Wednesday 21 December 2011

The end of the world in 2012 ?

The Pyramid at Tenochtitlan.

He had ridden the long trail from Chichén Itzá and he was tired, very tired. He was in no mood to deal with the jobsworth on the gate who was certain to be a Mayan. They always were in the front of the queue for any job that involved bossing people about. Mayans were good at languages and often went into the priesthood and so looked down on the likes of him, a mere Toltec. The fact that he had designed and overseen the building of the fabled pyramid at Chichén Itzá didn’t change a thing, he knew he would be seen as an artisan during his time here in Tenochtitlan.
      ‘Name?’ said the jobsworth, consulting his clipboard. Why did they always have to have clipboards?
      ‘Itzpapaloti,’ he answered, thus confirming his Toltec roots.
      ‘Well sunshine or whatever you call yourself, you can’t come on this site wivout a hi vis jacket.’
      ‘Why?’ asked Itzpapaloti in a spirit of innocent enquiry.
      ‘Health and safety rules, innit, people on site need to be able to see you.’
      ‘How is your eyesight,’ asked Itzpapaloti who was seeing an opportunity to enjoy himself.
      ‘Excellent mate,’ said the Mayan neanderthal, ‘I saw you coming when you and your donkey was at least a kalkaan down the trail.’
      ‘Mule,’ he corrected reasonably. ‘You could see me that far away? I am impressed.’
      ‘Yes, us Mayans are known for our good eyesight, it’s in our jeans, see.’
      ‘So, if you could see me from a kalkaan away, why do you need me to wear a Hi Vis jacket to see me just a couple of kaans away on the other side of the site?’
      ‘Err, rules innit, more than my jobs worth to let you in without one.’ Itzpapaloti had had his fun so he pulled a Hi Vis jacket out of one of the saddlebags and put it on.
      ‘I am the Chief Engineer for this project and will be here for the next five years so we need to get to know each other, what is your name my good man?’ He was really good at patronising people when he put his mind to it.
      ‘Err, it’s Ah Chun Caan.’ He put out his hand, taking Chun by surprise so he took it for a shake, he wouldn’t normally deign to shake hands with an Toltec. Itzpapaloti had a quick look around the site and then went back down to the village to fix up some digs.

‘Why are we building this pyramid Master?’ asked Tlaloc who was named after the God of rain and vegetation and destined by his name to be a helper.
      ‘The King wants us to build a calendar and I convinced him that we should use a pyramid to take the astronomical observations so that we can calibrate and check the operation of the calendar. It will take us about five years to build it so it will keep us fed for at least as long as that.’
      ‘That sounds good to me,’said Tlaloc. ‘What does your name mean by the way?’
      ‘I am named after the God of butterflies and I am destined to be a leader.’
      ‘But why does the King want us to build a calendar?’
      ‘As far as I can work out, it is something that the Chief Mayan priest told the King was necessary but I don’t understand it myself. I think I’ll go and ask him. He is an old friend of mine. His name is Chilam Balam, because he is a shaman.’
      Itzpapaloti made an appointment to see the priest at three in the afternoon of the following Tuesday, straight after he had finished the last sacrifice for the day. He walked into his office as he was washing the blood off his hands and drying the ceremonial sacrifice knife.
      ‘Hi Chilly, how is the shaman thing going?’ He asked to break the ice.
      ‘Hi at you Itzy,’ said his old mate, they had been in shaman school together for the first couple of terms but he had dropped out. Fainting at the site of blood is not an ideal qualification for a Mayan priest. ‘It’s not too bad but the supply of virgins for the daily sacrifice is drying up, young people just don’t seem to have any ambition these days.’
      ‘So, tell me about the pyramid we are building, what is it all about?’ Itzpapaloti asked.
      ‘Grab yourself a cup of cocoa and I’ll tell you the story,’ said Chilam Balam. He made himself comfortable in his office hammock while Itzpapaloti took the one nearest the door, you never know with a priest, and he started to tell him this story.

