Get ready to walk through airport security naked.

From the Guardian:

Foiled al-Qaeda bomb plot likely to lead to changes in US airport security

Homeland security adviser says FBI is testing latest underwear bomb to determine if it would have cleared current systems
The disruption of a plot by al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula to attack a US-based jet using what is being billed as an “improved” underwear bomb is likely to lead to increased security at American airports, the chief White House adviser on terrorism has indicated.

The full article is here. I have a feeling that we might have to take more than our shoes off the next time we get on a plane bound for the U.S.A.

The Most Astounding Fact

This is awesome. The astronomer Neil Tyson was once asked “What is the most astounding fact that you know?”
An Australian illustrator named Gavin Aung has turned the words he used to reply to the question into a cartoon. These are the first few panels, click anywhere in the illustration to see the full cartoon. You need to see the whole cartoon, trust me.

(h/t to Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy)

Boris, Ken, or someone else?

Non-Londoners can skip this post, I won’t be offended.

The time has come for those of us who live in The Great Wen to decide who we want to be Mayor of this great metropolis for the next four years. Although there are seven candidates, unfortunately I think our choice probably boils down to, do we dislike Ken more than Boris or vice versa?

Here, in alphabetical order are the seven candidates and the parties they represent:

Candidates

Name	Party
Siobhan BENITA	Independant
Carlos CORTIGLIA	British National Party
Boris JOHNSON	The Conservative Party Candidate
Jenny JONES	Green Party
Ken LIVINGSTONE	The Labour Party Candidate
Brian PADDICK	London Liberal Democrats
Lawrence James WEBB	Fresh Choice for London (UKIP)

Clicking on the candidate’s name will take you to their website, except for the B.N.P. candidate, who does not seem to have a dedicated website, so clicking on his name takes you to his Wikipedia entry.

Lets take a quick look at the minor candidates first.

Both the BNP and UKIP seem to think that the Mayor of London has more powers than he actually has. The BNP wants their Mayor to build a better NHS and pledges that they will not allow an amnesty for illegal immigrants. I might be wrong, but building (or currently destroying) the NHS is probably down to the Secretary of State for Health and granting an amnesty for illegal immigrants (not that there has ever been one suggested by either of the main parties) would probably come under the Home Secretaries remit. The UKIP Mayoral candidate, judging by his policies appears to think that the Mayor can unilaterally withdraw London from the EU. Both of them also seem to think that the Mayor can ban non-UK citizens from working in London.
If they don’t know what they Mayor can and can’t do then I think we can move on.

Siobhan Benita, the Independent candidate, is more interesting. I can agree with a lot of her ideas, especially on education, housing and infrastructure. Interestingly she is the only candidate to advocate building a third runway at Heathrow. If she was standing as the Labour or Liberal Democrat candidate (her ideas would fit reasonably well with both parties) I might consider giving her my vote, but as an Independent, she will find it difficult to garner the support she needs.

Jenny Jones, the Green Party candidate, is the only candidate with a well thought out and practical plan to turn London into a cycling city, along the lines of Amsterdam or Copenhagen, and for that alone you should consider voting for her. While cycling in London isn’t a dangerous as it is often perceived to be, it is not safe either, as she says:

It may well be fine if you are confident, experienced and physically fit, but we want roads where everyone feels safe whether you are 7 years old or 70.

Some of the other policies I am a bit more ambivalent about, though she is good on transport and recycling, slightly less so on what to do with non-recyclable waste.

Brian Paddick, probably doesn’t see himself as a minor candidate, but he is. He is not going to win, but the second preference votes of people who vote for him might, in fact probably will, decide who does.
He builds is candidacy on the following facts. For the first time the Mayor will be directly responsible for the Metropolitan Police, and he was a police officer for over 30 years. I will admit that during his time as Borough Commander he came up with some interesting and moderately radical (too radical for the Daily Mail) ideas on policing. The “big idea” on policing seems to be this:

If elected Mayor and London’s “Police and Crime Commissioner” I would make it my top priority to bring the police and public together, so that criminals don’t stand a chance.

Reading his manifesto it seems to me that he isn’t actually running for Mayor the position he wants is Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis. I want to elect a Mayor not a police chief. He is also a Liberal Democrat and I haven’t forgiven them yet.

Boris or Ken?

