A New Superwheat
You’d think as a coeliac, I would not be in favour of the new superwheat developed at Cambridge as reported on the BBC.
British scientists say they have developed a new type of wheat which could increase productivity by 30%.
The Cambridge-based National Institute of Agricultural Botany has combined an ancient ancestor of wheat with a modern variety to produce a new strain.
But I think this is a victory for traditional high-class science. As I understand it, after hearing the scientist on the radio, the combining of the two plants was done using the sort of methods, that have been used for years. Albeit with some clever seed incubation. No direct manipulation of the genes was involved.
So as this could give a yield increase of 30%, what would happen if these methods were applied to the other staple crops of the world.
Sadly, the problem is that, the Cambridge route doesn’t make any money for the big corporations of this world, who feel that the GM route is much more profitable.
I am not totally against GM, but it has to be used ethically and where it is demonstrated that it the only way to create an important product, such as a new cancer drug.
Odd Stories On The BBC
Perhaps because it is Saturday, four of the most read stories on the BBC, are a bit odd or offbeat.
Thermal invisibility cloak in first demonstration
North Korea’s silent football matches
Turning a scandal into a ‘-gate’
Fake airline pilot ‘landed planes at Gatwick’
Although the science behind the first, may find applications in cooling electronics and I wouldn’t like to be flown by a fake pilot.
Co-op Bank Debt Is Rated Junk
This report, says that the Co-op Bank‘s debt isn’t very highly rated.
I wouldn’t know whether it is going bust or not, but because of its political leanings and links to the Labour Party, I bet that management of the bank, wish that George Osborne wasn’t Chancellor.
What I find strange about the bank, is that why some of my left-leaning friends, who support Labour, bank with other banks, like Lloyds, Barclays or HSBC.
100,000 Downloads And Still Counting
The 3D-printable gun has now been downloaded over a hundred thousand times according to this report on the BBC. Here’s part of the report.
Californian senator Leland Yee said he wanted a law passed to stop the manufacture of 3D-printed guns.
“I plan to introduce legislation that will ensure public safety and stop the manufacturing of guns that are invisible to metal detectors and that can be easily made without a background check,” he said in a statement.
According to Defense Distributed, most of the 100,000 downloads have been in the US, followed by Spain, Brazil, Germany and the UK.
The blueprint has also been uploaded to file-sharing site the Pirate Bay, where it has become the most popular file in the site’s 3D-printing category.
Calls to make such a gun illegal and stop the downloading, will fall on deaf ears. After all to create an illegal gun factory, all you need is a few thousand pounds or dollars to buy a quality 3D printer. Many aspire to have a weapon for personal protection or to settle scores with rivals or neighbours.
This gun is still crude and what worries me is not this gun, but the follow on designs, that will be possible as 3D printing gets more affordable and a lot better.
How long will it be before a crime is committed using a gun, that has been downloaded from the Internet and printed?
Now That Is A Bank Raid!
There are reports from the United States about what must rank as the world’s biggest bank robbery. The story is on France24 here. Here’s the opening paragraph.
Cyber thieves around the world stole $45 million by hacking into debit card companies, lifting withdrawal limits, and helping themselves from cash machines, US authorities said Thursday.
It just shows how you should carefully monitor your bank account.
I think it also shows, that your money is probably safer in an account or securities, where it is working hard. After all, suppose you have money in a deposit account, in the same bank account, as your main current account, a crooked bank employee could perhaps hack your account, move the money to your current account and get his friends to withdraw it from cash machines with forged bank cards. It may seem to be an unlikely scenario, but when the truth comes out from this mega-robbery, it might be only one step away from a scenario the banks believe can’t happen.
A bank is only as secure as its weakest link. As we’ve seen over the last few years, they have found a few of those. But how many more are there?
Keira Knightley Gets It Right
It is reported in the Daily Telegraph, the the judge; sir Paul Coleridge, is praising Keira Knightley for her low key marriage ceremony. Here’s the first bit of the article.
