The building of new nuclear has proved challenging for the UK. The consortia are folding and we do not have the time left to build them.
But a ray of light from Hitachi:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20134735
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20137573
So we might now stand a chance of building them, without too much French intervention or restrictive practice...
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Ceefax retired
The analogue switchover has happened in the UK now, the last transmitter has been closed off. With it dies Ceefax, after 38 years - the BBC website had the final shutdown transmission pictures...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20032882
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20032882
Film: Hurt Locker directed by Kathryn Bigelow
A film about the Iraq war, and the bomb disposal team and their tour of duty. There are a lot of suspenseful sequences of defusing bombs, and action sequences which depict what fire fights must be like (lots of inaccurate shooting because of the conditions).
The central character is obsessed with the danger of his job, the fact he faces death at every bomb he is called to defuse. Consequently live away from Iraq seems mundane and humdrum.
An interesting and thought provoking film.
The central character is obsessed with the danger of his job, the fact he faces death at every bomb he is called to defuse. Consequently live away from Iraq seems mundane and humdrum.
An interesting and thought provoking film.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Film: Casino Royale directed by Martin Campbell
I saw this in the cinema back in 2006 and decided to rewatch a DVD of it. Astoundingly this DVD had found its way into the 20 pence bucket at Cash Converters.
I think when I saw it in the cinema I did not take a lot of the plot in, being rather irritated by the endless product placement that a Bond film should be able to rise above.
But on re-watching this did not annoy me so much - so I could concentrate on the plot. Of course all the product placed mobile phone handsets look very dated now. I did find one piece of placement, the heart defibrillator that Bond uses to recover from a cardiac arrest actually an interesting public safety/education message.
Also I saw the cameo of Richard Branson being patted down at Miami airport amusing - also more amusing was that it had to be cut out of the in flight movies of British Airways!.
The film still holds up - all action and refreshing of an good brand.
I think when I saw it in the cinema I did not take a lot of the plot in, being rather irritated by the endless product placement that a Bond film should be able to rise above.
But on re-watching this did not annoy me so much - so I could concentrate on the plot. Of course all the product placed mobile phone handsets look very dated now. I did find one piece of placement, the heart defibrillator that Bond uses to recover from a cardiac arrest actually an interesting public safety/education message.
Also I saw the cameo of Richard Branson being patted down at Miami airport amusing - also more amusing was that it had to be cut out of the in flight movies of British Airways!.
The film still holds up - all action and refreshing of an good brand.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Energy Policy
To more specialist areas of media this will not be news. But finally this week the risk of our enforced European energy policy were spelled out in harsh terms. The changes of power outage as we move to renewables and failing to provide enough backup power plants to replace older coal generators has gone from 1 in 3300 years to 1 in 12 years.
We've dragged our feet on commissioning new nuclear power is the one factor I can think of that has had some media coverage.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19842401
There is one columnist I can think of, Christopher Booker who has been charting this sleep walking into energy shortages for a few years. He has some extreme views on climate change - which are sometimes hard to accept. But on energy policy I always feel he is correct.
We've dragged our feet on commissioning new nuclear power is the one factor I can think of that has had some media coverage.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19842401
There is one columnist I can think of, Christopher Booker who has been charting this sleep walking into energy shortages for a few years. He has some extreme views on climate change - which are sometimes hard to accept. But on energy policy I always feel he is correct.
Book read: Priceless by William Poundstone
The main themes of the book is anchoring, where someone is drawn to a price by being influenced by seeing (sometimes unrelated) prices or numbers. You can either believe that marketeers are either steeped in this psychology or have found it to work over many years.
It feels like an area a regulator would eventually get hold of and try to control, and also as the secret gets out the effect of such priming of thoughts would have less effect because the subjects "know the game". Still it was nice to have the game explained and the rationale behind it.
The pioneers of this type of thinking, a mix between psychology and economics were Khaneman and Tverskry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Tversky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kahneman
Film: Inception directed by Christopher Nolan
This is a film that depicts the world of peoples dreams - and where a new kind of fraud can be committed, that of planting an idea in the dreamers head by appearing in their dream and altering the course of events.
The plot of this film is both clever and complex - I really liked the area it was describing and that was highly original. But the plot is complicated and quite layered, which means I will have to watch again to fully understand it.
But having said that a really engaging film with some great action sequences.
The plot of this film is both clever and complex - I really liked the area it was describing and that was highly original. But the plot is complicated and quite layered, which means I will have to watch again to fully understand it.
But having said that a really engaging film with some great action sequences.
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