Here we have our choice then Boris or Ken, Punch or Judy, Scylla or Charybdis?
The best thing I can say about Boris Johnson is that he wasn’t (quite) as big a disaster for London as I feared he might be. He comes across as a cuddly buffoon, but is actually a very calculating politician.
There are two Londons, the divide is not between Inner London and the Outer London suburbs as some suppose, and Boris Johnson tries to pretend, the divide is between the City of London and Greater London.
The London that he has been Mayor for is not Greater London, he has been Mayor for the City of London.
Billy Bragg links to a story in the Sunday Telegraph and points out:

Two headlines from the Sunday Telegraph today – ‘Boris Johnson: We need more tax cuts’ and ‘Rich get richer’. Could the two be in some way connected?

The one thing that people will probably remember him for, the TFL Cycle Hire scheme a.k.a “Boris Bikes” wasn’t even his idea. Jenny Jones (the Green candidate) came up with it and Ken Livingstone adopted it during his last period as Mayor. It just happened to be introduced during his term in office, but he gives himself the credit for it. Similarly with introducing Oyster Cards on the rail system in London. The donkey work was done before his election in 2008, all he had to do was dot the i’s and cross the t’s.
What have his achievements been, well, he got rid of ‘bendy buses’ to keep the cab drivers happy and replaced them with white elephants, sorry Modern Routemasters, that is if they ever get enough built.
His reaction to last summer’s riots was late, ineffective and patronising, to put it mildly.
I won’t be voting for Mr Johnson.

That leaves Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London from 2000 to 2008, Leader of the GLC before its abolition by Margaret Thatcher back in the 1980′s and known to most Londoners as ‘Ken’.

In years gone by I would have said “Vote for Ken, he is the only candidate who actually understands London.” This time I am not so sure. I could be that I think he has been around too long – he is 67 this year – I think that Labour would have been better with Oona King as their candidate, but they plumped for the devil they knew instead. A few other things are also bothering me. There is a vague whiff of Anti-Semitism around some of his statements. There is also a feeling that he has been opaque about his financial affairs. Having said all that, his policies, cutting public transport fares and the reintroduction (in London) of the Educational Maintenance Allowance, and support for childcare, seem to me to be the best package on offer and look affordable.
Along with every other candidate he pledges to reduce crime and make housing more affordable. I can’t recall ever having heard a politician pledge to allow crime to increase, so I think we will ignore that one. Making housing more affordable is more easily said than done and while I am sure they are all sincere in their wish to get housing cost down, again I think that should be taken with a pinch of salt.

My vote, without any great enthusiasm will be cast for Ken Livingston. As the Mayoral election is a sort of Alternative Vote, I was toying with the idea of giving my first preference to either Siobhan Benita or Jenny Jones, with my second preference to Ken Livingstone, but I think I might as well just vote for him and leave the second preference blank. There is no point in putting a minor candidate as your second choice, because they will all be out by the time the second choice votes are counted. If you want to support a minor candidate put them as your first choice and the vote for Livingstone as your second preference.

As for the London Assembly my advice is this vote Labour for the Constituency Member (elected on First Past the Post) and vote Green for the London wide additional member – we need some greens on the assembly to make sure that the other parties keep to their pledges on the environment.

So to summarise this is how I recommend that you vote

• Mayor – Ken Livingston – reluctantly
• Constituency Member – Labour
• London Wide – Green

How the internet sucks your time away.

This morning I got up full of good intentions about what I was going to accomplish. The first priority was obviously to make breakfast and read the Guardian, from cover to cover, except for the sections that I don’t read. I had about 60% of this task completed when Mrsjohnm55 asked if I knew how to add some one to an email group. I know how to do it with my work email, but we use Lotus Notes at work, and because it is Lotus Notes, the method will be completely different to any other programme ever written. Being male I was reluctant to admit that I wasn’t sure how to do it in Windows Mail, because I have never needed mail groups for my private email. I came upstairs and opened up my email to work out how to do it. It turned out to be as simple as dragging and dropping contacts into the group. However..

One of my hobbies is Family History, and I subscribe to ancestry.co.uk to help with the research. One of the things they do is email you if someone else is researching one of your ancestors, and there in my in-box was an email telling me that some one had found something on one of my 3x great-grandmothers. I had tried to get a better handle on who she was for a while so I clicked the link. I checked out the information, it wasn’t a significant addition to what I already knew, it gave me an actual date of birth as opposed to the month and the year that I already had. Actually it might be the date of baptism, it wasn’t that clear.

This got me thinking about one of my other 3x great-grand mothers. Checking out her death certificate, I decided to find exactly where she had died. I couldn’t find the address on Google Maps. On a whim I typed into Google “Map of Kelso 1870″. This took me to the National Library of Scotland’s digital map archive. I found the address that she had died at. As I sort of guessed the street had been renamed sometime in the past century and a half.

