What you googled for : Kinda spooky ;-)

Many blogreaders arrive at this blog via search engines, and they sometimes have the durned spookiest questions ;-) Here are three spooky examples :-

1) "How many people work at the NSA ?"

Well if it is like most government agencies, and/or large corporations, I'd guess the answer is "less than half of them ;-) But here's a photo of the NSA parking lot, OK?

2) "Who is the head of the UK's MI5 ?"
Well, Eliza ( Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller to you) is retiring (she's 58) and will soon be succeeded by Jonathan Evans (49, her deputy and the UK's head Al Quaida chaser).

3) "Who are the most primitive people in the world ?" You mean excluding Dubya? Admittedly, I'm not sure about this, but I think one of them is in this photo ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 31st March 2007 at 06:31 CET permalink Comments Email

Final turn :-(

A glider pilot died last weekend, spinning it in on the turn from base leg to final. My condolences go to the family of the pilot (whom I did not know). Obviously I can't talk about that accident in particular, since I was not there to witness the circumstances, and we should wait for the results of the official investigation. Nevertheless, having been a flying instructor for over ¼ century, I would like to discuss this type of 'final turn' accident in general, hoping to make it clear to my lay readers what makes them so deadly. Prospective pilots please pay attention ...

It is a widespread misconception that all aircraft land into the wind. Well, blimps, parachutes and hang-gliders generally do. Balloons land - by definition - going downwind. Fixed-wing aircraft (especially taildraggers) used to land into the wind up to WW2, but nowadays they land on surfaced runways which (mostly) just face into the prevailing wind. Most runway landings will thus have a cross-wind component.

Most airfields have a (proscribed) rectangular 'traffic pattern', the downwind leg being actually parallel to the runway, NOT to the wind. Then you turn 90° to the runway on the base leg, and finally you turn 90° from base to finals. The cross-wind component on finals to the runway is the head-wind (or tail-wind) component on the base leg, as the little arrows near the far end of the runway in my sketch show you.

Now lets consider what happens when you've got a tailwind on the base leg. It is your airspeed (speed relative to the air) which keeps you flying. So to maintain the same airspeed your ground speed will increase (by the tail-wind speed). You notice the runway is approaching (abeam) faster than expected and instinctively may try to tighten your turn by banking the plane over some more.

Not a good idea! Your stalling speed in the curve increases sharply as a function of bank angle, as shown in the table here. If you try to turn on the wingtip (75° instead of your usual 35°) your stall speed will nigh on double. Now the wing on the inside of the curve is going slower than the outside wing and so stalls first. That means it loses its lift while the outside wing is still lifting. This can throw the plane onto its back or at least into a spin. This is not a good thing as you are already at a low altitude (e.g. maybe only 100 -200 feet in the glider mentioned above). So you have no time to jettison the canopy, get out, and pull your parachute :-(

Because the inside wing is no longer flying, you can't use the ailerons to pick it up again. The correct - but counterintuitive -action is to stuff the nose down. This will a) help you pick up speed, and b) offload the wing. At the same time you apply full opposite rudder to turn the plane giving the lower wing more airspeed. However in a tight final turn close to the ground you may not have enough altitude to recover from the spin. Your instinctive reaction will be to pull back in the stick to 'lift' yourself away from the ground, but this only aggravates the situation and deepens the stall :-( In a powered plane you should apply power and go around again, using a wider downwind leg. In a glider you won't have this option, so aim to put it down outside the runway avoiding that fatefully tight final turn.

Now let's look at the case of a headwind on the base leg. At first sight this might appear easier, you won't have to make the tight turn on the wingtip described above. The headwind means that for the same airspeed your groundspeed is slower, so you are making less headway and your angle of sink is steeper. You think (in a glider) that you are not going to make it to the runway. Your instintive reaction is to try to 'stretch' it and maybe even fly at the minimal sink-rate.

I refer you now to the parametric speed diagram on the right. The vertical axis shows Lift, the horizontal axis shows Drag. The Lift/Drag characteristic of your wing is shown by the C-shaped curve to the right of the origin, which has (air)speed as a parameter. As you move up the curve from the horizontal axis, the speed parameter is decreasing. The dashed line tangential to the C-curve meets the curve at the optimal speed for best lift/drag ratio. This is the speed at which you can glide furthest. The C-curve tops out at a lower speed, the speed for minimal sink-rate. The C-curve then turns downward again (less lift, more drag) until the wing stalls, losing all lift. So your instinctive (and wrong) reaction to fly at minimal sink rate has slowed you down. Now the critical bank angle is even closer when you come to make the turn onto final approach, I refer you to the stall-speed %age increase table I showed you higher up the page.

