The Furrowed Brow
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Furrowed brow today because:
1) I've lost access to the Series O' Tubes at home due to a faulty telephone line splitter.
2) Also worried that we won't get to 5x10^4 posts by Friday.
3) Very worried about the Shuttle astronauts as the damage to the ship's heat shields seems quite bad.
SScat - just had a look at the images of the shuttle damage, doesn't look good. But I guess after previous disasters they have planned for repairs.
SSC,
That could have been three separate posts. Shame upon thee!
But this is the serious thread.
My first post from dual boot linux. I now have a schizoid 'puter - one side free of proprietary, the other totally sold out (bar firefox and thunderbird. The next from the windoze side. Is there a potentially serious enough yopic in there somewhere?
I dunnit.
xx
ed
My brow's furrowed for a number of reasons. But I think the shuttle issue outweighs them all.
Also, dare I say it, I continue to furrow my brow over Afghanistan and Iraq. Not to mention the many other areas of unrest and danger in the world.
Oh, and I've just been listening to Jacqueline Gold (think I've got the name right!), the doyenne of the Anne Summers empire, talking about her abusive childhood. Made my flesh creep and my brow furrow.
Anne P (2):
Yes, they've planned for repairs, but this will be the first time they've had to actually carry them out in space. It might have been an idea to fit up Enterprise (the original test-bed shuttle) just enough to get it up to the space station (a lot cheaper than "man-rating" it), trying out the repair techniques on that and then remote-control landing it, rather than waiting until astronauts were in real danger.
If NASA is constrained to have a ridiculously low accident rate (the Shuttle's fatality level is far lower than any car model you care to name) then the moneymen in the US administration should be prepared to pay for it.
(There will now follow loads of posts naming cars with perfect safety records...)
Alternatively, they could have halted all flights of the shuttle and concentrated resources on an Apollo-type crash (ahem) programme to speed up the introduction of the replacement CEV ship (Orion).
EdI: That's a bit rich! Your rate of posting has gone significantly down instead of up, just like the global markets, over the past few days.
C'mon, EdI, shoulder to the wheel! We need to get there by Friday ..... ;o)
SSC, your point three does give a topic to discuss here in the brow. Should the world be spending as much as it is on space exploration? Should it be more? Should we be looking at unmanned exploration? Obviously it affect us less in the UK than in the US, as our space budget is less, but I'd be interested to here peoples points of view...
FFred
My brow is furrowed again by a subject I've raised before - how we treat out prisoners. The Independent on Sunday reported yesterday that every year 200 mentally ill people who have been detained in police cells kill themselves. They need hospital places, but none are available. As I've said before, there are no votes in looking after prisoners properly. We should be ashamed of ourselves.
Sid
Big Sister-
Just read your posting- not sure whether my brow is furrowed for the same reason bu I really can't understand how she could justify the AS market, given her ghastly experiences as a child.
I feel quite angry towards her in a way. But I do admire her resllience.
Mollyxx
FFred (7):
I firmly believe that we should be spending a lot more on space exploration, both robotic and manned. Unless we're going to voluntarily regress to more-or-less agrarian society with a fraction of the world population we have just now, we *have* to move outwards.
In an eyeblink of time, we'll have exhausted fossil fuels, we'll have drained water tables, we'll have used up all the uranium and probably still won't have cracked nuclear fusion. If we don't find those resources elsewhere it's going to be pretty nasty down at the bottom of this gravity well and it'll be too late to *start* looking elsewhere then.
Molly: Yes, it was intriguing, wasn't it? The same thought did cross my mind.
Like you, though, I did admire her resilience. She clearly is still pretty traumatised by her youthful experiences.
Sis (6),
I know you never expect irony from us mericans, but there it is, clumsy as usual. Maybe I got a life in the last week or so, or maybe I got compulsive in arranging this schizoid serius cybernetics syndrome and went the root route.
Never mind, this one comes courtesy of windoze.
And, for the , another in our continuing series.
xx
ed
P.S. Linus seems a bit quicker and much cleaner than Gates.
