Chris Worfolk's Blog

As some of you know, despite being very much up on the whole computers thing that is going on these days, my diary remains very much on paper. I prefer it, I can easily add things and scribble things out, it comes in a very nice weekly view and is easy to flick through and I can carry it round easily.

However, with the latest addition to my family of gadgets, I am now carrying around a diary sized device with me anyway.

Having a paper diary also means that I have to transcribe all the events onto paper and there is no way to easily merge my personal diary and work diary. Also, repeating events are just so much easier when it comes to electronic diaries.

So, given the new opportunity, I’ve decided to give an electronic diary a go. Using Google Calendar, integrated into the Calendar app on my iPad, I now have my personal calendar and work calendar all nicely merged into one place and no longer need to carry around my paper diary.

I’m not entirely sold, I think it’s a little more difficult to add events than it is just scribbling them down, and I have some concerns regarding interoperability between Google and my iPad. I’m also not entirely sold on the weekly view I get from my calendar – I like the simplicity of just a list of events in my diary, rather than having a mix of all day events at the top and then actual events in the timeline, not all of which fits on screen.

But I’m going to give it a go and see if it improves my life. Can’t live in the stone age forever – not that they had paper in the stone age ;).

Often, volunteering with the Humanist Action Group is a very rewarding experience. We always receive positive feedback on the homeless outreach work we do. However, sometimes, it’s heartbreaking.

Last week, myself and Katie were out out on the usual run, when we encountered a man sat at the bottom of Briggate. He was very memorable because of the amount of blood covering his eye and nose.

Having sat down to talk to him, we soon discovered that only about fifteen minutes before we arrived, he had been badly assaulted by a group of young men.

After finding an eye witness and taking his details should the police be able to do anything, we walked Matt up to Leeds General Infirmary to get him checked out. Despite having a headache he thankfully seemed still coherent, but you can’t be too careful with blows to the head.

My point is though, who does that?

Who just goes up to someone and starts kicking them in the head? Or tramp whacking was Matt described it.

I’ll be honest, normally I would be a little dubious of such a story, but having had it entirely collaborated by an eye witness you have to wonder to yourself what kind of sick bastard would do such a thing. It degrades your faith in humanity.

Matt was clearly an intelligent guy who had been down on his luck; on the way to the hospital he discussed various programming languages with me, and the various flavours of physics with Katie. If it can happen to Matt, it can happen to anyone.

Yet somehow, some individuals, luckily a very, very small minority of our society, think it is OK to abuse people like Matt.

Luckily, there is something we can do. Getting out there and making a difference not only provides a valuable service but also has an incredibly powerful psychological impact, showing that people do care.

As such, I would like to take this opportunity to says thank you to everyone who has been involved with HAG work over the years. It is times like this that really remind you why it is important.

The July issue of our newsletter, Engage, is now available to download from our website. This quarter’s issue is rather Humanist Action Group heavy, with a number of articles looking at their work we’re doing there, as well as some exciting news on new projects and the regular news round-up.

Earlier this month, the Top500, the project which measures and ranks the world’s fastest supercomputers, unveiled the latest instalment of their twice-yearly list. It had a new number one – Japan’s K computer.

Of course, an even faster computer is in itself very exciting, this is especially exciting because the project, pronounced kei, aims to be the first computer to reach ten petaflops per second when it becomes fully operational in November 2012.

Ten petaflops is a key number because, despite there being much discussion of its accuracy, ten peraflops is the number put forward by Kurzweil for the upper boundary of estimates on the processing power of the human brain.

That means that, once the K is fully operation, for the first time we will have a computer more powerful than the human brain.

That’s pretty exciting!

Of course, it could be entirely inaccurate. Some think the brain is capable of 38 petaflops per second, or even higher – other estimates have suggested 100, or even 1000 petaflops.

But considering the exponential growth of computer power, even if that is true, that doesn’t actually delay the arrival of such a computer that much time.

Consider Cray’s new XK6. It is aiming to hit 50 petaflops (http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/supercomputers/229700091) and they say it will be ready later this year! Of course, it hasn’t been delivered yet, but presuming it does, this represents a significant step forward in the chase to beat the brain.

Even if you assume that the brain does, in fact, operate at 1,000 petaflops per second, 100 times faster than Kurzweil suggested, the release of the XK6 this year means that within seven years, 2018, we will still achieve a computer faster than the human brain. Soon enough that I very much hope my grandparents will still be around to see it.

Last Wednesday, myself and Jason, collectively known at Buzz as Row One, celebrated our second anniversary. Despite his recent engagement to Sarah, our bond remains as strong as ever as as such we celebrated by going for a romantic meal at West End House. Accompanied by JB, Ian and Average Matt.

This post is aimed primarily at my vegetarian friends.

I’m going to put this forward as a supposition: you believe that for a number of possible reasons including the good feeling from being ethical, the health benefits associated with avoiding meat, the fact that meat can be expensive (though some vegetarian alternatives are also) it is better to be a vegetarian.

