Retired Soviet officer belated rewards for averting nuclear war

I have mentioned Stanislav Petrov before, and if you do not know who he is, you should, and be grateful he was ever born.

If you thought the Cuban Missile crisis of 1962 was worrying, then think again.

1983 was a lot more worrying – and a lot less publicised, until a further ten years had passed, and the collapse of the Soviet Union allowed the record to become available in 1993.

See some background reading here: Dead Hand the Soviet Union Doomsday Machine toured – SeSco

For decades, men in bunkers watched their screens and warning lights every hour of every day, waiting for the Cold War to go nuclear.

This was the situation just after midnight on September 26th, 1983.

Stanislav Petrov was the Lieutenant Colonel in charge of the Soviet Union’s early warning radar system in a bunker near Moscow.

Then it happened.

“When I first saw the alert message, I got up from my chair. All my subordinates were confused, so I started shouting orders at them to avoid panic. I knew my decision would have a lot of consequences,” Petrov recalls.

The radar was showing a single missile inbound from the United States.

Now the race was on: was it real or a computer error? His boss accepted over the phone it was a likely fault. But as soon as he hung up…

“The siren went off for a second time. Giant blood-red letters appeared on our main screen, saying START. It said that four more missiles had been launched,” Petrov continues.

To Petrov, it did not add up. Any attack by the US would have been all-out to try and cripple a Soviet response. But if they were real, he had only 30 minutes to tell his superiors before the warheads hit.

“My cozy armchair felt like a red hot frying pan and my legs went limp. I felt like I couldn’t even stand up. That’s how nervous I was when I was taking this decision,” Petrov says.

Petrov stuck to his decision, broke a Soviet military rule by not telling his superiors, and was proved right. There were no missiles.

He never had the authority to press the button himself, but how close had the world come to nuclear war?

“At that time it seemed that our country was surrounded by enemies, but was strong enough to retaliate. The Soviet Union and the USA were too strong, and our countries had too many conflicts of interest in various parts of the world,” military analyst Vladimir Evseev says.

Another day the world almost ended — RT

He has received little recognition or reward – he might even have been ‘disappeared’ for not following orders without question.

His superiors were not happy about his failure to follow procedure, and unquestioningly forward the information from the launch detectors.

Stanislav Petrov Averts a Worldwide Nuclear War – Bright Star Sound

Now, in February 2012:

Most people become heroes for doing things. Stanislav Petrov became one through having the courage to do nothing – in the face of a potential nuclear threat.

­The retired Russian Lieutenant Colonel has picked up a major humanitarian accolade, the German Media Prize, for preventing possible catastrophic all-out conflict. The previous recipients of the award include Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan, and the Dalai Lama.

Retired Soviet officer rewarded for averting nuclear war — RT

Beware computer faults that aren’t!

After a reasonable start to the year, when I managed to maintain a reasonable discipline – just for fun – of something close to ‘a blog a day’ during January, things fell apart in February, and for some strange reason I managed to trash a load of stored info that I depended on for running my browser, and doing research.

Entirely my own fault, rather than a system fault, this meant that the usual backups or copies of the same info went with the originals – backups only work when they still exist. But that’s another story I need to work around, but at least I learnt something useful, and discovered a backup pitfall I had not encountered in some 20 years of looking after successfully looking after networks.

Although nowhere near what it was, things have begun to return to some semblance of normality and convenience, and I can get things done with some of the workflow automation I used to enjoy beginning to fall into place once more.

This morning, I thought I facing a hardware failure, just to make sure I couldn’t relax.

I notice a slash character on screen (the ‘/’) – and despite restarting both browsers and computer… this stayed on the screen.

I tried various editors, and even graphic programs – but no matter what I did… the slash stayed on the line as I entered characters, or drew over the same area.

I was beginning to resign myself to some sort of ‘stuck’ memory, or a failure in the memory area – and bad news.

Then, I noticed something odd – as I watched the characters I typed reach and pass that part of the line… the slash character appeared to be darker than the black of the character I was typing.

That seemed wrong, since an LCD shouldn’t be able to achieve a better contrast ratio for just one character at one spot on the screen.

