tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15245969223913213672024-03-19T13:29:00.344-07:00Dave Mitchell's BlogDave Mitchell is the semi-retired proprietor of Scarthin Books of Cromford, DerbyshireDave's Diatribes & Whimsieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716766140541138396noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1524596922391321367.post-89679044600136755282013-11-28T05:16:00.000-08:002013-11-28T05:16:04.613-08:00Lattice Labyrinth Tessellations: Look-out World!<h2 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><i><span style="color: #660000;">LATTICE LABYRINTH TESSELLATIONS</span></i></span></h2>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-size: large;">On Wednesday 27th.November 2013, the first sheets of <b>giftwrap </b>arrived from <a href="http://www.spoonflower.com/gift_ideas" target="_blank">Spoonflower</a>. I'm biased; <span style="color: #38761d;"><b>what do you think?</b></span></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXfTXiKqICfZaOFlbBV5JaYeMQ6qUaNDfyrSBzfUGLG1YVCLL1ayWsh9Ti5bTJT5HQpH49F5gqFE8TQvYlGIRvEJyQwI3eXr0rTlvVgo0MSUxtbBHWIT9Ny7jCtIPEsS1W8StxoBiVz3UB/s1600/GiftwrapDiamond(7,4)BlogVersion.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="462" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXfTXiKqICfZaOFlbBV5JaYeMQ6qUaNDfyrSBzfUGLG1YVCLL1ayWsh9Ti5bTJT5HQpH49F5gqFE8TQvYlGIRvEJyQwI3eXr0rTlvVgo0MSUxtbBHWIT9Ny7jCtIPEsS1W8StxoBiVz3UB/s640/GiftwrapDiamond(7,4)BlogVersion.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-size: large;">Well, actually, that ISN'T one I ordered. <b><span style="color: #741b47;">How about this</span>:</b></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI7N9gHJyH1zCGYWk5UdX9Us14X0Kqsip-ha_5pya1UsoxDI5pZwbYG4jKE-mKQ7Qd_0rynii7l4G7Jxk1mltaCxO8gxMF0uprSA8_Q1l74W70x4gCsioQZ6gEcIbuYPdMBua7ATZtlxK0/s1600/GiftwrapDiamnond(13,1)BlogVersion.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="472" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI7N9gHJyH1zCGYWk5UdX9Us14X0Kqsip-ha_5pya1UsoxDI5pZwbYG4jKE-mKQ7Qd_0rynii7l4G7Jxk1mltaCxO8gxMF0uprSA8_Q1l74W70x4gCsioQZ6gEcIbuYPdMBua7ATZtlxK0/s640/GiftwrapDiamnond(13,1)BlogVersion.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-size: large;">or a design I call, stare hard and see why, <span style="color: red;"><b>Logistical Nightmare</b></span>.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYR7LqN_Z-BQOqNqDwamhNtjF_vIUSjTEbfyrR-vIBYRzK4li2j0GdHN7Ng_yfR7MDBRfmYyyhimlH2kmp8rg7v7vJzJK3GzG6neZ-3wahHSJ2YyrzsfnihakwkcRnSzX0TRFtFtLgfGoM/s1600/LogisticalNightmareBlogVersion.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="508" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYR7LqN_Z-BQOqNqDwamhNtjF_vIUSjTEbfyrR-vIBYRzK4li2j0GdHN7Ng_yfR7MDBRfmYyyhimlH2kmp8rg7v7vJzJK3GzG6neZ-3wahHSJ2YyrzsfnihakwkcRnSzX0TRFtFtLgfGoM/s640/LogisticalNightmareBlogVersion.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-size: large;">If you'd like to know more about these <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tessellation" target="_blank">tessellations</a> of the <i>infinite Euclidean Plane</i> (sorry) or <i>unbeschränkte Ebene</i> ( entschuldige, but I like the sound of that) and their even more amazing relatives, then:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: red;">1.</span></b> come to my <a href="http://www.scarthinbooks.com/press-releases-and-latest-news-scarthin-books-cromford-derbyshire/dave-mitchell-book-launch/1589/" target="_blank">talk at Scarthin Books</a> on Saturday 14th. December, 7.30 for 8.00 ( in the cafe; light refreshments)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: red;"><b>2.</b></span> have a look at or contribute to my infant <a href="http://latticelabyrinths.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">latticelabyrinths blog </a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: red;"><b>and/or 3.</b></span> buy the <a href="http://www.tarquingroup.com/product.php?SKU_Code=2233" target="_blank">BOOK</a> and discover how to construct many of the infinite families of Lattice Labyrinth Tessellations. They are out there, waiting to be seen for the first time by human as opposed to Platonic eye. We are taking orders for <a href="http://www.scarthinbooks.com/products/scarthin-books-online-bookshop-cromford-derbyshire/new-books-scarthin-books-cromford/lattice-labyrinth-tessellations/" target="_blank">rare signed first editions at the Bookshop</a>.</span><i><span style="color: #660000;"> </span></i></span></div>
Dave's Diatribes & Whimsieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716766140541138396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1524596922391321367.post-15108857747347045182013-03-08T10:20:00.001-08:002013-03-08T10:20:29.886-08:00Some Simple Sums: How we Wrestle with Numbers<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<h2 class="MsoTitle" style="text-align: center;">
<b>Some Simple Sums<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></b><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"></span></h2>
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<b><span style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"></span></b><b><u><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">1. Wrestling with Numbers</span></u></b></h4>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Maths is notorious for inducing mental
panic – and yet it is supposed to SIMPLIFY thinking. Suppose that there are n
people in this room, to stop fights breaking out, <b><span style="color: #cc0000;">let’s all shake hands</span></b>. Let<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> t</b> be the time to shake hands, then if
everyone shakes hands with everyone else, then each of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">n</b> people must shake hands with <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">n-1</b>
others, so the total time, big <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">T</b>,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>taken by this orgy of peace-making
equals<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b>n(n-1)t</b> – or does it?
