Songbirds

When I were a lad, I lived on the outskirts of a small town outside Cardiff. Our little home backed onto a country lane which in turn led to what I think will have been the green belt. One of my favourite childhood memories (aside from that time me and 3 friends went along the tracks to find that dead body - or was that the film Stand by Me, I digress) was when my dad used to take me for walks. We had an old, coverless bird-spotting book and a scruffy pair of binoculars. I was captivated by the way my dad could identify any bird by silhouette and song. In hindsight, he was probably lying, but I've had a bit of a interest in ornithology since my childhood.

I don't tell this story often, partly out of embarrassment, and partly because nobody cares about my childhood. But this story leads me nicely onto the real subject of this article - the decline of our once thriving and diverse songbird population.

One if my first thoughts was that they are being outcompeted by magpies, crows and other birds of this ilk, coupled with the fact that these birds also raid nests and take hatchlings in a particularly evil double-whammy. This was in fact going to be the crux of this article until I did a bit of research and found out one thing: it's bollocks.

It turns out that the RSPB, in conjunction with the Britsh Trust for Ornithology has just (10th March 2011) published the results of a staggering 35 year study on the causes of the songbird decline in the UK. It looked at a number of factors, such as the predator-prey relationship, and found that there is NO evidence for believing this hypothesis (that magpies/crows et al are to blame), and perversely found a number of instances of a positive relationship between the predators and the prey (where the presence of the predator encourages population growth in the prey species). The study included a number of different predators, including "nest invaders" such as: Great Spotted Woodpecker, Magpie, Jay, Carrion Crow and Grey Squirrel. Link to the executive summmary of the article here.

So, that idea throughly debunked, I'll put forth my hypothesis: We are to blame. Humanity the Virus (see: The Matrix) has systematically destroyed the habitat, limited the food source and introduced some competing species into the eco-system. I am no Ecologist, but if we restrict a species' food supply, habitat and introduce new competitors for the same resources, then the songbirds are basically fucked. (profanity used for effect, rather than poor vocabulary)

It may have come to a point where songbirds are starting to circle the drain, and the longer I live, the more that I see the circles get a little bit faster and a little bit tighter. There may be no recovery unless sucessive governments decide to do something about this and either legislate against these restrictions (which they won't do), or curb the introduction of new species (which they can't do). One day, not far from now, I predict that these some of these songbirds will become one of the 16 species to become extinct that day. It will be all our fault, and we can't blame magpies.

Chernobyl - 25 years on

Today Humanity reached a very black milestone. It has been a quarter of a century since the partial meltdown in the number 4 reactor in Chernobyl, and I cannot believe that in these 25 years we appear to have come no further to making this supposedly safe technology actually safe.

25 years later, there are still thousands of cases of cancer/leukaemia that are COMPLETELY attributable to this disaster. There are STILL restrictions in the movement of livestock as far away from Chernobyl as the UK.

There has only been one comparable nuclear incident in these 25 years, and it was only a few months ago. The incident at the Fukishima power plant in Japan should have heightened calls for nuclear safety, or at least the investment in sustainable technologies.

Here in the UK, investments are being made in Wind Farms, Water Turbines, Solar Panels, and all the naysayers can say is "but I don't see them working therefore they are not working"

For these renewable energy projects to be seen as viable, they must make economic sense - therefore the periods when they run would be at times when the power to run them is cheaper. So, they use power when it's cheaper to run them and make money. It turns the concept on its head, and is a little like the tail wagging the dog, but once the capital for these projects has been repaid, these important pieces of technology can start to make a difference when they are needed, rather than when it is economically possible for them to run.

There is a project very close to Sheffield, which is looking at installing a variation of an archimedes screw to generate power through hydroelectric means, an ingenious and animal safe method. This was explained to me in some detail over the weekend, and it appears there is very little funding available for projects of this scope. So, lets all band together and save this planet, one screw at a time!

Alternative Energy?

