Inveterate dabbler in business, travel, gadgets & life
Congratulations to Boni for being recognised by the Queen and The Establishment,
Former News journalist Boni Sones, 54, of Fair Street, Cambridge,
is made an OBE for services to broadcasting and public relations.
Ms Sones, who helped set up BBC News 24, said: “I am absolutely thrilled
and tearful. There haven’t been many journalists who have been honoured by the
Queen. I am a hard-bitten journalist but this is very emotional.”
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Interesting talk by Andy Hopper tonight on Computing the future.
I especially liked his comments on setting projects for his PhD students. they have to be more advanced than what Google or Microsoft are doing but not totally science fiction stuff – A hard job these days I reckon.
Other interesting points was that 2-3% of the worlds energy is consumed by server farms. So the proposal is to put the server farms by the windmills and solar plants since data is so cheap to transmit. Servers need to get more intelligent so that they run closer to 100% utilisation (rather than current 30%) by switching themselves off etc.
He forsees the world running on simple low power terminals. Yep. bring back the Wyse50’s 🙂 But more likely to be mobile phones! Especially after his trip to Soweto to see how they are using phones there.
Also discussed the idea that every moving object would have a sensor hooked into a vast database so your phone could be measuring CO2 etc.
A revealing chart showing global hectares available per person and current usage levels with the USA standing out as usual.
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What’s the point of Economics was tonight’s talk in the new Cambridge University Festival of Ideas series, a trioka of economists pontificated on the subject.
Evan Davis was first on, causing a small cry of dissent from the packed lecture theatre when he suggested that somehow economists should be treated like seismologists that is seismologists are not blamed for causing volcanoes – worryingly I think he thought it was a reasonable comparison (Maybe he should have gone to Ben Goldman’s talk on How the media promote public misunderstanding in science), then he suggested that economists are life’s reasonable people so perhaps he was joking after all.
Moving on he suggested that we all familarise ourselves with the wikipedia entries for:-
Then moving on to suggest that economics is studying the world through a prism of simplicity with currently to much emphasis on precision and forecasting & comparing economics to the stylised London Underground map simple but not geographically accurate. An excellent speaker with no powerpoint back up!
Next up was Michael Kitson who started up with the quote on economics by Thomas Carlyle -Dismal Science. He then moved into audience participation with the The Ultimatum Game, the most popular figure chosen was £50 whereas apparently economists would predict 1p. Then he moved onto protectionism arguing that it is needed quoting from Kicking away the ladder by Chang then an interesting slide showing that Wal-mart was the biggest engine for growth in the USA (not the hi-tech industry). A good speaker with good use of powerpoint.
Finishing with Willy Brown outlining the effects of the National minimum wage in the 10 years of its operation in the UK. The most amazing for me was that the gender wage gap in low paid workers has been eliminated and that two million employees have benefited directly without any measurable impact on employment levels (contrary to the doom mongers on its introduction). A nice observation in his work at the minimum wage commission is just how badly managed most workers are.
In question time Evan Davis replied to one questioner with the rather good expression “The government should be a referee not a player”
A good evening the theatre was 100% full with a good mixture of people.
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A few notes from my walk around Cambridge today. The guy I know who runs a tiling warehouse store (I was his first customer 15 years ago) said the bottom just fell out of his market 3 weeks ago. He is a loyal Barclays customer with a 40K overdraft, without warning or for any reason they suddenly decided they want him to pay 11% for his overdraft! Impossible for him to change banks, the other banks are not taking on new business customers!
The gym I joined , to get a decent clean swimming pool, gave me 15months membership for the price of 11 plus I got loads of visitor passes for Sally to use. The gym seemed very busy.
The queues at the tills in White Stuff for their midseason sale where humungous and the shop was heaving.
The outdoor shop Open Air was totally deserted…
The Apple store was packed, as usual.
The streets were busy with the new students and it is a glorious autumnal day.
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