David Davis MP

I’m not even sure how long ago it was now. Four years maybe? While in Crete I received an email from a guy called David Davis. He apparently enjoyed my books and invited me for a beer in the House of Commons. I thought David Davis MP? The guy who fought David Cameron for leadership of the Conservative party and, unfortunately, lost? The guy who was in the territorial SAS and took Bscs in molecular and computer science before becoming a politician? One of the few politicians I have any regard for? Somebody is winding me up. I did, however, do some research and discovering in an interview that some of his favourite books were Iain M Banks’ Culture books I thought there might be some veracity in it. Incidentally I passed this on, I think to Banks’ agent, who then passed it on to him. Banks was apparently much amused.

Returning from Crete that year we just didn’t get round to following up on the offer. I’m not sure why, but things got in the way. The next year, when we returned to Crete, was when Caroline got sick so, that year was out and the one after. This year I got another email and decided I must follow up on it. And yesterday I did.

So, with my head aching from the dregs of a cold, I hopped on the train to Liverpool Street Station and took the tube to Westminster. I arrived about an hour beforehand – I was due to meet him in Central Lobby at about 7PM after some vote. Since I was early I wandered about a bit taking a few photos and looking for a can of coke to wash down the Paracetamol and Ibuprofen I had with me. After failing to find a drink and feeling cold I went into Parliament through the Cromwell entrance. I thought better to wait in the warm, but spent some time in a queue of people going through security checks similar to those you find in an airport.

When I got in I wasn’t sure where I was supposed to wait, but the large numbers of cops and security staff all around were all cheerfully helpful. I ended up sitting in the Central Lobby still wondering if anyone would turn up. He did, I of course recognized him at once and he recognized me. He took me through into a very plush restaurant, where I felt a bit under dressed, and an enjoyable dinner ensued. Conversation spanned books, pilots’ examinations, civil liberties and much else beside. A friendly and agreeable guy.

After this he took me on a tour of the House. I got to stand in the Chamber and elsewhere, saw the Shadow Cabinet room, David Davis’s office. It was all a bit surreal (not my favourite word) and I just wished I hadn’t felt so crap and could have appreciated it more. Thank you the Rt. Honourable David Davis MP.

Oh, some of these pictures are from places where cameras aren’t allowed. I’ve absolutely no idea how that happened. I particularly like the one of me standing by the statue of Margaret Thatcher, mainly because of how it will annoy so many…

Killing Cancer like the Common Cold

This is excellent news.

"This is absolutely one of the more exciting advances I've seen in cancer therapy in the last 20 years," said Dr. David Porter, a hematologist and oncologist at Penn. "We've entered into a whole new realm of medicine."

In the therapy, doctors first remove the patient's T-cells, which play a crucial role in the immune system. They then reprogram the cells by transferring in new genes. Once infused back into the body, each modified cell multiplies to 10,000 cells. These "hunter" cells then track down and kill the cancer in a patient's body.

Cigarette Sales Down (because of e-cigs)

Despite Best Efforts of Anti-Smoking Groups, Cigarette SalesWere Down 600 Million Units in First Quarter of 2013

Despite the best efforts of many anti-smoking groups, cigarette sales were down 600 million units in the first quarter of 2013. Why? Because electronic cigarettes competed successfully with tobacco cigarettes and drove their sales down.

Utter madness of the anti-smokers: they would rather people died than found a viable alternative to smoking, because it looks like smoking. Incidentally today I've been off the roll-ups an on an e-cig for one month.

Get Fracking!

Boris Johnson is here speaking some sense about fracking.

The extraction process alone would generate tens of thousands of jobs in parts of the country that desperately need them. And above all, the burning of gas to generate electricity is much, much cleaner – and produces less CO₂ – than burning coal. What, as they say, is not to like?

 I do love his view of the eco-doomsters:

In their mad denunciations of fracking, the Greens and the eco-warriors betray the mindset of people who cannot bear a piece of unadulterated good news. Beware this new technology, they wail. Do not tamper with the corsets of Gaia! Don’t probe her loamy undergarments with so much as a finger — or else the goddess of the earth will erupt with seismic revenge. Dig out this shale gas, they warn, and our water will be poisoned and our children will be stunted and our cattle will be victims of terrible intestinal explosions.

