Tolerances and complex problems

One of my favourite quotations gets a regular airing . . .  indeed much more regular than my blog posts have been recently.

"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

H. L. Mencken  (1880 to 1956)

Almost everyone laughs at that.  It sounds both incisive and frivolous at the same time.  I expect most people then dismiss it from their minds and would probably be delighted if they hear it again in a year or two without getting any more wisdom from it.

For me, after enjoying it and regularly using it while reviewing technical designs in a complex engineering environment it has taken on a extra layer of meaning.  It should be the motto of all practical engineers.  What most people don't realise is that the art of engineering is to make things that might be a little bit wrong but to ensure that they are right enough to function correctly.

Engineers call this 'tolerancing'.  Proper choice of tolerances in any design is the art of balancing performance against cost.  If you get the design too right you might not be able to afford to build it, or might not have enough time.

This is well illustrated by the old story about how to tell the difference between a scientist and an engineer. 

Stand them in opposing corners of a room, with an attractive member of the opposite sex naked (and presumably rather tolerant and open-minded) in the middle.  Tell them to approach that person by successively halving the distance between themselves and the object of their desire. Then wait.

The first one to leave the room will be the scientist, who has worked out that, in this way, you will never really get there. The engineer, however, has figured out that you will get close enough - for all practical purposes.

No through road

This is an interesting take on graffiti on road signs.  I've posted some Parisian road sign graffiti before, but this is a new one on me.  No through road for mythical characters here!

No through road for mythical saviours

Its interesting though.  When I see people wearing a cross around their necks I usually find myself wanting to ask what the T stands for.

Now I know!

More Parisian Graffiti

I have often featured interesting graffiti on Something Surprising.  Near the Pompidou Centre in Paris is this amazing face painted on a wall.  Is it graffiti or, given its location, art?

Graffiti or art - near the Pompidou Centre in Paris

My feeling is that it is too good to be considered as modern art of the type favoured for modern art galleries.

I'll settle for calling it good graffiti.

Physics on the Metro

Have you ever spotted how the air moves on metro trains?

On ordinary trains with short carriages there is often a flow of air through the carriage as the train moves along.  It brings blessed relief on those hot summer days!

But something different happens on those trains that are open from one end to the other, and the effect depends strongly on the number of people on the train.

One of those long un-divided trains on Paris metro line 1

If the train is fairly empty, you get a strong rush of air from the front to the back as it accelerates.  Quite often the train accelerates in steps, and you get repeated breezes of different strengths, correlating well with the driver's actions.  Then as the train slows down, the air rushes to the front of the train.

This shows that the mass of air inside the train has to be pushed to get it to speed up and slow down.  The push comes from a pressure gradient which is set up as the train changes velocity.  That gradient is established by filling one end of the train with more air, increasing the local pressure.

I had spotted this happening on a journey on an empty train.  The following day on the same metro line I was expecting to observe the same effect.   However, it happened to a much less noticeable extent.  What was different?  The train was full of people standing.  That meant that the air flow was significantly better damped.

The effect is also much clearer if you sit near the middle of the train than it is at the ends - obviously.  After a week of observations I think this is good(ish) physics.

On the other hand . . . on another journey I watched a roller skater walking down stairs (very carefully) and then rolling along the platform.  As he slowed himself down he spread his feet wide apart, lowering his centre of gravity.  To stop himself he brought them sharply back together, lifting his whole body a few centimetres.  It appeared to me at first sight that he had converted his kinetic energy into potential energy in doing this - but on reflection that is not consistent with conservation of momentum.  This wasn't good physics after all.

Perhaps it was just a flourish in his performance after all.

Isn't physics fun?  It gets everywhere!

Hale and Hearty

Enjoying a visit to Paris, I like to spot words in French that have obviously migrated into English.

Eiffel Tower - just before it was evacuated on August 9th, 2013

This week's word is 'hâlé' (pronounced ah-lay in French), meaning bronzed or sunburnt.  I have no idea how to say the word in such a way as to distinguish it from the more common verb 'aller' meaning 'to go'.  I assume that context is king.

