Fix it

The events at the BBC are quite extraordinary, yet somehow depressingly predictable.
Obviously many people are shocked by the allegations made about Jimmy Saville, but they are still allegations. They are being investigated by the police, and if he were alive one can be sure that his lawyers would have been issuing injunctions by now to suppress some of the press coverage in the hope of ensuring that he got a fair trial.
Perhaps because he is dead, perhaps because there are so many allegations, perhaps because some people did find him "creepy", we seem to have forgotten the need for due process.
Unfortunately what seems to have happened next is that the lack of normal process in the Saville case has led the media into a frenzy of thinking that trial by media is OK. That is is reasonable to put unsubstantiated allegations on TV, or repeat them on TV and in the media, without due process.
Whatever the truth of any of these allegations it will be a very bad thing if we abandon due process.
I'm not a lawyer, in fact I have to say that lawyers mostly annoy me, there are too many of them, they charge too much and they seem to promote a narrow view of the world. Nevertheless there are good reasons why we have a police force, a crown prosecution service, courts, juries and judges, and they are all independent of each other in a system that has evolved over centuries. TV programmes and newspapers and the internet are not a substitute.
The legal process may get things wrong from time to time, but if it does, there are appeals and mechanisms to secure redress. If we resort to the media and the Internet as an alternative, there is no appeal or redress and we will end up with a much more unfair society. We have only to look at the tragic cases of people killing themselves because they have been attacked on the web to see the extremes that are possible. As a society I'm sure we don't need more of that sort of thing, and I am prepared to put up with a few lawyers in order to ensure that.
If Jimmy Saville's alleged activities, and the fall out from revelations about them, end up undermining a fair society as well as apparently abusing children, then he really will have fixed us.

Liquid Nitrogen Cocktails

I borrowed the picture from the Guardian, via Google

When I first read headlines about liquid nitrogen in cocktails, I thought the media had gone mad. Nitrogen is liquid at almost 200 degrees below zero. Above that temperature it becomes gas.

Liquid Nitrogen has many uses, but one example is in the NHS where it is used to freeze warts, that gives an idea how cold it is. There is no way you can drink it. Pour it into your mouth and your lips and tongue would freeze solid. If you did get it into your stomach, it would explode because of the rapidly expanding gas.

That is not what happened to the poor girl who lost her stomach; she didn’t explode on the spot or freeze her mouth solid.

As far as I can work out, these cocktails have a small amount of liquid nitrogen added, which rapidly evaporates, making an interesting mist and adding to the drama of the drink. So why is it dangerous?

That's where the physics comes in.

If you add alcohol to water, it lowers the freezing point. The more alcohol you add then the lower the temperature you need in order to freeze the mixture.

Most cocktails have between 15% and 40% alcohol, which means that it would not turn into ice cubes unless you got it below the temperature that you find in most domestic freezers.

The table shows the freezing point of alcohol water mixtures.

                                                           

Alcohol Concentration	10%	20%	30%	40%	50%
Freezing point Centigrade	-4	-9	-15	-23	-32

       

Next question, how do they make these cocktails? I am surprised that the media don't seem to provide details, but from what I've seen, the barman makes up the cocktail and tips a little liquid nitrogen into the mixture.

That will cool the cocktail; exactly how cold it gets will depend on the temperature that it started at and how much liquid nitrogen is tipped in.

When you mix something that is at minus 190 degrees with something that has just come out of the fridge behind the bar, the final temperature depends on the volume of the two quantities that are mixed. The average cocktail is around 100-125 ml. Cocktail mixing is not an exact science but on average, something like a teaspoonful of liquid nitrogen would drop the temperature of the cocktail to about minus 15 degrees.

If you stuck your fingers in it, you would rapidly get frostbite. Bang down a couple of those cocktails and there is a good chance that your stomach gets frostbite. In other words, chunks of the stomach lining would freeze solid and die. The next thing you know you are in hospital having a gastrectomy.

Why the stomach, rather than the mouth or the gullet? I think the answer is that the fluid goes through those parts quite quickly, not allowing enough time for significant heat transfer to happen. In the stomach, on the other hand, the fluid stops moving and sits there doing damage. It won’t take long.

