• The Author – Bart Busschots

  

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When it comes to safety in the real world kids have vital safety precautions drilled into them. They are warned about the dangers of playing on the road and thought how to cross the road safely. They are also warned about strangers and told not to get into cars with them or anything like that. Hence, despite the fact that there are serious risks out there in the real world, kids generally manage to stay safe. However, the same is not true on the Internet. Many kids are not given a basic education on the very real dangers that exist in cyber-space, or how to protect themselves. As a result they are in real danger as they wander round cyber-space totally un-prepared for the nasty reality that there are very bad people out there who want to harm them. In my view the main reason for this is that many parents don’t understand computers in general and the Internet and the concept of the now all-pervasive social networking sites in particular. Without this understanding they cannot possibly prepare their kids properly so they end up wandering around the Internet un-supervised and un-prepared and become soft targets for pedophiles and cyber-bullies. In my mind this makes a very strong case for teaching children about the Internet and particularly safety on the Internet in school.

This problem was highlighted again today when two of my fellow PhD students in NUI Maynooth (and founders of www.bigulo.com) got some good media coverage for a survey they did of Irish related Bebo profiles. The press-release makes interesting reading and is full of very simple but very effective advice for parents. If you’re a parent I’d suggest you read it, and if you have young siblings who use the net I’d suggest you talk to them or your parents about it. Anyhow, this is an important issue and it needs to be kept in people’s mind so thanks Des and Andy for getting this important issue some much-needed media attention.

[tags]Bebo, mySpace, Internet, Children[/tags]

There was a bit of a hubbub at Wimbledon this year with people complaining because the prize money for the Lady’s Championships was less than that for the Men’s. Their argument goes along the basic line that ‘in this day and age’ men and women should be paid the same. At first glance you’d have to agree with these people but on analysis you’ll realise they are being ridiculous. Equality means that men and women should be paid the same for doing the same job. I agree with that 100% and that’s why I agree with the Women’s prize money being less. In the Women’s game it’s best of three sets but the men have to play best of five. In other words, the longest possible ladies game is the same length as the shorted possible men’s game! So, if the women want to be paid the same as the men they should play to five sets too, if not then they have no right to demand equal pay for less work! When it comes to equality it’s all or nothing in my book.

I’ve been watching Bush’s approval ratings slide over the past months and was happy today to see them, hit a new low of 29%. A figure that low means that he has not only annoyed the Democrats (which we all knew he would) but also the neutrals and even many conservatives. The only people I imagine he has left are religious extremists and capitalist extremists (or the Oil Lobby as most call them). As far as I can see the only reasons that people voted for him were his proclaimed ideologies but it seems that no amount of public Christianity can hide his total incompetence from the American people. For a long time after 911 it was considered un-patriotic to disagree with Bush on security restrictions and wars but that sheen has now gone. Almost 5 years after 911 he still does not have a single success story. Afghanistan is still a mess (but a mess that is out of the news now), Iraq is also a complete disaster area and worst of all he still hasn’t caught Osama or found his mythical WMDs! Add to that the American troops dying on a daily basis, the rubbish economy, the ineptitude of his response to Katrina and more recently that wonderful fiasco with that ports deal and you get a good measure of the man’s leadership abilities. Finally add to that his dilution of the boundaries between church and state and his flagrant homophobia and you have a man very few people can see as doing a good job. Well done Americans, what took you so long?!

When you see pictures of burning embassies and mad crowds it seems insane to think that all this is about a few drawings published in a Danish news paper a few months ago and now re-published in a few other news papers. Yes, the cartoons were disrespectful, yes they were initially published in a right-wing publication and probably designed to offend but honestly, a wee bit of perspective and tolerance would not go a miss. The cartoons were pulling the piss out of Muslims for being violent and militant …. way to prove the cartoon’s point guys!

