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Thundery wintry showers

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  1. Thundery wintry showers
    In some ways this spell is starting to remind me of the sense I had during July 2006. Until that month, I'd thought that I had a limited tolerance of prolonged heat and sunshine- but I soon found that if it's generally on the low side of 30C, and interspersed with the odd showery/thundery outbreak for variety, I can easily "tolerate" it for upwards of an entire month (more like "find it very enjoyable").

    The same is happening here with the cold snowy spell. Having had a fair dumping up in Tyneside (12cm on New Year's Day) I am now finding myself willing Norwich to catch up with the Tyneside snow depths. It's a tall order, but with a dumping likely tomorrow, not out of the question.

    It hasn't changed my stance on what I would like to see for February and the spring either- a February of alternating cold snowy and milder spells, and then a spring with frequent warm sunny weather but interspersed with switch-arounds and northerly outbreaks. As far as January is concerned, we're locked into this cold spell and Norwich only has about 3-4cm so far, so it may as well continue through to at least the middle of the month, as I don't see myself tiring of it before then.
  2. Thundery wintry showers
    Still five and a half months for things to change, but so far I have to give the Met Office a big thumbs up- seems a very good place to work, and I've been having a good time there. It isn't particularly difficult to find fellow weather enthusiasts, as might be expected. I'd been concerned that my social life might suffer, but in fact the MetO has a wide range of social outlets associated with its sports facilities, and thus so far it's been fine socially as well.

    The climate down here in Exeter is pretty poor for snow, as I gathered before I got here, but we get plenty "sunshine and showers" here which is always a bonus as far as I'm concerned. Although snow is very rare, Exeter does get a surprising amount of frost, probably mainly due to it being inland and in a valley. A couple of days ago, it was 0C at 11pm, rained at 4C at midnight (temps have a habit of shooting up just as the showers arrive) and then fell to freezing again, leading to a lot of "skitey bits".

    I've been playing quite a bit of chess recently as well, after a spell where I hardly played any (the chess society at UEA fizzled out).
  3. Thundery wintry showers
    PhD still going okay, and still enjoying the work for the most part. The fine spell of weather looks like being downgraded, here's hoping that the NE'ly brings my favourite convective "sunshine and showers" stuff and not the usual low cloud.

    I continue to strongly dislike the way the UK is going regarding personal liberty:
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8249020.stm
    As an individual measure it might not seem too bad, but the logical end result of incremental steps like these is a society where you cannot go within a few metres of a child unless you can prove that the child is "family" (i.e. related to within a few generations). Meanwhile of course child molestation will continue to occur on an infrequent basis within families, a consequence of families being exempt from these measures.

    I just hope the UK doesn't follow the USA's lead and become similarly hysterical over harassment and sex abuse in general, rather than just against children.

    On a lighter note, I'm liking the look of the upcoming football season. Man Utd haven't got as strong a squad as in the past, and are missing Cristiano Ronaldo rather more than they would like. Chelsea have a formidable team but their current manager is unproven and they are facing a transfer ban- which might not affect them too much, it depends on how many injuries they get. Arsenal are looking quite good. I felt quite gutted at their loss to Man Utd, as they were IMHO the better side for most of the game, but they are showing encouraging signs of being close to their best. Arsenal were, in my view, probably denied a stonewall penalty early in the game because of the memories of Eduardo's blatant dive. I don't think Liverpool will be challenging for top spot this year though.

    And as for England- I always had high hopes that Capello might be able to mould the team into a cohesive unit that plays well. It is looking strongly as if my hopes were not misplaced. I don't expect England to win the Cup but a quarter or semi final spot would still be a success after the depths of the Steve McLaren era.
  4. Thundery wintry showers
    In Leeds, this was a very warm and extremely dull month. The statistics on Philip Eden's site suggested that the North East had barely half the normal sunshine, and I can believe it.
    The first week saw near-normal temperatures, and persistent anticyclonic gloom- layers of stratocumulus covering the sky the whole time. It became brighter in the second week with some notable warmth around the 10th and some sunny spells, but then it became dull again.
    The 15th to 26th was another extremely dull period, and this time it was generally wet as well, with an exceptional lack of cool nights. Only three days stood out as featuring any sunshine of note- the 16th was dry warm sunny and quite summerlike, while the 20th and 25th featured a mix of sun and showers together with a few rainbows.
    The 27th was a remarkable day- sunshine all day, and it must surely have maxed at between 18 and 20C. After the dullness of the past 10 days, it was amazing to see the sun again, let alone see it all day! However, after a day of sunshine and showers on the 28th, it became extremely dull again, while staying warm.
    At 42%, this October would appear to have been the lowest scoring October since I started taking weather records, and the lowest scoring of any month since November 2004. Sunshine (or lack of it!) was the main factor here.
    Data is again patchy, with no temperature records from 6 to 16 October inclusive, but here are the stats from the dataset I have:
    Mean Max 14.5C
    Mean Min 9.5C
    Precipitation: 75mm (this is the whole month's total; the device kept a record of total rainfall even though it stopped transmitting to the computer)
    Highest max: 18.1C (27th)
    Lowest min: 6.7C (23rd)
  5. Thundery wintry showers
    We're getting close, not only to the end of the season, but also to the review of the rules concerning team orders. Here are some thoughts of mine on the issue.

    I think that the main problem- certainly the one that gets up many fans' backsides- isn't so much team orders, but rather team favouritism, in particular requiring one driver to defer to another while the "number two driver" still has a significant mathematical chance of winning the Drivers' Championship. In seasons where one team runs away with it, it denies fans the possibility of an in-house battle for the title. In close seasons, it puts the lead driver at an advantage in the Drivers' Championship (as opposed to team-mates taking points off each other) and thus rewards non-competition.

