In the Thrall of the Designer

It is an old rant really, Engineers hate Designers because we want to build every building an easily calculated square and they want to make the world beautiful, or to put it from the engineers point of view, we want to make a building that stands up on its own, that people can get in and out of, and the job of the designer is to then make it look pretty.

Designers are important, they work on aesthetics and often more importantly ergonomics. While I will bring up some of the most stunningly beautiful structures and machines in the world, Concorde, Any suspension bridge, and point out that these are purely form from function, in many occasions a designers input is important. However, more and more I see Function following form rather than the other way round. There are many examples, but the two I'll focus on are general car design and Glasgow's town centre.

Many cars these days suffer the same problem, particularly luxury and sports cars, and that is a big fat generic looking boot. I wonder why the Sportier Jag's all have the back of a Ford Mondeo. Designers and reviewers will bemoan Golf, a sport I have no love for, for this, as the design spec calls for a boot to hold tow sets of golf clubs. Now forgive my ignorance, but isn't the designer's job to make that look good, what next "Why must this car have doors, your artless insistence on getting people in and out of the car will ruin the lines." Inf act designers have had it too easy, in days gone by, engineers would design the general layout of all the mechanical bits and the designers had various boxes to play around with to fit a certain amount of space for people and luggage into the design, somehow no they have this idea that unless we remove functional car parts they can't design something pretty. I call tosh and reach, through my non-arts student chip, (They got the easy course and women, how many girls at uni want to talk to an Engineer?) that they are stroppy artists, that they would draw a car and tell an engineer to make it real, as if we were magicians who can cram any parts into any space. I'd love to see a car manufacturer tell their designer to try again next time a big square boot is left where something far more exciting should be. Come on designer, Design.

More worrying is Glasgow city centre. Now it looks good, re-paved, good lighting and some nice work done with glass. However, some simple engineering factors clearly weren't taken into account, principally traction. Glasgow is a damp city, it rains. It rains A lot. The designer who came up with the new city centre streets decided that some dynamic looking metal strips along some steps would look great, and it does, but first spot of rain and it becomes the perfect place to loose your grip and I'm amazed there haven't been more serious falls. The same guy decided that the tactile surface at the pedestrian lights near Central Station were dull, and that instead of a precast slab, metal studs would look better, and they do. Of course like the metal strip they make for treacherous underfoot conditions when wet. In fact, my main issue is that Glasgow's standard weather has not been considered. Walk down Buchanan street on a wet day, its slippy as hell, the combination of water and traffic film seems to make whatever they paved the street in like an Ice Rink. Now Engineers have chart upon chart about what materials are suitable for what in what part of the country. I can only assume this was ignored in favour of "But it looks so good"

So, if engineers are so great, why don't people listen to them. Well, its because we're technical. When talking to MPs, managers etc, we're talking to laymen, and we're talking technical, even if we try and dumb it down. Ask any technical person, be it scientist, software engineer or site foreman, and having a layperson in charge is a pain, they are either threatened that a lack of understanding of technical details belittles them or they see the world in "You fix problems, not me" way. They like designers, they tell them what they want to hear, like "The Scottish Parliament building will be a timeless design that will last through the ages" of course its already looking dated.

Designers have their place, but at the moment it feels like the tail is wagging the dog and we are in the Thrall to highly paid arts students who have little in common with the designers who made the term better by design.

Setting out to be Offended

Jonathan Ross returned to work this week, and to controversy once again. The controversy was, quite frankly, stupid.

The gist of the story is this. Ross was interviewing someone who made a comment about an old lady who kept trying to kiss him. Ross made some comments. At this point it may be considered poor taste but that's it. Its an anecdote about an old lady.

The News of the World, clearly trying to mine their own overblown Sachsgate decided that for once they were going to do research and the like and tracked down the old lady in question and her son, so he could be suitably offended and they could be suitably smug and condemning. This is really stupid in 2 ways.

1. The guy hadn't listened to the show, and was unaware of its existence until the News of the World found him and told him. That's a hell of a lot of effort to be offended. I'll say this to any papers now, if any radio DJ has insulted my gran, I really don't care.

