It caught my eye… 5-2024

MikeLeave a comment

In one of my past roles I was involved with multilingual dictionary production and even attended a lexicography conference in Lorient, France in 2004.

So it was surprising to read this article in the Guardian about Disappearing tongues: the endangered language crisis. It’s one of their long-reads, but worthwhile seeing where the world’s languages are heading.

Seems that the ever-changing climate of earth is continuing to affect all aspects of life, including the oceans fish population. Reported on Earth.com, it appears that the world’s oceans are losing their ability to sustain plankton.

Being at the bottom of the ocean food-chain, this is a worrying development.

There’s nothing like a dish of lovely Risotto to satisfy an empty stomach. However, not all is well in the rice fields of the Po Valley in northern Italy where Arborio and Carnaroli rice, the most suited to Risotto are grown.

Recovery from recent droughts will take some time and it appears that other rice varieties being trialled just can’t offer the same quality of dish.

Having spent some thirty minutes on the phone to my own water company, Thames Water, about a 30% increase in my monthly payments, I am not surprised to read that I am not alone in thinking what this report says.

Seems to me that we are not getting enough regulation from OFWAT or the UK Government about this subject

It caught my eye… 4-2024

MikeLeave a comment

Australia has been in the news quite a bit recently as it continues to experience very high summer temperatures.

I have also just finished watching a BBC iPlayer catch-up program called “The Australian Wars”, which deals with the conquest of Australia by the incoming colonial settlers and the battles that took place as they displaced the First Nations Indigenous Australians.

It’s a very interesting up to date (2022) and alarming documentary and a depressing reflection on British colonialism that has lasted much longer than you would think. Only recently, Australians voted in an historic referendum when all six states voted No to a proposal to amend the constitution to recognise First Nations people and create a body for them to advise the government.

Here we go again…

More problems for the Royal Navy as the HMS Queen Elizabeth Aircraft Carrier has had to suddenly withdraw from NATO’s Steadfast Defender 2024 exercise.

It does make you wonder if we, the taxpayers, are really getting value for money in our latest purchases for the Royal Navy.

It seems that it is suffering from similar issues that the HMS Prince of Wales suffered from and were only resolved by dry-docking in Scotland. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen this time.

Good news or the lack of it on all the news channels tends to get pushed to the end of newscasts and sometimes treated ‘time-fillers’.

Well, here’s a site that claims to have a ‘1,000 Bits of Good News You May Have Missed in 2023′. Some interesting snippets from its site include:

Nuclear Fusion – The Holy Grail!

MikeLeave a comment

The search for an endless supply of free energy has been around ever since humans have been around.

However, it now seems that we are approaching the moment when we may have access to a supply of endless environmentally friendly energy, although at some considerable development costs.

An experimental JT-60SA nuclear reactor in Japan’s Ibaraki Prefecture seems the best opportunity of far to be able to deliver a sustainable and near limitless power source, according to recent press reports.

The struggle to be able to produce limitless energy from a Fusion Reaction (the same energy that powers the Sun) rather than from a Fissile Reaction (the same produced in Nuclear Reactors and of course nuclear bombs) has been going on for many decades. Only recently has major progress been achieved, both in the JT-60A trials and at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California (LLNL) where scientists manage to get more energy out than the energy that was used to run the reaction.

Therein lies the ‘rub’; how to reduce the energy needed to sustain a fusion reaction so that it is possible to get long term access to this so called limitless ‘free’ energy. For example, the group at the LLNL had to use lasers to fuse two light atoms into a single one, releasing 3.15MJ (megajoules) of energy from 2.05MJ of input – roughly enough to boil a kettle!

It seems we are close, but there is still some way to go to having this type of energy at the flick of a switch.

Click on the image for an explanation of the differences.

It caught my eye… 3-2024

MikeLeave a comment

Physician Associates (PA’s) seem to be a big topic in the mainstream media at the moment, with some questions being asked about the potential of replacing doctors.

Various arguments for and against have also been put forward to about PA’s being used to fill the shortfall in recruitment of new trainee doctors.

There is still some confusion about their role in the wider medical environment. However, an article about PA’s and their roles at the Reading NHS Foundation Trust makes for interesting reading.

News this week indicates that the search for missing sailor Simon Parkes, who disappeared 31 years ago in Gibraltar while serving on HMS Illustrious, has restarted as Police investigate a car park in Gibraltar.

The investigation into Simon Parkes disappearance has also been linked to serial killer Allan Grimson who was serving on HMS Illustrious as a Petty Officer at the same time. He was subsequently jailed for the murder of two other men, one of which was also a sailor serving on HMS Edinburgh at the time of his death. Let’s hope this mystery is cleared up finally.

It seems from figures emerging that 2023 was a very hot year indeed. The UK according to various researchers had its second-hottest year on record.

Reports from around the world back up the ongoing warming of the planet and shows no sign of abating. For example, meteorologists in Australia have already warning about massive increases in temperatures across a lot of the country for this week.

It seems, from various sources, that if we have not already passed it; we are certainly close to passing the point of no return for more massive changes in the Earth’s climate.

The Royal Navy—What’s happening?

MikeLeave a comment

I have come across a number of recent articles discussing the current state of the Royal Navy. You can find access to the various news items below, which cover lack of manpower and early retirement of ships.

    Finally, this from the Navy Lookout site, which I think has a pretty good handle on the current situation in the Royal Navy.

