2012 — 5 September: Wednesday
While (on most days) I like to think I'm rational enough1 to pay no great heed to coincidence (and it's now a long time since I read, and subsequently culled, Koestler's "The roots of coincidence") I still find them interesting. Yesterday evening's example, while watching the first three episodes of "Spartacus: Gods of the Arena" (in which — had there been any carpet on display — John Hannah would have left none of it unchewed) I heard the word lanista (master, or trainer, of gladiators) which is surely no longer in common use.
Where's the coincidence? Well, it was just an hour or so since I'd read the word in the "Fall of Rome" chapter of 'Doc' Smith's space opera Triplanetary. And I'm pretty sure I've not seen or heard it anywhere else since I last read that book many, many years ago.
I await...
... the arrival of Mr Toyota, who's going to drive my car away, service it, test it, and drive it back (I hope) in one piece. Time for a second cuppa and a first breakfast, methinks.
There's really nothing quite as evocative as the sound (and smell) of a steam-powered locomotive, is there? One has just gone chuffing past. [Pause] Mere minutes before young Mr Toyota has driven off in my Yaris. Fingers crossed.
Unseen hazards of flight
Atmospheric gamma rays? Wonder if Big Bro is aware?
Preliminary calculations, however, show that if an airline flight happened to be struck directly by the energetic electrons and gamma rays inside a storm, passengers and crew members could — without feeling anything — receive up to a lifetime's natural radiation dose in a fraction of a second. A bit of good news is that we do not need to warn pilots to stay away from thunderstorms, because they already do so; thunderstorms are very dangerous places to be, with or without gamma rays.
I've always wondered what, exactly, is meant by that phrase "preliminary calculations". A calculation is, after all, a calculation. Surely? And just imagine what it must be like flying through the storms in the sun's atmosphere. (Link.)
Mr Toyota's just (12:23) told me my little wonder wagon will shortly be on its way back home, having passed with flying colours. Of course, whether the clock is now set to the correct time remains a matter of conjecture. (I didn't set it wrong as a test — the instructions in the manual simply don't match the model of clock installed, and it has defeated some of the geekiest of my geeky chums.)
It's a paradox
Mentioning the clock reminded me of that lovely chap Herbert Dingle and his very long-running attempt to overthrow2 the theory of Relativity based on what he saw as an irrefutable logical flaw demonstrated by the clock (or twins) paradox. I actually read his 1972 book "Science at the crossroads" while a student, but hadn't given it another thought in many years. Today, while reading various items on this topic courtesy of this Interweb malarkey, I've just ended up at a fine set of quotations on a "Maths" page. Example and source gleefully given:
Like the ski resort full of girls hunting for husbands and husbands hunting for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem.
As the (pleasantly sunny) afternoon winds on, I've just been exchanging notes with an ex-ICL colleague from (gawd help us!) 35 years ago who shares my admiration for the delectable desktop machine created by George Cogar. And the Yaris is safely back in my garage. I'm mobile again :-)
Suddenly...
... it's somehow become 22:08. I think I'd better switch on the plasma screen and see what I can see.