41

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: 06/08/2022 09:58:14 »

This can be problematic as pyrocumulonimbus clouds can produce a lot of wind, which can result in unpredictable fire behavior underneath the cloud and even cause new fires from lightning strikes.

Er, no. The fire produces the wind, due to simple physics. When the fire is extinguished, the clouds dissipate.Likewise cloud-to-ground lightning strikes are caused by the VandeGraaff effect of rapidly rising air. Internal and cloud-to-cloud lightning is indeed produced by circulation within the clouds themselves, but they don't cause ground fires.   

The problem with real science is that it doesn't make headlines, unlike climate "science".

42

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: 06/08/2022 09:52:04 »

Sanatamaria hummingbird:good news presented as bad. Typical Grauniad reporting.

43

Physiology & Medicine / Re: Why has no Warp Speed Pill been invented to Stop Periods?

« on: 06/08/2022 09:49:03 »

I have not advocated murder. People sometimes throw themselves down stairs whist resisting arrest. Ask any policeman.

Around 50 years ago I saw an excellent interview with a village copper who was about to retire, having spent his entire working life on the same beat. Extraordinarily, he had never been promoted, and no crimes had been reported within his patch. Asked how he achieved this, he said "I know all the kids. When the lads start mucking about, around the age of eleven, I smack them and tell their mums."

It works for all other mammals. What's wrong with humans?

44

General Science / Re: Why can't radio waves pass through the ionosphere, but a spaceship can?

« on: 05/08/2022 20:02:37 »

The clue is in the name - ionosphere. Ionised air is an electrical  conductor and acts to some extent as a "short circuit" to electromagnetic radiation, but to a solid object it is just "thin air".

Obviously most em radiation does pass through the ionosphere (hence sunlight, radiotelescopes, and communication with spacecraft) but at some frequencies and angles of incidence it acts like a mirror.

45

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: 05/08/2022 17:33:53 »

Another 'positive twist', we've seen headlines like those before and they will pop up again, more questionable for each heatwave, reefs dying, to then 'recover'.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/04/record-coral-cover-on-parts-of-great-barrier-reef-at-risk-from-global-heating-scientists-warn

Having your cake and eating it is ridiculous, but having your cake and complaining about it is called climate "science".  another.

46

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: 05/08/2022 17:29:27 »

You don't have farmers anymore, you have crop factories, running under the management of multi nationals and the conveyor belt principle.

It's called efficient farming. Anticipate demand, negotiate a supply contract, manage your land to meet it, with economies of scale, cooperation and subcontracting where possible.

Jimmy Doherty, local-ish farmer and TV presenter, made a telling remark from a market in Uganda. Similar terrain and rainfall, marginally warmer, but "85% of the Ugandan population work on the land and the country is starving. Less than 5% of the UK population work on the land, and the shops are full. It's not what they are doing wrong, but what we are doing right."

I also recall being shown around the hangars at a local farm-cum-airfield. Lots of historic planes being restored and displayed, then we were invited to see "the machine that really won the war" - a 1938 Fordson tractor.

Don't knock modern farming!

47

Physiology & Medicine / Re: Why has no Warp Speed Pill been invented to Stop Periods?

« on: 05/08/2022 08:57:58 »

Medical treatment for raging hormones?

No. A parental smack round the head for assuming a right to assault another human being. And for those who don't learn, maybe falling downstairs whilst resisting arrest.

48

Just Chat! / Re: How was Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri betrayed

« on: 04/08/2022 21:32:59 »

It is enough to buy your own bunch of fanatics for a while. Remember every member of Al Quaeda is just another politician, so like all other slime, hates everyone else and is only interested in money and climbing the greasy pole. A week is a long time in politics, and you can get very drunk and catch some interesting diseases with $25M. Who cares anyway?

49

Physiology & Medicine / Re: Why has no Warp Speed Pill been invented to Stop Periods?

« on: 04/08/2022 21:24:32 »

A very few men are  so sexually insecure and socially inadequate that they feel a need or even a right to assault women. These are the people who need medical treatment, not all women.

50

Just Chat! / Re: Do British pubs typically serve restaurant quality food?

« on: 04/08/2022 17:56:01 »

There has been a massive change in my lifetime, following tighter drink-driving legislation. In my youth, pub food was a grudging addition to encourage lunchtime drinking. With decreasing consumption of alcohol, and increasing competition from supermarkets, the majority of pubs have at least increased the scale and variety of their offerings and a good many are now really restaurants with decent draught beer and a dartboard. My chef son produces Michelin-star food in pubs.

