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Ikarus

Listed below are comments made by Ikarus between Wednesday, 9th July 2008 and Sunday, 6th December 2009.

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A flight that almost cost me my marriage 5:20pm on 06 Dec 2009 Dare I mention biofuels? Some experiments with biofuel powered engines have been carried out, and with promising results. Sure, producing the biofuels is not carbon free, and the net effect would not be zero, but it'd be an improvement on the status quo. At least, in the short term, there is a lot of promise in biofuels reducing the impact of aviation: the modifications to jet engines would be comparably small.

In the long term, the answer may well have to be hydrogen powered aircraft engines. Hydrogen which, in turn, would have to be produced on the ground, probably through nuclear energy.

There are a number of ways in which governments could accelerate the development of such propulsion systems. There could be competitions with financial prizes for engine manufacturers (the Ansari X-Prize did, after all, lead to privately funded rocket vehicles capable of reaching the border of space / leave the atmosphere), or there could be a heavily subsidised promise of free hydrogen fuel for 10 years (say, 2018 to 2028) for any passenger aircraft fueled purely with hydrogen. Believe me, if airlines could rely on ten years of free fuel, there'd be a noticeable demand for aircraft manufacturers to give them planes that could capitalise on that offer - and they'd be willing to pay a hefty price tag on those planes. One single, medium sized government (eg the UK) could probably have a massive influence with such a promise: It would be worthwhile for an airline to replace all its planes based in that country with hydrogen ones, and the replaced ones could be used for growth and expansion elsewhere, or sold.
Why cars are greener than buses (maybe) 2:18pm on 20 Nov 2009 Apologies if all of this has been covered in one of the 80000 previous comments, but...

Conspiracy theorist climate change deniers aside, there are few people who can sensibly welcome this article. There are some serious flaws in it:

1) People who own cars make more unnecessary / luxury journeys than people without cars. Sure, a hybrid car full of children driving along an empty road may beat a half-empty bus along the same route. But will the car owners always use it that way, or will they do more trips to shops that are further afield, occasionally do the odd lazy trip around the corner, and maybe even just go for a drive for no other reason than that they can? Reliance on public transport is not always the most convenient / lazy option, but it does mean people ration their journeys more sensibly.

2) Public transport is more easily able to introduce green technologies than individuals. Hydrogen powered or electric buses will happen a lot sooner than personal vehicles - at many airports in Europe, they are already operational. The infrastructure for public transport, because centralised, can be truely green (if there is the political will to invest the initial expenditure) a decade before the same could be widely available to members of the public.

3) Not all cars are environmentally friendly. Replacing fuel guzzlers with hybrids brings with it a lot of manufacturing / material cost. The most environmentally friendly solution is not to replace them, but to retire them, and with them, the right to personal transport ownership.

4) Not environmental, but consider safety. Public transport is far safer than the car. That hybrid full of children is many times more likely to end up killing its passengers and/or others than the train, bus or plane that could have been taken instead.

So, on the whole, I'm not exactly sure what the benefit of this blog post is. For car-loving petrol-junkies and the (environ)mentally challenged, it simply produces one tidbit they will remember: "BBC's ethical man / green guy says cars are more environmentally friendly than public transport" - they'll read straight past any of the reservations, conditionals, etc and use this as some kind of justification for being irresponsible. Hardly a desirable outcome.
Pandemic predicted in autumn 7:45pm on 01 Jun 2009 I'm trying to remember the government predictions recently circulated. I believe they predicted that 25%-50% of the population would catch swine flu at some stage - probably next winter. Of these, 0.25-1% would die. So the scenario for swine flu related deaths in the UK is: Anywwhere between 37,500 and 300,000 deaths. I presume these numbers were a prediction for the next 12 months.

I don't believe this is reason to panic. It is, however, reason to have some concern. One would expect hospitals and health care to get very stretched, probably overstretched, in six month's time. One would expect some level of disruption. The scariest thing: One would expect to experience a bereavement in the next year. This flu is not the equivalent of the Great War - but neither is it just the equivalent of a Heat Wave, in terms of its likely impact.

