country & western singers
No rappers? Kardashians?
Nikola Tesla's greatest challenge: He could measure electricity but not stupidity
There is a house in old Belgrade that has male and female private parts. If you were tempted to sing that last sentence, I suppose you could call it the House of the Rising Bum. Bum-bum tish. I thank you. You may not consider a building with gender junk to be so unusual. After all, there are Hitler houses and cat cottages, …
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Friday 2nd November 2018 23:57 GMT BillG
Re: country & western singers
In western Europe and further west to the Americas, we tend to be wary of cleverness. We believe smart people are up to no good, being deliberately and revoltingly smart all the time, trying to catch us out and being undeservedly satisfied when it turns out they were right all along. It's only fair that we beat the shit out of these spotty, bespectacled kids at school.
Another name for people wary of cleverness: Rednecks. They should be #1 on the list.
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Saturday 3rd November 2018 02:40 GMT Trilkhai
Re: country & western singers
Wouldn't the British term "chav" be better? It's not like poor uneducated whites in the Deep South are all "wary of cleverness" or anywhere near the only racial sub-group to produce a lot of people that fit that description...
FWIW, as an olive-skinned Californian geek, I'm not even close to being a redneck; I just don't think it's any cooler to target them than it is to use the offensive terms for poor uneducated non-whites and suggest they should be killed first.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 14:50 GMT Ogi
Re: country & western singers
> Clearly the list of those at whom an out-of-control autonomous car should aim are as follows, in order of priority
To be honest I find the whole question a bit silly. In my opinion, If the autonomous car is out of control, then by definition, even if it can make a decision on who to kill, it can't actually control the vehicle to take aim.
If the autonomous car still has control over the car, why wouldn't it decide to not kill anyone? It could aim to miss everyone, or just stop. One of the main things autonomous car enthusiasts go on about is how AI self driving cars will be millions of times better than human drivers and their puny animal brains. It will be able to stop faster, it will always drive at a speed fitting the road conditions, predict events better, and be so much safer, etc... i.e. the autonomous car is smart enough to never get into a position to have an accident in the first place.
Assuming all the above is actually achieved in the future (personally as a non techno-fetishist, I am skeptical), the only time the autonomous car has to make a decision about who to kill is if things have gone badly badly wrong. Basically we are talking about a hypothetical situation where the autonomous car still has enough control of the vehicle to use it to kill someone, but for some reason cannot use that control to avoid killing anyone (I don't know, suddenly a large group of people, all in a line and easily distinguishable, instantly appear just metres away from the car? Even then, either the car can hit the brakes and stop, or it can't, and it will skid straight into the group with no control over who exactly it hits).
Barring a malfunction (or it being hacked) that renders the AI car homicidal in intent, I can't actually see a use case for where the autonomous car has to make such ethical decisions.
And on that cheery note. Happy Friday, almost pint o'clock!
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Saturday 3rd November 2018 07:57 GMT Fruit and Nutcase
Youtube Stars
With under 1900 views in 3 years at the time of writing, I think Mme Dabbs is not in any danger of becoming a widow due to an autonomous car...
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Saturday 3rd November 2018 13:03 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: country & western singers
"In my opinion, If the autonomous car is out of control, then by definition, even if it can make a decision on who to kill, it can't actually control the vehicle to take aim."
My guess would be that an autonomous car gets out of control of it's AI by the latter overloaded with conflicting information and rules so that in order to ditch the lot it needs an emergency routine to follow. I suspect they're all loaded up with a secret "kill the lone pedestrian" function and that eventually it will be triggered where the overload arises in an entirely innocuous situation.
After all the emissions cheating stuff would you really believe it would be beyond the car manufacturers' inclinations?
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Saturday 3rd November 2018 16:53 GMT cosmogoblin
Re: country & western singers
My guess would be that an autonomous car gets out of control of it's AI by the latter overloaded with conflicting information and rules so that in order to ditch the lot it needs an emergency routine to follow.
Isn't that how humans work? If our cerebral cortex can't handle a tense situation, the decision-making responsibility is handed over to the amygdala, which has a small bank of emergency responses (fight-flight-freeze). The available responses aren't always appropriate, but they're usually better than mulling it over until it's too late.
If it's worked for animals over a billion years of evolution, it seems a good starting point for devices we design today.
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Monday 5th November 2018 14:00 GMT cynic56
Re: country & western singers
"the back doors of the lorry in front burst open, and hundreds of logs are flung out..."
Now it's getting much more complicated. Should it run over Beech before Ash, Horse Chestnut before Sycamore, Elm before Oak, on number 4 - the larch. I didn't even know these AI cars were qualified Dendrologists.
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Monday 5th November 2018 17:12 GMT Michael Wojcik
Re: country & western singers
Should it run over Beech before Ash, Horse Chestnut before Sycamore, Elm before Oak, on number 4 - the larch
Less of a problem in the US, where thanks to invasive pests we essentially no longer have many chestnuts or elms, and ash is on the way out too.
The loss of the American chestnut is particularly unfortunate. Those were huge, attractive trees that once represented maybe a quarter of all the trees in large parts of the Appalachian forests. They still survive in some isolated areas, where the blight hasn't been introduced or has been displaced by less-virulent strains, and various organizations have been working on varieties with better resistance to the blight.