Maps fascinate me, especially old maps. I don’t know how long I spent exploring the last three centuries of Scottish Borders via the maps I found in their archive, but it was a significant amount of time. If you like old maps have an explore of the site. It is first class and free. Just expect to lose an hour or two of your time.

I thought I might as well check Twitter (@john_m55) and that looks like an interesting article @so-and-so is tweeting about, I’ll check that out. That link in the article looks worth following as well. Should I look at my RSS feed to see if there is anything interesting there, of course there is, I wouldn’t be following these people if they didn’t say interesting things. Another half-hour gone. Might as well check Facebook before I shut down, nothing too much going on, except my sister tells me she has a friend who is cycling across the United States and is blogging about it, so naturally (cycling and cycle touring in particular is another of my passions) I had to check out his blog Bicycle Across America, more time gone.
And now I am blogging about it.

Time to turn out the (street) lights

I have blogged about light pollution and the needed for dark skies before. Miriam O’ Reilly writes about the subject in today’s Guardian.

It’s just after midnight. There’s no moon, and hardly any cloud. A few street lights burn in the village below, but on the hill where I’m standing they have no impact on the brilliance of the night sky. Brilliant, because I’m looking into a canopy of stars too numerous to count.

She lives in a village on the edge of Snowdonia, the reality for most of us is different.

The latest annual star count survey by the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) and the Campaign for Dark Skies (CfDS) showed 53% of those taking part on a clear night earlier this year could see 10 stars or fewer within the major constellation of Orion. Only 9% could see between 21 and 30 stars within the constellation, and just 2% had really dark skies above them and so were able to see 31 or more stars. Our skies are so “saturated” with glaring light, according to campaigners, that many of us are unnecessarily denied access to the wonders of the night sky.

In South London, where I live it is worse than that.
We needed to do something about this. We need to see the stars otherwise we lose something, partly our sense of wonder, partly our connection with the universe and the idea that we are a small part of it, but mostly the sheer joy of being out on a clear moonless night and looking up at the stars.

Posted from WordPress for Android

Pendulum Waves

It has been a long time since I last posted, partly due to work pressure, but mainly because there has been a lot of other stuff going on that has taken up my time. Anyway, to get myself back into the groove, here is a video that I found fascinating.

This is how it works:

The period of one complete cycle of the dance is 60 seconds. The length of the longest pendulum has been adjusted so that it executes 51 oscillations in this 60 second period. The length of each successive shorter pendulum is carefully adjusted so that it executes one additional oscillation in this period. Thus, the 15th pendulum (shortest) undergoes 65 oscillations. When all 15 pendulums are started together, they quickly fall out of sync—their relative phases continuously change because of their different periods of oscillation. However, after 60 seconds they will all have executed an integral number of oscillations and be back in sync again at that instant, ready to repeat the dance.

The full details can be found here

The correct way to use an iPad

This, I am reasonably sure, is how Steve Jobs intended iPads to be used. After all they are supposed to be versatile devices.
The video isn’t in English, but it doesn’t really matter.

(h/t to Token Skeptic)

A letter to my MP #NHSBILL

Below is the text of a letter (well email actually) that I have sent to my MP. He is Tom Brake (Lib Dem) Carshalton & Wallington.

Mr. Brake,
I am writing to you as a constituent who believes that the purpose of the NHS bill is not to improve the National Health Service but to facilitate its systematic destruction.

Given that all the Royal Medical Colleges, and everyone who has thought about the NHS bill consider that it will be disastrous for the National Health Service and ultimately for the majority of the people in this country.
This is the introduction to a piece in the British Medical Journal:

“Entitlement to free health services in England will be curtailed by the Health and Social Care Bill currently before parliament. The bill sets out a new statutory framework that would abolish the duty of primary care trusts (PCTs) to secure health services for everyone living in a defined geographical area. New clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) will arrange provision of fewer government funded health services and determine the scope of these services independently of the secretary of state for health. They may delegate this decision to commercial companies. The bill also provides for health services to be arranged by local authorities, with provision for new charging powers for services currently provided free through the NHS (clauses 1, 12, 13, 17, and 49), and it will give the secretary of state an extraordinary power to exclude people from the health service. Taken together the measures would facilitate the transition from tax financed healthcare to the mixed financing model of the United States. We provide an analysis of the key legal reforms that will govern policy development and implementation if the bill is enacted.”

The full article can be found here I strongly recommend you read this.
As you can see the authors consider that the Bill will allow charging for NHS services currently provided free at he point of delivery and allow the exclusion of groups of people from receiving treatment under the NHS completely.