2. Until the News of the World got its crusade on, no-one knew who this woman actually was. Of course now her name is in papers across the nation and she may as well now be known as that blokes senile granny.

In fact, more harm here has been done by the tabloids, who have turned this into a circus where now existed. Of course it has also raised the grim spectre of "Standards" at the BBC which will no doubt further hobble any decent comedy. We can look forward to more insipid comedy like My Family I guess.

My take on it, The BBC alone has 6 analogue radio stations (1-5 and a regional one) all of whom broadcast 24hrs a day (I think) now if you find Ross' banter offensive there are 5 other places from the BBC alone for you to tune into in the few hours he is on. Same with TV, so Channel 4 is showing horse Orgies (they're not, calm down) well watch BBC2, unless the programme is called Gentle Gardening for the Easily offended and in fact involves sex, swearing and bad language, watching Horse Orgies and claiming offence is really just going out of your way to be offended by something.

What bugs me is that there are a significant group of people who believe all broadcast media should be made so it caters to, well frankly them. Specifically nothing should offend them, which is a bit unreasonable since their threshold for offence seems so damned low. Now if I was to demand TV Catered to my every whim, well aside from a few Sci-fi and US shows it would probably look a lot like Channel Dave. So, I have a satellite channel that pretty much caters to me. And that's good, but the God Channel, Living and various other channels hold no interest, so I don't watch them. I don't get offended and write complaints, I just watch something else, which is surely the best advice to any serial complainers.

Pie Man's Guide to Science in the Press

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/01/for_gods_sake_have_bryan_apple.php

This site is a great deconstruction of a particularly woeful attempt as Science by a Journalist who clearly has no idea bout the subject. This is becoming an all to common issue.

Now, before I start, I should shoot myself in the foot. This subject is covered far better in the following blogs.
http://www.badscience.net/
http://www.quackometer.net/blog/
And many, many more (Take a peek at who I'm following if that's possible rather than putting together a page of links)

Anyway, following these sites for some time really gives you an impression of how poor science reporting in the media is. And in particular reporting on health related stories.

Previously health news didn't bother me. I was unfit, drank too much and ate the wrong foods, however now I have a child, and so while I still refuse to take too much responsibility in keeping myself running I am quite concerned about how to keep my daughter safe. And this is the problem. Ben Goldacre of bad science fame hits the nail on the head when he states that the press are only interested in 3 types of science news, The Miracle Cure, The Hidden Threat and "Crazy Boffins do something Mad". It also doesn't help that most Journalists see themselves as crusaders uncovering the Truth, when in fact, due to that requiring effort, they do little more than re-word press releases. This is why with all health stories. In fact, with all stories, you should check the facts yourself. However since people are concerned parents wondering if its safe to let your child near a wi-fi modem, I'll try as far a possible to stick to health.

SO, there is a story, reported in several papers and on TV that eating a bacon sandwich a day will make you really healthy. Now, we're all busy people (Well you are) so we don't have time to go on to pubmed and look for the peer reviewed paper published in a reputable journal. Its a shame that the online sources don't provide a link as it would at least show that the research has been looked at and had it methodology scrutinised as well as the interpretation of results. Regardless we can't check there, we need some easy information. Now, don't google, due to the way google presents results you could well be directed to a site that misleads, for example to the World Bacon Producer's website, which would mysteriously tell you that its true, fried bacon is good for you. Instead there are two websites that are your friend.

http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/ This lot really deserve more recognition. A simple goal to try and give out solid information about science. Check to see if they have anything on the subject.

Second should be a no-brainer http://www.nhs.uk/ yes, believe it or not, particularly in the case of health scares, they really try to get the real info out there. They even have a very interesting "Behind the Headlines" feature.

However, these two try their best, they can;t cover every idiot story. So first look is Dr*T's guide to consumer science as a starter
http://thinking-is-dangerous.blogspot.com/2008/03/bluffers-guide-to-consumer-related_25.html

But failing that, we finally get to my real guide, things that should raise warning signs.

