Lose with English film review
Lose with English is based around a bizarre inventor of fitness devices by the name of English Jones, which leads him to TV fame and fortune followed quickly by debt and disaster as English's inventions fail, resulting in injuries and poisoning in various catastrophic ways. Failure brings out the usual suspects including debt collectors, the intelligence services and even the Italian mafia as English goes into hiding.
The plot thickens as the FBI and Interpol get involved and the mafia attempt to terminate the contract. English meanwhile is holed out incognito, working as a pizza delivery boy in a Pizza takeaway, keeping low and tinkering with his next invention to help rebuild his fortune.
The mafia find English and give chase. English cycles off and gets away, resulting in one of the mafia hit men winding up in hospital, but the net is closing in. Under extreme pressure English suddenly invents a new device, which promises to turn his luck around. Everyone is taken in, except the hit men who now want revenge. The climax comes as they enter English’s apartment to kill him. English enters followed by his new investors and colleagues, making the hit tricky. The hit men decide to kill everyone and jump out only to be confronted by the FBI and Interpol.
English’s new invention, a fitness pillow turns out to have been made in China and is full of lead contaminants, resulting in law suits and English’s final downfall. Or is it?
The film’s humor is directed at vanity, greed and the shallow nature of the US fitness industry and the gullibility of consumers, while mocking the sharks who prey on debt.
Lose with English is the fourth budget film from the talented and charming Robyn and Michael, both run-away musicians from LA. More info about them can be found here: http://brightbluegorilla.com
The film was personally introduced by the couple with a selection of songs as part of a film club promotion in Cologne, Germany on 20th November 2010.
My rating: 4 out of 5 for entertainment with a great plot that does justice to the genre. This is impressive work on a very tight budget and an inspiration to aspiring film-makers to get out there and produce art, rather than becoming duped into the grab for cash.
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BBG website: http://www.brightbluegorilla.com/movies.html
Sunday 21 November 2010
Thursday 18 November 2010
Logic pyramids and the Dead Rabbit
Logic pyramids are robust tools used to make predictions by employing structured analysis. Data forms the basis of the logic pyramid. Data in the form of metrics such as temperature readings, or time for example inform us, or provide information for further analysis. This offers us knowledge and hopefully the wisdom to understand and ultimately become wiser as a result. This should lead us to taking action in some form leading to change, which provides more data in the form of dynamic feedback loops. These are indicators of the success of the action. Logic pyramids are seen in science and education as well as business analytics.
I call the opposite of a logic pyramid the Dead Rabbit for reasons that will become clear later. By simply turning the logic pyramid on its head, the opposites of the terms used in the logic pyramid are defined. Data becomes noise, information becomes no information, misinformation, or even worse disinformation (simply put: lies). This can only lead to ignorance, fear, doubt and uncertainty, which ultimately ends with inaction and even death. Hence the dead rabbit. Rabbits cannot process vehicles (they are cute, but dumb) and so become roadkill as fear freezes them as the truck approaches.
Classic examples of the Dead Rabbit in action are seen in propaganda campaigns. They were honed by the tobacco industry and have been perfected by the denial industry.
I call the opposite of a logic pyramid the Dead Rabbit for reasons that will become clear later. By simply turning the logic pyramid on its head, the opposites of the terms used in the logic pyramid are defined. Data becomes noise, information becomes no information, misinformation, or even worse disinformation (simply put: lies). This can only lead to ignorance, fear, doubt and uncertainty, which ultimately ends with inaction and even death. Hence the dead rabbit. Rabbits cannot process vehicles (they are cute, but dumb) and so become roadkill as fear freezes them as the truck approaches.
Classic examples of the Dead Rabbit in action are seen in propaganda campaigns. They were honed by the tobacco industry and have been perfected by the denial industry.
Wednesday 17 November 2010
Cloud computing & business apps
Download this:
https://www.dropbox.com
Summarize this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/oct/16/personal-productivity-apps
Then upload it to Dropbox.
https://www.dropbox.com
Summarize this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/oct/16/personal-productivity-apps
Then upload it to Dropbox.
