The game of control

Strange how human beings are only now noticing how they have become simple buying machines and work units 
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Cynically used to service our faltering materialist capitalist economy.
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When according to capitalist theory the economy should be servicing our needs instead.
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We notice this but can do little about it as we are too busy trying to satisfy the demands of our employers. 
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We have been programmed to be terrified of the economy collapsing.
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Persuaded to welcome flexible labour practices. 


Which result in having to accept lower pay and often longer hours.
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And for some reason, even with no population growth.
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A non-growing economy leads to increasing unemployment.
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When logically, it should just lead to the same level of employment where people consume the same as they did last year. 
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And just why is it considered better to having an endlessly growing economy?
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Society can be organised is such a way that de-growth is a legitimate option.
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And it is also clear to see that our present consumption in all areas is quite adequate for any reasonable human being. 
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But humans today are only useful to this society if they can be persuaded to buy ever more stuff. 
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Regardless of it's utility. 
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Or whether or not it produces any increase in satisfaction or happiness.
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And all this even as the environment we live in becomes increasingly barren because of the insatiable needs of the system. 
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Supporting this is a technology which is designed to keep us in a constant state of desire and dissatisfaction. 
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While the system itself would also like us to be in a constant state of anxiety and fear from the possibility of losing our jobs and livelihood. 
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Thereby making everyone more tractable.
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Nothing new in the above then.
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Just wonder how long it takes before the masses suss it out.
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Maybe never so long as they have ''just enough''
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Then again this might still take some time as it is pointed out to them every day on the telly how others have it much worse.
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One day not so far off though the corruption of the system will cause it to implode.
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So much greed in all areas creates an ever increasing acceleration of corruption. 
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And at some point pfut along comes the Black Swan or unexpected event and down we go!

Introducing the SMU 100

The technology, developed by a former Royal Marine commando, temporarily impairs the vision of anyone who looks towards the source.
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It has impressed a division of the Home Office which is testing a new range of devices because of the growing number of violent situations facing the police.
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The developer, British-based Photonic Security Systems, hopes to offer the device to shipping companies to deter pirates. 
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Similar devices have been used by ISAF troops in Afghanistan to protect convoys from insurgents.
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The laser, resembling a rifle and known as an SMU 100, can dazzle and incapacitate targets up to 500m away with a wall of light up to three metres squared. 
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It costs £25,000 and has an infrared scope to spot looters in poor visibility.
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Looking at the intense beam causes a short-lived effect similar to staring at the sun, forcing the target to turn away.
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The system would give police an intimidating visual deterrent. 
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If you can't look at something you can't attack it," said Paul Kerr.
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If police spot someone trying to do something untoward, painting them with this would certainly make them think twice about it," he said. 
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He said it could also be deployed during hostage rescues.
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The Home Office has been considering new forms of non-lethal equipment since the August riots, with the limited range of tasers and CS gas leaving a "capability gap".
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A Home Office spokesman said scientists at its Centre for Applied Science and Technology believe the use of lasers "has merit" and that it will be piloted by at least one police force.
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However, they will have to be satisfied the technology does not cause long-term health damage before it can be approved by the Home Secretary.
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Other technology being studied includes 'wireless electronic interceptors' that can be fired a greater distance than Tasers, and long-range chemical irritant projectiles, the newspaper said.
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The Metropolitan Police is exploring the possibility of buying three water cannons at a cost of £4m. 
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Currently the only police force in the UK to operate water cannon is the Police Force of Northern Ireland (PSNI), which has six. 
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Scotland Yard is also increasing the number of officers trained to fire plastic bullets, as a direct response to the riots.
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An escalating arms race by any other name.
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Mathew Holehousein

How much can you trust the traveller?

Most airlines still seem to think that peeling the back off a sticky label, looping one end through a bag handle and sticking it to the other end is too mentally taxing for the average traveller.

So while you can check yourself in and print out your own boarding pass online or at a screen in the airport.