I would urge you read it consider the opinions set out in it and vote against the bill.
Regards
John Manderson

If you care about what this bill proposes, which in my opinion is the dismantling of the National Health Service and its replacement with something along the lines of the American health care model, I would urge you to write to your MP expressing your opposition.
If you aren’t sure who your MP is or how to contact them this link http://www.theyworkforyou.com/ will help you find them.
As Ben Goldacre (@bengoldacre) tweeted

NHS is a historical aberration, built at a time when ppl better than us gave a shit. When it goes, it won’t be rebuilt

Write to your MP especially if he or she is a Liberal Democrat. They are all seriously worried that they will be out of a job come the next election when the Labour supporters (like me) that have elected them since 1997 decide to vote Labour again – even if it does mean I end up with Tory MP.

Kielder Water

A few facts to start with. Kielder Water is Britain’s largest man-made lake set in England’s largest man-made forest. The reservoir supplies water to Newcastle and the North East. The project which involved flooding a large part of the North Tyne valley started in the early 1970′s and was finally completed in 1982. The dam itself is surprisingly unobtrusive.

Kielder Dam

Today we went for a walk around a small part of the lake. This tree is a bit of an oddity in Kielder Forest, almost all the trees are conifers, but I liked it.

When we started out the lake was incredibly calm with reflections that were almost surreal.

The walk we did was about six miles in length. It was well marked and easy to follow without map. The packed shingle surface was easy to walk on. Surprisingly for a route chosen by mrsjohnm55 there was very little mud.

Despite the lack of mud Mrsjohnm55 ploughs bravely on.

Other interesting features of the walk were what I can only describe as modern follies. The most interesting of which was “Freyas Cabin”

A company (art collective?) called Studio Weave designed and built “Freyas Cabin” and its companion “Robin’s Hut” which can be seen on the opposite shore.. The full story can be found on their website They made up a story about Freya and Robin and how they met which I quote below.

Freya and Robin

Not so long ago, not so very far from here, there lived a beautiful lady named Freya. Freya loved flowers. She loved the Wood Aven with its little strawberry flowers that smell like Christmas and protect against evil. She loved the Red Campion with their hoof-like petals stretching from the tips of magenta pods, decorated with tiny white curls. But most of all, she loved Foxgloves, tall figures dressed in soft bells, some in pink, some in white, and some spotted with the fingerprints of elves. Freya liked to think of the foxes ringing the bells to warn each other of danger and insects sheltering from the rain under their gentle parasols.

You could find Freya wandering across the moors wearing long dresses with big soft pockets full of flowers she’d collected. She carefully took her pickings home, and pressed them for keeping and to decorate everything around her.

Not so very far away from her, lived Robin. Robin lived in a wooden hut in the woodlands over the water from Freya. He spent his days walking through the woods, looking after the trees and the animals that lived in them. He liked climbing trees and building little wooden houses for the birds to lay their eggs in. He dashed about the forest playing swift and intelligent games with the deer and scrambled about helping the squirrels find their buried nuts.

Freya could see Robin across the water. She could see he was kind and careful with the trees and the animals and that he loved them as much as she loved the flowers. Mostly, he skipped about playing, but sometimes, Freya saw him standing, perhaps sadly, she thought, looking out over the water. She longed to be able to talk to him, to ask him if he was all right or what it was he was dreaming of. So one day, Freya decided to make Robin a gift of a wonderful cabin. She hoped that he would see the cabin from his wooden hut and then maybe he would make a raft or a boat and come to see it.

Over the next few weeks, Freya worked very hard to collect flowers and plants and small branches. She made a big flower press and carefully laid out her collection in the shape of a woodland, just like she imagined the one Robin lived in. For the walls, she arranged the strongest branches from thick to thin. And for the roof she made an enchanted forest ceiling with twisted branches tickling each other. She decorated the entrance with precious Foxgloves to invite the fairies in. Then she pressed everything tight together so they would be strong and crisp and last forever.

While she was making the cabin, she noticed that Robin spent more and more time dreamily looking across the water. She was thrilled for she thought he must be looking to see what she was up to. She was so excited that she went and collected as many tall, straight flowers as she could find and proudly balanced the cabin up on a thousand of the tallest straightest stems to be sure that Robin could see it properly. But Robin couldn’t see it properly; he couldn’t see it at all.

Freya lived on the South side of the lake, which meant that the sun’s rays lit up the landscape in front of her and she could see for miles. But Robin lived on the North of the lake, so when he looked towards the South the sun got in his eyes and all he could see was a golden blur above the lapping blue lake.