This incident has now been blown up into a freedom of the press V religious respect issue. Personally, I think the cartoons were in bad taste and the fact that it is a real offense to Muslims to portray their God means that they should not have been published IMO. However, that is no reason to revert to violence and to take out your anger on an entire nation. Buring down embassies in response to a drawing does not seem proportional to me! Also, these cartoons were not published by the Danish Government so burning down their embassy is un-called for. Likewise, these images were not published by the Danish dairy company that is being targeted and had to lay off staff so they should not be punished for them.

The reaction in the middle east speaks volumes for the power of a few radical Imams to stirr up hatered. An entire nation is being targeted for the actions of a few cartoonists, if something this small can be blown up this much I think it’s fair to say there is a long way to go before there is peace in the middle east!

As I see it the initial cartoons were IMO a blow below the belt and not appropriate but the response is infinitely more inappropriate and I think the Muslim world has scored an own goal on this one. Yes, it is a minority of extremists doing the burning but it looks like a large enough group to me and the governments in the Islamic nations involved seem less than eager to protect people from these mobs. This response has re-enforced all the stereo-types being used by right-wing loonies in Europe to stir up anti-Muslim feeling and, in the eyes of many people, have prooved the cartoonist’s point.

As for this being a freedom of the press thing, I just don’t see it. Freedom of the press is about allowing the press to report events free from Government censorship, it’s not about insulting and belittling an entire religious group! These cartoons were designed to insult and belittle, not to relate a factual event.

Having just had a very negative experience with a Ryanair flight I think I should provide a warning to people – some of the airports Ryanair fly to are not actually properly equipped to offer a reliable international service. The case in point is "Brussels South" but this also applies to others such as Eindhooven.

Read more

The Catholic Church’s major policy document on homosexuality in the church was flawed and bad enough but to add insult to injury news of a private letter sent to all Bishops to accompany the new policy has been made public and it shows that there is now an actual witch-hunt underway. The Vatican are sending "inspectors" to all seminaries to look for "evidence of homosexuality". This kind of witch-hunt makes a mockery of the churches supposed love of gay people and plea that they not be discriminated against. This is the most un-Christian thing I have seen the Vatican do in my lifetime.

Firstly, I want to talk about the policy document, I will go through each of the flaws in it in turn. This policy bans homosexuals from joining the priesthood. Not only does it ban homosexuals but also people who "support the gay culture". The policy also makes a distinction between "Transitory Homosexuality" and "Deep-seated Homosexuality" and re-iterates the church’s view that homosexuality is a disorder and that it can be "cured".

Ignores Scientific Realities

Both the distinction between the two kinds of Homosexuality (which the Vatican made up) and the definition of homosexuality are at direct odds with the scientific study of homosexuality and show that rather than dealing with the realities of homosexuality the church would prefer to stick it’s head in the sand like a great big ostrich. I heard the Catholic stance on sexuality described as being like a house of cards this week. This may explain why the love between two men can cause so much trouble. Accepting the obvious realities about homosexuality, that it is natural, not a choice and not a disease, would bring all the church’s out-dated and illogical policies on human sexuality crumbling down around their ears. Simply put, in order to conserve the status-quo gays must be pushed back into the closet. The views on homosexuality that the church issue as fact are straight from the middle of the last century and ignore half a century of scientific research and study.

Children Left in Danger

The reasoning behind the policy is also fundamentally flawed, scientific studies have shown that homosexuality is not linked to pedophilia yet this policy is being billed as the Vatican’s solution to the child sex abuse problem. Thing is, the evidence shows that this policy is based on flawed logic and that the real cause of the child sex abuse is probably poor handling of celibacy by some priests and that it was definitely facilitated by the Bishops who hushed it up and protected offending priests. Hence the most important reform would be to deal with the Bishops who facilitated the sexual abuse of children and to deal openly with the problems enforced celibacy can cause. However, doing this would make things difficult for the leaders of the church, which includes many of the Bishops who facilitated the abuse in the first place! Hence, the Vatican are using gays as scapegoats to save themselves from some uncomfortable home truths.

This is despicable enough because it is very un-Christian to abuse a whole swathe of the population like this but it is made infinitely worse because it does not actually resolve the serious problem of children having their innocence stripped away by being horribly abused by people who should be protecting them. The church officials are hanging gays out to dry and sacrificing children to save their own skins. This is utterly revolting.