Checking luggage remains a highly specialised task for which you must find a person who has been adequately trained.

Lufthansa, at least, seems to have decided to give its passengers the benefit of the doubt. 

At Munich airport, from where I flew to Berlin this morning, you plop your bag on to the weighing-scale next to the check-in screen, put in your details, and it spits out a luggage tag. 

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After you've attached it, the scale, which is also a conveyor belt, shoots the bag into the maw of the baggage-handling system, but not before passing it under an electronic gate that reads the tag. 

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On my first attempt it spotted that I had forgotten to remove the tag from my previous flight, and shot the back bag to me. 

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Having pulled off the old tag, I put the bag back on the scale again—but must have put it on slightly askew, because it gave a different weight reading and the machine thought I had switched it for another bag.

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I had to start all over again. 

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Evidently, Lufthansa not only trusts its passengers to be smart, but has accounted for the stupid and sneaky ones too.

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How advanced, I thought, as I made my way to the gate.

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In fact, how civilised. 

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Things could still have gone wrong. 

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I could have put the tag through a poorly fastened strap, so that it fell off later. 

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I could have forgotten to take off the luggage ticket that is printed with the tag and stick it to my boarding pass (though these days, you almost never need it). 

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But in fact, most of us have seen airline staff do these things so many times that we automatically know how. 

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Instead of treating passengers like children, Lufthansa treats them like adults.

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Funny, though, I thought, after stopping to help a family who had somehow become trapped on the wrong side of another gate when they came off the plane, and were making frantic semaphore gestures through the glass doors to passers-by. 

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I told a Lufthansa person, whose first reaction was, Well, they should stay there. 

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It is forbidden to come out on this floor. 

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Funny how the check-in machine hadn't asked me to scan my passport or any other form of ID—I had just typed in my name and reservation code. 

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And funny, I thought as I waited in line to board, that the gate staff weren't checking anyone's ID either, just their boarding passes. 

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I got on the plane, ruminating that I could have given my name and reservation code to anyone, and they could have taken my flight instead. 

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Now, most of us wouldn't do such a thing. 

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But in these days of heightened security, is that taking trust in the passenger just a shade too far?

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G.L. Berlin

Out of the blue

When you have a disagreement with someone close to you.
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It did not start out that way just evolved from something said.
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Then before you knew it world war three had erupted.
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The nuclear option has been used.
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The nuclear option being instant divorce or break up.
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Both of you feeling right and leaving each other in the frame of mind that the other is at least an idiot if not deliberately trying to hurt you.
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Sometimes the squall passes.
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Sometimes though it does not and just seems to magically grow into a situation that threatens your very relationship.
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Once, twice, three, times this can happen.
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You are aware of this and try to dampen possible points of conflict.
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To no avail along comes yet another squall except that this time it isn't.
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The relationship breaks.
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Maybe it was time.
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Maybe it was over anyway and neither party wanted to point out the obvious.
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Maybe though something else was going on.
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And this is the truth for many relationships.
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One partner is unable or unwilling to change.
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Change is a normal part of life.
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The other has moved on drawing on new understandings.
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Sad story.
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One that effects so many, wondering bewilderedly what happened.
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In these unpredictable times change is all around us.
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This can be threatening.
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Change that subtly affects the basis of our relationship often without our being aware.
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Until one party uses the nuclear option of break up.
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A tough learning experience indeed.
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To avoid or lessen the possibility of being caught in such a scenario.
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Talk with each other and see how they are changing or reacting to change.
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Discus options to adjust the various aspects of your lives.
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Try to find common ground.
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Listen to each other, really learn to hear what they are saying.
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And where this is not apparent, ask them to explain.
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Care for each other.
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Should you find you cannot or do not want to then look inside yourself and be honest as to what has happened.
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Life can be harmonious but only when we are ready to work at it.
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Good relationships require work. 
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Do not let yours disappear because you were not paying attention.

