Status-Q

I’m sitting in a traffic jam behind a car bearing a sticker, “Atomkraft? Nein danke.” (Nuclear power? No thanks!)

I’ve always liked this design, which has been around for some time – the sun with the smiley face makes it into a nice, happy, positive statement. It’s a clever bit of marketing.

However, the sun is, of course, powered by… ?

Seth Brown has been doing some experiments. There are still many unanswered questions, but it’s a more rigorous approach than most of us have ever tried!

Nicely done!

Thanks to Hap for the link.

I’m not very good at keeping up with politics and current affairs in general at present, and one treat I always allow myself on holiday is the shedding of even the limited news-reading and Today-programme-listening that I normally do.

And so the Snowden affair, which started while I was away, largely passed me by: when I got back they were discussing intricacies of conspiracy theories and extradition orders and it was a bit like trying to pick up a TV mini-series by starting on the third or fourth episode. I’ll save learning about it for when the movie version comes out.

But I did think John Lanchester’s article in yesterday’s Guardian was a pretty sane discussion of the issues, even for those of us who missed the opening chapters.

Nice extract:

I call this the “knowing you’re gay” test. Most of us know someone who has plucked up the courage to reveal their homosexuality, only to be cheerfully told by friends and family, “oh, we’ve known that for years”.

Now, though, search engines know facts about people’s thoughts and fantasies long before anyone else does. To put it crudely, Google doesn’t just know you’re gay before you tell your mum; it knows you’re gay before you do. And now GCHQ does too.

Here at Status-Q headquarters, we’re having a new bathroom fitted, which means we’re getting all these newfangled gadgets that you youngsters just take for granted. Things like mixer taps, which our international friends are amused that we didn’t adopt about 50 years ago. I tell them that British plumbing is like the weather: it’s unpredictable, and we like it that way, because it gives us something to make polite conversation about when inspiration is otherwise lacking.

Anyway, we now have a cistern with one of these dashed clever dual-flush buttons. You know, with a small difficult-to-press button embedded in a large crescent. I think it’s a kind of Islamic yin/yang symbol. But the real mystery is that nobody seems to know quite how it works. It didn’t come with a manual, and even our plumber couldn’t answer some of my questions. Here are a few – perhaps the readers of Status-Q have greater lavatorial expertise than we do:

• It appears from visual inspection that the small button provides a smaller flush than the big one (these things are difficult to measure, but that seems sensible). But what happens if you press both, which is the easiest thing for my chunky fingers? Are they additive in some way, producing a megaflush? Or is that the same as the big button alone?
• If the authorities really want us to save water, shouldn’t the big easy-to-press button be the one that does the smaller flush, leaving you to add on the side button for the full monty?
• In any of the above combinations, does a press-and-hold give you any more than a brief press?
• Is there an international standard for flush-button-operation, or might all of the above vary by manufacturer?
• How many unnecessary gallons of water are used around the world each day by people like me who, in the absence of such vital information, always press the biggest combination of buttons for the longest amount of time? Can Status-Q make a significant impact on world water consumption?

All enlightenment most welcome! Or failing that, I’ve at least given you something to ponder next time you’re sitting there…

This is, I think, a lovely introduction to Stephen Hawking’s big ideas, in a two-minute animation commissioned by The Guardian.

The fact that it’s substantially the creation of my nephew Matt Kemp, who works at Scriberia, makes me like it even more! 🙂