Or right

Depending on your political persuasion.

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Women never cease to amaze me

I'm at the Ralph Lauren outlet store in Kittery ME when some flossy I've never seen before comes up to me and says "Excuse me, but does this jacket make my arse look big?"
(She actually said "ass". Americans tend to say "Ass")

All I said was "Well, you've got a big bum to start with (it was so big you could have safely landed a helicopter on it...) and that jacket unfortunately does nothing to hide it. So, yes, it certainly does" and then she started wailing hysterically.

I don't think she bought it....




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Why I hate Borders

They don't stock The New Yorker in their Portland ME store
They've never heard of Wired magazine
They have no idea that Springsteen's "Darkness" has been rereleased as a 3DVD/3CD set
Their free WiFi is slower than dial-up
They're going to take over Barnes and Noble and dumb it down to their level

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Glass half empty? Glass half full?

Glass empty.

Bring me another one.

Warren's Lobster House, Kittery, Maine

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There's something seriously wrong...

...when bottled water cost €6.40 a litre and vodka costs €12 a litre.

This could turn me into a drinker....

Seen at Frankfurt airport

Christ, it's HUGE....

....said the actress to the Bishop.

Never seen one this close before.
(Said jb to himself)
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Don't you just LOVE the eloquence?

Not to mention the biting sarcasm.

After the UK banking trade association wrote to Cambridge University to have a student's master's thesis censored because it documented a well-known flaw in the chip-and-PIN system, Cambridge's Ross Anderson sent this delightful note in reply:

Your letter of December 1st to Stephen Jolly has only this week been passed to me to deal with. I’m afraid it contains a number of misconceptions and factual errors.


First, your letter was not correctly addressed. The University of Cambridge is a self-governing community of scholars rather than a corporate hierarchy.
Omar’s work was not ‘published by the university’ as you claim but by him. If you wanted him to take his thesis offline, you should have asked him.
However, given that the material on the No-PIN attack appears on my page as well as Omar’s and Steven’s, and given that Mr Jolly passed the matter to me to deal with, I expect that I can save us all a lot of time by answering directly.




Second, you seem to think that we might censor a student’s thesis, which is lawful and already in the public domain, simply because a powerful interest finds it inconvenient. This shows a deep misconception of what universities are and how we work. Cambridge is the University of Erasmus, of Newton, and of Darwin; censoring writings that offend the powerful is offensive to our deepest values. Thus even though the decision to put the thesis online was Omar’s, we have no choice but to back him. That would hold even if we did not agree with the material! Accordingly I have authorised the thesis to be issued as a Computer Laboratory Technical Report. This will make it easier for people to find and to cite, and will ensure that its presence on our web site is permanent.


Third, Omar’s thesis does not contain any new information on the No-PIN vulnerability. That was discovered by Steven Murdoch, Saar Drimer and me in 2009, disclosed responsibly to the industry, and published in February this year. It is not expected that an MPhil thesis contain novel scientific work. Omar’s work describes and publishes the design of a platform for investigating and testing EMV generally and its primary uses are defensive: first, to enable customers to monitor transactions if they wish, and second to enable merchants and banks to test their own systems to see whether their system suppliers are telling the truth about security. I note you have announced the purchase of a terminal communications monitor from Barnes International. Omar’s device, which I understand he also offers for sale to industry firms in a private capacity, is for just that – monitoring terminal communications.


Fourth, he did not make available the source code for the No-PIN attack. Steven Murdoch, Saar Drimer and I did that in our research paper earlier this year. Omar did not include that code in his thesis.


Fifth, you say ‘Concern was expressed to us by the police that the student was allowed to falsify a transaction in a shop in Cambridge without first warning the merchant’. I fail to understand the basis for this. The banks in France had claimed (as you did) that their systems were secure; a French TV programme wished to discredit this claim (as Newsnight discredited yours); and I understand that Omar did a No-PIN transaction on the card of a French journalist with the journalist’s consent and on camera. At no time was there any intent to commit fraud; the journalist’s account was debited in due course in accordance with his mandate and the merchant was paid. It is perfectly clear that no transaction was falsified in any material sense. I would not consider such an experiment to require a reference to our ethics committee. By that time the Newsnight programme had appeared and the No-PIN attack was entirely in the public domain. The French television programme was clearly in the public interest, as it made it more difficult for banks in France to defraud their customers by claiming that their systems were secure when they were not.