The King, Yik'in Chan K'awiil, was getting old and, like many old people, he had fixed ideas of how he liked things to be. Unlike many old people, he also had the power to make things just how he liked them. Anyone who disagreed with him tended to become rather dead. One of the things he disliked most was watery cabbage so he wanted something done about it. The priests got together and set up a research project with funding they weasled out of the King.
      After a year of effort the Shaman Onan Research Project ( SORP ) came up with an idea that worked. It produced cooked cabbage that was flavoursome but free of excess water. They called it a solid and liquid phase brasica separator for long, or colender for short. Because of the secrecy required, they obviously could not show their prototype to anyone but presented some of the cabbage produced by it to the King. He was delighted and authorised them to spend as much Toltec gold as necessary to build a production model.
      They put the job of Project Manager out to tender. After many interviews, they selected Mixcoatl. He had never built a colender before but he seemed to know what he was talking about although his spelling left a lot to be desired. He set about designing the calendar and decided to use an astronomical observation system to ensure the angles, from which the dates were to be calculated, were precise.

The best shape for this observatory turned out to be a truncated pyramid so the site was selected, the ground cleared, materials selected and ordered and the construction started.
Itzpapaloti now understood what he had to do so he first upgraded his CAD system with a new patch and then set to work on the detailed design work. One thing he didn’t realise was that there was a bug in the software upgrade he had used which meant that each betán was undersize by one chan. This was very important as it changed the size of each dimention in the pyramid and so the angles observed by the astronomers. These results were then computed and the ITC rule number 37 came into play. This says that if your inputs are rubbish then so will your outputs be, however good your computer. This is known as ‘Garbage in, garbage out’ or ‘GIGO.’
      This wasn’t a problem for the Mayans as it just meant that the end of the world was predicted to be a long time in the future in 2012 instead of the actual year which is, of course, 3,017,237. The problem came when …well you know the rest.
      The other problem was that Yik'in Chan K'awiil never did get the tasty dry cabbage he wanted and several priests became dead quite quickly.
     
The moral of this story?
      Well I suppose it has to be that you should ensure that your Project Manager should be able to spell and your Chief Engineer should understand computer software version control.
      OK, I know it’s not the end of the world if they don’t get it right but … I said it’s NOT the end of the world.
     

Monday 19 December 2011

Writing challenge 14th December 2011

The Office Party
They had seen the weather forecast so decided to hold the party in the big barn. Daisy was back from her trip to alert the other nearby herds to Operation Lysistrata so she and Gertie set about arranging and decorating the barn. They arranged the straw bales around the edge so that some of the older animals could sit and chat while the youger ones were dancing in the clear area in the middle. It was quite difficuly putting up the streamers and bunting, cows aren’t really designed for climbing step ladders and pushing in drawing pins but they managed.
      The pigs had volunteered to arrange the food so there were plenty of apples from the orchard and even some cider that they had been fermenting for three months. They had negotialed a deal with Henrietta and her sisters so there were about three dozen eggs. Henrietta had teased Porky about providing some ham to go with the eggs and then accused him of  not being fully committed to the party when he refused.
      Gertie had brought the cream so she made lashings of custard to go with the stewed apple desert. She saved some to make some special porridge for Billy the Bull as he hadn’t been getting his oats recently, well since Operation Lysistrata started really, apart from that escapade with Florence who had been feeling a little frisky one day. She had been told off quite sharply by her sisters in the herd and she assured them it wouldn’t happen again.
      The goats were acting up again and refused to bring any food. This was not a problem for them as they would eat anything, probably even Terry’s Dwarf Bread if necessary but they were always good on the Carry Oche as their eyesite was excellent and they usually got several 180’s during the evening.
      The swallows had been invited but they took a rain check until the spring.
      It was seven o’clock, time to start the fun. The animals turned up on time, even the ewes were there, looking sheepish as they were a little woolly about time. Sean shepherded them in, took them across to the bar where he got them started on the cider.
      The owls were wisely late as they knew they would be the last to leave.
      It was a good evening and things started to liven up as the cider went down. The dancing was in full swing to the music of The Wurzels. John Hunphries sang an excellent solo rendition of ‘Old MacDonald had a farm’. Some of the animals argued about who could make the best farm noises during the chorus.
      During the band’s break Sean got up and sang his party piece, I know there’ll never be another ewe. The goats’ choir were persuaded to sing a couple of songs, gruffly and even the mini goatlet kids joined in.
      As the evening wore on and the cider level sank, some of the animals got a little tipsy. A couple of the pigs got together in one corner and started complaining about the organisation on the farm and listing the changes they would make if they were in charge. The biggest goat challenged Porky to a fight, they had never really got on. Then Porky admitted to Daisy that he had always rather liked her and asked if perhaps she would like to come outside for a little fresh air? Daisy demurred, she had been quietly fantasising about Billy for the last hour or so and the last thing she had in mind was an amorous interlude with a pig.
      Henrietta was a very sensible hen and managed to stop a couple of the younger, just not chicks, who had been sitting on the farm photocopier. She didn’t know what they were planning but it didn’t look good. She looked around and saw that Sean was missing, as was one of the ewes. She had a look for them and found them in one of the feed stores, ‘discussing ovine balanced diets,’ they said but Sean appeared to be wearing muzzlestick which was a little unusual, even for him.
      The rest of the hircines were acting the goat as usual and had to be restrained in the byre, where the cider had run out.
      Adge decided that the band had done enough so they packed up and tractored off home.
      The animals slowly walked home, arms around each other, some declaring undying love for their friends.
      Daisy and Gertie were just about still standing but both knew they would regret that last glass of cider at five the next morning when milking time came around.
      It has been a good party and they agreed they would do it again next year. 

