What I Learnt Today

Coke is good for you!

Smoking is good for you!

Radiation is good for you!

oobject.com has collected some vintage ads claiming dubious outrageous health benefit for the products they advertise. This could never happen now – could it? 🙂

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Seven Miles from Sydney and a Thousand Miles from Care..

Captain Arthur Phillip visited the northern reaches of Port Jackson on January 21st, 1788. He was looking for the best place for a new settlement, having rejected Botany Bay.

He came across a group of aboringines, and “their confidence and manly behaviour made me give the name of Manly Cove to this place”.

A monument marks the site

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Phillip may not remember Manly fondly. In 1790, on another visit, Phillip was speared in the shoulder by one of these ‘manly’ aborigines.

From the early 1820s settlement began in Manly Cove. Small boats was the only practical way of getting there – it was a few days overland from the settlement in Sydney Cove.

http://manlyaustralia.com writes

In the 1850s, Henry Gilbert Smith, an English businessman living in Sydney, saw that Manly – with an ocean beach on one side and fine sandy cove on the other – could provide a great “watering place” for the people of Sydney, as Brighton did for Londoners.

He arranged for Norfolk Island pines to be planted along the harbour foreshore and constructed a pier, near where Manly Wharf is now. The Pier Hotel was built and The Corso was cleared linking the harbour with the ocean beach.

Smith encouraged the growth of a ferry service to Manly. Excursion trips were available and by 1856 there was a daily ferry service. In 1859 Smith acquired the steamer “Phantom” specifically for the Manly to Sydney run.

In 1873, Smith sold his ferry service and the pier to the  Port Jackson and Manly Steamship Company, who ran both for the next 99 years. They sold to Sydney Ferries in 1972.

It was the Port Jackson and Manly Steamship Company that coined the phrase ‘Seven Miles from Sydney and a Thousand Miles from Care’. They build the Manly Fun Pier which I remember very well, since I grew up in Manly.

They’re still aren’t many better places than watching the yachts on a sunny day in Manly Cove. Today we had lunch at the Manly 16″ Skiff Club. Visitors welcome. Turn right after you get off the ferry, and follow the cove to the east about 200 metres. (its on the map above)

It was a great spot and a great feed – fish and chips, of course.

Go the Sea Eagles!

 

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You don’t see that every day.

As I walked past the square in front of Custom’s House in Sydney this morning, a team of people armed with picks were attacking a giant block of ice.

As I returned this evening, the ice had been transformed into an ice bear. It was a hot day, and poor old bear had begun to melt. However, I think that is the point. The fate of the Ice Bear is symbolic of the fate of his real cousins if the world warms.

Above the bear, Customs House provided the canvas for an amazing light show. Colours danced across the building, time sped by , the building decayed and then collapsed, only to arise anew in a blaze of reds and greens.

Looking out the starboard side of the Mosman ferry, the Opera House was also transformed by colours and patterns.

Either something pretty spectacular is taking place or I had too many beers durIng the POETS afternoon.

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How much do you have to carry with you when you go out? Have you got your phone? How many cards have you got in your wallet? Your licence? And cash? Google and Apple want to take care of all that worry for you.

But first, some discussion of ‘contactless smartcards’.

Have you used the new “PayPass” system? New Mastercard and Visacards include a little chip, that let’s you wave your card in front of a special sensor. The purchase price is automatically taken from your account. No signing, no PIN. Ideal for small purchases from, say, the newsagent, or a coffee shop, or on the bus. The current upper transaction limit is $100.

The Japanese are very skilled at moving lots of people around quickly. Ski lift tickets in Japan use a smartcard technology, so that you just need to strap the card in a pouch to your upper arm. It is checked when you bump your arm against a sensor at each lift. No need to fumble with gloves to take the card out of its case.

At our local hospital, I can just  hold my wallet with my hospital ID card up to the boomgate – no need to take the card out.

And many transport systems use contactlesssmartcards so that passengers don’t have to muck around with coins and tickets. London, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Melbourne have such systems – Sydney has spent a fortune without being able to achieve it. It was due before the Sydney Olympics- as reported this week in the SMH.

A contactless smartcard contains a coil of wire and a small antenna and a chip – but no battery. The electrical energy to power the chip and to send the signal is supplied by the receiver pad using an ‘Induction Loop’, sending small amounts of electrical charge wirelessly over a short distance (typically about 4-7cm). The coil converts the wireless signal to electricity, which powers the chip to send your details via the little antenna to the receiver.

Google has made some fanfare this week about the trail of an electronic wallet-phone using  ‘Near field communication (NFC)’.

NFC allows the use of contactless technology similar to that on the smartcards we have discussed, but in a mobile phone.

Using NFC, your phone will act as your wallet. Wave it next to the sensor, and your purchases are made. The advantage of a phone over a card is that it is ‘smarter’ – it can transmit more details. Potentially, you could select which credit card you wished to use. You could enter a PIN number so that you could transact more expensive purchases. You could link it with vouchers – say a 2 for 1 pizza offer, or your customer loyalty card. And it could contain your drivers licence, boarding pass, ‘bundy’ card, and car key.

Many predict that Apple will also include NFC in the iPhone 5.

Eventually, all you will need to carry with you when you leave home will be your phone. You will be able to make small and large purchases, and provide identification for all the services you need.

Just make sure you have it charged!

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Spooky. Today I learnt about the Baader-Meinhoff Phenomenon from my friend Andrew, and here it is mentioned again in this WILT post.

As defined by damninteresting.com, “Baader-Meinhof is the phenomenon where one happens upon some obscure piece of information– often an unfamiliar word or name– and soon afterwards encounters the same subject again, often repeatedly. Anytime the phrase “That’s so weird, I just heard about that the other day” would be appropriate, the utterer is hip-deep in Baader-Meinhof.”
http://www.damninteresting.com/the-baader-meinhof-phenomenon

Damn interesting.

The BM Phenomenon is related to ‘synchronicty’. Have you ever been thinking about someone when the phone rings – and by chance it is that person? That’s synchronicty.

The Baader-Meinhoff Phenomenon and synchronicity happen so often that they can’t be just co-incidence, can they?

Well, in fact, yes, they can.

Our brain likes to make patterns out of things. Think about how many thoughts we have each day – 99.999% of these are not remarkable for Baader-Meinhoff or synchronicity – they pass through to the keeper. We have so much data to take in each day that the odds are that there will be some matches sometimes – and our brain will spot the pattern and switch on the light globe of recognition. Ding! “That’s weird.”

This process is amplified by the recency effect. The more recent something has happened, the greater the significance we attach to it.

This phenomenon has nothing to do with the Badder-Meinhoff gang, or Red Army Faction, who were a German terrorist group, founded by Andre Baader and Ulrike Meinhoff in 1970. Whoever named this phenomenon must have heard that gang mentioned twice, and claimed the naming rights. I wish it had been an easier word to spell.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction

radiolab.org have previously had a fascinating podcast on the role of randomness in our lives, Stochasticity, and our inescapable need to seek out patterns. You don’t want to miss the story of Laura Buxton, aged 10, who found a balloon with a message attached that had blown randomly from the other side of England, having been released by another little girl, also aged 10, and also called Laura Buxton! http://www.radiolab.org/2009/jun/15/

(in the next few days, you can expect to hear more about Bader-Meinhoff or radiolab or synchronicity or the recency effect or……….)

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