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I just got back from a longer bike ride, as I forgot about October school break and went to Davidsons Mains for volunteering, only to find the school deserted. On the way, I was told at least 5 times that the front light on my bike is on. Of course, it was on, and will always be, but this just shows me two things:

• There are a lot of really friendly people out there
• Bikes have a long way to go before they're accepted as a real alternative to conventional means of transportation

Think about motorcycles: for years, there has been a law that requires motorcycles to have lights on, even during the day. It's simply a safety thing: if your light is on, you're more easily seen. So why isn't it the same with bikes?
Well, you'll say, bike lights run on batteries (which run out after a while) or these old dynamos that make a huge amount of noise, start slipping as soon as there is a drop of water on the tyre, and make you feel as though you're going up a steep hill all the time. This is certainly true, but there are very good hub dynamos available for bikes that cause almost no drag and, combined with the right set of LED-lights, simply give you no reason to turn off the lights on your bike at all. Of course, they are expensive (as I was told today: "you have too much money"). But why?
Well, the reason is simply that consumers are not willing to invest in good lighting for their bikes, which keeps demand for these things low and makes them expensive. The bike is something used for leisure or sport, so why spend lots of money on a good lighting system?
I suggest a different approach: if we're serious about reducing emissions, we need to get more people to cycle. Therefore, we need to make sure bikes are seen as a real alternative to the car - and this includes a reliable lighting system, especially in the winter, when most of the cycling is done in darkness. This shouldn't be an extra people with "too much money" have on their bikes, it should simply be the standard. The only reason that bike lighting is not on the same standard as car lighting is the comparatively minimal demand for it. Maybe, if the British government required dynamo-powered lights on all bikes (as is standard in Germany), this would make more people invest in it. But also, if more people start using real lights on their bike, other cyclists will notice and realise that there are alternatives to these battery-powered lights out there. Alternatives where your battery doesn't run out when you most need it, and where you can actually see in pitch dark and are never caught off guard without your lights.
I'll try and make a point in stopping (if possible) every time someone reminds me that my light is on and explain why.

This had me rolling on the floor, laughing. It's a movie about "scientific bias" against scientific freedom to advocate "intelligent falling". Apparently, a number of

[...]physicists, astronomers, chemists and philosophers [...] have had their reputations destroyed and their careers ruined by a scientific establishment that allows absolutely no dissent from Isaac Newton's theory of natural forces causing attraction between bodies of mass.

Freedom of speech above everything! Never mind if it's complete nonsense, publish it!
Maybe I should use that argument, should I fail to be able to defend my thesis: just stand up in front of the examiners and loudly protest that, no, my reasoning isn't wrong, they're just too narrow-minded and blinded by the mathematical dogma out there to accept my brilliant ideas. And if you don't give me my PhD, I'll make a film of it!
I'll just quote the article:

this is not only anti-American, it's anti-science. It's anti-the whole concept of learning!

That will get me my PhD!

Found on Only In It For the Gold.

Ok, it might be slightly geeky, but the guy's a science teacher. And it might sound like an argument given in a science classroom to schoolkids, but at least it's clear, free of the typical jargon that tends to surround the subject:



If you have 10 Minutes, watch it. It's worth the time.

We had some friends staying over last night.

Well, they weren't exactly friends at the beginning of the night. Let's say, we met them yesterday afternoon. Not even 24 hours later, it seems like I've known them for years. Incredible. How did this happen? Well, partly, it's thanks to the likes of CouchSurfing and Hospitality Club.

Astrud and John contacted me via CouchSurfing on Thursday, with a simple message: they were going to come to Edinburgh and needed a place to stay. As part of the CouchSurfing network, we offer our spare room in the flat to complete strangers who are also part of the network - and ended up with an amazing evening this way. The moment they came by to drop off their stuff, we hit it off. We were immediately talking like we'd known each other for ages already. And the evening got better and better: good dinner, lots and lots of wine were provided by us, while they - both massage therapists - treated Nadine to a massage, from head to toe. The rest of the evening (and well into the night) we just talked, exchanged experiences, laughed, and had a great time. At midnight, we had a bottle of champaign, to celebrate their 7th anniversary. It was amazing!

Now they're gone to drive around Scotland and I already miss them, as though I've known them forever. It's amazing that you can spend an evening with complete strangers and get close so quickly. What a wonderful bunch of people!

The great part about is that this is not an exception: this is just one of numerous wonderful evening we've had with complete strangers who came to stay at our place through one of the two websites mentioned above. All of these experiences were just great: starting with the wonderful Anna and Pawel who used our place as a jumping board for Scotland and who have since become some of our closest friends, through Zineb, who told us a lot about Paris up to our visitors from Leipzig, who we introduced to Single Malt - all wonderful evenings we would not have had otherwise.

If you're not already on there, get on CouchSurfing or Hospitality Club now - you won't regret it.

I have to go and prepare desert now. We've been invited to Anna and Pawel's place for dinner.

I went to an interesting lecture yesterday, by Chris Goodall, author of Carbon Commentary, which I subscribe to via RSS (and which has some interesting, quite critical, comments about "green" products on it, e.g. domestic CHP).