Cat (&all),
just by the way, I've been an avid science fiction reader for six decades, but I still believe in the .
xx
ed
Cat,
"Unless we're going to voluntarily regress to more-or-less agrarian society with a fraction of the world population we have just now, we *have* to move outwards.
In an eyeblink of time, we'll have exhausted fossil fuels,"
So do you reckon it's realistic to accellerate our surplus billions (and all they need to live) to seven miles per second with some as-yet-undiscovered energy source?
I'll take the regressive route, thanks very much, and use what energy Sol gives.
We must learn to live within our means.
xx
ed
"Never borrow for what you don't need.
Never think you need what you have to borrow for."
-Irish Proverb
Who says they're surplus?
My brow is furrowed because I'm struggling to find any reference to foot & mouth disease.
Is it because there are no dramatic images of animal carcases to show and therefore no longer considered interesting?
I n the meantime, anyone involved in food manufacturing has to jump through bureaucratic hoops to move product across the Irish sea or further afield. I'm not talking about just meat - anything ( I mean ANYTHING) that contains dairy or meat products is likely to be stopped and turned back - pizzas for example!
And where are they likely to be stopped? Speaking from personal experience, the most difficult place to get product into so far is....... Belfast! Yes, Belfast, Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom.
Anyone got a clue as to how likely it is that a cheese & tomato pizza is going to spread foot & mouth disease from Glasgow to Belfast??
Feeling very old and grumpy - but at least there is sunshine between the showers
Ed (14):
Short term I hope for hardly anyone (1,000's maybe) to be accelerated to 7mps. First, we need to use the resources the rest of the solar system offers us.
Yes, we need to curb our spending of Earth-bound resources, but the flip-side of that is not just reduced population growth, but population reduction.
What do you think is easier for politicians and scientists to sell to the people of the world? Expand outwards or one child per couple for the next few generations?
Long term, if manking is to survive - and if we have any purpose at all, that must be it - we have to colonize anywhere in the solar system we can cling on to life. At the moment, one biggish asteroid on the wrong path and the cockroaches inherit the Earth. I just hope they have longer vision than we seem to.
SSC, it would help if Shuttle had *ever* been properly fit-for-purpose, and were not now well past its use-by date. It was always a case of "you've cut the money back so much that this is all we can build" and not really intended to fly at all. Ten year life, or 100 flights tops; ok, none has done 100 flights (that would be too expensive) but when was the one in trouble most recently built? Anyone?
Anne Widdicombe unFair is doing a TV prog. on prostitution this week.
No doubt she will tell the prossies they shuold get proper jobs.
For me it should be the other way round with each prossy rounding up their own gang of intergenerationally idle white middle class women and acting as gang master getting them to do real work (it involves labour y'know Anne) , thinking of England in Africa and India and with women in munitions in WW1 and in the land army in WW2 as their patron saints.
(6) and Ed.Thank you Ed for your link to how 'merica does social housing.
The banks world wide are still refusing to say how exposed they are to sub prime default - the usual Enron level of honesty.
Plus they still saying they're more risk averse now so the flag ship private equity companies are still caught significantly short on their future plans.
Meanwhile the Banks flood the world with money, something they're not allowed to do to feed the hungry or even help those sub prime mortgagees hold on to their homes.
Big Sis (reprise) Iraq and Afghanistan continue for as long as the West frustrates majorities in the name of democracy.
And various: Not surprised J. Gold is involved in AS. Confusion about what is sex and what not is at the heart of the appalling syndrome she is a tragic victim of.
The Shuttle and the ISS are presently docked, therefore make an impressive shine when they pass over head in the night sky.
Check this resource for times and trajectories:
You will have to change the page by selecting your observation site from the data base in the "Configuration" section.
Ed I and the SSC, The question of whether mankind, having made such a mess of inheriting the earth, is fit to inherit the universe is one of those abstract discussions we are never likely to get any answer to, simply because if we can't get our act together as a species we won't ever get out there to find out.
It is clear that at this time we cannot, as a species, get our act togther.
I find this sad, but I can't say that I'm entirely heartbroken that the ten-foot-tall faster-than-light-travelling spiders of Alpha Centauri may not be called upon to stop a bunch of Hom. Sap. 'leaders' from starting to bomb other planets for the crime of not being Just Like Us whilst happening to own something We Want. At the moment we really aren't fit for civilised galactic society.
