Blog
Thoughts on Failure in Big Digital Projects
My take on most of the big digital projects is that the scope is far to ambitious at the start, because during initial planning the details are ignored and so it looks easy. As the project proceeds, a number of things happen:
Is all nuclear power created equal?
With the apparent rise of energy scarcity in the UK some in the media have been asking whether the Govt is indeed correct in wanting to build more nuclear power stations, and of course that is one option. However, when you restrict nuclear power to mean only uranium fission reactions, you get a distorted picture.
History of Fruit Growing between Cambridge and Sutton
At one point, pretty much the whole of the south-facing land in Sutton-in-the-Isle (of Ely) was dedicated to orchards and fruit growing, with the basket-making businesses thriving along the bottom edge of that ridge. A large chunk of the land - well over 8000 acres - between Cambridge and Sutton was used for fruit, much of which was processed by the Chivers factories at Histon and Huntingdon. I have an article, "How The Railways Deal With Special Classes Of Traffic" by A. Chauncy, describing the Histon factory:
Grand Challenges for the 21st Century
I've been thinking lately on the subject of Grand Challenges - those things that seem too big to address now but which are in fact achievable. In the last decades we have seen Challenges such as the complete sequencing of the human genome, the first fully-autonomous robotic vehicle, the landing of spacecraft on Mars, and finding the last significant component of the Quantum Physics model (the Higgs Boson) come to pass, so perhaps it is a good time to muse on new challenges.
Healthy Children?
I recently saw this picture in a local supermarket, and was struck by the dichotomy.
Getting fed up with...
I am getting fed up with TV cameramen of late....
Specifically those commissioned to take pictures in science and technology programmes...
Are we condemned to repeat history?
A wise man once said "those who don't understand history are condemned to repeat it." In the last few decades we have seen the apparent victory of capitalism in the wake of the collapse of the USSR, and in that time we have also seen its fatal flaws exposed in greed, aggrandizement and folly as the world economy teters on the brink of collapse.
Thanks for all the Fish: Can the world continue to fish the oceans?
Back in January I suggested a number of possible blog posts. Though it is disappointing that nobody commented publicly I have had a few encouraging conversations, so here goes on one of those...
Human Beings have fished for food for a very long time: it is certainly measured in multiple millenia. The seas and oceans are also vast, which in the past meant that the human impact of fishing was negligable. In the last few centuries, we have very rapidly increased the population by nearly a thousandfold. The sea, however, has much the same capacity as it always had...
On Lifelong Learning
Back in the 19th century, education was something you might go to school for, and but more likely practiced for as an apprentice or "junior". There was an expectation that you would be learning new skills through your life as you progressed through from apprentice level to senior or master. Fast forward to today and there seems to be an expectation that once you leave school, or possibly leave college, your learning days are over ...
Court Trials
Just a short post this time, to ask the question: Is it reasonable that in England, a court trial takes as long as it does?