Tuesday 13 December 2011

Writing challenge 8th December 2011 The Journey Home

It was a nightmare of a marathon journey. The three of us had planned it for several weeks, Kenyon wasn’t really old enough to understand. We hadn’t told the folks at home as we wanted it to be a surprise to see the two of us complete with their grandchildren. I am not sure who thought of it first but we both think it was probably Sheila.
      I was on a five year contract with BHP working on the massive gas project near Perth. Sheila was from Margaret River so she was delighted when the chance came up for us to move to Oz for a few years, she didn’t really like Surrey much although we had agreed that it would be our family home. The two children, Bruce and Kenyon got on well at school and loved the outdoor life. Bruce’s favourite word was ‘Barbie’ and no, he wasn’t talking about dolls. It was beginning to look as if I would be outvoted when the five years were up and, to tell the truth, I would be quite happy to stay in Oz as well, I just worried about the folks back in Farnham who were getting on a bit now and to be so far away if anything went wrong …
      First we told the folks that we were going off on a short trip up the coast so would be out of Skype and mobile range for a few days then we set off. The Quantas to Singapore was ok and we had a arranged to have a two day stopover which we all enjoyed but it went downhill fast after that. The Quantas A380 inbound was held up which meant it was going to be twelve hours late leaving so we had to cope with Bruce and Kenyon in the terminal as we had checked out of our hotel. After that there was a mix up on the seats so we had to throw a bit of a strop to get seats together.
      We finally got everything sorted, the plane took off and we relaxed although we had hoped the children would be tired but they had just had a long sleep in the terminal so Sheila and myself had to keep them entertained when all we wanted to do was sleep. I have never been so glad to see Heathrow. We got through the usual hassle with immigration in Terminal 4 and then they had rented out our car because we were late. It took an hour to get a replacement. M4, M25, M3, so much traffic! What else could go wrong now? We were nearly there and couldn’t wait to see the folk’s faces when they saw that we had turned up for Christmas.
      Around the town and then down the lane to their house. There was no car on the drive so maybe they were out shopping? We drove in and tried the door and looked through the windows. No signs of life. I knew they were friendly with the young couple next door so I went round and knocked on their door even though I had never met them. A youngish guy came to the door.
      ‘Hi, I’m David, Eric and Mary’s son,’ I said. ‘Do you happen to know where they are?’ He looked surprised.
      `I thought you lived in Australia?’
      ‘Yes, we do, but we’ve just arrived to spend Christmas here with them.’ He looked even more surprised.
      ‘B, b, but they drove up to Heathrow yesterday to fly out to spend Christmas with you, they wanted it to be a surprise.’


