The right mix

As part of my daily intake of news, both events and editorials, I usually visit Wikipedia (the English version) to read the feature article or some other interesting historical event that occured on this date.

Featured articles "represents the best of Wikipedia", but this unfotunately does not preclude a bias in the types of articles that qualify for this honour. This first became apparent to me after reading yet another featured article about an Austrialian war hero in as many months. These military personal are of course as deserving a place in Wikipedia as are all notable persons, and the quality of the article is not in question. But it did raise the question about how articles are selected to appear on the front page as a featured article.

I did a little research into which articles have been used as featured articles in 2016. Using a crude classification system, I grouped featured articles fron January 2016 to August 2016 into 9 groups divided by country. I suspected that military personel were overrepresented so that got its own category. It also quickly became evident which countries dominated the survey.

As the English Wikipedia, articles are mostly related to English speaking countries; USA, Britain and Australia related articles together account for 67% of all articles in the survey.

• USA 90 (37%)
• Britain 48 (20%)
• Australia 24 (10%)
• Other 82 (34%)
• Total 244

Another clear bias was towards American culture which accounts for 33% of all USA-related articles and 12% of all articles in the survey. This isn't so strange considering the popularity of American culture in the world.

As for the bias towards Austrialian military personal which inspired this article, they account for 3.5% of all articles in the survey. This may not seem like much but in fact it corresponds to one featured article per month that concerns a very narrow topic. And in relation to the total of number of Austrialia-related articles they are almost 40% which is a gross over-representation.

In general, the featured articles are greatly biased towards culture, persons, events and places, buildings, ships, etc. (82% of all surveyed articles). Only 43 out of 244 articles concerned any topics related to science, philosophy, economy, food, etc. I tend to believe that this is simply a result of the fact the people write about what they are interested in; the more popular a topic is the better quality of the article will likely be and the greater chance it has of being a featured article.

I really enjoy using Wikipedia; it inspires me to learn about new things, and not just in isolation but to be able to read related articles. To learn for instance not just about mathematical theories but also about the mathematicians themselves. So can I use Wikipedia to broaden my knowledge even more since there is so much bias in the featured articles?

Below the day's featured article is a list of Recent deaths. This being the deaths of notable people, there is something to learn about what contributions they made to society. There is a lot less bias in this list since death does not discriminate, and it quickly leads into new areas of exploration that are underrepresented in featured articles. It is also a fine way to honor these people by reading about who they are and what they did. Long live knowledge.

Escape from Dublin Airport

We made it! Having left for Dublin Airport on a cold clear morning at 11am we were very happy to finally arrive in Stockholm by midnight local time. All was calm at Dublin airport when we arrived; check-in was a breeze and the x-ray machine didn't beep as it has done every other time.

I should have suspected something bad was going to happen as the weather closed in and heavy snow started to fall on the planes sitting on the tarmac. Looking back it feels like watching the start of a disaster movie where all of the characters are introduced one after another: the girl with her dog, the guy that looked like Santa Claus, and of course, the couple with the one year old daughter.

Comfortably seated we were informed that the plane would need to be de-iced and this would delay our departure. But by the time it was done, the snow had turned to hail. Time for the next announcement: the runway had closed so they could remove the snow that had fallen. This would take two hours; we had missed our departure window. Worse still the hail meant that the plane would have to be de-iced again before take-off. Not much to do except wait and let Olivia play in the aisle. Not long into this wait, we were informed again that the plane had to move away from the gate to allow another plane to dock. Time ticked by.

By now, we were speculating about just when we would get to Stockholm and how much food did we have for Olivia. A few phone calls to the folks just to pass the time and give them the inside story on what turned out to be a showstopper for the whole city of Dublin that Wednesday afternoon on the last day of Christmas. To put some perspective on our situation, it wasn't just our flight that was delayed, but all flights were, as the only runway that was open was now closed. Flights were being diverted away from Dublin airport. On the ground, we were some of the few who had at least got onto their planes. The terminals themselves were gradually filling up with more passengers that were queuing to board and yet more were arriving to the airport all the time. Onboard, things were calm thanks to the helpful and informative staff. I was glad to be on a SAS plane.

Another announcement, bad news. Aer Rianta had no proper equipment for removing the snow/hail/slush from the runway. They had tried salting it but two planes that had subsequently landed reported extremely icy conditions. The only runway out of town would remain closed until they got to grips with the problem. To liven things up a bit, our plane was towed to one of the gates at the new unfinished T2 terminal. The sky had cleared up and the sun was starting to set. Whatever was on the runway was about to freeze. It was about 4pm.

At some point, the crew decided to give everyone food, at no charge. Great! But of course then everyone wants free food and 30 of the 120 passengers didn't get anything, including us. Pleas from the cockpit to the terminal were finally answered when a Gourmet Catering truck pulled up to the plane with a box of frozen pizza sandwiches. Eh? The crew hastily warmed them in the airplane ovens but the results were a bit uneven to say the least. At that was that. There was nothing more to eat or to buy to eat, except maybe a Twix.

At some point during the half-time refreshments, we were informed that the runway would only re-open again at 7.30pm. Time to do the math. It is a two-and-a-half hour flight to Stockholm approximately. Taking into account de-icing and taxiing to the runway, it would be close to midnight by the time we would get to the arrivals hall with our bags. That was of course if we could take off at all. Phone call to the parents. The news was not good on RTÉ either. The city was in chaos. Dublin Bus had stopped running (again) and the roads were slippery as hell. What were the chances of getting out of the airport if we couldn't take off?