Oak, on the other hand, we have plenty of. Run those suckers over.
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Saturday 3rd November 2018 13:09 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: country & western singers
Where do those using the term "scrum" and wearing rugby boots appear? Hopefully not too far below those wearing football kit. And amongst the latter do those not on a football field appear above or below those who are? I appreciate that in the normal circumstances the car is unlikely to find itself running down those who are on a football field; the manufacturers should make more efforts in this respect.
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Sunday 4th November 2018 08:20 GMT Fruit and Nutcase
Re: country & western singers
Do the autonomous vehicle AI training image sets contain country & western singers?
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Friday 2nd November 2018 12:24 GMT MyffyW
Don't blame the Serbs
British fears of German Naval strength, French desire to reclaim Alsace-Lorainne, Russian angst at the length of time it would take to mobilise their army, Austro-Hungarian dented pride mixed with internal contradictions inherent in a land empire, German expansionism and desire to avoid encirclement might all have a had a slight part to play beyond the single hand weapon that Gavrilo Princip discharged in Sarajevo back in 1914.
I'm out of breath now ....
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Friday 2nd November 2018 09:18 GMT Admiral Grace Hopper
Electricity
A good choice of tune, their speeded-up version of Kraftwerk's Radioactivity is a fine tribute to Tesla, but there is, of course, a more direct tribute.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 12:06 GMT CrazyOldCatMan
Re: Electricity
is a fine tribute to Tesla
There's also a very fine album by Australian Prog band Unitopia which is (almost) all about him:
http://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=28241
I don't know whether they are still a going concern (like most good prog bands they seem to go in and out of existence that the drop of a stage costume) but, if they are, they are well worth seeing.
One of the few bands better live than on record.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 12:38 GMT juice
Re: Electricity
TBH, I think this is one of the better tributes, courtesy of steampunk band The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYc9-OtxNE0
"A Tesla Coil
A Tesla Coil
My wife's been fitted with a Tesla Coil
If I get frisky in the marital bed
Sparks shoot down her leg"
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Friday 2nd November 2018 13:58 GMT juice
Re: Electricity
Aye, they're lovely and only occasionally slightly angry chaps, who do an excellent job of highlighting social issues from the Victorian era inbetween their more comedic moments.
In fact, I'd say that they're one of the very few bands who actually put the punk into steampunk.
Friday pub, you say? Mine's the hat *without* the cogs on...
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Friday 2nd November 2018 09:18 GMT Steve Davies 3
The name 'Tesla' has been hijacked
When you ask someone what a Tesla is unless they are an old skool Electrical Engineer they might say 'oh, that's a funny car that runs on batteries'.
A child might ask 'are the batteries included'? (joke)
I wonder what Nikolai would have said about the design cues of a vehicle that bears his name?
Would he be into minimalism? (like the Model 3 interior)
nice piece though Dabbsy.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 10:05 GMT Anonymous Coward
And to see the hijackers beating his name to death
Just google "tesla free energy". If that doesn't give you enough woo for a Friday arvo add terms like "masonic conspiracy" or "flat earth". An ocean of conspiracies awaits, for example:
"Nikola Tesla appears to have been murdered killed by Prescott Bush and his Family by way of german S.S. Lt. Colonel Otto Skorzeny. Also, George Bush Senior appears to be directly linked to a hand in the JFK assaination via Richard Nixon (a.k.a. Tricky Dick). For example, did you know Jack Ruby worked for congressman Richard Nixon in 1947?"
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Friday 2nd November 2018 10:47 GMT Loyal Commenter
Re: The name 'Tesla' has been hijacked
When you ask someone what a Tesla is unless they are an old skool Electrical Engineer they might say 'oh, that's a funny car that runs on batteries'.
I'd go with something you shouldn't go near with your keys in your pocket, unless you want to be stuck to whatever is causing it.
As a unit of measurement, the scale is a bit off of most practical uses.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 14:50 GMT Voland's right hand
Re: The name 'Tesla' has been hijacked
That's OK. Tesla (as in Nicola) still strikes back.
"Тесла" in Southern Slavic languages is the name of a carpenter tool. It is the nearly obsolete in Britain adze (most carpenters to use one have retired and I have seen one only in Eastern Europe). By the way - Judging by his family name Tesla quite clearly had a few carpenters in his ancestry.
In any case, to cut a long story short. Today, "Tesla" (or Тесла) in these languages in addition to carpentry tool meaning is also the colloquial for "botched job", "f***-up", someone not showing up for a meeting/date or something not being on time.
Good luck to Tesla Motors to sell a Tesla in a Balkan country. They are going to need it. It is after all a Тесла. Colloquial for a Tesla.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 15:06 GMT Antron Argaiv
Re: The name 'Tesla' has been hijacked
Today, "Tesla" (or Тесла) in these languages in addition to carpentry tool meaning is also the colloquial for "botched job", "f***-up", someone not showing up for a meeting/date or something not being on time.
Good luck to Tesla Motors to sell a Tesla in a Balkan country. They are going to need it. It is after all a Тесла. Colloquial for a Tesla.