You complain that our work may undermine public confidence in the payments system. What will support public confidence in the payments system is evidence that the banks are frank and honest in admitting its weaknesses when they are exposed, and diligent in effecting the necessary remedies. Your letter shows that, instead, your member banks do their lamentable best to deprecate the work of those outside their cosy club, and indeed to censor it.


Nonetheless, I am delighted to note your firm statement that the attack will no longer work and pleased that the industry has been finally been able to deal with this security issue, albeit some considerable time after the original disclosure back in 2009.

Yours sincerely,
Ross Anderson

Dream Jobs That You're Glad You Didn't Pursue

Scott C. Reynolds is a collector of broken career dreams. This column examines the life that might have been had he, or you, followed through.

Good stuff

The (j)b's knees

Bumped into my orthopaedic consultant in the supermarket just now.

"How are you?" he asked.

I asked him whether an answer would involve the usual consultancy fees or whether he was just being polite.

He laughed.

Just.

Bet he's a social climber, though

"

"I fly with a low cost airline and happy as Larry to have a job as a pilot.

It's a great job and I earn a descent living.

I work hard but before I started flying I worked just as hard."

Snow chains go on WHICH wheels...?

Pure art

Snow removal, UK style

Although someone did comment, saying:

Sorry, i find this picture graphically incorrect:

With two 'snow removal executives' at work, there should be at least 4 health and safety inspectors to make sure that any broom is the used to correct way round to prevent injury to bystanders and the general public.

Even though they are in hi-vis, there are no hard hats, the area they are working in is not fenced off, no crash barriers erected and no signage to indicate the risk of slipping, and signage to indicate the risk of tripping on the 'risk of slipping' signage. etc etc etc.

Just in case anyone's interested...

..why I've been listening to EPTAS on a daily basis since I bought it in Los Angeles on 4 December 1971?

Rod Stewart's Every Picture Tells a Story is the greatest rock & roll recording of the last ten years. It is a mature tale of adolescence, full of revelatory detail (Rod combing his hair a thousand different ways in front of the mirror), and it contains the only reference to the Dreyfus case in the history of rock. It is also hilarious, and one of the friendliest pieces of music ever recorded. It is rock & roll of utterly unbelievable power, and for most of its five minutes and fifty-eight seconds that power is supplied by nothing more than drums, bass, acoustic guitar and Rod's voice. Mick Waller should have received the Nobel Prize -- in physics, of course -- for his demolition work at the end of the first verse; Martin Quittenton's acoustic guitar playing is well beyond any human award -- for that matter, it is beyond human ken. John Lennon once said he wanted to make a record as good as "Whole Lot of Shakin' Going On"; Rod Stewart did it.

- Greil Marcus, Rolling Stone, 12/15/77. 

Linguistics

Q. What do you call an elevator full of intelligent, slim, softly spoken people?

A. A lift.

I do like recipes that call for "a handful" of this and "a handful of that"

This is really yummy one, found in The Guardian

4 lamb shanks
 (Kleinmarkethalle in Frankfurt from the Turkish guy next to where the horse butcher used to be)
A handful of plain flour

120ml extra virgin olive oil

2 red onions, peeled and chopped
2 celery sticks (with leaves), chopped

2 carrots, peeled and sliced

2 garlic cloves, roughly chopped

150ml white wine
 (or a bit more....)
2 bay leaves

2 tins of chopped plum tomatoes
 (I use just one)
600ml chicken or lamb stock
2 handfuls of black olives, pitted

450g pappardelle (Kesslers in the Altstadt in Mainz)

For the gremolata
1 bunch flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped 

1 lemon, finely zested

1-2 garlic cloves, very finely pasted

1 Preheat the oven to 150C/gas 2. Select a heavy-based, ovenproof pan that will hold the lamb shanks quite closely together. Season the shanks and put them in a colander. Throw the flour over them and shake it around over the sink.