Time for the finger test…

Yup!

The ‘/’ moved.

The ‘/’ turned out to be single fibre than had landed on the screen, and by sheer chance happened to be same length as ‘/’ character, and at the same angle as a real ‘/’ character.

One of those chance happenings you probably couldn’t manage without spending hours, and deliberately plant a single fibre on a screen to masquerade as ‘/’.

I’ve had ‘stuck’ characters and duff video cards in the past, so this simple fix just didn’t occur to me at first – I have to remember the’ finger test’ next time.

(But now I know how to wind someone up – maybe one day – and with a little touch of glue, just to be sure.)

Now, if only I could get my head back into ‘blog’ mode – I seem to have dropped the ball, as I don’t see anything particularly interesting, or I have just lost concentration thanks to the unexpected break.

Modern Orcadians might want to check on their MSP

One again, I seem to be forced into the arena of political madness as it seems the people of Orkney have an MSP who was keen to get his name in the media foe any reason, even if just to be pilloried. (I should write a political blog, it’s so easy – people just throw stories out to be collected.)

While the following major issue could, and should, probably have been dealt with through a few emails or a phone call, Orkney MSP Liam McArthur is reported to have lodged a Parliamentary Motion over the matter:

One of the most popular supporting characters from the hit US TV show The Simpsons has been revealed as hailing from Kirkwall.

The Orkney origins of Groundskeeper Willie, Springfield Elementary’s curmudgeonly janitor, will be divulged in an episode to be screened in the US later in February.

In the episode, flame-haired Willie is shown as a young Orcadian born of a ‘Doonie’ father and an ‘Uppie’ mother in a family torn apart by the rivalry of The Ba’, the island’s traditional festive football game.

The revelations came in an interview with Simpsons writer Rob Lazebnik broadcast on Radio Orkney on Thursday morning where he discussed the episode, titled The Daughter also Rises.

Following the announcement, Orkney MSP Liam McArthur has called on Glasgow City Council to remove the character’s name from its website, where it is claimed Willie – whose full name is William MacDougal – is a famous Glaswegian.

Mr McArthur said: “We know that those with Orkney roots are to be found far and wide across the globe. It should come as no surprise then that the Orkney diaspora has even reached Springfield USA.

“I was concerned to note, however, that Glasgow City Council have made moves to claim Groundskeeper Willie as one of their own by listing him as an ‘alleged’ son of their city.

“In light of recent, incontrovertible evidence and to avoid any future confusion, I have written to the Leader of Glasgow City Council, requesting that they renounce the claim on their website, and in any other relevant materials.

“A Parliamentary Motion has also been lodged to this effect.”

Via The Simpsons: Groundskeeper Willie’s Scots roots revealed | Aberdeen and North | STV News

In the same report, Glasgow City Council replied:

A spokesman for Glasgow City Council said: “We’re confused because Willie has previously described himself as being the ugliest man in Glasgow.

“Perhaps he is from Orkney, but like everyone else in the world who’s not Glaswegian, he just wishes he was. We’ve changed our website to reflect his new claim

As an apolitical creature, I really don’t know much about what duties an MSP is supposed to perform, but this is surely an utterly pointless and complete waste of Parliamentary procedure, whining about the fictitious genealogical background of an American cartoon character.

He MAY have had some sort of case to fight if GCC had denied the claim, and refused to change any reference it had to the character – but that didn’t happen.

He obviously has too much time on his hands – I’d be sending him for a few days holiday to consider his future if he worked for me (and placing some adverts about an upcoming vacancy in Orkney).

(The fuss was fine and fun – escalating the matter to Parliament was not.)

Poll finds Scots accent associated with ‘hard work and reliability’

Although Scots fare well in this little poll, I think the result is not too reliable.

The key factor to take take note of is the nature of the company carrying out the survey, who it is providing information to, and who it is using for its sample voices.

I think that sight unseen, if presented with ordinary folk from the streets of Glasgow, we’d be reproducing the blank stares that led to subtitles being added to Scottish television dramas a few years ago – thought by some to be necessary when the programmes were screened south of the border.

