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Tuesday, 30 December 2014

Tolerances and complex problems

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One of my favourite quotations gets a regular airing . . .  indeed much more regular than my blog posts have been recently. "For e...
49 comments:
Wednesday, 14 August 2013

No through road

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This is an interesting take on graffiti on road signs.  I've posted some Parisian road sign graffiti before , but this is a new one on m...
10 comments:
Tuesday, 13 August 2013

More Parisian Graffiti

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I have often featured interesting graffiti on Something Surprising .  Near the Pompidou Centre in Paris is this amazing face painted on a w...
6 comments:
Monday, 12 August 2013

Physics on the Metro

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Have you ever spotted how the air moves on metro trains? On ordinary trains with short carriages there is often a flow of air through the ...
4 comments:
Sunday, 11 August 2013

Hale and Hearty

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Enjoying a visit to Paris, I like to spot words in French that have obviously migrated into English. Eiffel Tower - just before it was e...
2 comments:
Saturday, 10 August 2013

Liberty - for the week

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I'm away, enjoying a week of holiday.  Guess where I am. Liberty, equality and fraternity It looks as though I might be in New Yo...
Friday, 2 August 2013

Prince Rupert's legacy

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Watching a TV programme recently (which is something that I rarely do) I was reminded of the incredible properties of glass.  Can you imagi...
1 comment:
Thursday, 1 August 2013

Inverse topiary

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Cruising down the River Thames, near Reading, I found that the graffiti artists have an unusual technique.  They cut away the ivy on a railw...
Saturday, 27 July 2013

BBC film crews

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Having been somewhat involved with the workings of a BBC film crew yesterday, for a programme that will be hosted by Richard Hammond, I am l...
5 comments:
Friday, 26 July 2013

Thought-provoking video about Intelligent Design

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What a thought provoking video about Intelligent Design, from The Thinking Atheist ! It ends up with this quote from Stephen Fry. ...
4 comments:

Something Surprising is back

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After a break of a couple of weeks, a regular feed of posts will restart later this evening.  Thanks for continuing to follow.
Thursday, 11 July 2013

Another UK crisis - MPs pay

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The UK Government has imposed a 1% limit on the increase of salary for public sector workers for the next three years, having already frozen...
Sunday, 7 July 2013

Skeptical about Skeptoid - go for green instead!

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The Skeptoid podcast has been one of my favourites for two or three years, and Brian Dunning's analyses of the topics that he covers ge...
1 comment:
Saturday, 6 July 2013

New RDFRS newletter revealed

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The Richard Dawkins Foundation(s) for Reason and Science (RDFRS) have released a newsletter, the first one being available here .  (As you m...
Friday, 5 July 2013

Downloading consciousness?

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Have you heard of the ' 2045 Project '?  I started to hear a few whispers about this fascinating and seemingly impossible idea recen...
Thursday, 4 July 2013

Does Creation science have any convincing arguments?

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Oxford Skeptics in the Pub hosted Peter Harrison this week.  He is based at St Andrews University (of which I am a graduate) so it was fun ...
Wednesday, 3 July 2013

The Wedge

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About 20 years ago, the Discovery Institute, that ivory tower of ' intelligent design ', was caught out.  Yes really! It was rev...
1 comment:
Tuesday, 2 July 2013

Fast trains or fusion?

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The surprising thing is that someone else has finally noticed that we are not spending enough money on developing fusion as the power sourc...
1 comment:
Monday, 1 July 2013

The rights of man - more Thomas Paine

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Last year I wrote about Thomas Paine, the first New Atheist , having just read his book ' The Age of Reason ' which was decades ahea...
1 comment:
Sunday, 30 June 2013

Lennox's non-fairy tale?

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Oxford University Professor, John Lennox mumbled some incoherent nonsense (it is reported, e.g. here and here , and much better here ) at ...
1 comment: