Order of the Bath

Sorry for the lack of posts recently, I have been veeery busy with the church video system. We are nearly there now.

Anyway, there was an item of note on the news this morning about supermarkets doing more to reduce packaging and marking those items which can be recycled. For once I have some sympathy with the mega-chains. How can they sensibly label packages for recycling when the local authorities who organise the recycling are all at odds with each other. Here they don’t recycle plastic at all unless you take it to one of the two depots or a few isolated collection points. The council just to the north, in the area where I work, the system is totally different. If you stand on the border you can see both systems in operation with different categories, timing and collection policies.
Returning the sympathetic view, the collectors and consumers do also have a problem distinguishing the different sorts of plastic so perhaps if they all worked together to create a standard then we would all be better off.

My teachers would have been the first to say that language was not my strong point. In fact, I have the unenviable distinction of having reached the end of formal education without a single language qualification to my name. But as a scientist, it bugs me when people use incorrect words because it conveys incorrect meaning and thus makes the communication pointless or even dangerous.
In the news this morning there were two prize examples. A chief constable from somewhere said that emergency calls this Halloween had been down by a third from the previous year. It a subsequent sentence it was clear that he meant down TO a third. Perhaps this is a mathematical inaccuracy but I think it was more likely to be careless use of words.
The second was an interview with someone responsible for the WHO report on depleted uranium weapons where he said that a contrary research paper was not included because it was not collaborated by other research. Now at best this is meaningless but at worst it implies that he was expecting there to be collusion between independent research projects. Of course what he meant was that the paper was not CORROBORATED by other research; Mrs. Malaprop would have been proud.
In both cases it was the interviewees that made the error under stressful conditions but I would have expected the interviewers to have picked it up and asked for clarification.
Another one that frequently bugs me is the apparent interchangeability of “site” and “sight” in emails but here I blame the reliance on spell-checkers and an inability of most people (including myself) of being able to proof-read their own writing. Having read this, if any of you want to turn the finger back on me for the poor spelling, use of language or proof-reading on this web site then I welcome it—you will be doing a service to other readers; but please point out the necessary corrections in detail else I will never be able to find them.

One of the news items on the radio this moring was a report by the Institution of Civil Engineers which said that to ease the water shortage in the South-East, water waste (sewage) should be processed to the standard of drinking water and re-enter the system.
Is this new? It was a common saying in London when I grew up that the Thames passed through five pairs of kidneys before it reached the sea.

Ian Graham makes an interesting point in a comment on Robin Wilton’s Post “Is this a news story?”

The Irish don’t have ID cards and their government has said that they are not going to have them. And if you’re Irish, you don’t have to carry a passport in the UK. Nor do you need a work permit (as Ireland is in the EU). So anyone from anywhere who wants to get a job in the UK without showing ID will simply say “I’m Irish”. End of story.

I want a phone service (mobile or land line) that tells me what a call will cost before I make it. Is that too much to ask?

Oh, and when abroad, tells me what an incoming call will cost me before I answer it.

In my opinion the providers are currently in breach of contract by not doing this. It is not enough to provide a published list of tariffs unless there is some way to relate a charge to each call in advance. How can I tell what operator that 078… number belongs to so I can look it up on the tariff chart?

When these stamps were first announced in May for release 7 June, my first thought was “eek,” they’re horrible. A sort of cross between Pocahontas and Lara Croft. Therefore I was not at all surprised to get a letter in June (dated the 2nd) to say that they were not to be released, mostly due to the objections from the Maori community.
They said that “as the stamps have not been released the stock is accounted for and will be destroyed.” Well why does the Len Jury auction catalogue that I have had today have them on the front cover, and a lot consisting of a full set—estimate 13,500 NZD? I would say that, from the accounts of the Post Office, that these stamps have been stolen and the auctioneer is handling hot property. They say “original invoice copy to vouch for authenticity” but that doesn’t mean anything. I would strongly recommend that no one buys these. The “teddy bears” fiasco from some years ago was bad enough, but this is just too blatant.

Update: I think I may have been a bit harsh on the dealers. It looks like NZ Post made one almighty foul up yet again and sold some copies by mail order before the official release date. Len Jury assures me that the invoice they have is from NZ Post. Even so I would not regard these as collectable by mainstream philatelists as they were withdrawn before the release date and hence not valid for postal use. There is some debate about whether NZ Post can order their recall from customers but I doubt it, as it was their blunder in selling them in the first place.

As Bruce Schneier said, you couldn’t make this one up.

Apparently some councils are bugging people’s wheely bins (actually ID’ing them with an RFID tag) to monitor quantities of non-recycled waste per household. This is sponsored by two German companies who want to know the gross statistics but the incentive for the council is that they can use the database to identify profligate households and impose sanctions.

The areas targeted so far are Crewe, Nantwich, Peterborough, South Norfolk, Woking, and Devizes. If I discover it in Bristol, don’t be surprised to see me out at the dead of night destroying the chips, if I can find them, or juggling the bins if I can’t. The implications for privacy are uncountable.

This BBC report includes the warning

Staff at waste sorting centres said people were often unknowingly putting out the wrong sorts of plastics, resulting in bottlenecks in the recycling process.

Clearly we will have to do better, removing more than the caps.

There was a report of the news this morning that a study had shown that older fathers, those over 40, were more likely to have autistic children. The study also said that they could not find a similar correlation for older mothers.

Just from the statistical point of view, this doesn’t ring true with me. In the majority of families, fathers and mothers are of a similar age, a big difference is uncommon. So if there is a high correlation between the age of the father and the age of the mother and also, as reported, a correlation between the age of the father and the incidence of autism then it follows that there must be a similar correlation to the age of the mother, just perhaps not quite so clear cut.

Apparently the study was of families in Israel but I wouldn’t have thought that the social structure was significantly different there.