Wasps

Where Do Wasps Go In Winter?
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Spring has finally sprung and the weather is warming up nicely
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But I haven’t spotted a wasp yet which begs the question – where do wasps go in winter? 
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Are they still in their nests, keeping warm and cosy like honey bees in a hive or have they migrated south with birds in search of food, sunshine, sandy beaches and sticky, sweet cocktails? 
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And even more importantly, when will the wasps be back?
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What do wasps do in Spring?
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From now onwards you may spot larger than normal wasps. 
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These are queen wasps emerging from their overwintering place which could be as diverse as the warm folds of a curtain, a cosy crevice in a shed or a loft. 
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The queen wasps will be on the scout for a new place to build a nest and lay their eggs. 
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You’ll certainly know it’s a queen if it stings you because only the female wasps have the distinctive stinger, which they can use repeatedly unlike bees.
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At the end of the summer season, worker wasps return to the nest and die. 
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Only the queen survives. 
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The queen will never use the old nest (probably because it’s full of dead wasps) and build a new wasp nest, creating a single cell at the end of a petiole. 
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Six more cells are then added to create the hexagonal shape.
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The queen then lays eggs which grows into small larva. 
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The larvae grows to full size then it pupates into an adult worker wasps. 
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The lifecycle from egg to fully grown insect is approximately three weeks.
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What’s inside a Wasp’s Nest?
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The worker wasps will continue to build and maintain the nest, forage for food and feed the larvae. 
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Until June the nests will normally be golf ball sized but may be larger with warm weather. 
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From late June the wasp nest will have grown considerably and wasps can normally be spotted on the outside carrying our repair and maintainance work. 
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Take a look at the amazing footage by worldofwasps showing a queen hornet and workers tending to the nest.
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There are no hard and fast rules with nature
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But please help us to map out Britain’s wasp infestations by plotting your wasp sighting at http://www.ukwaspwatch.co.uk/
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Alicia -  Rentokil

On and on we go

Yale Professor John Wargo describes as “an unexpected side effect” of our prosperity, “a change in the chemistry of the human body”. 
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For many of the substances that have built our economies are now embedded in our tissues and coursing through our veins: some, it seems, are up to no good.
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Tests for a hundred particularly hazardous substances have revealed that – on average – we each harbour 27 of them in our blood, though the chemical cocktail varies from person to person. 
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Children have been found to be more contaminated than their parents or grandparents, while mothers pass on the poisons to babies in the womb. 
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Researchers have found potentially dangerous chemicals in every one of 14 basic foodstuffs they took from supermarket shelves, and in the air of every home they visited.
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Findings like these spurred 200 eminent scientists from five continents some years ago to issue a joint warning that exposure to common chemicals skewed the development of critical organs in foetuses and newborns, increasing their chances of developing diabetes, cancer, attention deficit disorders, thyroid damage, diminished fertility, and other conditions in later life.
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The Standing Committee of European Doctors – which brings together the continent’s top physicians’ bodies, including the BMA – has added: “Chemical pollution represents a serious threat to children, and to Man’s survival.” 
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And the usually cautious US President’s Cancer Panel has reported that synthetic chemicals can cause “grievous harm” and that the number of cancers for which they are responsible had been “grossly underestimated”.
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In yet another warning, researchers from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and the University of Southern Denmark predicted a “silent pandemic” of brain conditions such as autism, cerebral palsy and attention deficit disorders, identifying 202 substances known to poison the brain as “the tip of a very large iceberg”.
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But perhaps there is most concern over endrocrine disrupters, the “gender-benders”, which interfere with hormones. 
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These have had feminising effects on wildlife: half the male fish in Britain’s lowland rivers have been found to be developing eggs in their testes. 
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And they are increasingly blamed for a precipitate decline in human sperm counts: measurements in more than 20 countries show that, on average, they have fallen from 150 to 60 million per millilitre of sperm fluid in five decades.
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Yet all this is still only a small part of the potential problem. 
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There are some 100,000 chemicals in use, but we only have good information on how safe – or otherwise – 15 per cent of them are. 
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The proportion that is adequately regulated is even smaller. 
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It is a massively neglected environmental and public health issue. “It’s time to tackle chemicals,” wrote the then Danish environment minister, Karen Ellemann, as the International Year of Chemistry opened.
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However, little happened during what Dr Gwynne Lyons, director of the independent Chemicals, Health and Environmental Monitoring Trust, has described a “damp squib”.
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But year or no year, the change in the chemistry of our bodies will continue to intensify. 
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Is it too much to hope that we will finally get to grips with it during our next orbit round the Sun?