I don’t like statistics being abused like this (it’s a sore point with me), since statistics themselves are neutral. They’re just numbers that don’t have any inherent bias in the story they tell.

The bias, or spin, comes from the people who use them, or rather misuse them for their own purposes, and add words to misdirect the casual, untrained reader.

In this case, pick and choose a sample, pick and choose and audience, them tell them something that they want to hear.

For this to have any real relevance, it would need a properly constituted random sample of voices taken from across the country, and rather more than 300.

But it’s a nice piece of fun, gave somebody a job for few hours, and the Scots didn’t get beat up for a change, so it’s not all bad, even if it is really just ‘smoke and mirror’ stuff.

And if you want to turn it serious, them just consider the prejudicial attitudes it betrays in the UK-based executives who took part.

The Scots accent is strongly associated with hard work, success and reliability in the workplace, according to a poll of business executives.

Indian and Asian accents were the only ones to score higher in terms of perceived work ethic and reliability.

And only voices from the Home Counties and the US were more commonly associated with success in the survey.

[Executive] Communications firm The Aziz Corporation interviewed 300 UK-based executives for the poll.

Company chairman Professor Khalid Aziz said: “The Scottish accent is well liked, with many positive associations. This is consistent with a similar survey we carried out six years ago.”

Kirsty Young and Gordon Brown scored high on a list of individuals’ voices which was topped by celebrity businessman Peter Jones and sports presenter Clare Balding.

According to the poll, the worst voice for a top job would be a “working-class” Essex accent.

via Scots accent associated with ‘hard work and reliability’ | Scotland | STV News.

Museum of Mathematics sought

It’s hard not to write about things Scottish, or not Scottish, without sounding like some sort of Scottish Nationalist, especially if one is enthusiastic about them.

However, just for the record, I don’t belong to that particular group, nor do I ever wish to be associated with any politically motivated agenda – but then again, I can’t avoid being hijacked occasionally.

This has some relevance, since I recently read about plans to have a ‘museum of mathematics’ established in the UK. Realistically, that means it will be established in England, many miles away from me, even if it represents UK mathematics, and this is simply for reasons of practically – it needs to put ‘bums on seats’, and that would not happen if it was located north of the border.

Looking at a list of Scottish mathematicians, I think there was only a handful of names I recognised offhand, and amongst those, probably only James Clark Maxwell would be familiar to the general public, and some of the others (including Maxwell) would probably be more readily recognised if introduced as physicists or scientists, rather than mathematicians.

Those behind the project are aiming to raise £50 million for the venture, and speak of needing £10 million just to get the venture off the ground, so it is looking for serious money to both start and maintain its operation, and with Scotland’s dismal record of its Science Centres – which had to shed staff and depend on subsidies to stay open – and the commercial venture of The Big Idea attraction in Irvine (which reputedly never attracted sufficient numbers or revenue to break even) – I would not even be so foolish as to even suggest such a museum be floated here.

Successful maths museums have already been established in other countries, such as the Mathematikum in Giessen, Germany, which first opened in 2002 and now attracts 150,000 visitors a year. This year will also see the opening of The Museum of Mathematics in New York, which began planning in 2008 and received funding from the likes of Google and some hedge funds.

Notably, the proposers have already rejected money-saving proposals such as opening within an existing, related science museum, as the say this would ultimately lead to the mathematical aspect being sidelined or absorbed over time, and I agree.

MathsWorldUK

CultureLab: Mathematics, looking for a good home

Rather, I’d just like to raise the profile amongst readers who might never even have heard of the project otherwise, should they wish to offer it any sort of support or encouragement.

In particular, with the Scottish Government’s eternal drive for tourism, I’d like to think that someone somewhere within its hallowed walls is already organising potential locations for MathsWorldUK to hold the sort of road-shows it mentions in its publicity.

We are, after all, supposed to firing up a new generation of children to be interested in science, technology, and engineering – and none of those happen without mathematics.

I remember well one of my first lectures, where the lecturer looked at the hall full of new students, and congratulated us on our choice of course, being the only one that also included four years of mathematics.

I have to admit that I have forgotten more mathematics than I ever learned, and of the theory, little was of use at work, and even less when the PC came to power – but then again, you still have to know about the subject before you can apply it, even if a lump of silicon is actually going to do the hard work.