    Most F1 insiders see F1 as a team sport and the drivers as employees who should do as they're told, point out that F1 has always been a team sport, and argue that the fans are deluded if they think otherwise. In fact, I think they're the ones who are being deluded, via the black and white assumption "either it's a team sport OR it's about the drivers". F1 has always been both, and most fans don't like the way its emphasis shifted towards "teams over drivers, business over sport" between the mid 1990s and the mid 2000s.

    Just because the current rule is haphazard, too broad-brush and impossible to enforce, I don't think that's a conclusive argument for abolishing it completely- it can just mean that the rule needs to be reduced in scope, and made clearer, more specific and easier to enforce. I reckon that teams should be prohibited from ordering one driver to defer to another unless it will clearly lead to the loss of the Drivers' Championship, or one driver is in with a mathematical chance of the title and the other isn't, while other team orders should be legalised. I think that would be easier to enforce against and would still prohibit the two main instances that got the fans' backs up in the last decade (Austria 2002, Germany 2010) as well as recognising that driver swaps in the last race of the season, when the championship is at stake, are usually considered acceptable by a large majority of fans.
  6. Thundery wintry showers
    The holiday in France was actually quite a good one- mainly spent around the swimming pool and messing about, sitting around in the sun (though I usually went in the shade to avoid sunburn) and playing table tennis. And also, getting lots of posh ice-creams. The first week was spent in the eastern Dordogne near Perigueux, the second not far from Magny-Cours.
    Some good visits to various places- my favourite was Chenonceau, which had a good castle and outdoor area, a boating area and a maze.
    The weather was very hot, especially in the second week. In fact, the second week, at 35-40C, was a very close approach to the ridiculous heat of my French holiday in August 2003, and I generally spent very little time outside between 1 and 5pm on those days. The first week (Dordogne) had scattered thundery showers dotted around but we missed them all; however the second week had two big thunderstorms, of similar nature to what the Dordogne storms are supposed to be like (strong gusts of wind, then a few hours of frequent lightning strikes and heavy rain). Without doubt, the biggest storms I've experienced so far. Although 35-40C is still far too extreme for my liking, I think I coped a lot better with it than I did three years ago, when I felt ill after going out into it for just two minutes.
    In Leeds, there's not much going on, most of the other students are stressed out with worrying about getting their projects finished on time, though I had an evening out playing pool and drinking Coke yesterday.
    Allegedly, Cleadon (Tyne & Wear) has not experienced much in the way of sea-fret, unlike last month, so when I get the July records in, it could well turn out to have been a scorcher. I reconstructed my earlier weather records by comparison with nearby stations to work out how hot the months of 1994-1997 were, and came out with August 1995 as the month to beat (estimated max 22.7, min 11.9, mean 17.3) so that's what July 2006 has to beat.
  7. Thundery wintry showers
    The Andy Gray story has developed widespread publicity now and I've given some opinions of my own in the relevant thread of the forum. I felt that the comments on Sian Massey crossed the line between "jokes" and "personal sexist remarks", and that the reprimand and suspension was a fair punishment. However, I then felt that the sacking as reaction to the stuff that was leaked afterwards was OTT.

    The overall verdict on these things is that the punishments should fit the crimes, and that the rules should be the same for everyone. The norm is for men to be punished harshly, and women leniently, for equivalent offences and we need the genders to effectively "meet in the middle" on this front. We can't necessarily score this as an example though, because it's possible that some people didn't like Andy Gray (e.g. repeatedly blasting referees when replays showed their decisions to be 100% correct) and just wanted him out.

    In the meantime I recall a discussion on the Martin Brundle "Pikey" issue (where he used it in a jocular sense, unaware of its stronger usages):
    http://forum.netweather.tv/topic/47973-is-the-term-pikey-racist/
    ...where I noted in that thread that I could have caused myself similar trouble with "nonce" as until 2006 I only knew of its jocular use to describe idiots and not its stronger sex-offender connotations. As it happens, Danny Kelly has now fallen foul of this one- he got 130 Ofcom complaints for calling Rafael Benitez a nonce (by which he meant nonsensical, as he pointed out in an apology 15 minutes later) and Rafa is now taking him to court over it.

    I think what these kind of incidents illustrate is that we should be careful of throwing insults at people we don't know, but also that we need to be careful to avoid letting choice of words carry more weight than the intended meaning. Any word can be corrupted and evolve offensive meanings, particularly if it becomes widely used among the likes of racists and criminals- and for instance if we take a line that no potentially-offensive words are acceptable and "idiot" is then corrupted in this way, a lot of us will have problems!
  8. Thundery wintry showers
    So, how late does spring normally arrive in this country? And what do we mean by "spring"? Personally I am happy to accept and follow the meteorological definition (1st March to 31st May) and think in terms of spring as meaning increasing daylight and sunshine hours and plant growth. I can certainly see a case for arguing that wintry weather persisting largely without a break well into March (as per 1996, 2001 and 2006) might be realistically considered as a "late spring".

