The value of an image

Technology Guardian of 27 November 2008 has a story about a church which used a couple of pictures on its website which were sourced from the Getty picture agency but without paying for them. Getty sent the church a demand for £6,000. I’ll talk about the rights and wrongs of this a bit later but it reminds me of one of my own experiences.

Some time ago I was involved in arranging a weekend meeting in a certain town (I am being coy about the name to avoid raising any legal hares).  We had to produce a booklet with the programme of the meeting and we wanted a cover picture which would attract people to the location. We gathered all sorts of images from websites, publicity brochures and so on and the one we all liked appeared on the town’s publicity brochure and, I think, their website. It was of a statue seen through droplets of water from a fountain, all glistening in the sun.

We could not have simply copied the picture even if we had wanted to, as we needed an original to get the required quality. We were going to ask the town publicity department – after all, we were going to publicise them. But then we had second thoughts: we were very short of time, the town might not have an original and they might not even own the copyright themselves. So a friend went out and took the very same picture and we used that. I think he even took the publicity brochure with him to make sure he got the angles right. I think we were legal there. I understood that it was the actual physical image, not the idea, which was copyright.

To come back to the church. I don’t know the details but they must have been very careless. They may have been in the wrong but the actions of Getty seem not less than rapacious – the article claims that the cost of actually licencing the pictures properly would have been just a couple of hundred pounds. And presumably the images were of their own church, so why did they not take their own pictures? My own company website has a picture of a well known local landmark. I took it myself but there must be very similar images in various picture agencies. I am sure I can prove I took it but perhaps I had better look for the original…

Showers and acupuncture

If at all possible, I take a shower every morning. Now you may be thinking that my personal bathing habits are a bit too much information but bear with me. Quite apart from any hygiene considerations, I feel much better after a shower. To a large extent that is understandable, particularly if I awake feeling a bit stuffed up. I guess it’s the hot moist air that helps. But there is something else. Even taking account of the difficulty of making objective judgements based on self-observation, I am convinced that having hot jets of water on the back of my neck give me an additional boost in addition to all the usual benefits of a morning shower.

I’ll return to this but first a digression on acupuncture.

A very good friend from university days, Stephen, became a GP although he is now retired. Some years before his retirement he did a course on acupuncture and operated a successful acupuncture clinic as part of his practice. Now, Stephen is a very rational person and I am a bit of a cynic about complementary therapies so I asked him once what it is all about. He replied with two points. If you itch, you scratch. A bit counter-intuitive that. You have an irritation which presumably arises from excessive firing of nerve endings and you cure it by stimulating those nerve endings even more. Second point. The classic acupuncture texts show diagrams with some sort of lines of force and key points (forgive me, I do speak from some ignorance here).  If you look at an anatomy textbook, those acupuncture diagrams are very similar to the diagrams of the nervous system of the human body.

So is acupuncture just a way of stimulating nerves? That sounds simple but I guess that knowing which nerves to stimulate is the difficult bit. Stephen also said that you don’t have to do it with needles – simple pressure can work. But needles do seem to be better. Maybe more stimulation or perhaps there is just a bit of psychology as well?

Back to my morning shower. I mentioned this back of the neck effect to Stephen and he said that is one of the key acupuncture points. So have I been giving myself a little acupuncture session every morning?

Channel Islands Fortifications

Being born in 1946, a large part of my schoolboy reading was based around the Second World War: the Dam Busters, Colditz Story, that sort of thing. One book which brought me up short was called, I think, “Islands in Danger” and described the occupation of the Channel Islands during the war. Most of the other books were pretty gung-ho but this was about a part of the UK which had been occupied. I hadn’t realised that had happened. (For anyone into Channel Islands history, the term ‘UK’ may not be appropriate but that is another story, going back to William, Duke of Normandy, in 1066.)