Thursday 1 December 2011

Writing challenge 30th November 2011 - Advent

Advent
It was the best of tines, it was the worst of tines. In fact it had been a forking awful day. I had been clearing out the stables for hours, pitching that odourous mix of straw and muck into a wheelbarrow and trucking it off to the heap by the side of the road where it gently steamed in the Autumn sunshine. I put the usual sign on top for passing rose and mushroom growers, ‘Pick your own horse manure, buyer collects.’ I then went back to bolt the stable doors after the horses had closed up for the day.
            The only good part of the day was that my son, Robert, had been helping me with the jobs around our riding school. He is eight and full of the questions that children that age ask and parents greet with mighty dread. It’s a bit like being on University Challenge when you should really be on Who Wants to be a …answering the first couple of questions. I mean, what do you tell an eight year old when he asks, ‘Why doesn’t the moon fall down, Dad?’ Do you answer using a simple Newtonian approximation with just a few of the equations of motion or Special Relativity to confirm the curvature of space using the gravity lensing of light as an example? No, I decided that it was no good hiding the facts of life from him, he would have to know eventually so I sat him down on the wheelbarrow, oops, forgot the pitchfork, and quickly went through the simplistic version of Quantum Physics with an explanation of the Higgs Field and the potential upset if CERN proved that there was no Higgs Boson.
            ‘OK Dad,’ he said, patiently ‘I understand all that simple stuff but why does the pub in the village, The Moon, not fall down, it is so old and it leans to the side a bit.’
            ‘I don’t know, Robert, that’s a much too difficult question for me. All I know is that my friend, Old Ted, hung himself in the Gents there last New Year’s Eve. That’s why  the toilets are now called the Kamikarzee. Come on young Bob it’s bath time and bed for you.’
            I managed to get him through the usual evening routine, bath, milky drink, into bed after saying his prayers – well his version anyway,

            ‘Now I lay me down to sleep,
            I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
            But not too long, I’ll need it soon
            I think tonight there’s a full moon

            If I shall die before I wake,
            I pray the Lord my soul to take.
            Heel and toe and laces too
            Why not take the whole damn shoe?’  

and then a story. We were half way through Tales from the Café, Volume one, you know that one about the last Red Kite in Snowdonia? Always has me in tears but Robert was asleep by the time I got to that last, sad bit. We had the discussion about possible Christmas presents of course. I said if he kept on about it I would tell Father Christmas not to bring him anything. He patronised me as usual and pretended to believe that stuff about old man FC. He had floored me last year when he asked me if Rudolf  flew using jet or rocket principles as it depended if he flew above the atmosphere or not. Kids!
            Today was the first day of Advent so we had to open the little door on the calender and fight over who was going to eat the chocolate. I tried to cheat by telling him he would have to clean his teeth again but I knew I was wasting my breath. He quoted an article from Two Thirty Magazine that said brushing twice a day was OK but any more would wear away the  enamel on his teeth. I gave in, as always. I wouldn’t really cheat, honest.
            I watched him as he slept. What would Christmas be without children eh? Quiet, peaceful, you could watch the Great Escape if you wanted or snooze through the afternoon.  No not the same, but better? No.
            It had been a good day in the Adventure Playground of life.

Wednesday 23 November 2011

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 19th 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.

Monday 21 November 2011

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

Wednesday 16 November 2011

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.

Thursday 10 November 2011

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:-


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

Any comments on it are very welcome here.

Sunday 6 November 2011

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?