Sir Paul Coleridge said he hoped the marriage, which saw Miss Knightley, 28, driven from the wedding with her new husband in a Renault Clio and guests wearing flip flops, would encourage other young couples to get married without having to worry about spending thousands on lavish ceremonies.
Sir Paul, who has launched the Marriage Foundation, said he felt the costs of weddings in Britain had got out of hand recently, with the average price tag to tie the knot now £20,000.
I can remember C, who was a barrister specialising in sorting out the details of divorces, chuckling as she saw details of the latest celebrity wedding in the papers. often saying, “It won’t last!” I think she said that about the Beckhams, but it was the only case I can remember, where she was wrong.
Our own marriage was a small affair in 1968, on the only glorious day in an awful summer. As it lasted forty years, is there a lesson there?
Are Politicians Stupid?
I’ve just been reading the legislation proposed in the Queen’s Speech today as reported on the BBC web site.
i can’t be against migrants to this country, as go back a couple of hundred years and half my ancestors were living in fear of their lives in Europe. But it was the sentence in the report that said that in future illegal migrants will not get driving licences, that shocked me.
How can they get them now and has it not been made illegal by Parliament? Obviously, not!
Who Will Be The Next Manchester United Manager?
Just watch the betting!
Years ago, I had a friend, who’s since died, who told me that some heavy punters have a direct line to what goes on at Manchester United.
At the moment David Moyes is well ahead on Betfair.
What Shall We Do With The Royal Mail?
I get very little useful mail today and haven’t for about ten years. My friends either, e-mail, text or phone me and all of my banks, utilities are on line. The only important post I get is tickets for various events, I’ve ordered on-line or by telephone and the odd small package delivered by the postman, like my INR test strips.
Most of the rest of the mail is junk usually addressed to the Occupier of my house. Make non-specific junk mail illegal and the Royal Mail would go bust. The worst offenders are estate agents and Virgin Media. I think I’ll get some cards printed, that I can post to the worst offenders, saying they will be charged £50 for wasting my time, if they send anything more.
Incidentally, I do post letters more regularly than I used to, as I have a post box on the corner.
Most of us love the Royal Mail and in rural and sparsely populated areas, I will admit, they do perform a regular social service. But where I live now in Hackney, I wouldn’t even recognise my postman, if I sat next to him in a pub or cafe. We though have a guy, who performs that low-level social service. We have this very accommodating guy, who keeps the streets clean and tidy, with his barrow and he always wishes you a hello and how are you, every time, you meet him on the street.
The real problem, I have is with parcels and packets, delivered by all of the companies and not just Parcelforce and Royal Mail. Usually, they come early in the morning, when I am still here, but often I return to find a card through the door.
Royal Mail/Parcelforce are in a strong position to create a proper on-line tracking service, as they are generally trusted.
You would need to register your name and address on their site, so that if you were getting a parcel delivery, they could send you an e-mail to say it was coming. I know some on-line vendors do this, but it often means logging in to a site and entering a tracking number, which means you have to have on-line skills.
Obviously, you wouldn’t always get an e-mail before it arrived, but you could have standing instructions like leave with number 27 or something similar.
A properly designed system would make it more efficient and probably save the Royal Mail money.
The first courier that gets it right and completes the loop between supplier and customer, will make a fortune and clean up.
Privatisation is not the cure, but augmenting the local link with technology may just be.
Just look at how easy it is to track trains and collect tickets at stations, compared to say ten years ago.
The Dangers Of 3D Printing
I’m a great believer in 3D printing, as it is a technique, that would have helped me greatly in the past, with some of the companies, in which I invested.
But this story, where some idiots in Texas, have designed a gun produced on a 3D printer horrifies me. Their aim seems to be to give everybody an affordable firearm.
But how do you police such a technology as 3D printing?
You can’t! Especially, as in a few years time, it will be one of the mainstays of small scale manufacturing.
The Anonymous Widower 