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A long time ago in a hamlet far far away, I shared a house, worked and drank an occasional beer with somebody who was slightly taller, but lamentably (for him) far less handsome than myself. His name was Andy and he was a rather impetuous boy: a life ruled by impulse and extremes, as evidenced by the “flamingo” photographs. More…

When making a pot of tea, I tend to add teabags and sugar at the same time; once the tea has brewed, I give it a stir, remove the teabags, add milk, and then with the aid of a knitted tea-cosy I get several hot mugs of tea in succession and can keep working without the need to return to the kitchen.

However, when I do return to the kitchen a recurring question bounces around my head: how much sugar is absorbed by the teabag before it is removed from the pot? i.e. exactly how much is the taste affected and how much energy is lost? More…

If you’re going to do something where you have just one shot, then you have to get it right first time, there can be no deviation. This is a very different requirement to just getting it right every time after a short teething period . Space exploration is full of one-shot right first time problems. For special problems you need special people. More…

Picture this: it’s a sunny day at the seaside and you’re enjoying an icecream. The human predilection to follow scripted conversation formats is such that you cannot fail to overhear somebody appreciatively inhale before joyously proclaiming “mmmmm, smell that sea air!”, to which a companion will invariably offer a helpfully informative “ah yes, that’s ozone“. More…

Schrödinger’s cat, bless it’s little white paws, had a pretty tough time of it; what with being locked in an imaginary box, and having to share that space with only a decaying radioactive isotope. At the end of the experiment, when the box is opened and the cat is observed, it’s probability wave collapses into either a live cat or a dead cat. It’s not exactly an easy life (or death). More…

Nuclear Energy is neither carbon-free, nor is it a secure energy, yet our government representatives appear to be drinking in everthing the Nuclear Industry offers them.

This morning on the BBC’s Breakfast Television programme we were treated to an interview with Alan Johnson MP, the Trade and Industry Secretary. The interview follows coverage of the the announcement that the government has ordered the Health and Safety Executive to assess all UK nuclear reactors. More…

For me, the arguments against nuclear power-plants in their current form are overwhelming; the most significant of these being the collapse of the “nuclear is clean” argument (because of the apparent hidden CO₂ costs of preparing the enriched uranium). More…

I’ve been intermittently toying with the idea of fitting an Anti-Limescale device to the water supply in our home. More…