Britain from Above

We all know what the countries of the World look like from space. Italy is a boot, America has a pan handle and Australia is a big smudge. Ever wondered what a countries infrastructure would look like from space? No, well I’m sure some people have. The BBC have a new documentary called ‘Britain from Above’ which uses state of the art computer graphics combined with GPS information from Taxis, planes, ferries and other vehicles to show how the country functions. After the cut you will find some facts and a link to the video on the BBC website.

Hosted by Andrew Marr the show will present imagery of Britain and the daily heartbeat that is the countries commute and communications network. Also included in this series is a look at how the cities have changed and how technologies keep us moving.

Video link

Facts from the show.

• The English Channel is the busiest shipping lane in the world: on a typical day 400 plus vessels travel through the Dover Straits, the biggest of which weigh up to 150,000 tonnes and take 3.5 miles to come to a stop.
• East London's Beckton Sewage Plant - all 280 football pitches worth of tanks, troughs and waterways - is one of the largest in Europe.
• On an average day, Britain's water pipes carry 16 billion litres of water - enough to fill 18 million bathtubs.
• In less than a week the waste sent to sewage plants is clean enough to be able to be pumped back into our taps.
• At the peak of the working day Britons send more than 5,000 text messages per second.
• 109 square miles of British countryside is just used for landfill.
• Between 7 and 10am, 36 million Britons are on the move commuting to the office or school.
• The average road user will spend more than 6 months of their life stuck in traffic jams.
• Every day more than 7,500 civilian aircraft crowd Britain's airspace, carrying more that half a million passengers.
• Over three quarters of a billion pounds in hard cash is transported around the roads of Britain every day. Driving one of the secured vans is one of the most dangerous jobs in the country with sometimes 15 attacks a week.
• Every day the nation's rubbish trucks collect more than 82,000 tonnes of refuse.

Stuff poll stuffed with....well stuff

The lovely people over at Fairfax media ran an article over the weekend regarding creationist material being sent to schools in New Zealand, as Mr Fett alluded to in a previous post. They also ran a poll for 12 or so hours along with it and Should schools be allowed to teach 'intelligent design? was the question posed. Now, we saw some pretty feverish posting from both sides for the duration of the poll, but the final results were Yes 15479 (46.5%) and No 17814 (53.5%). I didn't realise that many people read stuff let alone cared enough to vote - WTF?

I can only suppose that after it was posted on the Pharyngula and a bunch of creationist sites that both sides of the debate went nuts with poll scripts trying to outdo each other, because over 30,000 people voting on an internet poll is pretty bizarre even for a contentious topic such as this. To give you something to compare and contrast against, here's a run down of some of the totals for other super important questions posed by Stuff "

What's your favourite season?
11264 votes and summer was the winner. Crazy I know - who'd have guessed.

Pick your worst ever cover
11103 votes. When I first read this I thought it was talking about insurance - turns out its Music Covers. Winner was Celine Dion - You Shook me all night long. I didn't even know she did a cover of that, but she would have got my vote just for the simple fact she's couldn't sing her way out of a wet paper bag.

How financially literate are you?
8048 respondents, and I must admit I have no idea what the question means. Does it mean "Can you read a bank statement?", or is it talking about the stock exchange? No idea really - winner was "somewhat" which sounds more like a question itself - Some what?

And the pièce de résistance
Will warnings about long-term use of jandals make you rethink wearing them?
Of the 8853 people who bothered answering this one, over 5000 said "No way, I love my jandals." Wow. What illuminating information. I don't know about you, but I feel changed.

These internet polls we see on so many new sites these days are much like the ones I post on this site - a load of bollocks. A majority of them either ask questions so inane it would send your caffeine and cocaine hammered druglord neighbour to sleep within seconds (How interested are you in politics? 85% say Sod off!), or are so badly worded they are not even really worth answering.