Surely is is the origin of the English word 'hale'.

Liberty - for the week

I'm away, enjoying a week of holiday.  Guess where I am.

Liberty, equality and fraternity

It looks as though I might be in New York, but instead I find myself in Paris again, seeing some of the sites that I have never seen before, and visiting others, like this one, that I have seen from the train many times.

This is a 9m tall replica of the Statue of Liberty, and it can be found on the Isle des Cygnes in the middle of the River Seine.

Replica Statue of Liberty in Paris, on the Isle des Cygnes

Having walked the length of Isle des Cygnes I didn't see a single swan.

Did you know that is where we get the English word 'cygnet'?

Prince Rupert's legacy

Watching a TV programme recently (which is something that I rarely do) I was reminded of the incredible properties of glass.  Can you imagine a glass bulb that will not break when you hit it with a hammer, and yet will explode violently in the event of another tiny intervention.

If not, you will be amazed by Prince Rupert's Drops.  Wikipedia has a good article on the topic (as you would expect), but this video is also spell-binding and explanatory!

Inverse topiary

Cruising down the River Thames, near Reading, I found that the graffiti artists have an unusual technique.  They cut away the ivy on a railway embankment wall to leave their friendly message.

Topiary as graffiti

BBC film crews

Having been somewhat involved with the workings of a BBC film crew yesterday, for a programme that will be hosted by Richard Hammond, I am left with a few observations about BBC film crews.

The staff all seemed to be polite, pleasant and reasonable people.  They even gave the impression of understanding what our technical staff were talking about - at least when they took the time to listen.  I was surprised to hear the producer asking one of his interviewees not to dumb it down so much - and this was for a science programme on the BBC.  Yes really!

I suppose this is not a proper science programme like Horizon.  Perhaps Sunday evening specials are allowed to present real science instead?

Another surprise was that they preferred to film in very low light, to the extent that most of the people who were trying to do a real job, operating a complex fusion machine, were complaining that they couldn't see what they were doing.  Most film crews from other TV stations including the independents can cope with the normal lighting conditions, but it will be interesting to see the difference when the programme comes out.  Perhaps it will be spectacularly better than average.

And yes - it is true that Hammond is not a tall man.

But the biggest surprise is that the film crew must have numbered at least a dozen people.  Like the last time I saw a BBC crew for a high profile programme in action, I wondered what most of them were supposed to be doing.  Not much, from all appearances!  Funded by the tax payer, it seems that they can afford to employ four or five times more staff than most other companies.

After all, these are times of austerity.

Thought-provoking video about Intelligent Design

What a thought provoking video about Intelligent Design, from The Thinking Atheist!

It ends up with this quote from Stephen Fry.

Stephen Fry on the subject of Intelligent Design

Something Surprising is back

After a break of a couple of weeks, a regular feed of posts will restart later this evening. 

Thanks for continuing to follow.

Another UK crisis - MPs pay

The UK Government has imposed a 1% limit on the increase of salary for public sector workers for the next three years, having already frozen pay for the last two years.  (At the same time thy increased pension contributions by 1.28% this year, leading to a net decrease in take-home pay while inflation is obviously raging.)

Some people find that outrageous.  Others consider it to be an fair and inevitable way of balancing the books.  But whichever camp you might be in, I suspect that we are almost all in agreement that it would be grossly unfair if Members of Parliament (MPs) are awarded any increase in salary higher than that.  And yet, this is what they tell us we should expect.  In fact they might be awarded an increase of more than 10%, because (at the second attempt) the independent body that reviews their salaries has deemed that they are underpaid.

Neglecting the fact that many of them have second and third paid jobs, along with fairly generous expenses allowances and long periods when Parliament is not sitting, which world is this independent panel living in?

Somehow, it appears that the government is powerless to prevent this inevitable increase.  Exactly why that might be the case is completely unclear to me.  In my view, the MPs should:

• Do the job that they are paid for - full time, like the rest of us - and yes that sometimes means working late with little appreciation and for much less money than MPs already receive.
• Not have additional salaried posts.
• Definitely have their salary increases capped - as after all, they are public sector workers too.  