There is another insidious effect too :-( As you descend nearer to the ground, the head wind slackens off as friction between the air and the ground slows the air masses. So you need to put the nose down more to maintain airspeed. Now a decreasing headwind is like an increasing tailwind, whose effects I already described. The counter-intuitive response should be to cut the corner to avoid that fatal tight turn. If necessary, land the glider short of the runway, in its approach zone.

Now what about a gusty day? Well, you now have the worst of both worlds. You have to keep your speed up so that if the headwind gusts suddenly stop or veer to a tail gust, then you still have enough airspeed to keep flying. This means that your sinkrate is higher than the tangential line in the C-diagram. So you may be tempted to 'stretch' the glide and slow down which makes you more likely to stall in that turn onto finals :-( The day that accident happened in Oerlinghausen was a gusty day. The wind was gusting up to 60 km/h according to the airfield's weather reports. Bummer.

A question to my non-pilot readers : was that explanation understandable?

To end on a more positive note, let me show you a flight on a pre-WW2 open glider, the SG38 trainer. It is a really visceral experience to fly one of these things, you are sitting out in the breeze, no flaps, no airbrakes, glide-ratio barely 1:10, slow, perhaps even no instruments, just you and the sky :-) Perhaps the nearest to Harry Potter's broomstick (without the Quidditch) that you can get, and every bit as magic :-)

Update : Several of you pilot readers have asked for further reading to improve your flying. I can still recommend Alan Bramson's Be a better pilot, my (signed) first edition has the ISBN 0-668-04901-4. Although first published (Arco Publishing, New York) in 1980, his tips are just as valid now as they were then. It's (only) for powered planes though, there are no chapters specific to gliders. Alan used to be the chairman of the panel of examiners in the UK back then, and so knew well what he was writing about. Thanks here to my old friend Sarah Aylward, who used to fly a Grumman AA5 Tiger out of Elstree (N.London, UK) then , who bought me that book. Much appreciated :-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 29th March 2007 at 06:29 CET permalink Comments Email

The Mousetrap

Agatha Christie would have been tickled pink :-)

She is the writer of the world's longest running play (1952 -> still going) The Mousetrap. We saw it in St. Martins Theatre in the West End of London I think it was a couple of decades ago at least :-)

And now a local vermin exterminator company called Biotec Klute in the nearby village of Borchen have built what may be the world's biggest mousetrap as a show item for trade fairs. It measures 4.25 meters by 2.10 meters; they hope to get it in the Guinness Book of world records, once approved by their inspectors.

Most of you will know the rapid snap of a regular mousetrap; some may know the thwack of a larger rattrap. But the sound of this thing, built large enough to catch corrupt politicians, bribe-offering company managers, whoring company directors and others of that ilk is kinda scary. If it goes off within 25 meters of you whilst your back is turned, you'd probably die of a heart attack even whilst well outside the trap. 'Tis certainly not as long-running as the theatre play! I surmise the Guinness judges will agree it is the largest mousetrap in the world; if not, then heads may roll ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 27th March 2007 at 06:27 CET permalink Comments Email

Batman

Young Blogreader Penny has just taken her first flight and wants to know what orders "that man on the ground with the table tennis bats" is giving.

Ladies, the word "Chocks", as used here, means triangular wooden pieces of wood or metal used to hold the wheels steady in the parking position, not something you eat whilst watching TV or whatever ;-) They are needed because any wind will try to move the plane around even when parked. Hurricanes & hefty storms have been known to flip aeroplanes over although they are tied down (I just thought I'd reassure you ;-) ).

Someone else came here searching for the "Batman's orchester layout"; I really do wonder sometimes about the peculiarities of search engines. The usual seating is :-

Objoke : What is the ideal attitude for a U-boat captain's batman? Subservient.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 25th March 2007 at 06:25 CET permalink Comments Email

Shaggy Blog Stories

During the run-up to Red Nose Day, THE action-day for the UK charity Comic Relief, the english blogger Mike Atkinson and his team of co-editors put out a call for contributory tales to be published as a print-on-demand book. Over 300 contributions quickly rolled in - I submitted this one - but Mike only had room for 100 and so mine and 199 others were not accepted. Whatever. Mike has written about the exciting and exhausting week's work for his team on his blog Troubled Diva, so you can follow the details there. Looking at the list of UK bloggers who appear in the book, we can expect to read some great shaggy blog stories :-) Although, since Girl with a one track mind is included, I expect hers will be a Blogged Shag story ;-)