I have always wanted to visit the Channel Islands but somehow that never happened until just recently. It wasn’t a holiday, it was a visit with a group of bell ringers. We stayed on Guernsey and visited Jersey and Alderney one day by air to ring at the towers on those two islands. We had a couple of extra days, giving us the chance to walk some of the Guernsey coastline.

One thing which stood out was the immense effort the German occupiers put into fortifying the islands.  We saw a lot of it on the Guernsey coast and on Alderney, where we were given a thorough bus tour of the island in addition to ringing at St Anne’s church (and having our organiser interviewed by Radio Guernsey).  The work on Alderney has a sombre undertone: the inhabitants elected to be evacuated before the occupation and, I guess, away from any public gaze the fortifications were build by large numbers of slave labourers, mostly from Eastern Europe.  There is a memorial to them, and a plaque on the church wall, but their suffering and death in many cases deserves better recognition.

What struck us, looking at observation towers and gun batteries on the south west coast of Guernsey, was that all of this effort and suffering was in vain. The fortifications were never put to the test because the invasion of France passed them by.

My interest raised again, I bought a copy of “The German Occupation of the Channel Islands” by Charles Cruikshank in a book shop in St Peter Port. I am just getting into it but already I learn that, as early as the 1920s, the UK govenment decided that the Islands had no strategic importance. I am not a military strategist but it does make some sense: too near France to be defended by the British, too far from England to be useful to the Germans. Of course, the political significance is something else altogether.

Given this, why did Hitler insist that the Islands should be turned into a fortress? I suppose it was political – the significance of having occupied British soil. But what would have happened on D-Day if he had put all of that effort into strengthening the fortifications on the Normandy beaches. Playing the ‘what if’ game is dangerous, so I won’t continue.

I’ll just finish by saying that the seven towers we visited were some of the best-kept bells I have ever rung on, and that all of the Island bell ringers we met were most welcoming. A nice footnote to some rather sobering insights into the futility of war.

Graduation with trains

To Plymouth yesterday for #2 son’s graduation. He kept us waiting – he is 33 years old – but he has done well and we are proud of him. No A Levels so after working in various hotels he did a foundation course at Plymouth and was then accepted on a degree course. A really nice touch at the ceremony was that, as the academic procession went out at the end, they formed up into two lines and applauded the new graduates as they walked out between them. Do people go to university too young? I think that the life skills he gained working in hotels really helped him in his degree course and in the job he now has. And it was nice to see my 6 week old grandson again.

I travelled down from Bristol by train and really enjoyed it, especially for coastal bit for which I think I need to thank Isambard Kingdon Brunel. I’m not a train nut but I like trains. It might run in the blood as my paternal grandfather was an engine driver on the Great Eastern Railway, based variously at Dereham, King’s Lynn and Wisbech. He drove for a bit on the Wisbech to Upwell tramway. (Think Toby the Tram Engine for any Thomas the Tank Engine fans.) My Grammar school was alongside the King’s Lynn to Hunstanton line and formed a barrier between us and the local Secondary Modern (Oh dear, room for bags of social comment there).

Now, there was a level crossing, complete with crossing keeper, where the line crossed the main road next to the school. There is a level crossing just as you come into Exeter (home of the Met Office) St Davids station. When we crossed it yesterday and I saw the people, bikes and cars waiting I had a sudden surge of nostalgia. I remember standing by the crossing near what was to be my future school and seeing the Royal Train carrying the body of George VI back from Sandringham. I was only 6 years old then so I am not sure if it is a real memory or just a story I grafted onto things I had been told later. But I am sure I was there.

I am sure that when I was 10 or so I used to cycle down to North Wootton station (the first one up the Hunstanton line) to watch the trains. It was a rather quiet station and I remember being invited up into the signal box at one point. Would you let kids do that now?

Well, we have gone from a small boy watching trains to his son getting a BSc in Internet Technologies and Applications, all in one blog post. You can’t say you don’t get breadth.

