The Wisdom of Crowds

I have read a fascinating article, in of all places People Management (September 2012) about predictive markets. Basically the article wasn't exactly well written but the concept was strong. The article may not have been well written because it was extracted from a book, Oracles: How Prediction Markets turn employees into Visionaries, by Donald Thompson (published by Harvard Business School Publishing).

The basic concept is that a few technology and finance companies have been running internal stock markets where any employee can use fictional dollars to invest in ideas. Anyone can post an idea which is good for a couple of reasons. Firstly, there is no hierarchy in ideas, it doesn't matter at what level in the organisation you are, you can post an idea and hopefully people will listen. Secondly, because the buying and selling is anonymous just because an idea is from a senior manager doesn't mean you have to support it, unlike in most meeting where if you want to get ahead you need to support the boss (however dumb their ideas are - after all your next promotion might depend on them).

Essentially good ideas are valued commodities and bad ideas are junk stock. This approach frees up innovation and allows companies to see what ideas might work best. There is also a fun element in that if you invest wisely you will become a market leader especially if your ideas work in practice. Another part of life that has now been gameified.

Anyway as is my was I thought about this and decided I could create one of those. So I have created my own model and will build a small website for people to play with. If the model is any good it may become the next big thing or as is more usual it will be become another vaguely interesting project on mycreativeboost.co.uk the repository for all my mini projects.

Experimental Predictive Market The Rules V1.0

• Each stock is a question i.e. "Workers in the UK should be given 1 extra bank holiday?".
• Each stock initially lists at a price of £10 with 1000 shares for sale (Numbers would change if it ever became really popular).
• If no one buys the stock, the price will drop at a rate of 0.04p per day (the stock and therefore idea is unpopular).
• If someone buys stock the price rises at a rate of: 'Number of shares bought * 0.04p'.
• If someone sells stock the price falls at a rate of: 'Number of shares sold * 0.04p'.
• Trading limit of 100 shares per transaction.
• If price above £10.00 stock rises at a rate of 0.04p per day (Idea is popular and will keep rising until investors tempted to sell - Price will hopefully stabilise at the value of the idea)

I will admit the above rules are a bit rough and ready and may need refining over time. Think of it as a bit of a starter for ten.

Of course I accept no responsibility if I never finish this project, I have a habit of getting distracted by real life sometimes.

Signs that bother me

There are often hand written  or hand typed signs that just on a really basic level just bother me in some way.

The current one is in the toilets at work. It says:

"Please leave these toilets in the state that you expect to find them"

Firstly, I do understand that at a basic level it is saying don't make a mess and leave it tidy.

On a whole other level I am afraid that I cant possibly comply with the notice. If I did I would be forced to redecorate the toilet in order to create a brand new toilet that I would expect to find.

To illustrate my point, this is a typical toilet:

From howstuffworks.com

Now if I was to leave the toilet in the state I expect to find it, I might redecorate to give a more tropical feel to the throne room.

http://www.oneprojectcloser.com/tropical-bathroom-design/

Or perhaps improve the entertainment possibilities to add entertainment that I would expect to find.

http://www.lolgallery.com/best-toilet-ever/

Perhaps you get the general idea.

Spring cleaning nuggets

I am spring cleaning at the moment, going through all my old scrap books and files, sorting them out and weeding them.

One of the outcomes of this is that I come across old notes that I cant even remember writing, a bit like the re-discovery of old masters.

So here is just a phrase that was written on a random scrap of paper:

"The path you take may twist and turn, it may lead you back to where you began or somewhere you never thought you could be"

Or a slight rewrite would be:

"The path you take may twist and turn, it may lead you back to where you began or take you somewhere you never expected to be. In the end the destination doesn't matter, what matters is how you spend the journey".

A Human Psychology Premise

This is something I was discussing on-line in some high brow chat room. Yes, they do exist if you know where to look.

The discussion was about morality and whether a moral issue was black or white. My argument was that no issue could be purely black or white because of the human factor, in reality every issue was a shade of grey. It could perhaps look black or white but if you looked really closely there would be a hint of white or a hint of black.