My misapprehension was that you had to write about a personal anecdote, not just make something up. So next time, if there is a next time, I shall make up something like the shaggy dog story reproduced below. In the meantime, you can go over to the print-on-demand company LuLu and order the book online. Since it does not seem to have an ISBN number, I'm assuming you can't get it through normal bookshops :-(

Now we bloggers - especially those of us with the foolhardinesscourage to discard the cloak of anonymity - live in glass houses; everyone can see and judge what we write. After perusing some of the book's top 100 UK blogs I see that my own just does not contain enough humour :-( Nor have I complied with my own mission statement (see right sidebar) this month; I need to improve this blog on both counts. So here goes:-

Once upon a time - when Britain had an Empire ( or at least a larger Commonwealth) - the young Queen Elizabeth the Second (or first if you happen to be a Scot) did a tour of the Commonwealth and visited several places in Africa, including Southern Rhodesia as it was then called. She visited several kraals and the local villagers carved a specially magnificent wooden chair for her to sit on, upstaging even the local chief's throne. After the ceremonial dancing and prancing was done, HM remarked what a comfortable chair that had been and that if she ever came back she would like to sit on it again. And so it came about that the proud natives stored the comfortable chair away in the chief's hut in the vague hope that Her Majesty would one day return.

And indeed, fifty years later, to celebrate a half-century of queening about, Her Majesty DID revisit many countries and even got an invitation to visit once again the aforementioned kraal, even though that was now in an independant country (I think it's called Zimbabwe now). The new chief, grandson of the one she had first met, even pulled out her original chair - all dry and dusty - had it carefully dusted down and let her sit there for the traditional war-dancing demonstration. Unfortunately, it seems that during the intervening five decades the infamous african termites had gotten into the seat and weakened it considerably. As a result the chair collaped in a cloud of dry dust, dumping Her Majesty unceremoniously onto the ground. How embarrassing :-(

The moral of this tale? People who live in grass houses shouldn't stow thrones ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 23rd March 2007 at 06:23 CET permalink Comments Email

We shall overcome :-)

Joan Baez gave a concert just 50 miles down the road from here, but it was like travelling 40 years back through time :-) Magnificent! Her voice has aged well over the years, even though it is not the clear bell of her youth.

She sang some newer numbers from her recent album (Ring out the Bells), but it is the old songs with the political lyrics that her public loves most. Bring the Boys home is just as relevant to Bush's war as it was back then. My favourite song of hers is I dreamt I saw Joe Hill last night. And the sound of 2½ thousand people joining in We shall overcome! would bring a lump to throat of even the least pacifist amongst you. That may have been the last time I get to hear Joan Baez live, so thankyou Joan, it was splendid and moving. We SHALL overcome!

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 22nd March 2007 at 06:22 CET permalink Comments Email

Senile Dementia on the increase :-(

Plenty of snide remarks about the onset of senile dementia, after monday's blog about pensions ;-) However that is another subject not taken seriously until too late :-( Dementia is one of the main causes of disability in later life.

Just taking Scotland (UK) as an example, the BBC (Scotland) reports that the number of dementia sufferers is set to double within a ¼ century : "Dementia costs Scotland £1.4bn and the number of people suffering from the condition will almost double in the next 25 years, experts have warned. A report by the Alzheimer's Society says that the number of Scots with dementia will rise from 58,000 to 102,000 by 2031." For the UK as a whole it is reported that more than 1.7 million people in the UK will have dementia by 2051, mainly because of an ageing population. High cholesterol and blood pressure, and lack of exercise are also thought to increase the risk. One in 20 people over 65 and one in five people over 80 has a form of dementia. Around two thirds of those affected have Alzheimer's disease. There is no cure yet for dementia, and those with the condition need increasing care as the disease progresses.
Witness reports by those affected are depressing about the slow(?) downhill slope :-(

And yet (assisted) suicide is presently illegal in most western nations (except, e.g. , Switzerland) , a fact which only serves to make it slightly more difficult for suicidal people to carry out their wish. Kuro5hin has a good OpEd, asking the question "Is death a human right?". Certainly here (Germany) doctors often ignore patients' wishes such as "Do not resuscitate" and/or "Disconnect the life support if I am terminally ill !".

So what can we do to prevent or delay the onset of dementia?

It is usual for us old fogies to become increasingly forgetful and have some difficulty concentrating. This is not Alzheimers', it is just the brain's blood vessels clogging up, we're told. So it's a course of the Ginko pills (dried frog pills being unavailable outside pTerry's Discworld), drinking cranberry juice, and long jogs in the fresh air for us :-) Daily brainjogging by playing Memory, Sudoku and Crossword puzzles is amusing and alledgedly helpful too, although I prefer actively blogging, programming, maths etc.