Monday 15 November 2010
Green technology - water
Water-saving solutions:
* A system for using cooling water of lower quality. Info here.
* The dry toilet & compost loos.
* Rainwater harvesting (alternative source) &
* Greywater systems (reuse)
* Desalination – solar desalination.
Green tech
Principle: Sustainability.
PPP – polluter pays principle
How? The law – legal instruments
Litigation – legal processes (in a court of law).
RRR – reduce, reuse, recycle
Increasing efficiency is green
Cradle to the grave analysis. Closed loop recycling.
Impact, footprint
At least one in five of the companies using the largest amounts of water in the world is already experiencing damage to their business from drought and other shortages, flooding, and rising prices.
The wide scope of commercial problems posed by growing pressure on global water supplies and changing weather patterns is revealed by a survey of the 302 biggest companies in the most water-intensive sectors, across 25 countries.
The study was commissioned by the increasingly influential Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), which conducts an annual study of what companies are doing to measure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions on behalf of investors holding US$16trillion (£9.9tr) of assets.
About half the companies responded to the water survey, of whom 39% said they were already experiencing "detrimental impacts". In answer to a separate question, about half said the risks to their businesses were "current or near term" - in the next one to five years - a sample likely to have significant crossover with those already reporting problems.
Companies most at risk are in the food and drink, tobacco, and metals and mining sectors, says the first CDP Water Disclosure report. Other concerns listed were fines and litigation for pollution.
Marcus Norton, who headed the report, said companies that replied to the survey were more likely to have taken action to address water issues affecting their business, but he was still "impressed" by the replies: 96% were aware of potential problems, and two-thirds have somebody responsible for water issues at board or executive committee level.
Of the companies which did not reply, not all would be ignoring the problems, but Norton hoped in following years more companies would show they take the issue "seriously".
"I don't think this is an issue of the price of water increasing even 10-fold, which I think in many cases it will," he added. "For me it's about building resilience to and avoiding catastrophic damage from water scarcity and physical risks. If you run out of water you can't operate. We have seen floods in China and Pakistan cause hundreds of billions of dollars of damage."
Companies that ignore water dangers "pose a risk to investments", said Anne Kvam, head of corporate governance of Norges Bank Investment Management, a lead sponsor of the report.
The report, written by London-based consultancy Environmental Resource Management, names six companies showing "best practice" as mining giant Anglo American, consumer group Colgate-Palmolive, auto maker Ford, US utility PG&E, and engineers GE and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. This was not intended to suggest the named corporations were the top six, only that subjectively they were "good examples", said Norton.
A major report, Charting Our Water Future, commissioned by Nestlé and brewer SAB Miller among others last year, calculated by 2030 global water demand would outstrip supply by 40%, with shortages in some parts of the world much more severe than others, but also claimed existing management and technology could cut water use and boost supply enough to close the gap.
Nestlé chairman, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, previously warned water is a greater threat than climate change, and called for significant rises in water prices to pressure big users to be more efficient.
Solutions:
Identify the problems.
More? We must make more!!! More, more, more. Really?
We are using too much water and fossil fuels.
Climate change impacts – droughts & floods.
Water resources.
Limits to growth.
Solutions: Less resources for the goods and services we use and using renewable sources of supply.
Nuclear power, fusion reactors? No.
Norwegian energy exports (hydropower).
HVDC and smart grids. Osmosis energy.
Reduce, reuse, recycle..but if you cannot…
Desalination (seawater to fresh water):
Reverse osmosis
Solar desalination
Cradle to the grave analysis. Closed loop recycling.
Where do we use water?
Domestic sector, water-saving systems. Grey water recycling.
Toilets – dry toilets
Compost toilets.
Urine - water, urea – full of nitrates – a fertiliser.
Faeces. The breaks down to form compost.
The trick is not to mix the two!
Hygiene is important here!
WC water closet.
Film by McKinsey
http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/water/charting_our_water_future.aspx
* A system for using cooling water of lower quality. Info here.
* The dry toilet & compost loos.
* Rainwater harvesting (alternative source) &
* Greywater systems (reuse)
* Desalination – solar desalination.