This poll about ID for instance - the question, as pointed out by Bjorn over at Pharyngula was nothing to do with the article it linked to. The article spoke about creationist material being sent to schools in an effort to get their brand of nonsense into the science class. The poll asked a different question - should it be taught? In all fairness, who am I to say what the jebus nutters teach in their churches? Its their right to teach religion in religious classes or creationism in Sunday school. I may wish they wouldn't, as its total crap, but that's their right as a religion to teach the tenets of their faith. The same goes for a science class inasmuch as only science should be discussed therein, and since ID\Creationism is not science, it has no place there.
Bjorn did point out that if he ran a class he would mention it as a "this is not science" and while I agree with his philosophy behind the argument, I probably would agree with Alison and restrict that kind of thing to the higher years of school science and university. Our standard schooling should be teaching the science framework, creating skeptical and enquiring minds, and not bombarding them with every example of bad thinking in the world.

So if I were to answer the question on its own merits, I would agree with my Bjorn Free commenter and say Yes - people should be allowed to teach it. But in the context of the article, I would say No - not in the state schools.

And my point? Internet polls are bullshit. The question can be obtuse, you can use scripts to load them (much as this one obviously did) or you can be so confused you don't answer and the results are skewed beyond all recognition. Even Stuff say "Stuff polls are not scientific and reflect the opinions of only those internet users who have chosen to participate" and that's the best description ever - they are not scientific. They are meaningless.

The problem is that this information is used by lazy ass journo's to write articles. You see them frequently now on the major news sites "according to a poll on our site last week, 42% of people want to be flogged with licorice twice a week". Or they drop the "on our site" and it becomes "according to a poll taken recently, 85% of respondents have eaten a VW Beetle".

I guess all I'm saying here is that these polls cannot be taken seriously, and we should read closely what articles say when referring to polls.

“Opinion polls measure the public's satisfaction with it's ignorance”
Unknown

"I haven't trusted polls since I read that 62% of women had affairs during their lunch hour. I've never met a woman in my life who would give up lunch for sex."
Erma Bombeck

More gas for your $$$$$ - say it IS so...please?

Spam. Who'd have thought 100 years ago when they invented the savoury potted meat, that the word would eventually become one of the more feared in the English lexicon. And not feared in a "arrgh arrgh, its got my leg" kind of way, but more of a "oh for fucks sake, its not what I think it is" eye rolling type of response. Is my wanger really that small? Do my boobs really need to be bigger than they already are? Is investing in in that pharmaceutical company really going to fulfil me as a person? Or is all this spam just needlessly thrashing the worlds networking devices?

And some spam isn't even trying to elicit money - its one of those ones that unless you look closely at what its saying, and think objectively, it may sneak past the radar and encourage you to forward it on to someone else. The dreaded S-SPAM (Sneaky-Superficial Pesky and Annoying Message) that you end up getting from a well meaning work mate, your sister-in-law or the guy you know at the coffee shop who just got online for the first time and has your email addy for some reason. A majority of these run the same gambit - pull heart strings, then bullshit or threaten the reader.

My snake/dog/penis was trapped/shot/fired from a cannon and only through extensive surgery/gods will/serious whacking will it ever be able to work/walk/rummage through my sock drawer.
Please send this on to 5 million people and you'll see a fire start spontaneously in your hard drive/a cool video of dancing voles/me coming through the front door with an axe.

It was exactly this kind of mail that I received a yesterday. A well meaning, but misguided work....dude (I cant say mate, I don't know the guy!) sent it to everyone in the building. 500 people had that eye rolling moment when you see someone on the internal mail list you've never heard of sending an email with multiple $$$ signs in the subject.

So, "get to the point" you say, and quite rightly as well. The subject was "More gas for your $$$$$" and as I went to delete it, I paused and thought "thats a new one". More gas? I've seen more inches, boobs, drugs, pr0n, shares, watches, Nigerian dollars and degrees, but gas? Was someone hoping to up my flatulence rate? Ok ok - I couldn't help it - everyone loves the fart jokes. Lets examine the contents. Of the email. Not the fart.

In this day and age, with petrol prices sky rocketing, we are more concious than ever about when we use the car and for how long. So this email played on that fear and I was sucked in. Here's a basic run down :

It was someone in Durban (SA) who worked in the petroleum industry. They spoke about the types of fuel the handled every day.