There is a test for this premise:

"For a moral issue to be pure black or white every (sane) person on the planet must unanimously agree that it is so."

Now as no moral issue can pass this test moral issues can only be a shade of grey.

Now before anyone says what about this, just think would every single person in the world agree that it was 100% right or wrong.

I am not saying you cant get close I am just saying you will never be spot on. It is a hypothetical thought premise, nothing more nothing less. It really doesn't effect whether a moral issue is inherently good or inherently bad. All the premise really states is that you cant have unanimous verdict only a significant majority verdict.

The humle red band part 2

The infamous red bands I have previously blogged about have been the subject of a magazine article on the BBC.

BBC News: 10 uses for the humble red band

Who would have thought it, other people think about these things too.

Shakespeare's Monkey

Most people have heard of the theory that a monkey given an infinite amount of time and a computer will eventually type out the complete works of Shakespeare.

I of course wanted to test the theory, I do random things like that sometimes.

Rather than digitise the complete works of Shakespeare I thought I would start with the famous phrase:

"To be or not to be"

So programmed in perl with a mysql database attached a random number generator tries to recreate the famous phrase. With a bit of calculation it works out the percentage match and records the monkey world record.

Try it for yourself here - Monkey Shakespeare.

The world at large and the humble red elastic band

The world at the moment is a world full of nightmares and bad news. The Chilean miners were the one ray of sunshine in what is going to be a dark winter ahead. Bomb threats and financial crisis, job and funding cuts.

Still in this new age of austerity I would like to talk about red elastic bands, specifically the ones that are left all over the UK by postpeople as they ping off a banded set of mail that is being delivered.

They are not hard to find and are free so very handy if you want an elastic band, but being so colourful they are slightly more exciting than an ordinary brown one. Thinking of those table top Christmas books that litter the book stores at this time of year I was thinking of bringing out a book entitled "101 uses for a postpersons bands". So far number one is to use it to hold down the flaps on an opened coffee bag as those sticky things never seem to work.

Of course if it were a paperclip I could trade it up for a house, for a postpersons band I think you would struggle to trade it up for a shed at least until I have found out the only 100 uses for it.

This random thought was bought to your by coffee from Java and some orange marmalade on oatmeal toast (girlfriends choice).

Watching the news: Another Auntie's Bloomer

A vaguely interesting article about people protesting against potential cuts in the Science sector.

However, for a bit of impossible science cue some random BBC sub-editor.

If you look at the caption to the second photograph:

Demonstrators were asked to wear science items such as a laboratory coat or telescope.

Can I just ask for my own piece of mind how do you wear a telescope, there doesn't seem to be any arm or leg holes. You cant really wear it as a hat, it keeps falling off. Perhaps people often wander the corridors at the BBC wearing a telescope.

The maze project

I thought I would cross post an article to show what I am working on over at the maze project.

These are some designs and ideas for an indoor maze.

The first design I came up with was a series of interlinked rooms.



I had the idea that at the exit or entrance to each square (or room) in each doorway there would be a curtain that prevented you seeing what was beyond. So if you stood in each room all you would see in each one is the four curtains. I imagine the room to be plush red Victorian study type rooms all with exactly the same furniture, perhaps a round mahogany table in the centre, a dresser and a bookcase, all in exactly the same location with exactly the same stuff so whatever room you entered it had exactly the same layout. If you wanted to be really difficult you could give the room furniture a 2 or 4 fold symmetry. Of course if you wanted to be devilish you could change one item in each room, perhaps the book title of the third book on the third shelf would always be different, or there would be a silver spoon somewhere different in each room. Each room would not only be part of a larger maze but a sort of Sherlock Holmes esque spot the difference competition.

After this initial design I thought there was still lots of white space and really it could be a lot more of a complex maze.

Iteration 2 of the maze turned into this:



Now this is much more of a maze. Still the same curtains in each room but now when you leave the bright room you enter not just a corridor between rooms but a dark maze of twist and turns lit in shadows as you find your way to the next room. This also has dead ends in the maze so you can get lost, although once you learn the symmetry of the maze it becomes a lot easier.

To add to the darkness visitors to the maze would have torches as the dark areas are barely lit.