1. Does this sound plausible. When you look at things like magnet therapy, does it really sound likely. This is open to your understanding of science but a good start

2. Is a study referred to? Again not often, for facts like that are not for the likes of us, but sometimes a university is quoted, look to see if the University is crowing about miracle breakthroughs.

3. Is there some claim of conspiracy. The Alternative health and the Anti-Vaccination crowds love to think that there is some big pharmaceutical conspiracy suppressing their efforts. However all conspiracies, in fact most things in general should be treated with skepticism. Journalists like conspiracies, because it looks like they're exposing the truth rather than re-hashing a press release. In reality, most people shout conspiracy when all evidence has proven their case false.

4. Does it claim to drastically change our understanding of science, because if it does it better have some really good evidence and if that's not even present then be sceptical.

5. Does it pander to your base desires. Beer is good for you, Fatty food makes us fitter, Burning fossil fuels actually makes trees grow, The Cake is not a lie. Its nice to think all these things are true, but in reality its usually the results of a poor to non-existent study by the marketing board of Carling/McDonalds/Shell/Aperture Science.

I hope this ramble will add my voice to trying to get people to understand a bit more about the absolute twaddle that regularly appears on our news reports about science, and perhaps shames a few journalists into doing some research (Any) before they report.

Again, just to re-iterate, if you've found this rant rambling or otherwise badly done, please look at the linked websites that do a far better job than I ever could.

The Edinburgh Tram Farce

Well, once again I, a resident of near Glasgow can have a mild chortle about the Edinburgh Tram project. Already suffering difficulties of public disinterest, anger from store owners and ignoring the fact that trams are really an obsolete technology, there have been several new events that will most likely mark this project as a gold standard to measure council waste and corruption.

Digging Up the Road

There were complaints from shop owners along the route that business was being lost due to tram works. Now any engineer will tell you one of the most important factors of working in a densely packed urban area is to minimise disruption. However the group of cowboys who paid the best kickbacks clearly haven't considered this. There are reports of holes being dug for the moving or underground services, tarmacked over then dug up again in order to lay track (Also a really funny story about a hole in the road getting its 1 year birthday party thrown which ended in a minor scuffle but I digress)

When planning work there are several useful exercises to go through, Charts such as bar charts, activity on the arrow and activity on the node diagrams allow you to make the best use of your time. They show areas where, for example you will have the hole dug anyway. The only way I can envisage this happening is if the guy doing the diagram was slightly worse at it than I am.

Attached to this is the digging up of Princes street, which will see arguably the busiest street in Edinburgh effectively closed for over 9 months, which will include the festival period. Somehow at the planning stage no-one saw this as a problem.

Memorial

One of the mind boggling elements that again brings into question the entire team behind the running of this project was the war memorial outside Haymarket station. People were understandably upset to discover that it was to be removed to run the tramlines through. Understandably because I would assume, quite foolishly in my naivety, that whoever surveyed the route would see a war memorial and work around it, rather than just decide to flatten it.


What I wonder about these things is why no-one brought this up in the planning stage. Why no-one looked at haymarket and said "Where's the war memorial?" or looked at the schedule and said "You're not blocking off princes street during the festival are you, oh for how long, nope, work a different way around it," or indeed "Project not Viable, seek alternatives" Of course, Edinburgh has been setting itself up as having some really stupid transport ideas. The guided bus routes still confuse me, exactly what are they for, as far as I see they provide all the disadvantages of bus travel with all the disadvantages of a railway. In fact my inner cynic makes me think that they were a stopgap for a tram system as a far more useful installation would have been a road with a "No entry except Buses" sign at either end. No special buses, no blocking the thing off if a bus breaks down.