Perhaps they could rename the export version a "Nova"...
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chevrolet-nova-name-spanish/
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Friday 2nd November 2018 16:42 GMT MiguelC
Re: The name 'Tesla' has been hijacked
That's why you usually have some local brand management
Mitsubishi's Pajero was renamed Montero in Spain (wouldn't you proudly drive your Mitsubishi 'Wanker'?)
And Hyundai Kona was renamed Kauai in Portugal (who knew that driving a 'Kunt' could be embarrassing for some?)
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Saturday 3rd November 2018 19:47 GMT bombastic bob
Re: The name 'Tesla' has been hijacked
worst car name evar was a GM concept car called "Impact" (also another electric car). Later (when in production) it was re-named 'EV-1' [probably because they realized the implications of 'impact'].
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1
considering its eventual fate, the original name was _SO_ appropriate, foreshadowing, etc..
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Saturday 3rd November 2018 23:20 GMT Dejan
Re: The name 'Tesla' has been hijacked
Well, if Ford can sell cars with the name "Kuga" which means Plague / Black Death in SerboCroatian, the I guess even Tesla can sell a few cars over there. Its another matter that you hardly can charge it in any public location except along the Slovenian/Croatian coastal line so you will realy need the long range that Tesla provides.
Just check OpenChargeMap.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 18:51 GMT GBE
Re: The name 'Tesla' has been hijacked
When you ask someone what a Tesla is unless they are an old skool Electrical Engineer they might say 'oh, that's a funny car that runs on batteries'.
I think you'd be surprised how many people would know what a "Tesla" is (at least vaguely) if you started asking around in a modern hospital's radiology department. My 86 year old mother can tell you how many Teslas her cardiac stents are rated for...
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Friday 2nd November 2018 09:19 GMT Primus Secundus Tertius
Noted scientists
Britain, typically, put Isaac Newton on the lowest denomination banknote -- £1. Then they abolished that note and replaced it with a cheap coin: the brass sovereign.
West Germany put Carl Friedrich Gauss on their smallest banknote, the ten Deutsche Mark note. I would have expected more respect for scientists from them. Then they abolished the DM, replacing it with the Euro.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 10:38 GMT SVV
Re: Noted scientists
It seems like Stephen Hawking is the current favourite, but Ada Lovelace and Alan Turing are doing strongly too. So go cast your vote for a British IT legend! (Personally I would have Ada AND Babbage together just to stop the inevitable tedious hoo ha about what gender the cash front celebrity should be).
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Friday 2nd November 2018 19:09 GMT Kristian Walsh
Re: Ada Lovelace
Anyone bigging up Ada could do well to read: ...
That article perpetuates two myths: the first myth is that strong mathematical ability is necessary for someone to be a programmer (i.e., Ada wasn't a good mathematician, therefore Ada could not have been a programmer), and the second that Ada Lovelace's place in computing history was earned for being "the first programmer"*. Both are mostly untrue.
Lovelace's insight was much deeper that just writing out code, and was probably one that only a "failed undergraduate mathematician" with a penchant for the arts would have had - the other people connected with Babbage's machine seemed to be too enamoured with numerical methods to have made the leap outside of Mathematics that Lovelace did**. Basically, she is the first person to have stated the idea that the mechanical and mathematical processes, as used by the Babbage machine, might have application to things that were at the time considered to be the domain of Art, not of mathematics.
Here's the gist of it: If you assign numeric values to things that are not in themselves quantities, they could be manipulated by a machine like Babbage's to produce results that, once decoded from that numeric form back into their real-world equivalents, would have meaning. This is such a fundamental idea in computing that most programmers barely even think about it (and one major operating system family, Unix, conflates the concepts of text and binary data to such an extent that developers often make errors in handling them that only become clear when they have to translate their applications into a different human language)
__
* she was definitely the first writer of developer documentation, though; the "programs" published under her name are much clearer than the equivalents in Babbage's own notes, and the written correspondence (and occasional arguments) between Babbage and Lovelace would be familiar to anyone who's ever had to write sample code for a new system.
** Even a leap to another area of Mathematics would have been world-changing. George Boole, of "Boolean" fame, narrowly missed collaborating with Babbage - they didn't follow up on what seems to have been a very cordial meeting at the Great Exhibition of 1862, and Boole died (young) just two years later. Babbage adapting his Engine to use Boole's two-state arithmetic rather than decimal calculation remains one of those great "what if's" of history - there's no doubt that it would certainly have simplified the design enough for it to become feasible with the technology of the age. As it was, Boole's ideas on logical computing didn't get realised until 1937..
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Saturday 3rd November 2018 17:20 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Ada Lovelace
>the "programs" published under her name are much clearer than the equivalents in Babbage's own notes, and the written correspondence (and occasional arguments) between Babbage and Lovelace
This is the received wisdom - Allan Bromley who has made no little study of both the correspondence and Babbage wrote:
“Not only is there no evidence that Ada ever prepared a program for the Analytical Engine, but her correspondence with Babbage shows that she did not have the knowledge to do so”
He also sourced all of the examples in Notes to Babbage's previous work, several years earlier too - although they are invariably credited to Ada.
