Archive for the ‘Behaviour’ Category

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Internecine litigation: Pratt & Whitney counter-sue Rolls Royce

November 5, 2010

Bloomberg reports:

United Technologies Corp.’s Pratt & Whitney jet-engine unit filed patent-infringement complaints against Rolls-Royce Group Plc, a counterpunch in a dispute that may affect delivery of Boeing Co.’s Dreamliner airplanes.

Pratt & Whitney said it filed a complaint today at the U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington that claims the Trent 900 and Trent 1000 model engines made by London-based Rolls-Royce are infringing a patent for a swept-fan blade. A complaint making similar allegations was filed at the U.K. High Court in London, according to the company.

That the timing of the filing is unconnected and entirely coincidental with the current technical issues faced by Rolls Royce on their Trent 900 and 1000 engines is possible but unlikely. I am sure Pratt & Whitney’s lawyers are perfectly aware of the advantages of hitting an opponent when he is down.

 

File:Great Game cartoon from 1878.jpg

The Great Game: wikimedia

 

Bloomberg continues:

A ruling in favor of Pratt & Whitney by the ITC would mean Rolls-Royce would be blocked from shipping engines for Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, now in the final stages of flight testing. The U.K. lawsuit may limit shipments for the Airbus SAS A380, now in use by international carriers including Qantas Airways Ltd., and the Airbus A350XWB model powered solely by another version of the Trent engine.

“Pratt & Whitney’s case is very strong and we were left with no choice but to take these actions in light of Rolls- Royce’s aggression,” said Katy Padgett, a spokeswoman for East Hartford, Connecticut-based Pratt & Whitney. “We regret that these actions are necessary, and we continue to be willing to discuss a mutually acceptable resolution to this dispute.”

The complaints escalate a legal battle that started when Rolls-Royce sued Pratt & Whitney in May, claiming the GP7200 Fan Stage infringed a patent for a design that gives the largest part of a jet engine greater resistance to damage by foreign objects, more stability and lower noise levels. It later added Pratt’s Geared TurboFan engines, as Airbus and Boeing consider getting more efficient engines on the bestselling A320 and 737 planes.

Patent infringements must no doubt be fought but an internecine battle of this kind among the few engine manufacturers left may lead to some immediate competitive advantages to one or the other, but in the long-term could damage the entire industry to the ultimate detriment of the the consumers. The dispute has the potential of delaying engines to a variety of aircraft and to a number of airlines.

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Posted in Aviation, Behaviour, Business | Comments Off on Internecine litigation: Pratt & Whitney counter-sue Rolls Royce

Marc Hauser’s apologists are getting organised

November 2, 2010

Earlier posts have described a Harvard investigation led by the Dean of the Faculty of the Arts and Sciences Michael D. Smith which found Marc Hauser responsible for eight counts of scientific misconduct. Hauser has been “sentenced” to “book leave” for the year.

Some academics – together with some luke warm support from the CHE and the New York Times – seem to be starting a campaign to ease his way back into the academic world. But they give me the impression of merely being apologists. Perhaps – they say – he just made innocent mistakes. Or that the difficult subject of cognition is prone to errors. Maybe he got a raw deal! Unfortunately it all seems like a PR exercise now. Damage control and the hell with the questionable ethics of a Professor who specialises in cognition and ethics.

But it seems to me to be conveniently forgotten that he has already been found guilty – on eight counts just at Harvard. The onus of proof has shifted. The assumption must now be of guilt  – not of innocence. His work dating at least back to 1995 is suspect.

At least the Harvard Crimson is not (at least not yet) joining the circle of protective wagons beginning to form around Hauser:

Professor Hauser is set to return to campus next year after his leave is over. However, we believe that the University should implement some sort of consequence when he returns—a penalty that is on par with the severity of his actions. Although it would be helpful if Harvard would release more information on the eight counts of misconduct that it uncovered, it is likely prohibited from doing so by the regulations surrounding ongoing legal proceedings.

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Posted in Behaviour, Science, scientific misconduct | 1 Comment »

“What the Green Movement got wrong” – Channel 4

October 31, 2010

 

green = nuclear

 

Channel 4 in the UK is running a documentary this week called “What the Green Movement got wrong”.