    But no, let's try the Net-Weather Definition. For it to be "spring" it must meet the following criteria:
    [list]
    [*]it must be warm and settled, with temperatures regularly in the teens,
    [*]there must be no more snow or frost for the rest of the season.
    [/list]

    By this definition, when did Spring arrive across the UK as a whole since 1990? Answers below:

    1990- 29th April
    1991- early May
    1992- mid May
    1993- we didn't have a spring that year
    1994- 28th April
    1995- 20th May (or, if the period around 20 May wasn't settled enough, perhaps we didn't have a spring that year either)
    1996- 30th May (OK, no real spring that year either!)
    1997- 24th May (yes, a 1-week spring- now what were March & April 1997 like again? Doesn't matter, it snowed in May!)
    1998- 30th April
    1999- 25th April
    2000- 30th April
    2001- 30th April
    2002- 25th March
    2003- 14th April
    2004- 30th March
    2005- we didn't have a spring that year
    2006- 15th April (or if you count late May 2006 as "wintry", maybe this year also failed to feature Spring?)
    2007- 1st April
    2008- 5th May
    2009- 12th March

    So by this measure many people are probably going to have to wait quite some time for "Spring"!
  9. Thundery wintry showers
    There is often a large debate over whether we should keep updating the 30-year reference period every 10 years (the World Meteorological Organisation does it every 30 years, the Met Office traditionally does it every 10 years but has partially held onto 1961-90 in the recent update).

    My view is that it depends on what analysis we're doing and that there is often plenty of room for argument. When we're comparing current weather (or the past month or year's weather) with the "average", i.e. what the public are used to as being "average" conditions, I think repeatedly shifting the reference period forward is a good idea, because it is the most representative of the average that they're used to. For instance if we compare January 2010 with the 1961-90 average we're using a reference period that ends before a fair number of people were even born!

    But I think when we're doing an analysis of long-term climatology, it is often better to stick with one reference period. For the period 1993-2009 my Cleadon weather records are always compared with the estimated 1971-2000 averages, and I don't think I'll be updating to 1981-2010 anytime soon. It would have the effect of masking any long-term changes in Cleadon's climate. In fact I think a much longer reference period (say 1951-2000 or even 1901-2000) would be most ideal for this kind of analysis, but such reference periods are harder to get data for than the 30-year means.

    I suspect that these sort of considerations might be behind the Met Office's inconsistency in updating to 1971-2000, e.g. the monthly assessments are clearly in the former category, but one could argue that, for instance, the CET diagnostics are more the latter type and so are arguably better served by a reference period that is more representative of the longer-term (and 61-90 is more so than 71-00).
  10. Thundery wintry showers
    So, following on from my latest blog on transport, I came across an article relating to Top Gear on the internet.
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blog/2009/aug/03/clarkson-hints-top-gear-over?commentpage=1

    Some very, er, revealing comments here!

    [quote]If only it could be removed this programme has probably caused more deaths on our roads than any other with its glamourisation of fast cars and speed over everything else.Why not introduce a weekly crash analysis slot into the show if it must continue to explain how the most recent deaths and serious injuries occured with police and road safety professionals to give their comments.[/quote]

    [quote]The BBC should replace top gear with cycling gear a new show looking at all aspects of cycling club road ,commuter and touring this would be a much more sustainable and socially responsible approach to broadcasting,yes it is probably only a dream but if only it could happen...............[/quote]

    [quote]
    Beauty of the car? An ugly metal and glass box that pollutes the planet, clutters up every inch of our streets, makes us fat and lazy and gives our kids asthma? Where's the beauty? The sooner this programme finishes the better - it's a product of the past, rather like the Black & White Minstrals in the late 70s.[/quote]

    [quote]At first glance this story seems cause for celebration. Top Gear ending, some good news amidst the depressing headlines. But think about it, with the current BBC commissioning policies TG would probably be scrapped to make way for an even less intelligent, dumbed down petrol head's fantasy show. If such a thing is possible.[/quote]

    [quote]

    *Warning to simple people*
    Don't say "if you don't like it, don't watch it."
    It doesn't matter whether we watch it or not: attitudes towards speed and responsibility leak out into wider society.
    [/quote]

    [quote] [quote]Many people are into cars because of something that comes naturally to humans. its called FUN. People drive these because they are fun to drive. It is easy to get attached to something, not just it goes fast and looks cool, you have a genuinely good time in it. That is why Clarkson and many others, including myself, dread the day when we have to say goodbye to our cars, our fun.[/quote]
    And when you die horribly in a gruesome car smash, I shall dance merrily on your freshly dug grave and dance a merry jig as your no doubt tea-soaked relatives blub tunelessly into kitchen roll. And for an encore, I will squat down and parp out the brownest turds of the purest joy, splattering your newly-chiselled headstone mischievously filling the grooves of sorrow.[/quote]

    A perfect illustration of why I defend motorists so much these days. Part of it is simply a backlash against attitudes like the above, which I expect will become more prevalent as time goes by.
  11. Thundery wintry showers
    Excellent news- I have just been offered a PhD position at the University of East Anglia! The project is based on analysing precipitation variability across the UK and includes 6-9 months' working with the Met Office, in conjunction with the well-known Climate Research Unit at UEA.
    I have to admit I was always against the idea of living in the south-eastern third of England, but then again I had always considered that Norwich might not be so bad, because of being in a relatively rural area, exposed to thundery wintry shower activity from the north and east, boasting a relatively high "sunshine and showers" frequency compared to the rest of the region, etc. Should get some pretty beefy thunderstorms there too.
    I applied to quite a number of places this year, the UEA one was the first one I applied for and I initially thought that if I was accepted, it would be "a good banker" for while I was hunting for other opportunities. However, on the UEA open day, the PhD topic, the University and the local area all exceeded my expectations, and the other places I applied to were less convincing, particularly in terms of the topics offered. In the end the acceptance of the offer wasn't a difficult decision to make.
    Note: this blog entry was originally posted on 3 May, and edited at 11:26am on 5 May to make it more to the point.
  12. Thundery wintry showers
    We are increasingly looking like being locked into a prolonged cold spell, which may be snowy in the east and south- similar to January 1985. February looks at this stage like being somewhat milder, but whether it will be mild throughout, or a mix of mild and cold spells, remains to be seen.