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Saturday 3rd November 2018 17:42 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: Ada Lovelace
"Basically, she is the first person to have stated the idea that the mechanical and mathematical processes, as used by the Babbage machine, might have application to things that were at the time considered to be the domain of Art, not of mathematics."
Was she the first to print an ASCII art Snoopie?
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Friday 2nd November 2018 18:40 GMT Ken Hagan
Re: Noted scientists
"It seems like Stephen Hawking is the current favourite, but Ada Lovelace and Alan Turing are doing strongly too."
Interesting. I'd wager that all three would be unknown to the general public had it not been for disability, sex and sexuality. They are known for being "scientists, despite the obstacles that history placed in their path", rather than "scientists". Apparently the science is never enough of a story in itself.
Conversely, artists seem to get a free pass for their personal lives as long as the art is good enough. Strange.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 10:51 GMT Loyal Commenter
Re: Noted scientists
Go here to vote on the new £50 note.
https://app.keysurvey.co.uk/f/1348443/10fc/
I've gone with Dorothy Hodgkin, the Nobel prize winning developer of x-ray protein crystallography. Both ebcuase she was very smart, and because women are sadly underrepresented on bank notes.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 13:18 GMT WolfFan
"women are sadly underrepresented on bank notes"
Oh? Really? I haven't been in the UK in <mumble> years, but when I was last there I seemed to see that pretty much every bank note had a pic of a certain person named 'Elizabeth' on them. Is s/he not a woman? And if not, has anyone notified Phil the Greek that he's married to a guy? He is a sailor as well as being a Danish/German Greek, and so might not have noticed.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 12:36 GMT Chairman of the Bored
Re: Noted scientists
Maxwell! Go on, then, have an upvote. Einstein himself stated:
"Since Maxwell's time, physical reality has been thought of as represented by continuous fields, and not capable of any mechanical interpretation. This change in the conception of reality is the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton"
When I worked in a computational electromagnetics R&D effort the supers were named "Maxwell" "Faraday" "Dirac" "Gauss" "Petunia". Three Brits, one German, and a HHG reference in an American lab...
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Friday 2nd November 2018 20:04 GMT Alistair Dabbs
Re: Noted scientists
OK there’s some synchronicity here. My visit to Belgrade was for an IEEE meeting and now you’re all talking about Maxwell... for whom the UK & Ireland Section of IEEE installed a double history milestone plaque nearly 10 years ago. One is at Castle Douglas, the other at King’s College London. If you’re interested, here are the details and location maps: https://ethw.org/Milestones:Maxwell's_Equations,_1860-1871
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Friday 2nd November 2018 21:50 GMT Danny 2
Re: Noted scientists
@Symon,
James Clerk Maxwell may not have been "gay, disabled or a woman", but he was a Scot and Scots are a persecuted minority. Might be odd on an English banknote but a Scot founded the Bank of England.
"It'd be the BC"
Brian Cox? I would vote for Brian Cox, but we'd have to kill him first. The Queen is the only living person allowed on a British banknote.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 22:46 GMT Nick Kew
Re: Noted scientists
Why does there have to be *any* person on a banknote?
I expect Hawking will get it, and he is indeed a deserving candidate. Not to mention preferable to those candidates whose merits - though worthy - are secondary to matters of identity politics.
I shall make myself a lonely outlier by suggesting G H Hardy. His Mathematician's Apology was a seminal influence in my life[1], both for the way it shows the beauty of maths, and for its setting in the lost world of the academic elite it portrays. Deeply unfashionable of course, and his championing of Ramanujan probably just makes it worse, as that was purely on merit.
[1] It was one of main things that influenced me to study (pure) maths at Cambridge.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 10:45 GMT pakman
Re: Noted scientists
"Britain, typically, put Isaac Newton on the lowest denomination banknote -- £1."
Not only that, they messed up by putting the sun in the wrong place on the diagram of the Earth's orbit (the sun should have been at one of the focal points of the ellipse, not at the centre). Ironic, considering that Newton was also in charge of the Royal Mint at one point in his career.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 12:56 GMT Reginald Marshall
Re: Noted scientists
Heh. I've recently handled Serbian currency, so this column was a serendipitous reminder: the 2000 RSD banknote also has a scientist on the obverse, Milutin Milanković оf the ice age cycles fame. It's a rather strange portrait, from the mid to late 1920's in my estimation, where Mr Milanković faintly resembles the emcee from Cabaret.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 16:05 GMT Kristian Walsh
Re: Noted scientists
As the lower-denomination notes are the most seen, surely placement there is the real honour?
Three of the eight Deutschmark notes featured scientists (DM 10: Gauss; DM 200: the Nobel laureate Paul Erlich, DM 500: the entomologist Maria Sybilla Merian), a fourth celebrated an architect (50: Balthasar Neumann). Three writers, a poet and one musician rounded out the set.