Green tech
Principle: Sustainability.
PPP – polluter pays principle
How? The law – legal instruments
Litigation – legal processes (in a court of law).
RRR – reduce, reuse, recycle
Increasing efficiency is green
Cradle to the grave analysis. Closed loop recycling.
Impact, footprint
At least one in five of the companies using the largest amounts of water in the world is already experiencing damage to their business from drought and other shortages, flooding, and rising prices.
The wide scope of commercial problems posed by growing pressure on global water supplies and changing weather patterns is revealed by a survey of the 302 biggest companies in the most water-intensive sectors, across 25 countries.
The study was commissioned by the increasingly influential Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), which conducts an annual study of what companies are doing to measure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions on behalf of investors holding US$16trillion (£9.9tr) of assets.
About half the companies responded to the water survey, of whom 39% said they were already experiencing "detrimental impacts". In answer to a separate question, about half said the risks to their businesses were "current or near term" - in the next one to five years - a sample likely to have significant crossover with those already reporting problems.
Companies most at risk are in the food and drink, tobacco, and metals and mining sectors, says the first CDP Water Disclosure report. Other concerns listed were fines and litigation for pollution.
Marcus Norton, who headed the report, said companies that replied to the survey were more likely to have taken action to address water issues affecting their business, but he was still "impressed" by the replies: 96% were aware of potential problems, and two-thirds have somebody responsible for water issues at board or executive committee level.
Of the companies which did not reply, not all would be ignoring the problems, but Norton hoped in following years more companies would show they take the issue "seriously".
"I don't think this is an issue of the price of water increasing even 10-fold, which I think in many cases it will," he added. "For me it's about building resilience to and avoiding catastrophic damage from water scarcity and physical risks. If you run out of water you can't operate. We have seen floods in China and Pakistan cause hundreds of billions of dollars of damage."
Companies that ignore water dangers "pose a risk to investments", said Anne Kvam, head of corporate governance of Norges Bank Investment Management, a lead sponsor of the report.
The report, written by London-based consultancy Environmental Resource Management, names six companies showing "best practice" as mining giant Anglo American, consumer group Colgate-Palmolive, auto maker Ford, US utility PG&E, and engineers GE and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. This was not intended to suggest the named corporations were the top six, only that subjectively they were "good examples", said Norton.
A major report, Charting Our Water Future, commissioned by Nestlé and brewer SAB Miller among others last year, calculated by 2030 global water demand would outstrip supply by 40%, with shortages in some parts of the world much more severe than others, but also claimed existing management and technology could cut water use and boost supply enough to close the gap.
Nestlé chairman, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, previously warned water is a greater threat than climate change, and called for significant rises in water prices to pressure big users to be more efficient.
Solutions:
Identify the problems.
More? We must make more!!! More, more, more. Really?
We are using too much water and fossil fuels.
Climate change impacts – droughts & floods.
Water resources.
Limits to growth.
Solutions: Less resources for the goods and services we use and using renewable sources of supply.
Nuclear power, fusion reactors? No.
Norwegian energy exports (hydropower).
HVDC and smart grids. Osmosis energy.
Reduce, reuse, recycle..but if you cannot…
Desalination (seawater to fresh water):
Reverse osmosis
Solar desalination
Cradle to the grave analysis. Closed loop recycling.
Where do we use water?
Domestic sector, water-saving systems. Grey water recycling.
Toilets – dry toilets
Compost toilets.
Urine - water, urea – full of nitrates – a fertiliser.
Faeces. The breaks down to form compost.
The trick is not to mix the two!
Hygiene is important here!
WC water closet.
Film by McKinsey
http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/water/charting_our_water_future.aspx
Thursday 11 November 2010
Food and drink
Food & Drink
You are what you eat.
What do you eat?
I eat junk.
If you eat healthy food, you should be healthy.
If you eat healthy food you could also be ill, but not from the food, right?
If you drink English tea, you should become English…
Typical English tea is a mixture, or blend of different varieties, such as Ceylon, Assam & Darjeeling. There is also Kenyan, Rwandan, and tea from China. Earl Grey is a mixture of tea with flavouring from bergamot orange.