How to predict a hit

A research team from the University of Bristol's Intelligent Systems Laboratory in the Faculty of Engineering set out to predict the popularity of a song by using state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms.
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The team examined the UK Top 40 Singles Chart over the past 50 years and sought to identify the distinguishing features of songs which made the top five, compared to those which stumbled outside the top 30.
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The researchers used musical features such as tempo, time signature, song duration and loudness. 
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They also computed detailed summaries of the songs such as harmonic simplicity, how simple the chord sequence is, and "non-harmonicity" – how "noisy" a song is.
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By weighting the most significant 23 audio features, the team, led by Dr Tijl de Bie, produced a catchy equation for a potential hit: (w1 x f1) + (w2 X f2) + ... + (w23 X f23). 
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How good is this equation? 
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They claim it can predict with an accuracy of 60 per cent if a song will make it to the top 5, or if it will never reach above position 30 on the UK Top 40 Singles Chart.
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The team discovered several trends which may explain why the singles chart, dominated today by R&B/dance collaborations, has been described as the least diverse it has ever been.
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Before the Eighties, the danceability of a song was not very relevant to its hit potential. 
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But following the disco boom in the late Seventies, danceable songs were more likely to become a hit.
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In the Eighties, slower musical styles (tempo 70-89 beats per minute), such as ballads, were also more likely to become a hit than now. 
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The UK's best-selling singles of 1985 were "slowies" – "The Power Of Love" by Jennifer Rush followed by "I Know Him So Well", the Elaine Paige and Barbara Dickson duet.
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The researchers found it most difficult to "predict" hits around 1980, when the charts were in a state of ferment following the punk explosion. 
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Bands like Depeche Mode experimented with synthesisers, while rock bands The Jam and The Police co-existed in the top 10 with disco, soul and reggae songs. 
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A new wave of colourful pop acts led by Adam and the Ants and Duran Duran was also about to emerge.
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Although the early Eighties are often dismissed as a time of tinny, vacuous music, the researchers argue that "the late Seventies and early Eighties were particularly creative and innovative periods of pop music".
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Hits changed in the Nineties as the "simpler, binary, rhythms such as 4/4 time", the mechanised DNA of House music, became dominant. 
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Cheaper technology meant that anyone could construct a hit record in their bedroom. 
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Yet it appears that your dad was right all along – pop music is getting noisier. 
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On average all songs on the chart are becoming louder. 
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Additionally, the hits are relatively louder than the songs that dangle at the bottom of the charts, reflected by a strong weight for the loudness feature.
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Producers tweak songs so that they "cut through" on the radio and club sound systems, using a variety of techniques. 
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The sound is compressed, enhancing the bass end "thud" and punchy female choruses of chart-aimed songs.
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Dr De Bie, senior lecturer in artificial intelligence, said: Musical tastes evolve, which means our 'hit potential equation' needs to evolve as well. 
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Indeed, we have found the hit potential of a song depends on the era. 
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This may be due to the varying dominant music style, culture and environment.
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That is why they worked out the hit potential equation as a function of time. 
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This shows what is important in each given era, and the evolving priorities of fans.
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Music experts however posit an alternative equation for a chart cert today – The X Factor. 
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The songs colonising the current top 10 are those created by the talent show or by artists who performed in the sought-after guest slots, watched by millions of potential record-buyers. 
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Coldplay's sales soared 132 per cent this week after their appearance during the series final.
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The pop equation is explained at: scoreahit.com/TheHitEquation
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Surefire hits: The Formula