There will obviously be demands that such drinks be banned. That is probably not necessary, they can be made safe just by training the barman to use only minimal amounts of nitrogen and checking the temperature. If the drink is more than a few degrees below freezing, then don’t drink it. Not even if your friends dare you.

If you must drink one of these try asking the barman if he has 'O' level physics, but anyway take your time, pose a lot, sip it slowly and if you want to be really safe, drink a pint of warm beer first.

Apple Maps

There has been a fair amount of chatter on the web about Apple’s new map app. If you upgrade your Iphone to the new operating system, IOS6 as opposed to 5 then you find that the old Google Maps app has been replaced by Apple Maps.

There are a number of differences; motorways are yellow instead of blue, being an obvious one.

For me the biggest change is that the versions of the maps that show satellite pictures have such low resolution that they are useless. The following is an example.

I live in Worcester UK, a town that has been here for hundreds of years. The picture gives a little history; the city was the site of one of the last battles of the civil war.

Rather more recently a pedestrian bridge has been constructed across the river Severn. Today I took my car to the garage, on one side of the river and walked back home across the bridge. I tried out the map apps on the way. I have an Iphone 4s, not the latest one, so maybe the thing works better on the Iphone 5. On the 4s it is useless.

The bridge is not small, the picture on the left is taken from a little further up river.

Apple maps satelite view with me standing on the bridge comes out as some sort of abstract art. The black fuzzy line is the river Severn, one of the largest rivers in England, hard to miss. No bridge is discernable. 

 The map view is better, though there is no sign of the bridge.

On the bridge I opened the web browser and went to Google maps, their satellite picture is next. Although the structure of the bridge is not visible, they have drawn in the route, so if you were walking that way you might guess that there was a bridge available.

As it happens neither system is particularly up to date.

 The next picture on the right shows the satelite view of where I live, you might think it is an industrial wasteland or rubbish dump. the picture on the left shows what it actually looks like, both Apple and Google are about two years out of date.

Interestingly the various web reports I have read say that Google is about to produce a new app for IOS6. When I opened Google maps in Safari, it gave me the option to put an app on my desktop, i.e. on the phone. I did that and bingo, I have an app that opens Google maps. It may not be the version that Google are working on, but it will do for now.

Quilts

I spent yesterday with Lois at the Quilt show at the NEC. The Wednesday group that Lois belongs to, had an entry in the group competition. They didn't win, but that's not really the point.

The show is a fascinating event. I have no idea how many people are the least bit aware of this activity, certainly before I first went last year, I had no idea that so many people were involved in making quilts. I didn't attempt to count how many entries there are, but it runs into hundreds and the audience into thousands. Not only that, but people come from all over the world, both to exhibit and to visit. The audience was mostly european and about 99% female.

The security guards were mostly male and made pointless sexist remarks when we arrived,

'the men's creche is over there, the dancing girls arrive at three,' quite unnecessary. Quilting as an activity must in some way select its participants. A huge proportion of the audience seemed to have the same affect. Shirley Williams the day she did go to the hairdresser might be an appropriate image. Full of understanding, good humour and reliability.

This sense of of homogenaity is less obvious in the quilts. Some have obviously been designed to look like an archetypical quilt, other stretch the art form in every direction. Any subject can be imagined as a quilt, a brilliant set based on the large Hadron Collider, for example. The winner in the group category had a series of pictures of a sort of spoof olympics, based around quilting, the funniest cartooning a play on words on tacking, a term used in stitchery and also sailing.

There were some sailing boats too, though I wouldn't want to sail several,of them. They look like sailing boats, but the masts are in the wrong place, so they would be very hard to steer. The boat in the picture would be pretty good at going backwards. On the other hand an image of a boat on a quilt, is not really expected to win the olympics.

To my mind the art fell into three categories. The first might be called quilts designed to look like quilts. The second is art, in which the artist feels able to tackle any subject, but happens to like quilting as a medium. The third, is the second one, but taking the possibilities of the medium into the art - tackling a subject in a way that could only be done with fabric and stitching. I rather liked those.

