As the chance of a new eruption at Mount St. Helens increases today, Shelley Powers has posted her recollection of living downwind of the previous eruption on May 18th 1980. Makes interesting reading – and makes you wonder what on earth it will be like if Yellowstone Park erupts (the last eruption there was . . . → Read More: Mount St. Helens
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The International Monetary Fund yesterday added its voice to that of The Economist and The Bank of England, pointing out that British house prices appear much higher than can be explained by developments in fundamentals (wages and rents), and warning: The central risk remains an abrupt adjustment in the housing market… …With interest rates . . . → Read More: IMF says UK house prices too high Most people will be familiar with Escher’s impossible pictures depicting water perpetually flowing downhill in a closed loop or triangles which appear to join up opposite sides. Gershon Elber has discovered that some of these impossible figures can be made as 3D objects – the optical illusion only works from a specific angle, however. . . . → Read More: Modelling impossible Escher pictures in 3D Irish telcos were refusing to refund bills of up to $22 000 run up by unsuspecting computer users who had loaded trojan dialer programs to their computers and ended up routing their internet surfing via places such as Tuvalu, Diego Garcia and Mauritania for prices of up to $7.50 a minute. Now the government . . . → Read More: Ireland cuts phone lines to stop scams Elderly men, who walked less than 1/4 mile per day were found to be nearly twice as likely to develop dementia as those who managed two miles a day, an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association reports today. As a reasonable amount of exercise (say 1/2 hr per day) . . . → Read More: Walking helps prevent dementia If you have an old digital camera knocking around and fancy using it for some aerial photography, take a look at this article in engadget.com about taking pictures from a kite. If you can wield a soldering iron, it looks fairly straightforward, apart – possibly – from landing the camera intact afterwards. The British Liberal Democrat party is proposing to send teenage joyriders to go and race cars or learn car maintenance, as well as fining them Ł40. The proposal is called “tough liberalism” by the party spokesman. Um – is that supposed to be a deterrent or an incentive to break the law? If you see glass muesli bowls like these – they were sold as Villeroy & Boch, but we can’t find them on their web site and they have no identifying marks – and intend to wash them in a dishwasher, then don’t buy them. We have had three bowls crack, like the one . . . → Read More: Not dishwasher-proof Ruth and I both tried this spelling test in the Guardian. I confess, we both got 13 out of 23. Any of our friends or readers who can beat that – without cheating? Apple have issued a patch to the G5 uniprocessor firmware, which I have applied. My G5 now sleeps again without the fans running, which is a big improvement. |
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