1) The first tip was to only fill up your car early in the morning because "all service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground. The colder the ground the more dense the fuel, when it gets warmer petrol expands, so buying in the afternoon or in the evening" you get less bang for your buck.
2) Tip #2 was don't fill too fast because "the trigger has three stages: low, middle, and high. In slow mode you should be pumping on low speed, thereby minimizing the vapours that are created while you are pumping. All hoses at the pump have a vapour return. If you are pumping on the fast rate, some of the liquid that goes to your tank becomes vapour. Those vapours are being sucked up and back into the underground storage tank so you're getting less worth for your money.
3) Tip #3 was only fill when your tank is half full. This, it was reasoned was due to "the more fuel you have in your tank the less air occupying its empty space" and "petrol evaporates faster than you can imagine".
4) And finally, tip #4 is don't fill straight after a truck has delivered the fuel to the station, as "the petrol/diesel is being stirred up as the fuel is being delivered, and you might pick up some of the dirt that normally settles on the bottom."

The message was ended with a lovely "Hope this will help you get the most value for your money".

Now it may be that someone has decided to send helpful information around the world via forwarded email, but being the cynical bastard I am I seriously doubted it. I decided to spend 30 mins checking the veracity of this email because a) if it was right, I could save some pingers at the pump, and b) if it was wrong I could use it as blog fodder. Lets look at the claims :

1) Cold fuel is better than warm fuel.
It said in the email that a 1°C rise would make a big difference in what you pay at the pump. Nearly all petrol stations store their petrol underground. The ground temperature change over the course of a day is not big for something that deep - probably 1 or 2 °C during the course of a day (data from New Zealand meteorological stations in Wellington). But lets use the 1°C in the email. Assuming that a motorist typically bought 40 litres of petrol per week at $2.00 per litre, and assuming that by carefully choosing to fill up at a particular time of day said consumer could realize a 1% savings, the total savings to be gleaned over the course of a year is about $40. Would that reward really be worth the potential inconvenience of adhering to a rigid fill-up schedule week after week?
I checked a report done by the National Weights and Measures in 1999 and they state the following figures :

Hot fuel Temperature > 24°C Approx. 1% volume difference from 15°C
Warm fuel Temperature > 17°C Approx. 0.25% volume difference from 15°C
Cool fuel Temperature < 13°C Approx. 0.25% volume difference from 15°C
Cold fuel Temperature < 6°C Approx. 1% volume difference from 15°C

This means there would have to be a 9°C change to realise that 1% savings. That's way outside the 1 or 2 °C on an average New Zealand Day.

2)Pour your petrol slowly
Advocates maintain that pumping gas more slowly produces fewer vapours, and therefore consumers get more for their money by using slower settings on pumps (because less gasoline is lost to vaporization). Critics assert that the amount of vapour loss produced during the pumping process is so small as to be economically insignificant to the ordinary consumer. And one has to consider the time factor: Is the aggregate amount of time you're going to lose by using only the slowest delivery setting at every fill-up really worth whatever modest amount of money you might save?

3)Fill your tank when its half full
Some advanced gasoline filtration systems claim to recover about 2% of the fuel lost by evaporation from gas station storage tanks. Is that savings really worth essentially halving the storage capacity of your car's gas tank (thereby requiring you to stop for gasoline twice as often as before)? Assuming that our typical consumer bought gas once a week, and that the fill-up process averaged a modest 8 minutes (including the time to get to a gas station, to wait in line if the pumps are all busy, to pump the gas, to pay for the purchase, and to get back on the road), said consumer would be spending an extra 7 hours per year pumping gas to achieve these savings. Is that a good trade-off of time vs. money?
The report by NWM also states :

"With modern petrol engine burning about 98% of the fuel entering the cylinders and with catalytic converters burning about 75% of unburnt fuel leaving the engine, total emissions from the engine exhaust represent only about 0.5% of fuel usage. Vapour losses from ullage spaces are likely to be of the order of 0.15-0.2% at each of the stages listed above and the fuel supply chain emissions are therefore comparable with vehicle operating emissions"

0.15% - 0.2%, which if we use the example from point 1 (40l x $2 x 52 weeks = $4160/year) we would see a return of $6 to $8 per annum. Not very much return on the wasted time.