A group of environmentalists are challenging the movement they helped to create. These life-long diehard greens advocate radical solutions to climate change, including GM crops and nuclear energy.

In this film, these life-long diehard greens advocate radical solutions to climate change, which include GM crops and nuclear energy. They argue that by clinging to an ideology formed more than 40 years ago, the traditional green lobby has failed in its aims and is ultimately harming its own environmental cause.

As author and environmentalist Mark Lynas says, ‘Being an environmentalist was part of my identity and most of my friends were environmentalists. We were involved in the whole movement together. It took me years to actually begin to question those core, cherished beliefs. It was so challenging it was almost like going over to the dark side. It was a like a horrible dark secret you couldn’t share with anyone.’

The Telegraph reports on the change of heart:

Mark Lynas, a campaigner who has been a member of action groups on GM foods and climate change, said the environmental lobby was losing the battle for public opinion on climate change because it had made too many apocalyptic prophecies and exaggerated claims.

He said: “We have got to find a more pragmatic and realistic way of engaging with people.”

Stewart Brand, an American activist and former editor of Whole Earth Catalog, said: “I would like to see an environmental movement that says it turns out our fears about genetically engineered food crops were exaggerated and we are glad about that. It is a humble and modest stance to take to the real world. Environmentalists did harm by being ignorant and ideological and unwilling to change their mind based on actual evidence. As a result we have done harm and I regret it.”

* What the Green Movement Got Wrong will be broadcast on Thursday 4 November at 9pm and will be followed by a live studio debate hosted by Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy.

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Posted in Alarmism, Behaviour, Environment, UK | 1 Comment »

John Howard faces a thrown shoe

October 26, 2010
U.S. President George W. Bush Had Two Shoes Th...

Shoe- throwing has become an unambiguous, easily understood and visible expression of political contempt, dissent and outrage coupled to a helplessness against the “establishment”. I have posted earlier about the spread of this behaviour mainly against political figures in the Middle East and Asia.

Now John Howard joins the ranks of George Bush, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari and Chinese premier Wen Jiabao in having a shoe thrown in their direction. The Sydney Morning Herald reports

A man who threw a shoe at John Howard on last night’s Q&A program on ABC TV said the former prime minister “deserves a lot worse” than having shoes thrown at him.

Hunter Valley man Peter Gray was unapologetic about his actions this morning, telling Newcastle ABC Radio he was angry about Australia’s involvement in the Iraq War and he “found the right type of protest” to get his point across.

“That is for Iraqi dead,” Mr Gray shouted as the shoes missed their target.

 

Hunter Valley man Peter Gray tosses his second shoe in the direction of John Howard as Tony Jones stands up to call for the man's removal.

Peter Gray tosses his second shoe in the direction of John Howard: Courtesy ABC

 

Mr Gray confirmed that ABC staff refused to return his shoes.

Mr Gray explained that it was a very difficult to stand up and conduct such a protest, especially because such action was against his nature. “Quite a few people said I throw like a girl.”

 

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Posted in Behaviour, Trivia | 1 Comment »

Resource depletion is imaginary

October 19, 2010

 

Limits of growth

Doomsaying: Image by net_efekt via Flickr

 

“Humanity’s demands on natural resources are sky-rocketing to 50 per cent more than the earth can sustain”

trumpets the WWF.

Similar headlines have been common-place for the last 40 years. “The Limits to Growth” in 1972 was not the first time such dire predictions were made. They only carried on from where Malthus left off with his  An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798. And before Malthus there were plenty of alarmists and doom merchants  at least as far back as mankind has lived in complex societies where opportunists could exploit people by fears of catastrophes and impending doom.

Unfortunately, today’s so-called conservationists have descended to the level of doom “merchants”. Either they are propagating fears of humanity running out of food or oil or coal or metals or water or rare earths or they are screaming about the Earth running out of biological species or of polar ice or sustainability.

But I am not convinced.

Actually, mankind destroys nothing. At the elemental level we neither create or destroy anything (except in the use of nuclear energy where some elemental transformation takes place and where some little mass is converted to energy). All the metals we use or the fuels we use are merely transformed from one compound to another and occasionally some molecules are reduced to their elemental form. The Earth as a system loses only heat (and if the global warming maniacs are to be believed we are not even losing that). The mass of the earth changes only by the accretion of meteors and the leakage of atmosphere and this change is of no material significance.