There are lots of other variants to the maze, I can imagine actors roaming the maze telling stories to visitors, different lighting effects both in the dark areas and the room. Although I would probably want to stick to the rooms as places of quiet sanctuary and only the dark areas being the scary part. I imagine in the darkness you could have scary footsteps, howls and thunder and lightening, it would be a fantastical yet scary place.

I have also had practical thoughts as well, the entrance would be in the bottom left and the exit in the top right, but an emergency escape route would be a corridor that runs all the way round the outside.

To leak or not to leak: 5 types of leaker

Another day, another leak. Goes nicely with cheese don't you know.On a more serious note who is behind a leak and what are their motivations.

First, I suppose is the "knight leaker". They do it because the public should know about this travesty / abomination, they are people of honour and integrity, a shining example to us all. I imagine them to be people who have campaigned internally for the information to be released and get frustrated enough, realise it will never come to light unless they take a stand and do it themselves. I imagine these people have true moral dilemmas over loyalty and accepting what the right thing to do is. I imagine the decision to leak wins over loyalty on the basis it is for the good of mankind.

An example of this type of leak is that a government department has failed to keep track of 50,000 immigrants and has not put in place any policy to resolve the issue. Or Revenues and Customers have notice 50,000 tax errors but are only chasing those that have underpaid.

Then there must be the "profit leaker", they have information that someone wants and is willing to pay catch for it. Psychologically they think they can easily get away with it or the profit outweighs the risk. They have no moral dilemmas and are motivated by pure hard cash which might get them a new car or a house in the country. They also think there is no victim and it is perfectly harmless.

These people might be giving away confidential information such as who has quoted what for a government tender or giving away personal details such as bank details they might have access to.

Next will be the "thrill seeker leaker", this small group purely like being the centre of attention, they might be the secretary's and assistant's who are underpaid and over worked. Yet now they control the information and can leak something important. Again they think it is harmless, at least at first, then they might display addictive tendencies, aching for just one more leak. They probably carry on until they get caught or just get too greedy and leak something too big to go unnoticed.

Then there is the "revenge leaker" these have information which put someone in a bad light. They can also twist the information to be out of context, perhaps by lifting quotes which in isolation look bad. This is a very politically motivated leak and might be to discredit a rival. I imagine there are some labour supporters in government departments who pass things to Labour so the Tories look bad.

Finally, there is the "false leaker", these are the government sponsored leaks to test public opinion. I would imagine 50% of leaks at least, have semi official approval because if they leak the document they can canvas public opinion for free and if there is unanimous disapproval of a leak the party involved can always go on record and say it was a "blue sky" discussion document that was drafted and circulated at a low level. The document was never meant for public consumption and was discarded at an early stage. Most importantly the government or other party has plausible deniability.

As a way to canvas public opinion for free you cant really fault it.

I think today's announcement is of the false leak variety. The government can canvas opinion and see how much support some of these bodies or organisations have. If the hordes start to advance on Downing street they can always deny there was ever any intention to abolish the organisations. Plausible deniability and smoke and mirrors, now its policy now its not.

Conservative Liberals or Liberal Conservatives?

Is the new coalition government of the UK made up of Conservative Liberals or Liberal Conservatives. I personally think they are Liberal Conservatives. The question in my mind is if that judgement is based on what I believe to be their politics or the sometimes unnatural rules of the English Language.

In option 1 I think that the politics are generally Conservative yet tempered by liberalism hence Liberal Conservatives.

In option 2 the majority subject goes second and then the descriptive effector comes first hence Liberal Conservatives.

Of course with the power of the mighty google I can check out the most popular term.

Search term: Conservative liberals uk

About 8,430,000 results

Search term: Liberal Conservatives uk

About 8,390,000 results

Oh, a very narrow victory for Conservative liberals. Probably proves absolutely nothing but it was an interesting thought for the day.

Chris Moyles and the sixty piece orchestra

I like the new jingle called "morning movie", very classy. Only thing is Chris keeps talking all over it, only kidding Chris.

From the link above you can hear it in its full , building glory until the final salute of "The Chris Moyle's Show BBC Radio 1!".

