WelcomeToCatcliffeDemon

Working out who makes what for who in China.

ONE OF THE subjects that is always cropping up on forums and e-mail groups, at least on the British and North American lists that have been a member of, is the thorny subject of Chinese model production. More specifically, customers want to know specifically which of the various ready-to-run manufacturers use which East Asian factories.

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My new flat, pictured just before I moved my stuff in.

SHOWING JUST HOW behind I am on my blogging; I moved into my new flat on June 23rd, yet I’ve only just found time to sort out the pictures I took of the rooms and put ‘em up here. The wait was worthwhile, because I had a enjoyable half an hour earlier today knocking up a plan of the flat - pictured above.

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‘Aye to the telescope’

WHILE ROCKETS LAUNCHED from such locations as Cape Canaveral (NASA’s Kennedy Space Center) and Centre Spatial Guyanais (Ariane programme) usually grab the headlines. The real grunt work of space exploration can be found in altogether more landlocked locations, in the form of telescopes, which scour the sky 365 days a year across the visible and non-visible spectrums (or at least they were landlocked until the Hubble Space Telescope launched).

As a kid, I was fascinated by two things, dinosaurs and space. The latter manifested itself in a love of anything to do with the exploration of the cosmos, such as rockets, satellites, probes, and, of course, radio telescopes (hence the title bar at the top of the page). So I was particulary pleased when the BBC announced that the Lovell telescope at Jodrell Bank, in Cheshire, had won the corporation’s top spot in a poll for Britain’s best unsung landmark, beating such structures as the Humber and Severn Bridges and Crystal Palace.

It’s to my eternal discredit that I’ve yet to visit this site - it’s even more galling when you consider that I used to live just down the road from it, in Stoke-on-Trent. This is something that I must remedy soon!

There’s something about these images, and the others that can be found on Jodrell Bank’s excellent website. Maybe it’s the 1950s’ brave new world’ kind of design. The BBC article describes the era as ‘a more innocent age’, which being as the country had just come out of almost a decade of total war seems a bit strange.

I believe that it is more that these telescopes represent the finest aspects of humanity. They date, not from an ‘innocent age’ but from a two decade period when the horrors of the Second World War encouraged people to look forward. Jodrell Bank and other radio telescopes are all about peaceful exploration of the cosmos.

2007 is the 50th anniversary of Jodrell Bank. Let’s hope that we see some decent celebrations, and that the BBC takes the hint from its online competition and commissions a series of programmes on the radio telescope’s achievements.

Images: Anthony Holloway/Ian Morison, University of Manchester

I LOVE WEBSITES that feature great and original photography. One site that I keep going back to, even though it is rarely updated, is Shintaro Sato’s portfolio of urban nighttime pictures from Japan. The gallery called Night Lights includes some fascinating close up images of strangely empty street life. However, it is Sato’s other collection, Twilight, that shows urban Japan from above roof level in that 15-20 minute period before night truly falls, that really impresses.

Japanese cities are stereotypically protrayed as bursting with colour, full of neon and tungsten, but unlike some generalisations aimed at the country, this one is true. These long exposure images give the brightly lit scenes a life of their own, that is as fantastic as it is eriee, and while those streets are still empty of people, the main roads are an unstoppable mass of red and white light trails.

The stunning lenswork can be deceiving. Look closer and you’ll start to notice how densely packed in the dwellings are, or how the beauty may be only skin deep. Behind those brightly lit facades are years of caked on grime, crumbling concrete, ventilation shafts and the incessant hum of the air conditioners stacked five or ten high. There are even a few kitsch elements in there, most noticeably with a 50-foot high replica Statue of Liberty atop of one building!

This is a collection to really savour and I’d love to have five or six of these printed large to put up around the house.

Maybe I will book that holiday to Japan for next Spring…

‘Statistics, damn statistics and lies‘

I’VE ALWAYS THOUGHT that I was out of step with the rest of my age group and this is the proof.

According to the Grauniad article linked to above, 34-year-olds like myself spend “on average a curiously satisfying £88.88 per day”. Quite what anybody could shell out that kind of money on, I have no idea, even factoring in the extortionate price of housing in the UK.

Work it out, £88.88 x 365 days in the year = a cool £32,441.20. I’ll give you a shout if I ever get to half of that rate of spending!

The article goes on to say that “the British Cohort Study reported its findings that 14% of 34-year-olds couldn’t work out the change from a £20 note, and that one in seven couldn’t calculate 10% of £1,000.”

I wonder if these two studies could be related?