China Trip #3: Hong Kong

I have now been awake 32 hours and sleep is going to overtake me soon. This is my way of staving off jet lag. We'll see if it works tomorrow. I will certainly sleep well tonight.
Apart from my lift from the airport to the hotel being 2hrs late, nothing has gone wrong at all. When a driver did turn up (I'm blaming nobody for this) he was very polite. His 7-seater limo was geet lush. We could, however, have so easily got off on the wrong foot.
As I climbed in he asked "You wanna wink?". Well, no, I didn't, as it happens. Random exercise involving one eye...(?) Or maybe I misheard. "Pardon?" said I. "You wanna wink?" Bugger. I hadn't misheard. I thus assumed that winking was a local custom. So I summoned up my best wink (right eye; left eye is nowhere near as good; long story) and whilst doing it said "Go on then."
He then gave me a drink. Lovely, chilled water it was.
Went down without touching the sides.

China Trip #2: Dubai

This could be Rotterdam or anywhere... as the song goes.
It is sanitary white and spotless. If it isn't being cleaned it has just been cleaned; everywhere.
I am writing this in Dubai, Terminal 3, Gate 226 (they have lots of other gates too).
It is coming up to 1.30am and my flight leaves at 3.15am. I need a drink. The chunky Kit-Kat I substituted for a drink now feels like a bad idea. I am full of sugar, dog-tired and very thirsty. It is like being a chronic diabetic.
We flew through some amazing storms to get here and they suspended landings for over an hour. The scene on the Forward Camera (Channel 17 on my personal TV in the back of the seat in front) was awesome! We arrived only moments after the rain had stopped. Everywhere was drenched.
The desert will bloom tomorrow.
But I'll be in Hong Kong (via Bangkok).

China Trip #1: Newcastle International Airport

Time is standing still. On a much shorter scale the two minutes that must elapse before you can open your washer door are like this. Endless. 105 minutes in the departure lounge. 6300 seconds. I will count them all. Twice.
Fortunately, eventually, nature calls. My over heavy bag and I are travelling together alone. This is tricky at times. One of those times is now. Heading towards a urinal in a completely deserted toilet it occurs to me that the whole "which urinal?" problem is irrelevant at this precise moment. Phew! The hours... Anyway, on second inspection I decide against. There is a lot of splashage and my bag is very heavy to keep over my shoulder out of the puddles and... well, you know. So I head for a cubicle. Designed for poos. A poobicle.
The first has a smashed lock. I discover this after a struggle involving a 15 point turn with a heavy bag to face the door. The next has an inoperable lock. I can't see why but I'm no sanitary equipment operational engineer. The third looks like a shrine to the late Bobby Sands, IRA hunger-striker and dirty protest supremo. The fourth is a work in progress to emulate the third. I give up and go to the 16th. It is fine. My coat is hung on a hook that is there. My bag helps keep the door shut. I check the seat, then the floor. Dry, dry. Well, today is looking up. I sit. The gigantic Kimberley-Clark loo roll dispenser makes sitting vertically an impossibility. What were they expecting? Dysentery at Newcastle Airport? Maybe these loo rolls are meant to last the expected life of the airport. And then some.
Finished, I dried my hands using an air blower that could strip flesh from bones. It doesn't dry your hands; it blows the water off. The perma-damp wall sports a lovely commonwealth of the black mould aspergillus niger along each line of grouting, immune to the casual wipe of the cleaner's cloth.
Back in the departure lounge I decide on a Ritazza latte (large). Pronounced "lah-tay" all over the country but "la'ee" with a voiceless glottal plosive at the ' mark in Newcastle. Either way, it was very pleasant. Well worth an arm and a leg.
Got to go. My flight has just been called.

The Great Graduate Rip-Off

Graduating soon? Some advice for you.

The stated aim of our beloved Government is to have 50% of the UK population with university degrees. To do this they created lots of "new" universities from the old polytechnics and then proceeded to cram students in. Of course, students need qualifications. To make sure enough people pass, the A-Level has been getting steadily easier*. It is now so devalued that nobody actually believes they are worth anything (which is a shame for those that have them). But if you can't handle A-Levels there are all sorts of alternatives: BTEC, GNVQ, HEFC - just about any combination of four letters you can imagine.