... Yes, that comes to nine people, because (and in case you still labour under the misapprehension that Germans have no sense of humour) the DM 1000 note featured the brothers Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, famed purveyors of fairytales
The most surprising thing about this DM 1000,- note was that it actually saw real circulation: I received one in a pay-packet once in the mid 1990s, and I was able to spend it in a shop - okay, that took a bit of checking with the manager first, but for what was effectively a £350 note, it was relatively easy to use.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 09:28 GMT arctic_haze
Not the only scientist on a banknote
When Germany still had its own currency, the 10 Mark note had Carl Friedrich Gauss together with his eponymous bell-curve distribution, both on a graph and a formula.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss#/media/File:10_DM_Serie4_Vorderseite.jpg
Which reminds me that when I worked in Germany a Japanese colleague from the same lab asked me if I remember the Gauss distribution formula. I told him to look at the 10 Mark note. He did but went to the library to double check. He was surprised the formula was correct.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 14:09 GMT Anonymous Coward
"Or take more [...]"
The beneficial effect of that would possibly be to grow more hair on my bald pate. The pills are anti-androgens to reduce testosterone in order to stop my prostate enlarging again.
An interesting side effect is that I still know when I see something that is academically pleasing to my sexual aesthetics - but an emotional "kick" is gone. A rather detached feeling that is not actual asexuality.
Trouble-shooting hardware and software has also become less aggravating. My already well-exercised patience and tenacity have become even more unflappable.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 09:46 GMT Franco
Here in God's Country where we have our own banknotes (a cunning ruse designed to spike the blood pressure of London cabbies when they are presented them), we have nice feats of engineering on them (Bank of Scotland) like the Forth Bridge, the Falkirk Wheel or the Glenfinnan Viaduct (the Harry Potter bridge for the under 10s in the audience). RBS favours castles, and the Clydesdale Bank has famous people like Robert Burns or Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
On a side note, does "influencers" include the toolbags on LinkedIn who quote them constantly? If not, it should do IMO.
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Saturday 3rd November 2018 14:02 GMT Doctor Syntax
"Here in God's Country where we have our own banknotes (a cunning ruse designed to spike the blood pressure of London cabbies"
When I lived in NI the local banknotes were useful for spiking the blood pressure of any Scottish businesses I had to deal with when in transit along the dreaded A75. In NI local, NoE, Scottish and (while the Punt was at parity) Irish notes were all accepted without comment.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 10:08 GMT Milton
Anti-intellectual?
The article is messy and contrived and nowhere near some of Mr Dabbs' better efforts, but he does pick out a stinging point of concern: the appearance of rising anti-intellectualism and dismisal fo expertise in the "educated", "civilised" west. It's one thing for a bunch of religion-stoned goatshaggers to be hostile to science, but it is positively baffling to see the same thing in Britain, a home of the Enlightenment, and the US, the world's pre-eminent nation of scientific achievement.
What's going on?
We have cretins like Michael Gove saying "we've had enough of experts" (no, actually, we've had enough of you, Mr Gove, with your incessant lies and staggering incompetence), the vaccine-conspiracy idiots, and Dumb-as-a-stump-Trump bleating ignorant tosh about climate chnage, which he can barely even spell.
Is it the internet, letting people imagine they understand a complex topic because they've read a Wiki article? Resentment by the less educated, left-behind? Exploitation of ignorance and fostering of bigotry by vile populist politicians? Air pollution giving us new generations with lukewarm IQs?
We live in a world that exists only because of science, many of whose critics are alive only because of science, and yet this breathtaking ignorance and foolishness abounds.
I ask again: what the hell is happening??
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Friday 2nd November 2018 10:49 GMT Cuddles
Re: Anti-intellectual?
"It's one thing for a bunch of religion-stoned goatshaggers to be hostile to science, but it is positively baffling to see the same thing in Britain"
It's almost as though people are pretty much the same the world over, and trying to split them up into a nice neat "enlightened us" and "religion-stoned goatshagging them" doesn't do a particularly good job of representing reality.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 11:18 GMT Dan 55
Re: Anti-intellectual?
Now that everyone has a voice, opinion is treated the same as fact, division is treated as news, and weight of numbers decides who's won. Even sockpuppet trolls working for a hostile power half-way round the world count.
Also there's a religion-shaped hole left behind in the human soul, and that hole has been filled with popularism. Just like religion, it requires no real sacrifice apart from obedience, has easy answers to any problem, and has easily defined external evil things to blame.
So that's my 2p (value not guaranteed due to plummeting exchange rates).
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Friday 2nd November 2018 14:43 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Anti-intellectual?
"Just like religion, it requires no real sacrifice apart from obedience, has easy answers to any problem, and has easily defined external evil things to blame."
Hence why those with long memories - or are readers of history - can see the rise of potentially Fascist regimes like the 1930s.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 11:33 GMT Primus Secundus Tertius
Re: Anti-intellectual?
It has happened before. Religious nutters destroyed the School of Euclid and the Library of Alexandria. Here's hoping the books of Euclid will still be in use when all the religious books are forgotten.
I as a single man paying just about the maximum in British taxes feel that the education budget on STEM subjects is achieving nothing and is, unfortunately, a total waste of MY money.
However, I suspect it is a cunning plan by our invisible galactic overlords to prevent us from reaching a point where we might challenge them.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 12:34 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
Re: Anti-intellectual?
At the risk of being fair to the slithy gove
The 'experts' he had enough of were economists working for the world bank and friends who claimed that the financial crisis wasn't the banks fault, that the government always needed to bail banks out and austerity was a good idea to cut deficits.