Let’s run a test for a small value of n. Suppose <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">n=2</b>, then the formula yields <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">2t</b>,
but we know only one handshake is required. Aha, our formula has counted every
handshake from the point of view of every person- every shake has been
double-counted, so the correct formula is <b>n(n-1)/2</b>. Let’s tabulate this
for various <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">n</b>, Café Philosophiques
do attract a variable attendance -actually, rather more people than I have
included below, with our normal attendance of between <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">20</b> and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">30</b>, we would be a
long time shaking.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">A Constant</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">(Unity)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Number of people: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>n/1</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">No. of shakes<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">n(n-1)/1x2</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">No. of three- hugs</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">n(n-1)(n-2)/1x2x3</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">1</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">0</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">1</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">1</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 85.2pt;" valign="top" width="114">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">5</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 85.2pt;" valign="top" width="114">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">10</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 100.8pt;" valign="top" width="134">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">10</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 7;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 85.2pt;" valign="top" width="114">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">1</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 85.2pt;" valign="top" width="114">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">6</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 85.2pt;" valign="top" width="114">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">15</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 100.8pt;" valign="top" width="134">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">20</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 8;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 85.2pt;" valign="top" width="114">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">1</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 85.2pt;" valign="top" width="114">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">7</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 85.2pt;" valign="top" width="114">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">21</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 100.8pt;" valign="top" width="134">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">35</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 9;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 85.2pt;" valign="top" width="114">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">1</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 85.2pt;" valign="top" width="114">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">8</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 85.2pt;" valign="top" width="114">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">28</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 100.8pt;" valign="top" width="134">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">56</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 10;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 85.2pt;" valign="top" width="114">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">1</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 85.2pt;" valign="top" width="114">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">9</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 85.2pt;" valign="top" width="114">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">36</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 100.8pt;" valign="top" width="134">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">84</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 11;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 85.2pt;" valign="top" width="114">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">1</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 85.2pt;" valign="top" width="114">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">10</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 85.2pt;" valign="top" width="114">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">45</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 100.8pt;" valign="top" width="134">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">120</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 12;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 85.2pt;" valign="top" width="114">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">1</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 85.2pt;" valign="top" width="114">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">11</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 85.2pt;" valign="top" width="114">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">55</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 100.8pt;" valign="top" width="134">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">165</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 13; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 85.2pt;" valign="top" width="114">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">1</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 85.2pt;" valign="top" width="114">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">12</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 85.2pt;" valign="top" width="114">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">66</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 100.8pt;" valign="top" width="134">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">220</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">You notice I have added some other
columns. </span><span style="color: #cc0000;"><b>A New-age</b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="color: #cc0000;"><b> </b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">three-hug</b>
</span>requires at least three people, and to work out the number of different
three-hugs we have to <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">divide by</b> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">3</b> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">times
2</b>, the number of different orders in which the three people can be chosen
in order to eliminate double-counting and get the right answer. When counting just
the number of people (column 2) I have put in a “<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">divide by 1</b>”, as there is no double counting. I have also added a
column of constant unity to the left and finally also a row for zero people.
These modifications are there to bring out the beautiful simplicity of this
table. You can now see that you don’t need to bother with multiplying figures
together. As you go to the right, the figure in each cell of the table can be
found by simply adding the figure in the cell above to the figure in the cell
above and to the left. This means that the figure in each cell is also the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">sum of the series of</b> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">ALL</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> the numbers in the column to the left up
to and including the cell above and to the left. If you know some algebra, you
recognise that the first column tabulates value of a <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">constant</b>, the second of a <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">linear</b>
function, the second of a function including a square of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">n</b> ( a <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">quadratic function</b>),
the third a <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">cubic</b> function, and that
we could go on adding as many columns to the right as we liked in order to
tabulate values of the function<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">n(n-1)(n-2)……..(n-r+1)/ 1x2x3…xr</b>, which
is the number of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">r-hugs</b> and is a<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> polynomial</b> involving n to the power r,
where r can be as large as we like. We call <b>1x2x3x4…..xr</b>, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">r factorial</b>, or <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">r! </b>for
short, as factorials crop up all over the place in combinatorial mathematics
(which is what we have been talking about), probability theory and statistics.
For me, this has been a classical and beautiful mathematical exercise,
embarking on a potentially endless journey into more and more general results,
with wider and wider implications, starting from just one simple idea – that of
shaking hands.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="color: #cc0000;"><b>Does this sort of thing worry you? Well,
you are in good company.</b></span> We can trace mathematical thinking back to, for
instance, <b>Babylonian student excercises </b>still preserved on 4000-year-old inscribed and
baked tablets. Already in those days, the master was setting examples that can
still terrify us today, such as the brain-twister below.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I found a stone but did not weigh it. I
weighed out six times its weight and added 2 gin, then added one third of one
seventh of this weight multiplied by 24. The total weight was finally 1 man-na.
What was the original weight of the stone? </span></i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Answer, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">4 and1/3 man-na</b> .This works out correctly if 1 man-na equals 60
gin.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Incidentally, we see just how long ago
and far away the basis of our conventional division of hours into 60 minutes
and minutes into 60 seconds, both of time and of angle, was established.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">An <b>Egyptian problem,</b> found on a Papyrus
about 3600 years old, seems simpler:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">If 10 hekat of fat is given out for a
year, what is the amount used in a day?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">(c.f.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">
if 104 black bin-bags are given out for a year, how many are used in a week?</i>)</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The answer however is not so simple,
being expressed as:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">1/64
hekat and 3+2/3+1/10+1/2190 ro</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">.
(I hekat = 320 ro)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Here we see that, with the exception of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">2/3</b>, and maybe also <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">3/4</b>, the Egyptian notation and probably
the Egyptian mind could not deal with fractions other than “One share of
however many”. A fraction like <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">56/73</b>
(to which the above addition of shares is equal) was beyond writing down and
probably beyond thinking about. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Problems with notation have taken much of
the following three and a half thousand years to deal with. Modern fractions
like <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">56 73<sup>rd</sup></b><sup><b>s</b></sup>only
gradually permeated </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Europe</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> from </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Arabia</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> and </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Italy</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> during the Middle Ages. Present-day algebraic
notation<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">, x‘s</b> and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">y’s</b> and all that, came into use
gradually between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries; British calculus is
said to have been held up for more than a century by Newton’s now largely
abandoned notation – patriotism inhibited the adoption of Leibniz’s more
adaptable <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">dy/dx</b> expressions. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe there are improvements still to be made.