    It’s sad to see an organisation where I spent many of my formative years in such a mess. I’m not sure what the solutions are to boost recruitment so that we can keep more ships manned. However, I certainly think that politicians of all parties have a lot to answer for their actions (or lack of) over the past number of years.

    Mobile Phone Coverage in the UK

    MikeLeave a comment

    We’ve all been there; somewhere in the UK trying to make a call or use the internet on a mobile phone to find; we have no signal!

    Ofcom’s Mobile Phone Coverage map, which I have used on the left, seems to show a pretty good coverage across the UK.

    You can click on the image to find out more details from your own postcode area point of view.

    Looking at all the 4 main mobile phone networks (three, O2, ee & vodafone) using this service, we can see slightly different coverage maps than those of Ofcom which paint a different picture with not so much full coverage of the UK.

    So, just how good is the coverage of mobile phone coverage in the UK? I came across this report about United Kingdom Mobile Insights from m2catalyst a couple of days ago and clearly this a company is delving deep into mobile phone coverage not only in the UK but also around the world.

    Information in the Coverage-qoe/Traffic analysis/Digital divide report includes detailed measurement of the UK mobile phone network coverage. What’s also interesting is a comparison of where the UK sits in relationship to other countries for Connected Coverage and Traffic Percentage, the UK does not come out very well.

    The whole report can be downloaded at the end of the online report page, as are reports from many other countries around the work. Happy reading; that is, if you have a connection!!!

    It caught my eye… 2-2024

    MikeLeave a comment

    Wow!! What a lot of rain over the past few weeks and it seems that we have another example of climate change. That of course is no help to the people are having to bail out their homes from the latest inundation of flood water. Help from Citizens Advice is available.

    As the chart on the left shows (click to get a bigger version), the planets’ climate is continuing to change, is it approaching the point of no return? One hope not for all our sakes.

    With the sad news that Derek Draper has died today at the young age of 56, Long-Covid continues to cast its shadow over many people.

    A recent report indicated that, even in people that have recovered to some degree, they are still affected by it when trying to exercise to get back to full health. If you’re suffering from Long-Covid, here’s a Long Covid recovery guide from the British Heart Foundation.

    With Solar flare activity increasing and intensifying—see the recent Northern Lights magnificent shows, another effect of solar flares you may have personally experienced is interference in terrestrial broadcast TV and Radio signals. I have here in the last few weeks.

    Italy could soon have a solution to this as a side-benefit to its requirement to provide a reliable TV/Radio signal across all of its regions, in particular the most mountainous areas, by having an internet fall-back. It makes interesting reading and compares how a few other countries are progressing.

    Middle East Conflict

    MikeLeave a comment

    I recently saw an interesting post by Robert Peston on X (formerly known as Twitter) in relation to the current situation in the Middle East.

    “I have become increasingly worried that the charge of antisemitism is being levelled to silence legitimate and important debate. Antisemitism is on the rise, but there is also a rise in the unscrupulous use of the term to silence reasonable questions about the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza. This article in the Harvard Crimson by Jewish community leader Bernie Steinberg warns of incipient McCarthyism.“

    “It is worth reading, whichever side of the debate you are on https://thecrimson.com/article/2023/1“

    I’ve also just finished reading a fascinating book, A Line in the Sand, which for me has offered up a lot of explanation about the long history of why there have been so many conflicts. This is also worth a read. There are of course many other books on the subject available as well.

    It caught my eye… 1-2024

    MikeLeave a comment

    It’s a New Year! So, I am determined to post more this year and there is nothing like the first day of the new year to start off the first post.

    X (previously known as Twitter) continues to change since Elon Musk took over. I have not been a very big poster on the platform, apart from the NHS & Royal Navy tweets (or mini-newsletters as I might call them) that I put out on an infrequent basis.

    I do find that it is still a platform to use when all else fails which can focus a supplier’s attention when you have issues with providers of Gas, Electric and water and they need a bit of persuasion to respond. They just don’t like bad karma!

    One change I have seen over the last year is a drop in the random casual tweets containing nothing of consequence just taking up space on the timeline to the increase in more general information tweets as well an increase in various business related tweets appearing. Not sure if that is to do with my ‘Following’ list or just the tweaking of the various ‘algorithms’ that are behind everything now. However, in my opinion it does not seem to have gone downhill as much as some pundits were predicting, though I don’t think its long-term survival is safe yet.

    Here are a couple of tweets which were not on my ‘Follow’ list that popped up today.

    Marsh Family Songs — Which I always love.

    History

    National Public Radio (NPR) is an American non-profit media organization. NPR Music — one of the best online place to find information on music of all types — is also the home of Tiny Desk Concerts. I’ve been dipping in and out of this site for quite a few years and have found it to be a great place to find new artists from across the world of music, to already established names like Sting, Seal, Florence + the Machine and Mariachi Flor De Toloache to name just few of the many acts to feature.

    If you want to find new music of any genre you can think of, then this is a place to start. Here are some new ones I recently came across — Marta Pereira da Costa from Portugal, Laufey from Iceland and music from the USA Broadway stage show Sweeney Todd.

    Why does it take so long for Governments and particular UK governments to admit to their mistakes and properly compensate people for the errors are committed by them?

    As this story continues to show, there is still a long way to go before the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire and their relatives of get closure on the issue. Likewise, the Post Office computer scandal drags on, as does the Contaminated Blood enquiry.

    Why can’t governments act faster?