    I reached 12cm snow on New Year's Day and had 2 large snowmen built in the front garden- 12cm is the deepest snow at Cleadon, alongside February 2004, since February 1991. There is more chance of snow on every day through to the 5th, when I head back to Norwich, as long as there isn't too much disruption on the trains (oo-er!). The 4th looks quite marginal, but less so than the 1st/2nd.

    There probably won't be much snow in Norwich before I get there, but after I get there, with a pronounced easterly or north-easterly flow likely to set in for a week, that is likely to change. I may miss out on the largest snow depths in Cleadon, as there will be more accumulating snow there after I leave, but similar depths may well be reached in Norwich by around the 10th January as prolonged ENE'lys are ideal for snow streamers in the Norwich area.

    The question is, when does the point come when I get sick of all of this cold and snow? I had initially assumed it would be about a week or two, but in practice it is proving to be a lot longer than I'd expected. I'm becoming less averse to the idea of a pattern change to milder weather as time goes on, but it isn't approaching the stage where I start actively hoping for one. Perhaps the fact that we've had such a long run of mild winters, the sense that this could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness an 80s style cold spell, and the fact that the snow depths haven't been extortionate, are contributing to this.

    As John Holmes has often indicated, in a cold spell like this people need to take care of elderly and fragile people they know of, as many of these will suffer, particularly in areas hit by heavy energy bills. Cold/snow lovers should not feel guilty for enjoying this cold snowy weather, or for wishing for more of it, especially as the weather is something that we can't control, and making an enemy of snow or suppressing one's desire for it doesn't achieve anything positive (contrary to what the media seems to think!). But the health of those who struggle to cope in these situations is something that many of us can and should help.
  13. Thundery wintry showers
    After the thread about gay marriages (which I played a large role in) up comes another controversial and philosophical blog entry.
    I am not homosexual, but I am going to admit to something equally taboo- as things currently stand, I have no ambition to have children. If nobody believes me that it's a taboo, consider the answers I usually get when I say I don't want children:
    "Oh, it's just a phase, you'll grow out of it and you'll want kids when you're older."
    "It's unnatural not to have children."
    "Not having children is selfish because you're unprepared to make sacrifices."
    "Your life is incomplete if you don't have children. If you don't try having children, you will never experience it."
    "All women want to have children because of biology, therefore a woman who doesn't want children is a freak of nature. Men should want children because of their desire for sex, and out of respect for the wishes of the women they marry, who will want children, assuming that they are not freaks of nature."
    "You should have children, you can get your future wife to look after them"
    "You would be a really good father."
    Re the view that not having children is selfish. Surely the real selfish people are the ones who actually do have children, and then don't look after them? That way, people are harmed, whereas by not having children, while one doesn't bring a new life into the world, one doesn't harm anyone.
    As for the idea that one should try having kids otherwise one won't experience it, I think that's a very good argument for decisions where one can turn back if it doesn't turn out well. Having children is a decision where there is no turning back and it shapes the rest of one's life- if it doesn't turn out well, tough.
    I think the image that people who have children always end up better off, and those who don't sometimes regret it, is misleading Many people who have children do genuinely end up better off, but it's also something that a parent has to feel- if a parent has regrets about having kids, how is that going to reflect on the parent and pass over onto the kids? To ensure that they bring up their kids well, they will have to suppress any such regrets. People who don't have kids have no similar self-reinforcing mechanisms that prevent them from having regrets about it, so we end up with a misleading picture of how people feel about having children.
    Some people also decide to have children because it's the done thing. I understand the argument that everyone decides things because they want to do them, and if they didn't want to do them they wouldn't, but social pressure is clever in that it attaches negative 'strings' to particular decisions. If I have a choice between doing A and being rejected (a common example of a negative 'string'), or choosing B and being accepted, I may choose B. From this, it follows that I don't want to do A, but my main reason may be fear of rejection.
    I also feel, incidentally, that measures to increase birth rates in order to tackle the aging population problem are not a good long term solution. In the short term they may work, but in the long term, as the elderly population continues to grow, larger and larger birth rates will be required, presenting risk of an overpopulation spiral.
    Disclaimer: I have nothing against people having children. I also retain an open mind to the possibility that I might change my mind when I am older, and have children. I can't say that I hate children either- indeed I have a reputation for being quite good with them. However, as things currently stand, I don't want to have children of my own, and there's a possibility that my stance will not change, no matter how un-PC it is.
  14. Thundery wintry showers
    For those of you who think that the trend towards increased subjectivity in forecasts, like the increased frequency at which the phrase "at least it will be mild" is used, is more due to the BBC than the Met Office, here is an article from 2005 that strongly supports that view.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4310702.stm

    Now I'm not sure what to say about the first part of the Met Office's advice, moving away from using scientific language, as of course you get the problem of confusion vs. perpetuating lack of understanding by taking away information- it's a tradeoff. But the second part of their suggestions actually make many of the same points re. spin and subjectivity as I've been making for some time (the paragraph relating to telling people what is good and bad could just as easily have been lifted from one of my posts!). It is clear that the BBC has taken on board the first part of the Met Office's advice and not the second.