Minimum Pricing on Alcohol

So, Cameron is a nannying statist who wants to stick a minimum price on alcohol per unit. What on Earth is he thinking? Does he think that this will result in fewer pavement pizzas and fat slags crying in the gutter on a Saturday night? Does he think there’ll be less violence on the streets after chucking out time on a Friday and less chaos in A & E over the weekend? If he does think that then he’s an idiot because the people responsible for that drink in bars where the price is already way above his damned 45p a unit.

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Does he think that £2 on the price for a bottle of vodka is going to stop an alcoholic buying it? Does he think that ‘problem drinkers’ are going to alter their life styles because their weekly booze bill has gone up by ten or twenty quid? Well, maybe they will, maybe they won’t be getting the latest X-box, flat screen TV or maybe their kids will start outgrowing their clothes because, you can be damned sure that habitual drinkers will sacrifice other spending rather than the habit. Does he think that banning supermarket deals on wine, like three for a tenner or three for the price of two is going to do any more than piss off people who drink at home and cause no trouble at all?

Does he not realize that black marketeers – the same ones most smokers buy their tobacco from now – will be rubbing their hands together in glee? Has he, with his wonderful Eton education, not heard of Prohibition? Or was he too hung over after a night out getting pissed and trashing restaurants with the Bullingdon club to take that particular lesson in?

Really, it’s about time Cameron found his natural home in the Labour Party. There’s a place for him there, since that party doesn’t have a leader. Not that he’s much of a leader but I’m sure they could always find room for another advertising executive.  

And at the BBC...

I guess the fact that they were put through the mangle over cutting that program about Jimmy Saville led program makers to feel they had carte blanche on the next target. The complete lack of judgement kicked in as soon as they heard the words ‘Thatcher’ and ‘Tory’. All this was of course exacerbated by a complete lack of sensible oversight. Yeah, George Entwistle needed to resign because quite obviously he wasn’t worth his huge salary. But next a sharp knife is needed to cut out some of the diseased wood. It’s easy enough to spot – just check on who regularly buys the Guardian. No, strike that, it’s probably paid for out of our licence fee and then distributed free in Broadcasting House.

Oh, and I’m seeing twitters about how this is distracting from the child abuse. Do these people think that being accused of paedophilia isn’t abuse too?  

Gene Therapy

One of our habits/traditions in England has been weekend papers, read in bed (with tea and coffee and cigarettes for a healthy start to the day). Previously we’ve had these delivered but now that delivery costs more than the papers themselves we’ve started going to fetch them. I enjoy a chuckle at Clarkson, read some of the politics, skip over the celebrity stuff then Caroline removes the puzzle pages which we take off to Crete. This morning, out of all the articles about the economy, Europe, whatever, the one that really caught my attention was a small column quite a number of pages in. It was the most important article there and it was about this:

Regulators yesterday approved the first therapy in the western world that can correct errors in a person’s genetic code.

Europe has approved Glybera to be used against a rare inherited disorder which disrupts fat production in the body.

The treatment uses a virus to counteract LPLD, lipoprotein lipase deficiency, which can led to acute inflammation of the pancreas.

I can remember when this was confined to science fiction and the most speculative science articles about what it might be possible to do (Remember that chat between Roy and Tyrell in Bladerunner?). I can remember when this was a future possibility but maybe in ten or fifteen years if massive hurdles could be leapt. This is about changing something as ineluctable as fate: genetic predestination; the hand of cards you were dealt with in the womb and could never change. 

Cancer Deaths

The main news story on breakfast news this morning is about lung cancer now being the main cause of cancer death in women. This is obviously a terrible thing, isn’t it? A doctor came on explaining the demographics: many decades ago more men than women smoked and now we are seeing the results of women catching up in that respect. He pointed out that there is usually a large delay between smoking and this kind of cancer death, though neglected to mention that the delay is often a life-long one. Deep in this blog you’ll find a graph with lung cancer deaths along one axis and age along the other. People can die of it at any age, but the bulk of them die when they’re over 70. Now, while death of any kind is a terrible thing, are these new statistics a terrible thing too?

