A visit to Saltaire Mill

Saltaire is a cotton mill and workers estate near Shipley in Yorkshire, England. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site and an Anchor Point of ERIH [European Route of Industrial Heritage]. The site consists of several large stone built mill buildings, and an estate of brick built workers houses. The site is next to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. There is a railway station near the mill.



Saltaire was built by Titus Salt who, like Robert Owen of New Lanark, was a philanthropist who spent a lot of time and effort on improving the lot of his workers.

Wikipedia states that, “Salt built neat stone houses (much better than the slums of Bradford), wash-houses with running water, bath-houses, a hospital, as well as an institute for recreation and education, with a library, a reading room, a concert hall, billiard room, science laboratory and gymnasium. The village also provided almshouses, allotments, a park and a boathouse.” This was at a time when housing conditions in the cotton towns were appalling. You can read more about Saltaire at Wikipedia.




Both the mill buildings and the workers houses appear to be in good external condition. The brick built terraced houses are still occupied. They look to have been well built, and must have been excellent housing for the mill workers of the time.



Most of the mill buildings are closed to the public and occupied by Pace, an electronics firm, apart from several floors of one of the mill buildings which have been converted into shops and a cafeteria.



I was disappointed how little effort was being made to help visitors understand the historical significance of the site. For example, it would have been nice of one of the houses had been furnished as it would have been in Salt’s time and opened to visitors, or for visitors to be able to see inside some of the other amenity buildings that Salt built. There is no mill machinery in the buildings that are open to the public, or any effort to illustrate the mill environment.

In fact, there is little historical information or interpretation, apart from a chronology in one small room. The main management objective seems to be to reduce the costs of maintaining the site by letting the buildings for various commercial purposes.

Perhaps this is partly the fault of the local council don’t seem to be making a proper effort to give financial support to Saltaire, or protect the integrity of the site. They don’t appear to have much idea of the responsibilities that go with having a World Heritage site.

I also thought that the historical heritage was not being properly protected. The houses that Salt built are now in private ownership, and some owners have decided to change key external features like doors and windows. Television aerials have been attached to houses and telephone cables are visible. All these changes damage the integrity of the site. In New Lanark, which is the other UK cotton mill that has World Heritage status all the buildings have a common door and window design and paint scheme, and TV aerials and cables are banned.

At the moment there is little point in visiting Saltaire. There is little to see because you will only be able to view the outside of most of the buildings. The one building you can go into is just shops. After you have been you will not have any better understanding of the site’s significance, or how people lived and worked there. This could be a great industrial heritage site, but at the moment it is not worth a visit. The cotton industry started the industrial revolution in Britain and employed millions of people. Its history should be better commemorated than this.

Plants that changed the World

Many years ago I stopped off in Fiji on my way to Australia.   What struck me most were the differences between the two groups that inhabit the islands.  The native Fijians are Polynesians who came to the islands before 1000 BC. They had exclusive use of the islands until the late 19th century when indentured labourers from India  were brought to the islands  by the English  to work the sugar plantations.

The two groups are physically and culturally very different, and do not get on at all.  The unstable society that now exists is a product of the island's sugar industry.  It is an example of how a plant has changed a society.

One can also think of the movement of Africans to the Caribbean to produce sugar, and to North America to work on cotton plantations.

Historians tended to ignore  the effects of plants on human history until 1985 when Henry Hobhouse wrote 'Seeds of Change'. This book looked at five plants that had significantly changed the world, both politically and economically.

"The secondary title of Seeds of Change was Five Plants that Transformed Mankind and these were Quinine, that allowed Europeans to dominate the Tropics; Sugar, that changed the Caribbean population from Red Arawaks and Caribs to White Masters and Black Slaves; Tea, that inter alia, led to the destruction of classical China through the use by traders of opium in exchange for tea; cotton, that, like sugar in the Caribbean, led to a slave-economy in the Southern United States; and finally, the Potato, which produced huge increases in the Irish population and, when disease struck the potato, famine followed as did the greening of some of the United States.

A new edition has an extra chapter: Coca: how an Andean boon became a scourge on the streets, which tells the story of the Andean use of coca leaves and of the abuse of the modern concentrate, cocaine, which has harmed so many."

Hobhouse, H., 2006a. Seeds of Change: Six Plants That Transformed Mankind, Shoemaker and Hoard. 