    So next time you hear that accursed phrase "at least it will be mild"... don't go blaming the Met Office!
  15. Thundery wintry showers
    The move from Exeter to UEA has proved surprisingly non-problematic. I thought I would really miss the Met Office considering how much I loved it there, but UEA is also pretty good, so I feel like I've settled back in at UEA. It's good to know of different places that are all very good to live near and work at (Leeds University is another example).

    As for the weather, my views on how July 2009 went are decidedly mixed. I certainly go along with the general consensus that it went downhill as the month progressed. But the month's weather overall? I have to say I quite enjoyed it, because of the high frequency of sunshine-and-showers days, the frequent torrential downpours from cumulonimbus cells and the fairly frequent thunder- even through to the end of the month (the 30th in particular had some pretty impressive thunderstorms in Norwich). True, we could have done with some more warmth and sunshine and perhaps not quite as much rain and wind, but if I had to list the most depressing summer months for weather that I've lived through, July 2009 wouldn't be near the top of the list. It would certainly come nowhere near the months Tyne & Wear experienced in June 2007, June 1997 and July 2000.

    I can understand people wishing for a settled spell after all of this wet stuff, but I often wonder exactly what people mean when they talk about "settled", especially as different people might be using slightly different definitions of the term. You can get settled in the synoptic sense- i.e. non-changeable weather patterns, mostly high pressure, minimal Atlantic influence, and you can get settled in the weather sense- i.e. the weather stays the same over a long period of time (which could be sunny & dry or dull & damp for example). I guess from the way people post that most people mean the former, though some seem to interpret it more as meaning "no rain".

    I must admit, while I would welcome a good week-long high pressure spell of the nature of late May/early June as much as anyone else, I groan inwardly when I see the pattern of Azores ridge, cloudy westerlies on its northern flank and all precipitation being exclusively frontal. August 1998 in Tyne & Wear, a classic case of a month dominated by such a pattern, redefined the term "boring".
  16. Thundery wintry showers
    My view on the rising petrol costs is that if current trends continue, regrettably, we may miss a good opportunity.

    At the moment, a lot of people feel they "have" to drive (especially for work) primarily because there is no decent alternative. Provide a decent alternative, and many (not all, but many) of them will use it. There are also many instances of people driving around the corner just for "convenience" when they wouldn't really lose anything if they just walked or cycled. School runs can be shared or even avoided in some cases. In addition, if only there was more effort going into cleaner fuels, people would be encouraged to use them.

    Under the above kind of scenario I could see rising petrol costs helping to spearhead a mainly positive outcome. For the most part, the people who don't enjoy driving get the chance to cut down, while the people who enjoy driving get to continue doing what they enjoy, the environment benefits, and while certain people lose out (primarily people whose work or condition makes it physically near-impossible to use alternatives to the car) most people gain. More sociable use of cars, with people taking passengers with them who contribute to the cost of the petrol.

    Unfortunately, current trends are not in that direction. Instead, I can see recreational aspects of driving being marginalised. As it becomes more known that oil is becoming scarce and we need to cut down car use, in conjunction with the popular view that pleasurable things are "unnecessary", as in nobody "needs" to enjoy themselves, I can see pleasure driving becoming socially unacceptable. In addition, when an activity is frowned upon it's usually frowned upon most when it's pleasurable. The social and recreational benefits "don't come into it". So I expect little effort towards reducing the need for people to drive for work, school runs etc, leaving most people with no choice but to cut down on their recreational use of cars.

    There are other reasons for the emphasis on cutting out recreational aspects of driving. One is the policy of making driving unattractive relative to the alternatives in the hope that it might put enough people off driving to reduce traffic, which might make the alternatives more attractive (i.e. bring in the stick and hopefully the carrot will create itself). Plus the notion that restricting recreational aspects of driving is a necessary evil to legislate for the few idiots that abuse it (take current policy on speeding for example).

    The current trends might still give us more positives than negatives, but nothing like as positive as the scenario I envisaged above. Instead, it looks like it's primarily the people who most enjoy driving who will be forced to cut down, while the people who hate driving will have to continue driving because there's still no alternative. It reeks of a missed opportunity- though we aren't quite there yet. If we can somehow engineer changes to the current trend, there's still time to gravitate towards the former scenario.
  17. Thundery wintry showers

    Christmas

    By Thundery wintry showers,

    Well, it's coming up to the big day. Personally, I don't feel very "Christmassy" at the moment- it tends to be the case that I need there to be snow events shortly before Christmas in order to get me into the "Christmas spirit".
    My house is currently a construction site because of a new extension that is being built into the back garden, making things a little awkward, although it should be worth it come next summer when our garden will be more conducive to sitting outside.
    I will be meeting up with some of my old friends from junior school on Christmas Eve- most likely going to the local pub, and getting up to all kinds of daft stuff. However, as per usual, I plan to drink alcohol in moderation (if at all) and will hence not be hung over on Christmas Day- the last time I was hung over was back in October 2001! It will be interesting also to see what I get on Christmas Day.
    Christmas Day will see my grandparents come over, and then there will be a large gathering of immediate family members (uncles, siblings etc) for Boxing Day tea, which usually provides the opportunity to see various cousins, aunties and uncles that I see, on average, a few times per year. Last year's meeting went exceptionally well so I have high hopes for this year's as well.
    However, my immediate family aren't very "commitment intensive", nor do they buy into the "Christmas is family time, so you can't see your friends" malarky, and thankfully, nor do the immediate families of the friends that I currently hang out with these days. Thus, the traditional problem of my friends being unable to meet up with me because their families won't let them is unlikely to arise this year, which is another positive in my book.
    Perhaps most interesting of all, for me, is the possibility of an easterly around the 27th-29th December. It is by no means set in stone, but if it was to come off, it would represent my first experience of a "sunshine-and-snow-showers" easterly in the North East since 31 December 1996.
  18. Thundery wintry showers
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/8553629.stm

    As someone posted in the Comments section, the main arguments against any kind of technology seem to be:
    [quote]1) it slows the game down
    2) controversy is part of the beauty of the game[/quote]

    I'll give my twopenny's worth:
    1. too much "black and white" thinking and slippery slope fallacies I reckon. It's important that we don't implement technology to such an extreme that it will seriously disrupt the flow of the game, but there is such a thing as "striking a balance" that seems to pass over quite a number of the nay-sayers.