Chris Ghoti (18):
The orbiter Endeavour is the new one, built after the loss of Challenger; she was delivered in 1992 and has only made 19 previous flights. This is her first mission since the loss of Columbia (and consequent modifications to all STS orbiters).
The replacement vehicles now being "designed", for deployment not before 2014, are clearly a rejection of the entire Shuttle and reusable-spacecraft concept: they're basically Saturns I and V, with newer computers and the serial numbers files off. This will achieve the desired goal of keeping development costs low (because those don't produce immediate big shiny things to justify one's existence); per-flight costs will probably be substantially higher than with the current system.
Chris (18):
SSC, it would help if Shuttle had *ever* been properly fit-for-purpose,
Yes, apparently the plan was for a much smaller, less complex vehicle, but the USAF required that it be capable of launching military equipment and supporting long duration repair missions. Then there's the government contract situation; lowest bidder, and contracts that have to go to certain constituencies or the local representatives/senators don't vote for funding.
Then there's the fact that the International Space Station design and positioning was compromised by the fact that it had to be supported by the shuttle, which can only just about reach low earth orbit (LEO).
Funny how some people view vital, inspiring stuff like this as Science Fiction, and prefer "real life" as embodied by "Big Brother" and "Wife Swap". Urgh.
Appeal for your help, froggers!
I am working on an anniversary project (among other things I'm a publisher) for the PM Blog.
Please, those of you who love the Frog, and who know Fifi enough to trust me, can you please send an email via the weblink attached to my name above, and I'll tell you more!
No obligation, and your privacy (as always) is guaranteed.
Look forward to hearing from you ... including lots who have dropped off the radar.
;o) Fifi
SSC (23):
The original plan... well, that's a tricky concept. There were quite a lot of "original plans" before they came up with something cheap enough for Congress.
The one I'm most familiar with was a pure lifting-body vehicle, with no wings - much simpler aerodynamically, and much lighter and stronger too. What the Air Force demanded was a big cross-range capability - i.e. they wanted to launch from Vandenburg, pop a satellite into a polar orbit, and land back at Vandenburg all in one trip round the planet, during which Vandenburg would have moved (checks Massive Electronick Brane) about 1,300 miles sideways. A pure lifting-body isn't enough of an aeroplane to achieve that; so they added wings, and that meant many of the compromises that led to problems both in the design stage and in later flight.
The repair missions are another matter - nobody wanted to repair satellites, but the CIA was persuaded to say "we want satellite repair capability" in order to justify the Shuttle. It can't (and was never going to be able to) reach the useful satellite orbits anyway...
SSC @23, yeah, well, these are also the people who use 'it's not exactly rocket science' to mean 'it's comparatively simple', and don't have the faintest notion that rocket science is the comparatively simple thing to start with.
Random Firedrake @ 22: ah, your post did get through in the end then, congratulations and welcome to the frog! I tend to give the huge generalisation and hope that either someone else will fill in the gaps or else if someone disputes the generalisation I can locate the place I got the information from in the first place and give a bit more detail from source. Thanks for giving the proper gen for which I gave the sketch... :-) I'm essentially an indolent fish.
Big Sis and Molly - my thoughts echoed. Second thoughts I'd rather talk later on the beach.
An Aerospatial Firedrake (25):
(Any relation to Idris from Ivor the Engine? ;o)
Thanks for that info. I remember the lifting body proposal (cue flashbacks to 6-Million Dollar Man titles) but I didn't realise it was the CIA who said they wanted to repair things (even if they didn't really).
So who threw in the requirement to be able to bring things back to the ground, and why didn't they bring Hubble back to replace it's wonky mirror?
(Worries: can't remember if Hubble was launched by Shuttle.)
I think I know the answer to the last bit though: the Shuttle's a big brick with wheels when it touches the ground, it's probably not a great idea to load it up with a really heavy, expensive and delicate piece of astrophysical equipment...)