I hope this idea does float, as it does fill a gap, and I hope the planned road-shows materialise too.

Why?

Seven equations that rule your world – physics-math – 13 February 2012 – New Scientist

More than £7 million awarded in City Heritage Trust grants

Funding of almost £8 million has been awarded for heritage projects in Scotland’s six cities. The  grants from Historic Scotland will be used to enhance conservation areas and maintain historic sites.

Edinburgh projects already mentioned include work on monuments in Greyfriars Kirkyard, repairs to an original Victorian shop front, and restoration of a 19th Century listed building. Dundee will see work take place within conservation areas, including work on ‘at risk’ buildings, together with further investment in the Riverside and Crown conservation areas of Inverness.

The grants are good news, especially at the moment when purse strings are being tightened, so something somewhere has to be suffering. Something that could happen under such circumstances is the assumption that big or well-known high-profile cities can look after themselves, and have some sort of magical pot of money that can be drawn on, unlike smaller conurbations. However, as one who lives in one of those ‘big, rich cities’, I know this is far from the case, having watched many worthy building fall into decay, ruin, and eventual vandalism and demolition.

Listing etc is all well and good, but apart from legal status and little protection, it does not come with any funds to maintain or restore properties.

Press release:

6 February 2012

Historic Scotland has announced that it will be offering £7.69m in City Heritage Trust grants over the next three years to Scotland’s six cities. The grants are designed to safeguard and enhance conservation areas, the historic environment and sense of place.

Glasgow will receive £2,550,000, Edinburgh will receive £2,145,000, and Aberdeen, Dundee, Inverness and Stirling will each receive £750,000.

Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet Secretary for Culture and External Affairs said: “It is vital that we continue to improve the quality of our Scottish cities to make them better places to live, work and invest.

“Managing our historic environment creatively also contributes to sustainable economic growth by growing Scotland’s construction industry and increasing the availability and quality of traditional skills and materials. Using new skills and sustainable materials in the adaptation of existing buildings will also help support the historic environment’s transition to a low carbon economy.

“This investment builds on our Agenda for Cities and £7 million Cities Investment Fund, which has been launched to build the momentum to make sure our cities and their regions make the fullest possible contribution to sustained economic recovery – stimulating economic recovery and job creation.”

via Scotland’s six cities to benefit by £7.69 million in Historic Scotland grants.

There was further information appended to the release, which helps to explain some of the terms referred to in the release:

• The Year of Creative Scotland begins on January 1, 2012 and will spotlight and celebrate Scotland’s cultural and creative strengths on a world stage. Through a dynamic and exciting year-long programme of activity celebrating our world-class events, festivals, culture and heritage, the year puts Scotland’s culture and creativity in the international spotlight with a focus on cultural tourism and developing the events industry and creative sector in Scotland. More information about the programme can be found at: Year of Creative Scotland 2012 – VisitScotland. The Year of Creative Scotland is a Scottish Government initiative led in partnership by EventScotland, VisitScotland, Creative Scotland and VOCAL.
• More information and resources to help businesses engage with Year of Creative Scotland are available at VisitScotland.org > Year of Creative Toolkit
• More information about the Agenda for Cities can be found at Scotland’s Cities: Delivering for Scotland – In Collaboration with Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness and Stirling

LOG

If you read most of the media coverage the east end of Glasgow gets, chances are you will read about ill-health, short lifespan, and flooding due to neglected drains.

If you are watching a documentary, chances are it will be about rampaging gangs and endless street fights, forcing people to stay indoors after 6 pm.

Don’t believe all you see – when did a documentary maker ever make their name by reporting on happy people, or parks and gardens.

However, while wandering through one of those parks at the weekend, I was moved to wonder if there was new documentary subject on the way, intended to let the world know how thick residents of the east end of Glasgow are.

Lying by the side of one the paths I wander along was a log…

And some kind person had labelled it LOG, just in case some passing unfortunate didn’t realise what it was – well, it could easily be confused for a heavy-duty toothpick, couldn’t it?