Fuels Homophobia

Every gay person should be alarmed by the reasoning behind this ban and the language in the policy. We have all been branded as pedophiles and as being mentally ill. These kind of broad generalisations are always dangerous but are extra dangerous when they are made by an organisation claiming to be the voice of God and because they are using something as emotive as child sex abuse to justify their discrimination.

Makes no Sense and is Un-needed

Priests must be celibate, a major part of becoming a priest is to learn to repress the natural human sex drive. Homosexuality only defines your sexual preferences, nothing more, hence not having gay sex is no different to not having straight sex and giving up gay sex poses exactly the same challenges as giving up straight sex. To be a good priest you effectively have to become non-sexual, what difference does it make what sex you are not having!

This policy is utterly pointless because once you take away sex, gay people are no different to straight people and since priests are celibate and have mastered their sex drive it could be argued there is no such thing as a gay or a straight priest!

Bad for the Catholic Church

The catholic church is facing a crisis in the western world, they have far far too few priests and far far too few people filling the pews on Sundays. Why is this? Well, the Church’s out-dated views on Women priests and sexuality certainly don’t help and in places like Ireland the evil of the Church’s protection and facilitation of pedophiles also plays a huge part. Hateful policies like this only serve to drive more people from the church. Yet another negative message from an increasingly negative church that seems to be running to the past at an ever faster pace.

Letter to the Bishops

The letter to the bishops informing them of the witch-hunt that is about to begin removes all doubt about how this policy was intended. This cannot be seen as anything but a witch-hunt against all gays in the Catholic church. Congratulations Joe, you’ve taken your organisation of love back 5 centuries into an organisation of hate, more interested in persecuting gay people than dealing with Child sex abuse or the other real problems facing this world. I don’t think Christ would be happy to see his church persecuting people like this, I don’t remember any parables about excluding people or about discriminating against people but I do remember lots of bible stories about how much Jesus loved children.

From myself and Des’ posts on the matter and the comments both posts have recieved, it would seem fair to say that people agree that academic standards are on a slide. I’ve been pondering this for a while now and I’ve decided to summarise my views on why standards here in NUI Maynooth have been sliding from direct experience during my 8 years here in this article. These views are based directly on my experiences from a 4 year Double Honours degree in Science (Experimental Physic and Computer Science), 4 years of study for my PhD, 5 years of demonstrating in Computer Science laboratories and 3 years of lecturing to Computer Science students (Information Processing to 2nd Arts & HDipIT students).

In this article I will discuss one by one the factors I believe have been responsible for the falling standards in the Science Faculty at NUI Maynooth.

The abolition of the BSc General

The first time I started thinking about standards and worrying about standards falling was when I heard that the BSc general was to be abolished in the final year of my degree. Up to that point about 80% of students doing science degrees did the three-year General degree and only the top 20% or so went into the 4th year for an honours degree. The entry into honours was governed by your 2nd year marks and you had to get over 55% to be admitted into honours stream. In my year there were 12 honours Experimental Physics students and 20 honours Computer Science students.

There was a very good reason for the minimum requirement for honours, the honours course was tough going! When the general degree was abolished all students were automatically entered into the honours stream without any need to meet a minimum requirement apart from passing second year (i.e. 40%). It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that one of two things could happen here, either the failure rate would rocket up or the standards would plummet. As you can guess it was the latter as courses started being scaled down or dropped completely in third and fourth year to ensure that the students who should have been in the now non-existent general stream still passed in the honours stream.

The reduction of first year courses by 25%

The next major change was the reduction by a whopping 25% of lecture hours for all first year science students. In my first year we had 16 lecture hours a week (as well as labs and tutorials of course), four per subject per week. After I graduated that was reduced to just three per subject per week. This meant that a quarter of the modules once thought in first year had to go. Most of these modules were pre-requisites for modules in later years so they could not be dropped but had to be pushed back to second year, in turn pushing second year modules back to third year, third year modules to 4th year and 4th year modules out of existence altogether. By loosing an entire quarter of a year in one fell swoop there was no way standards could not drop.