And eating chocolate and drinking cocoa is highly recommended :-) That sounds like a great preventative therapy; I'll go for it; we'd be mad if we didn't :-) How about you?

So, teacher, my essay assignment's done. Can I have my marbles back now, please?

PS: Recommended reading on decreasing mental abilities : Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 21st March 2007 at 06:21 CET permalink Comments Email

Plan your pension(s) now!

Having just become an Old Age Pensioner (OAP) - 2 years earlier than usual - let me pass on some pension tips to those still in the working phase of their lives. Tips I would have done better to follow myself but didn't understand at the time how small the goverment pension would be.

Here in Germany the average monthly state pensions for those aged 60-64 are :- men €989 and women €594 and for those aged 65-69 : men €973, women €616^*. The last state pension raise was a mere 3%, some 13 years ago (for comparison, prices have gone up by 10% since 2001 :-( ). Currently, your individual state pension depends on what you paid in during the working phase of your life. If you always paid in the maximum rate (depending on your salary) then you could get double the numbers quoted above. However, the government is gradually throttling back the pensions to a subsistence level ( = social security) and has recently increased the pensionable age to 67, thus saving themselves 2 years worth of pension payments :-( You will need more!

The next option some people have is a company pension, usually financed to 50% by deferred salary. Here in Germany the law has made these fairly secure since the payments went into insurance schemes which pay out a company pension or a (then tax-free) lump sum which one can convert into an annuity. In the UK this went severely wrong, since companies could plow these pension funds back into the company; when these firms went bankrupt many thousands of people lost their company pensions without compensation (i.e. there was no bankruptcy insurance). In fact the UK government made at least half a dozen major gaffes in their race to privatise pension schemes :-( It is probably better to put your faith in bricks and mortar by buying your own house, so that you don't have to pay rent as an OAP.

In the USA too, a growing number of employers are ceasing to provide traditional pensions, under which they guarantee employees a fixed income upon retirement. Instead, employers are increasingly offering 401(k)-style plans, to which they make fixed contributions during an employee's career. This gives employees more control - and more of the risk. Other than the danger that workers will bungle their investments (or cash them out and spend them ahead of time), the reality is that Americans are going to have to save more if they hope to retire at a decent standard of living. Or, for that matter, to retire at all. The death knell for the traditional company pension has been tolling for some time now. Companies in ailing industries like steel, airlines and auto parts have thrown themselves thankfully into Chapter 11 (bankruptcy) and turned over their ruined pension plans to the federal government:-(

I also recommend that you start saving NOW for a private annuity pension. In order to get an additional private annuity of €500 per month from 65 on, you will need to save €77 from age 20, or €123 from age 30, or €216 from age 40 or €441 at 50. Alternatively, if you can put a €100,000 lump sum (from an inheritance,say) into an annuity at 65, you can expect €520 to €600 per month, depending on the scheme (expires at death or 85) you choose. Start saving now, 'cos you'll need it later!

Just because you can't see the problem right now, doesn't mean it is not there or will just go away. Don't go through life like Helen Keller in a room full of Rubic’s Cubes!

^* : For comparison, garbage-men and ambulance-persons make about €2100 before deductions.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 19th March 2007 at 06:19 CET permalink Comments Email

Out of the blue . . .

. . . come mails and feedback from people commenting for the first time on this blog, and interesting they always are too. Google serves to find like-minded people :-)

Student Lauren Lester wrote :- "There was a poem up in my room at a permanent hall seminary of Oxford University where I stayed for 3 weeks. It was typed up on a piece of paper as if the previous visitor had left it there. No author's name appeared on the sheet of paper. I loved it and have been looking for it ever since. Now I found the poem (by Leo Marks) on your blog site :-)" It turns out that the version I quote differs slightly from the version in the movie, she tells me, and wants to know which is correct? I don't know. You see, Leo Marks was a WW2 cryptographer and at the age of just 22, was in charge of all the British SOE agents codes and ciphers. And since I have -ahem- 'some interest' in codebreaking, this is how I happened upon his poetry.

Dog-loving blogreader Shanny sent me a couple of photos from southern California, annotated as follows :- "DON'T EVER MESS WITH A PORCUPINE! A Pitbull decided he would battle a Porcupine in back of his house in Southern California. But being both brave and stupid, he ultimately learned the hard way that he can't always win, no matter how tough you are. The vet removed 1,347 quills and the pit-bull survived!"