My preference anyway is to resurrect Saturn V for heavy lift, use Titan and Ariane for lobbing people up in either Soyuz, CEVs or nose-mounted lifting bodies, and if the military/intelligence services want their people in space, they can build their own stuff. (And paint it black to make it look cool no doubt.)
Who is Anne Summers? (I've led a very sheltered life)
Cat,
It ain't science fiction, but neither are the limits. They're fundamental. If we're to 'seed' the universe we need rather more than seven miles per second, and I hae me doots whether we can bring any useful solar system 'resources' back here (beyond electronic communication) back to Earth at any realistic 'economic/ecologic' cost.
As to the 'surplus', we are all part of it. Anyone eighty years old has witnessed a tripling of population. The rest of us are part of the extra two/thirds.
xx
ed
SSC (28): As far as I know I have no Welsh relatives...
Satellite return got quietly dropped at some time in the design stages, though I don't know just when - and yes, I believe landing shock was the major concern. The descent speed of the Shuttle is so high that if you fell out on the way down it would hit the ground before you did.
One idea had certainly been to do things like retrieving film from reconnaissance satellites, rather than requiring it to be deorbited and parachuted to Earth. (Digital cameras have made that mission fairly obsolete now.) Yes, the Hubble was deployed by Shuttle.
For man-rated launchers I like a spaceplane first stage on aesthetic grounds, and because air-breathing engines are so much more efficient than ones that have to carry their own oxygen supply. Even something like an SR-71 could provide a useful chunk of velocity to a small payload, never mind what could be built with materials technology more recent than that of the 1960s. This is why I tend to regard White Knight / SpaceShipOne as a bit of a blind alley: altitude is useful, but speed is much more important. I certainly agree with you that some sort of heavy-lift booster is the best approach to large cargo launch, at least until we can build some Really Big Lasers and leave the engine on the ground where it can be worked on.
ValP (7), Molly and Big Sister : Speaking as the veteran of a fair-few Ann Summers parties, and as one who nearly became an Ann Summers lady and was looking forward to it...
I wholeheartedly applaud Jacqueline Gold for converting her appalling childhood experiences into an appreciation that sex should basically be A Good Laugh.
There's no filth in the Ann Summers catalogue, nor (last time I went in looking for a birthday present) in the AS shops.
My all-time favourite purchase was the wrapping paper: tiny repeating patterns that you had to look very closely to appreciate were well-endowed snowmen or humping spotty-dogs!
Fifi
IT is not the easiest thing in the world, getting older. It is uncomfortable to feel your body complaining when it is asked to do something that a decade or two ago would have been easy.
It is upsetting when you watch the ranks of friends and colleagues thinning as you advance through the years and the death of a partner or other loved one can come as a hammer-blow in those circumstances.
But such things are natural and, to some extent at least, unavoidable consequences of entering your latter years.
And they will not be a dominant factor for some people, growing older amid a loving family with generations being born and growing up around them.
But what is not natural and certainly not unavoidable is the disrespectful and neglectful treatment that this advanced and wealthy society metes out to its elder citizens who are not so fortunate and for whom growing older means increases in loneliness and hardship.
There should be, in this society, a safety-net that encompasses the needs of those people who find themselves in such a position.
But what in fact exists is not so much a safety-net as a trap into which they have fallen and cannot extricate themselves.
More than 3.5 million older people in Britain who experience mental health problems do not have enough support or adequate services, according to Inquiry into Mental Health and Well-Being in Later Life by Age Concern and others.
It predicts that 3.5 million older people will have symptoms of depression by 2021, unless there are effective interventions. And around five million will suffer depression by 2051.
The chilling figure that only 15 per cent of older people suffering from depression are diagnosed and receiving any kind of treatment should give us all pause for thought.
That depression, unfortunately, is not merely a mental illness founded on illusion and delusion. It can have its basis in cold, hard fact.
For another set of worrying figures confirms that Britain's pensioners collectively owe £57 billion on mortgages, credit cards and loans and that one in five retired homeowners still have an outstanding mortgage on their property, owing an average of £38,000 each, while one in eight owes more than £50,000.
Couple that with the lamentable pensions policies so far adopted by this government and you have large parts of a generation isolated by health or financial considerations, unable to live decently inside this affluent society that they have been part of building and driven into depression by money worries.