The IMDB Top 250 Challenge

Been talking about starting this for a while. And well… I’ve decided… It is time. That challenge being to watch every film on the IMDB top 250 although to save time I only intend to watch the films I haven’t already seen. People balk about the usefulness of the list sure. More recent films are grossly overrated. Films over 10 years old though I would argue deserve to be there since the hype surrounding them has long since faded and their ratings likely reflect a majority consensus as to their overall quality.

But regardless I intend to watch every film on this list and find out if there are any surprises. So starting with the top 10, here are the ones I’ve seen already.

No	Film	Seen?
1	The Shawshank Redemption (1994)	Y
2	The Godfather (1972)	Y
3	The Godfather: Part 2 (1974)	N
4	The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)	N
5	Pulp Fiction (1994)	Y
6	Schindler's List (1993)	Y
7	12 Angry Men (1957)	Y
8	Inception (2010)	Y
9	One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)	Y
10	The Dark Knight (2008)	Y

So the only two I’ve not seen out of the top 10 so far are The Godfather Part 2 and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. I think both are going to require patience since I’ve tried watching them before and neither particularly held my interest. Inception and The Dark Knight whilst good films I really don’t think deserve to be rated this highly. The Shawshank Redemption at number 1? I agree it probably should be. The biggest surprise for me on this list was 12 Angry Men – a film I expected to hate but totally loved. The film I’m a little fuzzy on – One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest – haven’t seen it for years and can barely remember what it’s about but I remember being blown away by it. Perhaps I should give it another watch sometime. If a film on this list really blows me away I’ll write a review otherwise I really can’t be arsed kind of thing. Next up: 11 –20. 

Cargo (2009)

I've been trawling the Internet for more sci-fi films lately since I've cannibalised pretty much every single sci-fi film in the English language worth watching. Now the only thing left is to turn my attention to world cinema and see if there is anything out there that's equally as brilliant as some of the best.

So the latest film I've watched is called Cargo - probably the only science fiction film Switzerland have ever made. The film is in German with subs and the subtitles were such a bad translation of what was actually being said that it left me thinking I could have probably done a better job. That and the English translation of the sentences didn't actually make sense at some points in the film. Still this was mostly forgivable because I still got the gist of what was going on even if I had to fill in some of the blanks myself.

This film is pretty visionary in its own right and considering it was made on a miniscule budget the special effects hold up reasonably well. Certainly they're leaps and bounds better than Babylon 5 although in honesty that's not a terribly difficult feat to accomplish. But if a story is well told often even dated  special effects can be overlooked. I do however fall into a school of thought that thinks 2001: A Space Odyssey is distracting because the SFX have dated so much. Perhaps I'm in a minority there. I loved the book but not the film so much really.

So it's a bit difficult to really compare this film to any others since the storyline is mostly original. It steals ideas from other space operas such as Alien and Event Horizon but doesn't end up becoming a stupid horror film, more one of a gritty drama set in deep space. It's difficult to say what this film is actually about as well without giving away crucial plot points. Sufficed to say the story revolves around a future where Earth has been rendered uninhabitable due to several unspecified ecological calamities and what remains of humanity is packed onto cramped space stations. Another world has been discovered - Rhea and the inhabitants of those stations relish the opportunity to settle on this world - a trip that takes years and enormous expense. This is really what the story is about, a cargo ship transporting goods to a deep space station and a doctor attempting to save up the money required to go. The staff man the ship in 8 months shifts alone and film attempts to capture the loneliness and ensuing paranoia as well as things that haven't even really been considered in sci-fi such as how cold the ships would get in deep space. Predictably though as the doctor is nearing the end of her shift it turns out she's not alone and must wake the others to find out who else is there and for what purpose. The film sort of builds to a twist which is the main plot of the film and to say too much would give it away. It kind of becomes very obvious what's really going on long before it's said on screen but it still makes for a damn fine film and a social commentary on corporate malfeasance.

