noisy computer must die

Posted on March 10, 2005 by acb

We have a German exchange student for a fortnight. Nice, quiet, polite creature, who is taking full advantage of technology to avoid England, and speaking English. She spends a couple of hours a day IMing, in German, her friends at home; and most of the rest of the time here in her room if she has to be in our house at all. She does not read books, in any language, which must make this house a little strange since she is sleeping in the only room (except the shower) that does not have a bookshelf in it. That’s because it’s too small.

What it does, normally, have is the backup computer, plugged into an ethernet cable, and running linux where the fan won’t disturb anyone. That is now in this office, switched off, becasue the fan disturbs me. I want it in the cellar, where there is a power point and perfectly good wifi reception. So I bought a wifi card, and put it in. At this point I am perfectly stuck. The card works in windows, and is recognised and correctly by Suse 9.1. But, like our exchange student, it lurks all silent, talking to the router outside, and not to the box in which it finds itself.

I am completely at a loss, because everything you can google assumes a kind of basic understanding that I have not got. I can’t discover how you tell it that such and such a card corresponds to such and such an interface. How does it know that the main network card is eth0? Why won’t it recognise the wireless card as wlan0?

It’s a long shot but if there is any reader to whom these questions make sense, would they make themselves known? It’s Suse Linux 9.1 and a dlink 520+ card.

I do know that in the last resort I can take it down to the cellar, plug everything in, boot it into windows, get everything working, and then unplug the keyboard and monitor. That might give me backups. But I wouldn’t have remote access.

Posted in nördig | 10 Comments

Oliver Sacks

Posted on March 5, 2005 by acb

Is in the Guardian today. A wonderful photograph by Eamonn McCabe. I can’t bear to read the caption, of course, but I think it’s all right.

Posted in Journalism | 1 Comment

A wonderful time of worship

Posted on March 5, 2005 by acb

My undying thanks are due to Stephen Bates, who forwarded me this letter from The English Churchman, a magazine which is the light of a religious correpondent’s life.

If nothing else, it should correct the liberal fallacy that there could be no bigots more hysterical and narrow-minded than Christian Voice. Read on for the full story of CV’s disgraceful ecumenical involvement.

Continue reading →

Posted in God | 6 Comments

Factory farming

Posted on March 5, 2005 by acb

Apparently there are pubs near Leadburn, in Scotland, where you can buy Tandoori pickled eggs. George, who told me this story, says this is because Leadburn is surrounded by chicken farms, and after you’ve worked in one of those for three weeks, you have no sense of smell left.

That’s a rather light-hearted way of introducing one of the most horrifying videos I have ever seen. You have to click the added link for the video: the page itself is remarkably uninformative; perhaps because normal people can’t imagine what is being sold here.

This is why I try not to buy sandwiches or any other form of industrial food with chicken in them.

Posted in Blather | Comments Off on Factory farming

a really strange brain

Posted on March 3, 2005 by acb

An excellent piece by Carl Zimmer on the brain of homo florensis. Short version: it really isn’t a pygmy human. We do have a new, and very strange, species here.

Posted in Science without worms | 2 Comments

Radio script techniques

Posted on March 3, 2005 by acb

Below the fold are nerdy notes may be applicable to other sorts of research and document construction. Also, they will remind me what to do next time.

Continue reading →

Posted in OOo | 3 Comments

Blizzard news

Posted on March 3, 2005 by acb

Foreign readers may be puzzled by reports of a ‘blizzard‘ in the British press, often illustrated by pictures of cars on a road in snow so shallow that the edge of the pavement can clearly be seen.

This morning, I trudged through the knee-high drifts of wolves to bring you, from the mountains above Saffron Walden, a picture which sums up the stark terror facing this country. When next you try to understand the British attitude to snow, remember this

P3030315.jpg

Posted in Blather | 2 Comments

Demographic quotes

Posted on March 3, 2005 by acb

Since this is obviously of interest, here are some more quotes that may be in the Analysis programme:

Jean-Claude Chesnais: “the elderly population is exploding, especially at very old ages, and the young population is imploding and we need you know to face — Demographically, technically speaking, if we want to face the population ageing problem by you know demographic mechanisms, we have to import only babies without the fathers and the mothers. (LAUGHTER) Yes, it’s true. That’s pure evidence, that’s nothing political. You know it’s mechanical. So it’s of course not compatible with human rights. We can partly solve with adoption, but it’s … you know it’s nothing. It’s — In Germany the deficit is around four hundred thousand births a year. You know you cannot adopt four hundred thousand kids a year.”

The background to this is that there are three zones where population is falling in Europe: in Britain, France, and Scandinavia, it is faling slowly; in Germany and central Europe, it is falling quickly; and in the old Catholic heartlands it is dropping precipitously. In the industrial parts of Northern Italy and Spain, the fertility rate is below 0.8 per couple.

ACB: The ten million immigrants you were saying that no German government could say it wanted. This corresponds to the ten million babies that ought to be born.

JCC: Yeah, true.

AB: Right. That’s it.

JCC: It’s true, that’s exactly the point. (LAUGHS) Do we want … You know where do you find ten million babies except in Africa? (LAUGHTER) Are they ready to … you know to become ba… black in the few generations, you know? This is not so easy. Demography is really, really you know very drastic science, you know. You cannot play with it.

I really want to rename this programme “the drastic science”.

Posted in Journalism | Comments Off on Demographic quotes

Orwell on world peace

Posted on March 2, 2005 by acb

This is still worth thinking about. It’s the paragraph that follows my previous entry. In those early days, people didn’t write UN, but U.N.O.:

In order to have any efficacy whatever, a world organization must be able to override big states as well as small ones. It must have power to inspect and limit armaments, which means that its officials must have access to every square inch of every country. It must also have at its disposal an armed force bigger than any other armed force and responsible only to the organization itself. The two or three great states that really matter have never even pretended to agree to any of these conditions, and they have so arranged the constitution of U.N.O. that their own actions cannot even be discussed. In other words, U.N.O.’s usefulness as an instrument of world peace is nil. This was just as obvious before it began functioning as it is now. Yet only a few months ago millions of well-informed people believed that it was going to be a success.

Posted in War | 1 Comment

unconventional wisdom

Posted on March 2, 2005 by acb

There is less than a week in which to write my Analysis script on demography and I finally managed to scan in one of the passages which inspired the thought that informed opinion knows what will happen to the population in fifty years’ time — and informed opinion is always wrong. This is George Orwell, writing in 1945 ( In front of Your Nose )

Twenty or twenty-five years ago, contraception and enlightenment were held to be almost synonymous. To this day, the majority of people argue – the argument is variously expressed, but always boils down to more or less the same thing – that large families are impossible for economic reasons. At the same time, it is widely known that the birthrate is highest among the low-standard nations, and, in our population, highest among the worst-paid groups. It is also argued that a smaller population would mean less unemployment and more comfort for everybody, while on the other hand it is well established that a dwindling and ageing population is faced with calamitous and perhaps insoluble economic problems. Necessarily the figures are uncertain, but it is quite possible that in only seventy years our population will amount to about eleven millions, over half of whom will be Old Age Pensioners. Since, for complex reasons, most people don’t want large families, the frightening facts can exist somewhere or other in their consciousness, simultaneously known and not known.

Posted in Literature | 3 Comments