A bit different from denying physics
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Friday 2nd November 2018 12:41 GMT Dan 55
Re: Anti-intellectual?
Not quite - watch the first 1 minute 30 seconds at least.
He then went on to claim 33+ million people in the UK suffer from the UK's membership of the EU, peddled nonsense about his father's fishing business, set up some strawman elite vs. the people bollocks, ignored Faisal saying he's blaming the EU for the UK's austerity politics, said something about Juncker's private jet, and then went on to make unfounded claims about what was on the side of the red bus.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 14:39 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Anti-intellectual?
". It's one thing for a bunch of religion-stoned goatshaggers to be hostile to science, but it is positively baffling to see the same thing in Britain, a home of the Enlightenment, and the US, [...]"
In both countries religion is still touted as a major cultural force - especially by politicians. When people don't have a reasonable understanding of science and technology then the human mind accepts simple "magic" answers.
The Enlightenment was at least two centuries ago. Yet it was something that my UK 1960s non-denominational 11+ Secondary Technical School never mentioned - while they rigidly enforced religious assemblies. As well as the intended target scientists and engineers - it even produced a smattering of clerics including a bishop.
Recently a neighbour's son wanted to be an engineer. His devout Catholic mother stopped his transition to a non-denominational secondary school that specialised in science and engineering. Instead she insisted he went to the local RCC school - which only specialises in Arts subjects. Together with Sunday morning mass he is being moulded to have a core identity of that religion. Other Catholic neighbours are making sure their sons are also following that religious path at church and in an RCC primary school.
Neighbours who are Jehovah's Witnesses are doing the same with their daughters.
The CofE parish church funds evangelical missions into local non-denominational schools.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 18:56 GMT Ken Hagan
Re: Anti-intellectual?
"In both countries religion is still touted as a major cultural force - especially by politicians."
Not in my experience. The only part of the UK where politicians can safely espouse particular religious beliefs is Arlene's bit. Trying to defend a policy on religious grounds anywhere else in the UK results in a torrent of derisive abuse about "your sky fairy" followed by losing the argument.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 19:31 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Anti-intellectual?
"The only part of the UK where politicians can safely espouse particular religious beliefs is Arlene's bit"
While Arlene's lot as a group are extreme - many at Westminster are saying their religion is a major factor in how they vote.
As a sample. Jacob Rees-Mogg and my Tory MP both apparently take the Vatican's whip in opposing various civil rights equality issues. Theresa May has made public her Methodist faith in influencing her policies. Tim Farron, ex-leader of the Liberal Party, espoused his Christian Evangelical views that are at odds with LGBTQ+ civil rights. Even David Cameron touted himself as following the Christian faith - even if reception in the Chilterns was a bit variable.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 23:13 GMT Nick Kew
Re: Anti-intellectual?
Anti-intellectualism has a long history. Just look at the story of the Garden of Eden. Or going back further, Prometheus. In a more modern context one could point to Frankenstein as a famous example.
And real-life scientists through the ages - most famously Galileo - have also suffered persecution for daring to contradict the Establishment in their time.
Perhaps what's more remarkable in post-war Blighty (as in Stalin's Soviet Union) is that "elite" has become a dirty word - among the very elites who govern and otherwise influence us. Though only when it suits them: somehow we didn't hear them sneering at the festival of the ultra-elite known as the Olympics the way they do about intellectual or artistic excellence.
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Saturday 3rd November 2018 18:43 GMT Dan 55
Re: Anti-intellectual?
Not in my experience. The only part of the UK where politicians can safely espouse particular religious beliefs is Arlene's bit
Maybe a decade and a half ago when Blair was reminded that "we don't do God". Not any more.
The 2010 Academies Act under Cameron also opened the floodgates for religious schools to convert into academies and deviate from the national curriculum and teach mystical woo as a subject.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 15:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Vote for goats
"[...] see Museum of Naples Secret Cabinet, [...]"
The unearthed sculpture was reserved for viewing by the "incorruptible" Victorian elite. No doubt in its original time it had a Pagan religious significance for the plebs as well.
In the 1970s Mary Whitehouse and Lord Longford said that pr0n must be suppressed as it corrupts the lower classes. Implying that their elite can handle it - even if it supposedly disgusts them.
In 1971 Lord Longford organised a
crusadesurvey to go round various pr0n outlets in London and Copenhagen. A young Gyles Brandreth and Cliff Richard were taken along as chosen representatives of the swinging generation. Here is an excerpt from Gyles's diary of the tour.
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Saturday 3rd November 2018 16:09 GMT Uncle Slacky
Re: Anti-intellectual?
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
- Isaac Asimov
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Friday 2nd November 2018 10:09 GMT TonyJ
So many tings about Tesla
Let's not forget without him - no AC (edit for our US'ian cousins, I don't mean Air Con, I mean Alternating Current).
Westinghouse royally screwed him over as well, taking advantage of his will to ensure the best for others.
Mr Dabbs...this will surely do your nut in, given it's both Tesla-driven AND C&W?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbLshnfu0wY
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Friday 2nd November 2018 10:21 GMT Ogi
> You might even understand it what it's for. Children will wonder what the heck it means and eventually ask their parents to explain it to them.