Our own personal struggles with algebra and mathematics in general can perhaps
be excused when you consider how many centuries even those
cleverest-of-the-clever leading mathematicians took to get their notation, and
their corresponding thought processes, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>straightened out.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Note that the above-mentioned <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">three
and a half thousand years</i></b>, say <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">3511
years</b>, to be precise, could have been expressed as:<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> three millennia plus five
centuries plus one decade plus one year</i></b>. It is revealing to quote a Derbyshire
sale catalogue dating from 1920 for lands belonging to <b><span style="color: #741b47;">His Grace the Duke of
Rutland</span></b>: Here is a typical lot description (shortened):</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Yeld Wood Farm, Woodlands & Cottage
situate close to the Village of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Baslow…,
containing an area of about 82 Acres 3 Roods and 22 Perches</span></i></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="color: #cc0000;"><b>As you will know </b></span>(?) there are <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">forty perches to a rood and four roods to
an acre</b> which was the area that could be ploughed in a day, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">4840 square yards</b>. A <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">rood</b> can be well visualised as the
typical area of a mediaeval strip (or perhaps half a strip), <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">one furlong long by one pole wide</b>, or <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">220 yards by 5 ½ yards</b>. A<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> perch</b> is simply <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">a square rod (or pole), 5 ½<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>yards by 5 ½<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>yards</b>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">So, you see how
the prospective buyer can actually visualise the land area involved, whereas
giving it as <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">82.87265</b>, say <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">82.88</b>, acres, or <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">82</b> and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">71/80</b> acres,
requires the farmer to visualise <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">0.88</b>
of an acre; probably he’d rather have it in roods and perches. An ancient
Egyptian might render the area for sale as <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">82
½<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>¼ 1/8 1/80 acres</b>. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">All this takes
me back to primary school, I used to be able to add, subtract and even multiply
in acres, roods and perches, and in miles, furlongs, chains, rods, yards, feet
and inches. Measurement systems like this are meant<b> to avoid the need to think
in terms of fractions or decimals</b>. Almost any quantity can be expressed as
integral (whole number) multiples of units you have a habitual feel for. Same
with old money: one pounds, seven shillings and six pence ha’penny. Nowadays,
since decimalisation, we still have the various sized coins reflecting <b>our<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>physical need to hand over change in “roods
and perches”</b>, to speak metaphorically, namely the 50p, the20p, the10p, 5p, 2p
and 1p coins, but we no longer (or, I hope, do not YET) have common names for these coins and may get quite
confused trying to convert, say, 83p into <b>a practical palmful of change</b>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">We are not confused</span></i></b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">, say the mathematicians! <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">They</i></b>,
or maybe <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">We</i></b>, have surrendered the primitive need to visualise the sizes
of the quantities we deal with in exchange for the extreme simplicity of
manipulating numbers in the decimal system. Everything is in multiples or
divisors by ten. <b>82.87265 acres</b> may be hard to imagine, but it can be
multiplied by a hundred by a simple double shift of the decimal point. Other
multiplications, additions and subtractions take a bit longer than this but are
completely straightforward. In contrast, imagine trying to work out <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">how
many 4 ounce bags of sweets can be made up from a day’s production of 2 tons, 7
hundredweights, 3 stones, 5 pounds and 12 ounces</i></b>, which latter is
expressed entirely in units I still have a real feel for.<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> 2.372 tonnes = 2372 Kilograms
=<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>23,720 100gramme bags</i></b> is so
much easier!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">This handy
decimal system goes back at least to the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">India</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> of a couple of thousand years ago. For
the next stage of the discussion, we need to simplify it a bit more.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">10, 100, 1000, 10000, 100000, 1000000</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">,….</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">is getting hard
to write, let alone distinguish just how many 0’s there are. So generalising on
100 being 10 squared, written 10², we can write the sequence as:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">10,10,²10³,10<sup>4</sup>,10<sup>5</sup>,10<sup>6</sup>,</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> … and so on, these being the sort of
numbers that appear in successive columns of our handshake and hug table.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Similarly, the
sequence of numbers less than 1:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">0.1, 0.01, 0.001, 0.0001, 0.00001,….<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Can be written <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">10‾<sup>1</sup></b> (that is one over ten),
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">10<sup>-2</sup></b> (one over ten squared),
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">10<sup>-3</sup></b>, and so on.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">(For
mathematicians to deal with numbers less than 1 in these elegant decimal and
power expressions took a lot longer in the adoption than dealing with the
larger-than -one numbers. Finally, to join these sequences of powers together
we are forced to adopt the convention that the number <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">1, unity itself, = 10°</b> , even though multiplying a number by itself
zero times seems meaningless)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now, at last we are in a position to start
measuring the Universe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">2.
Getting the Measure of the Universe</span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<b>
</b><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b><span style="color: #cc0000;">In reaching out
to see and grasp the great and the little</span></b>, we start with a handy measure of our own size, <b>one
metre</b> – a stride, an arm’s length, a child’s height. – this is our unity, our <b>10°.</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Lets start going
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><b>up in scale in powers of ten,</b></span> or, as practical scientists say “orders of
magnitude”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Order 1</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">10metres</b>;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the width of the bookshop</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Order2</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">100
metres</b>;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a sprint, how far a shout
will carry, or a missile be thrown</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Order 3 </span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">1
kilometre</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a walk to the station, a waving friend visible</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Order 4</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">10
Km</b>;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the distance to the nearest
town, a long run</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Order 5</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">100
Km</b>; a journey to the regional capital, to court, to prison, to the seaside.