As well as the exhibits there was a massive commercial show, not just the makers of sewing machines, but a vast complex of stalls selling things you might use to stitch better or more easily, but also an amazing array of art and craft with a predominantly textile underpinning.

Some of these devices could have multiple uses. I bought a neat wooden stand that is supposed to be used for holding an embroidery ring, but in fact will hold my iphone and allow me to set up a standard position for photographing documents, a copying method I find is rather quicker and less fussy than using the scanner that is built into my printer.

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Yeah Definitely

Commentating must be a desperate business. Having to think of something to say, while fascinating events unfold in front of you. No chance of second thought, no editing, no time to think, no reflection; it goes out as you say it, and there's no getting it back.

What is even worse is that people like me, and people much more skilled than me, are sitting there listening, ready to pounce on every dumb comment, every out of place word or wrong piece of data.

“Murray is forcing Federer into unforced errors,” says John Lloyd. 

So now we have an extra category of errors, not just the usual, forced and unforced; now we have forced, unforced errors. How could that come about, just supposing for a moment that it wasn't just John Lloyd getting over enthusiastic. Maybe if Murray is simply creating an atmosphere of pressure, the possibility of unforced errors goes up. Is that what a forced, unforced error looks like. I can just about get my head around that, but what about unforced, forced errors. Maybe those are really impossible, but perhaps if one player has such a great style that even when they are completely relaxed, playing with no pressure at all, barely even trying, so you couldn't say that they were forcing anything at all, they might still force errors, without even meaning to. Those would be unforced, forced errors.

Enough of that. I may be getting the commentators disease, of having to talk all the time. Possibly the worst moment of this was after Ben Ainsley won his forth sailing gold medal. We saw him talking, being shown on the big screen at the venue and the idiot commentator is doing a voice over telling us what Ainsley is saying. OK, if he was talking chinese, that might make sense, but all the commentator is doing is stopping us hearing what Ainsley is actually saying. English does not normally need to be translated on the BBC. 

The crowd did get their own back; the same commentator was doing vox pops on the shore after the women's laser radial. The Belgian girl had just won the bronze medal, so why not interview some Belgians.

’What did you think of that?’ says the interviewer.

’Fucking great.’ says unknown Belgian. Whoops.

While I am in ranting mode, there are two more pet hates, I'd like to get out of the way.

The first is the over-adoption of certain words. I've given up on Yeah No. Is it one word or two? I know longer know what it means, I've heard it so often I'm not even sure I can any lomger explain why it is a daft thing to say. I've not however, given up on 'absolutely'. Over and over we hear both interviewees and interviewers using the word when it is simply not necessary, and often not really appropriate. I was pleased to hear the various fighters from the independent republic of Yorkshire who said “Yeah definitely” as their first words to many answers. If it is impossible to avoid these instant replies, I think I prefer “Yeah definitely.” Whereas absolutely is rarely true, and is frequently inappropriate; yeah definitely, is OK, it's expressing an opinion, and that doesn't seem inappropriate.

There is obviously something built into commentators genes that makes them adopt words. It is now seemingly impossible to use the word early without saying early doors. What on earth have doors got to do with anything? I once thought that it must be referring to leaving early, in the way the Eddie Waring talked about players getting an early bath, when they had been sent off. A glance or two at the web suggests that it comes from theatres, the doors opening early for the cheap seats. So what exactly does, 

"They let the New Zealanders get away early doors," mean in a sailing race. What doors, they are on the ocean.

Finally, there is the background music. The constant need to put some sort of thumping beat behind commentary and voice overs is beginning to make me change channels. Surely if the words are not dramatic or interesting enough to hold attention, then re-write the words. Adding a thumping beat is just a cheap trick and adds nothing. After watching these olympics, surely any one can see that we don't need to add drama, or worse still, some sort of false sense of excitement. Let the events speak for themselves. As I write this, the BBC is running a repeat clip of some of the rowing, along with a background beat that was not there during the events. Why?