Coriolis, bath water and science

It’s an interesting paradox that, while science is based on observation, any good scientist (or indeed any thinking person) will know that you can’t always believe what you see. This came home to me a while ago when having a light-hearted conversation about which way the bath water swirls as it goes down the plug hole. “This is a real effect”, a colleague said, “I saw it when I was on holiday in Africa”. Now, I’ve never been to Africa but what she was describing, which I have had confirmed by other people, is a way of extracting money from tourists in African countries which lie on the Equator.

When a tour bus arrives in a town bisected by the equator, usually conveniently indicated by a white line down the middle of the main street, a man will appear holding a large tin can with a small hole in the bottom. Holding his finger underneath the can on the hole , he fills it with water and adds a few leaves or twigs on the surface to show movement of the water. Standing on one side of the equator, he releases his finger, the water flows out and everyone can see which way it swirls out of the can. He then repeats the exercise on the other side of the equator and, lo, the water goes the other way. My colleague was convinced this was a real effect. She had seen it with her own eyes.

Now, the physics going on here is the Coriolis effect. I read about it in the “Feynman Lectures on Physics” which some relatives, both librarians, gave me the Christmas before my A-levels (bless them). Since then, nobody has told me that this is wrong (the Coriolis force, I mean, not getting nice Christmas presents). On the surface of the Earth the force varies with latitude – it is zero at the equator and a maximum at the poles. I freely admit I have not done the sums but, given the size of the Earth, I just can’t believe that walking a few yards to the other side of the road is going to change the direction and size of the force enough to affect the movement of a bit of water. If you lookat the way that ocean currents and winds circulate on the Earth, there is not much rotation quite a long way either side of the equator.

So there are two possibilities here. Either this is some effect unknown to physics or it is a trick. Maybe the guy gives the water a bit of a twirl as he pours it into the can. Occams Razor, or even just common sense, tells us that the first explanation is more likely.

So is there a paradox here? A paradox beween relying on obervation and not always believing what you see? Not, I think, if you are doing the science properly. I have said before that an observation on its own is no better than gossip – you need to try to fit it to an hypothesis. The hypothesis here is based on the effect of the Coriolis force, as seen in weather and ocean currents. If, as I suspect, calculation would show that the force is miniscule in a can of water then we need to seek an explanation – we need more data. One possible, and rather sneaky, way of doing this would be to take the man and his can to another location where the ‘equator’ is marked out, unkown to him, a mile or so away from the real equator. I bet he would still demonstrate water going both ways, especially if there were tourists there to give him some money. This isn’t judging such people, by the way. Good luck to them. I would do the same thing if I had to live in the sort of poverty that most people in Africa experience.

Placebo

Busy, busy, busy. Trying to catch up. How does anyone have time to write a daily blog?

Catching up on the 23 August New Scientist with an article “The Power of Belief” about new work on the placebo effect. I guess we all know that you can get an effect by giving someone a sugar pill and telling them it will make them better. But this article suggests it is more complex than that. Even if a drug is active, the effect depends on whether the patient knows what the drug is supposed to do. To quote: “If you don’t tell people that they are getting in injection of morphine, you have to inject at least 12 milligrams to get a painkilling effect, whereas, if you tell them, far lower doses can make a difference.”

You can’t depend on your own experience here – it is too subjective and you never do the control experiment. But here is an observation which may or may not be relevant.

A few years ago I began to suffer from stiff knees, especially after driving for a while. I though it was just old age but H, who was probably getting fed up with me complaining, said I should take cod liver oil. I resisted for a bit but then saw an advertisement in a walking magazine offering a years supply of cod liver oil capsules plus, as a gift, a years supply of glucosamine sulphate. I started taking both every day (already I am altering two variables at once) and it did seem to have an effect. I carried on for over a year – even ordering a repeat dose – but then I went away for a week or so and forgot the pills. When I got back something else intervened and I never got back into the habit of taking the pills.