Monday 31 October 2011

Flash Fiction Challenge for October/November

It started as a harmless idea, an abstract concept. Of course that was before they realised the full implications of what they planned to do.
     Wolfram had started it over coffee in the canteen one lunchtime. They were chatting about the implications of quantum physics – as you do – when Wolfie said.’ Why is it it that most scientists are happy to ignore the one problem with the most accurate theory in all science, the fact that it requires an observer to collapse the wave function so that a particle’s position can be measured? Everyone is happy to use the maths of quantum physics because they work so well, what everyone calls the shut up and calculate method but isn’t it time someone sorted this out and why shouldn’t it be us?’
Galena put down her doughnut and looked at him over the rim of her paper coffee cup. ‘What’s wrong with leaving it as it is, everybody seems happy with it and it works so why change it? Anyway we don’t have any of the equipment that we would need to do the experiments.’
     ‘If every scientists had taken that attitude, we would still be living in caves,’ said Wolfram, ‘ and what ever happened to scientific curiosity and the need to find out?’
     ‘Oh, stop arguing you two,’ said Olivine crossly, ‘let’s just get on and do it. Where do you suggest we start Wolfie?’
     ‘Well, as Galena kindly reminded us, we don’t have any equipment or money to buy any so I think all the work will have to be done by thought experiments. If it was good enough for Schrödinger and Einstein then it should be good enough for us.’
     ‘You forget that they were clever people and we have only got you,’ said Galena
     ‘Yes, and think how lucky you are to have me.’ said Wolfram.
     ‘Come on. Let’s stop sniping at each other and get on with it,’ said Olivine, ever the peacemaker. ‘ Do you think we should fetch Tourmaline and ask her if she would like to join in and help us?’
     ‘Yes, I think that is a great idea,’ said Wolfram
     ‘Well, you would of course, you have been lusting after her since she started here,’ said Galena who had a bit of thing for Wolfie and didn’t like the thought of Tourmaline muscling in on her territory. Wolfram coloured a little but said nothing, he didn’t want Tourmaline to know how he felt. Tourmaline, of course, knew exactly how Wolfram felt and was just biding her time until Galena was out of the way. She knew very well that fixing her startling green eyes on him in a full stare just made him melt and become incapable of rational thought.
     ‘OK then,’ said Galena. ‘Lets start here at the same time tomorrow. I’ll let Tourmaline know.’

     ‘Where do we start?’ asked Tourmaline, directing her searchlight stare at Wolfram.
     ‘Well, err, I think, we should start with the most famous thought experiment of all, Schrödinger’s cat.’
     ‘That sounds good to me,’ said Galena, anxious to get on Wolfram’s good side now that her rival for his affections was here. ‘Why don’t you go ahead and describe it for us, set the scene as it were?’
‘Creep,’ thought Tourmaline who knew exactly what Galena was up to. ‘Yes, that’s quite a good idea, luv.’ She said patronisingly as if surprised that someone with Galena’s limited intelligence could think of such a complicated concept. She said it with the Australian questioning lift at the end of the sentence which emphasised her incredulity.
     ‘OK then. A cat is placed in a wooden box. In  the box there is a gadget that fires a single photon at a filter. There is a 50% chance of the photon passing through the filter. If it does then a phial of poisonous liquid is broken and kills the cat. This means that, before the box is opened the cat can be in one of three quantum states:- alive, dead or both alive and dead. Once the box is opened the wave function collapses and the cat instantly snaps into one of the two possible classic states, alive or dead. The question is, when does the cat change from being in one of the three quantum states to being in one of the two classic states? What trigger is required to change it between quantum and classic states? All experiments so far show that an observer or measurement is required but does this agency have to be human?’
     ‘Well summarised Wolfie,’ said Tourmaline, determined to get her flattery in before Galena. ‘Where do we go from here?’
     ‘Why not try to split the human and non human possible cause of the collapse along the time axis and then we can record what happened when’ said Olivine who was the most original thinker of the group.
     ‘And just how do we manage that?’ asked Galena sarcastically. She had long been jealous of Olivine’s seemingly effortless thinking.
     ‘We need to record the event so why not put a camera in the box that is triggered by the same photon result that breaks the poison phial. This will then show what state the cat is in before the box is opened. If the photo shows the cat is dead then a non human agency can collapse the wave function and trigger the change from a quantum to classic state. If the experiment is repeated many times and the photo shows that the cat is always alive then it requires a human agency to force the change.’
     As soon as Olivine finished speaking, there was a flash and they all fell to the floor of the canteen, dead.
Someone else was doing the same experiment and they were the cats this time.