    2. I do think football needs a bit of controversy, but there is a big difference between controversy over contentious issues (which is often good for a sport) and controversy over obvious injustices which annoy a lot of those involved. No amount of technology would remove the need for referees, at times, to make decisions that are open to considerable debate. Of course there's also the usual "maintaining the status quo" arguments to defend point 2, e.g. "the traditional approach to the injustices associated with officiating always used to be 'that's life', so why change that?"- without the dominance of arguments like those I reckon the world as a whole would be a fairer place.

    I don't just look at this from the players' and supporters' point of view, I also think of it from a referees' perspective (as presumably does Graham Poll as an ex-referee). The "respect" campaign is always at risk of being one-sided if there isn't an onus on referees to do a good job as well as players/managers, but referees are only human like the rest of us and it would help if it was made easier for them to do a good job.
  19. Thundery wintry showers
    One popular misconception that's ingrained in our society is the idea that productivity is a linear function of working hours. Even at a scholarly level, it was generally assumed that the more hours you revised, the better your exam result. There was even a maths module where they stated "A person's performance in a piano exam can be expressed as y=mx where x is the number of hours per week the person practiced for, and y is the exam performance..."
    The problem with the "productivity = working hours x constant" is that it ignores two areas of inefficiency. If people are working longer hours, it only means they are sacrificing more time for their work, it does not necessarily follow that they use that extra time efficiently. People naturally tire out if they're working long hours (so when the relationship does hold, it's a diminishing returns curve, not linear). In addition, it doesn't take into account how useful the work is. Extra layers of bureaucracy, laborious methods of solving problems and finding useless extra work to fill in time with, results in longer working hours and more effort being put in, but no extra gain.
    It strikes me that the social norm of rewarding and judging people for the number of hours they spend at work is rewarding them primarily for the amount of self-sacrifice they make, rather than how well they address the work, and to some extent encourages inefficiency (there's no reward for working efficiently as you still need to fulfill regimented hours regardless). It encourages the long hours culture, and the inefficiency has the double whammy of wasting employees' time that they could have taken off or spent doing more constructive work, while employers have to pay them for working inefficiently.
    I believe that a good way forward would be to move towards rewarding people for their performance and effort applied, rather than the number of hours they spend at work. Less of a need for regimented working hours and a pronounced rush hour, more scope for working from home, and encourages employees to work hard because if they work very efficiently they may get paid more and/or get extra time off. By reducing inefficiency we may be able to reduce working hours without offsetting productivity. Some work does physically require people to be around certain premises for certain hours, so regimented hours are sometimes necessary, but even in those cases, an element of performance-related pay can sometimes be smuggled in.
    I wouldn't advocate abolishing working hours altogether though- we'd need to be sure that everyone was getting a fair workload under such a scenario, and the easiest way to ensure this would be to give them an estimated number of hours' worth of work over a time period. Thus, people would still be expected to work a certain number of hours on average, but in many cases it wouldn't have to be as regimented as is the norm today.
    The main barriers to the above initiatives being more widely used are, I think, the "productivity = working hours x constant" assumption, and as per usual, social inertia (the idea that a job should, by definition, mean working regimented hours in an office, because "that's the way it's always been done"), but there are signs of a slow trend in this direction.
  20. Thundery wintry showers
    My latest word on intellectual property is: we need the masses to start seeing past the premise that "copying is theft". Theft is a relatively black and white issue- barring exceptional circumstances it is wrong to take physical property away from people, and in a large majority of cases, a theft from a retail outlet equals a lost sale. The popular argument, therefore, is that since "copying is theft", "every copy made is a lost sale", and therefore that copying should be kept to the absolute minimum just like theft is.

    But copying is actually quite different, and its effects on sales can go either way- you have to weigh up the lost sales from people receiving clones of things [i]that they would otherwise have paid money for[/i] (this last bit is important) vs. the extra sales that result from the increased product exposure/brand awareness. Too much copying and the losses probably outweigh the gains, vice versa for small amounts of copying, and we also need to bear in mind that too much IP risks stifling the advance of information and technology, giving consumers poor value for money, and giving too much power to a small minority of powerful companies. The current trends in IP are, frankly, quite worrying, and heading strongly for this latter scenario. The stifling of debate on the issue is also a worry- increasingly if you argue against tightening IP laws you get roasted alive for "condoning theft".

    This consideration is why I take the stance that "casual copying", which is mostly moderate, is probably not the threat to the industries that it's made out to be, whereas the en-masse stuff is a real threat. The industries of course focus on the former because it is easier to police with DRM, and they assume that every copy is a lost sale... but they are wrong. Indeed I doubt that "casual copying" (dating from back in the days of the cassette recorder) should ever have been made illegal.

    That's not to say that I think all IP infringements are overstated in terms of their severity. The hacking into and leaking of unreleased stuff, for example, is not just an infringement of IP but also infringes upon privacy and security, often alongside many other things, and so morally speaking it is usually very serious.