On a positive note, even if the new trams do not cause the traffic chaos that similar systems in Melbourne cause, it may finally put to bed this insane love affair with the tram that runs through planning offices. Negatively, no alternatives, like the Trolley Bus mentioned in older posts, may be considered. I think this may be where my real anger at the project stems from. (My geographical location meaning that the building works and disruption don't affect me) In effect, I'm annoyed that the problems of installing an unnecessary tram system in Edinburgh, a sure case study of Bent councillors and mysteriously appearing "Save the Tram" campaigns, will mean that the "Not viable" option will be used by councils as an excuse to do nothing, rather than "Seek Alternatives"

Government 0 Internet 1

http://www.mysociety.org/2009/01/21/blimey-it-looks-like-the-internets-won/

mysociety are a great group of people, they're behind such websites as theyworkforyou, the site that from a simple postcode will tell you the names and official contact details and voting records of all your elected representatives. In fact I'd go further by saying they're the vanguard in an effort to stop the government taking advantage of the general apathy of the public to sneak through legislation.

Recently, Ministers were trying to put through an amendment to the Freedom of Information Act which would take ministers expenses out of the FoI remit. In short, they were going to put through a paper that would mean we, the elected public couldn't request to see exactly what they're doing with out money.

This isn't petty snooping, the ministers have to reveal exactly the same expenses as any self employed person has to in order to avoid being over taxed, so if its a standard they're holding others to it is not unfair that they be held publicly accountable by the same standard. It also prevents abuses of ministerial expenses.

The announcement of this bill was released at the same time as the controversial decision to go ahead with the 3rd runway at Heathrow, in short a blatant attempt to bury the bill and hopefully sneak it through without the public noticing. In fact what is worse is that, not only did Labour try to sneak it through, but none of the opposition made any move to inform the press or public about this. Basically all the ministers were keeping quiet in the hope of being able to keep their expenses out of the public eye.

Fortunately Mysociety organised a major Internet campaign, with a facebook group and everything, to get people to write to their MPs and ask them to vote against the bill. There was a small amount of media coverage and the majority of MPs said "Caught" (OK, they didn't say "Yes you got us, we were trying to hide this from you but you got us good you rascals") and voted against it. Now its very hard to see any sitting MP in a good light, they all let this through, kept it quiet and hoped it would stay buried. Its very hard to see them as greedy self interested spongers who don't want us to know exactly how their abusing our tax pounds.

Thankfully MySociety are doing good work in keeping all workings of parliament public, and in a more easily digestible way than the online Hansard. Its sad that we need a group like them, but with the current Governments habit of trying to hide controversial legislation and the press' seeming inability to catch them at it (I could go on about journalists being lazy and only re-hashing press releases as opposed to doing all that difficult research but that's for another post) it is important that a group like this keeps them on their toes.

War of Kings

The Marvel Cosmic event has started, and I'm dubious. See, back in the 90's I used to joke that if anything Marvel was making was doing well they'd try to sellotape an X-Men book on to it and inevitably it would all go to hell. Its based on flimsy evidence, and mainly about how bad the old 2099 universe went when they decided an X-Title would be just the thing to bring more readers into the fray. Saying that the Marvel Knights line has never really recovered from the time they added a whole morass of titles, including Wolverine and another X-Book, but saying that the problem was more that they just bunged a Marvel Knights banner on to several titles at that time. Still, in general I have a problem when events or other things try to force me to buy an X-Men book, and its not that I don't like the X-Men, but I'm just not interested enough to collect the comics. Anyway I digress.

War of Kings is running a little different form the Annihilation titles, presumably because with Guardians of the Galaxy and Nova already running it may be a bit much to get people to pick up 4 tie ins. In fact this could be a good diet event with a few one shots, Tie ins with Nova and Guardians which I already read, A Darkhawk 2 part mini and the problem child, X-Men Kingbreaker.

Yes, an X-Book.
I Missed Issue #1 but 'm tempted to see if I can track it down. Why, well partly completism but mainly because an X-Men spinnoff is one of the main characters and it may be a better jumping on point.

The plot of War of Kings looks like it will focus on a battle between the Kree and the Shi-Ar. Hang on, you say, this sounds like Operation: Galactic Storm. Well its not inconceivable that the Kree and Shi-Ar would fight again, and the difference here is that the Shi-Ar are lead by Vulcan, who is some relative of Cyclops from another X-book series who ended up running the Shi-Ar. and the Kree, who we see in the Secret Invasion tie in this week,a re now lead by Black Bolt and the inhumans, and using sonic tech based around his planet busting voice. SO the X-Book tie in isn't entirely untoward. The Shi-Ar are mainly the X-Men's aliens, and I was wondering where they had been through the Annihilation events. Looks like they're using the state of disarray to expand.