2 Heat half of the oil in the pan and sear the shanks on all sides until golden brown. Take the meat out and set aside. Fry the onions, celery, carrot and garlic, stirring from time to time. After 5 minutes, turn the heat down and cover.

3 After 10–15 minutes of on-off stirring the veg will have softened nicely. Put the meat back in and add the wine and the bay leaves. Let the wine reduce by a third, then tip in the tomatoes, along with enough stock so that the liquid just about covers the shanks.

4 Add the olives and season.

5 Pour in the rest of the oil, cover and place in the oven for 2-3 hours, until the meat chunks are coming away from the bone. Take the dish out of the oven and let it sit for 15 minutes with the lid on.

6 Cook the pasta according to the directions.

7 To make the gremolata, mix the chopped parsley, lemon zest, garlic and some seasoning.

8 Drain the pasta, return it to the pan and ladle in all of the veg and juice to coat it nicely.

9 Toss gently and tong into a serving dish. Put the shanks on top, add a ladle or two more of the sauce and sprinkle with gremolata.



Serves 4

Speechless....almost

Just one word.

Phenomenal

Gender Benders, Grammatically Speaking

From the Washington Post Style Invitation, in which it was postulated that English should have male and female nouns, and readers were asked to assign a gender to nouns of their choice and explain their reason.

The best submissions:

SWISS ARMY KNIFE—male, because even though it appears useful for a wide variety of things, it spends most of its time just opening bottles.

KIDNEYS—female, because they always go to the bathroom in pairs.

TIRE—male, because it goes bald and often is over-inflated.

HOT AIR BALLOON—male, because to get it to go anywhere you have to light a fire under it… and, of course, there's the hot air part.

SPONGES—female, because they are soft and squeezable and retain water.

WEB PAGE—female, because it is always getting hit on.

SHOE—male, because it is usually unpolished, with its tongue hanging out.

COPIER—female, because once turned off, it takes a while to warmup… AND… because it is an effective reproductive device when the right buttons are pushed… AND because it can wreak havoc when the wrong buttons are pushed.

ZIPLOC BAGS—male, because they hold everything in, but you can always see right through them.

SUBWAY—male, because it uses the same old lines to pick people up.

HOURGLASS—female, because over time, the weight shifts to the bottom.

HAMMER—male, because it hasn't evolved much over the last 5,000 years, but it's handy to have around.

REMOTE CONTROL—female… Ha!… you thought I'd say male. But consider, it gives man pleasure, he'd be lost without it, and while he doesn't always know the right buttons to push, he keeps trying.

Drugs for Women

With the introduction of Viagra to fix a perennial male problem, a British pharmaceutical company is working to redress the balance:

MIRRORCILLIN - A 5cc dose enables a woman to walk past mirrors for up to
four hours without pausing once.

STOPPANAGGIN - Gives women a vague feeling of contentment towards their
spouse/boyfriend.

COSMOPOLIRA - Doubles female intelligence, allowing "facts" in trash
lifestyle magazines to be disputed.

LOGICON - Trials showed that females taking this were able to follow a
proposition through to its logical conclusion, and argue effectively
without being diverted into non-relevant postulates such as "you don't
love me any more".

PARKATRON - 72% of women taking this were able to safely reverse park a
Ford Fiesta into a space only 12 metres long; 54% achieved this in under
15 minutes.

MAGNATACK - Uniquely distorts the cornea, making certain shapes appear
much larger than in reality - no practical use for this drug has yet been
found.

WARDROBIA - Clinical trials show that almost 23% of women taking this drug
can safely walk past a sale notice, and an amazing 42% stayed within their
credit limit.

BEERINTULIN - Engenders a female desire to bring her spouse/boyfriend
alcoholic beverages and snacks during televised sports.

I think they're wrong

Some budding scientists in Mainz have come up with this stuff and I think they're on the wrong track. 