Your doing a cracking job keep it up. Not that I can show my trend credentials by saying I am an avid listener to Radio 1, I have never liked the music even when I was a young un. I have always liked the talky bits of the Chris Moyle's show, he is a good laugh and occasionally he does play a song I can listen to and enjoy.

Crack on Chris and the team.

Snow Watch 09/10 - Leg 4 Day 4

Well Day 4 and although the snow is lovely, having to drive to work is a nightmare.

In Oxfordshire they are being very sparing with the grit which means any local roads are still covered in snow / ice and not good to drive on at all. The difference can be seen driving north off the A34 onto the A41 towards Aylesbury.

A34 gritted and maintained by the Highways Agency perfect, no snow or slush able to made near normal speeds of about 50 mph. Both Lanes open. The A41 the other side of the M40 roundabout maintained by Oxfordshire County Council, one lane vaguely clear, one lane covered in snow passable by the brave and 4 x 4's. Its pretty pathetic really.

Other local roads even if they don't grit they could at least use a snow plough on them. There is almost 2-3 inches of compacted snow which is getting quite treacherous.

I know the arguments about it being a 1 in 40 year event, other areas are getting priority gritting etc etc. Surely there are contingency plans. Someone who set themselves up with a snowplough and a warehouse full of grit could make a lot of money at the moment.

Plan A,

• set up a massive southern counties Depot containing at least one months grit for the entire south.
  
• put in a rail terminal, get rid of the lorries and make it a lot easier to get the grit out and deliver to any point over the rail network.
  
• Seek alternative supplies, perhaps you don't have to use grit, what about sand, maybe even chalk?
  
• Organise volunteers to shovel, grit and snowplough. Everyone would muck in if it was organised. This goes back to the civil emergencies force I have talked about previously.
• Create laws making householders responsible for their own pavements and driveways.
• create a fleet of flame-thrower ice vehicle, which burns the ice off the road.
• Send 40 MP's on an all expenses paid trip to Sweden to find out how they do it (Joking - although this is the one thing most likely to happen).
  

Any more ideas to help the experts because clearly they need some?

On another subject by the look of the met office weather warnings the heavy snow possible for leg 5 has moved from Sunday / Monday to Saturday / Sunday. Apparently we can expect another 1 - 5 cm of snow.

Watch this space.

18 monkeys sitting at a keyboard

I have written a perl script that simulates eighteen monkeys each hitting one key either a letter of the alphabet or space key. They are trying to write the line " To be or not to be".

"Why?" I hear half the world scream, "For goodness sake, why? Think of the children!". Sorry slipped into a Simpson moment there.

Anyway I have written this totally geeky pointless script just because I can. It was a personal challenge to myself, can a mild mannered recruitment officer who knows a bit about perl write a script that will achieve this.

To explain the mechanics, I create a sequence of 18 random numbers between 1 and 27. Convert that all into letters or a space, then compare it to the text I want, calculate the percentage match and repeat until I get a decent match. For the maths bods out there the actual odds of hitting a perfect sequence are 18 to the power 27. In other words a really really really large number.

So anyway tonight I have been running batches of 2000000 iterations and outputting to a file every combination with a match over 7 letters.

Here are the results so far:

The highest ever match is 9 letters off a run of 200000000 iterations which just goes to show hitting the full eighteen letters could be a bit of a miracle. That run took 3 hours to do.

The interesting thing is that 8/9 letter is starting to make almost recognisable word patterns:

6533243 TULBEHXRBGMK EO BE 9
7596871 DO SJOR FOOUHU BO 8
15070898 AOSBH RQMNLT GO AA 8
41948431 TOPKGJCE ROTSTOJSE 8
83387651 TOEBOYXY UKT HP FE 8
131295542 NO BGVIR TPTGTX MB 8
123724196 TOIBXRY BENT TOWTE 8

I should explain the first number is the iteration, then we have the code sequence and finally the number of matching letters.

Ok so most of them still sound like the Russian or Japanese version of "to be or not to be" but bits are beginning to make sense.

Next experiment reduce the number of letters in the phrase to see if we can hit the high matches quicker. Maybe I will try "Out damned spot" but really I need something even shorter.