Now we are beginning to reach the edge of the pre-industrial ordinary person’s
experience</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Order 6</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">1000
Km</b>; travelling to the national capita city, to another country, or on a
pilgrimage</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">An experience of
only a few courtiers, merchants, churchmen, armies</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Order 7</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">10,000
Km</b>; The voyage of Christopher Columbus, Marco Polo’s travels</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">We are now
getting to the edge of the ordinary person’s experience, but not beyond the
ingenious measurements of the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Classical
Greek</b> geometers, who obtained very good estimates for the size of the
Earth. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Order 8</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">100,000
Km</b>; A girdle around the Earth.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Order 9</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">1
million Km</b>; The distance to the Moon; beyond the ordinary mortal, but again
not beyond the ingenious Greeks, whose curiosity and method is humbling. They
visualised the distance in “stades”, a foot-race distance of about 200 yards.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Order 11</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">100
million Km</b>; Of the order of the distance to the sun. Even this<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> the Greeks </b>tried to measure, and their
estimate was “correct” to within an order of magnitude; it was more accurately known
by the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">17<sup>th</sup>.Century</b>. <b><span style="color: red;">A digression, a triumph in science may long remain useless
in practice!</span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Order 12</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">1
billion Km</b>; The distance to Jupiter. Only the invention of the “Gallilean”
telescope made this possible to conceive .Galileo first observed Jupiter’s 4
largest moons in <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">1610</b>. They are
easily seen with binoculars and, as early as <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">1676</b>, small delays in their eclipsing by the planet were used to
obtain a good stab at the speed of light, unimaginably high at 186,000 miles (
Anglo-Saxon motorway units) per second.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Order 16</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">1
Light Year, or a third of a Parsec</b>. The nearest star is about 4 light-years
away. Note the introduction of new units to try to help us visualise the
immensities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The distance to a star (not
a planet) was first measured in <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">1838</b>,
using parallax, the slight change in direction from opposite sides of the
Earth’s orbit. A parsec is the distance at which the parallax of a star,
subtended by the RADIUS of the Earth’s orbit, is one second of arc</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Order 21</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Diameter of the Milky Way, our galaxy (<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">100,000 light years</b>) Advances in the measurement and understanding
of starlight spectrums and in so-called Cepheid variable stars made
measurements like this possible by about <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">1915</b>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">A digression. To
quote from the internet, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">how to bring
the Universe down to size</b>:</span></div>
<i><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="color: red; font-family: "Times New Roman";">There are an estimated 150 globular clusters that swarm around our
galaxy. Each of them contains 100,000 to 1,000,000 stars in a spherical
region </span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman";">ONLY</span></b><b><span style="color: red; font-family: "Times New Roman";"> a few hundred light-years in
diameter. </span></b></i><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Order 22 </span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">1
million light years<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">, </span></span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">is the approximate distance to the
nearest other galaxy, The Great Nebula in Andromeda, M 31. Controversy about
whether “galaxies”, those fuzzy objects, were gas clouds, perhaps forming
stars, in the Milky Way, or other collections of stars at a great distance, was
finally settled only in <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">1923</b> (the
approximate birth-date of physicist Freeman Dyson) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>with the aid of the 100 inch Mount Wilson
telescope– Hubble identified individual variable stars in nebula M 31.</span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Order 25 </span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">1
billion light years</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">1929</b>,
Edwin Hubble proposed his celebrated “expanding universe” theory. The dimmer
the supernovae, the further away the galaxy and the bigger the red shift,
explained by its receding from us. A billion light years was uintil recently
about the limit for observations of this type on galaxies.</span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Order 26<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Ten billion light years</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">. The distance to the edge of the
observable universe is currently estimated as about 16 billion light years,
giving a visible diameter of twice this.</span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">So, the largest number we can come up with, relating the size of the
observable Universe to a stretchy human pace-length is some <b>3 X 10<sup>26</sup>.
</b></span><br />
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Though the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Greeks’</b> imagination reached out to
their estimate for the Sun’s distance, of <b>order 10</b>, it was not until the
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">17<sup>th</sup>.Century</b> that
planetary distances became accepted, <b>order 11 to 12,</b> not until the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">19<sup>th</sup>.Century</b> that the true
remoteness of the fixed stars was revealed, <b>order 16</b> and not until <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">the lifetime of the parents of many at this
meeting </b>that the true scale of the observable Universe, <b>orders 22 to 26,
</b>was understood and accepted. </span><br />
<b><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Surely we
must <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>question whether any existential
philosophy more than 200 years old can have more than inspirational or
allegorical significance? </span></b><br />
<br />
<b><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b>
<div align="center" style="text-align: center;">
<b><u><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">3.
Smaller and ever-smaller</span></u></b><b><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></b></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Time now to turn from telescopy to microscopy
and <b><span style="color: #cc0000;">go down in scale</span> </b>to the smaller and smaller, starting <b>again from our
“zeroth” order of I metre</b>.</span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Order Minus 1 </span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">10cms</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A “handy” size, the scale of a handspan, a fist, a stone, a sheet of
writing paper, a jug of milk.</span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Order Minus 2 </span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">1
cm</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A finger’s-breadth, a flower, handwriting, an
easily snapped <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>twig, a pebble</span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Order Minus 3 </span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">1 mm</b>. Getting hard to see. Grit, a
seed, a pin-head, your nails needing cutting</span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Order Minus 4</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">0.1 mm</b>. About as small as can be seen
or<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> imagined</b> to be visible to the
naked eye. Small seeds, sand-grains, eye of a needle. From <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">mediaeval times</b>, magnifiable to a more comfortable scale by
single-lens “reading glasses” (as in Umberto Eco’s monastically set <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Name of the Rose</i>)</span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Order Minus 5<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">0.01mm., 10 micro-metres</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">. Silt or “soil” particles; they don’t
float but do smear. Pollen grains – may blow about but can and need to settle.
The cells of animal and plant tissues are often in this range; first described
by Robert Hooke, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">c. 1670</b>, from his
microscopic observations</span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Order Minus 6<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">1 micrometre</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">. Dust. As we know, you can’t see it till
it settles. In the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">17<sup>th</sup>.
Century</b>, the double-lens microscope allowing X20 to X200 magnification
brought this scale into view.</span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Order Minus 7<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">0.1 micrometres</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">or
100 nanometres</b>. The wavelength of visible light is in the range 400-700 Nm.
and this limits what could be distinguished using the best optical microscopes
by <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">late Victorian times</b>.</span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Order Minus 9<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">1 nanometre, a billionth of
a metre</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">; about the
diameter of a sugar molecule. The actual existence of “molecules” became
accepted during the 19<sup>th</sup>. Century, but the direct investigation of
their structure only began <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">c. 1920</b>
with X-ray crystallography, X-rays having a wavelength comparable to molecular
sizes.</span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Order Minus 10 </span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">1
Angstrom, a tenth of a nanometre, 100 picometres</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">; typical effective size and separation
of atoms. </span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Order Minus 12</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">1
picometre , a billionth of a millimetre</b>. The wavelength of the electrons
used in microscopy is about 5 picometres. This limits the electron microscope,
developed in <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">the 1930’s</b>.</span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">ORDER minus 13</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">100
Femtometres</b> This is where “High Energy Physics” takes over; larger and
larger linear and circular accelerators:-, particularly <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">since about 1960</b>, </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">CERN</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> and the infant <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Large Hadron Collider</i></span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Order Minus 15</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">1
femtometre</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>roughly the radius
(whatever that means) of a proton or electron. The existence of the electron
was deduced <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">about 1900</b>, but protons
and neutrons not until their tracks could be followed in cloud or bubble
chambers from <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">about 1930</b></span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Order Minus 18<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">1<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> </span>attometre or nano-nanometre</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">. About the feasible limit of High Energy Physics and
correspondingly the scale of elementary forces and particles studied.</span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Order Minus 45 </span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Planck
Length</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">. An entirely
hypothetical and especially hard to understand concept. May perhaps be thought
of as the ultimate limit of the precision with which a particle’s position
could be ascertained in the quantum theory. The energy of the probing
particle/wave would be such that a black hole would be formed, so no
measurement would result (!?!)</span><br />
<b><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I have gone down to the very (to the 27<sup>th</sup>. Power) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">silly</i> Planck Length just because I want
to give the Universe a chance to resist the power of the human mind! </span></b><br />
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">So</span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman";">, the extension of man’s ability to look at
very small things has gone from <b>order 7 </b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to <b>order 18 </b>in little more than 100
years. As with the very large, surely our outlook should have changed radically
with such an expansion in our ability to observe the sub-sub-microscopic
entities of which everyday objects and ourselves are made up. Certainly, we are
filled with wonder by television programmes, articles and books, but most of
even us “educated classes” experience little outside the everyday scale in our
everyday lives.<span style="color: #cc0000;"><b> We are mostly scientifically ill-informed and even more
inexperienced ; we probably do not own or rarely use a microscope or a
telescope, let alone an x-ray diffractometer or a linear accelerator! It is
very easy, still, for us to live in an unquestioning mental world akin to that
of the “ancients” in which only a few visionaries posed fundamental questions.