All the elements that were available remain available. The forms of compounds that we currently use and which have been created slowly by slow natural processes may well be used up. But so what? Mankind has always used what is available and when natural rubber was not enough we made synthetic rubber. We usually take what is available and transform it into the form we want. We take metal oxides, reduce them to the elemental metals and then recombine them into the qualities of steel or alloys we need. We take oil and convert it into plastics. We take plant material and make paper. We take other plant material and make oils. We take sand and make glass. We take limestone and make cement or concrete. We are a carbon-based life form. We use carbon in all its forms as diamonds and all organic materials and now as graphene for nano-materials. We take oil and make food. Nearly all the drugs we use are synthesised.

Even if we restrict ourselves to the known form of the resources we use, we cannot forget that 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water. We have not even begun to see what can be found there. Even the off-shore oil and gas we extract hardly scratches the (submerged) surface. We are crowding out some particular species but keep finding new ones. The number of mammals (but not necessarily species) in existence is increasing rather than reducing. The diversity of life in the sea is hardly touched.

The overwhelmingly pessimistic view of mankind and its future which drives the current-day conservationists to their creed of “stop everything” goes nowhere. “Stop the World, I wan’t to get off” is not something for me. A strategy for humanity – like any other strategy – cannot be based on “what not to do”.

I suppose it is the difference between an optimist and the doom sayers. I see no energy crisis – only some technological challenges to be met. I see no food crisis – only some tasks to be carried out, and these tasks do not need any technological breakthroughs. The Earth and the Sun will take care of climate as they see fit and our task is to adapt to whatever changes may come and not to waste our time in any futile attempt to try and control it. We could stop using all energy today and the Earth and the Sun will still cause climate change to happen and mankind is not even a bit player in that music.

I remain an optimist and I believe in the human ability to develop technology. As educational standards improve, human population will probably increase till about 2050, then reduce slightly from about 10 billion people and then stabilise at a very slow rate of growth. This development will be dynamically coupled to our rate of technological development which will continue but where we cannot predict the rate of breakthroughs appearing. A breakthrough in transportation methods (and since the invention of the modern internal combustion engine for transport in 1862, this is now overdue) or a breakthrough in food synthesising technology or finding new sources of energy (and I do not mean wind or solar) will have an obvious effect on quality of life and on rate of population growth.

A true environmentalist must be first concerned with the quality of life for humankind. The “environment” devoid of humans is no environment at all. I wish the so-called conservationists (who are not in my opinion true environmentalists) would stop telling me what not to do.

There is no resource crunch. There may come shortages of resources in the form we are used to but I have supreme confidence in our ability to develop the required technologies to keep improving on our quality of life – and to keep evolving.

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Posted in Behaviour, Engineering, Environment, Ethics, Evolution, Technology | 1 Comment »

Commonwealth Games: The inquest begins

October 17, 2010

The “last minute syndrome” is a unique and peculiar asset in India

The Games were supposed to cost under Rs 2,000 Crores (about 450 Million$).

The actual cost is likely to be around Rs. 30,000 Crores (about 6.7 Billion $).

About 500 Million $ has probably been paid for fictitious work, over-invoiced and overpaid to contractors, skimmed off or pocketed by individuals connected to the Organising Committee headed by Kalmadi. Some individual fortunes have been made and squirrelled away into Swiss and Channel Island and Caribbean bank accounts.

CWG Delhi Closing ceremony: image bharatchronicle.com

 

The investigations have begun. Some scapegoats will have to be found. Shrill voices are questioning whether it was worth it or not. There is no shortage of suggestions about how all the money could have been better spent.

For example Vir Singhvi writes in the Hindustan Times:

We could have overhauled healthcare in our cities. We could have built thousands of new schools. We could have overhauled the chaotic traffic system. We could have spent that money on recruiting more policemen and giving them the facilities they need. We could have built hundreds of new courts and recruited more judges to reduce the backlog in our judicial system.

But I have a somewhat different take.