Its easy isn't it?  It is just like telling another public sector worker that they have achieved the highest level of achievement in their role which might give them a rise of a few percent in normal times, but that in spite of that their pay rise is capped at 1%.


Failing that, I can see the potential for one of the biggest protest marches ever seen in London.  I will be there, whatever else might be happening that day.

Will you?

Further comment:  38 Degrees is obviously lining itself up for a goo campaign on this topic.  Participate in their consultation by following this link.

Skeptical about Skeptoid - go for green instead!

The Skeptoid podcast has been one of my favourites for two or three years, and Brian Dunning's analyses of the topics that he covers generally have my trust.  One or two things might have influenced my views about Dunning recently, but setting aside accusations of fraud that have echoed around the skeptical community (if indeed it really is a singular community) in this week's episode I think he actually has a couple of things dangerously wrong.

He was talking about laser pointers.  Are they really dangerous?

Obviously the answer is that some of them are indeed a hazard, but I have to point out that his reasoning to determine which are safe is far from my own understanding of the topic, and advice from laser safety experts.

Dunning's approach was correct in pointing out that the human eye is more sensitive to green light than red, but his conclusion was the opposite of normal thinking.  The reason might be that he has incorrectly assumed that increased sensitivity (i.e. ability to perceive the smallest amounts of light) correlates with sensitivity to damage (which it does not).  The brightness of some green pointers is truly scary, but not all of them are actually dangerous.

Damage to the eye is caused by power, not by apparent brightness.  OK - you might have a coloured spot in your vision for longer if the light seems brighter, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you have damaged your retina.  On the other hand, infra-red lasers can easily blind you without seeming bright.  Indeed they can do their terrible damage invisibly.  (I work with people who operate IR lasers which would only be eye-safe at a distance of 20,000km by they way.)

In fact, the science in the above claims should be interpreted in this way.  Green pointers appear brighter than red pointers for the same power.  So a red 1 mW laser pointer seems surprisingly dim compared with a green pointer of the same power.  To compensate for this, people are tempted to buy higher power red pointers.  You might need tens of milliwatts to compete with 1 mW of green.  This is where the danger lies.

Brian Dunning's conclusion that you should never use a green pointer is misleading and potentially dangerous.  You should use green wherever possible, but just ensure that its 'peak output power' is less than 1 mW, not the 1 to 5 mW that Dunning recommended.

Then you can be certain that your audience's eyes will be safe.  You should still avoid shining the light direct into anyone's eyes though.

Small note:  There is a theoretical potential failure mode for green lasers, where they go to even higher power.  If you spot your pointer getting much brighter then you should get it tested.  In my own experience they seem to get dimmer with time, but this is only a matter of statistics (and perhaps ageing eyes?).

New RDFRS newletter revealed

The Richard Dawkins Foundation(s) for Reason and Science (RDFRS) have released a newsletter, the first one being available here.  (As you might know, there are two RDFRSs.)

Being a fan of Richard Dawkins and his work (as many of you will have spotted a long time ago) I eagerly clicked the link to see what fascinating information it might contain.  Richard has such a good way of spotting interesting things and presenting them in accessible ways.  I thought there was a good chance that it would be another thing that I would subscribe to, but unlike many of the others that I almost dread having to read, this one was going to be something that I would be eager to see.

So - did it live up to my expectations?  Perhaps the existence of two separate but linked foundations, East and West of the Atlantic might make it difficult to choose the content.  There was quite a good article by Sean Faircloth who is a powerful speaker and writer, but apart from that there was a bit of advertising (which I accept as being necessary), mention of a new member of staff (yawn! who cares?) and a selection of other articles that failed to get my full attention.

All in all, I have to say that I found it surprisingly disappointing. 

Let's not give up on them too soon, as they might find their feet and decide which country they really want to talk to.  I don't really mind which one it is, as I do listen to a number of US-centric podcasts.  However, most of those give UK a greater degree of prominence than the first edition of this newsletter has done, from its American heartland.