</b></span>How many of us have ever thought of estimating the moon’s distance by timing
the length of a lunar eclipse, as did the Greek natural philosophers.</span><br />
<div align="center" style="text-align: center;">
<b><u><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">4.
But how BIG is the Universe, actually?</span></u></b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 47.25pt; margin-right: 48.0pt; margin-top: 5.0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i><span style="color: red; font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">"Space is big. Really big. You just
won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may
think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.”</span></i></b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 47.25pt; margin-right: 48.0pt; margin-top: 5.0pt;">
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">Douglas Adams</span></b><i><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy</b></span></i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 47.25pt; margin-right: 48.0pt; margin-top: 5.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<b><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is, how many
conceivable points does it contain?</span></b><b><span style="color: red; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> EASY! </span></b><br />
<b><span style="color: red; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><b><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">4πR³, </span></b><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">where R is the radius in
Planck Lengths, 1.6<b>π</b>X10 to power71x3, let’s approximate a bit, after all
my calculations may not be that precise, </span><span style="color: red; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">10 to the
power 324 is near enough.</span><br />
<div align="center" style="text-align: center;">
<b><u><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">5.
God’s Numbering System</span></u></b></div>
<b><span style="color: red; font-family: "Times New Roman";">But the very hairs
of your head are all numbered. </span></b><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Matthew Ch. 10
Verse 30</i></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman";">God is supposed to have
no problem numbering, that is describing and knowing, every point in the World,
now known to be so much bigger than the Evangelist could have thought, and
implied in the quotation.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman";">The readers of the Bible
are supposed to be awe-struck by this degree of omniscience.</span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.5pt;"> </span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Not so Archimedes, who
explains, in the 3<sup>rd</sup>. century B.C, in a paper addressed to a King
Gelon, that his numbering system is capable of dealing easily with the number
of grains of sand that might be needed to fill the Universe. Our numbering
system is also perfectly capable of dealing with the scale of things, as we
have already seen.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Another way to look at
this is to perform a card trick. Imagine I am holding <b>three <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>perfectly normal <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>packs of 52 cards</b>, excluding troublesome
jokers, 156 cards which to simplify things can be considered all to be
different, each pack having a different design on the back. I assure you that<b>
this pack has not be prepared or tampered with</b> in any unfair way, but the cards
are of course in one particular order, with one letter per card, I’ve written
out a short passage from Shakespeare. Now, watch carefully</span><span style="color: red; font-family: "Times New Roman";">. </span></div>
<b><span style="color: red; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt;">Dave fans,
shuffles, fumbles and drops the whole pack on the floor. </span></b><span style="color: red; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt;"><span style="color: black;">What a mess!</span></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Oh *******!!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How am I ever to sort them out again? Well,
if I work through all the possible orders to find the right one – the 152-letter
message from Shakespeare, I will need not merely all the time in the world, but
much more than that! </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman";">There are just two ways
of ordering two cards, six of ordering three, twenty-four of ordering four, in
short <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">1x2x3x4x……x156</b> of ordering
them all – its that FACTORIAL again, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">156!</b>
This number is rather large. I haven’t had time to calculate it, but I’m told
that <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">70!</b> Is approximately <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">10 <sup>100</sup></b>, so <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">100!</b> is going to be at least <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">10<sup>150 </sup></b>and somewhere around
the three-pack mark the number of ways of ordering the cards is going to exceed
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">10<sup>324</sup></b><sup> </sup>, the
number of “Planck points” in the visible universe. So there on the floor is all
that God needs to set up a one-to-one correlation with number all the hairs on
the head of all of space.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Now there is a very
theoretical minimum conceivable time interval called the<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> Planck Time</b>, about <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">10 <sup>-43</sup>
seconds</b>.( this is about </span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman";">one ten</span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman";"> thousandth. of the time
it takes light to cross the diameter of an atom) The present age of the
Universe is a <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">mere</b> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">10<sup>18</sup> seconds </b>(and counting,
slowly)<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>which comes to <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">10<sup>61 </sup>Planck Times</b>. So, there
is no way those playing cards could be got into the right order to rediscover
Shakespeare’s message in a time equal to the lifetime of the Universe so far.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman";">We can also see that God
would not need many more playing cards to number not merely each point in the
Universe, but each point at each instant in the life of the Universe, each
point in space time, with plenty of room left over to describe what is going on
at each point, whether empty, or associated with a particle, or with the scale
and direction of each possible force field, and finish by giving this point in
space-time a fanciful name, perhaps inspired by Peak Rock-climb or Lead-mine
nomenclature! <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Don’t Sneeze Now Arete</i></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>or
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Second-Cousin’s
Fortune</i></b>. There are even more names available that orderings of playing
cards, which leads us to:</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" style="text-align: center;">
<b><u><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;">6.
