Writing challenge 23rd November 2011 - Jack Frost

Lewis Steinberg looked out of his side window. All he could see was the blue Arctic Ocean far below him, where was the ice? He looked again as they crossed over Tasiilaq village fronted by Kong Olaf Havn, the deep anchorage offshore, sheltered at its back from the Southern winds by the 2,000 metre bulk of Qaqqartivakajik - Sailor’s Peak. There were no icebergs in the Havn, unknown for this time of year. The usual procession of the monsters Southwards down Ammassaliq Fjord was also missing.

            ‘What do you think is going on Jeff?’ he said, looking across to his Captain in the left  seat who was flying the 747- 400 on this leg from Heathrow to New York.

            ‘I’ve no idea Lew,’ said Jeffrey Cognos, ‘the weather is normal but there is no sea ice and no free icebergs. All we can do is report it to the scientists when we get to Kennedy and they can figure it out. Something weird is happening, that’s for damn sure.’

Sven Rasmussen of the Danish Geological Survey leaned over the side of the open fibreglass boat that was being driven with some elan by Dinas, who delighted in the power of the twin Evinrude 115 HP outboard motors clamped to the transom. Sven had hired Dinas and his boat to carry out some survey work around the fjords. Dinas had his own tourist business so with this being the off season, he was glad to have the business from the DGS. Normally it would be impossible to cream down Ammassaliq Fjord in February as it would be frozen solid to a depth of over a metre with many icebergs locked in place. Today it was an expanse of open water, shining cerulean blue under a clear sky.

            Sven was taking samples of the water to check the salinity. Normally it would be less salty than the open sea because of the icebergs melting. Today it was as saline as the sea. He asked Dinas to travel North and to get as close as possible to the snout of the famous Rasmussen glacier. It was not named after Sven, much as he would like it to have been, but after the 19^th century explorer.

            ‘How am I going to shoot enough seals to feed my family if I can’t get my sled and dogs out on the ice?’ asked Dinas. ‘I need at least twenty seals a season. When are you clever scientists going to figure out what is going on so that we can get everything back to normal? I think you low latitude people have stuffed us Inuit yet again.’

            ‘I’ve got no answers,’ said Sven but I am doing my best to find out.’

            They approached the snout of the normally highly productive glacier and could see something strange was also going on here. The glacier front normally floated out into the bay until it could not support its own weight and then great house-sized lumps of 15,000 year old  ice calved off and were set free as icebergs. Today the glacier front was sloping down to the sea and disappearing under the surface. There were no icebergs being produced. Sven had spent many years in Greenland but he had never seen anything like this. He asked Dinas to moor his boat near the ice so that he could jump on to it and collect some samples. When he tested then, he found that the ice was 2% more dense than normal and so it no longer floated on the sea water. This explained the sinking glacier front, the lack of icebergs and the dearth of sea ice but what was causing it?

The canteen was nearly full. The scientists were celebrating a very successful run of the LHC. They had collected a mass of data and would start analysing it in the morning but now it was a time to celebrate. Normally alcohol was not allowed at CERN but today an exception had been permitted by the staid Swiss Head of Science. Most had a glass of whiskey in hand and the day’s success was toasted. Alice Fermi from the USA looked at her half empty glass and asked her colleague Ernest Dirac from the UK if he could see anything strange in the glass.

            ‘Well, it’s unusual to see you drinking whiskey that you have paid for,’ said Ernie, ‘Apart from that it looks OK to me.

            ‘Come with me to the bar then,’ said Alice.

            ‘A large glass of water please, with plenty of ice,’ said Alice to the barman.

Ernest looked in astonishment as the ice cubes sank to the bottom of the glass.

            ‘I was afraid of this happening, the tau neutrinos we have been producing and sending down to Italy have spread through the globe and have changed the crystalline structure of water ice so that it is now heavier than water.’

            ‘So what?’ said Ernie, ‘ it’s no big deal, it just means we will have to stir our drinks a bit more to keep them cool.’

            ‘It is a bit more than that.’ said Alice. ‘In fact it is the beginning of the end of the world. Every time it snows, the snow and ice will sink to the bottom of the ocean and that water will be lost from the water cycle. Eventually there will be no more rain and the Earth will dry out and turn into one big desert. There will be no crops, so no food so we will all die.’

            ‘Yes, we shouldn’t have messed around with those FTL tau neutrinos.’ acknowledged Ernie.

A plain meerkat’s guide to economics.

It seems to me that the world economic system is in a bit of a mess at the moment and, as I have an hour or so free, I thought I would give the politicians and economists a few tips on how to sort it out.

Before I start, I feel I should list my economic qualifications so that you can judge my authority and knowledge in this field.

None.

I have relied a great deal on advice from that famous economist, however, Sir John Milton Keynes.

I was also inspired by a chart on a BBC web site that took my attention while I was browsing through the blog of a well known published author at:-http://klquirkytales.blogspot.com/2011/11/news-round-up.html

I recommend this blog, do have a read.

