Mr Bloggs Writes

CERN's LHC: STARING GOD IN THE FACE?

Two eminent scientists have expressed the opinion that the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, in Switzerland, may be sabotaging itself from the future and apparently they have the mathematics if not to prove, then substantiate their claim.

Back in the early '70s, science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke wrote a short story called 'The Nine Billion Names of God'. Set in a Nepalese monastery, high in the Himalayas, it described how the monks had been toiling for centuries to list all nine billion possible nine-letter names for their god. They believed that when the list was complete, the world would come to an end as its purpose would be over. Frustrated that the job was taking so long, the monks bought a computer to speed things up.

The two techies who installed and looked after the computer decided that, as it neared the end of its run, they would slip away from the monastery, reckoning that the monks, disappointed that the world had not come an end after all, would take out their rage on the computer and its servants.

Descending from the monastery on horseback, one of the techies glances at the clear sky at the appointed hour and observes that "one by one, and without any fuss, the stars were going out" or words to that effect - my copy of the book was lost years ago.

Although the story is a bit daft, there is a parallel between its message and what is going on at CERN today with the LHC: there may be some things either we're not meant to know, or it would be better not to know.

When the hydrogen bomb was invented, more than one nuclear physicist expressed the concern that detonating such a weapon could possibly set off a chain reaction that would ignite the entire atmosphere, bringing life on Earth to an abrupt end. Despite this possibility, the scientists went ahead with testing their new toy and now we live with a weapon that can truly bring the Sun to Earth.

Given the, to-all-intents-and-purposes, infinite size of the universe, it is reasonable to assume that there are or have been many planets capable of supporting life that evolved into technologically advanced species. How many of the black holes observed in space are actually the sites of former planets where similar experiments took place? Perhaps black holes exist as a warning to the rest of creation not to mess with things that are best left alone?

Not all bold decisions are taken wisely in the name of progress.

Is anyone listening?

Labels: arthur c clarke, big bang, CERN, large hadron collider, LHC, nine billion names of god

THE HELICOPTERS OF DAWN

I love that title - I wish it could be the title of a book I have written, but I fear it would sound too like a sci-fi, spy or Vietnam war tale. Having been a sci-fi nut as a boy, youth and young man, I amassed quite a collection and my favourite author was the master himself, Isaac Asimov. That brilliant man wrote sweepingly epic stories of the future, including one called 'The Robots of Dawn' so perhaps he is the inspiration for this entry.

With mixed feelings about air bases being closed down (you just can't help feeling they will be needed again one day, especially in what looks like being a very troubled century), we were relieved that RAF Coltishall no longer operates when we came across and moved into our present home in a most tranquil location in north Norfolk. Since we arrived, we're heard hair-raising tales from people in the area of being able virtually to 'count the flies on the pilots' teeth' as their Jaguar fighters took off and banked at low altitude overhead before screaming off on some exercise or other.

Having lived in the countryside for many years we were used to tractors and other agricultural machinery chuntering about - although here in Norfolk there are an awful lot more of them and they are bigger and noisier than anything we ever witnessed elsewhere. That's life in a deeply rural and agricultural area and you accept it philosophically or move back to town.

What we hadn't bargained for are the helicopters that service the North Sea gas platforms and which buzz to and fro on a line from Norwich airport to Bacton and beyond, pretty well all day long and often starting at first light, hence the title of this entry. And our village is right under their flightpath. One summer's morning, when I had got up especially early to try and catch the odd rabbit off-guard, I counted six helicopters (and these are big machines) between 06:30 and 07:10.

Helicopters are relatively slow, fly quite low and the biggies have very large rotor blades that literally beat the air, creating sound and shock waves that signal their approach some time before they arrive and leaving behind echoes of their passing for some time after they've gone. Thank goodness they're not the truly awesome Bell 'Hueys' of Apocalypse Now fame - their mighty two-bladed rotors create shockwaves that hit your diaphragm like a bass drum, long before you can see them. A Bundeswehr (German army) Huey came in to land maybe 50 metres away from me at Rheindahlen (HQ BAOR) once and I was practically bludgeoned into unconsciousness by the vibrations.