4)Sediment in the tank
Most sources agree that deliveries from tanker trucks do stir up particles of dirt and sludge in gasoline storage tanks, but that this isn't really much of an issue for the ordinary motorist. Service stations are required to have filters that trap dirt and sludge, and modern cars also have fuel filters, so a bit of stirred-up dirt doesn't really pose much of a potential to adversely affect your car. And again, one has to consider the trade-off. On the (probably infrequent) occasions when you arrive at a gas station at the very same time a tanker is filling the station's tanks, is it really worth the time and expense to leave without filling up and drive off to a different service station just to avoid something that likely isn't much of a concern in the first place?

If you've skipped all of this and are looking for the punch line, here it is - don't believe everything you receive in the inbox, but don't be overly sceptical either. Check your facts, look for evidence supporting and contradicting both sides (check the veracity of the sources too) and make up you own mind.

For the best info on making your car go further, I suggest you read the following sites which have the best info for motorists and its basic stuff backed up by simple science. It by far and away beats anything listed above in terms of fuel saved and it can be as simple as modifying your driving habits. Check it out.

New Zealand Government website FuelSaver

Consumer.org - Consumer Protection Non-profit Organisation

BTW - this email is listed on Snopes.com and they say this :

This collection of purported money-saving tips for buying gasoline is another item difficult to classify as strictly true or false. It's not completely false in that one or more of the tips might actually result in some savings (however modest), but it can't fairly be classified as true either, as the practical utility of all of these tips is disputed, and the economic gains to be had from following them is highly questionable.

Surprise surprise - video games dont do shit

In a new book Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do by Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson, a husband-and-wife team at Harvard Medical School, they detail their views on the effects of video games on kids. The results? Hardly surprising really. No direct causal link between computer gaming and violent behaviour. "What I hope people realize is that there is no data to support the simple-minded concerns that video games cause violence," Kutner said.

The only thing that the research did show was an increase in aggressive behaviour for kids playing M-rated games. The researchers found that 51 per cent of boys who played M-rated games – the US industry's equivalent of an R-rated movie, meaning suitable for ages 17 and up – had been in a fight in the past year, compared to 28 per cent of non-M-rated gamers. The pattern was even stronger among girls, with 40 per cent of those who played M-rated games having been in a fight in the past year, compared to just 14 per cent for non-M players.

Some people may say "Aha!" at this point - "see! Play violent games, increased violent behaviour!". Not so kemosabe - it shows correlation, not causation. You cant draw a link like that when you don't take into account other factors like home life, personality type or other such influences. What if kids who are naturally predisposed to aggressive behaviour seek out aggressive natured games?

"It's still a minority of kids who play violent video games a lot and get into fights. If you want a good description of 13-year-old kids who play violent video games, it's your local soccer team," Olson said.

They also are trying to place the new wave of computer gaming (new meaning the last 12 years or so since Quake came out) in context with other such media influences such as TV, Movies and comics. Whenever a new medium is released, there is always a tendency for people to jump up and down and blame human activity on the influence of a new media. Look at Video Nasties in Britain, Heavy Metal music in the 80's and Rock'n Roll music in the 50's - every time someone has pointed at these things as a single cause of all that is bad in society today. I'm afraid life just isn't that simple - its always going to be a combination of factors.

There have been several studies recently which show differing levels of response from young people when exposed to "violent" video games. Some say they calm people down and allow them to release tension. The one thing they all say is that further study is needed because the results are unclear.

Playing games that simulate violence against fictional characters is not the same as actually mutilating someone. Comparing something that is in reality violent (assaulting someone) against something that has no real world consequence (playing GTA4) is not the same. A majority of people can differentiate between real world violence and fictitious or simulated violence. It is true that people become desensitised to certain violent symbols after long periods of gameplay (such as images of guns and war) but this does not affect they way the react to emotionally disturbing images such as sick children.

"One thing I like about their approach is that they've tried to historicize the whole concept of a media controversy and that we've seen this before," said Ian Bogost, a professor at Georgia Tech known for his studies on video games.

The book urges a common-sense approach that takes stock of the entire range of a child's behaviour. Frequent fighting, bad grades, and obsessive gaming can be signs for trouble.

"If you have, for example, a girl who plays 15 hours a week of exclusively violent video games, I'd be very concerned because it's very unusual," Kutner said.

"But for boys (the danger sign) is not playing video games at all, because it looks like for this generation, video games are a measure of social competence for boys."