So lets get the Euro zone sorted first and then get on to the difficult stuff. The problem all seems to be about who owes how much to whom so take the UK and Ireland as an example. The UK owes Ireland €113.5 bn and Ireland owes the UK €104.5 bn. Now even my simple maths can cope with that and see that the UK owes Ireland €9 bn net. OK that’s simplistic and I know it is different people and companies that owe different banks different amounts but why not look at it in a simple way. I suggest we set up a bank in the UK and call it, oh I dunno, say, The Bank of England and tranfer all the UK to Ireland debts to that bank. Do the same in Ireland, perhaps call this bank, err, The Bank of Ireland. The two banks then net off the debts with the end result that the UK owes Ireland €9 bn. Doesn’t seem so bad now does it? All we need to do is cut down on MP’s expenses for a couple of years and we could pay that off. Think how much we will be saving in interest payments. Now we could do the same with the other countries – if they all had central banks. They do? That makes it even easier. Now all the companies in the UK that were going broke because of all the interest they were paying on their debts are not paying any so they can afford to invest and take on people and start selling to each other. I think this is called economic growth. All these people that are now employed are now not drawing benefits but paying income tax and national insurance so the governments income increases so the deficit can be paid down. This is called a virtuous circle.

There is one big catch to all of this which I am sure you will have noticed, being clever Open University students. Where does the Bank of England get the money from to pay the aforementioned €9 bn that we still owe to Ireland. Well, perhaps they could print some money. What! They already have? Where did it go? I didn’t see much of it, did you? You say they paid it to the banks? Don’t be silly. Why would they do that? Oh, I Asee. Yes, I guess someone has to pay those salaries and bonuses to those poor, unappreciated bankers ( Did you know that ‘b’ is pronounced ‘w’ in German?  Sorry, I digress. ). Here is a different idea. Why not get the Bank of England to print a bit more money – say £100 bn ( None of that Johnny Foreigner Euro stuff ) . I think the population of everyone over sixteen years of age in the UK is about 50 million. Do the math as the Seppos say and you give every adult in the UK £2,000 in vouchers that has to be spent on goods that have been produced in the UK, within 3 months. Wouldn’t this produce more growth than giving it to banks who will buy gold bars and stick it in the vaults – if there is any left after the salaries and bonuses have been paid?

I know it is a bit more difficult because of the difference in owings between some countries. For example, Italy owes France €309 bn and France owes Italy €37.6 bn which means that Italy owes France €271.4 bn net – a huge sum, so what is to be done there?  Italy could invent a new currency – perhaps call it the Lira or something similar and tie it to the Euro. Then devalue the Lira against the Euro by 10% each year. This means that Italian exports in France will get cheaper year by year and so France will buy more of them. French goods will become more expensive in Italy so Italians will buy less of them. This means that the net balance will slowly reduce. To make this politically acceptable to private Italian savers with money in the bank, their accounts should be topped up by the 10% loss each year by the Italian central bank so that they will not withdraw their Euros before they are converted to Lira. After about five years, the net debt will be reduced dramatically, the 10% ‘girdle’ will be removed from the Lira and it will be allowed to find its own level which, at the moment would be at about 50% of the Euro so Italian industry would become very competative again and economic growth would take off. Well, until lunchtime anyway.

The same thing should happen with all the world debt that China are holding. The renminbi is badly over valued at the moment and should have some downward pressure applied by agreement. If the Chinese government refuses then tariffs equal to the required devaluation will be applied by all countries around the world to exactly the same level. This will have the same effect as devaluation of the Chinese currency.

Simples!

Next problem please.

Alexander Potempkin – Moscow 2011

References:-

The General Theory of Employment, Interest, Money and Meerkats – Sir John Milton Keynes 2010

http://klquirkytales.blogspot.com/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15748696

Writing Challenge 15th November

The Great Escape

Daisy had herd that there were changes afoot on the farm. She and her sisters had talked about what was coming during their walks to and from the milking parlour. They had seen the new sheds being built, they all agreed that something had to be done.

            The radio was always on when they got to the parlour so they were able to keep up with the news because Henry the milker was a Radio Four man. Daisy liked John Humphries best because he knew which buttons to press on the politicians to get them to make fools of themselves. James Naughty was just too full of himself, he didn’t realise that the programme was about the people he interviewed, not about him. As for the others …

            The programme was full of the news that the UN had declared that the world’s human population would pass seven billion today. Daisy wasn’t sure how many that was but knew it was a bigger herd than hers and surely it was too many. How would you manage to milk all those animals every day? They all settled down quickly because John was on today and there was going to be an interview with a man from Defra. This could be interesting, what was he going to talk about?

            ‘Thank you for coming in today, Minister,’ said John, who was always polite before sticking the knife in.

            ‘Lovely manners,’ said Daisy to one of her sisters, Gertie, who was in the stall next to her.

            ‘A real gentleman,’ agreed Gertie.

            ‘With the world  human population increasing so rapidly, what will be the effect on dairy and beef production, given that humans are building on more of the land that has traditionally been used for grazing cattle?’