Musicians have laboured long and hard to find the elusive formula for a hit song. 
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The "Hit Potential Equation" (w1 x f1) + (w2 x f2) + ... + (w23 x f23) claims to be just that. 
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It sounds complicated but is the score given to a song according to the importance and occurrence of 23 audio features including loudness, tempo and duration. 
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The team classified songs into "hit" or "not hit" based on its combined score. 
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Hits according to the formula include TLC's "No Scrubs" (no 3 in the UK charts in 1999) and "If You Don't Know Me By Now" (no 2 in 1989) by Simply Red. 
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The TLC song's loudness, harmonic simplicity and steady 93bpm tempo are deemed the key features of its success. 
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In the late Eighties, changes in beat, low energy and tertiary time signatures were the formula for Simply Red's hit ballad

Jonathon Porritt - A point of view

 Many brands are very far from being a "force for good" in the world: 

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People are being persuaded to spend money we don't have on things we don't need to create impressions that won't last on people we don't care about.

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But then just look around you at the broader sustainability scene. 

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The vast majority of consumers are still either confused/disempowered, or indifferent/ignorant – I know it's not politically correct to say that, but it's true. 

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Worse yet, the vast majority of investors are still intent on maximising short-term returns rather than building over the long term – even when it's their own pension funds that they're investing in.

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And worst of all, governments the world over would appear to be clueless about transitioning their economies from yesterday's patently unsustainable "smash and grab, slash and burn" 
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To the kind of sustainable capitalism that offers the prospect of better lives for the 99% while staying within recognised environmental limits. 

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And without too traumatic a decline in the living standards of the 1%.

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The potential power of brands.

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So let's not look these branded gift-horses in the mouth. 

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When I compare our politicians' sorry performance on environmental issues with the performance of some of Forum for the Future's leading corporate partners, there's no question who is making the bigger difference. 

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Not just in terms of reducing their own direct footprint, but in helping their customers improve their own lives in increasingly more sustainable and responsible ways.

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Brands are so much better placed to narrow that frightening values-action gap that politicians have to confront, where the voters say one thing and promptly do another.

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And are somehow more trustworthy precisely because they are so clearly in the business of making money out of doing the right thing. 

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As Dorothy Mackenzie of the brand consulting business, Dragon Rouge puts it: 

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People resist moralising statements. 

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But everyone knows a brand is out to make money and that clarity of intent wins trust.

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And that trust creates the space to innovate. 

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While politicians sit around waiting for people to show them where they want to go, companies can use the power of their brands to help normalise our behaviour.

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"Wash at 30C', "less is more" (with concentrated detergents or energy-efficient light bulbs), "healthy choices, better lives", and so on.

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Designing-in sustainability and dithering politicians 

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Sometimes it's not even necessary to ask or even inform consumers: build it in – "sustainability inside", as it were – and don't get too het up if people don't know exactly what those benefits are all about. 

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How many ordinary citizens have the first clue what Intel Inside means, even as they feel vaguely good that the latest gizmo that they're splashing out on offers them that reassurance?

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And that's about as good as it gets at the moment as politicians dither and short-termism rules supreme in our capital markets. 

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What we need to do is build aspirational armies of citizen-consumers who no longer feel the need to get cynical at the idea of "small actions, big difference". 

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It's all about scale, as explained by John Thøgersen, professor of economic psychology at the Aarhus School of Business and Social Science in Denmark: 

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One of the reasons why people are passive is that they feel no one else is doing anything. 

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When it comes to climate change, your contribution is so small it doesn't really matter. 

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What matters is what other people do. 

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If you don't perceive that many people are also saving energy, then you feel a bit of a sucker because you're losing something without helping the problem.

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In that regard, things have moved on a long way from the "I will if you will" message that the UK's Roundtable on Sustainable Consumption first came up with nearly six years ago. 

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Today's leading brands have a much more dynamic story to tell: "we have, so you can".