Monkeys Typing Shakespeare</span></u></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Shall
I compare thee to a Summer’s Day,</span></i></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Thou
art more beautiful and more temperate.</span></i></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Rough
winds do shake the darling buds of May</span></i></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">And
summer’s lease hath all too short a date.</span></i></b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;">At
this point I had intended to embark on some intricate calculations of the time
it would take the proverbial “monkeys” to type even this and the other eight
lines of one supreme sonnet of Shakespeare, but I think you have got my drift
by now. It's going to be an absurdly long time, <b>though we could calculate a decent estimate! </b>Even were the monkeys able to employ, not typewriters, but the still
proverbial “Quantum Computer”, they would have no chance of discovering even an
early draft by the Bard within the lifetime of the Universe. This is, I
suppose, a commonplace observation, but<b> it is less commonplace</b> to ask;</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<b><span style="color: red; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“How then </span></b><b><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;">DID</span></b><b><span style="color: red; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;"> the
sonnets of Shakespeare ever </span></b><b><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;">GET</span></b><b><span style="color: red; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;"> written
– starting from the blankish, even if anthropophilic slate of the early
Universe”</span></b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;">particularly
as <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">the </b><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b>Universe</b> got off to such a
laggardly start in </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">the race against the monkeys to see who could write Shakespeare’s works</b> <b>first</b>. Nearly <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">ten billion years</b> were given over just
to forming giant stars, letting them manufacture heavy elements and then blow
themselves up, so that the scattered materials could condense into a second
generation solar system, our sun and planets, some solid and iron- and silicon-rich.
Another <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">half-billion years</b> at least
were required for things to solidify a bit on planet Earth and for Jupiter to
vacuum up most of the dangerous impacting meteors. Another <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">mere hundred million years </b>or two sufficed for life to appear, but
more than <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">three billion years</b> were
used up before it crept out of the sea. Another <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">300 million years</b> were needed to evolve mammals and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">298 million years</b> to evolve the first
self-consciously intelligent species. And during all this time, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">the monkeys</b> can be imagined typing
randomly away, by now they <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">are well in
the lead</b> – they’ve got as far as several very beautiful lines of a risqué
sonnet. Even the last <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">two million years</b>
before the present, about a ten-thousandth of the lifetime of the Universe,
have largely been employed in developing language from scratch, honing all our
subtle passions, emotions and abstract intelligence and in developing the art
of story-telling and aural tradition. Only in the last <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">50,000</b> or less years have written alphabets allowed remembered
culture to develop and be passed on. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Urban
living</b>, with all its special crafts, including those of playwright and
poet, seems to extend back no further than <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">10,000
years</b> before the present, and this period is essentially that which has
allowed literature, philosophy and science to be recorded so that the likes of
Shakespeare and Newton could rejoice in “standing upon the shoulders of giants”
to achieve there own dazzling in- and out-sights.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;"><b>So
we allowed the typing Monkeys a very long start indeed, but we still got there
first!</b> This shows the true scale of the wonder of human thought.<span style="color: #cc0000;"><b> Douglas Adams
once again got here first</b></span> – his super-computer <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Deep Thought</i></b>, faced with
discovering the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">QUESTION</b> to which <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">46</b> is the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">ANSWER</b> to <b>The Riddle of</b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">
Life, the Universe and</b> <b>Everything</b> announces that it needs to design:</span></div>
<i><b><span style="color: red; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;">“A computer which can calculate the Question to the Ultimate Answer,
a computer of such infinite and subtle complexity that organic life itself
shall form part of its operational matrix…. And it shall be called..</span></b><b><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;">the
Earth</span></b><b><span style="color: red; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;">”</span></b></i><br />
<br />
<div align="center" style="text-align: center;">
<b><u><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;">7.
The </span></u></b><b><u><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;"><b><u><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;">Interstellar </span></u></b>Pen is mightier than the Sword</span></u></b><b><span style="color: red; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt;"></span></b></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">So much for the scale of the Universe, we can
hack it!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> But can we affect it, or even explore it - hardly at all. You might think of scientists and engineers working on Earth to be analogous to a gathering of pub philosophers gathered in an English inn scheduled for closure! But that is another story - SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence - and this article has gone on too long already!</span></span>Dave's Diatribes & Whimsieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716766140541138396noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1524596922391321367.post-35046898802519843042013-03-08T07:06:00.002-08:002013-11-23T07:47:55.912-08:00Energy & Oysters; Sizing up the Quest for Renewable Energy<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 36.0pt;">Energy and Oysters</span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 26.0pt;">Sizing up the Quest for</span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 26.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Renewable Energy </span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 24.0pt;">A
Light-hearted Look at </span></i></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 24.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Heavy-handed Projects</span></i></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 24.0pt;">Dave Mitchell</span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Leaning heavily on:</span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">SUSTAINABLE ENERGY – without the hot air</span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">By David J.C.MacKay</span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">and</span></i></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">paying homage to</span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy</span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">By Douglas Adams</span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Scarthin Books 2012</span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="color: red; font-size: 14.0pt;">Oysters and Energy</span></u></b></div>
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Numbers are famously feared to “phase” folk. Even in the
so-called serious press and Radio-4 culture they are used just to <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">impress rather than
to inform.</span></b> Few journalists and commentators appear to understand let
alone have the ability to employ numbers to inform the public. Among the
innumerate is numbered at least one Chancellor of the Exchequer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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A typical misuse of numbers, from a 2010 issue of the
Independent newspaper’s magazine supplement:</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“In 1860, the three oyster companies in Whitstable alone, employing
more than 100 boats and over 500 people, sent<span style="color: red;"> 50
million tons of oysters </span>to </i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">London</i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">.”</i></b></div>
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Let me illustrate ways I customarily make sense of, and check
the plausibility of numbers. This is a million tons of oysters a week, 125,000
tons a day or 5000 tons an hour –<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;"> 6 times the rate at which coal is fed up the conveyor </span></b>into
a typical German 2GW power station, such as Ratcliffe on Soar. Allowing for the
weight of inert shell, maybe the oysters could be burned to produce 8MW of
electricity – about a fifth of our generating capacity (from about a quarter of
our one-time coal-mining production). – <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">Out with wind-turbines, in with Oysters! </span></b>It’s also
10 tons of Oysters per year per inhabitant of London,
or a trainload from Devon every 5 minutes. I think it is
the tons that <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">crept</span></b>
or was <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">slipped
in</span></b> there, 10 oysters a year per Londoner sounds about right. </div>
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I’m going to quote lots of figures, and most of them I’ve
subjected to what we might call the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">Oyster Absurdity Check</span></b>: looked at in other ways,
do they seem ABOUT RIGHT? The whole talk has been produced without using a