Biker and Deadhead John wins the pint of Guinness for giving my 1971 oldtimer bike a name. It is Dark Star, from which I deduce that John is also a fan of The Grateful Dead; Jerry Garcia RIP. Somewhere I have a VHS tape of the SF movie too, John :-) Runner-up was Mary-Anne, 'cos I liked her great pun, but decided it was too long for a bike-name The dark side of the fours :-) Meanwhile my friends Stefan and Sabine made me the sixties-style stickers, so the bike is now labelled like this, this and this.

Ford CAD/CAE SW development engineer Igor Ivanitskiy picked up on one of my PI posts and wrote : "I was recently pleased to find your method to Square the circle. Interesting, but I did also found a way to solve such problem with compass and ruler when I was a 17 year old student in Russia in 1986. . . . I calculated the precision for my method and it was giving me 3.1426... which is quite close for a method which requires only 4 operations with compass and 3 lines... " I've written back to Igor and asked him to send me a draft of his method.

Postgrad student Eddie Chee works on the SingHealth(Telecare) project in Singapore and is using one of the AI textbooks I wrote a long while ago and asked if I had plans to update with a third edition. Sadly not, Eddie, as I'm retired now; but at least I could give him some insights from similar AI work we did back then. And of course the AI primer textbook (Grundlagen von Expertensystemen) contains instructional sourcecode (in PROLOG) which I put in the public domain, so he can use that free :-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 17th March 2007 at 06:17 CET permalink Comments Email

A poem about PI-day in America

O ur american friends write the date in format MM-DD-YY and so today (3-14) is called PI-day there. And it is for them that I blog a little poem today, to be read aloud at exactly 33½ seconds to two today (i.e at 3-14 1:59:26.5 ;-)

Now I blog
a rhyme excelling
in circle round
and magic spelling.
Celestial sprites elucidate
for my own telling
can't relate...

Here's an irrational hint : Count the number of letters in each word :-)
My German readers can go read one of my short stories line by line instead.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory at 3-14 1:59:26.5 CET permalink Comments Email

Emulating Aristarchus as schoolboys

As instructed we split into teams of four, two of us (A and B) lying on our backs and supporting the wooden triangle as shown. Boy A, looking through the smoked glass, lined up his side of the triangle with the (middle of the) sun. Boy D helping him with the fine adjustment. Boy B looked at the quarter-moon. Jeb had chosen this day very carefully for this exercise, there being no clouds, and both the sun and the (exactly-quarter) moon being visible in the sky. Boy B looked at the quarter-moon over the lowest point of the triangle. It was not QUITE at a right angle to the sun. Boy C was to move a pencil along top of the wooden triangle until boy B told him it now intersected the (terminator shadow line on the) moon, then boy C marked the triangle accordingly and the team wrote down their measurement of the angle. Each team did this in turn and we averaged the results (to minimise errors).

Meanwhile, Jeb told us about Aristarchus (310 BC - c. 230 BC), a Greek astronomer and geometrician. He was the first person to propose that the sun - not the Earth - was at the centre of the solar system. Aristarchus argued that the Sun, Moon, and Earth form a near right triangle on the day of quarter moon. His estimate of the angle was 87° and so he concluded that the Sun was 20 times farther away than the Moon. Our measurements averaged to 89° 30 mins +/- 45 mins. This was also wrong, it should be 89° 50 ", putting the sun about 390 times farther away than the moon. Aristarchus also explained that the Moon and Sun have very similar apparent angular sizes (some eclipses are minimally annular) and therefore their sizes are proportional to their distances from Earth, i.e the sun is 390 times bigger than the moon.
FWIW, Aristarchus's geometrical solution is one of the surviving Greek maths treatises.

I used to love these kind of maths lessons. But I got into trouble once in the summer holidays due to a passion for geometry :-) On a calm day at the seaside I made a cylindrical sandcastle exactly 1 foot high, then paddled out to sea on an inflatable raft, thinking to go out until I (with my eye also 1 foot above sea level) could no longer see the sandcastle. Then I would be able to measure the curvature of the Earth and thus deduce its size. It turned out later that the formula for calculating the distance D of the horizon is D²=4*h/3, with D in nautical miles and height h in feet. So I would have paddled out about 2 miles! Luckily Dad saw me paddling off into the distance and had the coastguard come and fetch me in. I shall draw a veil over the child-beating ;-)

While I'm reminiscing, this is a good place to quote the poignant poem "Sometimes" by Thomas S. Jones Jr. (1882-1932) with its intro- and retro-spective deep insight :

Across the fields of yesterday 
He sometimes comes to me, 
A little lad just back from play -- 
The lad I used to be. 

