Untitled Aphorism #2

What do we mean when we talk of the superman? The ubermensch so to speak. Putting aside the frankly ludicrous notion thrust upon us by post world war 2 populism and paranoia of naziism which we must condemn, it is thus: the individual who has risen above philosophy - or more precisely, he who has realised the flaws in the philosophy of the past and moves into the new philosophy.

Fundamental, to me at least, is the recognition that mankind views the universe through his own eyes. That there is an absolute reality is objectively speaking, completely correct. However, the fact that observation is through this jaded mask of experience, culture and pathos, it may incline us to miss the absolute reality of the universe and insert a certain degree of relativistic truth in it's place that would, outwardly, appear as absolute truth.

So how to find the absolute truth - the fabric of reality that is not coloured by experience? Is this even possible to do? First, we must reject all that has gone before, and move ourselves back to first principles. But this has been done before. Ultimately this is self-effacing, as the only reason that one would go back is because of the experience of what has gone before.

So where do we move from here? - This is difficult to say. The truly evolved superman would realise the above and have an idea of where to move next.

Untitled Aphorism #1

What kind of future have I been left. I had plans you know. Finish my PhD. Do a post-doc in Germany or the Netherlands. Come back. Teach. Live and learn. Not too fussed about research but want the security of an academic position.

Now what? Is my nationality toxic? Am I British for Britain? I don't like that type of exclusivity. I live on a planet not an island.

Everything I ever learned seems to be a lie these days. Equal rights, equal opportunities, equal pay, equal representation? No. Take the common factor away. Replace with exclusive. That's better. Sod intellect, meritocracy or freedom. Replace with pathos, aristocracy and oppression. Oppression of who? The oppressors of course. Isn't that a contradiction? Seemingly. But natural if one believes in true doublethink.

Was my education so far removed, so distant? Am I perched on my ivory tower? Unable to connect with the common man. This certainly supports my disconnect with reality. I believe in logic. Is logic even real or is it just pathos masquerading as civility? Difficult to conclude there. Certainly logic is self supporting and circular.

Does anything truly matter? Is matter even real? What even do I mean by matter. 

Far too late.

The left wing squabbled
About who, was the most politically correct;
The most modest and humble in the face of opposition and yet,
still opposed to oppression.

Whilst the populist mad men riled the working man,
against his neighbour.
Told them that it was only people who
weren't from here, that caused oppression.

And when they realised,
that being politically correct no longer got them voted,
and that they should have listened all along,
to the person who spoke his left wing mind.

It was far too late.

Upon freedom of the press...