None of the predicted or feared catastrophe’s occurred. There were no terrorist attacks. There was no epidemic of dengue fever. The facilities at the Games village largely functioned well.  The logistics were chaotic to begin with but also largely functioned satisfactorily. As the performance of India’s athletes started bringing in the medals at the Games, the crowds which were initially absent started showing up. The opening ceremony was well carried out but the logistics on the opening day were chaotic and stressful for many athletes. But this was transformed by the time of the spectacular closing ceremony in front of a packed house.

In transforming an apparently hopeless situation into a qualified success by means of India’s patented “last minute syndrome” some heroes appeared. Sheila Dikshit the Chief Minister of Delhi and Dr Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister can I think be credited with the success of the final mobilisation of effort. Politicians who were busy distancing themselves from the Games the week before it started were clamouring to be seen at the closing ceremony. The Delhi Police must take a bow not only for the security aspects but also for the handling of traffic. The organisers (and even the newly activated Committee who were now under the whip) and all the officials and “volunteers” and even the Delhi population pulled out all the stops. Many private contractors with their contract labour carried out a minor miracle on the last few days.

And this brings me to my point. One of the key issues in India is not – in the first instance – the availability of funding. The Indian weakness is in implementation, in using the money available well. Whatever the Games cost, the money was forthcoming when needed. About 10% was probably wasted. But because of the attention and pride (or more accurately the potential loss of face), a fiasco was averted. The “last minute syndrome” was activated. Implementation, and rather effective implementation, took place.

Even if there had been no Games and even if all the money had been poured into health care or traffic improvements or overhaul of the judicial system it would have achieved virtually nothing. Without attention and without visible deadlines to create a potential loss of face and -therefore – without a means of activating the “last minute syndrome” the money would have been frittered away.

It would be much more constructive if, instead of moaning about what could have been, every project being implemented in India could figure out a way of creating the real deadlines which could activate the “last minute syndrome”.

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Commonwealth Games- Australians dominate the medals but athletes leave Delhi on a sour note

October 15, 2010

The Australian team totally dominated the Games with their haul of 177 medals including 74 Golds. But some of their athletes seem to have been involved in vandalising the Games village. Just high jinks perhaps.

Rank Country Gold Silver Bronze Total
1. Australia 74 55 48 177
2. India 38 27 36 101
3. England 37 59 46 142
4. Canada 26 17 32 75
5. South Africa 12 11 10 33

Zee News reports that

Some Australian athletes destroyed electrical fittings and furniture in their tower in the Games Village on Tuesday and Wednesday.
According to a newspaper report, the athletes shouted slogans against Indian ace batsman Sachin Tendulkar, who was named ‘Man of the match’ and ensured India’s victory in the Bangalore match, and tossed a washing machine down from the eighth floor of their tower.
According to newspaper sources in Delhi police, this hooliganism by Australian athletes started on Tuesday when Tendulkar scored a double century to force Australia out of the match. Irked by this match-winning performance, they first damaged electrical fittings and fixtures in their block. The report also says that Delhi Police, which received a complaint about this vandalism, has downplayed the incidents to prevent them from growing into a diplomatic embarrassment for Australia.
Meanwhile, confirming these vandalism reports, Australia’s Commonwealth Games boss Perry Crosswhite on Friday denied involvement of any Australian athlete in the incident at the Games Village.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

An Australian athlete was sent home from the Commonwealth Games for bad behaviour this week and a washing machine was dropped from a balcony in Australia’s section of the athlete’s village after the closing celebrations.

No one was injured by the washing machine but Perry Crosswhite, Australia Commonwealth Games association chief executive, said he was disappointed by the incident on Thursday night.

“We don’t know who did that,” Crosswhite told journalists today. “Delhi police came around and they’ve done a report and an investigation and we’ll hear about that.”

But by all accounts it was a spectacular closing ceremony and a qualified success. It was a long way away from being the fiasco that had been feared.


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Voice print technology led to arrests of alleged terrorists in Europe

October 8, 2010

Officials who apparently thwarted an alleged terror plot against Europe used voiceprinting technology to catch several suspects.