In 2003 Hobhouse produced another book, 'Seeds of Wealth', which covered a further four plants. The book was subtitled, Four Plants That Made Men Rich'. A later edition added a fifth plant, coffee.


"The chapter on timber is titled The Essential Carpet. In it, Hobhouse discusses how the shortage of timber in the United Kingdom led to the use of coal, which led to scientific advances and ultimately to the industrial revolution. On the other hand, the abundance of timber in the USA spurred the westward march of the country during the 1800s.


In The Grape's Bid For Immortality, the author discusses the growing of vines and making of wine from 600BC to the present. Wine has an enormous potential for the creation of wealth, multiplying profits wherever it is successful.

In the chapter Wheels Shod For Speed, he tells the story of rubber and how it changed the economies of Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and indeed the world. 

More Than A Smoke is a fascinating account of how the colony and ultimately state of Virginia owes it wealth to tobacco. Initially this area had a monopoly on tobacco by decree of the king of England. This industry created a landlord class, which amongst them counted certain signatories of the Declaration of Independence, like Washington and Jefferson."

Hobhouse, H., 2006b. Seeds of Wealth: Five Plants That Made Men Rich, Shoemaker and Hoard.

Both are fascinating books.

Hotel booking sites

It has just been announced that hotel booking sites are to be examined by the UK's competition watchdog. This is long overdue.

I have only used Booking.Com so my comments only relate to that site.

I have used Booking.Com  to book hotels in the UK and overseas. Being able to book hotels through one site and compare prices, locations and reviews is very useful.

Recently they have been using pressure selling techniques to get bookings.  Messages are constantly appearing giving the impression that if users do not book immediately [IMMEDIATELY!!!] they might have to reconcile themselves to sleeping in a cardboard box. Research and careful consideration are not encouraged.

It did not use to be so but now the ethos seems  like that of a used car lot and not that of a trustworthy e-commerce site. Booking.Com is no Amazon.

Describing an hotel as 'Fabulous' happens far too often. To my mind an hotel has to be extraordinary to be described as fabulous. Recently I stayed in one that Booking.Com described as 'fabulous' but I would describe as no more than OK. Its price would have been justified if it had been fabulous, but it was not.

The problems at Booking.Com must lie with senior management.  Perhaps the company needs to bring in someone capable of building a trusted brand. Uber had to make changes. Booking.Com needs to do so voluntarily before they are forced to change their ways.

Sikunder Burnes

I have just finished reading Craig Murray's superb biography of Sikunder Burnes.

Burnes was a British officer, an explorer and a key participant in the Great Game [to keep the Russians out of India]. He took part in the invasion of Afghanistan and was murdered in Kabul.

It is an excellent read. So is Craig Murray's blog - https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

Reportage

John Carey  is a British literary critic, and former Merton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. He is the editor  of the Faber Book of Reportage (1987). This was published in America as Eyewitness to History, Harvard University Press, (1987).

The book [700 pages in paperback] is a collection of over 250 reports, starting with a report of the plague in Athens in 430 BC and ending with a report of the fall of President Marcos in 1986.  In between there are reports of a dinner with Attila the Hun, the torture of a Jesuit in the Tower of London, the Confederate bombardment at Gettysburg, the execution of Nazi war criminals and the My Lai massacre.

Some of the reports are several pages long. Others are only about a single page or even half a page.

The book is still in print. It is a superb read and I recommend it to you.

I found the book after reading Carey's autobiography, The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life (2014).

Carey is also the editor of  The Faber Book of Science (1995). That was published in America as Eyewitness to Science: Scientists and Writers Illuminate Natural Phenomena from Fossils to Fractals, Harvard University Press, (1997).

Buying tyres online

I was never happy with the tyre buying process in the UK. After I had bought a tyre I always felt that I had been hornswoggled.

There was no way of determining which  brand of tyre was the best in terms of durability, safety and value for money. I usually used price as a surrogate for quality whilst well aware that it was not a good surrogate. There was also the suspicion that the garage or tyre fitting company was offering the tyres that provided them with the best commission and not the ones that were best for the buyer.

The problem was poor information.  To make a good  decision a buyer needed information on tyre quality and comparative information on a range of tyres.

