Man vs. Car - in London

As an antidote to the terrible events in London last week, here's a little something to cheer you up. Tonight on Top Gear - the UK's most popular driving program - we were shown a challenge between car and runner. Each had to cover the same London Marathon course through Central London during rush hour, from Greenwich round to Westminster and back again, or thereabouts. Even with it being London, and knowing that the average speed of cars in London is 10.6 miles per hour, you would have to bet on the car, right? After all, marathon runners can only get up to about 15 mph, and there had to be sections of the 26 mile course, where the car would get way ahead of the typical runner and easily win the race.

Wrong! Although the car was initially in front (in a quiet part of Greenwich), it was quickly overtaken and never caught up. The runner won by a good 10 minutes.

Ok, so it's a runner not a normal commuter, but there's an important lesson here. It's total lunacy to drive around London. For short journeys you might as well walk. Am I the only person who thinks this in London? It seems so, given the zillions of people who struggle through the congestion charging zone every day.

Anyway, you can find out more about it here.

ELSEWARES » INDEPENDENT ART & DESIGN

ELSEWARES » INDEPENDENT ART & DESIGN. Cool stuff from old junk.

A Letter To The Terrorists, From London

From The London News Review. This pretty much sums it up to me:

This is London. We've dealt with your sort before. You don't try and pull this on us.

Do you have any idea how many times our city has been attacked? Whatever you're trying to do, it's not going to work.

All you've done is end some of our lives, and ruin some more. How is that going to help you? You don't get rewarded for this kind of crap.

And if, as your MO indicates, you're an al-Qaeda group, then you're out of your tiny minds.

Because if this is a message to Tony Blair, we've got news for you. We don't much like our government ourselves, or what they do in our name. But, listen very clearly. We'll deal with that ourselves. We're London, and we've got our own way of doing things, and it doesn't involve tossing bombs around where innocent people are going about their lives.

And that's because we're better than you. Everyone is better than you. Our city works. We rather like it. And we're going to go about our lives. We're going to take care of the lives you ruined. And then we're going to work. And we're going down the pub.

So you can pack up your bombs, put them in your arseholes, and get the fuck out of our city."

Astrologer Sues NASA Over Comet Probe - Yahoo! News

Astrologer Sues NASA Over Comet Probe - more marvellous lunacy.

John Titor on the future

An interesting article from a set posted by an (alleged) time-traveller from 2036. Good stuff.

First reporter in Nagasaki - his report finally published

An article from George Weller in Nagasaki has only now been published in the Mainichi Daily News: "American George Weller was the first foreign reporter to enter Nagasaki following the U.S. atomic attack on the city on Aug. 9, 1945. Weller wrote a series of stories about what he saw in the city, but censors at the Occupation's General Headquarters refused to allow the material to be printed".
A powerful but harrowing account of the first atom bombs.

Landed Properties and Proprietors

Landed Properties and Proprietors: "Several other families have held land since the twelfth century, including Tremlett, Tichborne, Plowden, Fulford, Lucy, Mallet, Medlicott and Saltmarshe. They never ranked, as they do not rank today, among the great ennobled families, the Cecils, Thynnes, Cavendishes and Comptons, who date from post reformation days, nor even the FitzRoys, Churchills, Bentincks and Wellesleys, who date from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They are older by far than these, and less distinguished. The first qualification is explained by the deficiency of the last. Many of them owe their survival to their very lack of past renown. By not aspiring to royal favours they ran no risks of attainder and forfeiture, consequent upon the disgrace of many an over-ambitious mediaeval and renaissance name, and few risks of losing all they possessed in later centuries at the gaming-table and on the turf. Whereas in 1618 Sir Walter Ralegh had his head cut off and his estates confiscated, and whereas in 1741 Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford, came to it premature end through dissipation, after being obliged to sell Wimpole and his unrivalled collections in order to pay his debts, the Plowdens still live unostentiously at Plowden in Shropshire, and the Fulfords at Great Fulford in Devon ~ two manor houses of moderate size as they have always done since the twelfth century."

Porn Peddlers Won't Bare It All

From Wired News: Porn Peddlers Won't Bare It All. A rather bizarre story about the maturing world of the internet porn industry...

Evolution vs. Intelligent Design

Evolution is true. Deal with it.

Sprayonmud Products

Sprayonmud Products. Where are the idiots who buy this kind of stuff?

LiftShare

LiftShare - a way to save money AND help the environment. Care to share a lift?

Why you should ignore emergency procedures

In a very interesting WIRED article, a summary is made of a NIST report about why people survived or died in the 9/11 World Trade Centre attacks. Basically, the report says that around 3000 lives were saved because people ignored the emergency procedures - instructions were given to them to stay put or use the stairs to get out - and used elevators to get out of the buildings. There is an interesting PDF presentation about it at the NIST website. The complete report is here, with an executive summary here. In particular, the executive summary says:

More than twice as many occupants were killed in WTC 1 as WTC 2, largely due
to the fact that occupants in WTC 2 used the 16 minutes between the attacks on WTC 1 and WTC 2 to begin evacuating, including the use of elevators by some occupants in WTC 2.

Los Alamos whistle blower hospitalised in attack

Los Alamos whistle blower hospitalised in attack. Who could have done such a thing?

Constitutions - US vs EU

Someone told me the other day that while the US constitution is only 2 pages long, the proposed EU constitution is over a 1000. So I had a look.

Well, it's not THAT bad, but it's not far off, as you can see from the copies I've found below:

Proposed EU Constitution (from the BBC: 325 pages of PDF.

US Constitution (from USConstitution.net, including amendments): about 30 pages of HTML.

Just think how easy it is to hide stuff in a long boring document, and then think why the EU constitution is as long as it is.

Committee on Radioactive Waste Management

CORWM: Have your say on the UK's Radioactive Waste - and help them find a way forward. This is an effort to get input from the public on radioactive waste management.

Party party!

Get a haircut!
Originally uploaded by Hywel Owen.

Well, I went to my friend Julie's birthday party on Saturday night - excellent night out. Can you guess what the theme was? Took a few nice photos, which you can see here. I spent Sunday recovering quietly in a corner...

Nature - Avian Flu

Avian flu focus from Nature. You should read it!

News

"...security consultant Bruce Schneier says: 'One of the things I routinely tell people is that if it's in the news, don't worry about it. By definition, 'news' means that it hardly ever happens. If a risk is in the news, then it's probably not worth worrying about. When something is no longer reported - automobile deaths, domestic violence - when it's so common that it's not news, then you should start worrying.'" From
The Register.

New light on Hitler's bomb

New light on Hitler's bomb; from Physics World.

one digital life desktops

Some fantastic desktops from onedigitallife. The Dalek is the best.