2012 — 11 October: Thursday

Yesterday1 was a lot nicer than this morning, so far. It's raining as I type, ...

Weather

... and I think that's a perfect reason to stay in and hone my crockpottery skills. So that's my evening meal sorted. Now, what about breakfast? [Pause] Well, the potting of the crock would have gone much more smoothly had I not had to nip out to grab a couple of missing vital ingredients. Hence breakfast is only now (11:39) on the 'table'.

Now this I did not...

... know. Made me smile, though. Source and snippet:

The field of scientometrics — the science of measuring and analyzing science — took off in 1947 when mathematician Derek J. de Solla Price was asked to store a complete set of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society temporarily in his house. He stacked them in order and he noticed that the height of the stacks2 fit an exponential curve. Price started to analyze all sorts of other kinds of scientific data and concluded in 1960 that scientific knowledge had been growing steadily at a rate of 4.7 percent annually since the 17th century. The upshot was that scientific data was doubling every 15 years.

Ronald Bailey in Reason.com


If we're so smart, how come we can still only 'scientifically' account for less than 5% of the matter in the Universe? Or is that little factoid also now outdated? Not that I tend to rely on the New York Times for my science coverage. (Reasons.)

Mr Postie was only somewhat bedraggled a couple of hours ago when he cheerily dropped off that cheaper-by-one-penny DVD boxed set...

DVD

... but would by now be very much wetter. It's chucking it down rather more steadily than I approve of. Meanwhile, the crockpot is making known its presence. Yum.

Well, I'm delighted to see that the Figg Tea Shoppe ignores the prevailing monsoonic conditions and remains open for business. Meanwhile, the crockpot won't be denied for very much longer. Let's see if I've lost my culinary magic touch... I did, after all, manage to forget to add a splash of wine. Wonder if sherry works as a late addition. Or port — any port in a storm, right? :-)

Delicious. I've still got it.

  

Footnotes

1  Weatherwise.
2  I assume he discounted increased advertising content.