There are some fairly major plot holes in this film and sometimes the actions of the characters make little sense in light of what's going on but the film mostly glosses over these with a backdrop that is artistically beautiful. Not the best sci-fi I've seen but certainly not disappointing. IMDB Rating 6.2/10

The Fossil Record...

I was reading a blog which belongs to a friend of mine yesterday (link) that refers to the volcanic island of Surtsey off the coast of Iceland, and that fossils have been found there. This island was created as a result of volcanic eruptions between 1963 and 1967, so logically thinking these fossils cannot be more than 50 years old!

I was intrigued when I read this and decided to learn more. It turns out that fossils were present on the seabed when the initial eruption occurred; chunks of rocks (called xenoliths) containing some of these fossils were "shaken" loose, carried up with the lava flow and deposited onto the still forming island. Go figure!

My friend's article yesterday went onto criticise the concept of radiometric dating. It seemed almost a throwaway comment, but again, got me thinking - are radiometric decay rates constant?

The truth is, I don't know. I'm not 4.6 billion years old and wasn't there during the big bang. What I do know can be inferred from evidence. For example:

Supernovae are known to produce a large quantity of radioactive isotopes (Nomoto et al. 1997a, 1997b; Thielemann et al. 1998). These isotopes produce gamma rays with frequencies and fading rates that are predictable according to present decay rates. These predictions hold for supernova SN1987A, which is 169,000 light-years away (Knödlseder 2000). Therefore, radioactive decay rates were not significantly different 169,000 years ago. Present decay rates are likewise consistent with observations of the gamma rays and fading rates of supernova SN1991T, which is sixty million light-years away (Prantzos 1999), and with fading rate observations of supernovae billions of light-years away (Perlmutter et al. 1998). link to source here

So, based on this (and other) evidence, it would seem that radiometric decay rates have not changed significantly over the last 169,000 years. So we have there proof of an old universe, rather than the 6000 odd years proposed by some Young Earth Creationists.

There is one model for radiometric dating which is consistent with Young Earth Creationism, that of Helium Diffusion (link), and from what brief research I have been able to conduct, this technique has been extensively debunked (link). Again, having read all this today, there are some holes in Radiometric dating, but it is the best method we've got. For less old samples, we've got Dendrochronology (tree-ring dating), and there exists a complete record for the last 11,000 years, with another set of data for the last 26,000 years. (link).

So, all in all, even if any type of radiometric dating is bogus, it doesn't really matter. Tree-ring dating and ice core sampling are used for a plethora of different purposes and their practical purpose is hinged on the fact that they are reliable for periods older than the last few thousand years.

Also let us not forget that these highly flawed and untestable techniques (Potassium-Argon, Uranium-Lead, Samarium-Neodymium, Rubidium-Strontium, Argon-Argon, Iodine-Xenon, Lead-Lead) cross confirm each other and arrive at the same dates for objects. Weird how they do that when they're so flawed.

Limitless (2011)

Got chance to watch this decidedly average Sci-Fi film the other day. Thoughts? Well it's decent and I enjoyed it a lot more than Battle: Los Angeles. The premise is also pretty clever - that premise being about a man stumbling across a drug that makes him feel smart and invulnerable (er wait... don't all drugs make you feel like that?). But in the case of this drug - NZT it actually does give him these qualities and consequently he makes the transformation from lowly writer to stock market tycoon in less than a couple of weeks. Naturally though the story isn't a simple as that because this drug has some serious side effects - like complete amnesia, psychosis, oh and it kills you if you stop taking it - a couple of dilemmas that the protagonist faces during the course of this movie. Ultimately the man - Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper) manages to overcome these obstacles and we are left with a movie that is arguably pro drugs and was quite possibly funded by the pharmaceutical industry looking to sell more nootropics such as Piracetam and Adderall. But NZT, hell if I had some I'd conquer the world and you pathetic minions would have to bow before me. Time to get in touch with my dealer. The second best film I’ve seen at the cinema this year. Stars Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, Tomas Arana and Anna Friel. 7.5/10.