calculator; we’re dealing in round figures and in estimates that should be
right to an error of maybe plus or minus about 20%. So far are we from coming
to terms with the long-term implications of our way of life, that such accuracy
is an adequate guide to figures that are subject to variation or cannot be
precisely known. I’m going to stick to metric units, much easier to manipulate,
besides we do have a feel for a kilogramme (about 2 lbs, 1000 make a tonne) and
for a kilowatt-hour – the famous one-bar electric fire or fan heater.</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="color: red; font-size: 14.0pt;">Human Energy and Power</span></u></b></div>
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Running a fit, skinny 65kg body like I used to have up the
Bookshop stairs in 2 seconds, at rather more than 1 metre per second = 700 watts or <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">0.7 kW</span></b>,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a quick burst of adolescent human power, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>about the steady output of a horse, 1
horsepower.</div>
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Running up a mountain at 1200 meters per hour = 200 watts,
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">0.2 kW</span></b></div>
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A fit day-long ascension at 600 metres per hour = 100 watts, )
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">0.1 kW</span></b><span style="color: red;">. </span>Actual useful steady output of a manual labourer, or
a serene old Monroe-bagger, maybe <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">75 watts</span></b> on average.</div>
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I’ll concur with David MacKay’s (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sustainable Energy – without the hot air</i>) approximation of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">1kwH per day per
person</span></b> as a ballpark figure for adult human output, we can buy that
much electric power for about <span style="color: red;">10 to 20 pence</span>. So
that’s what we’re worth as manual labourers – hence our replacement by JCB’s. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Think of that when <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">virtuously winding</span></b> up your torch,
radio or watch to save energy. We need to eat the equivalent of several times
this output of course, as us small chemical engines, are, at about 25%,
somewhat less efficient than car engines and coal-fired power stations. A quick
check on the reasonableness of this calculation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At 25%, we need to input about 4kWh of food,
or about 3500 kcalories (often referred to as 3500 <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">C</b>alories with a capital <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">C</b>)
in heat energy units. Yup, that’s about the sort of daily intake we’re supposed
to need if working normally hard.</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="color: red; font-size: 14.0pt;">Historical Energy Use by
not so ancient Brits</span></u></b></div>
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Fortunately, we get a bit of help from nature – already
complex mediaeval and renaissance European societies were very energetic,
founding and naming ALL our villages and towns
– Wirksworth, Bonsall, Matlock, Cromford, Snitterton, Tansley - <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>routing nearly all our town-centre and village
roads, establishing esssentially ALL of our
hedges and walls, building ALL our village
churches and ALL our cathedrals, without <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">having heard of as
yet unborn Watt</span></b>. In the Derbyshire
Peak especially, we are renting
unfurnished a world built by our pre-industrial foreparents. Interestingly,
hardly enyone wants to actually LIVE in the modern world built by machines –
even <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">in </span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">Dubai</span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">, those who can
live in detached villas</span></b>. </div>
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These foreparents did have some help in boosting their 1 kWh
per day. Taking just Renaissance England England, around 5 million people had
the power of more than a million oxen and horses to draw on, so this added
perhaps as much as <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">2kWh per day</span></b><span style="color: red;"> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">per person</b></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black;"> </span></b><span style="color: black;">to</span>
their power They had 125,000 square kilometres to divide up between no more
than one tenth of today’s population, so they had lots of woodland – maybe
50,000 sq. kilometres, growing wood at the rate of 0.2 Watts per sq metre. Work
it out: 50,000 x 10<sup>6</sup> x 0.2 = 10<sup>10 </sup>watts = 10 million Kilowatts,
2 kWh per person, or 48kWh per day per person – maybe they utilised a quarter
of this, say<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;"> 12
kWh per day per person</span><span style="color: black;">. </span><span style="color: red;">No wonder we are so fond of open fires and campfires! </span></b><span style="color: black;">Indirectly, the power of the sun<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>turned their </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">wind and waterwheels</span><span style="color: black;">, </span></b><span style="color: black;">perhaps 20, 000 of
them in </span><span style="color: black;">England</span><span style="color: black;">, generating 12kW each, or 50W per person for maybe 10
hours a day, a handy</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;"> 0.5 kWh per person per day</span></b><span style="color: black;">. Also courtesy of the sun, they grew food to feed themselves and their
beasts, used for meat and milk and wool as well as for power, maybe producing
another </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">10
kWh per person per day</span></b><span style="color: black;"> so you can see that
they had already, by Shakespeare’s time managed to </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">multiply their personal power output by a
factor of 20 or 30 </span></b><span style="color: black;">by what we would call
sustainable methods, producing or at least utilising some </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">25 KwH per person
per day</span></b>. Nature provided everyone with 24 slaves. This estimate is
supported by similar levels for today’s Algeria,
Egypt, Indonesia
and other “developing” economies.</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="color: red; font-size: 14.0pt;">So - Back to the Land? </span></u></b></div>
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<span style="color: black;">Sorry, there’s a catch. Were the
ten times more of us to attempt to go back to Olde Englande’s way of working
and living, that 25kWh per person per day <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>would be reduced to </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">2.5 kWh per person per
day</span>. </b>That’s what <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">a back to the land, self-sufficiency, backyard-windmill-and-chickens
life</span></b> would mean. Maybe we should indeed envy France,
which supported a mediaeval population of some 20 millions, a full third of
today’s number, on 4 times England’s
land area.</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="color: red; font-size: 14.0pt;">Back to Today’s Feasting on
Energy</span></u></b></div>
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How much power in total do we ACTUALLY use per head per day
in early 21<sup>st</sup>. Century Europe – well, it’s
hard to be exact, with all the global trade and moving around, but the figure
seems to be about 125 kWh per day. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">125 kWh per day!?</span> </b>I’ve seen an estimate as high as
140kWh per day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">5kW roaring away every hour of the day for
every one of us – 12kW per household!!??</span></b></div>
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Yes, give or take a bit, it is so, and, at 15p per kWh, we
in Europe can (just about) afford it – £19<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>per day per head, maybe £50 per day per household, 8 hours work at the
minimum wage –<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">
it is already becoming a strain</span></b>, may we have some working tax-credit
please?</div>
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Where does it come from – well, mostly from coal, oil and
gas of course – hence the global warming we’re warned about. And, on that front
let me say that I fear that we ain’t seen nothing yet – you can’t multiply the
concentration of a gas in the atmosphere by 50% without having effects. It’s
lucky for us that the<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;"> concentration of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>carbon-dioxide in the used air in our lungs </span></b>is already two
orders of magnitude (about a hundred-fold) greater than the ambient levels, or
we would all find ourselves panting continuously even when resting. Fortunately,
our evolving forbears had plenty of time to accustom themselves to ancient
carbon dioxide concentrations which are scientifically controversial but
probably 2-3 times the present level.</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="color: red; font-size: 14.0pt;">An Everyday Tale of
Cromford Folk</span></u></b></div>
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How do we manage to use all this energy? <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">I nip into Matlock
to pick up our Clare </span></b>from the community minibus, six stop-and-start
miles in the van, about a litre of fuel used, 10 kW-hours used at 30%
efficiency, or about <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">3 x my daily output of power</span></b>, or, roughly, input
of food! Maybe with the right equipment I could hand-haul the van to and from
Matlock in three days. I could have walked it easily and gently in two hours,
expending 200 watt-hours and Clare 100 watt-hours, needing about a kWh of food
intake, or about a tenth of the energy actually used, but at the cost of (say) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>£20-worth of my time. The actual money cost,
doubling the fuel cost, was about £2,30 Afterwards, a cup of tea! – boil up a
litre of water through 80 degrees, 80, 000 calories, 80kcals, about 100 watt-hours.