Anyway, what I want to know is, why are so many helicopter flights to the gas platforms necessary? I understood that ships do most of the re-supply work and that crew changes are not that frequent - four weeks on, two weeks off? Why so many flights every day, then? The expense, which no doubt finds its way into gas prices, must be astronomical, as large helicopters cost (I believe) in excess of £500 per hour to operate - and that doesn't include crew and other logistical costs.

Ok, we are lucky to live in such a peaceful and lovely spot and I am lucky to be able to work from home and look out of my office window onto such a vista, so I know I can't expect much sympathy, but if someone can explain why so many flights are necessary and why they all have to fly over our village (can their route not be varied from time to time?) I'll shut up. In the meantime, if anyone's got a spare Stinger or two, I've thought of an interesting variation on pigeon shooting!

Labels: bacton, bacton gas terminal, helicopters, isaac asimov, north sea gas platforms, norwich airport, robots of dawn

WHATEVER THE WEATHER IN BROWN BRITAIN, IRELAND DOESN'T EXIST

When the BBC's national weather forecast comes on, I sit less comfortably in my chair - for two reasons:

Firstly, I hate, with a passion, the hideous colour now imposed onto the British Isles - a rather drab and dingy shade of brown that makes the country look like some post-apocalyptic desert. Mind you, given the state of the nation under New Labour's Gordon Brown, perhaps the colour is entirely appropriate. We're all in the sh*t, sh*t is brown in colour (usually) and who presided over our immersion in the brown stuff but Mr Brown? Quick joke: Did you hear about the two men who fell into a sewer and drowned? They were interred together.

Anyway, back to the point. I would appreciate it if the map could be more in keeping with the perception of our country as the 'green and pleasant land' of yore, maybe with some relief to show our magnificent hill and mountain terrain, so how about it, BBC? Talking of green and pleasant lands leads me neatly on to my second point.

Just over the water lies the 'emerald isle', a chunk of which, rightly or wrongly (don't want to get into that here) is part of the United Kingdom. The other, larger part, is a country so foreign, so alien, that it doesn't exist at all when it comes to the weather. Yet the citizens of both parts are constantly to-ing and fro-ing between them as if they were one country - as indeed in most ways they are.

Surely it would be in the interests of good neighbourliness with the Republic of Ireland to acknowledge its existence, meteorologically speaking, and include details of what's happening to the weather there? If you live in the North and are planning to drive down to Dublin for the day, you'd probably like to know what the weather's going to be like, wouldn't you? Well, Auntie Beeb won't tell you. Maybe she does on the regional weather for Northern Ireland, but I wouldn't count on it. And I bet national forecasts in the Republic include the North - well, you would, wouldn't you?

We're more closely related to Ireland than any other European country and our uniquely isolated geographical proximity means we're all in the same boat, weatherwise, so why not include all our cousins over the Irish sea in our national forecasts - it would be the grown-up, friendly and neighbourly thing to do, wouldn't it?

THE KNIVES ARE OUT FOR USELESS PARENTS

The latest news - that Scouts are being advised not to carry (pen)knives any longer - makes for depressing reading and is yet another nail in the coffin of any sort of 'normal' society - ie one where it is possible to carry what may be deemed to be an offensive weapon without the authorities automatically assuming you're likely to attack someone.

As a boy, my brothers and I and our friends loved knives - they were so useful and represented an early opportunity to justify parental trust and enjoy some independence. I think my father took me to a shop in Bulford, near Larkhill where we were then stationed (my father was an Army officer) to buy my first knife. We left Larkhill for Malaya in 1965, when I was about seven, so I must have acquired my first, albeit small penknife around the same age. I had that little knife for many years, well into adulthood, and I think I was able to pass it on to my sons when I, in my turn, thought they were old and sensible enough.

In the shop, the display case of gleaming penknives was irresistible and I would compare the relative merits of each knife, looking for the best combination of blades, construction and materials, design, shape and of course price. I would then covet the chosen one until I had enough pocket money to buy it, or could persuade my parents to give it to me as a Christmas or birthday present. My Godfather, who had been in the Army with my father when younger, used to send me penknives at Christmas from America. That's how totally normal they were back then.

It was always tricky to decide whether to go for a knife with lots of blades, but possibly poorer construction, or a simpler affair with just one - or maybe two - blades, which would usually be better made and last longer. Blades invariably did get damaged or snapped off, in trying to make a knife do something for which it wasn't designed, like being a screwdriver or levering the lid off something. Once a blade was broken, sometimes it could be ground back to become useful again, but usually the knife just languished in a drawer, lamented but no longer loved - not when the breakage offered a cast-iron reason to seek out and buy a new knife!

