Articles and Essays
My ‘Duhhh’ moments
Why does the sound of thunder get “stretched out” the further away you are from the strike? Funny you should ask… I grew up under the misapprehension that it was echoing around the area, reflected off hills, cliffs, buildings, trees, etc. Then one day, I was in a very flat part of the world and…
Spare a thought for conspiracists
I saw this on social media the other day: It took a few moments to get my head around the idea, but it’s an image of the Sun by ‘neutrino light’. Neutrinos do not interact with ordinary matter, so these neutrinos have passed through the Earth unhindered. Unfortunately, this also means most of them pass…
A Grumpy Father
Forward I decided to jot down some thoughts about my father who died some 40 years ago. I realised that if someone didn’t, as the surviving person who knew him best, the memory of the person he was would largely disappear with me. I’m also aware that his story is similar to that of many…
Vaccinations – a common-sense view
When I was growing up in the 1950s British midlands, a common sight was children wearing leg callipers. They were recovering from Polio. Everyone knew someone who’d had polio. My grandmother had had it as a child, and her height never exceeded 4 ft 5 inches. My junior school teacher had it as an adult,…
Flat Earth – a comprehensive debunking
Introduction I can well understand the appeal of Socratic discussion (say in a High School debating society, or in the pub after a few beers); arguing from a standpoint that you don’t seriously believe, or considering alternative explanations for things that we take for granted, and seeing if they stand up to scientific scrutiny. Great…
U.S.A.I.D
I was sickened to read the other day, that Musk/Trump (Mump) is considering stopping USAID – started in 1961 by JFK. The article I read went on to say that “foreign aid doesn’t poll well in the US”. Well guess what… foreign aid doesn’t ‘poll well’ anywhere. Most governments don’t ask the voters for their…
Anthropogenic Global Warming… or not?
The Elfstedentocht is the biggest ice-skating tour in the world. It’s held in the province of Friesland in the north of the Netherlands, and it’s a circular route 200 km long, passing through all eleven historical cities of the province. It used to be held every whenever the ice was more than 15 cm thick, on average every 2 –…
What’s wrong with America?
“The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.” – John F. Kennedy “I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries, when…
Correos complaint
This is a new complaint about your resolution of Reclamación: 07441532. The original complaint was that I paid for a forwarding service for three months (27/06/2024 to 27/09/2024), but mail continued to arrive at our ‘old’ address. Your response was that all forwarding was carried out correctly, and you closed the case with a ‘No…
Populism and the slide to the right
One of life’s enduring mysteries, is why people apparently become more conservative as they get older. Something I refer to here as the Slide to the right (STTR). Of course, not everyone succumbs, but averaged across a large enough population, the trend is demonstrably true. As we’ll see below, it’s interesting that this trend also…
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