A pre-occupation with pass rates

This was discussed in detail by Des so I’m not going to dwell on this. Basically pressure was applied on departments by the University administrators to pass more students. This resulted in modules being simplified and more difficult modules disappearing all together. Weak students were being let into second year when they were simply not fit for second year so second year had to be toned down for them and that effect just rippled up the years. I’ll give two examples of this.

Firstly, courses in Perl and Matlab have now completely disappeared from the Computer Science and Software Engineering degree. I used to demonstrate both these modules and was exceptionally disappointed to see them go.

Secondly, I think Data Structures and Algorithms demonstrates really well how courses get diluted. In my second year Data Structures and Algorithms started off with the basics of stacks, queues, linked lists and trees and then went on to go into their applications including implementing a binary search tree, implementing node balancing with both AVL and Red-Black tress and culminating in the implementation of the Huffman Encoding algorithm for data compression in C++. The course also went into searching and sorting algorithms in great detail culminating in an implementation in C++ of the recursive quick-sort algorithm. Now students don’t even learn about Huffman encoding let alone implement it, they also don’t implement AVL trees, red black trees or even simple binary search trees. Basically students learn about these data structures but not their applications and they certainly don’t have to program even the half of what we had to do. This was brought into stark contrast when I was talking to a 4th year who did Data Structure and Algorithms two years ago. He said it was useless theory with no application in the real world. I was shocked so I explained what WE did in DaA in my second year and his jaw dropped. He had only done about half of what I’d done and was exceptionally annoyed to have been deprived of a proper DaA course. Why was he deprived of this course? Because the standards were dropped to up the pass rate.

A change in student attitudes

I have noticed over my time demonstrating in labs and lecturing that there has been a steady change in students attitudes. I call it the rise of the secondary school mentality in university. Students expect to be given everything on a plate, to never have to do any independent work and want to pass with the absolute minimum of effort. There are also more and more students in college against their will. They are not there because they want to be but because their parents made them go, just like you get in secondary schools.

There are many theories on why there is this change in attitude. Darragh suggested it was because everyone can go to college for free so they don’t value it. I think it has a lot to do with parents molly-coddling children further and further into adulthood and basically making their decisions for them. In reality it’s probably a little of both.

The effect of this however is that if students are not spoon-fed information they will simply not learn it. When I was an undergraduate it was not un-known for us to be told to research a topic or to go read a book in our own time and then to be examined on that topic. That just doesn’t happen anymore in the science faculty. A worse effect of this is that if something is challenging students just don’t bother with it. They then do poorly in the exam and because of the pressure to keep pass rates up the challenging stuff is just removed from the courses.

This however has an immensely negative effect on the good students in the class because they go un-challenged, get bored and either under achieve or transfer somewhere they won’t be bored or worse still, drop out.

Conclusion

When you consider that everyone is being forced through what used to be the elite honours course without weak students being failed, that 25% of first year has disappeared into the ether and the pressure on departments is to pass pass pass students, how could standards NOT plummet!

Links

• Is a CS Degree actually WORTH anything?
• Students are the only bottom line that matters

I was heartened today to see Blair’s draconian plan to allow terror suspects be detained for 90 days without charge defeated in the House of Commons. It was reduced to 28 days which is still a long time that the police can hold you without providing any evidence to anyone but it is dramatically better than 90! It’s great to see British MPs being smart enough not to over-react to the London bombings in the same way as American lawmakers did to 9-11 by agreeing to Bush’s truly medieval Patriot Act.

A post on Mikado a few days ago making out that wind power was some form of conspiracy to destroy our countryside and to make money for large faceless corporations without giving us anything in return has spurred me on to put together an organised argument showing why wind power is a good thing for the world in general and for Ireland in particular.