 

By the time you are 18 you have a unique voice print:derlinguist.com

 

The British Government Communications Headquarters used voice identification technology to help uncover the plot according to a report in the Canadian Press. Several of the voices were recorded along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Police in southern France on Tuesday arrested 12 suspects in sweeps against suspected Islamic militant networks, including three men linked to a network recruiting fighters for Afghanistan.

In one of the cases, nine suspected Islamic militants were detained in southeastern Marseille and its suburbs, and authorities turned up at least one automatic rifle and a pump gun, the officials said.

In Tuesday’s other roundup, two men were arrested in Marseille and another in southwestern Bordeaux on suspected ties to a Frenchman arrested in Naples, Italy, last month accused of links to an Afghan recruiting ring.

Officials in Germany were tightlipped Tuesday on details of a U.S. missile strike in Pakistan’s rugged mountain border area where Pakistani officials said eight German militants were killed.

U.S. officials believe a cell of Germans and Britons was at the heart of the Europe terror plot. Germany’s ARD public television cited unidentified sources Tuesday as saying four of the Germans killed in the missile attack were of Turkish descent.

Developers of voice biometric technology say it can be more useful than traditional fingerprint analysis in fighting terror. The private sector has already embraced the technology, with U.S. probation officers using it to monitor offenders, and Canadian call centres using it to identify customers. Israel’s largest bank, Bank Leumi, says it has been using voice biometrics for the past decade to deter fraud and boost customer safety.

U.S. and British intelligence run an international eavesdropping program that gathers huge amounts of information. So big is the overload that the National Security Agency is building a massive storage centre in Utah to handle the mountains of data.

Almog Aley-Raz, whose Israel-based company PerSay Ltd. supplies governments and businesses around the world, said that using voice biometrics could allow officials to scan a large number of phone conversations for a several suspects’ voices, greatly streamlining intelligence work.

“An entry-level server enables you to run 100 streams of audio against maybe 100 voiceprints,” he said, noting that in some cases dozens or even hundreds of servers could be run back-to-back to comb through intercepted calls. Aley-Raz accepted that the technology had its flaws — it is vulnerable to background noise and poor audio quality, for example, and can become confused when people start talking over one another.

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Why Forecasts need to be wrong

October 7, 2010

 

The Lorenz attractor is an example of a non-li...

Image via Wikipedia

 

This started yesterday as a short comment on the changing forecasts by Hathaway on solar activity in Solar Cycle 24 but has now become something else.

As clarification, I  distinguish here between prophecies and forecasts  where:

  • I take prophecies to be a promise about the future  based primarily on faith and made by prophets , witchdoctors, soothsayers and politicians such as “You will be doomed to eternal damnation if you don’t do as I say”,
  • I take “forecasts” to be an estimate of future conditions based on known data with the use of calculations, logic, judgement, some intuition and even some faith. They are extrapolations of historical conditions to anticipate – and thereby plan for -future conditions.

(more…)

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Sony disassociate themselves from 10:10

October 4, 2010

I just received the following email from Nick Sharples, Sony Europe’s Director of Communications:

Dear Mr. Pillai,

Thank you for your email concerning the video released by the 10:10 climate change campaign group. Sony has supported the 10:10 climate change campaign because we share its objective to reduce carbon emissions. However, we strongly condemn the “No Pressure” video which was conceived, produced and released by 10:10 entirely without the knowledge or involvement of Sony. The company considers the video to be ill-conceived and in extremely bad taste. We also believe the video risks undermining the work of the many thousands of members of the public, schools and universities, local authorities and many businesses, of which Sony is one, who support the long-term aims of the 10:10 movement and who are actively working towards the reduction of carbon emissions.

As a result we have taken the decision to disassociate ourselves from 10:10 at this time.

In our press statement we will be posting tomorrow morning we reaffirm our ongoing commitment to the reduction of global carbon emissions as part of our ‘Road to Zero’ environmental plan.

Yours sincerely,

Nick

Nick Sharples

Director of Corporate Communications

Sony Europe

The Heights, Weybridge

Surrey, KT13 0XW

nick.sharples@eu.sony.com

+44 (0)7786 114 870 (Mobile)

+44(0)1932 816 828 (Office)

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Posted in Behaviour, Environment, Ethics | 17 Comments »

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