At present in Britain, the tone du jour is the so-called "Brexit" referendum, called for June this year. A referendum seemingly called by the Conservative Party to claim back votes that might've been lost to EU sceptic party UKIP.
Now, for some time in Britain, there has existed the claim that we are being overrun with immigrants. Being that I am middle class, work in science and university educated I don't see this. I've never seen it. I grew up in a village in Northamptonshire. A village where we could count the people of differing ethnicities on one hand. A village where, upon reading the record of the "Board School", there was a delightful account of the time the "Negro came from Northampton."
But, also I've never seen immigration as a problem. I've lived in Bradford and Leicester which are 2 of Britain's most ethnically diverse cities. I've always embraced multiculturalism, sought to learn more about my neighbours and enjoyed the benefits of living with different people. It creates a global atmosphere in my own back garden, so to speak.
My childhood was interspersed with long phone calls with "Uncle" Ghulam in Kashmir, and I learned the Arabic greetings before I started at secondary school. And I loved it. It wasn't cultural misappropriation, it was necessary to allow cohesive discourse with those who I lived with. I knew my Hindu Gods, and aspects of Brahma by the time I was 10 and I made my first Holy Communion in the Roman Catholic church at the age of 11.
Now building back to my initial point, I have encountered in more recent times, an alarming streak of xenophobia running through this country. The type that we mock our elderly relatives for, is rearing it's ugly head. But why should it be? I mean, we seem cohesive. Living in Leicester, I always enjoyed seeing the men in the town in their mosque hats, and occasionally bumping into a Dominican Friar. There was no "us and them", it was all us.
Yet, certain newspapers and internet media seem to fan the flames. The Daily Mail runs a non-story with the headline "THE NARBOROUGH ROAD IN LEICESTER. OVERRUN WITH 40 SHOPS FROM 60 DIFFERENT NATIONALITIES"
and the comments,
"It's political correctness gone stark raving mad."
"White people are a minority in Britain"
"My Grandad died in the 2nd world war for this..."
This statements can be handwaved away. The vast errors can be pointed out. Now, it seems as if the press wants to link the exit from the European union with the "immigration problem" - which it isn't.
But why are they doing this? What do they have to gain. Well, the press are unfortunately now in the employ of the power hungry ones. They understand that the European Union, with it's regulations that do such pointless things as securing maternity pay and equal rights for men and women and fair working hours and prevents child labour. Oh only the cornerstones of civilisation. But not something that really sits well if you're trying to turn a profit.
And that's really what it comes down to. They are fostering their own interests at the expense of their fellow man. It is how history has always been. We have hoped that perhaps it had been overthrown but the foul taint of monarchy and plutocracy are rearing their ugly claws once again.
And it is for this reason that a free press is so essential. To call out the media in the employ of big business. It is why magazines like Private Eye are so important. It is why inquisition like institutions like the recent enquiry into the actions of the News of the World are appalling. They tear down any semblance of a sane and free democracy.
"EVERYTHING FINE" reports newspaper in employ of authority.
Tony Benn said "The people in power don't want the public to know too much as they might challenge what they decide themselves."
If we know this, and we understand it, we must move to protect our free press before it is totally bought under the control of the Murdoch's and the oligarchs who have no interest in morality, freedom or society but in turning a cheap profit at the expense of human misery and life.

Aphorism on the state of politics

I am not a political theorist, or even an expert in politics. However, I shall comment as little more than an outsider on these matters.
It occurs to me that politics in this country is fundamentally broken. New Labour stripped away any semblance of a right and a left. However, where New Labour succeeded was as an institution.
So the principle problem with right wing politics is the contempt that it appears to hold the electorate with. The outcome of right wing politics is logically to ensure a free market, however the means employed to get to this stage is to rely on fear and misinformation to coerce a public, viewed as fools, into submission. This can have the unexpected side effect of collapsing into totalitarianism when not balanced by democracy.
Conversely, left wing politics succeeds in that it does not view those who vote for it with contempt, but fails fundamentally as it has lost its moral compass. The foolish electorate, unfortunately, require morality to be spelled out. When a left wing government does this, it becomes right wing in that it will view its electorate as fools to be goaded but when it doesn't do this it can never succeed as no one will support a cause that has no morality.

100 Days of Corbyn

So a lot of (most Conservative) people keep saying that Jeremy Corbyn is unelectable and ridiculous and he should step down.

May I ask, if he's unelectable, then why are you worrying? Why bother with a smear campaign if he won't win in any case? Unless you view the British electorate with such contempt as to think they are not capable of making decisions by themselves.

In fact if anything, the continuous rhetoric of how unelectable he is, the constant smears, surely show how much of a threat he actually is.

I like short blog posts...

"This Government makes me happier and happier." Said No Ordinary Man.

So the government is forcing more benefits changes on people. A new budget that will cut billions from those who are most needy in society. This naturally filled me with a lot of vitriol, so be prepared for a tl:dr.
Well I'm so glad that this government is going to put countless disabled and ill people through needless stress, heartache and suffering just to save a few quid. And all because, as a culture, we have decided that being disabled is a swindle to cheat the state after money.
Nobody asks to be disabled. Nobody wants to have to claim disability living allowance. It's not "for fun" or a swindle. Stop the rhetoric that it is. Just accept that people need to claim it.
You can't incentivise people into not being disabled like you can with people who are out of work through choice.
Somehow we voted for a government that actively discriminates against the disabled because it knows that they won't fight back or that if they do they won't be listened to.
I'm disabled. Like many people it is a cause of great shame and not a badge that I wear with honour - more a cross that I have to carry in a culture that kicks me to the floor more often than it helps me up. And changing the benefits that make life bearable; by putting people through unfair hoops and forcing them through bureaucratic targets, making then into statistics instead of people, this government is kicking disabled people to the floor once again.
And to add insult to injury, the Home Secretary has decided that questioning government policies is tantamount to treason. Disagreement makes one a "terrorist sympathiser".
I suppose this is hardly surprising when one considers the bed fellows but do we want to fall foul of a Saudi-Chinese system of state control and interference?
I am opposed to military action in the middle East AND to sweeping welfare reforms.
I am pro funding education, healthcare and the police.

