Remote Controls and Different Political Wavelengths

Egg-heads suffer 2018 Whitehouse budget cuts

Flicking through the channels or using the BBC i-player on TV, taking photographs whilst avoiding camera contact, unlocking the car before reaching it, these are the everyday uses of remote controls. They use light at wavelengths outside our range of vision. The TV and camera remotes use infra-red light. The easiest way to check this is to fire up your smartphone then look at the screen whilst pointing a remote at it and pressing a button. You will see the flashing light bulb sending its infrared signal, visible to the camera sensor but invisible to the human eye.

The other distinguishing feature of these remotes is that, although you can bounce the signal off walls (point the remote at a wall on the opposite side of the room to the TV but without blocking the return signal with your body, and you can change channels), you cannot get the signal to pass through a wall.

Remote car keys can penetrate through walls as long as they are not too thick. This is because they use radio waves - at frequencies of 315 MHz for North American cars and at 433.92 MHz for European, Japanese and Asian cars. Radio waves belong to the same form of energy, electromagnetic waves, as light, but their wavelengths are just much longer.

The new Amazon Echo and our smartphones can also use different kinds of waves - sound waves - to trigger a response. As my mother and I found out when we were trying to set up her new Android tablet and inadvertently had the phrase OK Google in our conversation - and she suddenly found herself online.

We humans too work on different wavelengths, as evidenced by the BBC's electoral debate with 7 different party representatives, who each triggered different responses in parts of the audience sympathetic to them. Whilst we might consider this a more metaphoric interpretation, There are real electrical brainwaves coursing through our brains. Viewers were also on different wavelengths - with the Daily Mail preparing tomorrows headlines, blasting the BBC for its left wing bias. Whilst the BBC used an independent polling organisation find an audience that reflected the voting and other demographics of the UK - they did not select members on the basis of their vocal contribution. Apparently the 'lefties' were louder. Good thing someone told me as I thought it was actually a balanced event with both Amber Rudd and Jeremy Corbyn coming over well, now matter what was thrown at them.

Otherwise it was not a good news day. A major car bomb in Kabul, Afghanistan, killed more than 90 and injured several hundred, just over a week after the past two attacks, in Manchester and Egypt. The lights of the Eifel Tower went black in honour of those killed and sympathy with the survivors this evening.

The AAAS (American Association of American Science) mailed out a warning and call for action as they saw that the Whitehouse budget meant "More than 30% of the EPA’s budget will be slashed. Nearly 20% of NIH’s funds will be taken. 70% of the funding for renewable energy R&D will be cut under this plan."

The UK Visa and Immigration service has found a now and profitable way to distinguish between us Brits and Johnny Foreigner - they have introduced a £5.48 charge for email enquiries - for people from outside of the the UK.