I find advice telling people to sneeze hygienically stupid: It does not benefit the sneezer, and it only might benefit the sneezed at people. I don't want advice on "how to keep your illness to yourself" - I want advice on "how to not get ill, or minimise the impact if you do".

If I were the government, I would advise people to try and keep their immune system strong this year, at least until the flu season has passed. If that means healthier living and less excess for a year, then so be it. I'd rather catch the flu after spending six months eating and drinking sensibly, than after weeks of poor nutrition and binge drinking.

As for Tamilflu - I would like to know how bad the side effects are (and the likely mortality from those) before I'd consider taking it.
Now wash your hands 6:20pm on 05 May 2009 It's a depressing thing, really. Working in a communication role within a large organisation, I have found myself having to alert people to please not leave their laptops unattended, as they might get nicked. I have been told to warn people of the dangers of tobogganing in the snow. And I have received numerous requests to put out notices that people should please drive carefully / cross the roads only at designated crossings etc.

I tried to say no to all of them. I was overruled in each instance. Why? Because there is no visible cost to being too patronising. But there is a small risk of a large cost if the organisation does not show evidence of being proactively caring. Small risk times large cost equals small cost. No cost vs small cost... the battle is lost before I open my mouth to object.

(I try and tell people that being patronising disengages the audience, and that audience disengagement is a significant cost, but, alas, the spinelessness of modern management in large organisations would rather incur a large unseen / unmeasured cost, than a small known cost.)
What caused the Amazon firestorm? 09:40am on 14 Apr 2009 Blue_Blood1 is dead wrong.

Amazon is the closest thing there is to a monopoly in book sales. As such, it becomes more than a private company, and gains a responsibility to respect freedom of speech. A bookseller (or library) who is willing to censor its stock in any way is committing a fundamental betrayal of their purpose. One would expect that from a "Christian Bookshop" next to a church (one reason why I would never willingly enter such an establishment), but not from a global online retailer. I could have sworn Amazon used "banned books week" as promotional tool for some books, rendering the current scandal all the more hypocritical.

Amazon taking steps to censor books in the US is similarly abhorrent to Google censoring searches in China. Google, at least, has the excuse of adhering to local laws. What excuse does Amazon have? "It was just an 'error' that we would never have corrected if people hadn't kicked up a fuss"?
Cool garbage 11:46am on 23 Aug 2008 I think the previous comment neatly ignores the bit where the article mentions that the "artist" has, aside from creating a big head of IT stuff, also founded a centre which genuinely recycles four million pounds of computing hardware. Among those four million pounds, I don't begrudge them the 500 pounds of hardware used for a piece of art that raises awareness / publicity for their work...
Magazine on Twitter 9:30pm on 21 Aug 2008 As an avid and regular BBC reader, I find the comments and whinges about mistakes a little baffling.

Yes, typos creep in. Sometimes even bad sentences and dodgy paragraphs and even - shock, horror - unintended double meanings.

But they're still a minority feature. I don't notice them on a daily basis - I tend to come across them maybe once a week or so.

Websites tend not to have nearly as much proofreading going on as printed publications - after all, they can be changed in a second. I'm quite willing to forgive the odd mistake or two. Besides, there is always the old Newswatch site, where I can point out typos that I spot on the website to my heart's content.

All that said, what is this silly obsession with Twitter? I know, technophiles all around the world are in love with it, but it's just not going to ever catch on and become mainstream. It might have some appeal for the zero-attention-span crowd, and among adults trying to be trendy and down there with the youth of today, but I have not yet encountered anyone below the age of thirty who has any interest in Twitter. It's a monumental case of creepy tree house - and shunned by every single young person or student I've met. (The irony being that all the middle aged Twitter users are convinced that Twitter is the perfect medium to engage with the youngsters of today, which is why they dabble with it in the first place.)
Rape: A complex crime 1:27pm on 09 Jul 2008 Actually, you may be understating the scale of the problem in this, which is even more scary.

In similar surveys in America, another category was included in the list: Attempted rape. Numbers for that category were many times the number of actual rapes. If I remember correctly, one study found that up to 40% of women in the US were the victims of either rape or attempted rape during their lifetime. (That particular study was not just about adult life though).

I have tried to find comparable data in the UK, and failed...

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