That many people die of cancer now is because they’re not dying of the killers of the past. Anyone who has done some research into family history will know about that. Consider for a moment the possibility that an increase in lung cancer deaths in women in the above demographic might be because many of them are not dying of something else. In fact the woman they had on the show had been cured of breast cancer before her lung cancer was discovered. Breast screening, smear tests and the resultant treatments have hammered those kinds of cancers and, of course, the most difficult one to cure remains. Life is 100% fatal – remember that next time some of these TV dipsticks start shouting statistics at you. It is arguable then, that this increase in deaths from lung cancer can be seen in a positive light.

Let me illustrate: Kevlar vests are introduced during a war. Statisticians bemoan the increase in the number of deaths from head wounds.

It's the Population, Stupid.

There’s quite a bit on the news about a hose pipe ban in the East of England and I cannot help but note how the elephant in the room is being ignored (or, read The Departure).

Over just the last 20 years I’ve seen our local town of Maldon expand hugely, acquiring a suburban belt half a mile thick with its superstores, roads and other facilities. This is just one example of what has been happening across large swathes of this country yet, I don’t recollect hearing much about reservoirs being dug (though we do get nimby-ism resulting in this).  

We must also remember how people’s habits have changed since the middle of the last century when the weekly bath, shared by the family, was common. How many showers are pouring every day now, how many washing machines and dish washers churning, how many flush toilets operating? Consider how much water one person now uses each day, which can range from 50 to 150 litres, and multiply that by millions. And consider that the population of London alone is getting on for 8 million.

Another question to ask is where does the rain we do get go? With so much ground now covered with concrete and tarmac it runs off, into drains then into rivers and out to sea. This is also the cause of many of the floods the media have been getting hysterical about in recent years. You may see some old town or village getting submerged, but don’t just blame the weather, blame the housing estates and cities upstream preventing water soaking away and thus passing the buck downstream. Put a waterproof layer over the land and water runs off quickly and, surprise surprise, the land dries up.    

Yes, we have had a couple of dry winters, but they are not the main problem. The problem is infrastructure failing to keep up; infrastructure right at the limit where it fails under just a little extra strain. And of course, it’s the population, stupid.  

Science Fiction Singularity

I had gone off Horizon programs because of how dumbed down they’ve been, how so often they were lacking in content – what content they had often being spread over an hour when, if you cut out all the pointless camera shots, they might have filled twenty minutes – and by the frequent righteous environmental preaching. However, I did record one called ‘Playing God’ (a title that put me off straight away), and enjoyed it immensely.   

This was about synthetic biology – essentially genetic modification – and how far advanced it is now. In the program we see the spider goat – a goat that produces a useful spider silk in its milk – and a pre-production plant for making diesel from GM yeast as simply as alcohol is made from the normal kind. The advances are coming at an ever increasing pace what with people being able to do this stuff in home labs. They can buy ‘bricks’ which are chunks of DNA that express certain characteristics, over the Internet, and mix and match them. For example, a bunch of enthusiasts pasted a jellyfish gene into e-coli to make luminescent bacteria – this in the kind of lab any of us could put together in a garden shed.

This is massive; this is a game changer. As the presenter noted this is like Bill Gates putting together a computer in his garage.

Of course the presenter had to whiffle on about the ethics of it all and whether it should be done. All the objections were based on either the Abrahamic religions or the ones springing from the Church of Environmentalism, and of course the terror of change they like to stir up. However, it is far too late to put this one back in the box.

It has been said (well by me at least) that nothing dates faster than science fiction, and this program brought it home to me. In science fiction there’s a lot of talk about various kinds of singularity. It’s usually related to the creation of AI and is seen as an ‘intellectual event horizon, beyond which the future becomes difficult to understand or predict’. It occurs to me that science fiction itself is facing its own singularity of exactly the same kind. We’ve reached the stage now where between writing a book and it being published, part or all of the content of that book can go out of date. Of course with e-books the gap between writing and publishing can be closed but, in maybe just a little time, we’ll reach the point where even as we speculate or extrapolate we will be going out of date, then the point when we’ll simply be well behind the curve.