The EU solved the first part of the problem by introducing a compulsory labelling scheme for tyres. The new standard gives motorists a way of comparing new tyres on their fuel efficiency, wet grip and noise.  The wet grip rating is particularly important.

The wet grip scale runs from A to G and each point represents 3 metres of stopping distance. The difference between a tyre rated A and one rated D is 9 metres, or the difference between stopping safely and sharing the drivers seat with the back of a lorry.

Of course, this labelling scheme is one of the reasons why Britain has to leave the EU. How dare those bastards in the EU dare give consumers information which is damaging to industry profitability. Without high profits factories will close and millions will be put out of work. When Britain is out of the EU our usual practice of  bribing lobbying politicians and civil servants will kill such schemes.

The established tyre retailers have not been enthusiastic about providing customers with comparative information so enter the online retailers, such as Blackcircles.com.  These do provide the comparative information that has previously been unavailable. In addition to providing information they will supply tyres directly to the you or arrange for a nearby garage to supply and fit the tyres.

I checked the BlackCircles web site recently when I wanted two new tyres and was able to find a tyre with a rating of B/A/68. That is, a fuel economy rating of B, a wet stopping distance of A and a decibel rating of 68. Just what I was looking for and at a price of £65 per tyre [including fitting, tax and wheel balancing]. I rang my local garage and they quoted £73 for the same tyre and service, though they cut their price to £68 when I told them the Blackcircles price.

Blackcircles is not the only online tyre retailer. As more people become aware of them I would guess the existing tyre retailers, like HiQ, are going to experience some disruption.

 The old system gave tyre manufacturers no particular incentive to research and produce better tyres. The new system will and I expect that industry will also suffer some disruption, at least in Europe.

Self addressed - Mr Bray's experiments with the post

At the end of the 19th century the young W R Bray started a series of experiments with the UK postal system. These included having his mother crochet an envelope and posting himself - three times. Later he became the Autograph King.

15 Sep, 2010. Englishman Who Posted Himself and Other Curious Objects, the First Edition edition., New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

 

The book is well written and has lots of illustrations of Bray's experiments.

I heard about Bray from a Futility Closet podcast.

Link

 

There is also a Bray website.

 

Link

 

More recently Harriet Russel carried out a similar series of experiments.

 

Link

 

 

 

Knotty Studies

One of my favourite books is Aubrey's Brief Lives. John Aubrey was born in 1626 and his book is a series of short essays about prominent figures of his time. His memoirs are often scandalous, gossipy, startling and funny. They are always very readable.

For example, in his memoir of John Colet he mentions that Colet was buried in a lead coffin and the coffin was filled with liquor to preserve the body. After the Great Fire of London someone made a small hole in the lid of the coffin and a Mr Wyld and a Mr Greatorex sampled the liquid and gave their opinion on its taste.

One of his best quotes is about himself. He confesses that he wanted patience for knotty studies'. Me too.

Utopia

Utopia is a six part series that was broadcast on the UK's Channel 4 in early 2013.  I have only just found it.  It is the best thing I have seen for a long time. Superb acting. Very violent.

The Wikipedia article is here.

Utopia is available on DVD and as a torrent.

A second series starts on Channel 4 next week.  HBO are doing an American version.

Another series worth seeing is Rubicon.  This will be harder to find since, strangely enough, it was only shown once and is not available on DVD. It is barely available as a torrent.

Vancouver Anthropology Museum

The Museum of Anthropology at the UBC [MOA] is on the University of British Columbia campus, a short bus ride from downtown Vancouver. It is close to the Nitobe Garden [see earlier post and map].

It is the best museum in Vancouver [though the museums in Vanier Park are also worth visiting, particularly the Maritime Museum] and one of the best museums I have ever visited.

MOA houses over 40,000 ethnographic objects from almost every part of the world, including the South Pacific, Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas and 535,000 archaeological objects. The ethnographic collection is a mixture of historical objects and contemporary objects. The most famous example of the latter is Bill Reid's yellow cedar carving shown below. Incidentally, there is also a Bill Reid gallery in downtown Vancouver.

The Raven and the First Men

The photographs below might make it appear that most of the ethnological material is from British Columbia's First Nations. That is not so.  There are over 15,000 objects from Asia, almost 12,000 from North America (of which only 7,100 are from the First Nations), approximately 4,300 from South and Central America, 4,000 from the Pacific islands and over 2,300 are from Africa. The object shown in this post is in the museum.
 
