Posts by Eclectic Man

Re: Bless

I AM your father.

Re: Bless

Throw your wallet 10 feet behind "the mugger" and peg it.

Story told to me by a friend:

He did a version of Karate which had only recently been 'invented' so the Japanese founding 'Master' of the school was still alive. There Master came to the UK to check up on how his trainees were doing and was 'accosted' by two young men waving a knife and demanding he hand over his wallet. He took out his wallet, threw is forcefully on the ground, looked the knife-wielding assailant unblinkingly in the eye and said in an even voice:

"I am prepared to die for that wallet, are you?"

They ran for it.

Re: Bless

The UK law on what constitutes an offensive weapon is tricky. Were you to carry a bottle of perfume with the intention of using is to protect yourself in the event of being attacked, that constitutes an offensive weapon, and is, therefore, illegal. If you are returning from cricket practice, are attacked and defend yourself with your bat, that is self-defence as the cricket bat was being carried because you play cricket. (I have no idea how difficult getting blood out of willow is, but I expect someone does.)

This from Alfie Moore's excellent radio show 'It's a fair cop' from the BBC.

Conversely, a former work colleague who was a 2nd dan black belt at judo, and a respected international judo referee, when asked what he would do in a fight responded: "Run for it!"

But, in extremis, a doner kebab with spicy sauce, or fish and chips with salt and vinegar can be bought and carried quite innocently (everybody got to eat some time officer), and could be very annoying if thrust into an assailant's face or up his/her nose.

Re: I'm shocked!

I'm shocked!

Don't be, we're Management Consultants.*

*People who make things up** based on half-remembered conversations overheard in the the pub, a complete lack of any real understanding of the subject, and a regurgitation of things we read online, most importantly telling other people what to do.

** Well, not every consultant is like that, just a few***

**'Few' as in 'a lot but I don't want to be sued for defamation'

Re: Trekking poles

Hmm. I am not a fan of trekking poles, unless you have genuinely learnt how to use them. If you walk in the hills, you will come across many rocks with scratches on them where someone with a pole fell over because they didn't know how to use them. I have seen someone who thought he did know how to use his poles fall over and break one of his crossing a stream on trek in Africa. (He was ok, just a bit shaken, and we managed to extend the remains of his pole to the required length.) But it is much better to walk without them if you can - as a species we have done it for several hundred thousand years*, so it should be possible for most of us.

*Or maybe for up to 7 million: https://www.science.org/content/article/human-ancestors-were-walking-upright-7-million-years-ago-ancient-limb-bone-suggests#:~:text=An%20ancient%20leg%20bone%20found,upright%207%20million%20years%20ago.

What to take and what to know

There are several books on navigation, including 'Mountain Navigation' by Peter Cliff. He points out that in the mountains there are two sorts of 'lost':

'Lost' type 1 - Don't know which part of the hill you are on.

'Lost' type 2 - Don't know which hill you are on.

With the new-fangled GPS satnav thingies people are less and less aware of their surroundings and cannot actually navigate using map and compass - it is not that difficult to learn. And do take a map and compass, because even if you don't know how to use them, someone you meet might. The best way to navigate is to check where you are all the time on the map, with compass, don't wait until you are lost before trying to find yourself. And remember to check where the sun is - is it in the right direction for where you think you are going and the time of day. If it is straight ahead and midday then you are not walking East.

Take a whistle in case of accidents, they weight very little and the standard distress signal is six short blasts, repeated until help arrives. Again, you might not be in personal need, but someone you meet might be. (In the dark, a torch with six short flashes, repeated is also recommended). A 'space blanket' and small first aid kit including anti-septic wipes and sticking plasters in case of minor cuts is also important.

Re: The Power of Fear!

As a child, my father, the head of a local secondary school, took school holidays walking in the hills, Cumbria or North Wales. I was always the youngest by over a year. Anyone, one year I was sharing a bedroom with one member of staff and two sixth-formers. None of whom could get the heating to work. So I told them how to operate the machine:

Staff member: How did you know that?

Me (pointing): I read the instructions on the top.

Irritating, moi?*

*Strangely I survived childhood with very few life threatening 'accidents' or near misses. I guess being the head-master's son had some benefits, after all.

Re: The Power of Fear!

there's a scientific explanation for everything - I've just got no idea what that is!

That made me smile. Please, please, please may I use it? (I promise to cite you appropriately.)

Re: I wonder

My father was the Head of a secondary school. One winter there was a break in, and the police did exactly what you recounted - followed the track of footprints in the fresh snow to the miscreant pupil's house.

This is, of course a complete failure on two counts of the UK Schools system:

1 The pupil had bot been instilled with any respect for the school

2. The pupil had not even been educated sufficiently to avoid being caught by something that is shown in many cartoons (Tom and Jerry for example).

I'm not sure whether the pupil should have apologised to my father or my father to the pupil.

D'Oh icon indeed

Re: Neat - Diffraction

The ESA page concerning Proba-3 is here: https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Engineering_Technology/Proba_Missions/Proba-3_Mission3

A link gets to the following explanation of the reason why a 150m gap betwixt occulter and coronagraph helps:

"The Sun is a million times brighter than its surrounding corona, so eclipsing it is essential for coronal studies. This is what happens during a solar eclipse of the Sun by Earth's Moon. But that sporadic event lasts a for only a few minutes. A solar coronagraph is an optical instrument which reproduces artificial dark eclipse conditions by mean of an occulting disk. Previous Sun-observing missions such as SOHO incorporate ‘coronagraphs' to study the corona. But their effectiveness is limited by a phenomenon called diffraction, where stray light overspills the edge of the occulting disk.

Progress on this front requires moving the Occulter much further away while still preserving eclipse-like conditions for long periods of time – precisely the performance offered by the Proba-3 externally occulted coronagraph. The technique has previously been attempted during the 1975 manned Apollo-Soyuz mission, when an Apollo Command Module blocked light falling on a Soyuz spacecraft.

... targeting an increase in our close-up view of the Sun and its corona from three solar radii down to just 1.08 solar radii as a goal – that is not traditionally enabled by smaller-scale coronagraphs."

https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Engineering_Technology/Proba_Missions/Proba-3_Science_payloads

Re: Curious timing

This is how human civilisation ends. Not with an 'I, Robot' style GenAI taking over control 'for humankind's benefit', but with AI's effectively controlling everything and comprehensively screwing it up. No human will be able to understand the coding mess and get the computers up and running and doing 'useful' things, and the GenAIs that actually run things will be too stupid to get that we are starving because the computer controlled factories are filling their quotas but not producing or distributing any actual food to us.

If Earth is ever visited by aliens in the dim and distant future, they will uncover a world where all the robots are working perfectly servicing a biosphere that no longer exists.

Happy Christmas everybody!

Re: Motion detection

You need an infestation of well-trained rats, cockroaches or glis-glis (edible dormouse to us uneducated proles) to run along the pipes and trip the switches every now and then.