There has been (for a very long time) much talk about ‘the death of science fiction’.  Maybe that will occur when the need for sensawunda, which we all look for in SF, is supplied by the news every day, or even in our day-to-day lives. If that happens I’m not sure I’ll be particularly upset about it.   

Stem Cell Success

Hitting the sack last night to read for a while I did not get to see the 10.00 o’clock news (probably a good idea) but I did hear some mention of a stem cells success. On Twitter this morning I picked up on a story about two people, who were losing their sight, being treated with embryonic stem cells. One of them, a 51-year old graphic artist who was ‘legally blind’ i.e. could read nothing on an eye-chart, and a 78-year old suffering from macular degeneration.

A week after having cells derived from a days-old embryo injected into her eye, the graphic artist could count fingers, and after one month she could read the top five letters on the eye chart. She can see more colour and contrast, has started using her computer, and for the first time in years can read her watch and thread a needle. The macular degeneration patient recently went to the mall for the first time in years.

There’s some about the possible dangers of using stem cells in the article, how they can differentiate into the wrong sort of cell. I read a story somewhere (which might be apocryphal) of someone being treated for Alzheimer’s and ending up with bone growing inside their brain. Then there are the moral issues. Being an atheist myself and more inclined to the idea that intelligence is more to be valued than species this is not an issue to me. And isn’t it also the case that adult stem cells can now be used and that ways are already being found to multiply them?

This from 2006:
Researchers of the Whitehead Institute have discovered a way to multiply an adult stem cell 30-fold, an expansion that offers tremendous promise for treatments such as bone marrow transplants and perhaps even gene therapy.

"A 30-fold increase is ten times higher than anyone's achieved before," says Lodish, senior author on the paper.

Perhaps any biologists here or those who have read up on the subject can elaborate?

About Those Breast Implants...

So, the moment I heard this story about possible problems with industrial-grade silicon breast implants my knee-jerk reaction was, ‘Hey, you wanna buy bigger tits in France then that’s your problem and I shouldn’t have to pay for it!’ Then I thought about it for a bit and completely changed my mind. I’m guessing that someone who has shelled out for breast implants in France is someone with cash to spare on cosmetic surgery and is unlikely to be a dole scrounging parasite. Therefore, it is probably the case that they’ve been paying into the NHS, and quite likely they have paid in a damned sight more than they’ve had in return, so why shouldn’t they have medical care if there’s a problem with those implants?

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NHS doctors do not have the right to lecture us on our lifestyle choices or refuse care. They especially do not have that right when we are forced to pay them. I’ve written this before but I'll write it again: it is like going into a chemist’s to buy Aspirin, paying your money, then being asked why you need the pills. When you say you have a hangover the assistant replies, ‘You shouldn’t drink so much and, because you have, that’s your own fault so I’m not giving you your Aspirin, but I’m keeping your money.’

Of course while this has been going on some NHS berk was on TV connecting these breast implants to smoking and drinking. ‘The NHS has to pay for smokers and drinkers!’ she said, righteously offended. Okay, so the NHS has gone out and earned its own money has it? And it is now having to shell out on those evil smokers and drinkers is it? Erm, no, Mrs NHS Berk, that’s OUR money you’ve got there. We gave it to you on the basis that you would look after us when we’re ill. I don’t recollect anything about you being able to pillory people who aren’t behaving as you would wish. You can’t start changing the rules after the fact.

Incidentally, smokers provide huge revenue for the government and, no matter how the righteous try to twist the figures, they cost the NHS less than non-smokers. Did you think dying young was more expensive than the cost keeping you dribbling and in incontinence pants in an OAP home?  

This is a long and slippery slope, whatever your opinion about smoking and drinking, or fat people (or rather, how much you have responded to the constant indoctrination, de-normalization and demonization from NGOs, government and the NHS itself). Where does it stop? Why, for example, should we pay for the rescue and care of a climber who has fallen off a mountain? Why should we pay for any sports injury? Why should we pay for maternity stuff and childcare? I mean, having children is a lifestyle choice nowadays, isn't it? Why should we pay for that guy cutting off his finger – he obviously wasn’t paying attention when using that Stanley knife. Why should we pay for that woman with malaria? It’s her fault she went on holiday. Why should we pay for that guy with AIDs? He should have used a condom. In fact, on that basis, we shouldn’t pay for any STDs.