This government appears impervious to the reality faced by millions who do not fit into their cosy "couple together for 50 years growing old gracefully in their own, fully paid for home" preconceptions.
If the government is serious about respect for older people, it is going to have to do some serious rethinking of its policy priorities as regards the state pension and when it is going to do something about the ridiculously low level that it is fixed at in relation to wages and the cost of living in 21st-century Britain.
It is also going to have to review its medical expenditure priorities rather thoroughly.
And the lack of thought on the issues raised by its fixation on home ownership, on mortages possibly dragging on years into retirement, as the principal means of housing supply, is so overdue as to be a scandal in its own right.
Finally some good news...
Do we think Karl Rove has jumped before he was pushed or is he going to run with the next GOP hopeful or is there some nasty truth about to appear.
Keith (33)
Thankyou for your nicely put posting. I think you have outlined a number of issues which I agree with.
I have no solution.
When you look at the projected figures for the number of people retiring over the next 30 or 40 years, I think that there is a real issue over cost. Bluntly, those who can afford it, will get help, and those that cannot will not. This is the direction in which we have just started, and which you have outlined.
Where they can, people need to fund their own homes, their healthcare, their pensions, and their children's education.
where they can not, as you describe, it will not happen - unless they are fortuneate to have a loving and caring family.
best wishes
nik
one thing. in the old days when there were lasting relationships:
by the time we're all 85 its two girls for every boy.
but those still together (both partners alive) are far less likely to be in care homes than singles.
They prop each other up like two playing cards in a card house
but single women live longer than those married women 'cos its the man needs more propping.
the men curiously about the same. (celebrity status of living single male versus wifely care)
true? you professionals?
thank you fifi for your very kind words on the previous Brow
Today's FUD: (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt)
BAA express worry about reports that airport protesters are going to commit bomb hoaxes and "disguise themselves as passengers" to get into the airport and cause disruption.
Funny how BAA's worries about these reports have surfaced before the alleged reports. In fact, apart from BAA's statement, I haven't heard anything about these reports at all.
Suspicious, me?
Ah, The Furrowed Brow. To me there's nothing like a traditional British pub, and proper British beer is the finest in the world.
The real stuff I mean. Still fermenting as it's piped into the barrel, still a living thing as it's lovingly drawn by the mechanical pressure of a wood and brass wicket.
None of your, fizzy, gassed-up, pasteurised rubbish here, but the pale gold bitters, or deep brown milds turned out by real brewers. Cheers.
I learn that DefectiveByDesign are holding a protest outside the ´óÏó´«Ã½ in Manchester today (1pm to 3pm) against the ´óÏó´«Ã½ iPlayer's use of proprietary formats and Windows only software. Laudable though their aim is, given the weather up here, I reckon they'll be lucky to get a decent turn-out.
tut, tut, SSC @ 38, how can you be so untrusting? They speak, naturally, of the reports made to them in person by the cleaning-lady who heard it from her friend Reen who works in the pub in Hounslow where someone was saying only yesterday lunchtime that he wouldn't be surprised if those there protesters didn't all have plans to pretend to bomb Terminal One with litre bottles of tap-water, using comb-and-tissue musical instruments to spread panic and threatening to hijack the drinks-trolleys using crochet-hooks as weapons of mass destruction.
Just remember, You read it here first.
(Honestly, is anyone even going to *notice* if someone apart from BAA disrupts that place? They're doing such a good job without any help at all.)
Electric Dragon (40):
I'm really being cynical today, but I can't help noticing that the "Listen Again" system has been off-line or at least severely curtailed since the iPlayer was introduced.
I'm here at my desk, about to embark on another session of manual data entry, and really looking forward to listening to a bit of Hancock's Half Hour, or the bits of ISIHAC which I missed on ´óÏó´«Ã½7 last night, all to while away the boring work, and what do I find? A massive *four* ´óÏó´«Ã½7 programmes available to listen to: Big Toe and CBeebies and two sets of soap.
Bah. Maybe the ´óÏó´«Ã½ don't care about Mac users listening to vintage comedy now they have their flashy iPlayer for the PC-weenies.