But other than being told sternly that 'Knives are dangerous and are not toys.' we were neither given nor needed any detailed instructions in how to carry and use them safely. You very quickly learnt that trying to use the knife to open a tin of beans would either break the blade or result in it folding up on your fingers, something you only ever did once. Lockblades were a great discovery, but they tended to be cheaply made at the pocket money level - I did buy one in a huntin'/shootin'/fishin' shop in Dulverton when I was on Exmoor for a Combined Cadet Force camp when I was, oooh, 14 - in 1972. No school master forbade me buy it and none of my fellow-cadets were ever in any danger from it.

And so we whittled away our spare time and an essential part of our boyhoods, making walking sticks and bows and arrows, cutting string and other important accessories of boyish pursuits. As far as I know our parents never worried that we were going to stick our knives either in ourselves, each other or complete strangers.

As we got older, so we graduated from penknives to sheath knives and although they were great things to have, in some ways they weren't as useful or versatile as a good penknife. We could even wear sheath knives on our belts, at least at home.

So, what has changed in the intervening years? Well, like most malaises of society, I fear the change in knife 'culture' if that word is really appropriate, comes down to incompetent parenting, plain and simple. My parents didn't have to beat me to instill discipline and respect for my fellow man (or boy) in me and although they were reasonably strict, you can see that they allowed us a fair bit of latitude as children. We would no more have dreamt of threatening someone with a knife, let alone attacking them with it, than we would have set fire to the local school!

With the media full of stories of feral children and the horrendous crimes perpetrated by children supposedly too young to take responsibility for their actions, it's glaringly obvious that we are looking at a catastrophic social breakdown brought about by generations of badly brought-up children becoming feckless parents themselves.

Being married to a teacher at a successful state school with relatively minor social problems, I get an inkling of some of the things going on and wrong with today's children. Too much bad child behaviour has become normalised and almost acceptable, just to get the job done and it's making it impossible for schools to impose the discipline that allows classes to be managed, at least in the state system. The degeneration of Rock and Polzeath into drunken squalor as armies of private school children descend (often without parents) on Cornwall shows that the deteriorating behaviour of the young is a problem that spans the whole class 'system'.

There was once an entirely reasonable expectation that children would come to school equipped to interact with their peers properly, be able to use cutlery and the lavatory successfully and imbued with basic politeness and respect for authority so that they could sit (reasonably) quietly in class and pay enough attention to make it possible for teachers to educate them. Without these things a school cannot function and ultimately families and society cannot function.

Children have an instinct for what is right and wrong and although the savage lies just below the skin, as exemplified by Lord of the Flies and the death of James Bulger and subsequent child-perpetrated atrocities, it is possible to produce and raise children who can become decent useful citizens. That means them being brought up in a loving, consistent but disciplined way and being made to realise as early as possible that the world does not revolve around them and then understanding that a knife is a tool and not first and foremost a weapon of self-defence or offence.

Knife crime, underage drink and drug abuse and youthful promiscuity are all problems that could be fixed, if we were brave enough to empower governments to do something about them, but the steamroller of rampant liberalism grinds on, leaving an increasingly broken society behind it. It's a grim thought that it has taken just a couple of generations to undo what it took nations many painful centuries to achieve - something approaching real civilisation.

Labels: feckless parents, feral children, knife culture, knives

JUST WHAT ARE WORDS WORTH?

I signed up recently to a newly-launched service called People Per Hour.com. Supposedly it brings freelance service providers and potential clients together. You get emails telling you about jobs relevant to your skills and services and then you can bid for the projects they feature.

The problem is, there are a lot of people out there who think it's possible to dash off lengthy articles in volume, in no time at all and for practically nothing.

Here's an example: Someone wants lots of 500-word articles written for his/her website, for which they are prepared to pay... wait for it.... £5 per article!

It takes an entire day to write 1,000 words well, including client changes etc. So this person thinks a freelance writer can live on £10 a day. Not very realistic, is it?

In fact, the freelance journalism rate has been £300/1,000 words for years and really it should be higher than that by now, but people don't place enough value on good writing, especially if they have to pay for it!