51

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: 04/08/2022 17:49:25 »

The price of anything in a free market is whatever people are prepared to pay for it. In the case of motor fuel, gas and electricity, there is no competition : all your mains gas and electricity comes from  two pipes and if you moved to a different supplier, he would just increase his prices to match the one you left. In the case of motor fuel, the price creeps up every week because if garage A adds 1p per liter, there's little incentive to drive to garage B, and garage B then follows suit because the  next one is 20 miles away.

Similarly with bread and potatoes.  If supermarket X keeps the price of wine constant, adding 10% to the price of potatoes won't alter your shopping habits much in the short term, so Y down the road also jacks up the price of potatoes....

The great thing about COVID or the Russian invasion of Ukraine, is you can blame the price rise on some irrelevant external factor.

52

Physiology & Medicine / Re: Why has no Warp Speed Pill been invented to Stop Periods?

« on: 04/08/2022 17:36:12 »

Anyone with a brain would be in favor of reducing the population. The means to do so safely and cheaply has been around since 1960. As BC says, how you use it is a matter of choice, unless you subscribe to some bizarre superstition that allows dirty old men to determine your sex life and reproduction.

53

Physiology & Medicine / Re: Why does nobody seem to care that covid can cause erectile dysfunction?

« on: 03/08/2022 22:47:43 »

A very strong bias, surely. If you turned up at the appointed time for a free vaccination, along with practically everyone else you know, went home and carried on your life without getting ill, would you really waste another moment telling the world that nothing interesting happened?

54

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: How are physical units defined?

« on: 03/08/2022 20:44:56 »

So it's about the interpretation of "round the coastline". The continuous smooth ovoid that just encloses Great Britain is almost certainly shorter than the high tide contour.

55

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: How are physical units defined?

« on: 03/08/2022 18:06:30 »

Typicaly the scale of man is 1 m (the "who").

That is where the French revolutionaries got it wrong. The Romans had sensible natural scales, that still persist in the last backward country - the USA.

Thumb - inch
Foot - foot (12 inches)
Arm - yard (36 inches thumb to nose)
Adult humans are mostly between 5 and 6 feet tall (1.5 - 1.8m)
Mile - milia passuum - 1000 paces (a Roman pace being together, left, right, together - like a proper dance script) - 1760 yards for the average soldier, who covered 4 - 6 miles per hour on a road (the Romans made the roads, and invented standard shoe sizes to keep the army marching efficiently on them)
Pound - 2 day's bread ration
Gallon - 10 pounds (2 days ration) of water

though the Yanks have screwed up the system by having a US pint equal a pound, and keeping 8 pints to the US gallon.

Defining  the meter as a fraction of the earth's polar circumference  through Paris was all very well politically, but not directly measurable. Navigators generally use the sexagesimal system  with a nautical mile equalling one minute of latitude (directly measurable) and being adequately close to 1000 fathoms (hand-to-hand span when pulling up your sounding weight).
   
 

56

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: How are physical units defined?

« on: 03/08/2022 17:49:47 »

counting their paces and then multiplied the number of paces by the length of their stride they would disagree on the length of the perimeter

Surely the disagreement would be of the order of (the uncertainly of stride length multiplied by the number of paces)  plus (one average stride multiplied by the uncertainty of counting) for each participant. You can take the root sum of squares for your best prior estimate of the limit of disagreement.

57

Just Chat! / Re: Ever had Stargazy pie or Spotted Dick or dined at Simpson's in the Strand?

« on: 03/08/2022 17:41:43 »

Spotted Dick was a staple of school lunches in my youth. Never fancied Stargazy Pie (too bony) but my chef son worked in Cornwall and has made and sold a few. Nothing on the menu at Simpsons that you can't get in a pub anywhere else.

My US colleagues used to suffer for a few days when visiting the UK. Jet lag coupled with spending a day immobile and dehydrated on a plane and in a boardroom, often leads to constipation. One very traditional pub lunch  I used to recommend was lamb stew - it's a novel but pleasant taste to the American palate, definitely reminds them of their supposed Gaelic roots, keeps out the cold, and if you're not used to it, cleans out the lower intestine very quickly and smoothly.

58

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: 03/08/2022 17:29:28 »

Why the  *** don't you want a real democracy?

Everybody wants it, and everybody thinks they have it, but for as long as you allow politicians to serve themselves, and the police and civil service to serve politicians rather than the electorate, nobody will ever get it.

59

Physiology & Medicine / Re: Why does nobody seem to care that covid can cause erectile dysfunction?

« on: 03/08/2022 17:24:31 »

The NHS website certainly lists ED as a persistent symptom. Interestingly, it is likely that Viagra can have a double benefit in improving vascular performance all over the body!

60

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: 02/08/2022 22:38:51 »

As I said, it's a unit of time that results from dividing one fundamental constant by another. But as the article says, its value depends on what you think Planck's constant is, and how you define the second. It's just a number.