It was in fact those banknotes that made me ask that question when I was a kid. In addition to Tesla on one side, you would have his Tesla coil printed on the other side, or the schematic of his poly-phase generator.
I thought it was cool, and asked my dad about it, and in addition to explaining it to me, he took me to the Tesla Museum in Belgrade, where I got to see all his old experiments being demonstrated, including the poly-phase generator, and an absolutely massive Tesla coil (it was a good 3 odd metres tall).
They would give you fluorescent tubes to hold, and power on the coil. In addition to the sudden tingly feeling and hair standing on end when powered up, you would get lightning bolts out of the machine, and the fluorescent tubes actually lit up in my hand, with no connectors! You could swing it round like a light saber (and of course, I did a bit). I thought it was all amazing, like magic, but with actual understanding behind it (I just had to learn).
There were other experiments, including an incandescent lamp attached to nothing but a coil wound antenna, which was lit up by a transmitter a metre or so away, wirelessly. Dancing metal eggs, a recreation of his remote controlled boat, a model scale demo of a 3 phase power infrastructure (model power station, generators, step-up/step-down transformers, overhead lines, and model homes being powered at the ends), and many others.
That was the moment I got hooked into science. It drove me to learn and understand all, and it is still my goal to build myself a tesla coil (and a tesla turbine, which was another cool piece of kit).
Alas, in the UK there was not much demand for skilled engineers, all the EE stuff was being rapidly offshored to the far east, so for uni my dad recommended I go into computers instead.
As a result, instead of studying EE at uni, I did CompSci. Rather than sparks flying at the office, I spend my days behind a desk shuffling entropy around (and now it is my turn for the jobs to be offshored), but I still remember and am grateful for what inspired me to go into the hard sciences.
Alas, the Tesla museum ran out of funds and shut down in the late 90's/early 2000's. It has since been refitted and reopened, but I don't know if they still have the same demonstrations as I saw. I've been told now its more "interactive games" and less actual demos. Plus I don't think modern health and safety would tolerate firing up huge tesla coils with kids next to it grinning and holding tubes, but I am hopeful. Next time I am down there I might pop in, see how things have changed.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 14:47 GMT Colin Wilson 2
"Alas, the Tesla museum ran out of funds and shut down in the late 90's/early 2000's. It has since been refitted and reopened, but I don't know if they still have the same demonstrations as I saw"
I visited it last December. They still had those demonstrations - including the Light Sabre flourescent tubes.
Well worth a visit
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Friday 2nd November 2018 15:11 GMT Anonymous Coward
"[...]an incandescent lamp attached to nothing but a coil wound antenna, which was lit up by a transmitter [...]"
A neon bulb held near an HF transmitter will also light without contact. In amateur radio circles it was reckoned that a nice red glow was a good sign. If there were purple tinges then there were possibly parasitic oscillations that needed to be cured.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 23:43 GMT Kristian Walsh
Re: More scientists on banknote.
I don't suffer from migraines, except those times I had to handle banknotes in Switzerland...
The internet tells me that I'm referring to the pre-2005 Series 8 notes, but photos don't really do them justice: why waste 10chf on LSD when you could just stare at the money itself...
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Friday 2nd November 2018 10:42 GMT Voland's right hand
Nice one Dabsy
Close, but no cigar.
When Serbian (or anybody else on the Balkans north of the Greek border) thinks of Tesla, the options are actually in THIS ORDER:
1. https://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A2%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%BB%D0%B0_(%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%BA%D0%B0) - carpentry instrument and colloquial for F***up (something that involves a destructive fix +/- percussive maintenance).
2. Nicola Tesla
3. Battery driven car selling which on the Balkans beats the NoVa and Pajero for Spanish countries as far as marketing is concerned due to 1. Specifically, the colloquial meaning.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 11:03 GMT Potemkine!
I know this for a fact because they put portraits of smart people on their banknotes, rather than featuring the usual toffs, millionaires, politicians, blockbuster authors and privileged upper middle class do-gooders.
Before the euro banknotes, the french banknotes where having portraits of French "celebrities" on them, whose names where used as a nicknames for the banknotes. We had the Berlioz, the Debussy, the Quentin de la Tour, the Delacroix, the Montesquieu and the Pascal.... scientists seem to lack popularity.
Also, +1 for Mr Dabbs' list!
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Friday 2nd November 2018 14:58 GMT FrogsAndChips
Re: Pascal, you should look into his contributions in fields of mathematics and physics.
There were also the Louis Pasteur, the Marie and Pierre Curie, and the Gustave Eiffel (ok,this one was more an engineer than a pure scientist). All in all, scientists were not that underrepresented on banknotes.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 11:43 GMT Nick Gisburne
Don't forget we had Darwin
I know we got rid of Darwin with the change to the plastic tenner, but he is certainly one of the most influential figures in science and history. I still remember the reactions of some American evangelicals, who were congratulating themselves on having 'In God We Trust' on their money, when I showed them that one of our notes had that pesky evolution bloke Charles Darwin on it. Minds blown.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 11:59 GMT hammarbtyp
Re: Don't forget we had Darwin
That was then.