Actually, I was quite pleased to see this oddity, as the place has been cleared over the past year, with little motivation for carrying a camera. Maybe 2011 will be better than 2012.

Much as I would like to have attributed this to some new initiative by Glasgow City Council, perhaps aimed at helping the local neds (maybe stopping them kicking the logs and hurting their poor wee feet if they did not know what they were), the reality is that Scottish Water is currently tearing up extensive sections of the nearby roads to renew buried fittings, and all the instructions for the diggers are sprayed on the road using blue paint

Goodbye Echofon

I don’t normally ‘shoot first and ask questions later‘, but when I finally realised that Echofon’s writers were taking the P out their Firefox add-on users, I hit the Remove button before I thought about how to deal with consequences.

I’ve used it since it first appeared as Twitterfox, and it works well since I don’t use the social aspect of Twitter, and have it as an alert system for a few selected sources. It means I don’t have to check them as they pop up on-screen whenever something happens, and I can read the detail later.

When the latest Echofon update was installed, I initially thought they had just highlighted the latest tweet to arrive. It didn’t look relevant, but sometimes I get retweets, and ignored it at first.

Then I realised that the content was completely irrelevant, and worse, was an unsolicited advert from an American company – as useless in Scotland as a chocolate teapot is to a tea addict.

A quick check of all the available options showed that there was no choice offered, and that all option to block the ad-tweets had been removed. A look at the list of modifications to the most recent version of Echofon showed the inclusion of ads as the last item in the list.

Fortunately, there’s a simple fix to defeat the ads – provided the Echofon folk don’t do something even more underhand.

I checked the Echofon add-on page at Mozilla – they seem to have upset a lot of people, and possibly not simply be the addition of the ads, but by the imposing way they did it, and without warning. You don’t find out until you upgrade, and find the ad permanently planted at the top of your list of wanted tweets. That’s NOT the way to do it, and expect your faithful to remain faithful.

Placing an ad in the most prominent place in an application and forcing users to look at it every time they open the application is not the way to get it accepted.

Even Microsoft did not do something as blatant in its Office 2010 Starter freebie – it may be a nuisance and nag, but at least it’s a nag tucked away in a corner – not in the middle of the page of every document or spreadsheet you open.

Echofon for Twitter :: Add-ons for Firefox

I see it’s review rating has gone from a high of 5 stars (242) to a high of 1 star (348) the morning, after this ad stunt was exposed.

It’ll be interesting to see if anything changes – after all, if the idea of adverts is to bring people in, what do you do with ads that drive people away, and reduce your popularity?

It also makes the tagline that introduced their add-on look a bit sick – Full featured, super clean Twitter app for Firefox.

Super clean?

PS Comet bicentenary web site launched

Replica Comet on the Clyde

We’ve been watching for events associated with the bicentenary of the paddle steamer Comet, and PS Comet bicentenary second newsletter.

When the last newsletter was published, mention was made of a forthcoming web site dedicated to the events around the bicentenary. This has now been placed online, and can be found at:

Comet Bicentenary

City of Adelaide (The Carrick to Glaswegians) transport timeline

(See also original Clipper ship cradle about to set sail for Scotland – 28 October 2011).

We’ve raised the issue of the treatment of the remains of the clipper City of Adelaide, or The Carrick if you watched it sink while moored in Glasgow, with some despair.

We often accept reality and that not every relic can be retained in pristine and ‘as-new’ conditions, but the way the City of Adelaide was treated is unforgivable, since it was – or rather is – the world’s oldest clipper ship. The only other surviving composite iron- frame and timber-hull clipper is said to be the Cutty Sark, and that is five years younger.

The City of Adelaide was built in 1864, its job to bring early settlers from the UK to the infant colony of South Australia. The state’s longest-established families are linked to the ship, and it has been estimated nearly a quarter of a million descendants of its passengers now live in Australia.

It’s final journey to the Scottish Maritime Museum in Irvine should have seen its future secured – that’s the idea behind a museum, isn’t it?

Remains of the City of Adelaide pictured on the slipway at the Scottish Maritime Museum Irvine in 2005 © Chris Allen

Instead, it lay derelict and decaying, and was so unwanted that it was first due to be deconstructed – a process whereby researchers would take it to pieces and record the structure in detail, together with the methods of construction, destroying the hull in the process.