    An interesting case study is "Steam", which I've been using quite a lot recently. I think its online support, and requiring log-in access for it, is a very good way forward, as it creates a big difference between a copy and the original, as is offering digital distribution as an alternative to retail. But the online activation DRM aspect of it is an unnecessary evil, giving the IP owner a huge amount of control over the end user, making software functionality dependent on external servers, and if they got rid of it, any lost sales due to increased "casual copying" would probably be at least offset by extra sales from people who got exposure to the products and went on to buy them in order to get easier access to the support on Steam. Thus, I reckon that Steam without the DRM would most likely give a "win-win" type of balance between content creators and end users.
  21. Thundery wintry showers
    Perhaps not a strictly accurate title. However, as a couple of recent experiences have starkly reminded me, while I sometimes misbehave and sometimes get punished for it, I usually get punished less for my own misbehaviour, than by association with other people's misbehaviour.

    The process is that others misbehave, I behave in a way that is innocent, but which gets tarred with the same brush as their behaviour (often via some unwritten code of etiquette, sometimes by a rule) and so I get sternly reprimanded for misbehaving. The argument is: their behaviour is bad, my behaviour is associated with it, so therefore my behaviour must be bad.

    If I defend my behaviour it's interpreted as condoning the associated misbehaviour perpetuated by others. Also, if I have a strong case for my behaviour, it poses a threat to authority (unlike those who attempt to justify harmful behaviour, which can be refuted on moral grounds). Thus to defend their authority they have to fall back upon authoritarian lines like "rules are rules", "I'm right because I say so", and "we're watching you- accept you're wrong, or else!" Thus I often get dealt with more harshly than the actual offenders.

    For those who were wondering about my big issue with "the minority spoiling it for the majority", the above should give strong insights.
  22. Thundery wintry showers
    I have just finished my MRes course in Physics of the Earth and Atmosphere- got a Merit in it as well, so all in all a positive result.
    The positive result summed up a very positive year- the period September 2005-August 2006 probably represented the best year of my life so far. The course was very good with a lot of meteorology content, and it was good to be able to get involved in research into convective storm initiation and converse with the Environment department, the lecturers and PhD students who were all well-versed in the academic side of meteorology. At first I questioned whether academia was really something I would get into, but in the end, I certainly did.
    Not just that, but it was also excellent socially. There was very little of the suppression of individuality ("you have to fit in with the norm or you get ostracised") stuff- people generally respected each other as individuals, rather than putting pressure on them to conform. Consequently, forming frienships was remarkably easy. I also found the city of Leeds to be surprisingly good- I expected it to be just another city, but it has a very vibrant atmosphere with a wide variety of things to do, yet does not suffer from overcrowding, even on a Friday or Saturday night. There was also ample scope to do things other than go to nightclubs and get drunk- playing pool and going tenpin bowling were two favourites.
    I certainly have far more confidence in making friendships than I've had for at least a good ten years. In Lancaster and my old school I learnt how to deal with social problems; in Leeds I learnt how to deal with not having social problems- a very welcome experience indeed.
    Now for the bad news- I'm not there any more, and I'm in the position of looking out for a combination of job and PhD/research opportunities from my parents' home instead. On the research front the main thing will be to apply for the next batch of research funding early next year (or something might turn up before then; some PhD projects are available all year round, but funding is a problem). However, paying the odd visit to Leeds is certainly on the agenda, especially since three of the people on my course still live around there (two are doing PhDs). Ideally I'd love to be back there again doing some kind of research next year, but you can't put all your eggs in one basket- I have to look elsewhere as well, and for jobs as well as research courses. I guess that if I don't land anything in research by mid-next-year and haven't found a job in an area of my interests in the North East by then, I will have to put more emphasis on jobseeking and search outside of the North East region for jobs.
    People might be thinking "why do you want to go into research, or jobs in environment/meteorology, when they don't give much money". They may well not, but my main priority in life isn't to get loads of money- it's to have a happy life with an enjoyable work and home life, and to get enough money to sustain a basic living. Work isn't such a burden if you're working in something you take an interest in anyway.
  23. Thundery wintry showers
    Following on from the discussion with WBSH et al, I will add some of my own thoughts in here, especially since there have recently been positive developments in this area.
    In my experience, one of the main issues with these relationships are knowing where the line stands between platonic and sexual love (in theory it is easy; a platonic relationship has no sexual involvement, a sexual relationship has at least some, but in practice it is complicated). With regards sex and love being different things, I think it would help people understand if more analogies were made with "family" relationships, e.g. someone might love a platonic friend as they would love their mother, or a close sibling, neither of which are usually associated with sexual involvement.
    The bigger issue in my experience has been third parties spreading nasty rumours about the male constituent of the friendship and undermining the friendship. This kind of thing is hard to deal with due to the social norm that whenever a third party interferes with a friendship, you assume the friend 100% guilty, and the third party 100% innocent. Thus, if either of the friends go to anyone for advice on how to deal with this third party, they will be told that they are being shat on by each other. There's also the social norm that if a man is accused of abusing a woman, you believe the accusations, thus people tend to believe whatever rumours are spread.
    The issue of a "true" friend is double-edged here, as when the friendship is broken up, the male constituent usually ends up in trouble for what he is rumoured to have done. The truer the friend, the more trouble will be required to break up the friendship and thus the more likely it is to survive, but also, the more trouble the male constituent will end up in if the friendship falls apart. The concept of a friend who would stand by someone "no matter what" is unrealistic, e.g. if someone is made to choose between one person or another (which can happen in these situations) then he/she can't be a "true" friend to both of them. Again, an analogy with "family" makes this more clear; this stipulation of "stand by you no matter what" is rarely if ever applied to "family".
    I think the social segragation of the sexes also makes platonic relationships difficult, particularly for men, as male shows of care and affection are often misinterpreted as being sexual. Like-minded constituents of a platonic relationship may violate gender norms and be put under pressure to conform, which causes them to be pulled apart as they lose the things they have in common. In general platonic relationships seem to work best if they occur within a "family", mainly because society considers "family" to be trustworthy and "friends" to be unimportant, so "family" are given a lot more leeway (plus, "family" relationships are normally assumed asexual by definition) so third parties are less likely to take offensive action (and less likely to get away with it if they do).
    In the past couple of years, however, I have been able to form some platonic relationships with women without encountering the above issues, which has helped my confidence in them and shown me that it is possible to make them work. They are becoming more acceptable in society than they used to be, but as long as gender and "family vs friends" stereotypes continue to be accepted without question and enforced by society, there will always be barriers to them being accepted as they are.
  24. Thundery wintry showers
    Is this phrase catching on? There is an excellent site from Reading University's Meteorology department documenting the daily weather going back to the late 1990s:
    [url="http://www.met.rdg.ac.uk/~brugge/"]http://www.met.rdg.ac.uk/~brugge/[/url]