And yet he smiles so wistfully 
Once he has crept within, 
I wonder if he hopes to see 
The man I might have been.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 13th March 2007 at 06:13 CET permalink Comments Email

Stu's Blogwalk : Not quite a random walk :)

Over in the real world, outside the electric realm of the blogosphere, Alan Sloman is hiking the length of Britain, from Land's End to John-o-Groats, and visiting some interesting places (which are mostly pubs it seems) as he goes.

I think the longest day's hike I managed last year was a mere 9 miles, so I'm following Alan's blog with respect as something I'll never do. Thankyou Alan, for letting us share your adventure.

Here in the blogosphere I've decided to do a little - almost random - walk of my own. The first step will to be choose a blog I like from my blogroll, and recommend you go read it too. The next step will be to choose a blog I like from their blogroll, and recommend it to you. Repeat that step recursively. I wonder where we'll visit?

I'll log the links regularly in the right sidebar under the heading Stu's Blogwalk so you can follow it there if you wish. It turns out that one has to be careful in the choice of targets and their blogrolls. For example, Alan's blogroll links ONLY to other hikers and the blogroll over at Cockpit conversations links ONLY to other pilots, so there is the danger of landing in a thematic dead end. So the non-random part of this blogwalk will be that I try to link to people with a wide variety of interests (which in turn makes them more interesting :-) Why don't you add a Blogwalk yourselves?

Back in May of last year I showed you a proof that a random (drunkard's) walk of N steps staggers only a distance of sqrt(N) steps from the origin, and thus it may take a while to reach blogs outside my usual range of interests, even ones in bad taste :-(

< Maths lesson on >
Suppose we draw an arbitrary line (e.g. the limit of good taste) some distance from the origin of a random walk. (How many times) will the random walk cross the line? Surprisingly, for any random walk in one dimension, every point in the domain will be crossed an infinite number of times almost surely. Corollary : if you are a gambler with a finite amount of money playing a fair game against a bank with an infinite amount of money, you will surely lose! In two dimensions, any line will also be crossed an infinite number of times. Our random walk here is in 2 dimensions (interestingness of the target blog, length of its blogroll) and so our random walk will be a discrete fractal, with fractal dimensions four thirds, and we are approximating Brownian motion.
< Maths lesson off >

My not-quite-random walk through the blogosphere will also be self-avoiding¹ and loop-erased². I've chosen to start with Winston's blog and will append a new link every time I blog, the next one being from HIS blogroll. Etc, etc, Stu's Random Blogwalk.

¹ : see Madras and Slade (1996), The Self-Avoiding Walk, Birkhäuser Boston. ISBN 0-8176-3891-1
² : see Gregory Lawler (1996), Intersection of random walks, Birkhäuser Boston. ISBN 0-8176-3892-X

PS: The sketch above is a hommage to the early Joan Miro´, eg, the 1934 painting 'Swallow/Love', [as urban legend has it] a detail of which served as inspiration for the post-WW2 German flag :-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 11th March 2007 at 06:11 CET permalink Comments Email

Political hot air : CO₂ Kneejerk Nonsense

Ever since the UN report on global warming came out various politicians and media molls have kneejerked their favourite project as the ultimate solution, and in this process have emitted more carbon-dioxide than a two-ton SUV.

Suggestions (in Germany) have ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous :-

• Tax kerosine - jet fuel - to make flying less attractive (Green Party idea).
• Airline passengers to pay a climate solidarity tax to plant trees in the 3^rd world (SPD). Meanwhile politicians and civil servants commute by air by the thousands between Bonn and Berlin. What was that about the beam in your own eye?
• Ban vehicles with combustion engines completely (CSU). Presumably they don't understand that the electricity for electric cars' batteries comes from (fossil fuel) power stations and thus the CO₂ emissions have just been moved elsewhere.
• Ban light bulbs (as Australia proposes). But leave the air-conditioning on 100%?
• Reduce the urban speed limit from 50 km/h to 30 km/h (Greens). Presumably they don't understand that drivers would then change down from 5th to 3rd gear, polluting urban areas more and for longer :-(
• Ban air travel completely (Greenpeace). And go transatlantic by bicycle?

THEN you can think about putting a solar-cell roof on your house and/or buying a share in your local wind-turbine farm, and swapping your chelsea tractor (=SUV) for a smaller, lighter car which consumes under 6 ltr/100kms and not over 20 ltr/100kms!