Asteroid attack: How would we cope? (New Scientist)

When an email like that hits your in-box you cant help but race across the desktop with your mouse pointer and click it.

The answer apparently if you want the short answer is "Not very well".

Then the article is full of more questions such as

"Should we panic?"

A. Not really, a killer impact strike would only happen once every 2000 years and the odds of hitting a populated area are even smaller.

"Can we nuke it?"

A. No, not unless we had several years warning. At the moment our early warning systems just aren't good enough. One asteroid last year was only detected 20 hours before impact. 2008 TC3 detonated over Sudan and was too small to do any damage anyway but millions of asteroids that could do some damage are out there and we are not yet tracking all of them.

The exciting questions over with, I can tell you about what the article is actually about. The US Air Force ran an exercise in 2008 where they played out a scenario where a killer asteroid was heading straight for earth. Straight out of Hollywood there were two parts of the asteroid, one heading for a splash down in the Atlantic ocean on the west coast of America and the other heading for Washington DC. Cut to people screaming and running past notable Washington monuments and running past electrical shop windows with President Obama on screen urging people to remain calm all the way via satellite from Air Force One currently flying over New Zealand.

Back to the studio where CNN have bought in whoever answered the phone first, to pretend to be an expert on asteroids / politics. "Its all the governments fault they should have seen it coming years ago. They cut funding into asteroid destruction technologies and invested in free health care for all. What were they thinking?"

Sorry, digressed suddenly there, too much thinking about life according to a Hollywood movie script.

Commenting on the scenario outcome which demonstrated that the US was woefully unprepared for such a disaster Peter Garreston (organiser) had this to say:

"As a taxpayer, I would appreciate my air force taking a look at something that would be certainly as bad as nuclear terrorism in a city, and potentially a civilisation-ending event."

He wasn't just talking about the X-factor rejects from the first round who with their off key singing destroyed several world heritage sites yesterday.

Simon Cowell responded with these comments directly to the planet killer asteroid:

"I am just not convinced by your planet killing performance, I just didn't feel it. Your just too small this year, you need to come back next year... Danni Yes or no?"

Normal service is being resumed ... please hold while we connect you to sanity.

US Air force 0 - Asteroid 1. Final Score.

Anyway, moving on. Having pretty much determined that being able to avert disaster was pretty much impossible the assembled team turned to disaster management. Somebody had forgotten to get coffee from the supermarket and everybody knows you cant deal with a disaster without some serious black coffee.

The primary concern in the disaster management scenario was to stop the public who were in the path of the asteroid from panicking. In my opinion the only way you could stop the public panicking is to shut the media up. You only have to look back to the credit crunch to see how good the media are at proclaiming the end is nigh. Their doom scenarios would cause the public to panic within about three seconds although you might have 30 seconds of grace while they come up with a suitable two word caption for the screen.

Cue movie voice. "It was a time of darkness, the media had the biggest story ever, the story to end all stories, the story to end it all..."

A bland boardroom is shown on screen with a number of men and women in power suits.

Random media type 1: Yes, but what's the caption.
RMT2: How about "earth crunch"
RMT4: Sounds too much like "credit crunch", crunch doesn't spread fear as much as it used to.
RMT3: How about "Armageddon"
RMT2: No, that is only understandable by the AB1 demographic and its only one word.
RMT1: How about "Fatal Friday"
RMT3: No sounds like another stock market crash.
RMT2: How about"End of the World, as we know it"
RMT1: Too long it will appear over the station logo.
RMT4: How about "We're screwed"
RMT1: Well its direct, two words, but it just doesn't have any zing.
RMT3: How about "Rocky: The final return".
RMT2: No, that's already been copyrighted for the movie of the disaster.
RMT1: I know, how about: "Mankind's Annihilation"
RMT2: Works for me.
RMT4: Excellent.
RMT1: OK that's agreed, now lets talk sponsorship, are we thinking Coke or Nike...

Back in the reality created by the US Air Force which one can only assume didn't include a simulation of the media machine.

Timothy Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts who has also probably been watching two many Hollywood blockbusters suggested this scenario.