What is tea? Dried leaves of various plants.
Tea is a generic term. The opposite is specific.
There is the tea plant, which grows at over 1,200 meters above sea level.
I am on a diet – meaning you are eating less, or eating more – as in a sport diet. Both mean a change of diet.
What do you eat (or consume)?
Types of consumer:
If you eat at the Mensa, you are a Mensavore.
If you only eat vegetables and fruit you are a vegan. Vegans do not eat anything that comes from animals, insects, or seafood.
If you only eat insects, you are an insectivore. Examples food are locusts, ants, termites etc. E.g. anteaters
A vegetarian does not eat meat, but they sometimes eat seafood and also dairy products. This includes milk, cheese, yoghurt & eggs.
Squid & octopus are both closely related: Group of animals known as Cephalopods, which includes jellyfish.
If you only eat meat, or insects you are a carnivore.
Snails
Carnival – meat eating festival.
If you only eat fruit you are a fruitivore. E.g. the fruit bat, or some strange people. The urang utan is another example.
If you only drink blood you are a vampire, or a Masai.
Veins and arteries.
If you eat both vegetables and meat (everything in fact!) you are an omnivore. Most of us are omnivores.
If you eat people you are a cannibal.
Is there anything you don’t eat?
Insects, dogs, cats, horses, people? Raisins, spinach, sauerkraut, caraway, cucumber, gherkins,
pickled food e.g. pickled onions, eggs.
I don’t eat any of the things above and I also don’t eat chips (French fries).
Crisps are snacks.
What do you eat? What’s your favourite food?
Pizza. Fast food?
Why become vegetarian?
It healthy, or healthier?
We do not need to eat meat to survive. Meat is often contaminated with diseases and toxins and medicines such as antibiotics, growth hormones etc.
Animal rights, animal cruelty (factory farming),
Slow food is regional, traditional, enjoyable, healthy food.
My favourite German food is goose, served with dumplings and cabbage. St. Martins goose is a tradition.
What is the most common dish in England?
Beans on toast? Maybe.
Haggis is stuffed sheep’s stomach.
Clue: It’s not fish and chips. Cod was the food of the poor because it was cheap, but we fished out all the cod and that was the end of cheap fish.
It is Chicken tikka masala.
Finger food is food you can eat with your fingers.
I eat chicken…
What is good food?
No artificial substances (E-numbers for example), pesticides, artificial fertilisers (NPK)
N = Nitrates
P = phosphates
K = Potassium
If you do not use any artificial fertilisers, or chemicals in farming your food is organic (Bio in German).
Babies are very sensitive to trace amounts of chemicals. E.g. DDT, PCB’s etc.
FYI: LD50. Toxicology is the study of poisonous substances.
Meme = an information virus (from Richard Dawkins)
Ethics in food:
Hygiene (disease control) e.g. salmonella in egg production. Factory farms for chickens are unhygienic for example.
Conditions in which the animals live.
Health issues. How good for you is this food?
Junk food: Unhealthy food. Fast food.
Examples include McDonalds, Pizza Hut, KFC.
Fast food kills variety, but variety is the spice of life.
Kebab? Is a kebab unhealthy? Why? What makes food healthy, or unhealthy? It depends on where the ingredients come from.
Too much fat (uncountable)*
*Much and many: Much is uncountable. Many can be counted. For example: Wine.
Healthy food. Slow food. A balanced diet.
The ingredients are good for you. What does the body need?
Foodstuff:
Vitamins (fruit & veg also sugar), protein (eggs), minerals (NaCl, Ca, Mg, Fe etc), fats (unsaturated (in plants) & saturated fats (e.g. in meat)), carbohydrates (bread, rice, pasta, starch and fibre).
Carrots – vitamin A accumulates (builds up) in the body. Vitamin A is deadly in high amounts.
Too much of a good thing is bad for you.
Vitamin C however, passes through the body.
Vitamin D comes from sunlight. That is why we suffer in the winter (SAD disorder). Think of disease, or ill at ease. Sick is an old word, which also to throw.
Prefix – e.g. dis something negative.