Now we get a Brexit 50p
Since apparently in our Groupthink country we cannot know trust experts, I expect the next notes to be:-
Nigel Lawson shown pushing back the sea levels with one hand, Canute style
Nigel Farage, beer in one hand striding to the future in a Mao great leap forward pose
Boris Johnson with text written totally in Latin, or maybe just one of his speeches, whichever is least intelligable
and of course Jacob Rees-Mogg on the newly minted 10 shilling note
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Friday 2nd November 2018 15:21 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Don't forget we had Darwin
Nigel Lawson shown pushing back the sea levels with one hand, Canute style
...from his permanent residence in France
Nigel Farage, beer in one hand striding to the future in a Mao great leap forward pose
...while possibly living out his old age with his children in Germany
and of course Jacob Rees-Mogg on the newly minted 10 shilling note
...with his eye on rural Ireland for a post-Brexit comfortable financial and Vatican approved culture.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 12:13 GMT Teiwaz
All that's required are small steps that may still lead us towards a brighter, smarter future.
Small steps?
Depends on the mind, a small step to some is a step to far for others (especially if they fear they may be financially less well off in that case).
What we need is true a true social system, and a working technocracy - we currently have a lazy idiocracy and a system that edges on reversing the social reforms of the Victorian age.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 14:51 GMT mrrrk
Fifty Pound Note
James Clerk Maxwell needs to be on the new fifty pound note. He's British (ok, Scottish) and he's up there with Newton and Einstein - but no bugger's heard of him. Put his equations (instead of some simple unit definition attributed to Tesla) on the note and that'll really fox the parents...
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Friday 2nd November 2018 15:31 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Fifty Pound Note
The recent BBC TV documentary is not available - but here is an "In Our Time" Radio 4 programme about Maxwell.
Not sure if these radio programmes are geographically limited.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 14:59 GMT Giovani Tapini
the English language's infuriating but amusing propensity to conjure ambiguity out of thin air
Have you ever looked at Chinese? Get someone to walk through a character by character translation of almost anything (i.e. not google translate) and you will see what I mean...
We do however have a propensity for looking for double meanings...
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Friday 2nd November 2018 18:47 GMT Daedalus
Re: the English language's infuriating but amusing propensity to conjure ambiguity out of thin air
An amusing example of this is "The Wizard-Masters of Peng-shi Angle", a back-translation of a bootleg Chinese translation of Frederik Pohl's satirical short "The Wizards of Pung's Corners". The translator who brought it back to English had no knowledge of the original story. The plot mostly survived but a lot of American advertising jargon from the original was almost unrecognizable.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 15:58 GMT Missing Semicolon
Aggh, it burns!
Having followed the link to
http://www.mgb.org.rs/en/visit/the-residence-of-princess-ljubica
I find that it's the worst kind of "well it works on my 28 inch monitor, what are you complainnig about?".
Set the window to be normal sized, and the picture is mostly obscured by the text!
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Friday 2nd November 2018 16:02 GMT EveryTime
Tesla was exception at intuitively understanding near-field effects, and the evolution of coupled 3D rotating fields.
He didn't understand far-field effects *at all*, and didn't have the mathematical expertise to fake it by working with the equations.
The former ability allowed him to design rotating electrical machinery that people hadn't even conceived of. Everyone else was thinking in terms of static fields, resulting in awkward, inefficient commutated motors and generators. Tesla's AC generators and motors were compact, symmetrical, efficient, smooth and reliable.
But his lack of mathematical ability meant that he was often very wrong when his intuition failed. That was evident in his ideas that were, to put it gently, were those of a crackpot.
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Friday 2nd November 2018 22:06 GMT Danny 2
Who should an autonomous vehicle kill in an avoidable crash?
I have a list of ten former colleagues and 'friends', and as soon as I can hack their vehicles then that's my bucket list.
Autonomous vehicular murder seems such a promising new field that I'm abandoning my research into a knife that can stab people through the internet.
Talking about vehicular murder, did anyone else notice the bus driver deliberately caused the Chongqing bus plunge? The person attacking him was blamed by the BBC, but the footage clearly shows him pulling the wheel for no sane reason.
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Saturday 3rd November 2018 22:18 GMT Celeste Reinard
Menslaugter
As an environment conscious person I just cycle - and only had one attack on my life today by a car piloted by somebody getting instructions from his gran through his smartphone. Maybe they can program cars with a female sense of humor - not to target women - only just men? For starters? ... Or, and here is an idea, outlaw pedestrianism. Or at least tax it heavily.
I think the mentioning of country & western singers is gratuituosly rethorical; who would ever miss them?
Country road, here I go... >Carmageddon ensuies<
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Sunday 4th November 2018 00:31 GMT philmck
I have no objection to Country & Western music performed between consenting adults in private, but I once spent a week driving long distances around California and Nevada when I had a few days off between Christmas and New Year. The rental car had a cassette player but I had no cassettes with me, so the only entertainment I had was the radio, and once clear of the cities all they played was C&W. Being Christmas, it was C&W carols, of which there were only half a dozen and they were repeated endlessly.
I've never been able to listen to C&W since.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
