Skeptical of kettles

Those pesky goddamned commie scientists have been at it again.

The latest idea is that if you pass an electric current through a metal coil, you produce resistance, and therefore, heat is generated. They reckon that such technology is causing the water in my kettle to heat up.

Well I'm not having it, do you hear?

First of all, it might be quite nice if the water in my kettle is warmer.

In any case, I have serious doubts about the science. Lots of electrical engineers and quantum physicists signed a petition on the internet debunking the myth of electric making kettles boil. Clearly there is no consensus on the issue.

And frankly, even if there is a connection, well there's no conclusive proof that it's human activity that's responsible. The kettle is by a window, so it could be sunlight that's making it warmer. Or some other factor we don't know about yet.

And here's the clincher.

Back in 1503,. people had kettles, which sometimes boiled. Yet there was no electricity. So the idea that it's electricity that's causing kettles to boil is just clearly ludicrous.

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From Amsterdam to Betelgeuse

I somehow ended up with a dutch audiobook version of Douglas Adams' classic sci fi story, The Hitch-hiker's guide to the Galaxy. I go through periods where I will have my ipod connected to the car's hifi, and it popped up on shuffle the other day.

Familiarity with the story, and the distinctive names of the characters made it possible to actually follow what was going on, at least some of the time. I seem to remember that linguists consider the Dutch and English languages to be close cousins, which also helps.

But it was an interesting experience, and one that allowed me to interact with the story in an unusual way. It made me think.

Still, like the cartoon at the top of this post, much of it was "blah blah blah blah blah blah Arthur blah blah blah blah Zaphod blah blah blah", mixed with semi garbled familiar words and phrases, like "teleporten" for example.

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The island that isn't.

Now and again, Google Earth related stories occur in the mainstream  media. Sometimes, I'll take the time to post here about them.

Today, there's an article on the BBC's Website about an island that's listed on various maps and charts, and also on google maps/ google earth, but at that location, there is only salt water, to a depth of over a kilometre. The BBC even included a graphic that showed the wrong bit of ocean along with the caption,

"Sandy Island can be seen as the shaded area due west of New Caledonia"

So there's a nice irony there. In attempting to show where something isn't, they've shown the wrong place.

Sandy Island isn't over 200 miles to the west of where the picture above thinks it isn't.

And here it isn't.

According to GE, there's a big hole in the world at this point although I had my mouse hovering over the location when I took this snapshot, and it reckons that the ground is 2 feet above seal level, rather than 4,500 feet below sea level. So it looks like some hasty revisionism is going on here.

There is an earlier, historical image, dating from early in 2009.

And it's still not an island, sandy or otherwise. Just clouds and ocean.

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Update: There's been some revising going on on the BBC's page too. They now have updated their photograph to show where the island actually isn't insead of where nobody thought it wasn't.

Elephant spotted in Dee Estuary

I used to live just near the Dee Marshes. I saw sheep, oystercatchers, herons and geese. I never saw this elephant though.

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Snow

Snow is like rocking horse poo round here. We're generally a bit warmer than everywhere else because we're next to the sea, and the Clywyd hills catch most of what does arrive.

Not today though. We got more than enough.

Went out in it of course, and slid down a hill.

And we made a snow rabbit.



Good times!