When that didn’t happen, it was reported that the hull was simply going to be demolished to clear the ground it lay on.

Apparently that news was not well received when it went public, and this option was shelved.

Australians finally rescue City of Adelaide

Although we had been trying to keep an eye on the media, apart from local news, nothing else was spotted, primarily because we were completely unaware of what was happening on the other side of the world, and without that knowledge had no idea what to target our searches on. Unfortunately, being named ‘City of Adelaide’ meant that it was all but impossible to get results that did not favour the city rather than the rotting hull lying in Irvine.

To save looking for them again, I’ve listed them below, together with their dates of publication:

Historic City of Adelaide clipper ship on course for 2011 homecoming | News.com.au. May 31, 2011.

The 100-tonne cradle will be built in Adelaide, dismantled for transport to Scotland in shipping containers, then reassembled there and placed under the ship. On wheels, the cradle will then carry the ship, which now sits on a slipway at Irvine near Glasgow, and roll it on to a low-draft barge, which will take it to a transit port for craning on to an ocean-going ship that will bring the cradle and clipper to Port Adelaide. Mr Roberts said the cradle would cost about $1 million to design and build commercially but was being done for a fraction of that thanks to materials and labour being donated. But help was still needed, he said. The Scottish Government was providing some funds for the ship’s removal but the trust was still looking for help from the Australian Federal Government to transport the ship.

City of Adelaide work to begin – Local News – News – Portside Messenger. June 24, 2011.

CONSTRUCTION of a giant 100-tonne steel cradle, to support historic clipper City of Adelaide on her journey to the Port from Scotland, will begin at Gillman next week.

A ceremony to mark the start of the project will be held at Samaras Structural Engineers on Monday morning (June 27).

A bottle of champagne will be cracked over the first piece of the cradle by Pam Whittle, the great-grand-daughter of the clipper’s first captain, David Bruce, and Marion Wells, the great-great-granddaughter of migrant Matilda Methuen.

The Scottish government decided to allow its permanent return to the Port last year.

The building of the cradle will be a joint effort by more than 15 engineering firms from around the state, donating labour and materials.

Adelaide firms Aztec Analysis and Bown Contracting and Drafting have designed the cradle so that it can be built over several sites across SA, then shipped to Glasgow in containers for assembly underneath the City of Adelaide.

The clipper and cradle will then be rolled onto a barge for transfer to a deep port at Rotterdam, where it will be transferred to a larger ship for the voyage to Port Adelaide.

$1m cradle built to transport clipper to SA – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). October 28, 2011.

Another step has been taken towards bringing the City of Adelaide clipper to South Australia from Scotland. A $1 million cradle has been built at Gillman in Adelaide and is about to be shipped to Scotland.

2012 arrival date for City of Adelaide clipper | Adelaide Now. December 28, 2011.

The first two containers of prefabricated components of a large steel cradle left Port Adelaide at the end of October and will arrive at Irvine, where the ship sits, on January 6. A further three containers, each also carrying 15 to 20 tonnes of cradle parts, will leave Port Adelaide on Friday and are due in Scotland in late February. The cradle will be moved under the ship’s hull by late March.

Carrick ready for the off – Irvine Herald. January 13, 2012.

The first two containers of prefabricated components of the cradle arrived in Irvine on Friday. The last three containers, each carrying 15 to 20 tonnes of cradle parts, are due in late February.

The Clipper Ship City of Adelaide Ready by March for Transport to Australia | Old Salt Blog – a virtual port of call for all those who love the sea. January 19, 2012.

The first two containers containing sections of the shipping cradle have now arrived in Irvine, Scotland. The last three containers, each carrying 15 to 20 tonnes of cradle parts, are due in late February.  Once the cradle is reassembled under the ship, the 150-year-old clipper and cradle will be moved onto a barge for transfer onto an ocean-going ship for the voyage to Port Adelaide, Australia.  The current target date is the end of March, if all goes well.

City of Adelaide lying at Irvine on February 07 2012 © wfmillar