Surely it follows then that if only more people tried it, more people would become vegetarian and this would be good because you think vegetarianism is the best, most ethical position.

So how about this idea: Try Vegetarianism Week. It is a week (or a fortnight, or a month, it might not work over such a short time period) in which one of your friends gives up meat and tries vegetarianism, and in exchange, for period of time, you eat meat.

This would mean that many more people try vegetarianism and hopefully some of them like it and stick with it and as a result, we’ve won a fresh convert.

Of course the next likely question is “why do I have to eat meat instead of them?” The reason is that most meat eaters are arrogant bastards about it, using quips like “we’re naturally meat eaters” and “I’m a real man” and “why don’t you eat eat, you giraffe, you!”

Indeed, there is nothing most of them would enjoy more than a vegetarian eating meat. That’s the hook, that is what sells them. Most of them would never try vegetarianism (otherwise they would probably be vegetarians), but breaking a deal with them such as this could finally get them to give it a go.

Secondly, it doesn’t increase the number of animals being killed for food by you eating meat for that period because they will have stopped eating meat, so it balances out (and hopefully in the long term reduces the number of animals breed and killed for food because they will hopefully like being a vegetarian and convert).

Thoughts?

Btw, to my non-vegetarian friends, just as a quick gauge of its popularity, who would be interested in this?

We’re pleased to announce that online video site Dailymotion has accepted us into their content partner programme!

Over the past twelve months, we have been building up an archive of the academic lectures and events that we and our follow groups have been staging and we will now be able to bring this collection to the world – all in full 1080 HD.

Look out for more exciting news on this topic in the upcoming weeks and months, but for now you can browse our newly opened Dailymotion channel. The first lecture we have posted is Dr Terrence Kee delivering the 2010 Worfolk Lecture on “did life on Earth originate on Earth?” and we are adding new talks on a regular basis.

At Chris Worfolk Foundation, we support and manage a number of local community groups, allowing us to leverage our resources to provide a better experience for members of the local community who attend them.

We’re also passionate about Transhumanism and the benefits that GNR can bring to society.

As a result, we’re now supporting the Leeds Transhumanists group, a group for anyone interested in discussing and furthering Transhumanism and related topics, such as the technological singularity.

So, if you’re around the Leeds area and have an interest in the future of humanity, why not join us?

Last Saturday we hit Wendy House to celebrate Oli’s birthday (as if he wouldn’t be going anyway lol). Unfortunately Viki got in a mood and refused to come, and banned George from going as well.

Never the less we pushed forward and Sarann set around customising Norm appropriately for the evening. Turns out he pulls off the top hat very well.

I finally got round to watching the first episode of Secrets of the Superbrands which looks at technology.

I’ll be honest, the presenter, Alex Riley, really failed to endear himself to me with his surely attitude. I’m sure he’s an intelligent guy who on purposely plays the fool with comments like “iPhones, and iPads and 3gs and stuff like that.”

In fact, these go on and on with comments like “that’s a massive electromagnet, so if I brought in anything that was metal it would fly over there and rip Adam’s face off” or “is there any time when you think eww, it’s a brain, it’s horrible” to which the woman succinctly answers “no.”

Anyway, as we are all aware, marketing these days is brilliant. It’s amazing. Remember the last time you went round Tesco – did you buy something that wasn’t on your list? Buy an extra one because it was two for one? That isn’t an accident. You didn’t go out to buy that stuff, but you did, and it might sound like a simple thing, but millions of pounds of Tesco’s money goes into making sure it happens, every time you walk in that door.

Apple especially have some amazing marketing too. People hang off Steve’s every word.

But I really felt the show suggested that Apple were somehow tricking us into buying their products. Missing the point – that Apple produce really, really good products. So they should be – they are really expensive. But isn’t that just how the world works normally? You pay more, you get a better product? I don’t buy Apple products because it’s a cult, I buy them because I have enough disposable income to buy better products.

As for his treatment of Microsoft, there seemed to be disdain in his voice when he said they spend $5.5 billion on research and development. Of course R&D helps their profits in the long term, but it’s also giving back to the community (OpenOffice is great for example, because they just copied Microsoft Office which is great is because of all the money Microsoft spent making it great).

Also some of it was just factually incorrect. Microsoft’s income isn’t dwindling, they’re setting new quarterly records.

There is nothing wrong with his Nokia 6330 Classic but it’s just silly to take an attitude of “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it” when new phones are adding some amazing new features bringing you better communication to those you care about and access to the sum of all human knowledge.

As for, us getting better software because they get our details to target ad at, surely that is actually a good thing? How many boring ads do you sit through on TV ad breaks? Most of them don’t target you, so there is no point you looking at them. What if you could just watch the one advert and then get back to your programme? That is what targeted ads offer.

And seriously the presenter was very, very annoying. No surprise he labels himself as an agnostic. And who asks the man behind Kinect if he was abused as a child? He’s like annoying, offensive, shit version of Louis Theroux.

Anyway, rant over lol.