And so continue the excuses for refusing treatment because a socialist experiment is, as always, running out of money.

The NHS was supposed to be free for all UK citizens at the point of use, but it is not. Foreigners get treatment they’ve paid nothing towards. We get charged exorbitant prices for medications that can be bought over-the-counter in other countries for a fraction of the cost. NHS dental care costs the same as private dental care elsewhere. Prescription charges are uneven, applying in England but not if you happen to live anywhere else in the UK. The NHS should be broken up and privatised and the only enforced requirement for UK citizens should be medical insurance, which would lead to real choices about your medical care. And, if that happened, the dependence on customer money rather than ‘free government money’ would rapidly shut up such righteous pricks like Mrs NHS Berk.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

We went to watch The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo yesterday – a film we were looking forward to after seeing that Daniel Craig was in it, and after one glimpse at the actress playing Lisbeth Salander. The title sequence was gobsmacking: James Bondish but in an oily and dark and somewhat disturbing way, thereafter I found the music a bit annoying at first and got that feeling of, ‘Oh dear, they’re doing the intrusive music to cover the crap content,’ but this turned out not to be the case.

As Blomkvist Daniel Craig was excellent, but then he’s excellent in just about any role he takes, though of course he is always Daniel Craig. I’d add that he was excellent in Quantum of Solace and that the reason the film was crap had more to do with the story and direction. Rooney Mara, as Salander, was simply brilliant. I think my criticism of the Swedish version was that both these roles weren’t filled adequately and, certainly, the Salander of that version wasn’t anywhere near enough as edgy, dangerous and disturbing. I reckon it was Mara’s bleached eyebrows that tipped it. The rest of the cast were great too. Christopher Plumber of course could be relied on to deliver the goods, and Salander’s new guardian did a very good job of being thoroughly detestable.

I could see where bits of the book had been excised and I could understand the reasons why. A large book of course has to be cut to fit into the film format and the need for the plot to head in a relatively straight line to the end. I was slightly annoyed by the cutting of what I will call the ‘Australian bit’ but even then could see why it might have been removed. It didn’t fit the tone and texture of the film and was, in essence, after the dramatic ending - subtext.

Thoroughly recommended.  

Resolution ... well, sort of.

At last, Christmas is over, the New Year is beginning and I can get on… I quite often feel like that at this time of year and, since this is resolution time, many other do too. Now the compulsory gorging, socialising and alcohol excess has come to an end. Now it’s time to sober up and look at the costs.

The first cost I noted last night. Unable to get to sleep I sat up reading a book. While reading I looked down at my torso and noted that it’s measurement front to back is now more than the one from side to side. This is despite doing twenty sit-ups and press-ups every morning for months, and cycling 16 to 24 miles a week. It really is time for me to do something about my big fat gut.

January is our zero alcohol month so that’ll knock off the calories, prove to myself that I’m not an unrecoverable alcoholic and allow my liver to recover… Then again, I read recently an article titled ‘Janopause detox does more harm than good’. Apparently ‘doctors say’ this is medically futile and fails to rejuvenate the liver. Yet, the liver does regenerate very quickly so how can a month off the booze not be a good thing? Of course, reading between the lines it soon becomes evident that this is an article patched together by the anti-alcohol lobby – the kind of people who want the pointless minimum pricing on alcohol. Taking a month off apparently encourages people, who are of course all idiots, to think that they are immune to the effects of alcohol for the rest of the year. And we must all stick to the government advised limit on alcohol units … oh yeah, let’s revisit that (have to pay to see it now):

The safe limits were introduced in 1987 after the Royal College of Physicians produced its first health report on alcohol misuse. In A Great and Growing Evil: The Medical Consequences of Alcohol Abuse, the college warned that a host of medical problems – including liver disease, strokes, heart disease, brain disease and infertility – were associated with excessive drinking. The report was the most significant study into alcohol-related disorders to date.

