Winding Down
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology, science and other news
by Alan Lenton
11 December 2022
A cold and frosty good morning to all! This week we have a couple of pieces on Musk, including the fact that he is no longer the richest man in the world. We also look at a piece about NASA’s Artemis mission, carbon offsets, and the James Web Space Telescope. We have material on lab grown chicken meat, human extra arteries, and a look at the last UK census.
There are three sets of pictures, one from a Japanese artist, a very good photograph of the Taj Mahal, and a video of a volcano eruption. The quote is from theatre critic Kenneth Tynan.
Finally, the scanner section covers hunting for alien life, FDA blocks Microsoft/Activision/Blizzard merger, layoffs at Amazon and Meta, charging electric cars, and finally quantum mechanics.
Enjoy!
Alan Lenton
Publishing schedule: Next week’s issue, 18 December, will be the last one of the year. Winding Down will return on 8 January 2023
Credits: Thanks to Fi for editing, correcting errors, etc.
Updates:
Musk’s antics at Twitter are starting to have an effect on the perception of Tesla – and just at the wrong time for Tesla. Why is that? It’s because Tesla’s rivals – the old school auto makers – are finally catching up. It will take time to work through, but already Tesla’s share of the market is starting to drift down.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2022/12/02/elon-musks-twitter-antics-are-tarnishing-teslajust-as-its-ev-rivals-are-catching-up/?sh=2b1425d32018
In the meantime, back at Twitter itself, the company is being sued because the layoffs instituted by Musk since he took over amounted to 63% of women in engineering roles compared to 48% of men. The allegation is that in so doing Twitter violated the employment laws.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/12/twitter-lawsuit-alleges-musk-layoffs-disproportionately-targeted-women/
And finally, it turns out that Musk’s actions have so reduced the value of Tesla, and with it the value of Musk’s Tesla stock, that Musk is no longer the richest man in the world!
https://boingboing.net/2022/12/08/forbes-elon-musk-no-longer-worlds-richest-person-after-latest-tesla-stock-dip.html
Essays:
The Conversation has an interesting piece on NASA’s Artemis mission and why it may be the last NASA astronaut mission. I’m inclined to agree with them. The author of the piece argues that the growth of computing power and robotics makes fully automated missions possible, and that the comparative fragility of the human body makes them necessary for anything further than earth orbit.
It’s an interesting piece and the author is Martin Rees, the UK Astronomer Royal. Recommended.
https://theconversation.com/artemis-why-it-may-be-the-last-mission-for-nasa-astronauts-195065
Science Alert has a very informative piece on carbon offsets – in particular showing that 10 years of forest carbon offsets have had no climate benefit to California. I’m recommending this as an essay, rather than a news item, because it has a very good explanation of what carbon offsets are, how they are supposed to work and how they actually worked in this case.
https://www.sciencealert.com/grim-study-shows-10-years-of-carbon-offsets-in-california-had-no-climate-benefit
Astronomy:
I wasn’t sure whether to put this piece into essays or astronomy, since it’s both! Those gorgeous pictures from the James Webb Space telescope? They’re not actually what you would see if you could peer through the telescope like a regular one. What the telescope actually provides is a data set, and those gorgeous pictures are a visualisation of that data set.
There are a number of pieces about this scattered around the net, but the best one I found was the one on the Quartz site.
https://qz.com/2188123/the-james-webb-space-telescope-images-arent-faked-theyre-designed
Bio-Agriculture:
Well, it’s official, at least in the USA. The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has pronounced a lab grown meat as being safe to eat. The FDA hasn’t yet given permission to sell the stuff – it’s still checking out production facilities. I predict a row over this that will make the arguments over GM crops look like chicken feed (so to speak)!
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/lab-grown-meat-is-safe-to-eat-fda-says-180981160/
Biology:
Wow! Did you know that humans keep growing an extra artery in their arms? No? Neither did I. It seems that we all start off in the womb with an extra artery that runs down the centre of the forearm. This vanishes later in gestation, because it’s not needed any more at that stage. But, it turns out that more and more often the extra artery is not vanishing and people are born with the extra artery.
There used to be about 10% of births with this feature in the late 19th Century, but by the late 20th Century the figure was up to 30%. That’s a massive increase and scientists are still trying to figure out why.
https://www.sciencealert.com/humans-keep-growing-an-extra-artery-in-their-arms-and-this-is-why
Census:
This one is mainly for Brits. The latest stuff to come out of the census that was taken in 2021 is a great little visual comparison program that lets you see how your local council’s population and suchlike changed over the ten year interval. Some of the measurements are great – for example:
‘In 2021, Hounslow was home to around 36.8 people per football pitch-sized piece of land, compared with 32.4 in 2011. This area was among the top 10% most densely populated English local authority areas at the last census.’
And no – Hounslow isn’t made up of a large collection of football pitches!
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/articles/howyourareahaschangedin10yearscensus2021/2022-11-08
Pictures:
And some nice pictures for you to look at amid all the strife and trouble this December morning:
First off is a set of woodcuts from the Japanese artist Kawase Hasui (1883-1957) covering an era in which there was great change in Japanese society.
https://www.spoon-tamago.com/2021/11/11/traveling-ukiyoe-artist-kawase-hasui/
Photographs of the Taj Mahal are ten a penny, but I thought this one in the online Smithsonian magazine was one of the best I’ve seen for some time!
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/28-places-to-see-before-you-diethe-taj-mahal-grand-canyon-and-more-10804769/
And finally, an amazing short aerial video that is one of the best volcano eruption sequences I have seen! Mauna Loa, the world’s largest active volcano on Hawaii. Incredible!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-63814130
Quotes:
“A critic is a man who knows the way but can’t drive the car.”
Kenneth Tynan – English Theatre Critic 1927-80
Scanner:
The hunt for signs of intelligent alien life just got a massive boost
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-hunt-for-signs-of-intelligent-alien-life-just-got-a-massive-boost
FTC sues to block the $69 billion Microsoft-Activision Blizzard merger
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/08/1141613281/ftc-microsoft-activision-blizzard
Wormholes may already have been detected, physicists ay
https://www.sciencealert.com/wormholes-may-already-have-been-detected-physicists-say
Big layoffs coming to Amazon
https://boingboing.net/2022/11/15/big-layoffs-coming-to-amazon-too.html
Charging cars at home at night is not the way to go, study finds
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-09-cars-home-night.html
11,000 laid off Wednesday at Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook
https://boingboing.net/2022/11/09/mass-layoffs-expected-today-at-meta-the-company-formerly-known-as-facebook.html
Don’t let yourself get tangled up by these 4 quantum mechanics misconceptions
https://www.sciencealert.com/dont-let-yourself-get-tangled-up-by-these-4-quantum-mechanics-misconceptions
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
11 December 2022
Alan Lenton is a retired on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist (among other things), 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.
If you have any questions or comments about the articles on my web site, click here to send me email.