PARLIAMENT'S joint committee on human rights gave an extremely sharp response to the situation of elderly people in care homes on Tuesday and it was quite right to do so.
It is a shameful position that care home residents are excluded from protection under the Human Rights Act and one that is crying out for immediate redress.
The committee quite rightly criticised ministers for failing to provide "proper leadership" and guidance about the Human Rights Act to care providers.
But it is hardly for the great and the good in Parliament to adopt the moral high ground in this instance.
It was the House of Lords which ruled in June that the Human Rights Act did not apply to the residents of private care homes and left residents to the tender mercies of an industry which is currently more than 90 per cent in the hands of privateers who, incidentally, celebrated loudly when the judgement was made.
Quite what they were celebrating is unclear since, if their claim that human rights are adequately and equally protected by the Care Standards Act was true, the decision would have been of little relevance.
But, according to Disability Rights Commission chairman Sir Bert Massie, such is definitely not the case. "This ruling," he said at the time, "will cement a fundamental inequality in disabled and older people's rights."
And, as we have seen recently in the case of 103-year-old Esme Collins, Age Concern director-general Gordon Lishman was spot-on at the time when he pointed out that behaviour currently lawful in independent care homes includes evicting residents for spurious reasons.
The committee was "alarmed" that the government's planned Healthcare Inspectorate would not be given powers to investigate individual complaints and well it should be.
To leave one of the most vulnerable elements in society unprotected by human rights legislation and without individual recourse to any monitoring authority is, quite frankly, unforgivable.
The separation of responsibilities which leaves the public sector regulated by the Human Rights Act, while the private sector is excused that regulation on the basis that private care homes do not provide "functions of a public nature," was an absurd formulation by the House of Lords, which sidestepped the issues of respect and justice for the elderly almost completely.
And in a sector such as care of the elderly, which has become steadily more and more privatised, such a formula was a blatant abrogation of responsibility.
It is a hopeful sign that the Healthcare Commission agrees that the Human Rights Act has an important role to play in ensuring that older people's rights are protected.
But it is not enough to say that it is "exploring ways of incorporating the principles into its core standards," as commission head of long-term conditions Amanda Hutchinson suggested.
There is a much wider problem that must be addressed, since the Law Lords' decision could impinge on any of the growing number of services contracted out by councils.
Human rights cannot be retricted on the basis of whether one is in the care of private or publicly run services. They are rights for all people and not even capitalism is exempt from honouring them.
Parliamentary report is the other side of my last posting.
Local authority homes give Human Rights protection but not private homes.
There has to be urgent legislation to correct this.
Agree with most of your comments JPA.
I would add though that even those who can't get any Local Authority funding should also have protection.
Surely there must be some way around the fact that private care homes are exempt from Human Rights protection?
What happens to these people constitutes assault in some cases, and could therefore be classed as a criminal act. If nothing else, it's a breach of contract, because if you're shelling out that sort of money you should be signing something that says they'll offer adequate care (at least!) in return.
The Human Rights protection was there prior to the latest law ruling.
All homes have to be registered and I am sure this ruling should not reversed the protection of the registration process.
Sometimes people do not use the normal channels of complaint because they are frightened of the consequences.
Time to change the subject
Is Elvis dead?
Was he Elvis anyway?
Listen tomorrow to today's afternoon play.
1.
HIPs;
I paid 350 quid for a survey of 10 pages, 10 facts per page.
Such gems as 'The house, it is thought may date from the late 1800's' Three pounds fifty for that.
But someone else had got that far (getting a survey done ) before so the people I bought it from just had to check nothing had chjanged in a month.
The HIP should be kosher for the potential purchaser and its cost? (Total cost)/(Number of enquirers) - refunds automatically given as more potential buyers use it.
2. Still think local authorities building retirement villages on the coast is a good idea. Say at Skeggy for Leics people here.
3. In india so i'm told you get an upset stomach like you get a headache here. The expression of tension when things get too much
I had a friend who was told by his quack the pains in his feet were a headache (tension)
I always get toothache. But i think thats cos my ex mother in law was a dental receptionist.