After a couple of months I realised that (a) I was not taking the pills and (b) I did not feel any worse. Now, two questions, probably never to be answered in any rigorous scientific way:

1. Did I feel better because I was expecting to, after starting on the pills?

2. Would I have felt worse when I stopped if it had been a conscious act, rather than stopping without thinking about it?

Motorway pile up

Big crash on the M4 at 02:00 this morning – motorway closed for over 12 hours. Latest news is that although some serious injuries, no deaths.

Why do crashes happen in the middle of the night? Is it drivers asleep?

It would be useful if there were publically available accounts of why accidents happen (anonomised of course), with statistics on the causes of accidents. This isn’t morbid curiosity. I think it would help drivers to understand what causes accidents and would improve driving overall.

Perhaps this sort of stuff is available. But I haven’t found it yet.

Leaving Scotland

So, we are home again. I missed a few chances to post – the wifi in the Polochar Inn was fine but worked best in the lounge bar and that was a bit busy!

North Uist-Benebcula-South Uist-Eriskay are brilliant. Islands with nothing to the west but America and all linked by causeways. The East side, quite respectable hills and lots of lochs (more water than land?); the West side, silver beaches and blue sea…

West coast of South Uist, near Orosaigh, looking towards Barra.

We travelled by ferry back to Oban from Lochboisedale – over 5 hours but fascinating. We must return!

Some thanks and highlights of 12 days, with only one day of heavy rain…

• To the Village Inn at Arrochar (http://www.maclay.com/village-inn-arrochar.html). It was meant just as a break on the journey but would be well worth a repeat visit.
• To http://www.skyewalk.co.uk/ for suggestions for walks.
• To the Eilean a’ Cheò Guest house in Ardelve, near Dornie (http://www.scothighland.com/index_find_us.html). The only B&B we have found who offers a room service meal if you arrive too late for the pub! And the evening light on the hills…
• To the 9-1-4 mountain equipment shop in Ardelve, for helpful staff (http://www.914outdoor.co.uk/). Do you get the name? Think Munros.
• To the Isle of Raasay Hotel, now called the Borodale House (http://www.isleofraasayhotel.co.uk/). For comfort and probably the best meal of the holiday. We hope you sort out your licensing problem!
• To Caledonian Macbrayne ferries (http://www.calmac.co.uk/). Your monopoly might make you the Microsoft of Scottish ferries but we found your staff most helpful.
• To the Polocar Inn on South Uist (http://www.polocharinn.com/). We will be back. But it would be good if your wifi worked as well in the Gust Lounge as in the lounge bar!

Well, back to normal now. I know we were lucky with the weather. But we really did enjoy the trip and we look forward to returning. Perhaps Barra as well next time…

Eagle spot & children walking

Now at Polochar Inn at South end of South Uist. Got a connection again so let’s get up to date.

After leaving Raasay we spent two nights at the Uig Hotel in Uig, North Skye. We went for a walk in the amazing rock formations in the Quiraing. While there we met a family from Watford who restored our faith in English children. Two children, aged 8 and 4 (or maybe 3) who were happy to be out walking on mountains! The family were birders and were keen to see a Golden Eagle so then we all saw an eagle being mobbed by two Raven. A result!

Today we took the ferry from Uig to Lochmaddy on North Uist. An amazing place (I’m using that word a lot). We travelled from North Uist, through Benbecula, to South Uist, all islands joined by causeway – more water than land.

Sad history and a new life

After 5 days of good weather in Scotland we had rain today. We are on Raasay and walked round to Hallaig – a clearance village. A sad place. The whole story of crofting and the clearances is a tragic one which I need to find out more about.

But just before the walk I had a phone call from my second son to say that I have a new grandson.

William John Shipp, born 9 August 2008 to Sam and Jill

I guess you could draw some contrasts between the sadness of the clearances and the joy of new life. But that’s too clever. You just need to enjoy what you can.