Smog's Blog

Are there any engineers in The House?

smog — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 22:37:55 +0000

The BBC reports that

The Italian government’s credit rating has been slashed by Moody’s from Aa2 to A2 with a negative outlook.

The ratings agency blamed a “material increase in long-term funding risks for the euro area”, due to lost confidence in eurozone government debts.

To anyone with any sort of engineering background this is as clear example as it is possible to have of a positive feedback loop leading to hunting oscillation. And the answer in this case is equally clear – break the loop and then, if it is certain that controlled feedback has some value, remake it with some appropriate hysteresis in place.

Breaking the loop means simply shutting down the ratings agencies – any useful purpose they may once have served is now vastly outweighed by the damage they are doing through providing this feedback mechanism. I would suggest also simply banning short selling for a period – this too is clearly a major contributor to hunting oscillation. Once the markets have reached a more stable state, and after a period of careful thought, then some elements of positive feedback could be reintroduced, with appropriate regulatory controls.

Sadly, with governments staffed by lawyers and under the sway of the gambling bankers I fear this is unlikely to happen. It’s a great shame that there aren’t sufficient people of a rational scientific or engineering background in government.

Beware…

smog — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 17:32:27 +0000

Not the Hong Kong Sign-Writing Department’s best effort…

I think they just did!

Racism in the SCMP

smog — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 23:46:06 +0000

I was surprised, and not a little saddened, to read the racist views of Alvin Sallay in the SCMP on Sunday when writing about the Hong Kong ladies cricket team:

Godiva is one of nine Chinese girls in the 15-strong women’s squad. The rest are non-Chinese, but all are united in the fact that they qualify for the games by being born in Hong Kong and holding SAR passports.

This is a quite outrageous sentiment. People who are born in Hong Kong and are citizens of China holding Hong Kong passports must be “Chinese”. What else could they be?

If Mr Sallay had written:

There are eight Englishmen in the 11 man England team. The rest (Monty Panesar, Owais Shah, Adil Rashid) are non-English but all are united in the fact that they qualify for the team by being born in England and holding British passports.

in a respectable journal then I hope that a decent sub would have got rid of it, but if it crept through to publication then it would have caused an outcry, triggered apologies and quite possibly have resulted in the author looking for a new job. Racist views such as this are really not acceptable in a civilised society and in what laughingly claims to be “Asia’s World City”.

It was particularly dispiriting to read this at the end of a day I had spent up in the New Territories as part of the support team for the Unison Hikathon. Unison, headed by the indefatigable Fermi Wong, really have their work cut out trying to make Hong Kong an inclusive, non-racist society, particularly when even people from within the ethnic minorities they are trying to help, such as Alvin Sallay, are so openly racist.

Sex

smog — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 09:10:27 +0000

It’s been a bit quiet here – sorry about that: I’ve been spending a lot of time leading groups of people around the hiking trails of Hong Kong, and just haven’t been inspired to write.

But one blog that I follow (and another that has somewhat infrequent postings) is Sexual Intelligence by Dr Marty Klein. There’s lots of good and very sensible stuff there, and his latest post on the way popular magazines over-simplify and pigeonhole sex and sex roles seemed particularly good to me. Talking of being interviewed by a junior staffer for one such magazine (I take it to be Cosmo, although he doesn’t name it and I’m not an expert on women’s mags) he says:

When she asked “What do men think when they see a new woman naked for the first time?” I told the truth: “Wow!” She thought I was either putting her on or simply misinformed.I dunno—do you really have to be a guy to understand that amazing experience?

For me that’s certainly accurate, as far as I can remember.

But it’s been a while – any volunteers to help test if this still holds true?

Some sanity on the question of risk

smog — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:21:55 +0000

From the Winton programme for the public understanding of risk at my alma mater comes this post from David Spiegelhalter highlighting an excellent new report in the UK about the risks and benefits of kids undertaking outdoor adventure programmes. It certainly puts to rest a few negative myths about the sort of “adventure training” that I took part in when I was at school and which I think is extremely valuable for any child.

I particularly like this set of data:

Accidental deaths, children under 16, England and Wales, 2006
Road transport 114 Drowning/choking/suffocation 69 Fire/flames 24 Falls 16 Rail/Water/Air transport 4 Poisonings 4 Other accidents 33
TOTAL 264
Average fatalities per year on activities during school visits 1

Whilst the focus is very much on the UK and its legal and educational system, the underlying message is clear: let the kids get out there and have fun!

Government by Fear (again)

smog — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:47:50 +0000

With thanks to Bruce Schneier for highlighting it in his blog, I must recommend this essay by Tom Engelhardt for getting to the essence of the US Government’s “management by fear” approach to terrorism. Sadly, many other governments seem to follow their lead.

They just don’t get it, do they?

smog — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:30:08 +0000

On viewing the plans for the new Legco accommodation (in part of what used to be the beautiful Victoria Harbour) Emily Lau commented “I think it’s better sound-proofing the room because it will be disturbing if there are protests outside”.