So, it looks like I'm going to cave and buy an X-Book.

I have reservations. I worry that War of Kings is going to shake up the cosmic status quo again which could be a pain, Guardians is just getting its stride and Nova is doing well, I don't think the cosmic branch of Marvel needs another event. I worry that this could do bad things to Guardians and Nova. On the other hand, it is still being helmed by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, and they've yet to see me wrong in the cosmic side of things, and 2099 only really went wrong when Peter David left, so perhaps provided D&A can keep things together it should be fine.

Tax and Benifits, a Joined up Idea

I've recently had the misfortune of trying to apply for working tax credits, and responding to a letter from the HMRC about possible overpaid NI contributions, giving me a fascinating and terrifying view of the tax/benefit system. To be honest, it seems to be engineered to try and put you off claiming, and I do wonder if this is the idea.

I received a letter from HMRC asking about how much of various types of tax I have paid, which involved trawling through files for P60 forms and the like. My thought while doing this was "Hang on, I Pay tax to you, and you don't know how much I'm paying, that can't be right?" Similarly, when my wife applied for Maternity allowance and applying for working tax credits, we're using our best judgement to tell one government department what another could tell them definitively.

I'm not asking for a huge database, while a good idea in principle we know how good the Govt are at IT projects. No, what I'd like is a little communication between departments. Think of how this could work. I start off single and living with a parent earning money. The Government knows my address and knows the other person there is someone with the same last name. I'm doing not badly at work and buy a small flat. My name is updated to the flats address on the electoral roll, and as I'm the only name associated at that address so I qualify for single persons allowance on my council tax. The electoral register will in fact track anyone of voting age who lives with me. I get married, there's a record, I loose my job, the tax office know and should really start unemployment processes. I get another job, similarly they should now know. I have a child, the Benefits agency should know from the register of births, and be able to ask the Tax office about my household income and be able to work out what benefits I am due. All it takes is for government departments to actually work together.

Now naturally this does somewhat fall apart if my work is cash in hand, but if I work for a company properly, on the books My tax is taken from me before I see a penny of my wage. This could reduce fraud and errors by automating much of the system and removing the human element.

As an extra boon I would also have the rule that if the benefits office overpay you, unless it can be proved that you willfully submitted incorrect information, you keep the money, however if you are underpaid they have to make up the difference. I think we would see fewer errors if the office was given some sort of incentive to get things right first time. Currently its the end user who suffers from any and all of their mistakes and incompetence.

War Machine #1

Well, I've been waiting since the 90s, and now its finally happened, following the conclusion of the War Machine: Weapon of SHIELD arc in Iron man, we now have War Machine's ongoing.

Its good, this issue is mainly setting up the status quo and plot lines for the near future. We know Suzi endo left seeing Jim using lethal force to stop atrocities and he's definitely not changed his tune since. It is a far cry from the Jim Rhodes of the first War Machine ongoing, who agonised and beat himself up over killing anyone, from Psychotic dictators to super-villains. This issue really shows exactly how dangerous War Machine unchecked is. It sets up a supporting cast with Parnell and Bethany cabe, and a possible ongoing arc with the cybernetics slowly killing him or at least affecting his mind and what looks like a cloned replacement body. Of course its now in the hands of old normie Osbourne.

The art was good, not excellent but able to the task, the shots of the world through Jim's eyes are very crowded and a little confusing, but it fits the idea that he's downloaded tons of information on war criminals etc from the worlds computers and it comes up as a barrage of information. My main criticism is a small one. The artist has based the look of the armour on the "Stealth Operations" variant of the movie Iron man suit seen as a toy from same movie. Its not a big thing but I would have insisted the artist draw a suit that has as few cosmetic differences to the suit we've seen in The Initiative and Weapon of SHIELD as possible, but that's just me.

Still, at the moment, this is a keeper.