As I write this, Joe Root is firmly entrenched at Seddon Park and is moving steadily on towards another double-hundred. I was there on Saturday, and can report that the pitch is as flat as an optical bench, and even I fancy my chances of getting three figures against any bowling attack on this surface. […]
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I was reading in a physics magazine earlier in the week about the nature of neutrinos. These are extremely numerous elementary particles, but only interact very weakly with anything. Around a million billion pass through you each second, almost all originating from our sun, but few of them are likely to interact with you enroute. […]
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Apparently, some people enjoy washing their cars. Each to his or her own, I suppose. I mean, some people like duck shooting, some people follow Coronation Street, and some people’s idea of a good day out is to sit on a grass bank at Seddon Park and watch cricket all day. (Guess which one I’ll […]
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Well, that was a most unsatisfying end to a novel. After building up to an exciting conclusion, Nemo decides he’s had enough of wreaking revenge on his enemies* and plunges The Nautilus into the Moskenstraumen (Maelstrom) whirlpool off the Lofoten Islands, Norway, where, presumably, there is no return. (Or is there? I note there’s a […]
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A couple of days ago I attended (and spoke at) the University of Waikato’s “LearnFest” event. There were lots of talks and sessions on very diverse aspects of teaching, mostly at tertiary level. One was by Myra Williamson from Te Piringa Faculty of Law here at Waikato, on Contract Cheating at Tertiary Institutions. Now, I […]
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I’ve been reading Jules Verne’s novel “Twenty thousand leagues under the sea”, considered as one of the very earliest science fiction stories. In brief, Monsieur Aronnax, and a couple of sidekicks, are taken prisoner by Captain Nemo and his mysterious crew and treated to an underwater voyage around the world on the truly expansive submarine, […]
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Just in case you don’t have a seven-year old boy in your house (in which case this will be obvious) a well-known brand of breakfast cereal here in NZ is currently coming with All-Blacks stats cards. Perfect for finding out your favourite rugby player’s height, number of caps, and how much they can eat for […]
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In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been busy preparing for our summer paper on Science Communication. Looking for something amusing about ‘risk’ in science, I came across this neat xkcd.com cartoon about why so many people come knocking on my door (or phoning me, or emailing me) desperately wanting me to spend hundreds of […]
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This morning we woke up to discover a power cut. This meant: No electric kettle. We do have a gas stove, however, which we could light with the help of matches (the automatic ignition relies on mains power.) So we did eventually get some hot drinks. No toaster. No microwave. No hot toast, no porridge. […]
Continue readingFollowing-on from my suspicions as to the accuracy of my car’s reporting of my travel statistics, here’s another mystery. The length of my journey from home to work, as recorded by my odometer this morning, was 24.7 km. The length as recorded by Google Maps is 25.2 km. So, my odometer underreads. Or it did […]
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