Taking Out The Trash

Robots on Salisbury Plain

  Spent my second day at Copehill Down where the finalists in the MoD's Grand Challenge faced off.
The ideas was for teams made up mostly of people from small firms and universities to design an autonomous system which the army could use to fight urban wars.
As Major Matt Kelly from the Royal Irish Regiment, and urban warfare specialist, pointed out - more and more people are living in cities so that is where the fighting is lincreasingly taking place.
Ideally a small body of soldiers would be able to deploy the system to gather intelligence on things like snipers and roadside bombs.
There were all sorts of robot cars and wheelbarrows and mini-helicopters and gliders taking part.
The winner announced this afternoon was Team Stella.
(The first pic is Team Stella's entry, the second isn't   Wall-E but Team Thales effort).
Anyhow it's been interesting to cover but I was surprised to see two secondary schools among those in teams. Bruton School for Girls and Royal Grammar Guildford School.
The link between universities and military research is well-established if not well debated. (This report from Scientists for Global Responsibility is worth reading if you're interested). But sixth formers?
Still, as several people pointed out - you've got to get young people interested in science before they take their A levels otherwise it makes it all the more difficult to get them interested engineering at university.
James Randerson over at The Guardian has blogged on this having attended the Grand Challenge event too.
On another tack - any of these spy in the sky gizmos with decent capability will undoubtedly end up being used by civilian police forces and probably in this country. There are civilian spin-offs (mine clearance was one mentioned to me) but security comes first.
Aside from these woolly quibbles there was some remarkable engineering on show which was about as far from male-anoraks-in-the-shed as you can get. If you wanted to get young people interested in engineering (and show them what kind of people are interested) then a few tickets to an open day at the next Grand Challenge would be money well spent. Certainly better spent than that on having the Red Arrows and Typhoon flypasts for the media days.

Dig for Victory

Wednesday night's parish council meeting should have been a doddle with a couple of planning applications and some cheques to sign leaving plenty of time for the chairman to go bellringing (and yours truely to catch the football).

Instead we had to consider an issue which is probably going to become more pressing over the years.

You can read the rest of my latest post on Total Politics here.

And they all lived happily ever after?

I once came across guidelines the National Trust gave to staff who dressed up in animal costumes for children's fun days. The key rule was never to remove the head from the costume in the presence of children because it will really freak them out.
These pictures and the report on a day of industrial action at Disney in Los Angeles are similarly disturbing at some primeval level. Although, having enjoyed Shrek (well, the first two) you could get used to seeing elves and princesses handcuffed by police and put in the back of squad cars.
Disney has long had an appalling record on union rights - but then what do you expect from an organisation founded by an FBI stooge? You don't see much mention of Disney's early cartoons featuring anarchists with ticking bombs threatening America in the official history. So, all power to the labour protestors in LA.
I wrote a piece once on films featuring trade unions for Tribune (you can download a version here) which was great fun to research. There has been little written on this area (as opposed to film production and unions) - but if you are interested then Tony Zaniello's book Working Stiffs is worth a read. There's also a great summary of union films at Roger Darlington's web site.

(Hat tip: Indymedia)

Blog Action Day

Get  creative, they suggest.
This year, Blog Action Day's theme is poverty
Well, I have  until October 15 so I've got to have come up with something by then.

I'd like to thank...

I'm putting together my application for this year's Paul Foot Award so was interested to get details on who won an award named after another hero of mine - I F Stone. The inaugural winner is John Walcott for his coverage of Iraq. The lead up an  invasion was a pretty poor time for most American (and British journalists) but since then there has been some excellent work. Imperial Life in the Emerald City is a great piece of reportage.
As a freelance you don't tend to have time or resources to go for awards (even if the ego is willing). The NUJ's magazine The Journalist always has a list though and if you're not going to sing your praises then, hey, who is?

The future is robotic

Spent the day on Salisbury Plain looking at contestants in the MoD's Grand Challenge showing of their kit.
The competition is to find a system which will help the army fight its urban warfare battles in the future.
So there are UAVs and UGVs and robot cars and wheelbarrows and all sorts. They've been working out how to spot threats, duck under power lines and climbs stairs.
But the biggest problem over the last three days? The incessant weather.
When the teams started thinking about this an August start date should have meant fine weather. Instead half the flying vehicles have been bandly hampered by the gales.
Interesting to see that i doesn't matter how hi-tech it gets, a little bit of H20 can cause all sotrs of problems.
The winner of the Grand Challenge will be announced on August 19.

Youth action

I posted on the Total Politics site about our rather lamentable effrots at engaging young people.
(When I saw our - that's the community where I am a parish councillor in Wiltshire).
I pointed out that Carl Haggerty and Tim Davies have done some interesting work in this area and hoped we might learn from them.
Tim has now replied:

We're going to be launching some of the research on Youth Work and Social Networking in September and we're having a gathering of people to explore all things new-technology and youth engagement on the 27th September. Details are here: http://www.ukyouthonline.org and I'm hoping we're really going to be able to generate and catalyze more action on innovative youth engagement.

There is also a network of people growing at http://ukyouthonline.ning.com looking at youth work and new technology.

Many thanks for the advice and best of luck with the work - I'll be looking in on those sites.

Radioactive shrooms

According to Cosmos magazine: the former cooling towers at Chernobyl are now home to a new species of mushroom which feed off the radioactive soil.
I thought it was only cockroaches which would be left come the end of the world but as Darwin said: it's not the strongest which survive, but those who can adapt.
Hat Tip: Utne Reader which is a fantastic digest of news

Taking liberties

Civil liberties seem to be the issue of the moment.
Iain Dale posted this after someone complained about the the intrusive state particularly relating to schools (but aren't schools pretty autonomous now on everything other than curriculum and so free from the shackles of the state?).
Tom Harris followed this up by asking what's wrong with cctv; Iain hit back (as did his loyal legions) and it all got rather predictable and with regard to surveillance cameras.
I think the letter writer's complaint about fingerprinting in schools was far more interesting.
At the same time the shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve talks about relaxing the rules on state surveillance (and is Cameron going to be known as the politician who reduced the number of CCTV cameras?). What with Grieve's predecessor staking out the civil liberty agenda it's all got rather crowded in this particular ideological battleground.
It has led Tom Watson today to highlight what he sees as inconsistencies in the Conservative approach.
Are we under greater surveillance than, say, in 1997? Undoubtedly. As ever, technologically as outpaced public debate and neither the state or private sector has hung around too much waiting for everyone to give their OK.
Yes, there are more CCTV cameras than anywhere else but most don't work or aren't monitored - even the police see little merit in the way they are used at the moment.
But it's far more than CCTV. It's information databases and data mining. It's the way our details are shared between agencies or with other governments (Statewatch has done excellent work observing this area). Above all its a general public ignorance about what scope of surveillance that allows its abuses to flourish. If we don't know, then how can we debate the issue?
Do I think an incoming Conservative government would lead to civil liberty nirvana? No. They've already shown contempt for the Human Rights Act. They would treat enemies of the state (climate change protestors, strikers etc) with as little respect as previous administrations. And, with a tough on crime and terrorism ethos how could they make it more difficult for the police and security to 'do their job? Like Labour I think they are hamstrung by their own rhetoric.

Eight ball, side pocket

Like most rural communities we've got that potent mix of young people, lack of transport options, lack of facilities and boredom.

A critical mass has built up in the village over the last six months to try and tackle this. We've had the church, the police, MoD, youth service and parish council talking round and round.

And the first result? A pool table. One that we don't actually have the room to store anywhere.

*sigh*

You can read the rest of my latest post on the Total Politics site here.