On this day 35 years ago.

Voyager 1 was launched. About the size of a small car it carries some cameras and scientific instruments. It has been for some years the most distant man made object from the Earth (Currently it is more than eleven billion miles distant from the Sun and receding rapidly). It may already be the first man made object to leave the Solar System.

Before leaving it did the Grand Tour of the known planets and sent back pictures of Jupiter’s Red Spot, erupting volcanoes on Io, traces of water under the ice of Europa and methane rain on Titan, all unexpected discoveries.

It flies on, with sufficient fuel for instruments and communications until at least 2020, it is, of course, nuclear powered.

As easy as I, II, III

When watching an old TV show or film sometimes curiosity comes upon you to know what year the vehicle was made. Crystal clear if an easy to understand (c) 2003 flashes up on the screen. Not so simple if it’s in heathen Roman Numerals.

MMIII is crystal clear too. It gets rocky (Sly gave us I through V then he dropped the numbers with Rocky Balboa) when MCMLXXXVIII is displayed. Now you all can work out what MCMLXXXVIII is as it is prominently on display here. Trouble occurs when the Roman clock face year is shown for a split second then you’d have to be Superman (Christopher Reeve made IV of these) to decode the legion length letters (LLL is better than CL, don’t you think?). It gives me a hangover (II of these so far) when the year zips by and I’m left in the dark.

It brings it all back!

I was popping out to get a paper this morning, when I saw my near neighbour lining up her eldest daughter on the front porch in her new secondary school uniform, ready for a first day photo. Her daughter had a somewhat pained look on her face, probably not because she did not want to go to the new school, which a very good one, but because she realised that, in years to come, that photo will come back to haunt her!

I remember my parents doing much the same thing on my first day at grammar school. I looked ridiculous, because the first form uniform (or year 9 or whatever it is now) included a stupid school cap and SHORT TROUSERS, and by then I was already 5′ 7″ and built like the prop forward I rapidly became! I managed to put on as stupid an expression as my parents would let me get away with, but that photo is still the source of much family amusement.

“Oh, poor kid!!”, I thought 🙂

Hmm, what was I saying about mechanical advantage?

He, (Pistorious) was, plainly, furious at the defeat. In a post-race interview he indicated that Oliveira, who prevailed in a time of 21.45 seconds, had the advantage of having longer prosthetic legs. Indeed, he held profound reservations about some of his fellow competitors, pointing out that Oliveira and American Blake Leeper had lengthened their prostheses in pursuit of an advantage.

“We’re not racing a fair race here,” he said immediately after the race. “The regulations say that you can make yourself unbelievably high.”

Linky thing.

Please note that, unlike some of the usual dippy comments on the article, I have nothing to say about the man, whom I admire as much as any of the other athletes taking part in the games, especially the marathon and distance runners – and the blind five-a-siders.

Still life is a bowl of cherries

Usually I don’t enter the photo competitions. Simply because it is dangerous to cut about with a camera in my neck of the woods for a variety of reasons. Once a man goes beyond a certain age he is looked on as suspect when he starts taking snaps outdoors. Vigilante bands with pitchforks appear out of nowhere. Another basis for not photographing is the danger of catching a crime being committed in the background of your shot. This can annoy the criminal no end. They have been known on occasion to drop the plasma and attack the amateur paparazzi because a set of lens have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. As I treasure my skin I tend not to photograph in the neighbourhood.

This still life has still got some life in it.

Continue reading “Still life is a bowl of cherries”

Drought becomes personalised.

Although not as spectacular as the drought in the mid west, we too have been having it pretty dry.  It has now got to 40 days and nights without a drop falling from the sky.  Needless to say with our own well and a garden I have been watering every day, all day to keep the beds going, bugger the lawns!  Unfortunately we are on fluvioglacial outflow overlying boulder clay.  To the uninitiated that is one very, very thirsty soil that dries out all too quickly.  Good for bulbs and that’s about it without constant adding of humus and water.

Well then!  Yesterday being the beginning of our Bank Holiday (and sod all happening until Tuesday) what happens, yes, the well pump becomes incandescent and stops dead.  American houses do not have holding tanks.  No well pumping, no water, just like that, not one bleeding drop.  As luck would happen a friend was visiting, he is the water man of the Nooksack tribe.  So he and spousal unit set out to investigate.  The well is so old and solidly built they could not get it apart.  Nothing to be done until Tuesday then!  Mass planning how to save the greenhouse, veg garden and potted plants, forget washing and showers!  Serious panic but only on behalf of plants!  Everyone else can drink wine!

Continue reading “Drought becomes personalised.”

Whackos of the Week.

An early start this week.  A plural award because no civil servant – yes, it’s the civil service, again…is anyone surprised?…is named in this latest example of snivelling bureaucratic lunacy.  A man, a University Professor, who can trace his British ancestry back to the 14th century faces deportation because he was born in India – to British parents when India was still part of the Empire.

Meanwhile, a bunch of raghead terrorists are to take the gubmint to court, whining about how their human right to blow people up in the name of their lunatic branch of organised superstition is being suppressed.

Good, innit?

Link.