OK, before I get into the bones of this post I think I should explain my involvement in the wind industry. I am not and have never been an employee of any wind energy company but my father works for one and runs a few and has been involved in the wind industry for quite some time now. He started off developing wind farms part-time in the evenings and was so good at it that he was snapped up by a major European wind turbine company and since then he has been with a number of large wind turbine manufacturers. Because dad is so involved in the wind industry I get to tour many of the wind farms in Ireland at various stages of development and building as well as when they are operational. Also, when dad was still doing this stuff part-time and when I was still in school I used to help him with the development work (which usually involved getting very cold and very wet on a mountain somewhere) from time to time so I have some hands-on experience of the industry too. So, now that you know where I’m coming from we can continue!

There are a lot of common arguments against wind power that you often hear and I will go through them one by one later in this post but I’ll just start by giving you my view of ‘the big picture’. At the moment, we as a society, are heavily dependent on energy and the resources we currently get the majority of that energy from are finite and running out. So something has to give. Either we stop using energy or we start developing other sources of energy that will not run out. Wind is not THE answer but it is part of the answer. There is no one source of energy that could power the whole world, a good energy grid is diverse so that a problem with one source does not cripple the grid. A grid powered by all wind would be ludicrous, as would a grid powered by all solar or all biomass or all hydro or all anything. Basically, diversity in the grid is a good thing and since the wind is totally free and always blowing somewhere in the world it should be tapped as part of our overall energy strategy. Ireland is perfectly placed to tap this resource so it should!

So, what are the common arguments against wind power? Well lets start with the most common one:

Wind farms should be stopped because they are a blight on the landscape are are spoiling the countryside.

Firstly, many people actually LIKE the look of wind turbines! Personally I think there is something very elegant and graceful about them and I think they add to the landscape. There are people who disagree with that though and that is their right. However, these people who think wind turbines are ugly will probably agree that they are less ugly than fossil fuel buring power plants or Nuclear power plants. Also, each turn of those blades is reducing the amount of CO₂ we are pumping into the air where as the never ending flow of smoke from the chimneys of fossil fuel burning plants increase our damage to the environment each second they are in operation. Another important point to note is that agricultural life just caries on as normal below wind turbines so they just become a part of the land rather than taking it over like a large fossil fuel or Nuclear plant does. Wind turbines are in tune with the country, large power plants are NOT!

It is fair to say that areas of outstanding natural beauty like the Burren or Glendalough should not be used for wind farms no matter how ideal the conditions. No one with any sense could argue with that. Likewise wind turbines should not be placed in the path of migrating birds or in areas where their foundations would cause major damage to the environment. Luckily the planning service in this country is not so inept as to just grant permission for wind farms willy-nilly, they ensure that environmental impact studies are done and that their recommendations are enforced and that wind farms are built in such a way as to minimise their visual impact.

Finally, the future of large scale wind energy in Ireland is probably off-shore. Turbines that are off-shore are out of the way and except in excellent conditions, out of sight too. They also get steady sustained winds and assuming they are built sensibly and bearing in mind the local geology and ecology they will not harm any one or anything but just give us clean power.

I think the best way to illustrate my views on this point is with some pictures! All the images used in this post are of power plants and wind farms in Ireland (including the North). First I’ll show you some images of fossil fuel burning power plants in Ireland and then some images of Irish wind farms.

Moneypoint (coal burning 915MW)

West Offaly Power (peat buring 150MW)

Tarbert Power Station (oil burning 620MW)

Poolbeg (oil & gas burning 1,020MW)

Now, lets compare that to some Irish wind farms.

Kingsmountain (25MW with 10 2.5MW turbines)

Meentycat (75MW with 38 turbines of various sizes)

Tappaghan (19.5MW with 13 1.5MW turbines)

Arklow Bank (25MW with 7 3.6MW turbines)

Wind Turbines generate almost no power

In the very early days of the wind industry there was some truth to this statement, the technology was still very primitive so as well as the turbines having low power ratings they were also very inefficient and hence generally produced very little power so you needed LOADS of them (like you see in California) to make them even remotely worth while. Thing is the wind industry now has some serious capital behind it so the turbines have come on in leaps and bounds in the last 10 years.