Suffix
Fluids, especially water.
You are what you eat.
What do you eat?
I eat junk.
If you eat healthy food, you should be healthy.
If you eat healthy food you could also be ill, but not from the food, right?
If you drink English tea, you should become English…
Typical English tea is a mixture, or blend of different varieties, such as Ceylon, Assam & Darjeeling. There is also Kenyan, Rwandan, and tea from China. Earl Grey is a mixture of tea with flavouring from bergamot orange.
What is tea? Dried leaves of various plants.
Tea is a generic term. The opposite is specific.
There is the tea plant, which grows at over 1,200 meters above sea level.
I am on a diet – meaning you are eating less, or eating more – as in a sport diet. Both mean a change of diet.
What do you eat (or consume)?
Types of consumer:
If you eat at the Mensa, you are a Mensavore.
If you only eat vegetables and fruit you are a vegan. Vegans do not eat anything that comes from animals, insects, or seafood.
If you only eat insects, you are an insectivore. Examples food are locusts, ants, termites etc. E.g. anteaters
A vegetarian does not eat meat, but they sometimes eat seafood and also dairy products. This includes milk, cheese, yoghurt & eggs.
Squid & octopus are both closely related: Group of animals known as Cephalopods, which includes jellyfish.
If you only eat meat, or insects you are a carnivore.
Snails
Carnival – meat eating festival.
If you only eat fruit you are a fruitivore. E.g. the fruit bat, or some strange people. The urang utan is another example.
If you only drink blood you are a vampire, or a Masai.
Veins and arteries.
If you eat both vegetables and meat (everything in fact!) you are an omnivore. Most of us are omnivores.
If you eat people you are a cannibal.
Is there anything you don’t eat?
Insects, dogs, cats, horses, people? Raisins, spinach, sauerkraut, caraway, cucumber, gherkins,
pickled food e.g. pickled onions, eggs.
I don’t eat any of the things above and I also don’t eat chips (French fries).
Crisps are snacks.
What do you eat? What’s your favourite food?
Pizza. Fast food?
Why become vegetarian?
It healthy, or healthier?
We do not need to eat meat to survive. Meat is often contaminated with diseases and toxins and medicines such as antibiotics, growth hormones etc.
Animal rights, animal cruelty (factory farming),
Slow food is regional, traditional, enjoyable, healthy food.
My favourite German food is goose, served with dumplings and cabbage. St. Martins goose is a tradition.
What is the most common dish in England?
Beans on toast? Maybe.
Haggis is stuffed sheep’s stomach.
Clue: It’s not fish and chips. Cod was the food of the poor because it was cheap, but we fished out all the cod and that was the end of cheap fish.
It is Chicken tikka masala.
Finger food is food you can eat with your fingers.
I eat chicken…
What is good food?
No artificial substances (E-numbers for example), pesticides, artificial fertilisers (NPK)
N = Nitrates
P = phosphates
K = Potassium
If you do not use any artificial fertilisers, or chemicals in farming your food is organic (Bio in German).
Babies are very sensitive to trace amounts of chemicals. E.g. DDT, PCB’s etc.
FYI: LD50. Toxicology is the study of poisonous substances.
Meme = an information virus (from Richard Dawkins)
Ethics in food:
Hygiene (disease control) e.g. salmonella in egg production. Factory farms for chickens are unhygienic for example.
Conditions in which the animals live.
Health issues. How good for you is this food?
Junk food: Unhealthy food. Fast food.
Examples include McDonalds, Pizza Hut, KFC.
Fast food kills variety, but variety is the spice of life.
Kebab? Is a kebab unhealthy? Why? What makes food healthy, or unhealthy? It depends on where the ingredients come from.
Too much fat (uncountable)*
*Much and many: Much is uncountable. Many can be counted. For example: Wine.
Healthy food. Slow food. A balanced diet.
The ingredients are good for you. What does the body need?
Foodstuff:
Vitamins (fruit & veg also sugar), protein (eggs), minerals (NaCl, Ca, Mg, Fe etc), fats (unsaturated (in plants) & saturated fats (e.g. in meat)), carbohydrates (bread, rice, pasta, starch and fibre).