Lab work, or what I did with my summer (2013)

This summer proved to be an interesting experience. For the first time, I was permitted to work in a research laboratory, doing experimental science. Not the stifled, predictable, has a correct answer work done in undergraduate laboratories but the open ended field of research science. I had agreed with Professor Andy Ellis of the University of Leicester to work in his laboratory over the summer, and the experiment was much more chemical physics, than physical chemistry. We were synthesising nanoparticles in helium nanodroplets. The first time I'd ever been able to do any such work and certainly an interesting experience. 

The door to the "office"

The helium nanodroplet experiment is an interesting area of research. The droplets themselves are cooled to a temperature of 0.37K, and hence the helium is superfluid. This means two things, the first being that molecules are free to move about inside of the droplets and also that due to the low reactivity of helium they don't form interactions with the helium nanodroplet and thus provides a fantastic way of capturing and holding particles to perform tasks like spectroscopy. This is aided by helium's transparency to most forms of radiation. An off shoot of this is the fact that the size of the droplets can be controlled and thus the size of particles within these meaning that the helium nanodroplet systems provide a novel and interesting method of synthesising nanoparticles with very tight size control.

One of the first tasks we had to do was test the oven we were using to introduce metal into the helium beam. This was done on an ultra high vacuum rig to simulate the conditions that the oven would be operating under. This also ensured that most of the water that had built up on the metal surface would be dissipated by evaporation. 

The oven in operation

The rig it was operating inside of

Eventually this was moved to the main rig. Normally, at this point I would show a picture of the main rig that was being worked on but unfortunately I couldn't find a good enough picture to show it off. It's a big piece of kit - kind of 2.5-3m long apparatus.

We produced nanoparticles fairly quickly containing aluminium. It was especially interesting to see these under a TEM however I cannot post them here as they are publication pending. Eventually we turned our attention to what we were seeing in our mass spectrum.

Now, a few years ago, some German scientists published a paper saying that aluminium atoms trapped in helium nanodroplets were separated by layers of helium and hence would not cluster together. Now, I know of work done that shows that excited electronic states of aluminium tend to the surface of the droplet and I also know of work done that shows that ground state aluminium does not. They had very limited evidence for their claim that these layers of helium existed. But one thing is certain, clusters would not be seen in the mass spectrum.

Yet, this is exactly what we saw!!!  Imagine our surprise. Even more interestingly was that these followed a near magic number progression! Even more interesting. The findings were published then in the Int. J. Mass Spectr. in 2014 and my name was on the paper!! Hopefully the first of many scientific papers in my name!!

It was a great summer and I was keen to repeat the experience again! Even if there were some ups and downs.

The secret life of students... Urgh.

http://www.channel4.com/info/press/programme-information/the-secret-life-of-students

"The three main components of university life at Leicester are partying, action and friends"

Thanks channel 4. Thanks for throwing the academic reputation of the University of Leicester into disrepute. Thanks for making university look like a drunken play pen for imbeciles. Thanks for perpetuating the misnomer that university is just three years of partying with studying being an annoyance on the side.

In my opinion, the three main components of university life at Leicester are studying hard, socialising with nice, decent people and teaching from world renowned academics. A notion of students just being into partying and fun and friends and blah blah blah raises the expectation of thousands to something truly unrealistic that will be shattered when they arrive.

I am particularly disturbed by the character by the name of "Aiden" who from his bio on this website is a lad, reinforcing a villainous stereotype that, from personal experience, makes university life not just horrible, but plain terrifying and can ruin the experience.

The sooner this can be over and done with, the better.