    ...and in its summary for the 3rd February it says the following:
    [quote]Overnight into the 3rd snow fell mainly in E areas of England and Scotland although some falls were reported in Ireland, SW England, the Channel islands and other places. To the S of the snow most places in England and Wales had an air frost - with Cent and E England then having a cold day. During the day there were further falls of sleet and snow in N and E Scotland resulting from fronts circulating around a low pressure area centred over S Ireland (MSL pressure down to 985mb). There were also some snow showers over Ireland, Wales and SW England that gave some heavu falls in places. The Met Office also reported some [b]thundery, wintry showers [/b]in S countiews of England which died out as they moved N.[/quote]

    I remember being affected by those showers in Exeter on that day- there was no thunder here but there were certainly some quite dramatic showers of snow, sleet and hail.

    The 15th June was an amazing day of weather in Exeter. It started off dry and sunny but shower clouds shot up during the morning and there was a colossal rainstorm at 11:30am, which led to some limited flash flooding around the Met Office. After some sunshine and showers over lunchtime, a thunderstorm came over from 2 to 2:30pm, with even more torrential rain- rivalling the deluge of the 6th June, although it was of more normal duration for rain of such intensity (about 10-15 minutes). There were about 20 rumbles of thunder in total and some overhead lightning. Flash flooding again occurred and although I didn't specifically notice any hail, it was reported from the location as well. The rest of the day was mainly sunny with a few showers, and at 7pm there was a "sunny shower"- a moderate shower with bright sunshine throughout leading to a vivid rainbow.
    True, the Norwich area got rather more severe thunderstorms (as per usual!) but from what I've seen and heard the rain was no more intense than in Exeter and the storms constituted one long spell of thunder- a large part of me feels happier to have had the short sharp cloudbursts that Exeter experienced.

    On a related note I am leaving the Met Office in three and a half weeks' time. The place and the people who work there will certainly be sorely missed, but on the other hand it will also be good to be reunited with UEA and the people who work there. The MetO has made an excellent account of itself while I've been there, and I hope to end up back there at some point during my future career.

    As for the climate of Exeter, I don't like the climate as much as that of Norwich overall, but I have to say that it's rather better from my perspective than I expected (and that's not just because the winter was unusually snowy- though if that is ever a problem there's always Dartmoor which is about as snowy as inland parts of North-East England). Sunshine hours are good, anticyclonic gloom relatively rare, summer weather pleasantly warm, and although thunderstorms aren't that numerous, there is no shortage of heavy convective rainstorms at any time of the year. Certainly more interesting than the climate of Lancaster, which is the other part of western Britain that I've lived in.
  25. Thundery wintry showers
    These stats are copied from my June 2006 weather summary in the thread. I could sue myself for infringing my own copyright and make myself put up with Starforce 3.0 Professional copy protection just to read my discussion (only kidding; been uninstalling a computer game because of above issue)
    Statistics for June 2006, relative to estimated 1971-2000 averages for the location:
    Mean max: 18.8C (+2.2)
    Mean min: 11.2C (+2.0)
    Mean: 15.0C (+2.1)
    Difficulties with rainfall recorder- only 2mm, which I don't trust at all, though it was certainly a very dry month.
    Warmest: 24.8C (12th)
    Lowest max: 12.6C (25th)
    Highest min: 15.4C (17th)
    Lowest min: 7.6C (27th)
    The first 12 days of June in Cleadon were dry and very sunny in general, though cooling sea breezes ensured that the maxima weren't particularly high during the first 10 days; as the wind changed to a southerly the 11th and 12th were very warm.
    From the 13th onwards the weather was rather cloudy and dry with a fair amount of anticyclonic gloom, though the month ended with a couple of sunny days. It continued rather warm, primarily by night,
    It was the warmest June since 2003 at Cleadon. The average minimum was actually 0.1C higher than 2003 (although given inhomogeneities in my records, not statistically significant) but the average maximum was 0.6C lower. The sunshine excess of 1-12 June was largely negated by the mainly cloudy weather thereafter, with an excess of around 10% according to the Met Office sunshine maps. This means that June 2005 was actually sunnier than June 2006, while the last significantly sunnier June occurred as recently as 2003.
    Leeds did rather better sunshine wise, with an excess in the 20-30% region.
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