Winding Down
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology, science and other news
by Alan Lenton
2 July 2023
Welcome back to Winding Down. This week we would like to draw your attention to how Athenian democracy operated, while other material covers wind power and the possibility of manufacturing energy out of thin air. There’s also some bad news for would be male astronauts, and a ‘look’ at the Voyager 1 Spacecraft.
Pictures features birds, a lot of them, and the quote from the politician Harold Wilson seemed to me to be very appropriate for this week!
Finally the Scanner section contains material on deepfakes, 19 hour days, a Linux squabble, Saturn’s rings, 10 years after the Snowden leak, and finally volcano secrets.
Enjoy!
Alan Lenton
Publishing schedule: Next issue will be published on 9 July.
Credits: Thanks to Fi for editing, correcting errors, etc.
Essays:
‘The Conversation’ has an excellent essay on how the ancient Greeks prevented their democracy from being captured by ruthless narcissists. Those of us who live in the UK or the USA will know what I’m talking about!
The ancient Athenians practiced direct democracy, rather than representative democracy. However, they also selected public officials by what is known as ‘sorting.’ This is a random selection by lot. This ensured that ordinary people were represented in government – a safeguard against corruption and bribery.
Even more interesting, they practised a system of ostracism. Once a year they gathered to nominate disruptive members to be expelled! If a large enough number of people voted in favour, the people nominated would be banished from the city for 10 years.
Those ancient Greeks knew a thing or two about democracy!
https://theconversation.com/how-the-ancient-greeks-kept-ruthless-narcissists-from-capturing-their-democracy-and-what-modern-politics-could-learn-from-them-208042
Power:
Two stories about power generation caught my eye recently.
The first is about the growth of windfarms. It seems that in the Texas town of Roscoe, which is windy and remote, they have 627 large wind turbines, spread out over 100,000 acres of the arid land. The locals are definitely happy. Not only does the farm provide all the energy the town needs, but the excess is sold on to the grid and has helped to fund schools, employment and generate a local economy.
And, no pollution...
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/texas-wind-power-renewables-future/
The other item was a report on some research in which a group of engineers were able to draw clean energy out of thin air 24/7. I, for one, never really thought about it, but the electricity for lightning, for instance, must come from somewhere. Apparently you don’t need any exotic material to do it – you just need to fill your material with nanopores less that 100 nanometres in diameter!
Definitely sounds hopeful!
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-05-harvest-abundant-energy-thin-air.html
Space:
The Voyager 1 spacecraft is now nearly 15 billion miles out from the Sun. It was launched in 1977 and is currently travelling a modest 38,000 miles per hour. It the furthest human-made object from the Sun. Atlas Obscura has a nice article about it and about what you could see of the Solar System if you were travelling with that spacecraft.
Fascinating.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/strange-maps-where-is-voyager-1
And talking of travelling in space... It seems that work recently published on research to understand the effects of low and zero gravity on the human body found that “female astronauts have lower water requirements for hydration, total energy expenditure, oxygen (O2) consumption, carbon dioxide (CO2) and metabolic heat production during space exploration missions compared to their male counterparts.”
Would be male astronauts, take note!
https://phys.org/news/2023-05-female-astronauts-efficient-future-space.html
Pictures:
Just one picture this week. It’s of masses of pelicans and cormorants on San Francisco Bay.
https://photocontest.smithsonianmag.com/photocontest/detail/marina-seabirds/
Quotes:
“A week is a long time in politics.”
Harold Wilson, British Politician 1916-1995
Scanner:
Deepfakes being used in ‘sextortion’ scams, FBI warn
https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/08/ai_deepfakes_sextortion_fbi/
For a billion years of Earth’s history our days were only 19 hours long, finds new study
https://phys.org/news/2023-06-billion-years-earth-history-days.html
Rocky Linux claims to have found ‘path forward’ from CentOS source purge
https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/28/rocky_linux_rhel_ripples/
New study reveals just how lucky we are to witness Saturn’s incredible rings
https://www.sciencealert.com/new-study-reveals-just-how-lucky-we-are-to-witness-saturns-incredible-rings
10 years after Snowden’s first leak, what have we learned?
https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/07/10_years_after_snowden/
Secrets still smolder at one of the world’s most active volcanoes
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/secrets-still-smolder-at-one-of-the-worlds-most-active-volcanoes-180982394/
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
2 July 2023
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.
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