The power ratting of the turbines is literally 10 times higher now than it was 10 years ago but more importantly than that the efficiency of the machines has been massively improved by innovations such as variable pitch blades, variable speed rotors and an increase in sheer scale with larger rotors up higher in better air.

Again, looking at Ireland, the largest turbines we have now are the 3.6MW turbines on Arklow bank. Ten years ago we didn’t even have 0.3MW turbines here yet because 0.2MW turbines were considered top of the line back then. 3.6MW is BIG and I will use that for my calculations but I will point out that the large turbine manufacturers are now working on 5MW and even 6MW turbines so just imagine where we will be in 10 years!

So, 3.5MW, what does that really mean? Well, firstly, no machine produces power at it’s rated capacity at all times so assuming your turbines are on a good site (and lets face it why put them anywhere else!) with reliable 10m/s winds a cautious estimate for that machine’s average efficiency over a year would be 80% so in the space of one year that machine would produce a little over 24GW/h (GigaWatt/Hours). To put that into perspective, 24GWh/ is 24,000Units of electricity and according to the ESB the total demand in the Republic of Ireland in 2001 was 24,221 GW/h. In other words, it would only take 1,000 wind turbines to power the whole country! Seems like wind turbines produce PLENTY of power to me!

Wind turbines save very little CO₂ emission

The argument goes a long the lines of "wind turbines have to be manufactured and the wind farm built and that results in CO₂ emissions so they are not that clean". This is a really stupid argument because ALL power plants have to be built so ALL power plants will result in the emission of CO₂ while they are under construction. However, the moment a wind farm is switched on it stops producing any CO₂ emissions and each Watt of power it produces results in zero CO₂ emissions. Contrast that to any fossil fuel burning plant and even if you assume that the construction of a huge power station results in no more CO₂ emission than the building of a wind farm (something I don’t buy for a second) they start off at the same point as a wind farm but each and every single Watt of power produced results in more CO₂ being emitted into the atmosphere!

There are some nice statistics on the CO₂ emissions savings of wind energy on the Airtricity web site. In case you are not familiar with them Airtricity are an Irish green energy company that produce all their power from wind energy. The quote below is form their front page:

Airtricity has saved the release of 1,988,918 Tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere since 1st January 2003.
This is equivalent to taking 473,552 cars off the road for a year!

This seems like an exceptionally significant saving in CO₂ emissions to me and that is just from one company!

Wind farms make money for large corporations

Of course they do! ALL large scale energy production is run by big business because only big business CAN do things at such a large scale! An individual industrial standard wind turbine costs well over a million Euro so when you consider the cost of developing and building an entire wind farm you can see why only big business can take on such projects.

I think the people who go on about this have the twisted view that all large companies are evil and therefore since all large wind projects are done by big business wind farms are evil. This is just rubbish. Give me GE Wind over Exon any day!

Wind turbines could never power the whole country

Yes, this argument DOES seem laughable but I was actually presented with it on a Mikado thread so I figured I’d include it here.

No, wind farms could never provide ALL our power but that does not mean that they cannot provide ANY of our power! Like I said in my intro, a good power grid has lots of variety so my answer to this argument is "so what???".

Links

• The ESB – www.esb.ie
• Airtricity – www.airtricity.com
• GE Wind – www.gewindenergy.com

Just saw in the news today that Bishops are to be allowed to make up their own mind on withholding Holy Communion from politicians they don’t think are towing the Catholic line.

Way to cheapen a sacrament, pull the church further into politics and generally make the church seem like a bunch of children. "No, you can’t express an opinion we disagree with or we will deny you sacraments", sounds awfully like "It’s my ball and if you don’t pretend to agree with me I’m going home".

Yet again the RCC falls FAR short of the Christian ideal. Does this kind of petty thing seem like the kind of thing Jesus would do? Not to me it doesn’t. Christ went out of his way to embrace sinners and show how much he loved them, he certainly did not shun them and deny them his love.

Yet again I get a strong urge to shout "I told you so" to all those people who said Ratty "would not be that bad".

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