But Richard Smith, the former editor of the British Medical Journal and a member of the college’s working party on alcohol, told The Times yesterday that the figures were not based on any clear evidence. He remembers “rather vividly” what happened when the discussion came round to whether the group should recommend safe limits for men and women.

“David Barker was the epidemiologist on the committee and his line was that ‘We don’t really have any decent data whatsoever. It’s impossible to say what’s safe and what isn’t’.

“And other people said, ‘Well, that’s not much use. If somebody comes to see you and says ‘What can I safely drink?’ you can’t say ‘Well, we’ve no evidence. Come back in 20 years and we’ll let you know’. So the feeling was that we ought to come up with something. So those limits were really plucked out of the air. They weren’t really based on any firm evidence at all.

In fact, take a look at this bit of QI on this matter, then google the subject and try to find anything about this in the righteous bansturbation proliferating across the Internet.

I’ll also be ramping up the exercise and cutting down on what I stick in my mouth. I often start this off by spending a day eating nothing – the next day finding I’m no more hungry in the morning than I was the day before – thereafter, eating less and having further ‘days off’ like this shrinks my stomach so I just don’t feel as hungry. Of course this is, apparently, a bad thing to do too. I disagree. What the hell is fat for? It is a way of storing up calories for lean times. So what happens if you don’t eat? You burn up fat rather than the half a pack of chocolate biscuits you ate last night. It’s quite a simple equation.

Okay, I’m off for a cycle now.  

Out in the Wilderness!

Apparently David Cameron has cast us into isolation and the icy wilderness outside Europe, if you swallow whole the propaganda belched up by the BBC. As someone noted, on one blog I was reading, this is the kind of isolation of the one passenger who failed to board the Titanic on its maiden voyage. Of course the piles and piles of bullshit here are high and ripe. First off, Britain is not the one out of twenty-seven as the BBC would have us believe. And as far as I can gather (I’m no expert) he said ‘no’ at a meeting to discuss having a meeting to work out some way of promoting stability. There was, in fact, no treaty to veto but a draft treaty. If you want more detail, check here.

However, one wonders why sticking a financial transactions tax in there which will screw money out of Britain’s economy has to be part of the deal. Could it possibly be a further power grab that actually has no effect on the vast amount of money countries owe and how, economically, they are rapidly heading down the toilet? Could it be a little bit of payback for Britain’s failure to kowtow to Brussels and join the Euro? Could it also be Merkel, Sarkozy and crew looking for someone to blame –Britain – when it all goes tits-up as it inevitably will?

Nice to note the BBC telling outright lies too. How the financial sector is just an insignificant part of Britain’s economy when it actually accounts for 10% of national income. Meanwhile the reporters all looked like they wanted to be wearing black arm bands as they promoted doom and gloom about Britain not going ‘Baaa!’ with the rest of the sheep. They then delayed for as long as possible before letting Cameron put his side of, ‘We’re not in the Euro, these changes are against our national interest, so I said no, okay?’ Of course I’ve no doubt that later that ‘no’ will become a sort of ‘no’ and eventually slide into being a ‘yes’ because Cameron is as big a europhile prick as most chiselling politicians.

Update:
Incidentally, what are these sanctions they're talking about for profligate governments? It hardly seems logical to financially penalize a government that's overspent: Hey, I find you guilty of shooting yourself in the foot. I am, therefore, going to punish you by shooting you in the other foot.

Higgs Boson

It appears that the good people at CERN have either discovered or are close to discovering the Higgs boson or ‘God particle’:

Rumors swirled today that data may have been found that supports the Higgs boson at ~126 GeV. Reliable sources have speculated the data will show a certainty, that something’s there, to about 4.2 sigma, the threshold for official detection is 5 sigma, but that only triggers many rounds of attempted confirmation.

Physics blogs are alive with chatter about a possible sign of the Higgs boson – or perhaps an entirely unexpected particle – in data from the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland. But the claim has not gone through the experiment's vetting process and could easily turn out to be wrong, physicists say.