For those who have read this blog for some time, I should apologise for going on about this, I have mentioned it before.  (Stop the bloody music http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1389520202868642266#editor/target=post;postID=2686805028156897544)

Will someone in broadcasting please listen. I am tired of my wife yelling at the TV every time the news bomp bomp bomp head bomp bomp bomp lines bomp bomp bomp come bomp bomp bomp on.

Post script.
In the into to the closing ceremony Gary Lineker
"They came from all four corners of the country and all four walks of life." All four walks of life? Really Gary, and what four would those be?

Fiction

I haven't been blogging because I have been watching the Olympics. Glued to the TV and clutching two iPads, I have missed very little, but there are lulls. In those I read on the iPad. I have an app called Flipboard. It keeps popping up on other people’s must have lists, so I am in good company. It allows you to pick up feeds from all sorts of other sources, see the picture to get the idea. 

Being lazy, I rather like having all that stuff gathered together on one page and kept up to date for me.

Among other things, I get a feed from the New Yorker. If I subscribed to the paper magazine I know I would never read it all and masses of paper would clutter up the house. On Flipboard I get a selection, made by someone else, so I’m probably missing something, but it is constantly refreshed, with no waste paper and therefore guilt free.

As a side effect, I also get emails from the New Yorker with links to other morsels of wisdom and humour. Among those I found a piece called “Everything is Fiction” from Keith Ridgway [born October 2, 1965 is a Dublin-born award-winning writer. He lives in Dublin after living in the UK for many years, Faber & Faber]

In the midst of a piece where he says he doesn’t know what he is doing –

‘I don’t know how to write. Which is unfortunate, as I do it for a living.’

He says -

‘I know how to wait until the last minute before putting anything on paper. I mean the last minute before the thought leaves me forever. I know how to leave out anything that looks to me—after a while—forced, deliberate, or fake. I know that I need to put myself in the story. I don’t mean literally. I mean emotionally. I need to care about what I’m writing—whether about the characters, or about what they’re getting up to, or about the way they feel or experience their world. I know that my job is to create a perspective. And to impose it on the reader. And I know that in order to do that with any success at all I must in some mysterious way risk everything. If I don’t break my own heart in the writing of a book then I know I’ve done it wrong. I’m not entirely sure what that means. But I know what it feels like.’

If that doesn’t capture what you need to do as a writer, I’m not sure what does. You can read the rest of the piece at: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/08/everything-is-fiction.html

Editing

Editing gets into my head. I am about half way through obsessionally trying to find all the spelling and grammatical glitches in my current book. Also trying to spot where I’ve got the time line wrong, or accidentally muddled the plot. There are a number of problems that are almost unique to this activity, the first being that Microsoft Word is insane. For example in this paragraph it thinks obsessionally should be spelled obsession ally. I don’t know who this ally is, or what he or she is obsessed about but I wish he or she would get out of my text. Note the “he or she” there. If I put they, word green lines it and wants to change it to he or she.

I also hate the way that it can’t make up its mind. Actually, Word is not alone in having these problems, (wordiness, consider revision), The ‘Pages’ app on the iPad can’t decide what to do about z. If I write realized, it changes it to realised, then it decides that is wrong and suggests I change it back. I have encountered similar circular idiocies in Word, but fortunately, I have managed to train myself not to record them.

 After a few hours, it becomes necessary to watch the TV or go shopping, just to give my eyes a break from the screen. We went to what might be called an out of town shopping centre, if it was out of town. One of those assemblages of prominent branded retailers all in large shed with a big car park.

I guess they have such a lot of trade that it makes sense to have a restaurant as well. There is a drive through KFC. As you come into the car park there is a sign that says “DRIVE THROUGH PARKING” Normally I can steer past this without my blood pressure changing a millimetre; after a morning of editing a phase like that causes problems.

There cannot be such a thing as drive through parking. Parking, and driving through, are mutually exclusive; you cannot do both at once. [Word thinks that should be “Parking, and driving through, is mutually exclusive”.]

The sign could be amended to Parking and Drive Through, or maybe KFC Drive Through, with Extra Parking. Better still might be a sign that says, “Do Not Read When Editing.”