Carrots – vitamin A accumulates (builds up) in the body. Vitamin A is deadly in high amounts.
Too much of a good thing is bad for you.
Vitamin C however, passes through the body.
Vitamin D comes from sunlight. That is why we suffer in the winter (SAD disorder). Think of disease, or ill at ease. Sick is an old word, which also to throw.
Prefix – e.g. dis something negative.
Suffix
Fluids, especially water.
Thursday 4 November 2010
The Weather
The Weather
How does the weather work? What drives the weather?
What is weather?
Wind – how do we measure wind? In m/s (mph) Beaufort scale (logarithmic scale of 0 to 15)
Clouds – Cirrus, cumulus, stratos
The sun drives the weather. It heats up the atmosphere?
The angle of the sun determines the seasons and temperatures during the day and during the year, but the climate is the driver of the weather. As the amount of greenhouse gases increase the climate changes. The planet is heating up resulting in the snow melting, sea level rise, more extreme weather. Another result is more, or less rain. In areas where it is dry it will become drier and wet areas will become wetter, leading to longer droughts in summer, and increased flooding in winter.
Not only that, climate change will also lead to increasing ocean acidification as more CO2 enters the system. This is bad news because coral reefs which are made of carbonate minerals will be destroyed.
Cause and effect.
Types of weather:
Objective: stormy weather (wind force 6 to 8), calm, hurricanes, tropical cyclones - weather systems.
Subjective: Nice weather, bad weather.
Characteristics of the weather:
Temperature (measured with a thermometer. In Europe the unit is in degrees Celsius, but in the USA it is degrees Fahrenheit. The scientific unit is Kelvin). Zero degrees Celsius (the freezing point of water) is 273.15 K, or 32°F. The boiling point is 100°C.
Air movement, water movement (or cycles) is described as wind.
Air pressures can high, or low. In BAR, or hPa. Normal air pressure at sea level is approx. 1 Bar or 1000 hPa. Air pressure is the result of the amount of air above us.
Seasons: Winter, spring, summer & fall (US English) UK English it’s autumn.
In the winter it’s colder than in summer.
What, where, why, how and when questions (about the weather).
Definition: The weather is a process in the atmosphere.
1. Understand the task (or the question).
2. Brainstorm
3. Report
HOME
How does the weather work? What drives the weather?
What is weather?
Wind – how do we measure wind? In m/s (mph) Beaufort scale (logarithmic scale of 0 to 15)
Clouds – Cirrus, cumulus, stratos
The sun drives the weather. It heats up the atmosphere?
The angle of the sun determines the seasons and temperatures during the day and during the year, but the climate is the driver of the weather. As the amount of greenhouse gases increase the climate changes. The planet is heating up resulting in the snow melting, sea level rise, more extreme weather. Another result is more, or less rain. In areas where it is dry it will become drier and wet areas will become wetter, leading to longer droughts in summer, and increased flooding in winter.
Not only that, climate change will also lead to increasing ocean acidification as more CO2 enters the system. This is bad news because coral reefs which are made of carbonate minerals will be destroyed.
Cause and effect.
Types of weather:
Objective: stormy weather (wind force 6 to 8), calm, hurricanes, tropical cyclones - weather systems.
Subjective: Nice weather, bad weather.
Characteristics of the weather:
Temperature (measured with a thermometer. In Europe the unit is in degrees Celsius, but in the USA it is degrees Fahrenheit. The scientific unit is Kelvin). Zero degrees Celsius (the freezing point of water) is 273.15 K, or 32°F. The boiling point is 100°C.
Air movement, water movement (or cycles) is described as wind.
Air pressures can high, or low. In BAR, or hPa. Normal air pressure at sea level is approx. 1 Bar or 1000 hPa. Air pressure is the result of the amount of air above us.
Seasons: Winter, spring, summer & fall (US English) UK English it’s autumn.
In the winter it’s colder than in summer.
What, where, why, how and when questions (about the weather).
Definition: The weather is a process in the atmosphere.
1. Understand the task (or the question).
2. Brainstorm
3. Report
HOME
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