I don’t know why I’ve never realised this before, but while we commonly quote fuel economy in miles per gallon, or litres per 100km, the whole thing resolves to area. Volume (gallons or litres) divided by distance (miles or km) equals area.
You can visualise this geometrically: distribute the fuel in a long cylinder along [...]
Do you remember the episode of The Simpsons where Homer helps Mel Gibson make his film more interesting by replacing the villain with a dog? A dog with shifty eyes, so you can tell he’s evil? It seems like Gibson learned something that day. The baddies in Apocalypto leer and grimace and cackle and [...]
I have just learned about the Stalin-era Soviet miner Aleksei Stakhanov, or rather the political movement of the time, which bore his name.
In 1935, word reached the Politburo in Moscow that, at his mine in East Ukraine, Stakhanov had hewed 102 tonnes of coal in 6 hours — 14 times a typical yield. Stalin [...]
They tell me to say: “Sense About Science has produced a guide to help people to query the status of science and research reported in the media. Get the guide by clicking the e-button.”
There’s a danger here of giving a “we know best” image (yes, I know, we do know best…) but nonetheless, it’s [...]
Saturday: We went to Stratford to watch them play Leamington. We had a nice lunch, but the match was called off due to a waterlogged pitch. Stratford is so dull that even shopaholic Debbie couldn’t remain entertained, and we got an early train home.
Sunday (New Year’s Eve): We spent most of the day preparing [...]
Just look at these pictures of Japanese people (and Koreans, judging by the lettering on one picture) working on an enormous diesel engine!
Obviously, I’m not writing this at the turn of midnight. I expect by then I’ll be surrounded by drunken idiots singing Auld Lang Syne (the worst element of the New Year — the song, that is, not the people).
But, Wordpress lets me time-delay postings. So, as if at the stroke of midnight: Happy New [...]