Saturday 29 October 2011

Forest dreams

The speed of rotation of the Earth and hence the length of the day was determined many years ago, about 4.6 billion years in fact,  by how much mass of star dust coalesced to form the Earth and the quantity of rotational energy transferred from that dust. This rotational speed has been decreasing very slowly since the moon split off from the Earth and started the tides in the oceans. These tides act as a drag and so are slowly reducing the rotational speed and hence the day is getting longer. The friction of the oceans in their basins is also slowly warming the Earth, but not by very much.
The rotational speed of a spinning object can be varied by frictional drag, as we have seen but it can also be affected by moving the object’s mass closer to or further away from the centre. This can be seen when a spinning skater speeds up by bringing her arms in closer to her chest.
The same effect can be seen on the Earth by cutting down trees, a laid down tree has its mass closer to the centre of Earth than does a growing one. As the Earth is progressively deforested then this effect will increase and so the day will get shorter.
One more argument for growing trees and not chopping them down.

Thursday 27 October 2011

A story for Hallowe'en

The presence
He knew it was following him. He couldn’t see or hear anything but he had a very powerful feeling that it was there, always behind him, following.
It had started at the end of September in the Autumnal woods. He had been out for a walk  with Ruly, not far from home, when he first felt a presence. He should have been able to see a shadow or hear some scuffling in the dry leaves but there was nothing. This didn’t make it better, he still knew it was there. What was it? What did it want. Was it going to hurt him? He asked Alice about it when he got home. Had she seen any strangers in the village or heard anyone around the cottage? He had to be careful, he didn’t want to spook Alice, she had enough to deal with already. He just implied that someone in the village had seen a prowler. He was surprised that Ruly hadn’t made a fuss, she was usually the first to detect and intruder or anyone coming to the door a long time before either Alice or himself were aware of anyone. Alice knew nothing.
At first it was only in the woods but, as November approached, it came closer, nearer to home. It watched as he dug in the garden. It was outside the window when he worked in the kitchen. Then it was behind him when he sat at the desk in the study, sorting out the domestic paperwork. Then it followed them up the stairs to their bedroom. There was no sanctuary now, it was everywhere, all around them, suffocating in its all pervading presence. Alice could now feel it as well. They never discussed it but it was always there.
He made a pot of tea and prepared a tray, as Alice preferred it, he was happy with a tea bag in a mug. He took the tray into the small lounge where the fire was crackling in the hearth. It wasn’t really necessary for its heat but it gave a cheerful glow to the room and made it feel cosy, lived in and welcoming, a warm, soft, curved place of refuge from the cold, dark, hard edged world outside. He waited a couple of minutes to allow the tea to brew and then started on their daily tea ceremony. First a dash of semi skim from the Delftware jug, then tea from the pot through a silver strainer and finally a couple of sugar lumps presented to the cups with EPNS tongs – why did it taste better with lump sugar? The teapot , cups and saucers were Burleigh ware, part of a wedding gift from Alice’s parents. A vigorous stir was then required followed by a couple of dings of the apostle spoon on the side of the cup before being clattered into the saucer.
. ‘How was your day?’ he said.
‘It was OK but that idiot Brian messed things up again so that we had to redo the payroll run on the computer. That took an hour and made us late starting on the post so it wasn’t ready when Guy the postman arrived so we had to scurry around to get that finished as its not fair to hold Guy up, even though he doesn’t complain and is always cheerful…’ Alice chattered on with her familiar litany of the day’s minor disasters in the general admin office of the company where she had worked for eleven years. He liked listening to her stories of the daily adventures and the lives of her colleagues, poor Brian always seemed to get most of the blame. He enjoyed this time of day, remaking their relationship daily over a shared pot of tea after being apart, concentrating on their different priorities through the day.
He had lost his job with the same company two years ago when that big export contract had been cancelled. He had worked in production so when there was a quick reduction of ten per cent in the overall work force, he was one of the first to go. His compromise agreement was generous enough to see them through until he could get fixed up with another job, or so he thought at the time, but with the reduction in exports and the downturn at home, jobs became harder to find. He slowly moved into the role of looking after the house and garden, while Alice managed to negotiate a few more hours and they had settled into a comfortable routine which neither of them would now like to change.
He had dug up all of their quarter acre garden and now kept them supplied with most of their vegetable needs during the year. He sold and bartered the surplus in the village. They got by but it was more difficult now without Mr Vincent’s lodging money coming in every month. Mr Vincent, they never called him anything but that, had come to live in their two spare rooms. They had reported his absence to the police when he went missing that day. The detective sergeant asked lots of questions and searched his rooms and his decrepit van, still parked outside the cottage, but nothing came of it. Henry, that was his name, seemed to have no family so there was no pressure on the police to find him. The detective spread the enquiries around the village and the surrounding area but no one had seen him, no one had any information so the case was slowly wound down as others came in and took priority. It was eventually put up on the unsolved, too difficult shelf. He was never found, Vincent van Gone, they called him in the village.
It was about this time that he started digging up the garden, growing the vegetables that soon became the talk of the village and were in great demand, except at the annual flower show where they started scooping up the prizes – to the annoyance of the local experts.
Their tea ceremony was disturbed today by the presence they both felt, intruding into their settled lives. Even Ruly was feeling it now, she kept clicking across to the bay where she put her paws on the window seat cushions for a long stare into the darkness before coming back to her usual place on a soft mat beside Alice’s chair, looking up for a reassuring pat.
Eventually they could pretend no longer, they had to acknowledge the presence. They talked, what could be done?
Perhaps they would have to dig up the ground under the new compost heap again?

