Bloody Tourists

People in Barcelona, Spain are marching in protest at the flood of tourists that are turning their city unlivable for them according to this article.  This is not a unique thing either: as pointed out in the article, Venice is almost depopulated now: only tourists go there. 
This looks to be disturbingly common - eventually every city with cheap, easy travel connecting it will get this surge of drunken backpackers, rubbernecked sightseers and cheap flophouse dwellers which will make a big mess. This is crazy. Another hopeess attempt to make business that depends on foreign money coming into the country supporting such "industries" as gambling and drinking . . . . leaving a big mess behind.
I agree that we all need jobs but this is not what I call a legitemate industry to keep a country going - not unless the country is something like a tiny pacific island that has no other industries.

Ah, but why worry? soon the housing bubble will burst and the waste matter will hit the ventilation device  . . . .  and maybe the Yanks will start World War Three. . . . . . but the Super- Rich will be fine in their secret hideout in the New Zealand Alps, far from nasty atomic fallout, secure in the knowledge that they have bought their immortality  . . . . a bit like a very old telly show made in Enzed in the seventies, called "The Alpha plan". 

They haven't figured on the locals though: once WW3 hits, tribes of big, muscular, really pissed off  Maoris won't be stopped by electronic gadgets for long - they are a resourceful people, if it's Angry Maoris vs. technogeek billionnaires, I'm betting on the Maoris. ;)

It's Not Happening

This is a direct quote from The Register:
In a frankly-startling interview given to radio shock-jock Alan Jones, the PM (Tony Abbott) said among other things:

• “What we've managed to do through this, admittedly imperfect ... is reduce the growth rate of this particular sector as much as the current Senate would allow us to do”.
• “What we did recently in the Senate was reduce, Alan, reduce, capital R-E-D-U-C-E the number of these things that we are going to get in the future.”
• “I would frankly have liked to have reduced the number a lot more.”
• And, in spite of there being no scientific research that wind farm noise endangers health: “I do take your point about the potential health impact of these things; when I have been up close to these wind farms not only are they visually awful but they make a lot of noise”.

I can only theorise that either (a) He is following a script provided by some unseen master ro (b) he is a mistake and not fit to run a chook raffle.
See here for all the details

But then this thursday there was a global meeting of climate contrarians - it looks like Tony is making the same noises as the members of that gabfest did. Yeah right, just like smoking is prefectly safe - or so the spindoctors told us all.  . . .which brings me to this:
Merchants of Doubt, a film by the same man who made Food, Inc. all about the Spin Doctor business and how they twist things around to con people into thinking pretty much anything they want them to think . . . . . .    (thanks to Boing Boing for that link!)

Sign of the times: This young man became a pro racing driver at this year's Le Mans 24 hr by training in a game. I kid you not. Expect more of this in future.

Finally, today's newspeak from Wired, a site that I once visited often, but not so much now - it seems to have slumped:

 

Until now the only "solids" I did went down the toilet. Where do they get this stuff?

Two Theives and a liar

I just discovered that the NYSE is going to list rates for Bitcoin.
If you have not been looking, Bitcoin is a purely electronic currency that carries with it an index of where each amount came from and where it resides, and that index is freely available.
The value of a Bitcoin was originally set by the difficulty of "mining" it, that being computationally intensive since Bitcoins are basically a huge complex number (without going into detail).
I have been follwing the whole thing because the money system as it exists now has become a huge mess and yet we all depend on it for everyday life. Locally things look okay at the moment but our currency is linked to all others just as our "economies" are linked so if one falls apart it will affect everyone connected too.

The title of this post comes from a song by Gary Clail many years ago. Here are the lyrics:
--------------------------------------------------------------

"I’ve done a few dealings in the city
met a number of stockbrokers
and i can tell you in all my life that i’ve never seen
such dishonesty and greed
it’s like a big betting shop a bookies a casino
where the’re all screwing each other and the rest of the world"

the devil is here in the city
and the city wakes up with the devil
the devil is here in the city

the poor man comes and can’t get a look in
the poor man comes and he can’t get a shout
the rich man comes in his brand new car
bought on credit from a leasing house
the con men come and try to have us over
selling us shares that we already own
accountants came and juggled with the numbers
that’s how they became two thieves and a liar
that’s how they became two thieves and a liar
that’s how they became two thieves and a liar

the devil is here in the city
and the city wakes up with the devil

the poor man comes and can’t get a look in
the poor man comes and he can’t get a shout
the rich man comes in his brand new car
bought on credit from a leasing house
the con men come and try to have us over
selling us shares that we already own
accountants came and juggled with the numbers
that’s how they became two thieves and a liar
that’s how they became two thieves and a liar
that’s how they became two thieves and a liar

pack it up?, pack it up, pack it up, pack it in

the devil is here in the city
and the city wakes up with the devil

"when the jews and italian communities went to america right
they landed in a new country that was ripe for organisation and for rackets
now in this country thats not possible
because the real power the real money the real rackets
have been going on over here for hundreds of years
all stitched up and passed on from generation to generation
and the american gangsters right,
theyr’e still struggling to get the respectability that theyr’e after
but we’ve had three centuries headstart on those buggers
and look haven’t we done a beautiful job of it an’ all
i bet you there are millions of people right that think
that the blokes who work here in the city are really good blokes
hard working who have got the economy of this nation deep in their hearts
what a load of cobblers it’s the best confidence trick in history"