In the long term, the best way to reduce pollution is to have less (--> zero?) children; mankind is the real cause of pollution and thus the climate change. Getting the world population back down to below 1900 levels would solve our problems better. But can you imagine how the One True Church™ would respond to this suggestion? Unlikely :(

Meanwhile the EU is about to define a new set of pollution/emission rules. The BBC reports :- "In Brussels, EU leaders are expected to commit to cutting carbon emissions by 20% by 2020 compared to 1990 levels. It is thought EU leaders may agree to a deeper cut of 30% in emissions by 2020 if other developed and emerging nations, notably the US, India and China, join in." (emphasis mine ;-) ).

PS : The Boss of the EU drives a 5-liter V-10 Tuareg SUV. 'Nuff said?

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 9th March 2007 at 06:09 CET permalink Comments Email

Rockers' Replies

Thanks all of you who commented so promptly on my 'new' oldtimer, about which I wrote in monday's post. Bikers have sent me photos of their machines from chopper via oldtimer-racer to modern triple and from places as close as the neighbouring state here in Germany to as far away as the 59 Club of Australia.

Shadow, writing from Oz, tells us " Our 500/4 won the Victorian Classic title on the weekend, flying the flag for the 59 Club". Showing that we oldies are not slowies ;-)

Four Dinners (UK) wrote "I'm thinking of getting an old scooter with lots of chrome mirrors and things.", which would make him a Mod rather than a Rocker in my eyes :)

Robert (Switzerland) wrote "Just had a look at your latest toy, the CB750. It looks great, well maintained." and complains about our huge German number plates "... Get rid of that notorious German " Küchenblech" at the rear of your machine!"

Doug Alder (Canada) expects to see me punching through the sound barrier soon ;-)
He adds "One of my first bikes was a 1978 CB650/4 but I liked my 1981 Seca XJ750R much better" :-)

Haggiswurst suggests the name "Iron Horse"; I think I'd prefer an Iron Bru tho' ;-)

Liz has a punny name suggestion for the bike : "Thor (the thunderous noise and what you will be after a long bike ride :-) )". She must have tried the 'seat' already :(

Mike Golby (South Africa) writes that he once had "a 1976 Honda CB500 with 4-into-1 pipes and Clubmans . . . that brings back many fond memories. . . . The engine exuded a throaty roar, amply amplified by that megapipe, that made me a hero in my own eyes. Keep riding, Stu, I'm sure I saw a study linking motorcycles to longevity in the Health section of Google's News Page :)".

And several wrote from Germany. Enviously, Schorsch says he wants to retire too :)
Werner Sauerwein must be doing ever longer trips on his new crimson Pan European, why else would he have equipped it with a Garmin global navigation system ;-) ?
Paul Gockel instructs me on the correct way of riding such a valuable oldtimer :-)
Thomas has also bought a 2^nd bike, another Triumph Triple, mother and daughter :)
Karsten has a Mean Streak, saying HE is not old enough yet for a Hardly Ableson ;-)
Chili suggests the name 'Hot Granny' ; you spending too much time looking in the mirror, lass? Jim Roberts (US) at Noded suggests the name 'Black Knight', whereas Four Dinners (UK) suggests "Black Beauty? A bit obvious I know but she is stunning! Me jealous? Never!" :) Some suggested names have already been used by manufacturers, viz. Black Shadow and Black Knight were however Vincent models.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 7th March 2007 at 06:07 CET permalink Comments Email

A couple of Oldtimers :-)

Official : I'm an OAP now :-) Well, since March 1st actually, so I'll be moaning about the state (of) pensions in a future post :) But for now I just want to show you my 'new' old acquisition. In a fit of pique at getting old I bought myself an oldtimer. It's a 1971 Honda CB750 Four, done up as a Cafe´ Racer in the UK style of the 60s/70s, black and chrome and LOUD. Almost completed now, it still needs the black and white tank decal stickers from the 1960s. Ace Cafe´ on the left, 59 Club on the right, and a Ton Up club sticker on the rear hump of the leather seat.

And this is what my now fairly neatly restored Cafe´ Racer looks like :-

• from directly behind, the view most of you will see :-)
• from the front, what you see coming up fast in your mirror
• from the rear right, my favourite photo, featuring the 4 in 4 pipes
• from the rear left, a shot of the other side, displaying the Konis
• this is the SOHC motor block, I've got it oiltight now :)
• and these are the instruments. Only 65,000 kms despite being 36 years old :-)

Back in the 1960s one of the best clubs for UK Rockers was the 59 Club in which I was quite active. In fact I actually coughed up for a life membership (#5587) at the time. Thus I am so grateful to the local authority here who have assigned me the suitable registration number plate I requested :-) Thanks girls, that was very good of you :)

@Liz, this is the sound of Hailwood's Honda going through Creg-ny-Baa ( 94kB .wav file).