I find it hard to like concrete buildings but Arthur Erickson's beautifully situated building is an exception.

These First Nation doorways had a defensive function. Visitors had to enter a building through the openings indicated and to do so had to either crouch down or enter sideways.

Some First Nation carvings.

Chess set

The museum's collection is very well displayed. To make as much as possible available  display cabinets have drawers underneath where more objects can be inspected. A practice that other museums could follow. MOA also has terminals to a very useful online catalogue of over 38,000 object (33,000 with images) dotted throughout the building.

As well as being a tourist destination MOA is  a research and teaching museum, where UBC courses in art, anthropology, archaeology, conservation, and museum studies are given. Many UK museums have 'dumbed down' to attract the general public but there is non of that at MOA.

The Iron Chink

The Fraser River is the longest river in British Columbia [854 miles] and flows into the sea just south of the city of Vancouver.  Every year tens of millions of salmon used to enter the mouth of the Fraser and several canneries were built at at the small port of Steveston to process the catch.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Steveston was the busiest fishing port in the world, with fifteen salmon canneries, six hotels, numerous saloons and gambling dens, and up to fourteen windjammers simultaneously loading canned salmon for world markets. On a Saturday night, 10,000 people thronged the board walks, including Native Indians, Japanese, Chinese, European immigrants, and sailors from the seven seas.

Cannery with dock for unloading catches

Some of the cannery labour was provided by Chinese workers who had come to Canada to work on the transcontinental railway and were unemployed when the railway was finished. At the  Gulf of Georgia Cannery three gangs of thirty men each worked on topping, tailing and gutting the salmon. Fast work with sharp knives produced a crop of lost fingers.

Manual salmon processing

In 1903, Edmund A. Smith developed a machine that could guts and clean salmon many times faster than human workers. A good worker could remove fins, head, tail and innards from about 2,000 fish per 10 hour day. On the first day the machine cleaned 22,000 fish in nine hours, or about 40 fish per minute. By 1904, the fish-cleaning machines could pack an average of 9,000 to 10,000 cases of salmon per day.

Workers laid the salmon one by one on a moving track. Each salmon had its head cut off by a sharp, rotating blade. A workman then pushed each salmon into the butchering machine. The machine quickly pinned the fish and cut off its tail and fins, and opened the belly with a saw. It even cleaned out the blood and guts with brushes. The butchered salmon was then ejected onto a conveyor belt and sent to the washing tables.

Smiths machine became widely know as the “Iron Chink”, because if could perform the work of approximately 50 Chinese salmon butchers. The innovation increased cannery profits but made thousands unemployed.

The Iron Chink

Salmon were then sliced into can sized chunks by these circular blades

A reconstructed canning line

The 'slime line'

Of course, the usual tragedy of the commons situation arose and the salmon were almost wiped out by overfishing. Eventually, all the canneries closed. Only one remains and that is now a museum.

The museum is is a national heritage site and is well worth visiting. Stevenson is easily reached by a subway and bus ride from central Vancouver.

Thanks to conservation efforts salmon are returning to the Fraser in the tens of millions. A local newspaper reported that ' The Pacific Salmon Commission, which had been anticipating a return of about 12 million pinks, now says an estimated 26 million fish are in the Fraser. Other rivers are experiencing remarkable returns as well.

“The fish poured in here in such numbers that the sea was a sparkling diamond,” said Ken Kirkby,  who has been working to restore salmon runs in Nile Creek on Vancouver Island. “You can’t see the bottom of the river for the salmon.”

The increase in salmon numbers may be due to a controversial experiment which  dumped100 tonnes of iron sulphate and 20 tonnes of iron oxide some 350 kilometres off the Haida Gwaii archipelago in an iron fertilization project. This created a 35,000-square-kilometre plankton bloom and it has been argued that Pacific salmon feeding on the plankton would grow in number and size due to the increase in food supply, boosting salmon stocks and causing a massive salmon run in 2014.

The Laki Volcano - the fourth great risk

I have just finished reading 'Island on Fire' by Witze and Kanipe. This fascinating new book is mainly about the 1783 eruption of the Laki chain of Icelandic volcanoes.  Many people in Europe remember the Eyjafjallajokull eruption in 2010 because it sent out a plume of dust particles that disrupted air traffic over Europe. There was a fear that the dust particles would get into jet engines and cause planes to crash.