Chris' lecture was about the gap between what people say and their actions, in respect to Climate Change. He started off with putting the UK into an international context, and, lo and behold, the UK ranked as one of the countries with the lowest interest in environmental issues (far below China, by the way!) and had the lowest confidence in that we can do anything to prevent climate change (again, far below China, which might have something to do with China's trust in their government). Actually, the statistics for China have to be taken with a grain of salt, as, according to Chris, there appears to be some confusion that smog counts as climate change in China. But this is actually material for a whole separate bit of research on where China really stands on the issue of climate change. It seems that they're not as apathetic as is generally believed, whereas the UK is just in a terrible state, as usual 1 hour and 200 years behind the rest of Europe.

The interesting statistic that came out of his talk is that climate change awareness (and willingness to act on it) is not in any way related to income or education. Across all income groups and education backgrounds, you get the same general makeup of awareness, with a large group (about 40%) saying that they care about climate change, but haven't made any (substantial) changes to their behaviour (i.e. flying less). This is interesting, as it goes against the "green is luxury" stereotype employed by a lot of critics of personal action on climate change.

This definitely fits in with the stories I hear from my girlfriend's colleagues: even though well-educated engineers, most of them seem happy to "talk the talk" (i.e. come to sustainability group meetings), but not "walk the walk" (take the train to London for the Christmas night out rather than the plane, turn off their monitors). It also fits in with personal experience: I'm an academic in an academic department, surrounded by very intelligent people, but certainly don't get the feeling that anyone cares about climate change. Or maybe we're just too quiet? Maybe there is a quiet majority, deeply concerned about environmental issues and climate change, hiding (as mathematicians like to) in their offices?

If there is and you're reading this, come by my office. Let's make some noise!

P.S. More on consumer segmentation can be found on Chris' blog.

A while ago, I was complaining about a Mr. Dimmock complaining about the decision to show Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth to secondary school children. He brought the case to hight court.

And he lost. At least for the most part. The judge ruled that "An Inconvenient Truth" could be shown, but only if accompanied by corrections. The decision was that the file basically got it right, but exaggerated in parts.

Again, I haven't seen the film, so I can't judge whether it does exaggerate. He probably does, but it's to drive the point home. If exaggeration is what it takes to wake people up, then so be it. Though it probably isn't necessary to exaggerate.

The judge (who is a climate scientist as well, I assume?)

[...]accepted that melting of the ice would release this amount of water - "but only after, and over, millennia."

I'm not entirely sure where he got that information from, but probably the IPCC report. According to this, the report has its predictions for the timescale of the ice melt wrong, as it assumes linear response of the arctic ice to temperature changes. Well, according to the paper, Gore's version wasn't so far off:

Climate forcing of this century under BAU would dwarf natural forcings of the past million years, indeed it would probably exceed climate forcing of the middle Pliocene, when the planet was not more than 2–38C warmer and sea level 25±10 m higher[...]In combination with warming of the nearby ocean and atmosphere, the increased surface melt would bring into play multiple positive feedbacks leading to eventual nonlinear ice sheet disintegration, as discussed by Hansen (2005). It is difficult to predict time of collapse in such a nonlinear problem, but we find no evidence of millennial lags between forcing and ice sheet response in palaeoclimate data. An ice sheet response time of centuries seems probable, and we cannot rule out large changes on decadal time-scales once wide-scale surface melt is underway. With GHGs continuing to increase, the planetary energy imbalance provides ample energy to melt ice corresponding to several metres of sea level per century ( Hansen et al. 2005b).

So maybe, just maybe, Al Gore doesn't have it all wrong. Maybe they should include a list of corrections with the list of corrections for the film?

Finally. After years and years. Well, for me only one year, actually, as I didn't even start getting into Radiohead until a year ago.

Finally, the new album is out. In Rainbows. And after listening to Radiohead up and down, back to front, for the last year, and liking them more and more the later they got (read Kid A, Amnesiac, Hail to the Thief, and then, even though not Radiohead, The Eraser), this one is right up my alley. It reminds me of The Eraser, but with more instrumental behind it. Seems that Thom got his way in the end, but all the better for me. I've been listening to nothing else ever since this morning, when I jumped out of bed, downloaded the album while taking a shower, and listened to the whole thing over breakfast.

Now, I'm on the fourth listening, and some favourites are starting to come out: strangely all around the later half of the album. All I Need is brilliant, Faust Arp keeps on getting better every time I listen to it. Actually the whole album has the Radiohead effect: first listen: ok, interesting. Second listen: start noticing some exceptional tracks. 3+ listening: start realising the gem this album is, noticing how different and distinctly amazing every track is in its own right. It just keeps on getting better. And I'm not the one to listen to music over and over, but a new Radiohead album is the exception. And I haven't even gotten to the stage of reading the lyrics, which will add a whole other dimension...

It's worth every penny of the £15 I chose to pay for it (and that's a lot more than most other people paid, if this is anything to go by).

Thank you, Radiohead.