And now, dear blogreaders, bikers and other dear friends, here is where you can contribute : I'm soliciting for names for this bike, so go ahead and email me your suggestions please. Winner gets a mention in this blog, perchance a beer or two ;-)
Suggestions so far :- Ghostrider (Hanseat), Stu's Hotwheel (Schumi), Black Witch, Black Shadow, Black Cat, Black Lady, Black Flash, Scotch Stu (all suggested by Torge), Old Man's Folly (Jenny), and The Dark Side of the Fours (Mary-Anne) . . . . .
The following names are not allowed, as they are assigned to my other machines : Yuchi an RD350, Zedex a ZX-10, Mjollnir a MuZ 660, Sleipnir a sporty TL1000S, and Yambeau^* which is a torquey FJR1300 (and which is my current long-distance tourer).
Yes, it seems I really do have a predilection for single-word two-syllable names :-)

^* : FWIW, no, 'Yambeau' is not a typo, it's a portmanteau word combining 'Yamaha' with the french 'Beau', meaning handsome. Also it's a homonym for 'Jambo', Suahili for 'Hello'. Have pun, will travel! :-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 5th March 2007 at 06:05 CET permalink Comments Email

A Lunar Eclipse tonight :-)

We are all hoping for clear skies so that we can see the lunar eclipse tonight. It'll be a total eclipse as seen from Europe and Africa, but partial from the Americas and Asia, Hawaii none.

Lunar eclipses do not happen on every orbit of the moon around the Earth which tells us that the plane of the moon's orbit around the Earth is inclined to the plane of the Earth's orbit around the sun. Even Aristarchus (310 BC - c. 230 BC) deduced that; I'll tell you more about him in a later post. The moon will disappear (as seen from here) totally into the Earth's shadow. Annular (ring) eclipses are even rarer, only happening when the moon is further from the Earth on its elliptical orbit. I don't think Aristarchus knew that.

NASA has a map online showing us where the eclipse can be seen in totality and when it happens (ca. 23:00 UT). Kodak has put some basic tips on photographing the eclipse online for us. NASA also has a page outlining the other three eclipses this year too (two partial solar, one other total lunar). The solar eclipses are on the 19th of March and the 11th of September(sic!). The other total lunar eclipse is on the 28th of August.

Get out your telescopes or binoculars! Here's wishing us all clear skies tonight :-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 3rd March 2007 at 06:03 CET permalink Comments Email

Le Jog - from Land's End to John o' Groats.

Alan Sloman(sic!) is starting his Big Walk up Britain today, from LE (Land's End) to JOG (John o' Groats).

Forty-odd years ago, I did that trip on a motorcycle, camping on the roadside overnight. But Alan is a keen Hiker and is going to walk all the way, blogging his progress from a mobile-phone keyboard as he goes, and - I presume - blogging some mobile-phone photos too. I've been reading about his preparations and it all sounds very interesting, albeit I couldn't do it myself nowadays, ten miles is my daily maximum nowadays :) So I recommend y'all to follow this link to Alan's blog and let's all read him and comment our encouragement. Go, Alan, go!

Still on the subject of long distances, here's some feedback on Jon Jeffryes Lands End motorcycle trip, as reported last week. Liz Hinds tells us that "My longest almost non-stop bike ride was from the south-west of France to south Wales but it did include the ferry and some sleep in a boiler house at the ferry port (so not non-stop at all). But it was on a 175cc bike. With all the camping gear ;-)". Respect, Liz, respect!

And Jon himself has bought an almost new Royal Enfield Bullet. They are a 50 year old British design still being made in India these days. I would be worried about reliability, but Jon plans on doing a 'Longest Day' run again, this time on the Royal Enfield. Oha!

Remember I wrote about our mobile library a while back? Jessamyn has a great photo of an early US mobile library taken in the museum at Tuskagee university (Alabama).

Wing Commander Little (UK) has graciously sent me a ticket for one of his balls. But I have politely declined, since I am unsure whether it's a dance or a raffle ;-)

Poor old Haggiswurst has had his blog hijacked. Again! Last time it was by some gay porn blogger. This time by someone offering contraceptive sponges. He does get 'em ;-) Or rather they get him :-( So I've removed him from my blogroll until things become clear again. Is it specifically the Blogger tool that has this hijacking problem? Does anyone know of preventative measures that I could pass on to Haggiswurst? Other than checking for trojans and keyloggers which I already suggested to him?

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 1st March 2007 at 06:01 CET permalink Comments Email