(TL:DR cigarettes are now supposed to go out if you don't inhale.)
]]>Naval Architects and ship operators and offshore platform operators "knew this" at least back into the 80s; we were documenting rogue waves (and considering what design consequences) when I was in school.
At one level, this goes back even further; the Queen Mary was hit by a 90-100 foot tall rogue wave in December 1942. It was unusual in that it was one of the few ships of that (or any) era which would have survived that wave. She barely did; she rolled down to about 52 degrees, which was about 3 degrees short of the angle at which she would have capsized.... Again, known both to professional mariners and naval architects, but thought to be bogus by many scientists studying waves.
Nobody had a good theory at the time.
Finally they've been getting both buoy and platform data on 100+ foot waves and started to make models that predicted them.
]]>Really? Ah, yes from the link I see that it's true!
Bloody Hell!
Now this is evidence of how The Law can change to suit Reality...non Advert Land - Cigies are Good For The Lungs look you can belive in US for HERE is an Ever So Macho Cowboy and HE is smoking Our Product with never a sign that his Actor will shortly Die of Lung Cancer. Only Believe and Smoke OUR Brand - Reality is, err...Flexible?
Back when I was a child I was SO virtuous that despite my British working class background I heroically refused to Smoke! Oh, all right it turned out that when my friend the next door neighbours boy smuggled out a purloined cigarette - age about 10 as was usual for that sort of thing - and I tried the same it turned out that I was horribly allergic to cigarette smoke and I swear that I thought that I would never stop throwing up. This turned out to be a bit of a grown up disadvantage because way back in the 1960s of my youth just about everyone in my social circle of whatever class smoked and just about every public venue for social gatherings ..Pubs /Clubs /Classrooms and social spaces of Technical Colleges/universities everywhere had an atmosphere that resembled that of the planet Venus: sometimes I'd take a deep breath outside of a room and gallop in to do whatever I needed to do -opening windows along the way - and then dash out again. Ashtrays were utterly ubiquitous in every social setting and they were expected to be in place and emptied by the cleaners at the end of the working day.
So, not so very long ago the sad huddle of Smokers outside of just about every public working or social space in the U.K. would be a strange and alien sight to any passing near future time traveller...and this really was not so very long ago with the ban on smoking in enclosed spaces being pretty close to Now.
Granting a little space for the Language of warning to emerge then just about any warning notice about “No Smoking " would cause up-stream traveller to pause and cry eh? Wot The F ? Whilst lighting up for a soothing Drag.
This has been a profound change in the social habits of Humanity in a fairly short space of time.
I submit that the most deadly artefact in Human History has been the Cigarette...it puts the Kalashnikov Automatic Rifle Far, Far in the shade in terms of lethality. So much Death from such a simple thing and such a weight on the scales of commerce and industry in such a short space of time.
]]>The last few times our government got unobstructed, we got the Department of Homeland Security, the war in Iraq, and bank bailouts worth roughly $3000 per US citizen with no meaningful oversight. I prefer them obstructed, and would prefer most of them be completely obstructed in some sort of prison.
]]>Are you a libertarian? Just curious.
]]>Briefly, he's attacked the problem from the direction of mathematical beauty rather than from trying to explain hard data, and then asking whether the data fits the maths.
Some people have been saying that the LHC should already have been showing up events his maths predicts.
But if the LHC is only looking at the data for the events they expect to see, and throwing away the rest, that criticism is seriously weakened. If Weinstein's math makes a prediction, they can go and look.
This is a lot like Dirac and the positron. He had math and no data, but people started looking.
We're at the "watch this space" phase.
]]>No. I'm not against government in principle, but I spent about five years in Washington DC. I gradually came to the conclusion that the system has completely lost touch with reality, and that the federal government of the United States is simply not a realistic channel for any sort of positive change in our society. If any social progress happens in America, those guys will be the last to hear about it and they won't like what they hear.
]]>Vanzetti @ 203 Urban myth .. Oxford student found ancient reg, saying he should have free beer with all his meals (from when water wasn't safe to drink) .. college grumbled, complied ... & about a week later, having burrowed in said ancioent regs ... fined him for not wearing his sword ....
jay @ 210 I gradually came to the conclusion that the system has completely lost touch with reality Here, too!
]]>Second, a history of them, although since it's in a newspaper it probably contains errors, nevertheless fits with what I have read elsewhere: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/sweet-delight-a-brief-history-of-the-mince-pie-6270572.html
]]>Nothing quite broke, and copies of the film were carried to Canada by jet bombers.
I kept getting interruptions, but one thing said made me cringe. There was a contingent of the WRAF in the parade, and commentator described them as "gorgeous", for which I can forgive him, on account of their nylon stockings.
Sixty years on, the WRAF has gone. Men and women are all in the RAF. And, as the Daily Mail reported in 2010, there are women flying bombers in the RAF. The way they write the story makes me cringe, but they tell the story. (The comments are worse.)
Sixty years ago, the only 'planes with swept wings in the flypast were some RCAF Sabres. The RAF has been operating the Tornado for more than half the Queen's reign. The Canberra stayed in RAF service until 2006.
The technology doesn't always change as quickly as we might think.
]]>:)
]]>...and the 7 Swifts, the Valiant, and the Victor and the Hunter, plus the Vulcan and Javelin deltas
The Canberra stayed in RAF service until 2006.The technology doesn't always change as quickly as we might think
the PR-9 phased out in '06 was very different to the EE Canberra B.2s in the 1953 flypast, different wings, more powerful engine, revised fuselage, different role
the Tornado may be thirty years old, but the ordnance it drops and the avionics it uses to drop them are not - the RAF's Tornados have been rebuilt two or three times - and five of them in their 2013 form could do the job of all 48 of the Canberras and all 45 of the Avro Lincolns in the '53 flypast
in one sortie ;-D
something like the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_Shadow was a science fictional then as it is now.
]]>The flypast over Buckingham Palace on the 2nd June 1953, Coronation Day, was made up of 144 Meteors and 24 Sabres.
Have you confused it with the Coronation Review of the RAF?
The first production Valiant flew in December 1953. There were prototypes in existence of all three V-bombers, but the Vulcan prototype was being modified. The Supermarine Swift entered service in February 1954: again, there was only a prototype flying in 1953.
The way that prototypes in general fell out of the sky in those days, I hardly think you would see them over the middle of London.
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