Another problem to worry about was that aircrews can only(!) work 15 hour shifts and ours would have to call it a day if we didn't get off the ground by 8pm. Fingers crossed that Aer Rianta could re-open the runway in time.

Olivia kept us busy and the time passed reasonably quickly. I can't remember being bored. Their were dogs in the cargo hold. One was a 12 week old puppy called Spike that was allowed on board for food and water. Laptops were brought out. Kids huddled together in front of the screen as Mowgli led Bagheera on a merry chase throught the jungle. Olivia made sure she was in on the action.

Another announcement. Finally! Some good news. We would be the one and only plane to take-off that evening from Dublin airport. All other flights were cancelled. Passengers on other planes were forced to debark to an already over-crowded airport only to have to queue to get new tickets for the following day. All the hotels in the area were fully booked. A smattering of applause from the passengers. We were the lucky ones it seemed.

And take-off! More applause. I looked out over a night-time Dublin glowing brightly from the city lights and the snow that reflected them.  We circled the city and headed east. Olivia drank her bottle and fell asleep. We were still awake and alert. The whole thing had the feel of an adventure and we had made it out of the jungle. Maybe that's why I didn't feel so hungry with only a dodgy pizza sandwich to eat since breakfast. And so ends the story of escaping from Dublin airport.

Here begins the story of how my car locked me out with the engine still running in the middle of Arlanda's long-term car park. We had made it out of Dublin airport but would we make it home?

I left Stina and Olivia in good spirits in the arrivals hall and took the bus to the long-term car park. Well, if you think there have been artic conditions in Ireland for the past two weeks, then it has been even worse in Sweden. The morning of our flight home, it was a frosty -22 degrees in Arlanda. After two weeks of winter weather it took a good half-an-hour to remove first the thick layer of snow from the car and then the 3cm of ice under it. All the while the engine was running, providing heat to warm the windscreen and the interior of the car. At one stage I opened the door to throw the brush back in. Then I closed the door and heard the hum of the electric motor as the door locked. What the! Checked the door, all the doors, the boot. Nope, definitely locked out. Rang Stina. Quickly came to the conclusion that our best bet was to take a taxi home and get the spare key and get the taxi back to the airport. It was after 1am (Swedish time).

The car was still running when I got back to the long-term car park at 3am. The spare key worked. Whew! Home and in bed finally by 4am. Too tired to be hungry. My last thought was there's nothing for breakfast in the apartment.

Docuphile

I love documentaries. I haven't time to follow a whole TV series so a documentary is often an entertaining and informative way to relax for an hour in front of the TV. It can be about anything from wildlife to current affairs or famous people.

Some of the best documentaries of I watched have been about current affairs such as Crude Impact , Manda Bala, The World according to Monsanto, Another perfect world but the other day I saw a really good documentary about the artist Keith Haring. And that is just the thing, there are a lot of really good quality documentaries around now, or maybe its just that I have been paying more attention in the last few years. Indeed, there seems to be several documentaries getting a lot of media attention at the moment; Bananas!* and Videocracy to name a couple.

The impact of these films should not be underestimated. The makers of Bananas!* are being sued by Dole and the film The World accoring to Monsanto is billed as the film that "americans won't ever get to see." Manda Bala is also cited as a film that can never be shown in Brazil. So, I count myself lucky that I am not a target of such censorship.

In Sweden, we are also fortunate to have such good programs as Dokument utifrån and K-special that show a new documentary from around the world every week. Another program Uppdrag granskning reports on goings on in Sweden. In particular, there have been several programs on over-fishing, E.U. fishing regulations and fish-farming.

So how does this flood of information affect me? Well, as a consumer you pay for what you get. For a start I keep a pocket-size fish guide in my wallet when I am out shopping. Eco-food is also prefereable. Ask yourself, how can a banana be so cheap when it is grown on the other side of the world and has a shelf-life of just 2-3 days?

But I am not just a consumer but also a citizen of a democracy, and so being informed about what goes on in the world ("constant vigilance") enables me make the best use of my vote and helps hold our politicans accountable.

And now with the Copenhangen Climate Conference starting in a week, I expect there will be at least a few documentaries about climate change and climate politics on TV. Looking forward to it.

Baby black hole

I read a sci-fi short story once about a boy who went into a toy store and bought a pet black hole enclosed in some sort of glass case. It came with its own "food" to keep it alive and instructions explaining not to feed it anything else once the food ran out. Well, the boy brought the black hole home and fed it ubtil one day the food ran. Then he tried feeding it some other things in his room. Nothing bad happened so he continued to do this until one day the glass case vanished in front of his eyes and then things in his room started to be sucked into the black hole. In terror, he ran downstairs just as his bedroom door disappeared. The story ends with the boy running down the street while behind him his house implodes. More a horror story for nerds really which is why I like it.

Somehow my brain saw an analogy between feeding a black hole and raising our one year old daughter. The thought goes that providing appropriate stimulus to a small child usually results in the child learning to do new things which is fascinating to the child's parents. However, at some stage the child becomes self-sustaining, that is it learns on its own and not always with the most desirable results (climbing the furniture for instance). And that is where the analogy ends because at least this baby black hole can be taught to do the right thing.

I would love to know what the name of that book was.