"I'm picturing people panicking and driving the wrong way on the freeway, screaming 'Oh my god, it's going to kill us!'"

We are not just talking republican policies on health care here either (little current affairs reference for my American audience). In true Hollywood fashion he forgot to mention the two teenage virgins by the side of the road getting busy as they certainly don't want to die a virgin. I am thinking American Pie meets Armageddon, now that would be worth going to see.

The outcome of the exercise was a realisation that there is no asteroid emergency plan beta 6 and Bruce Willis is not on 24/7 asteroid destruction call out. However the earlier the warning the better the response would be.

Which brings us nicely on to early warning systems. The good news is that two out of the three early warning systems are in Arizona where during the months of July and September you cant see a thing because of the cloud cover. Excellent, I can see that makes everyone feel better. Lets hope no asteroids turn up at that time of the year, perhaps they will just leave a calling card and come back later.

Even better news, the US Air Force have imagined a scenario where an asteroid could start world war 3: The final showdown. If an asteroid detonated over a politically sensitive area like the middle east then it might be interpreted as a nuclear attack and governments may retaliate.

Of course NASA has put a lot of money into funding projects to track potential planet killers but in a selfish approach they only focus on the Northern Hemisphere which is perhaps a bit short sighted as a planet killer in the Southern Hemisphere could still destroy all life on the planet as we know it.

NASA and the European space agencies are working on it though, so hopefully things will improve in the future.

NASA are also working on an Asteroid ship which will help defend the planet. Exclusively, here now I can reveal the working prototype:

Intertwined colour lines: a fascination

I find myself strangely fascinated by coloured lines intertwined together, especially if it is a pattern based on something man made or familiar to me.

This is a hand drawn colour line copy of a 1914 clearing house railway junction diagram of the area around clapham junction (the big confusing area over on the left). If you want to you can compare it to the original over here on wikipedia.

Maybe I have discovered a whole new art form with which you can experiment with on any map or satelitte photgraphy, just drawing designs. Today the web tommorrow Tate Britain.

Misconstruing BBC news article part 2

Wireless power system shown off

Well surely someone should have turned it on for the demonstration as

Wireless power system shown on

would have more effectively demonstrated its capabilities.

I am probably the only one in the universe that finds that even slightly funny... I shall get my coat.

State of Fear by Michael Crichton

I re-read this book recently, it is a work of fiction which introduces the premise / theory that the environmental lobby is just another method by the establishment to keep us in a perpetual state of fear, following on from the cold war came global warming. This state of fear creates spending and political power but the book using scientific references to support the fictional plot suggests that global warming is at best inconclusive and suggests that we are yet to learn so much about are environment that any theory about global warming is little more than a guess.

However as the character in the book suggests just because you don't agree with global warming doesn't mean that you don't want pollution controls and CO2 reduction. I have to say Michael Crichton creates a compelling argument. One of the best simple comparisons is that despite all the investment and technology we cannot accurately predict the weather beyond 5-10 days so how can we consider a prediction for a 100 years hence to be accurate.

There are loads of other rational arguments in the book but with the alternative view I find it difficult to believe that global warming is a global conspiracy. I suppose one of the problems is that until it happens we wont know whether everyone is right or wrong.

The precautionary principle also mentioned in the book means that if there is the slightest change of the catastrophic scenario occurring then we should not take the action that would cause it. Therefore the precautionary principle would suggest that because scientists have found a potential risk we should do everything to eliminate it. However you could use the precautionary principle to say we should live 50 ft underground all the time because every time you go outside there is a risk of a plane falling on your head.

Then I reach the thought in my head that says "Do I believe in global warming?". Then my second thoughts kicks in and realises the framing of the question suggests there is a belief factor rather than relying on cold, hard, undeniable facts and truths.

"Do I believe in doing something to protect the environment?". No facts required this time but how do you protect an environment, again it raises in the book that you can only manage an environment and we still don't know how to manage land to protect something. The ecosystems around us are ever changing we cant protect and preserve but we can manage it in a direction. In the books it talks about nature not having a balance but oscillating between different factors as species rise and fall.

