Winding Down

An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology, science and other news
by Alan Lenton
14 November 2021

And another issue of Winding Down hits the digital presses. This week we take a look at the issue of the male contraceptive pill, at how to destroy the planet, the Labour Party’s latest digital disaster, and life in the UK via statistics for the 50 years between the 1961 census and the one in 2011. There’s a video on expensive build screw ups and some pictures of World War I soldiers as tourists. The quote is from Bertrand Russell.

Finally, in the Scanner section, there are links to material about oxygen on the Moon, Cannon and printer ink, what low winds mean in the future, library e-books in the USA, the implications of hybrid home/office working, and finally a cosmic impact in the Jordan valley. English language purists will no doubt note the use of the Oxford Comma in that last list!

Have fun!

Alan Lenton

Publishing schedule: Next Issue 21 November.

Credits: Thanks to readers Fi and Barb for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down.

Essays:

Sitting in my list of essays for a while now has been an article about how it’s long overdue for a male contraceptive pill. Question: Why has it been sitting there for so long? Answer: Because I wanted to ask around my lady friends to see if their reaction to the idea was the same as mine. It emphatically was.

And that answer?

“No ****** way would I trust a man who claimed to have taken a male contraceptive pill.”

To put it bluntly it’s the women who have to bear the consequences if the man has forgotten, lied or screwed up in some way.

Still, it’s an interesting essay, covering the question of how you would share issues of fertility between men and women rather than by laying the responsibility mainly on the woman in a relationship.
https://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/male-contraceptive/particle-7

Science:

Have you ever wondered what the best way to destroy our planet would be? I have, but that was in the days before I managed to get out of doing Latin at school! In the meantime, should you still be in that frame of mind, Live Science has a piece on the top ten ways to destroy Earth. Fascinating and explosive stuff in most cases, though my take on the most likely issue is out of control von Neumann machines eating the planet!
https://www.livescience.com/17875-destroy-earth-doomsday.html

Security:

Well, the British Labour Party has some serious questions to answer over its use of former (and presumably current) members’ data – including mine! I haven’t been a member of the organisation for years – long enough that I can’t remember when it was I left. Nonetheless, at a quarter to six in the evening on 3 November an email from the Labour Party popped up in my email.

‘Private and Confidential’ it said. You’ve gotta be joking – the first thing anyone getting one of these notifications is going to do is to scream loudly on the social media channels. And of course, publish the information in the letter –

“We are writing to you to let you know that a third party that handles data on our behalf has been subject to a cyber incident. While the Party’s investigation remains ongoing, we wanted to make you aware of this incident and the measures which we have taken in response. We have also provided details of precautionary steps you may consider taking to help protect yourself.”

– which raises far more questions than it answers...

For a start, why do you still have my details when it’s years since I was a Labour Party member? Even more important, what/who is this third party you handed my information over to – without seeking or receiving my permission?

I suspect this is going to cost the Labour Party not only a lot of money once the lawyers get their teeth into it, but also a lot of political capital. If they can’t even look after their own data, how on earth can they run the country?

Mind you, I don’t expect that those of whose data was compromised will get more than a few groats in compensation, the bulk of any settlement will go, of course, to the lawyers.
https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/05/labour_party_ransomware_data_breach_questions/

Statistics:

The UK’s Office for National Statistics recently finished digitising the UK censuses for 1961 through to 2011. In 1961 I was at boarding school, but ten years later I was in Leicester, married, and we were moving into what was then considered to be a nice flat. That was in spite of the fact that it had an outside toilet!

Ten years later (1981) I was in London – living in Hackney, and running a bookshop in Islington. The flat in Hackney had an indoor toilet, but no bath. I used the Islington public baths round the corner from the shop.

Another ten years and I was in west London in a house belonging to a housing cooperative. This one had an indoor toilet, a bathroom and a garden (more than a little overgrown). I’d clearly come up in the world! Or maybe, looking at the stats, the country had itself come up to scratch

The changes in the 50 years covered are massive. Take a look and see what you can find...
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/articles/censusunearthedexplore50yearsofchangefrom1961/2021-08-09

Pictures:

This week’s first picture is a video of, and I quote, “Most Expensive Construction Mistakes in the World” Fifteen minutes of total fascination, and great scenes of stuff being blown up!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8MqFpM_A4Q

Our second item is still pictures. It’s perhaps appropriate on the weekend of First World War remembrance. However, it isn’t about the trenches of that war, it’s about soldiers as tourists at a time when ordinary people, for the first time, went to exotic places like France, Italy, Egypt and Turkey. In 1914 there was no way such humble people would have left their towns and villages, let alone the country. These are a few of their photographs.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/world-war-tourist-pictures

Quotes:

Our first quote is a classic headline about sorting out the problems with the Hubble Space Telescope:

“Of course we’ve tried turning it off and on again: Yeah, Hubble telescope still not working”
https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/02/hubble_trouble/

The second quote is also a little different from usual – it’s philosopher and historian Bertrand Russell’s ‘ten commandments’ for living a life in the spirit of liberalism:

Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
Do not think it worthwhile to produce belief by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.
When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavour to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
Be scrupulously truthful, even when truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.

I especially like number three!
https://www.openculture.com/2021/11/bertrand-russells-ten-commandments-for-living-in-a-healthy-democracy.html

Scanner:

The moon’s top layer alone has enough oxygen to sustain 8 billion people for 100,000 years
https://www.space.com/moon-surface-oxygen-8-billion-people

Canon makes ‘all-in-one’ printers that refuse to scan when out of ink, lawsuit claims
https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/19/canon_lawsuit_ink/

What Europe’s exceptionally low winds mean for the future energy grid
https://theconversation.com/what-europes-exceptionally-low-winds-mean-for-the-future-energy-grid-170135

Bipartisan bill would force Big Tech to offer algorithm-free feeds, search results
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/11/bill-proposes-algorithm-free-option-on-big-tech-platforms-may-portend-bigger-steps/

U.S. Congress investigates publisher restrictions on library E-books
http://blog.archive.org/2021/09/24/u-s-congress-investigates-publisher-restrictions-on-library-e-books/

Hybrid working is fuelling demand for more tech and bigger homes – both are bad news for the planet
https://theconversation.com/hybrid-working-is-fuelling-demand-for-more-tech-and-bigger-homes-both-are-bad-news-for-the-planet-166385

Evidence that a cosmic impact destroyed ancient city in the Jordan Valley
https://phys.org/news/2021-09-evidence-cosmic-impact-ancient-city.html

Footnote:

Please send suggestions for stories to alan@ibgames.com and include the words Winding Down in the subject line, unless you want your deathless prose gobbled up by my voracious Thunderbird spam filter...

Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
14 November 2021

Alan Lenton is a retired on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist, the order of which depends on what he is currently working on! His web site is at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/index.html.

Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.

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