the devil is here in the city
and the city wakes up with the devil

the poor man comes and can’t get a look in
the poor man comes and he can’t get a shout
the rich man comes in his brand new car
bought on credit from a leasing house
the con men come and try to have us over
selling us shares that we already own
accountants came and juggled with the numbers
that’s how they became two thieves and a liar
that’s how they became two thieves and a liar
that’s how they became two thieves and a liar

the devil is here in the city
and the city wakes up with the devil

-------------------------------------------------------------

I thinnk the song is quite accurate, and lately things have only got worse: Now governments across the globe are madly printing money trying to claim that it will all be fine . . . . . . but it cannot possibly turn out that way.  

For a while I thought maybe something like Bitcoin would replace the funny munny but as soon as it becomes another speculation item for the stock markets it is doomed. Market speculation destroys the whole point of actual markets where money is borrowed to improve productivity or products - and here I mean actual, physical products only.

Even Rupert Murduch agrees that things have gone badly wrong:

Singularity? What singularity?

Have a read of this (courtesy of VICE.com).   Here is the original post by Zeljko Svedic.
I must agree with Svedic's claims: most of the worry about "singularity" or smart mchines are based on anthropocentrism and irrational human ideas. This is the main reason that I have not read all the hype by the fear merchants about this supposed techno-apocalype.  If the machine is so smart why would it bother having anything to do with a bunch of insects?

There is also a whole of baloney about some machine that has the purpose of making paperclips, but ignore that - if it only has the purpose of making paperclips and it has not thought beyond that then it is not intelligent at all, certainly not smarter than a human. We know what the paperclip is used for, and we know the greater purpose of paperclipping: an intelligence does not obsess over one tiny goal, it survey the bigger picture to see what the greater purpose is, and it probably would not care about humans except as a footnote in it's history.

Thankyou Zeljko Svedic.

There is also another lesson here for humans:  Nick Bostrom, Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and various other important people are no smarter than you or me.  Don't ever be fooled into thinking that someone else is soooo much wiser than you: none of us are and we can all be fooled and manipulated by emotive content if we are not watching out for it.

Scarey huh?

No robot takeover this year

No doubt you have heard of the Singularity preachers or the fear of robots turning into Terminators and wiping out all those stupid, inefficient humans  . . . .  well, just in case you are concerned about that happenning,  here is a video that will spell out just how far, far away that mythical event is.

Don't get me wrong, I admire the work these people are doing - but it is quite clear how far we are from a robot that can do the simplest domestic duties.  Check out the Darpa Robotics Challenge on June 5th to see the best they can do too.

Bloody glad I don't live in England

Wanting To Believe?

Getting around in space is very wasteful because the only known way to do so is to take some mass (matter) and throw it out the back of your ship as fast and hard as possible (thus "Newtonian motion": action producing reaction). 
The reports of a device that claims to derive thrust without throwing matter away can be seen here on The Verge  (The EM drive) I am not surprised if it doesn't work, since the idea behind it seems to be vague and it is hard enough to make a real object from a clear idea.
  
But . . . . 
There are also a number of variants of a mechanical thrust-producing device loosely termed The Dean Drive.
Look here and here at Steve Hampton's site.  This is very different from the previous example which featured microwaves bouncing around in a metal container: the site includes video of mechanical devices that can and do provide thrust without exhaust or movement of the outside medium (air or water).

Okay, I amit that I want to beleive this, but there is something more to it: on the Dean Drive page we see simple diagrams explaining how it works.  If Steve Hampton has faked it, why did he keep building more versions and models if the first one didn't work?

I fully expect that this type of drive will not be able to get a ship into space or levitate a car against gravity - the thrust derived for weight of the device would make that very difficult, but it could be used to drive things in space provide it works as shown in the video . . . . so the question then becomes "Why is this not getting researched by NASA and others?"

Here are my probable answers, you can choose among them for yourself.

1. Science has become a bureaucracy and it has rules, the most fundamental being Newton's laws of motion. Anyone claiming to modify or otherwise alter these holy laws is automatically wrong.

2. Trendy scientist don't like mechanical devices any more - they are too "last century", and scientists have already discovered EVERYTHING about mechanical devices. If it were solid state and involved electronics, that would be okay. 

3. Something to do with patents, lawsuits, ownership and so on: someone already has claimed this and will sue the ass off anyone trying to use it for serious commercial gain.

4. NASA has already tested it and it didn't work in space - so show us the proof - the Youtube vid where they tested it  on rails (or whatever) in a vacuum chamber and it DIDN'T move.
DON'T give me any long winded "explanation" by a Ph.D about why "it won't work".

Ah, but I really don't expect any replies to this.  Nobody reads this, it's just my own example of one hand clapping.