Finally the book finishes with the premise that they should set up a new environmental group which basically looks for problems and fixes it, so take land management, you accept you do not know how to do it, so you take 8 similar parcels of land, have a different management policy in each one. Try things out get them evaluated by outside consultants and by trial and error find out what land management policies work and don't work.

One character talks about scientific journal authors talking about simulations as if they were real world data and suggest that such articles should be labelled "Warning: Computer Simulation - May be erroneous and unverifiable" and then suggests a label for newspaper articles as well "Warning speculation - may be fact free".

I have long argued about labels for news articles, some kind of evaluation of the source:

How about this the Zephryist- Morton coding
(the highest number would be taken in each code)

8 - Video evidence
7 - Sound evidence
6 - Multiple eye witness accounts
5 - conflicting eye witness accounts with some commonality
4 - Single eye witness account
3 - written evidence
2 - Multiple eye witness conflicting accounts
1 - 2nd hand source no eye witness accounts
0 - opinion only no verifiable witness 1 or second hand

4 - Known as giving previously reliable evidence
3 - No previous record of evidence
2 - Questionable record of giving reliable evidence
1 - interpretation of known facts with own opinion on conclusions or extrapolation
0 - own opinion - few known facts with open interpretation.

3 - Expert / professional in field
2 - Media expert in field
1 - Amateur in field
0 - Unknown knowledge status in field.

So with this you could evaluate any news source such as the BBC news website which would be a 8 by 4 by 2 site, one of the highest rating with video evidence, known to give reliable evidence in the past, and with media experts.

You could also rate a blog, my highest rating would be a 4 by 4 by 1 unless you felt I was merely giving opinion where my blog would be rated 4 by 1 by 1. Of course with a fully functioning system the ratings would be given by peers.

The beauty of the system is that the lower the number the more questionable the source, it would help any reader instantly be able to separate fact from fiction without having to read pages of previous articles and compare them with other sources to determine the reliability, with a peer reviewed system other people have already done the leg work.

You could go further and break down the rating system more by breaking each section into a series of questions almost an acid test of reliability.

I may return to this some day or like many other posts on my blog it may just be a random thought that sits on the shelf collecting dust.

The misconstruing BBC news article game

I may have invented a new game. All you need is to look on the news pages of the BBC, I use the top 10 article lists. Pick an article title and come up with an alternative story behind the headline.

So for example from today:

WHO warns swine flu 'unstoppable'

I did not realise the rock band "the Who" were experts in pandemic viruses.

I may post some more as I see them.

What was going on there then?

I was off on one of my irregular visits to one of the outlying depots. This time I have been doing a grand tour updating the local HR managers on some process changes we are making. I tend to do most of the work with my manager helping with the bigger bits. My manager is more than happy to delegate these meetings to me as I know exactly what is going on and can brief it with no problems.

So my boss delegated responsibility to me to arrange and give this briefing. So I contacted the manager and suggested we meet up. She kind of dithered about it so I left it a few days, it went a bit quiet and when I bought it up again she told me she had contacted my boss to arrange the meeting. My boss had already passed it on to me so we kind of said fair enough, if they need a bit more senior manager hand holding then we can go do it together.

So we get there my boss (female) and me (male) to meet this HR manager (female). My boss does a quick intro and then hands over to me as I know all the detail. So I am going through everything and any time the HR manager asks a question she addresses it to my boss. Its almost like the entire conversation is between her and my manager and I am nothing more than an audio tape. This was accompanied with her generally looking at my boss and using body language to focus on my boss and not me.

It was very disconcerting and if the sexes were reversed so that I was female with two males you might interpret it as sexism. I find it difficult to believe it was sexism but equally I find it hard to believe she didn't talk to me because I clearly know my stuff and my area of work. I have a good reputation around the organisation and am known for my thoroughness.

My boss and I did talk about it briefly afterwards but she was none the wiser and it had made her feel a bit awkward as well, because she is completely confident with my briefing ability and would have happily left it to me. She had already tried to convince the HR manager that I was completely competent in giving the briefing.

So I don't know what that was about but it will be interesting to see what happens in the future.