Very little of Richard's flair and enthusiasm comes through just yet.  Please try harder.

Now if you want a really good newsletter, (which happens to be UK based), you could do worse than that of the National Secular Society, which you can find here.  I actually look forward to getting that one by e-mail every Friday.

Downloading consciousness?

Have you heard of the '2045 Project'?  I started to hear a few whispers about this fascinating and seemingly impossible idea recently.

Founded by a wealth Russian entrepreneur, Dmitry Itskov, in February 2011, the project aims to develop the technology required to download a human mind into a robot avatar, essentially extending life, perhaps as far as immortality.  By that time Itskov will be about 65 years old.

Interesting!  Apart from the obvious worry about choosing exactly the right moment to kill your real self and transfer your 'soul' (for want of a better word) into a machine, there must be no end of other moral implications.  Does the 'robot you' then have human rights?  Does it have the right to reproduce, and if so, what algorithms go into the production of the offspring.  Is there a way to make the mingling of computerised brainwaves sound like a romantic encounter, and if not, in what way could this being be described as being fully human?  And if the avatar offspring went through the terrible twos while it effectively inhabited an adult body, how would the parents cope?

I can't resist asking whether it forces God out of the picture too?  After all, which part of the new synthetic 'you' did God create?  Unlike the conventional type of 'intelligent design', the success of this project might demonstrate that ID is real.

If it happens in your lifetime you can decide for yourself.

Does Creation science have any convincing arguments?

Oxford Skeptics in the Pub hosted Peter Harrison this week.  He is based at St Andrews University (of which I am a graduate) so it was fun to have a chat with him.  His talk was about creationism.  As it said on the SITP site:

It’s easy to make fun of many creationist claims, but what are their strongest arguments?

Creationism often takes a lot of flak for the kind of wild claims made by hoards of ALL-CAPS creationists on blogs and YouTube comments. But of all the claims and arguments made by creationists, which are the most impressive? Do they pose a threat to creationism-denying scientific fields? Forget the usual tired canards. Peter has spent a year collaborating with top creationist organisations and groups to collate and bring to you their most powerful arguments yet…

So, I hear you asking whether any of the arguments were convincing.  He had asked them about both their evidence for creationism and in four of the five cases for evidence that the world is young (6000 to 10,000 years old).  The fifth organisation promotes old-earth crationism so it was not relevant in their case.

The organisations that he had challenged included Answers in Genesis and The Discovery Institute.  It seems that they have now ceased to cooperate with him after he shared his conclusions with them.  They didn't even appear to have used their best lines of evidence even while they were talking, but then again who is the best judge of that?

One thing did surprise me.  In his discussions with the 'Discoveroids', he had used the term 'creationist'.  I happen to listen to their podcast, ID The Future (which I decline to link to, as I have no desire to increase their Google ranking) on a regular basis.  They usually make a point that The Discovery Institute is there to promote 'Intelligent Design', and not creationism.  They say that there is a difference, although I have some doubts about that.

All in all, it was an entertaining evening with a great speaker.  It was only the second time that he has given that talk.  I hope he will get chance to use it many more times.

The Wedge

About 20 years ago, the Discovery Institute, that ivory tower of 'intelligent design', was caught out. 

Yes really!

It was revealed that they had a document that defined the Wedge Strategy - with a 20 year target of convincing the world that there was some science in the (not even a theory of) 'intelligent design'.  Of course there isn't!  (If you provide some evidence to dispute that claim then I will be happy to consider it.)

21 years later, we are still waiting for success and Dembski et al are back-pedalling. 

Fast trains or fusion?

The surprising thing is that someone else has finally noticed that we are not spending enough money on developing fusion as the power source of the future!

Andrew Steele wrote in the Guardian:

In among a raft of new infrastructure spending announced by the UK government in the wake of last week's spending review, it was revealed that the cost estimates for the HS2 high-speed train line had been revised significantly upward. According to the new projections, HS2 will be completed in 2033 at a total cost of £42.6bn for construction and £7.5bn for trains – a total of just over £50bn.