They say:

V₂O₅ nanowires exhibit an intrinsic catalytic activity towards classical peroxidase substrates such as 2,2-azino-bis(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) (ABTS) and 3,3,5,5,-tetramethylbenzdine (TMB) in the presence of H₂O₂. These V₂O₅₂O₅ nanowires mediate the oxidation of ABTS in the presence of H₂O₂ with a turnover frequency (k_cat) of 2.5 × 10³ s⁻¹. The K_M values of the V₂O₅ nanowires for ABTS oxidation (0.4 μM) and for H₂O₂ (2.9 μM) at a pH of 4.0 are significantly smaller than those reported for horseradish peroxidases (HRP) and V-HPO indicating a higher affinity of the substrates for the V₂O₅ nanowire surface. Based on the kinetic parameters and similarity with vanadium-based complexes a mechanism is proposed where an intermediate metastable peroxo complex is formed as the first catalytic step. The nanostructured vanadium-based material can be re-used up to 10 times and retains its catalytic activity in a wide range of organic solvents (up to 90%) making it a promising mimic of peroxidase catalysts. nanowires show an optimum reactivity at a pH of 4.0 and the catalytic activity is dependent on the concentration. The Michaelis-Menten kinetics of the ABTS oxidation over these nanowires reveals a behavior similar to that of their natural vanadium-dependent haloperoxidase (V-HPO) counterparts.


I've been studying this field for a number of years and what they haven't taken into account is the following:

Self-assembly of adsorbed species is markedly influenced by weak mutual interactions and the local strain of the surface induced by the adsorption. Nano-structuring taking place on the surface is well explained by the notion of a quasi-molecule provided by the reaction of surface atoms with adsorbed species. Self-assembly of quasi-molecules by weak internal bonding provides quasi-compounds on a specific surface. Various nano-structuring phenomena are discussed: (i) self-assembly of absorbed molecules and atoms; (ii) self-assembly of quasi-compounds; (iii) formation of nano-composite surfaces; (iv) controlled growth of nano-materials on composite surfaces. Nano-structuring processes are not always controlled by energetic feasibility, that is, the formation of nano-composite surface and the growth of nano-particles on surfaces are often controlled by the kinetics. The idea of the “kinetic controlled molding” might be valuable to design nano-materials on surfaces. 

I'll be quite happy to discuss this over a coffee at the Tin Shed on Wheels and set them straight.

They can buy... 

PS
My core area of expertise is a bit different - the effect of micro vortices on  laminar flow over light alloy convex dihedral secondary control surfaces with rotational and reflectional symmetries and the use of stub deflectors to achieve even dispersion.


I just picked up this nano business as I went along....


We could even get Prof Dr Mr Helen along to round off the group with a discussion on the timing of Proterozoic deformation and magmatism in a tectonically reworked orogen.

Should be fun...

Luddite

My electric toothbrush is in my suitcase under a pile of thousands of orphaned bags at Frankfurt airport.

I've been using electric toothbrushes for so long, I'm feeling a bit lost.

I unpacked a Luddite version last night in order to keep Doc Höffler happy and it was confusing to say the least.

I worked out which end went in my mouth, but when I pressed the shaft nothing happened.

I started moving my head from side to side which worked quite well until I starting feeling dizzy, everything went black and I keeled over.

Ms jb (who's in a similar predicament) suggested moving my arm in a horizontal direction.

Works quite well.

Very quiet, too.

Not that I can hear much anyway

&%#* it.....

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Sod it

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Oh dear

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Thinks....

If I'm not in New Orleans, then this could be Frankfurt airport the morning after a snowstorm.
Don't rate my chances of flying on standby today
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Qatar 2022

Apparently McDonalds have already started cashing in on Qatar's hosting the 2022 World Cup by offering a Qatar Pound Burger, with Flies and a Sheik.....

I've always wanted a "Bruce", actually....

Baden-Baden

A gaggle of geese, a nest of rabbits... #11

 

...a shitload of photographs 

Photography by James Merrel shot on location in India for Habitat's Autumn Winter 1994 catalogue