I totally agree - any young kid who can't whoop an oldie's ass at Unreal Tournament deserves to be sent back to PC Gaming kindergarten until he can frag with the best of them.

Poor polling leads to inconclusive results - BTW Go the Canes.

Rugby. Lifeblood of our small nation at the bottom of the South pacific. Or is it? According to a poll presented on Stuff today, more Kiwi's are turning away from Rugger and doing, well, who gives a shit really. My point is that its yet another example of poor opinion polling and poor journalism. Combined they create a bullshit article that plays on the ever present undercurrent of malaise we feel every year when the rugby season starts.

So, this article in Stuff is titled "Kiwi's losing interest in Rugby". That's nice. And on what amazingly insightful piece of investigative journalism do they base the revelation on? A poll. Well, after being polled a few times, I know the calibre of questions the most pollsters ask. They are generally slanted in some way, whether they mean to or not, and will probably skew the results towards a specific outcome. This particular one asked people whether or not they would be taking more, less or the same interest in rugby this year compared to previous ones.

Ok, not very specific, but not only that, they list the results and then talk about MORE people feeling bummed about rugby this year. Sorry? Did I miss something? You asked a small sample of people (500 which is minuscule) one question and are now drawing a different result? They asked people if they would be more or less interested in rugby, but this does not tell you if this is different to LAST year. Or the year before. At no time does it point to historical data. The only thing you can tell from this poll is that for a small sample of people, 29% were less interested, 54% the same and 14% were more interested.

To get an accurate result, to answer the question on whether people are more or less interested in rugby this year, compared to other years, they would need to poll a LOT more people every year, at the same time of year, and compare the data from each year.

They also draw conclusions based on irrelevant fact. They state that this is because we got so much rugger last year, and that we lost the world cup. Yes - I said it. We screwed the pooch. Farted with the new girlfriend and fluffed the blanket. We George W. Bushed it. We came a gutser. We ballsed it up. It was, by all accounts, a bit of a booboo. But, I still support the All Blacks - they are a fantastic bunch of strapping lads who could've taken those South African finalists with one arm tied behind their backs any day.

I digress. Anyway, the point is, this is baseless conjecture - its like me taking a poll of the neighbourhood on cat's and then using this information to conclude a point about dogs. The information may seem to be related, but unless you actually ask the specific question, its just a guess.

You may say at this point, "What the hell do you care?" and you'd be right. I don't. But I wanted to talk about rugby without being all "Go the 'canes!" and sound like a sports nut.

Ahem

GO THE CANES!!

Bullshit and Statistics

I read an interesting article on Ben Goldacre's site Bad Science about a book called How to Lie With Statistics by Darrell Huff. This small but important tome discussed the ability of people to use statistics to make claims about various topics. Not long after reading this, I read a headline on Stuff.co.nz - "Kiwis prefer classic rock over pop". Now while this headline gladdens my heart, being an old school head banger myself, I immediately asked the question "How do they know?" Did they interview every single music listener in NZ and poll them on their music preferences?

Reading the article clarified it a bit where it says in the first line "CD-buying Kiwis would rather rock to Led Zeppelin than listen to younger artists, recording industry figures show." So the sample has been defined as CD buying Kiwi's, which is different to the headline which states just "Kiwis". Going on more into the article it explains that CD purchases were the basis of the statistics, and even states "Album sales were "strongly filtered towards hard copies" which were often bought by people aged 30-plus." So we have narrowed the sample even more - NZ CD purchaser's, predominantly over 30 years old.

Looking at this, its not really a surprising statistic - older people who still buy CD's prefer Classic Rock to modern pop. No shit - really? Older people like older music? I would never have guessed. Might as well have a headline "People with no teeth prefer mushy food" or "Journo's with no real news to report make shit up".

I know its not a big deal, but it did highlight to me the regularity with which the mainstream media frequently use statistics to make news. I'm not saying they are the only one - governments, corporations and advertising companies regularly do the same thing. It's just another interesting fact and something to keep in mind the next time someone says something like "MAC User's more likely to pay for music that PC users". This story in particular smells like a big pile of steaming crap and basically states that Mac users are more honest that PC users based on stats garnered by an Entertainment Industry analyst and posted on AppleInsider. Whatever.

Just remember - check the numbers and be sceptical.