levels of unemployment, high-street spending, manufacturing, etc. The point we were talking about was not the comments on rising unemployment, etc (all of which are very valid and supported by statistics from the British Chambers of Commerce), rather that half-way down it proceeded to say 'Technically the UK is not yet in recession...'.

Hang on one cotton-picking minute! First you say we're in a recession, then you say that, according to the guidelines by which economists define recession, we're not - guidelines which have some well founded mathematical basis.

Don't get me wrong, I know full well why headlines such as this are printed. I am all too aware of the way journalists will twist stories to be more dramatic if they think it will result in more sales. The kernel of our discussion this morning revolved around the fact that, normally, the application of such writer's license effects only a limited number of people. Take, football, (soccer to any Americans reading this) for example. The amount of bad press placed on the England football team after a poor performance has many times affected the confidence of the players and therefore their subsequent performances, resulting in the demise of a number of managers in the process. But, this effect is limited to the team and their immediate circle. Although poor performances leading to us not making a major competition has been shown to cause a drop in revenue for sports bars, etc, in general terms this impact is low.

With the economy, the story is a different one. The western economy is closely coupled to the performance of the stock market, when the market is in a period of growth the economy will grow too, and vice versa. The danger of the stock market is that, to a large extent, is is driven by the mood of it's investors. If they get twitchy and start panicking then all hell breaks loose (as was seen with the Northern Rock debacle earlier this year). Unlike football, in this case any fall out from bad press can effect everybody as overly dramatic stories bemoaning the 'almost' recession cause investors to become less pragmatic and the market to plummet and the economy to wobble. As the news article itself pointed out, this then feeds back into the general public with job losses, etc, which then feeds back into the economy with less high-street spending to prop up the markets, i.e. an economic circle of death.

So, in conclusion, I ask the question we talked about over coffee. By printing and talking all this doom and gloom regarding the state of the economy, are we in fact talking ourselves into a recession when otherwise the markets would have dipped but stabilized?