Actually, Robin was very fond of the golden blur and often stood admiring the hot fuzzy oranges and purples shimmer. It reminded him of an amazing place he had been told about when he was a little boy. He had heard the stories many times, that in the far North there is a magical place called Glimmerfell, where there are huge mountains pointing out above the clouds, covered with flowers growing from the rocks and the ice. Apparently, the flowers glow orange and purple because in Glimmerfell, it is always sunset. He found himself thinking of this place more and more, until eventually, one day, he decided to build a boat and set off to try to find it.

Of course, when Freya saw Robin collecting wood and beginning to build a boat, she was thrilled that he had seen that she had almost finished the cabin and was planning to row across the lake to see her. Over the next few days, Freya put the finishing touches onto the cabin and Robin built his boat and packed it with food for a long journey.

Then one morning, he untied the boat from its mooring, and set off. Freya watched expectantly as Robin rowed towards her. She felt she had never been so happy and excited in all her life. But after a short while, he seemed to be drifting away to the west and soon Freya realised that he wasn’t coming her way at all, but instead, was going in completely the opposite direction.
Freya couldn’t understand what she could have done so wrong. Not only did Robin not want to come and see the cabin she had made for him, he wanted to leave the lake completely. She sat down in the middle of the garden she’d planted by the cabin and began to cry. As Robin rowed further and further away, she became so upset, her tears turned into gold. She picked herself up and wrapped the cabin in the gold tears streaming from her eyes.

Meanwhile, as Robin was rowing away, he turned his head to look back at the lake he loved. He hoped everyone would be all right while he was gone. As he watched the familiar woodland slipping further and further away, knowing that he might not see his home for a long time, he noticed something glinting in the distance. He thought it must just be the sun in his eyes, but as he took one last glance, he saw it again, even brighter. He was so curious that he decided to row back and find out what it was. After all, he hadn’t gone too far yet.
As Robin approached the glimmering, it grew brighter and brighter and he rowed with all his might

As Robin approached the glimmering, it grew brighter and brighter and he rowed with all his might

As he approached the glimmering, it grew brighter and brighter and he rowed with all his might. Once he was quite near the shore he could see an unusual golden cabin that looked like it had a forest inside it. Then once he was very close, he could see that next to the cabin, someone was sitting and crying with her face buried in her dress. Robin quickly tied up his boat, rushed over, and gently swept the foxgloves so they sang soothingly. Freya lifted her head at the sound and saw Robin standing there with a concerned look on his face. A little embarrassed, she brushed the tears from her eyes and they fell like gold dew onto the surrounding grass. Robin offered his hand and she unruffled herself as he pulled her up. Seeing she was all right, Robin turned to the golden cabin. He was quite enchanted by it. Freya explained that she’d made it for him. Luckily, he had climbed inside for a better look just before she said this, so she didn’t see him blush!

Freya and Robin sat in the cabin all afternoon, talking about the trees and the flowers. Robin almost forgot he was planning to go to find Glimmerfell. He described to Freya, the cloud-collared mountains and the glowing ice-flowers. Freya was fascinated and asked him lots of questions he didn’t know the answers to because he hadn’t been there yet. Freya offered to lend Robin her flower press so he could collect some flowers to bring home. Robin said he wouldn’t know how to press the flowers properly and asked whether Freya would perhaps, like to go with him. Freya said she would love to.

So at sunset, having loaded Robin’s boat with some more food and Freya’s flower press, they set off on their adventure.
They didn’t leave very long ago, so they are still away adventuring, but if you can find them, you can see Robin’s wooden hut and the golden cabin that Freya made for him, facing each other across the lake, awaiting their return.

It is lovely area of the country and well worth a visit.

---

Update Sunday 04 March 2012
I have updated and modified this post, which was originally from my Android phone. For some reason it didn’t upload the images that I included. I have now added some images and added the story of Freya and Robin.

York

York has to be the most fascinating city in the United Kingdom. It has something to do with there having been a city here for around two thousand years. Every corner brings another building that has been around for at least five
hundred years. Some like the Abbey of St. Mary’s are in ruins ( thanks to Henry VIII). Others are remarkably well preserved.

The city walls date from medieval times and are still largely complete.

The best preserved building is York Minister. It took around two hundred and fifty years to build and was dedicated in 1472. It is the sixth cathedral to stand on the site.

The streets around the Minister are narrow and distinctly medieval in character.

After dark something almost magical happens as the town takes on a whole new dimension.

Posted from WordPress for Android