Monday 24 October 2011

Radioactive decay and the meaning of life.

Take a lump of pure uranium 235. Make it a small lump or the experiment won’t last very long. ( See ‘chain reaction’ )
This uranium is unstable and will decay into different elements over time. This can be shown as a decay curve that shows exponential reduction of the uranium. This means that each molecule of uranium will decide to decay at a different time. But, they are by definition all the same so why do some ‘decide’ to decay earlier than others?
Possibilities:-
1 – Each molecule is different and so decides when it wants to decay.
2 – Something is in control and so tells each molecule when it is it’s turn to decay.
3 – Neither of the above are true so the decay of each molecule is totally random and it is only the very large number of molecules involved that give the smooth decay curve.
Argument:-
#1 cannot be true because each molecule is made of the same, identical smaller particles.
#2 seems unlikely, who, what, would bother to individually control every molecule in the universe?
That leaves #3 which seems to be true. If so then this fist sized lump of uranium is demonstrating that all events in the universe are random.
Sounds good to me.
 To put it into modern terms, there is no app for the meaning of life.

Today's controversy

Neutrinos have been discovered travelling faster than the speed of light. Was Einstein wrong? No, not in this case anyway. C = the speed of light in a vacuum. There never is a vacuum even in deep space – how deep is space, stupid expression, space stretches to infinity, or back on itself in every direction. Quantum theory suggests that positron / electron pairs are popping into existence and then cancelling each other out all the time so there is always something in a vacuum, quantum froth.
 This something will slow particles to less than ‘the speed of light ‘ depending on their mass. Light has a wave / particle duality. If you have an observer then they will be ‘seen’ as the quantum particle equivalent of the wave which is packets of light called photons. Photons must have mass because they have energy because they are always moving - it is a non question to ask, 'what is the mass of a photon at rest?', so they will be slowed by particles in a vacuum. Neutrinos will be the same in that they will be slowed by any particles in their way. So, if neutrinos are observed to be travelling faster than ‘ the speed of light’, it just means that their mass is less than that of photons. Einstein has not been mocked. He was probably playing dice with god at the time.

What is now?

What is now?
Send a person to stand on the sun, ok, be kind, give them asbestos boots, with instructions to shout ‘Now’ at the same time as you. Stand in your garden on a cloudless day and look at the sun through smoked glass. Can you see him? Are you ready? Shout ‘Now’ and wait. 18 minutes later you see him shout back ‘Now’. The question is, ‘why did he wait so long? Look at it from his point of view. He shouted as soon as he saw you shout so his now is 9 minutes after yours but, from your point of view, your now is when you shouted and his now is 18 minutes later. We now (!) have three ‘nows’. Which one is the real ‘now’. Depends on your point of view.