Oh dear. Democracy? Who needs it, eh?

Spike gets the hump

smog — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 07:11:25 +0000

I don’t normally indulge in meta-blogging (blogging about bloggers) on the grounds that it could easily lead to disappearing up my own (rather sizeable) fundament. But I’ll make an exception this once, just to call out the hypocrisy in Spike, of HongkieTown, since he seems to have got upset with me doing it on his site and now declines to post any more comments from me. He has also removed the link to my site from his, believing perhaps, but wrongly, that I share his need to have blog hits to massage my ego.

The facts of the case are simple: this week he posted an article decrying the fact that a driver who killed someone whilst under the influence of alcohol got a relatively light sentence. And yet less than 3 weeks earlier he posted quite happily about his own drinking and then driving home from Wanchai (“I only had two” – tell that to the judge!).

As far as I, and, I think, most other people today are concerned, there’s only one acceptable level of drinking and driving, and that’s zero. But until people like Spike believe that too we’d better be careful on the streets between Wanchai and Sai Kung – you never know when he might be out there having “only had a couple”.

Med Stars, Gold Coast – just don’t!

smog — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 04:09:14 +0000

We made a rare mistake in choice of post-hike refreshment this week having walked up the Yuen Tun Country Trail to the point where it intersects the Maclehose, then 10km of the old Maclehose trail along the banks of the Tai Lam Chung reservoir, and finally down to the Gold Coast. Here we had a number of choices, from Ebenezer’s and McDonald’s through Med Stars, Chili’n'Spice up to Le Bristol. We decided we were a bit grubby for Le Bristol but then were tempted into Med Stars by the fact that bottled beer was $25 and 500ml of draft Carlsberg $27.

But that’s about all this place has going for it. My companion ordered a minestrone soup and a prawn and avocado salad, and I opted for the “roast lamb in pitta bread”. The soup was described by him as “straight out of the can”, and the best that could be said for the salad (the least bad bit of the meal) was that the prawns were “OK”. The bread served with them was stale. The vinegar in the oil and vinegar offered tasted more like malt vinegar than balsamic. My pitta was one of the horrible fluffy ones they have in ParknShop, and the filling was 90% lettuce with a very small portion of some sort of processed meat that might have once originated in a sheep, but I couldn’t be sure. Since we were still a little peckish we compounded our mistake by ordering a bowl of “steak chips” and some deep-fried mozzarella sticks. The chips were hugely over-salted, and the oil used to fry the mozzarella was clearly not fresh. The bill with about half a dozen beers came to $503.

So, in short, avoid this place unless all you want is the beer, and, frankly, since there are places to sit anyway you could do that cheaper by going to the 7-eleven for take-outs.

There don’t appear to be many walks that would end up at Gold Coast, but just in case I find myself there again, does anyone have any recommendations for where we should have gone for some post-hike grub and reasonably priced beer?

The Globe – it’s back, at last

smog — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:49:05 +0000

The Globe finally got its new liquor licence for the new premises today, so this afternoon quite a crowd descended on the place. It’s in the space that used to be Le Tire Bouchon in Graham Street, just a few steps up from Hollywood Road and only 100 yards or so from where it used to be.

First impressions were that it is really trying to be something quite different from the old Globe – the idea now is very definitely “gastropub” whereas the food in the old place was, erm, basic, to be kind. The new environment is a very big space, and very light. Not your traditional dark wood pub at all. The bar is in the middle of the room, with plenty of seating around, plus four-seater booths down one wall. At the far end is an open kitchen and a few tables for dining. And there’s also an semi-separate “lounge” area with big sofas and a big screen TV which would be great for reserving for a gang of 10 or so mates to watch sports events. There are other slightly smaller ones dotted around the bar, and according to the staff they have as many NOW boxes as screens, so each one can be showing a different channel if that’s what people want.

Of course The Globe is based around good beer and they had an excellent selection in, although the list on the website is currently way out of date, and, unfortunately, they didn’t have any Typhoon T8, which I haven’t tried yet, but which I think is the only hand-pulled real ale regularly available in Hong Kong. They also have a much longer wine list than they used to, and a very nice and reasonably-priced looking menu which I will definitely be in to sample soon. Apparently the chef has moved over from a reasonably flash hotel and they expect good things.

So on first try, it was good, with just two comments – when the bar is empty the acoustics are very hard, which means that even if people are sitting at opposite ends of the room talking they can be heard throughout the bar. And secondly the price list advertises “pints” of beer but they don’t serve pints at all – they serve 500ml (and then for many of the beers that includes a pretty hefty head as well). This does disappoint me for a so-called British pub, and it annoys me that the weights & measures people in this town don’t get to grips with this – it happens in a lot of places.

But other than that, this is one of only a very few places with a good range of beer in town, and now with added food aiming at a high quality it should definitely be on everyone’s list to try. So get down there and wet the head of Toby’s new baby!