Oh and my biggest thanks goes to the management at the University of Leicester for allowing this to happen. Because TV shows always portray things in a positive light.

I'm hoping now that this will be surprisingly good, but I have a feeling that it won't be. Mostly because of the inherent mistrust of the media on youth culture. Any programme that shows "intelligent" young people as being morons will help aid this message that all young people are stupid and we shouldn't take them seriously.

The hypocrisy of it all.

I recently watched this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfGMYdalClU

Poignant. Non?

Yes, I hear you chorus back. Taking the moral high ground; how dare those humans make their way to the top of the food chain using their brains and technology. Fuck technology I feel you type. From a keyboard. On a computer. On the internet. Using electricity. Whilst drinking a cup of tea. That came from India. That was imported here using technology.

No. No one human can profess any degree of superiority over others these days with respect to the environment. We all live in a developed world. Any human who professes to be above any others; who takes an air of superiority based on nought but their own perceptions of how wonderful they are, does a great injustice to what has come before. To what has made them what they are today.

All of us. And I mean, all of us, owe our lives to technology. Destructive that it may be, but industrialisation has created a modern world that is safe, free from epidemic diseases, from mass slaughter of humans, from famine (let us face it, there is so much food in the world that the whole world could be fed. Greed means people in the developing world go hungry. Not lack of food. Greed of the west).

So if you must take exception. Please, attack the big businesses. The ones who proceed with this destruction. It is never too late to take action. But the wording is key here. Big businesses; multinational conglomerates MUST learn that what they do is not right. As long as people are squabbling over who personally has the best carbon footprint, they win. Unify against them for they count on injustice to drive their mills and feed their children.

Science ruins everyone's fun

On browsing facebook this morning (something I question my rationale for doing every time I log in, I guess it speaks to my inner egotist) I noted that one of the "trending" posts was a girl blabbing on about "Ancient crystal pyramids under the bermuda triangle."

I am sceptical, instantly of any such claim, especially when such a claim makes a point like these crystal structures must influence ocean currents (which, oceanographic studies show there isn't any "interesting" current features around the area), that we don't know how they got there and hence why science must be wrong and the nuts must be right; and finally that there is absolutely no evidence of these structures even existing.

My inner rationalist leaps to attention, and I am struck with an overwhelming urge to post every tiny bit of logic at this person and their ridiculous followers (who I am certain only approve of this, not because they agree but because they like the person posting). I could cite tons of studies done and work on the subject. But my hands are halted. Previous experience has taught me that people don't like their opinions to be challenged. They tend to see it not as an attack on their opinion but on them personally. As a scientist, I am used to people attacking my ideas but we come to accept that most other people in the world don't.

And this raises my main point. Science is forever seen as "ruining everyone's fun" with it's logic, and rigorous testing. I mean, how dare it sit there with any authority over unfounded and potentially harmful opinions that are often spouted out of the mouths of people with absolutely no credentials (a mail order PhD is not equivalent to a real PhD which takes 3 or 4 years of solid work to complete).

I read recently that a boy in Calgary died due to his mother's belief in homeopathic medicines. The cause of death more worryingly was a strep infection. A mild, curable infection that certainly hasn't been a death sentence in the western world since the days of the 1800s. And for what, so that this innocent child's mother could have a level of moral superiority over her friends who support "big pharma" and don't understand nature or the holistic methods that pre-date logical and rational chemistry by nearly 200 years.

The whole "natural" notion, (or Organic to the uninitiated) makes me sick. Science merely harnesses nature to do our bidding. If it couldn't happen in nature then it can't happen in the lab. It's merely a probability of likelihood. How many animals for example have evolved transition metal based touch screens. None, because it's not feasible. But it could still potentially happen. The notion that if it doesn't happen in nature then it's not good for us is likely founded in the unethical practices of the past (which to a lesser extent continue to this day) but I raise the point that selling you a drug with side effects for a large sum of money is far better than selling you some "magic powder" that is in reality sugar for a large of sum of money when it comes down to treating diseases.