The Laki eruption was far more deadly, not because of the force of the eruption or its dust emissions, but because it sent out a massive cloud of toxic fluorine, chlorine and sulphur dioxide [as much sulphur dioxide as 12,000 coal fired power stations emit in a year] that spread over much of Europe and probably killed tens of thousands of people by affecting health and crops. Its emissions may even have affected the flow of the Nile and caused  famines in Egypt.

In 1783 communications were poor and science primitive so the cause of Europe's distress was not understood. Divine displeasure was thought more likely than a volcano in Iceland. It is only recently that scientists have began to understand what happened [and become alarmed by their findings].

The public may not be aware of the risks of Laki type events but the UK Government is worried. The Cabinet Office publishes  a National Risk Register which covers the main threats to the UK [a copy of the 2013 edition can be downloaded from here].

The Register identifies four main risks.

1.  An influenza epidemic.

2.  Flooding.

3.  Catastrophic terrorist attacks [although the government adds that mass impact terrorist events are “unlikely”].

4.  Volcanic eruptions.

The 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland showed some of the consequences that a volcanic eruption far away can have on the UK. The NRR assessment is that there are two main kinds of risk from volcanic eruptions. The first is an ash-emitting eruption, similar to Eyjafjallajökull. This kind of eruption is economically dangerous because of the possible disruption of transport.

The second, which is slightly less likely than an ash-emitting eruption but which could have widespread impacts on health, agriculture and transport, is an effusive-style eruption in Iceland on the scale of  Laki. This second type could kill many humans and animals  and is now one of the highest priority risks. 

Laki today

The Laki eruption from the Grimsvötn volcano in Iceland is the best understood large magnitude eruption of this type. In 1783–84 Grimsvötn erupted along a 27km-long fissure system (Laki). Significant levels of sulphur dioxide, chlorine and fluorine were released over a number of months, causing visible pollution across the UK and Northern Europe which is thought to have resulted in mass crop failure and thousands of excess deaths. At least 20% of the population of Iceland succumbed to famine and disease. Records suggest that mortality in England in the summer of 1783 was 10–20% above average and there are similar historical accounts of increased mortality rates and/ or respiratory disorders in France, the Netherlands, Italy and Sweden.  

Incidentally, Icelandic volcanoes are particularly dangerous. Not only because there are a lot of them, but also because it is easier for their output to get into the stratosphere and travel over large areas. At the equator the boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere is 18 kilometres above ground. At the poles it is only 8 kilometres up.

Witze, A. and Kanipe, J., 2014. An island on fire: the extraordinary story of Laki.

EU tyre labelling

In November 2012 the EU introduced new labelling for tyres.

The new standard gives motorists a way of comparing new tyres on their fuel efficiency, wet grip and noise.  Previously it had been hard for buyers to tell if one tyre was better than another. The aim of the new standard was to gives better consumer information and, in the longer term, provide manufacturers with  an incentive to produce better products.

Recently I went into my local  tyre retailer. There were twelve tyres displayed and only one had a visible label showing its EU ratings. The other eleven had a label showing the retailer's own rating system. I was told that it was different from the EU standard.

I am not going to speculate why the retailer failed to display the EU standard information for all their tyres, but I will not be going to them next time I need a new tyre.

I would also suggest that the legislation needs to be changed to make it an offence not to clearly display the EU standard ratings for all the tires that are being offered for sale.

Library of Birmingham

Birmingham is England's second largest city and the hideous building below is their new public library. It was built at a cost of £190 million. Birmingham claims it is the largest public library in England.  It is the kind of building that architects call iconic and everybody else calls crap.

I had a look around the library recently and I have to say I think the Brummies wasted their money.  In the age of Google and ebooks I don't think building a big book box was a good use of their money.

Its a big building, but it seemed to be a bit short of books. There were empty shelves and empty spaces were there could have been more shelving [if they had the books].

The library had lots of computers and there were about 10 to 20 times as many people using computers as reading books.  The library seemed to be more like a large internet cafe than a library.

Birmingham might have been better advised to spend a great deal less than £190 million digitising the important books in their collection and making the information available online.