Now here's the question. Assuming that one of the big reasons people go to university is to train up for a job at the end of their degree, are we now genuinely expected to believe that 50% of the jobs out there in UK Ltd. require a degree? Walk down your high street. Do half of those manning the shops need a degree? What about the factories? Building sites? Transport? Service industries? Are we really saying that half of these jobs require degrees?

Of course not. Stop being silly.

So why are we cramming people into university? Well, here is my take on it.

If we get half of our 18-21 year-olds into university that is a hell of a lot of dole we don't have to find, apprenticeships we don't have to create and opportunity we needn't worry about. Then, when we've got them into university we charge them for the "privilege". £3000 in fees (due to rise steeply). So a tax (clearly) of £9000 for a 3-year degree. Then there is £3500 per year in loans (government backed). So, a government loan of £10500 or so across the three years to be paid back as soon as you cross a very low threshold. Those graduating this year are looking at starting their working lives with around £20000 in debt and probably a lot more. What a rip-off! Look at our economy. It is an unmitigated mess with the opportunity for job-seekers shrinking by the minute. If you do get a job and actually manage to get a decent salary they will tax you more. Heads you lose, tails you lose.

My advice?

Emigrate.

Go to a country that values a UK degree. Plenty do. You won't have to pay back the 20 grand so you can have your education for free and then start a new life in a country that values your education. What a deal!

Do it. You know you want to.

*Hotly denied. Therefore true.

Rainbows

This time of the year is a fabulous time to switch on the "science" light in young minds. March and April are littered with rainbows. Next time you are out and about in the showers, have a really good look at a rainbow.

Things to look for...

The colours are staggeringly pretty. We don't see Red-Orange-Yellow-Green-Blue-Indigo-Violet. Victorian poppycock. We see deep red, orange-red, yellow (a lot), a thin green zone, cyan, blue and violet. The colours aren't distinct. They melt into one another. Inside the bow it is much brighter than outside. Outside the main bow there is often a secondary bow, much fainter, where the colour order is reversed. There may be some other bands of colour too. If the sun is low in the sky the bow will be very high, and vice versa. You never need sunglasses when you are looking at a rainbow. The sun is shining on the back of your head. Evening rainbows are much redder than midday rainbows. The pot of gold is the illumination of the ground where the bow meets the earth. You can also get rainbows at night. Ghostly moonbows; best around full moon.

Show your children. "See" rather than "glance". After a lifetime of being immersed in science I still love seeing rainbows. They replenish my love of physics.

Pigs in the Trough

There are few things less surprising than corrupt MPs. Tony McNulty is the latest. Although he quite rightly points out that he hasn't broken any rules it is worth remembering that - in their own countries - neither did Stalin or Hitler. Okay, so he isn't in their league but it really stinks when the "Right Honourable Member" is plainly on the fiddle. Irritatingly, MPs are amongst the highest paid in the country. Top 5%, I think. They always bleat on that they would earn much more in industry or commerce. Well bugger off and earn it! Let's see you do it.
Most of our MPs are career politicians. They have done very little outside politics and they learn, from a very early age, how to fiddle the system. The House is geared around fiddles. They can ask for £250, with no paperwork, on any day they like to take a visitor out to lunch. I have screeds of paperwork to fill in every time I buy a text book on Amazon.
They have systematically denatured our democratic system. The ONLY thing I would like to see Cameron and his mob achieve is the cleaning up of Parliament. Hercules managed to clean the Augean stables in a single day. I will gladly kneel at Cameron's feet if he cleans up Westminster in one term of office.

Alcohol: Pricing per Unit

To listen to the Puritan Kakistocracy's Chief Quack you would be forced to conclude that we are a nation of binge drinkers. We most certainly are not. A tiny minority, less than 1%, do the whole binge drinking thing. So basically the lie we are being told this time is that alcohol is too cheap so we should make it expensive to stop binge drinking. What about the 99% of us who have done nothing wrong? Oh yes, we pay too. So it's just a tax then? Well... Yes. Will it curb binge drinking? Well... No. Not a chance.
The irony is that a 50p per unit pricing system will almost certainly increase binge drinking. It is self-evident that binge drinking happens in public; in pubs. Since these places already charge much more than 50p per unit they will be more or less immune to the Quack's Tax (© JAT 2009). The remaining few who binge at home (if, indeed, anybody does) will thus be driven into pubs to binge there. The whole scheme might put a lot of off-licences out of business, but the publicans will love it.

Dear Puritans: Prohibition in the USA. Go read up about it.