But people don't like to be questioned on their decisions. Especially when their decisions are not logical or rational. They like people to blindly accept them. A friend of mine once made a claim that alcohol could help treat liver disease. I asked for a source. He told me he didn't need one, and then linked me to a dubious website on holistic medicine which cited various "new age" magazines as it's references. What I found more concerning is that this is man who studies a science course alongside myself, who views pharmaceutical companies as little more than pill pushers but is not afraid to take unknown substances sold to him as class A drugs which are synthetic chemicals, and are still made in even more unethical ways.

Science isn't fun. I will accept this. There was once an age of discovery where the discoveries made were understandable to the general populace. But this day has passed. The recent discovery of the Higg's boson is a prime example. The Higg's Boson was big news. The "God particle" it was dubbed, but if you asked the general public, on the street, what on earth was the "Higg's boson" most wouldn't be able to tell you, or they would be able to make a comment along the lines of it being a particle in physics. Science is now very esoteric. Great discoveries like the Higg's Boson are important, but most people aren't going to understand it. Now, if you don't understand it, that's fine. But don't try and drag unsubstantiated claims about medicine and pseudosience into the argument. Science is complicated enough if it isn't having to fight off people who make ludicrous claims.

Euro Truck Simulator 2, or how I learned how to stop worrying and love trucks.

I should be a busy student. With many deadlines and a lot of work to do. I wish my brain would somehow cotton on to this. It can't.

Instead, I have been mostly doing this!!!

 

  

This happened on my first outing. I haven't quite got this truck malarkey. 

Don't you just hate it when you go out for a drive and this happens.

 

Why did I think that driving at night was a good idea?

 

 The wheels, oh god, the wheels!

Still not got it. But that package will get there on time!

I don't even know what happened here.

 I bought my own truck. It's pink and I did this with it the first time I took it out.

 

Sod other trucks! I rule the road!!

 

Well, I did rule the road. Not really on it atm.

And thus concludes a dramatically short piece about how crap I am at truck driving.

Next month: FLIGHT SIMULATOR X

A return to First West Coast and HS2

So, it's been a few months and First have lost the west coast franchise, though not in the circumstances I might've predicted. But it's nice to see a re-evaluation of the bidding process and a continuation of Virgin Trains services on the West Coast route.

But this is a minor point; a mere reference to something that was before.

My main rant today is about HS2, this government's farce of a high speed rail plan.

So I think we ought to go over the plans to begin with. The first stage of High Speed 2 is the construction of a new rail route through the midlands serving just outside of Birmingham. Coming later is the construction of a new terminus (at the former LNWR station at Curzon Street), and if the money doesn't run out then the route will be extended to serve Manchester, the East Mids and Leeds.

I have a few minor problems with this. My major concern is with the initial route. It doesn't go anywhere, and I do not believe that passengers will pay extra to save a very small amount of time. I am not opposed to the idea of a high speed line in Britain, as we are one of a very small minority of European nations who do not have an intercity high speed line. I just fear that this will be a prime example of what I can only refer to as "British Engineering" that is, something that was hurried out to appease a lot of people but fails at a key level and will be used mostly as an excuse for future governments to criticise the decisions of the current government.

Now, I would propose a few changes to this high speed proposal. I believe that the current route from London to Birmingham is fine, but that it ought to be routed out of a different terminal to Euston, as Euston is extremely busy. Say, Marylebone for example. This route should travel along the chiltern until outside of London, where it can branch away and become a high speed line proper. This could then pass over the west coast mainline near to Birmingham, and an interchange from the high speed line could be provided. That is to say, the high speed train could leave the high speed line and travel to Birmingham New Street, where it could say, continue onwards to Manchester or Liverpool or even Glasgow.

I like this as it helps relieve pressure on the overly busy West Coast line between London and Birmingham, freeing up spaces for more commuter services between the two cities and creating more freight opportunities also. I also like that this would mean that in theory the high speed line could be extended when ready to be as opposed to all being done at once. People will always be able to travel from Euston to Manchester, just the journey time would be reduced when the extended high speed line would be opened.

Now this is not without some problems, and I think the main is engineering a train that is compatible with both the limited loading gauge of British urban railways and the European loading gauge usually used on high speed lines, but hey, this train already exists in the form of Eurostar. We would merely have to update this to a new spec.