There is a nice roof garden with good views of central Birmingham.  However, since Birmingham is one of the most hideous cities in the UK this is not as delightful as it might sound.

Zionist Terrorism & the British

In 1947 Britain was in the unhappy position of holding the Mandate for Palestine and was trying to keep the Jewish and Arab communities apart. The Jews wanted to turn Palestine into the State of Israel and the Arabs wanted to keep their country. A number of Zionist terrorist gangs had been formed and were busy murdering British servicemen and policemen.

A sixteen year old Jewish boy was abducted by a British covert counter-terrorist squad. He was never seen again and it has been claimed that he was tortured and murdered by members of the squad. A hat belonging to the squad's commanding officer, Major Farran, was found at the scene of the kidnapping. Farran  was later  court-martialed for the murder of the boy.

Cesarini has written a well  researched book about the affair. He obviously believes it was an important incident. I am not so sure. Somebody killed a sixteen year old boy and other people in the Palestine administration and UK government behaved dubiously. However, compared to what was to happen in later counter-terrorist operations in Ireland and after 9-11 it was a very minor affair. In Ireland agents of the British government tortured prisoners, operated death squads and planted bombs.  There was certainly nothing approaching the horrors of the British operations against the  Mau Mau in Kenya.

Most people in the Palestine administration and the British Government behaved well and there were no Abu Ghraibs. Farran was acquitted by his court martial [though in rather dodgy circumstances] and went on to have distinguished career in Canada.

What I found most interesting in the book was not the Farran incident but the scale of Zionist terrorism.

I knew about the King David Hotel bombing. What I did not know was -

- The Jewish terrorist gangs killed a lot of British servicemen and policemen in a long series of incidents. Some of the leaders of these gangs are now commemorated in Israel and two went on to become Prime Ministers of Israel.  This is something to remember when the Israeli government prates about Palestinian terrorists.

- The Jewish terrorist gangs conducted a letter bomb campaign in Britain and killed several people, including Major Farran's brother.

- Following some particularly nasty terrorists incidents in Palestine mobs attacked and burnt Jewish businesses in several UK cities.

-It was no surprise to learn that there was a great deal of hysterical and inaccurate reporting by the Daily Mail and other British newspapers.

The British government behaved well during the Jewish terrorist gangs bombing campaign in Britain. Unlike the Blair government they didn't over react and introduce unnecessary and repressive legislation. The police and intelligence agencies were effective with the powers they already had and easily dealt with the terrorists.

The problem of Jewish terrorism went away when Britain pulled out of Palestine. Perhaps the lesson of that is that the problem of Moslem terrorism may well go way when we are no longer in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I thought that Professor Cesarani was rather too indignant about the actvities of Major Farron and some of the other British players in this drama. Despite that the book is well worth reading.

Cesarani, D., 2009. Major Farran's Hat: Murder, Scandal and Britain's War Against Jewish Terrorism, 1945-1948, Heinemann.

Jack Irish and Vikings

After the success of the first two Jack Irish films they have started filming the third book, 'Dead Point'. Good news for all Jack Irish fans.  I hope they will then go on to 'White Dog'.

Very impressed by the 'Vikings', the new History channel production.  Everything about it is very well done and it is not surprising it has been renewed for a second season.  I think it is better than Game of Thrones. Fewer characters and a faster pace.

YouTube video

Travis Fimmel is superb as Ragnar Lodbrok. I think they are right to describe this as his breakout movie.

Michael Hirst is the writer. I think one of his sources must be 'The Long Ships' by Frans Bengtsson, considered by many to be a masterpiece of historical fiction.  It is well worth reading, don't be put off by the cover.

Alternatives to Google's services

The Guardian has a handy list of alternatives to Google's services.  Click here.

I already use DuckDuckGo as my search engine. It is a very acceptable alternative to Google.

I did not know about Nokia's maps but they seem to be as good, if not better, than Google Maps.

The Guardian mentions Tumblr as an alternative to Blogger.  I have started using  both Wordpress and Tumblr after it became clear that Blogger was on Google's kill list. Given the rate at which Google is closing its services it makes sense not to post anything to Blogger that you would be sorry to lose when it closes.

Spyware in Firefox?

Is there spyware in the Firefox for Android browser?

I started using Firefox several years ago because it had far better privacy protections than Safari or Internet Explorer.  The desktop version still has.

