Bad Ads

It’s the 50th anniversary of the Advertising Standards Authority in the UK this year – the ASA, for anyone who doesn’t know, is a quasi-governmental organisation that was set up in 1962 to police the wacky and wonderful world of advertising and to crack down on any ads found to be offensive, misleading, or otherwise inappropriate. To celebrate their birthday, the Telegraph has helpfully released a Top 10 (or should that be Bottom 10?) of most complained-about advertisments in the UK (listed here.) The reasons these got into trouble vary – some were violent, one depicted nudity, two were disliked on religious grounds – one for discriminating against Catholics and another against non-Christians. Coming in at number 9 (with a total of 939 complaints) is DECC’s Act on CO2 campaign, aka “Bedtime Stories” – I complained about this one myself, as it was aimed at scaring little children witless about extreme weather events caused by people doing things like switching on lights. But the number one Bad Ad was KFC’s 2005 Chicken Zinger sequence, with call centre workers singing with their mouths full, which weighed in at 1671 complaints (not upheld!) Yes, the most notorious ad in recent British history was one which showed no sex, violence, religion or climate change but some young women singing through mouthfuls of fast food. I don’t entirely know what to make of that.

Dodging Bullets

The Earth has had close encounters with two asteroids this week, as per this Wired article – a blue-whale sized one passing at a distance of 32,000 miles on Monday, and then a minivan sized one that came even closer on Tuesday, at a distance of 8950 miles. There was no real danger from objects that small, which had they collided with us would have burned up safely in the atmosphere, our natural shield against space weather. Mind you, Monday’s asteroid (2012 KP24) was 23 metres long, and if it had been double that length, it would have had roughly the dimensions of the beast that dropped from the skies during the Pleistocene epoch, about 50,000 years ago, to gouge out what is now Meteor Crater in Arizona. No dinosaur killer, but definitely a life-changing experience for anyone who happened to have been in the vicinity. Tuesday’s object was tinier, but its name has an uncomfortable resonance – 2012 KT42 – the KT Boundary being the old label for the iridium-rich stratum of rock that marks the monster asteroid impact which brought the Cretaceous Era to its close in dramatic style. However, commentator cui bono on Watts Up With That had a different perspective on the matter. “Some see a threat. Some see $100,000,000 of precious metals hurtling by.” Good thinking!

Enter the Dragon

So far, so good. The ISS’s flexible Canadarm2 robotic appendage has managed to grab SpaceX’s incoming Dragon resupply vessel and bring it in for docking. Things have certainly moved on from the old days of June 1997, when a similar sort of vehicle veered out of control and bashed into the ageing Mir space station, sending it into a dangerous spin. Success! Now the people up in orbit have their fresh laundry, potato chips and other good things that make life worth living in space. Of course, the mission is only half over, as the Dragon will still need to survive the journey back to Earth and down to California with all the empties – but that’s a story for another day.

“Scared to Death”

I maintain a website called My Transcript Box, where I sometimes upload transcripts made from audio and video found on the internet. My most recent one is of an excerpt from BBC Radio 4′s Today programme, broadcast yesterday morning (Friday 25th May) – it’s also being discussed on the ever-excellent Bishop Hill website. In this programme, Professor Nina Fedoroff, who is President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, says that she is “scared to death” that fewer people now “believe in climate change”. Which is an interesting thing to say, given that she has already commented unfavourably on the persistence of belief systems “especially if they’re tinged with fear”.

Later in the excerpt, a plant scientist prepares to reach out to sceptics of GM technology, in order to try and win them over and prevent them from trashing his experiments. Opponents of GM foods include, of course, many greens who definitely believe in climate change, and who the BBC would not, presumably, want to chuck into the “anti-science” sin bin, along with U.S. Republicans, assorted right-wingers and us evil climate sceptics. So would these greens fall into the nasty “anti-rationalist” category, or would they just belong to the less reprehensible “worried, because they don’t really understand what we’re doing” camp? Sadly the report ends and we never go there. A discussion for another time, maybe?

Dragon Rendezvous

The Dragon is on its way – SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from its Cape Canaveral launch pad on Tuesday, and now an unmanned capsule containing food, water, spare pyjamas, etc., approaches its target. This has been a good year for space news, so far – last month there was the announcement about asteroid mining missions by Planetary Resources, and this week sees the first time a private company has launched a vehicle to dock with the ISS. Small steps for now but harbingers of giant leaps to come, as the human footprint expands offworld – that is my hope, anyway.

“Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.”

There’s a project under way at Cornell University to perfect a 3D food printer that creates meals in layers made up of countless numbers of infinitesimal “dots”, although it is unlikely to be commercially available – or generally affordable – for a while yet. At the moment, the lab prints food using syringes full of gloop of different kinds (“raw food”, if you like) but they’re working on “food inks” – which are hydrocolloids, also known as gums – that can be blended to make cookies or cheeseburgers, much as black, yellow, cyan and magenta tones are combined in an inkjet printer.

The Guardian recently reported on it and you can see why some Guardianistas might approve, as it fits in with the “sustainability” mantra, having the potential to eliminate much of the supply chain behind every packet of chocolate Hobnobs bought in Tesco. I like the idea for different reasons, however. Not being a particularly enthusiastic cook, the notion of dialling up lunch (rather than messing around with saucepans) really appeals. And it’s a baby step closer to Star Trek’s replicators! Full-blown molecular nanotechnology will be the ultimate answer, of course, but this looks like a promising start.

Faster Blogging

I have been very busy and haven’t had much time to blog, this year. So here’s an experiment – shorter posts, even smaller pictures and (hopefully) more frequent updates. There has been no drought of subject matter, after all. I want to write about SpaceX, food printing, the planet Venus, sustainability and the price of chocolate oranges. I want to write book reviews – The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley, Quiet by Susan Cain, The Departure by Neal Asher. And when all else fails, there’s the weather – and, of course, the great climate change caper. Let the fun begin!