I suspect that many people go looking for help with writing just because they are either too busy or can't be bothered to do it themselves. Some people know they don't have the talent for it and recognise that writing well is a special skill that must be valued and paid for commensurately - they are usually the people who become my clients.

If you're considering looking for help via People Per Hour, please - be sensible. Would you be willing to work for £10 a day? Didn't think so.

Labels: freelance writer, People Per Hour, writing rates

THOSE WHO LIE IN UNVISITED GRAVES

I love visiting churches, especially here in Norfolk, which has more ruined mediaeval churches than any other county, apparently. I like looking at the memorials in the church and the gravestones outside and trying to imagine the lives those named might have led, especially if they seem to have been cut short.

You quite often see memorials to young women, many of whom must have died in or after childbirth, as well as poignant dedications to children. What carried them off? Fever? Poverty? Falling off a horse? I feel quite connected to these sad testimonials and speculate about the times in which those who lie beneath lived.

In a church near us, there's what I consider to be a remarkable memorial to a young woman, apparently of a very good and prominent local family, who died at the age of 25 in 1841. The wording on the memorial doesn't speak of her family's grief at losing her so young, but rather suggests that she may have been a thoroughly bad girl! Either that, or she was so virtuous or self-effacing, that she asked for such dismissive words to be left as her memorial.

This is what it says:


I believe this young woman was related to the rector of the parish. Was he some stern Victorian who was shamed by his daughter's louche behaviour - perhaps she became pregnant out of wedlock and died in childbirth at 25? Was the wording on the memorial a warning to other parishioners not to follow his daughter's path?

Maybe I'll get to the bottom of it in time - we've only lived in the area a few weeks - but in the meantime I can't help wondering about that young woman and what she did to deserve such a
damning postscript to her short life.

CAR SCRAPPAGE SCHEME - SOMETHING NOT QUITE RIGHT?

So, the car scrappage scheme goes live today.

If you have a car that's over ten years old, the government and the car industry will contribute £2,000 towards a shiny, new and presumably low CO2 emissions (and therefore low VED) vehicle.

So, what if your car is only eight years old, but has fallen foul of the new VED bands now being applied arbitrarily and retrospectively to vehicles registered after March 1st 2001?

Our Land Rover Discovery TD5 was registered in May 2001 - just two months too young to duck under the wire, yet it's exactly the same car as one registered pre-March 1st. That two months means that VED for our car is now a massive £400 per year - up from £210 this year.

That's a swingeing, punishing tax, penalising us for a purchase decision made some time ago, before we had any idea VED bands would start being moved around to address some pseudo-green agenda.

Here's the paradox: on the one hand the government is telling us our car is a polluter and if we keep it we can expect to pay more and more VED for the privilege of paying them more and more tax on fuel as well, but on the other hand it doesn't qualify for the scrappage scheme which is supposed to be taking more polluting cars off the road.

Now,that really makes sense, doesn't it?

But even if our car did qualify for the scheme, we couldn't afford to take advantage of it because we have no equity in it - the new VED bands have rendered such vehicles all but worthless and in any case we are only one year into a five year bank loan we took out in 2008 to buy the car in the first place!

This must be what it feels like to be set upon by a gang of thugs and be given a kicking while the Police look on but do nothing. Whichever way you turn you are being hit and the very people who claim to be helping you don't give a monkey's.

Apparently the new VED bands have affected over 9,000,000 cars - that's an awful lot of vehicles and many of them aren't 'evil' 4x4s - oh no, they're things like people carriers and perfectly ordinary saloon cars that just happen to have larger engines. The result is an enormous number of worthless cars that can't be sold, second-hand dealers stuck with stock they can't shift and therefore going bust and millions of ordinary and probably not very well off people caught in a rather nasty Catch-22.

I think we can expect to see more older but perfectly serviceable cars torched or otherwise 'disappeared' and a corresponding rise in dubious insurance claims as fairly desperate people try to extract some value from vehicles that have become veritable albatrosses. I have a friend - an East End lad - who could arrange for a car to be 'stolen' and torched. If we didn't need our dear old Disco for towing our boat, I think I would be tempted to give him a ring.

Now, when is the General Election due?

Labels: government tax rip-off, insurance fraud, VED, vehicle excise duty