            ‘The answer is intensification.’ said the minister. ‘We can no longer afford the luxury of allowing cattle to ramble aimlessly around pasture land. We can bring the cattle indoors,  grow feed crops intensively and so get as many as three crops a year from the old pastures. My civil servants have estimated that we can increase dairy and beef production by a factor of three if it is done properly.’

            ‘What about the welfare of the animals?’ asked John. ‘What will they do cooped up all year in buildings with a lot less space, no fresh air and only silage to eat, no fresh grass?’

            ‘They will just have to put up with the changes, even humans will have less space so we all have to contribute our share. We will need more of them to feed the growing human race.’

            ‘That seems a little unfair, minister. It is humans that are over breeding and yet it is the animals that will have to suffer.’

            ‘Good one, John,’ said Daisy quietly

            ‘Stick it to him John,’ grunted Gertie

            ‘I’m afraid that is just how it is going to have to be,’ said the minister

            ‘Thank you minister’ said John, always polite, knowing that he had just got the minister to upset several thousand animal rights activists.

            ‘Now for sport with Rob Bonnet.’

            ‘I don’t want to spend all my life indoors eating only processed food,’ moaned Gertie as they wandered back to their pasture, looking forward to a late breakfast of lush, fresh grass in the morning sunshine with the birds singing for them – cow heaven. ‘What can we do though?’

            ‘I, for one am not going to stand for it, lets call a cow council tonight to decide what we can do,’ said Daisy defiantly. ‘Think of all the methane from those extra cattle and the effect it will have on global warming. Oops, excuse me’

            They all gathered in the evening gloom. There were no humans around to hear what was going on and they probably wouldn’t understand their Friesian accent anyway. Billy the bull was sent over the corner of ten acre, he was too stupid to understand what it was all about. They would try to explain it to him later.

            The herd discussed the situation and came to the reluctant decision that something had to be done. They agreed on two action points. They would not allow the humans to breed more cows and Daisy would be dispatched to spread the message to as many herds as she could reach. They decided on a code name for it: Operation Lysistrata.

            It was going to be difficult for them all, perhaps Billy would be affected more than most, it was all he had been bred for. They scouted around the edge of the field, looking for a way out for Daisy. They found it, along the stream. She was sent on her way with the good wishes of all of her sisters in the herd.

            The revolution was on, no more bovine bonking.

Tales from the Cafe - published today

A group of us from a recent 'Writing Fiction' course from the Open University have been working on an anthology of short stories. It is published today as an e book.
Here are the links:-

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/103508

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B006584WHS

It is called Tales from the Cafe, hope you enjoy it.

Any comments on it are very welcome here.

Dimensions

I lay in bed. I look at the wall facing me, at the foot of the bed. I move my gaze to the right, following the wall. The wall stops, there is another wall at right angles stopping it from going any farther. There is a corner between them where they join – two walls but only one corner. I follow the corner upwards to where it hits another wall. This one is called the ceiling. It is at right angles to the other two. Now we have three walls and three corners. The three corners descend towards each other and meet to form a super corner. What is next. Ah, another wall. This one must be at right angles to the other three and, when it is in place it must produce how many corners – I suggest six. The problem is where you put this wall to satisfy the conditions. I try this wall in different positions, nothing works. Something is missing. We need another place. What is missing must be the fourth dimension. Problem solved, we have a tesseract.

Now we have to test the hypothesis.

If you unfold a square – two dimensions, you end up with four lines – one dimension.

If you unfold a cube – three dimensions, you end up with six squares – two dimensions

If you unfold a tesseract – four dimensions, you should end up with cubes in three dimensions but how many? Using the previous examples, the answer seems to be twice as many objects as there are dimensions, so eight. Now we have four dimensions in one room.

This would be a good way to build a space saving house. Build eight cubes, call them rooms and then fold them into the fourth dimension. ( You might need to hire a special tool to do this ). No corridors are needed because all of the rooms are next to each other. This house only takes up as much space as one room but it has eight rooms, each one is as big as the house.

We can draw points, lines, squares and cubes on paper in two dimensions. Can we draw a tesseract reduced by two dimensions and draw it on paper in two dimensions? The answer, surprisingly, is yes.

wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Dimension_levels.svg

The most recent physics, string theory, predicts we live in a space with ten dimensions, M theory requires eleven  This is where it gets difficult. Where do you fold all these dimensions? It seems that we can just about visualise and cope with eight cubes folded into a tesseract in four dimensions but eleven dimensions? They must all be very tightly folded. Quantum physics, of course stipulates space with an infinite number of dimensions.

So far we have stayed in the room but if you start at any corner where two walls meet and then follow this corner until you come to a third wall, you will be in a super corner where the three walls meet. If you get right into the corner then you are at a point. A point has position but no dimensions. If you now go further into the corner, past the point with no dimensions you suddenly burst out into a different universe where there are no walls, no limits and no corners, only cabbages and flowers, butterflies and bees. Different rules. How many dimensions? Is colour a dimension, is smell? What about time?