What is immediately striking about this figure is that it's about the same as estimates of how much it will cost to develop nuclear fusion to the point at which it could supply affordable electricity to the grid.

What is also strikingly missing is that the £50 billion for HS2 is being paid by the British taxpayer, whereas the $50 billion estimated for fusion could be shared by all the countries in the world.  That makes it much more affordable.

However, in general Steele gets the point.  Good for him!

The rights of man - more Thomas Paine

Last year I wrote about Thomas Paine, the first New Atheist, having just read his book 'The Age of Reason' which was decades ahead of its time when written in the 1790s.  I hadn't followed up the subject very much until this week I heard an interview on The Pod Delusion (episode 193) with actor Ian Ruskin (starting at time stamp 14:32).  Ruskin is putting on a one-man play about the life of Thomas Paine, and if I was in London (and not working that evening) I might have made the journey to Conway Hall.

I have often wondered where the concept of human rights came from.  The very idea that humans had irrevocable rights has only gained much traction in the last hundred years or so, even though there were hints of it in the previous century.  I have even quizzed a visiting human-rights lawyer on the topic - although I didn't actually get any useful information from her.

Hearing more about Paine's work I am beginning to realise that he played a very significant part in the development of human rights thinking.  He might not had been the originator of all the concepts that he wrote about, but by distilling them into a book called 'The Rights of Man' he certainly brought them to the attention of the people.

Ruskin says that Paine deliberately chose not to protect the commercial rights to his work and that by doing so it meant that the books and pamphlets were circulated much more widely than they otherwise would have been.  Although not exactly a pauper at the time of his death, he was certainly not a wealthy man either.

He can also be remembered for a quotation that is still relevant today.

“Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.” 

The latter part certainly applies in UK at the moment.

Lennox's non-fairy tale?

Oxford University Professor, John Lennox mumbled some incoherent nonsense (it is reported, e.g. here and here, and much better here) at the 'National Prayer Breakfast'.  Presumably Lennox is quite good at mathematics.  If not, he would not be a professor at Oxford University.  Nevertheless, if the reports of the event are to be believed then he seems to grasp very little of logic.  Isn't that surprising?

Apparently he 'preached' that atheism was a "delusion" and a "fairy tale for those afraid of the light".

Can anyone explain to me how this can be true?  Surely atheism is the lack of all these religious fairy tales, not specifically the Christian fairy-tale that Lennox happens to like.

Perhaps Prof. Lennox has been an outspoken critic of "God Delusion" author Richard Dawkins, but if that is the only thing that makes him famous then perhaps he should be called 'a-famous'. 

As for blaming atheism for the "moral drift" in society, (as is reported), I would just point him to accounts of the activities of Roman Catholic Priests over recent years and indeed Muslim men who have married child brides over many centuries (collectively, at least).  Where is the moral drift now?  Has it been led by religious men, perchance?

Dismissing the common assumption that science and religion are not compatible, he said  "There is no necessary conflict between science and God, the real conflict is between world views, atheism and theism".

If not, why is he picking this particular fight? Moving on, we hear that:

"God is not the same kind of explanation as science is. 

Now . . . on this point we can agree.  One is a delusion and one is not. But then:

God is the explanation of why there is a universe at all in which science can be done."

Lennox might tell us this.  But after all, this is just a fairy story!

Isn't it?

Dr Lennox was addressing over 600 people at the Bible Society-sponsored National Prayer Breakfast at the Houses of Parliament.
As Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, Dr Lennox has frequently spoken out against modern-day atheism, calling Richard Dawkins 'wrong'.
He said that the new atheism is responsible for 'the moral drift' in today's society. And he added that science and religion are not opposed.
'There is no necessary conflict between science and God, the real conflict is between worldviews, atheism and theism,' he said.
'God is not the same kind of explanation as science is,' he added. 'God is the explanation of why there is a universe at all in which science can be done.'
He warned that, 'The playing field is not level since atheism has become so dominant ... and is often regarded as the default position in the media.'
The risk of this is, he said, that society would forget 'the contribution of Christianity to the moral foundations of our society'.
- See more at: http://www.baptisttimes.co.uk/index.php/national-news/986-atheism-a-delusion-john-lennox-#sthash.x2vSZjv2.dpufvvOxford University Professor John Lennox told over 600 people at the National Prayer Breakfast why he is not convinced by atheism.