But, y'know, what do I know?

A stegosaurus a day.

My friend Stuart has a blog. You should check it out if you like stegosauruses and origami.

Linky linky.

A Stegosaurus a Day

Oh em gee, facebook went down

So, I was shutting down my pc for the night yesterday when I was contacted by a friend who informed me that the old favourite social media site facebook was down. Being logged into facebook at that moment, I was surprised. Everything seemed to be working. I tentatively tapped refresh and Lo and behold, it was down. I immediately ran to my source on all things internet and again there were several threads all on how facebook was down. This, it seemed was a global thing.
Now what struck me at this moment was a curious feeling. I suddenly felt very alone. Isolated from a community, so to speak. As older modes of communication sprang into action (msn and steam) I was reminded of earlier years, when this was the only method of communication. It amazed and shocked me of how much we have come to rely on facebook for communication and to a lesser extent,  a sense of identity. I considered the effort I had put into crafting a page tht best sums up myself as an individual, and to lose this felt like losing a book tht I had crafted. It was very curious tht facebook cld create this sort of sensation.
Facebook came back online a few minutes later, and relief came when I cleared my cache and got back on. But I can't help but to think now: Am I addicted?
Probably, but ah well. I'll share this on facebook no doubt, as a final stroke of irony...

Oh and if you're wondering about the appalling spelling in this, I wrote it in my lunch break on a mobile phone, so some abbreviations were used.

A moan about "First West Coast Limited"

Today Virgin Trains, the West Coast Mainline Franchise holder for some 15 years, lost its lucrative hold on this line to one of the worst performing TOCs in recent times, the ironically named “First Group.” A TOC that repeatedly fails to meet government set targets about punctuality and seems hellbent on a price hiking system that means that a return ticket for a journey from Paddington to Oxford will set you back almost £50. Nearly a pound a mile. This, is versus an operator whose consistently high standards have persistently placed them at the top of the league tables for train operators over the past 15 years. All because of a flawed bidding system.

Virgin trains were reported to have commented that they made a “realistic bid” for the franchise, but lost out because of the vastness of Firstgroup’s coffers. This worries me for a number of reasons. One would’ve thought that the government, who issue the franchises, would have learned from National Express’ example of a few years back. Another ridiculous bid, that pushed off high quality operator “GNER” from the East Coast Franchise and then when they could not make the route profitable enough to fund their repayments, then lost this to the state who had to step in and take control at considerable public expense. Yet, we see another company pursuing the same line.

First have claimed that they can make this route pay back, and they can do this without cutting operating costs. I’ve read their proposals. Adding 11 six car trains to the London-Glasgow Route is not going to make this work. This is an undersubscribed route, in fact, a lot of the West Coast is undersubscribed, and with the prospect of HS2 coming along, it begs the thought of why bother upgrading capacity in the short run.

The RMT have threatened industrial action if Firstgroup try to cut costs by hacking pay and services, and let’s face it, they will. So presumably, we’re looking at a return to the days of the late 1980s, where rail transport was severely disrupted by industrial action. And this is caused by a flawed railway and bidding system.

Firstgroup have a poor record for customer satisfaction, and this juxtaposed by Virgin/Stagecoach’s high record of customer satisfaction. I can vouch for Virgin trains being a fantastic company. Having travelled into Manchester Piccadilly on a “First Transpennine” service, the difference between the attitudes of the two companies was stark. As I was travelling first class and had prebooked, I was met at the platform at Manchester and I made my way to the first class lounge where the service offered from then, until arriving at Milton Keynes was absolutely wonderful. First Transpennine on the other hand didn’t want to know, and their desiro trains were difficult to get onto with a lot of luggage.

Privatisation has not saved money at all; in fact it has increased operating costs. And providing a public service with a profit motive ensures that money comes first and people second. We see a lack of investment as a result, and a railway system that leaves us lagging behind the rest of Europe. And I hope that the selling of this franchise for the ludicrous price tag that it sold for, will work out for Firstgroup without them causing the West Coast Mainline to slide into disrepute. Otherwise, we may see another return to a state controlled mainline which is not good for public confidence in our ailing railway system.