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And we certainly need to see still-fashionable cynicism put aside. 

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Short of the whole global economy imploding in front of our eyes (which I can assure you would do very little to enhance the prospect of a genuinely sustainable world), we have to take people with us, step by step, not beat them into submission.

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Solitaire Townsend, one of the co-founders of communications consultancy Futerra, has been particularly trenchant in her critique of conventional campaigning: 

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Environmentalists are very good at identifying what people should desire, not what they actually do desire. 

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She has exhorted politicians and businesses alike to put "the sizzle" into sustainability, using humour, creativity, peer-to-peer messaging and real people making a real difference in compelling, sassy ways: "a live, warm-blooded human being is top trumps when it comes to changing behaviour"

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I go with all that – as do all of our corporate partners and their brands. 

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But not at the expense of some deeper probing about the scale of the change required. 

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As yet, even at its best, we're nowhere near the zone of genuinely sustainable consumption – less unsustainable consumption is still the name of the game.

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But I really don't blame companies for that. 

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It's governments that set the rules within which companies operate in terms of regulation, taxation, incentives, public procurement and so on. 

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Unfortunately, governments are so in hock to incumbent corporate power-brokers and so timid in the face of the utterly predictable whingeing from trade associations and all those vested interests who stand to lose most as we innovate our way through to a dynamic low-carbon, equitable economy. 

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The most we can expect of such dysfunctional politicians, whatever their party loyalty, is for them not to get in the way of those who've seen what a better future really looks like and are seriously intent on making it happen.

Jonathon Porritt -  Founder director of Forum for the Future.

Pet, danger message

Here is a short version: Yes, your puppy or kitten is a soft-eyed, big-pawed, soft ball of adorability. 
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Nevertheless, do not let them share your pillow. 
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And no matter how tempted you are, do not kiss them.
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No, really, don’t. 
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Here’s a sample of why:
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A 2008 matched case–control study surveyed 9 plague survivors, 12 household members of these survivors, and 30 age- and neighbourhood-matched controls about household and individual exposures. 
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Four (44%) survivors … reported sleeping in the same bed with a pet dog.
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Two cases of meningitis in newborn children (less than 1 month of age) have been reported; one was associated with a pet cat stealing a baby’s pacifier and using it as a toy.
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The other was associated with a pet dog that often licked the baby’s face.
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B. henselae (cat scratch) infection was suspected and confirmed by serologic testing of a 50-year-old man from Japan, who had left cervical lymphadenopathy and owned a dog that often licked his face.
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A case of meningitis caused by P. multocida in a 60-year-old housewife living in the United Kingdom was reported. 
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She admitted to regularly kissing the family dog.
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A 48-year-old man with diabetes and his wife had recurrent MRSA infections. 
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Culture of nares samples from the family dog grew mupirocin-resistant MRSA that had a PFGE chromosomal pattern identical to the MRSA isolated from the patient’s nares and his wife’s wound. 
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The couple reported that the dog routinely slept in their bed and frequently licked their faces.
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In Australia, septicemia and multi-organ failure developed in a 48-year-old woman after her fox terrier puppy licked a minor burn wound on the top of her left foot.
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A 60-year-old patient with chronic eczema died of septic shock and renal failure and disseminated intravascular coagulation caused by C. canimorsus. 
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The ulcerous chronic eczema of his legs was the most probable port of entry for the organism because his dog used to lick his legs.
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With the resigned tone of researchers who know in advance they won’t be listened to, the two authors make a public health recommendation:
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Persons, especially young children or immuno compromised persons, should be discouraged from sharing their bed with their pets or regularly kissing their pets.
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Although uncommon with healthy pets, the risk for transmission of zoonotic agents by close contact between pets and their owners through bed sharing, kissing or licking is real and has even been documented for life-threatening infections.
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I would have more to say about this, but it sounds like I am trying to scare people.
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Yes that's right I am.
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Pets are pets.
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Animals from another species.
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Treating them like humans is not smart.