Tuesday 18 October 2011

Writing challenge 14th October 2011 – Bumps in the night

Garwain was pleased to get back to the Canine Livery Centre. It had been a long trip back from the Holey Land. He had been glad to leave as he kept falling in those caves and he wasn’t that fond of Cruzade anyway, he preferred Lucozade or, if desperate Gatorade. He slowly climbed down, well up really, off his faithful Dachshund, Reinhold. He had served him well over many months and miles but, having to really jack up the stirrups to ensue his feet didn’t drag along the ground, meant that his knees kept bumping on his chin as Reinny galloped along.
      Garwain had served with distinction and so had been given a field commission to Varlet 2nd Grade. This was unusual at his age because he had only graduated from Varlet Academy in Camelot a year before. No one usually got promotion from Varlet 3rd Grade after less than 2 years. At the ceremony he had been given a certificate that entitled him to up grade from a Canine 1.7 to a Canine 2.1. He was delighted with this as it meant he could now choose to ride a German Shepherd and keep his feet off the deck without suffering chin bruises. He also got to spend a few shekels on extras so he chose a big woofer so that he could get the full benefit from playing his favourite classical music while he galloped / loped along. His dog’s Bach was going to be a lot worse than his Bitehoven. He was not quite sure why the Germans had got such a hold on the cruzade transport market these days but assumed it was something to do with the cross border tariff arrangements. He checked about nine dogs before settling on a fine specimen called Wilhelm. He saddled up and off they went, back on the trail to his home barracks in Aldershot.
It was raining, of course, for his trip along the M4 and he wasn’t quite sure if Wilhelm was the ideal mount for him, ‘They wouldn’t send a knight out on a dog like this,’ he muttered to himself as he slipped off the rain-soaked back of the dog for the 11th time. ‘Thereby hangs a tail,’ thought Wilhelm as he doggedly kept going through the wind and rain.
After he had settled back in to barracks life and got to know Willi better for just over a year he got call on Skipe from the Palace. ‘Hi, it’s King Richard de Tird here’ said the voice of the King who originated from Tipperary, a long, long way away from Aldershot. ‘D’you remember when ye saved de life of dat Varlet just as he was going to disappear down one of dem caves in the Holey Land?’
‘Well, yes, of course I do,’ said Garwain.’
‘That Varlet was in fact your King, myself, Richard de Tird. I am so grateful to you for saving my life that I am going to bypass the normal Varlet grading system and promote you straight up to a Knight 2nd Grade. This will give you an increase in salary, all the mead you can drink and an entitlement to wear plate armour and ride a Equine 1.3. I have notified the H.R.department and you should get the papers through in about two years if that department works as efficiently as it normally does.’
      ‘Tank ee, err I mean Thank you very much Syre,’ said Garwain who was delighted that he was finally going to be able to get rid of his Varlet style chain mail, he was fed up with licking and sticking all those envelopes.
So off he went to the stables to trade in Willi for Dobbin. Dobbin was getting old, a bit long in the tooth, and there was no choice as there had been a run on horses because of the Cheltenham Gold cup in a couple of weeks time. The other unfortunate truth was that the fashion for German dogs had passed and more Varlets were now choosing to ride the new fangled labranials so the trade in price for Wilhelm had dropped quite dramatically. So it was Dobbin or nothing. He chose Dobbin who was strong and willing but he was a little thin and so his ribs stuck out.
As he was now entitled to wear plate armour, he trotted off to the armoury to get fitted with his new suit. It was a shame that stainless steel had not yet been invented as this meant that he was stuck with the old style rusty plates that creaked and squealed as he walked and was high maintenance, especially in WD35 costs.
Eventually all was ready so he donned his suit of armour and was helped up onto Dobbins back where he found that the ribs stuck in his backside rather uncomfortably, making many bumps in the knight.