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Why does this matter? I submit that knowledge for its own sake is a good thing, but also, who knows what sort of technologies such a discovery would lead to? Similarly, what kind of territory are we being led into by those FTL neutrinos? Here’s an article that purports to explain why the Higgs boson matters but, for myself, one of the commenters nailed my feelings about both this particle and those neutrinos:

Translation: the standard model describes a universe that doesn’t actually exist, and so instead of conceding some fundamental defect in the standard model, they assume it must be right and instead there is a missing piece of the puzzle. Much like dark matter and dark energy, the Higgs boson is another epicycle.

And for illuminaton:

Slang for bad science
In part, due to misunderstandings about how deferent/epicycle models worked, "adding epicycles" has come to be used as a derogatory comment in modern scientific discussion. The term might be used, for example, to describe continuing to try to adjust a theory to make its predictions match the facts.

Yup, there's a lot of that about.

Late Turner Prize Entry?

Apparently a late Turner Prize entry said to depict the failure of capitalism in the modern world didn't quite make the grade:

A fleet of Ferraris and a Lamborghini Diablo have been involved in one of the most expensive accidents in history after a high speed pile-up in Japan.
  
Meanwhile it is rumoured that an early visitor to the gallery was arrested for planking on the prizewinning exhibit:

Petrol Price

Oh isn't George Osborn generous in not putting up the tax on petrol. Now, when you buy a litre of fuel at the pump for £1.40 you're only paying at tax rate of 142% - that's 83p in tax. But of course you need to pay such huge rates to finance all those enormous and completely unfair public sector pensions. But we must also not forget the billions the DFID is throwing at other countries, what we are paying for more fucking useless windmills and for another climate change jolly somewhere, or the billions thrown at the corrupt and totalitarian EU, or that biased advocate of leftwingery the BBC, or the lazy fucks on welfare, or the overpaid jerks in our councils, or the... ok, I'll stop there.

Back to work so I can pay for all those dicks out there.

FTL Neutrinos Update

Apparently the ftl neutrinos have been refuted:

Their claim is that in getting to superluminal velocities, the neutrinos should lose energy by producing photons and electron/anti-electron pairs (“e+e- pairs”), in a process “analogous to Cherenkov radiation” (the “blue glow” in nuclear reactor water, so beloved of movie-makers).

“A very significant deformation of the neutrino energy spectrum and an abundant production of photons and e+e- pairs should be observed,” the ICARUS group says.

This hasn’t happened, they assert: “We find that the neutrino energy distribution of the ICARUS events … agrees with the expectations for an undisturbed spectrum of the CERN neutrino beam.

“Our results therefore refute a superluminal interpretation of the OPERA result,” the group writes.

Okay, who can see the huge hole in the logic here? Let me explain: by conventional theories the neutrinos can't travel faster than light but, by conventional theory, if they do go ftl, they should do the above. This is what is known in physics as having your cake, the other guy's cake, and eating both while disappearing up your own arsehole.

Warp Factor One Million

So the guys at CERN did another test with their superluminal neutrinos:

By tweaking the experiment in an attempt to address a potential flaw in their original experiment, they again showed that the neutrons arrived at the Italian site some 60 billionths of a second faster than if they had been travelling at the speed of light.

I do have to wonder with measurements like this if they’re getting into some error bar, some tolerance limit on actually measuring the speed of light. It’s the kind of thing that rears its head quite often in science and is quite often ignored by the mainstream media. Anyone who has worked in engineering knows about tolerances and the impossibility of exact measurement.

Nevertheless it is all exciting stuff (for a nerd like me). The MINOS team at Fermilab are going to try and replicate the results, but it’s interesting that they had similar results before but which lay within a margin for error. So, what does this all mean? Some people are already speculating:

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The new findings, available here, also further strengthen a particular scenario: The neutrinos do not travel with superluminal velocity all the way. They only ‘jump’ a small initial distance shorter than 20 meters, after which they settle back and travel as usual with speeds below that of the speed of light. This initial jump would occur at speeds that are more than ten times the speed of light, perhaps even millions of times the speed of light.

I don’t really have to elaborate on why I particularly like this speculation, do I?