The math professor told guests at the Bible Society-sponsored event that atheism was a "delusion" and a "fairy tale for those afraid of the light".

He urged Christians to have "the courage to create public space" for the discussion of "a biblical worldview", as he pointed to the example of Tyndale, who translated the Bible into English 400 years ago and would eventually be executed.

Dr Lennox, who has been an outspoken critic of "God Delusion" author Richard Dawkins, blamed new atheism for the "moral drift" in society.

He also dismissed the common assumption that science and religion are not compatible.

"There is no necessary conflict between science and God, the real conflict is between worldviews, atheism and theism," he said.

"God is not the same kind of explanation as science is. God is the explanation of why there is a universe at all in which science can be done."

Atheism is a 'delusion', a 'fairy tale for those afraid of the light'. That was the message from Prof John Lennox from Oxford University on Tuesday morning (25 June).
He also urged Christians to have 'the courage to create public space' for the discussion of 'a biblical worldview' in society - citing the example of Tyndale's translation of the Bible into English 400 years ago.
- See more at: http://www.baptisttimes.co.uk/index.php/national-news/986-atheism-a-delusion-john-lennox-#sthash.x2vSZjv2.dpuf

Dr Lennox was addressing over 600 people at the Bible Society-sponsored National Prayer Breakfast at the Houses of Parliament.
As Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, Dr Lennox has frequently spoken out against modern-day atheism, calling Richard Dawkins 'wrong'.
He said that the new atheism is responsible for 'the moral drift' in today's society. And he added that science and religion are not opposed.
'There is no necessary conflict between science and God, the real conflict is between worldviews, atheism and theism,' he said.
'God is not the same kind of explanation as science is,' he added. 'God is the explanation of why there is a universe at all in which science can be done.'
He warned that, 'The playing field is not level since atheism has become so dominant ... and is often regarded as the default position in the media.'
The risk of this is, he said, that society would forget 'the contribution of Christianity to the moral foundations of our society'.
- See more at: http://www.baptisttimes.co.uk/index.php/national-news/986-atheism-a-delusion-john-lennox-#sthash.x2vSZjv2.dpuf

Atheism is a 'delusion', a 'fairy tale for those afraid of the light'. That was the message from Prof John Lennox from Oxford University on Tuesday morning (25 June).
He also urged Christians to have 'the courage to create public space' for the discussion of 'a biblical worldview' in society - citing the example of Tyndale's translation of the Bible into English 400 years ago.
- See more at: http://www.baptisttimes.co.uk/index.php/national-news/986-atheism-a-delusion-john-lennox-#sthash.x2vSZjv2.dpuf

Atheism is a 'delusion', a 'fairy tale for those afraid of the light'. That was the message from Prof John Lennox from Oxford University on Tuesday morning (25 June).
He also urged Christians to have 'the courage to create public space' for the discussion of 'a biblical worldview' in society - citing the example of Tyndale's translation of the Bible into English 400 years ago.
- See more at: http://www.baptisttimes.co.uk/index.php/national-news/986-atheism-a-delusion-john-lennox-#sthash.x2vSZjv2.dpuf

Atheism is a 'delusion', a 'fairy tale for those afraid of the light'. That was the message from Prof John Lennox from Oxford University on Tuesday morning (25 June).
He also urged Christians to have 'the courage to create public space' for the discussion of 'a biblical worldview' in society - citing the example of Tyndale's translation of the Bible into English 400 years ago.
- See more at: http://www.baptisttimes.co.uk/index.php/national-news/986-atheism-a-delusion-john-lennox-#sthash.x2vSZjv2.dpuf