I recently acquired a new Android tablet and went to  Google Play  [aka Android App Store] to download Firefox.

Link to Firefox on Google Play

To Google's credit they show what permissions an app takes if you install it [Apple do not]. When you look at some of these lists of permissions it is clear that many of the apps in the Play Store are little better than spyware.

I checked Firefox's permissions but I did not expect to find anything untoward.

The apps description emphasises privacy as you can see below.

However, when you look at the detailed list of the permissions the app would take it is clear that it provides anything but privacy.

 

 Particularly alarming was what Firefox wanted to do with my tablet's cameras.

Anybody who installs Firefox gives it permission to take photographs or video [from either camera] whenever it likes. The users permission is not required.  Nor are users told when the cameras are operating. Think of the implications of this.  Even if users were foolish enough to trust Mozilla [producers of Firefox] what would happen if some malign malware was able to get control of your browser and start the cameras rolling?

How can Mozilla  justify including this in Firefox?  If it is not spyware it is hard to imagine how else it could be defined. It would be interesting to know what has gone wrong at Mozilla for this to happen.

I didn't download Firefox [though over 200,000 idiots have done]. I took a look at Google's Chrome browser and it does not seem to need to operate my tablet's cameras. These are the permissions it wants. They are not trivial but at least they exclude the permission for rectal probing that Firefox wants

Now that I have seen what Firefox for Android wants I wonder what the desktop versions of Firefox are up to.

How they produce tinned grapefruit

Grapefruit

Have you ever eaten tinned grapefruit segments?

Have you ever wondered how the produced those nice clean segments?  How they peeled each grapefruit, separated the segments and removed all the pith?

They must be using some clever machinery, right?

Last night a new TV programme called Food Unwrapped on the UK's Channel Four went to a grapefruit canning factory in Swaziland to see how they really do it?

When the grapefruit arrive at the factory they are steam blanched to soften their skins. Then they go to the peeling and segmenting process.

This turned out not to involve really ingenious machinery but 250 African ladies and their fingernails.
 

The grapefruit were now segmented but still had their pith. To removed that they soaked the segments in what was described as food grade [wtf?] hydrochloric acid. This did the job but left the segments contaminated with the acid.

To get rid of the acid they then washed the grapefruit in caustic soda, another powerful corrosive.

We were told the alkaline caustic soda neutralised the hydrochloric acid and left the segments safe to eat.

Should we believe that?  Well, if I lived  in a  country with a government that took food quality and safety seriously, and the interests of its citizens carried more weight than  the bribes of food industry lobbyists, I might.

Unfortunately, the UK is not such a country and so I do not.

I wonder if the same technique of  hydrochloric acid and caustic soda washes is used to produce other tinned fruit, such as orange segments.

Pro-biotic

The second half of the programme was on the pro-biotic industry.  Where do they get the bacteria they add to products to make them pro-biotic?  I don't think many people who saw the programme will be buying pro-biotic products in the future.

Talking Landscapes and the Dixton Harvesters

The BBC has produced a fascinating six part series called Talking Landscapes.   Each episode explains the historical background to a particular British landscape.

The series is presented by Aubrey Manning.  He is excellent and has done several similar series. Some are available on DVD. I have  Earth Story and have just bought the Landscape Mysteries box set.

The series was last broadcast in Autumn 2012. I only discovered the series as it was coming to an end and it does not seem to be available on DVD. I hope it will be.

The Cairngorms episode was superb.  What seems like a natural wild Scottish landscape is definitely not wild but entirely created by human activity;  and some of the most important changes took place several thousand years ago when the area was intensively farmed.

In the Vale of Evesham episode Manning explains that what seems like a modern farming landscape was actually created by the Anglo Saxons, and has hardly changed since.

The episode shows a fascinating painting called the Countryside around Dixton Manor  or The Dixton Harvesters  that shows an agricultural landscape in the 18th century. It is harvest time and there are 133 people (71 male, 62 female) at work. Some are scything or raking hay. Others are resting, a couple is dancing before musicians and there are Morris dancers.

This was before modern agriculture depopulated the landscape. The painting has been called "one of the most evocative pictures in the whole of English art. There is nothing like it either in its day or at any other time: to stand and look at this picture is to be taken through the looking glass."

Copies of the print are available here. They sell a print of the entire painting and of an extract.