Posts by stever@cs.waikato.ac.nz
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Hard News: Staying Alive, in reply to James Butler,
James, yes. Same here. Especially when passing long lines of parked cars. Almost everyone, in fact, drives past (sometimes having waited) without comment. There are, of course, a few who can't resist shouting something stupid. Giving yourself a couple of metres, in fact, usual means a car can get past either immediately or without waiting more than a few seconds.
In the UK, where I was brought up, we had Cycling Proficiency Training and Tests at junior school. (Run with a local bobby and lots of parents. You get a badge to put on your bike and a certificate!) One thing I always remember being taught (and it came up again later when I was learning to ride a motorcycle) is : ride confidently and claim your space!!!
It's good advice.
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Hard News: Staying Alive, in reply to Roger,
Absolutely! It's bizarre. I cycled to work(and elsewhere) in London (and still when I go back) for about 15 years and rarely saw glass. These days in Hamilton there's at least one patch somewhere on the way to work (8kms) every day!
And, though the Rode Code tells people after a crash to remove glass, sharp bits of plastic etc. from the road surface, even the Police at a crash site (I've mentioned this once to an officer--never again--to much hate there...) don't clear the road surface (where I'm making the mad definition that the space for cyclists in the gutter is part of the road surface).
And the road signs temporarily put in the cycle lane (even *over* the painted-on cyclist diagram!!!) is maddening. The Council's reply to all these is "we know, we think it's wrong, we'll let them (Police, road firms etc.) know"---and nothing changes.
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I'm not sure the media here have really been tested by events much or often, so it's more like we're "benefitting" in these ratings from a form of "if you don't say anything, people can't tell you've got nothing interesting to say or that you're an idiot, and tend to over-rate you" sort of thing.
The press here seem, to me, to be at about the (in UK-terms) Daily Mail level---concentrating on house prices, celebrities and death (not necessarily in that order).
So, nothing too offensive, but with a consistent frame, a few hangups, and not much at all in the way of "investigation".
Print the press releases almost verbatim, don't rock the boat away from a conservative bent, appeal to the middle classes, and you're doing "OK".
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Good words by rather a good scientist....
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Hard News: On Science, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Absolutely. And it's so often demonstrably a farce as we all make up various numbers.
For example, I've been asked to say what extra income my science will make for NZ in the next few years.
Trying to honestly answer this, I ask the relevant ministries what the total for currently existing industry in the relevant area is. The answer is usually, essentially, "We don't collect those figures, but we do for this whole, huge area that includes your area."
So, using that as a start, and then trying to guess what size the area I'm interested in is as a proportion of the larger whole, I then make a further guess as to what increase in income my science will make (and this is a complete guess---let's say it'll make 1% difference in five years....)---so a guess gets multiplied by a figure arising from a guess at a proportion of a ministry's rough figure, and that then becomes a "data point" that someone assesses me on.
All this is sort of an illustration of bad science---a number gets derived in some dubious way and then, because it looks "precise", it's imbued with significance, it's history is forgotten and it takes on some sort of legitimacy just because it has to---there are no data in the country that allow the calculation to be legitimate, but this is, apparently, "better than nothing", so it gets used.
It's pretty clear it's nonsense, but the factI'm required to do this also makes it clear that our science funding regime is completely unfit for the job it's meant to be doing.
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Speaker: Doing the right thing on retirement, in reply to Kate Hannah,
Some +s there too.
In my area (prog and spec langs and logics in computer science...sorry!) things that really make a huge difference take (looking at the history) 20, 30, 40 years from the original research to possible fruition. E.g, code contracts turning up in .NET, starting with work of Hoare and suchlike in the mid-sixties----and that's with 15 years or so of MicroSoft behind them, just lately!
Also, again looking at the historical record, we should expect only about 10% of the research we do (and the money we put into it) to have commercial returns (the driving determinant in NZ research bodies for the last few years).
So, trying having to quantify for FRST (or whatever replaces it) and even Marsden how much money you'll make for NZ in three years is totally pointless. In fact, it's beside the point-----it misses the point.....etc.
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Up Front: Casual, Shallow and Meaningless, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
One, I believe, of the Queen's favourite lines :-)
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Sorry...back a bit to the property rights and planning...but this piece by Monbiot seems very applicable here too.
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Here's the paper I recalled hearing about concerning the first detection of toxins from GM crops in humans.
Concentrations not worrying, apparently, but clearly something to be aware of....and further research around accumulation etc. I guess necessary, given the effects these toxins, in higher concentrations, can have (see the conclusions).
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I think that there have also been reports that toxins in crops which are "GMed" to produce them (for protection of the crop, I guess) are turning up in people's systems.
I think there were claims (or fears) that those toxins could be toxic for people and other animals, not just the pest they were meant for.
The theory was that the toxins should have broken down into harmless components.