Well, that’s better, I could produce that much in an hour -but how, in practice
– cuddling the kettle would only get the water to about 35<sup>0</sup>C. Later, a bath for Clare
– 70 litres
through 25 degrees, say 1.5kWh, or one and a half times my daily power output,
but costing me only about 25 pence.<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;"> A week of baths for Clare for less than the price of a pint</span></b>.
No wonder pubs are struggling – daily baths for all the family for the price of
a round this Friday night.</div>
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These apparently trivial examples indicate how without
thinking we use prodigious amounts of energy in our daily lives. Us Mitchells
have had a very long generation time averaging about 35 years for three
generations now, so <span style="color: red;">my Granddad remembered life in the
late 19<sup>th</sup>.century </span>– he an iron-ore miner, Grandma a milkmaid
in<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a Cumberland
village. Sounds mediaeval, but it wasn’t. Their society, with its profligate
and inefficient use of coal – 5 tons or more per head per year – got through over
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">100kWh per head
per day</span></b>. The blink in time of 250 years since the Industrial
revolution seems like for ever to us, the profligate use of energy goes back
not just to our own upbringing, or to that of our parents, but far beyond the
tales even of our great-grandparents.</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">Can this go on</span></b> – of course not! – the reservoirs
of fossil fuels are finite, only, typically about100 years of them are left at
current usage rates. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">Global warming is just a little</span> <span style="color: red;">sibling</span></b> of the family problem of use of finite and
irreplaceable fossil fuels to provide energy – we’d better find other sources
damn quick.</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="color: red; font-size: 14.0pt;">Finite Resources Last for
Ever – the Chocolate bar Effect</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Actually, this isn’t
quite true. Logically, we CAN make a finite resource last for ever. Consider
this bar of basic best-value chocolate (I recommend repeating this
demonstration). <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">Total
Dave-reserves one bar</span></b>. Consideration-time’s up! Current comfortable
rate of consumption, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">half a bar a day.</span></b> Dave’s reserves will only last
for two bites, two days, then<span style="color: red;"> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">the end of life as I gnaw it</b></span>. But wait, remedial action,
I’ll reduce my consumption by 50% per day. Next bite is a quarter, next an
eighth, next a sixteenth. It’s the old frog-in-the-well commonplace that I’ll
never quite eat all of that chocolate. Even though there were only two bites of
proven reserves, and half were consumed on the first day, the bar will last for
ever. Coincidentally, we are thought to have used around a half of everything
there is in the way of finite resources in<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;"> a “day” of about 100 years </span></b>(200, actually, but
the equivalent of a much<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"> </span>shorter period
at late-20<sup>th</sup>. Century rates), so to make a rough stab, to eke out
what remains for ever we need to use up only half of what remains in the next
hundred or so years.</div>
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Generally, the maths is beautifully simple – for 2 years of
natural resources to last forever, we have to halve consumption each year, for
reserves of 50 years to last for ever we have only to reduce consumption by a
fiftieth or 2% per year, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">for a 100 year reserve to last forever we need to reduce
consumption by a hundredth or 1% a year to make the resource last FOR EVER.</span></b>
Eventually, of course, our consumption will reach very low levels, and will be
significantly lower after as little as ten or twenty years, but surely such a
rate of retrenchment should be possible.</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">Not so easy</span></b>, however. If we continue at present
energy-use levels then even such an apparently small, say 1%, annual reduction
in fossil use implies an enormous rate of increase in the provision of
renewable energy, from a baseline near zero. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">Fossil fuel use</span></b> would go down in the
series <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">100,99,98,97,96,95</span></b>,
roughly, but renewables must therefore go up in the series <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">0,1,2,3,4,5</span></b>. The final<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;"> </span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">5</span></b> in that series is about where we are
at in the UK with regard to electricity generation now, so to achieve just a 1%
further reduction in fossil fuel use, we have to increase pour renewable energy
output from 5% to 6% -<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;"> a 20% annual increase in capacity</span></b>;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a tall order. You can see why it is that
people quote 10 to 20 years as the minimum period it takes to get from the
pioneering stages to a substantial use of replacement technologies.</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="color: red; font-size: 14.0pt;">Sources of Renewable Energy</span></u></b></div>
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How might we replace fossil fuels? By renewable energy we
tend to think of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">wind, water, tide or sun</span></b>. However, to quote an article in the
latest Scientific American:</div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nathan Lewis of Caltec
says that by the year 2050, civilisation must be able to generate more than 10
trillion watts of clean energy </i>(what he means is 10 terawatts, or 10,000
Gigawatts, which he says is 3 times the average US energy demand of 3.2
Terawatts) (c.f. UK <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>400GWatts).<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Damning up every lake, stream and river on
the planet, Lewis notes, would provide only five trillion watts, about half his
target</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">.</i></b></div>
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We can do that sort of calculation for the UK.
Area of UK is
245,000 square kms, or 245 x 10<sup>9</sup> sq metres, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">so if we could generate 2 W per sq metre of our
land area </span></b>from renewable sources of energy,, we could generate at a
power of 500GW, approximately our current level. But is anything approaching 2
W per sq metre practicable?</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">Hydro: </span></b>David MacKay estimates the maximum
theoretical hydro-power in lowland Britain as only <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">0.02 W per sq metre</span></b><span style="color: red;">,</span> (one hundredth of the target) and in Highland Britain
as <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">0.24 W per sq
metre</span></b> – <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">average about 0.15 W per sq metre</span></b> and what
proportion of this could we utilise in practice? – 20%? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That gets us down to <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">0.03 Watts per sq. metre.</span></b> Really,
the contribution this can make is almost trivial, and just think of the
expense, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>fun though it might be to mess
about with<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;"> Archimedean
screws in Cromford Dam. </span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">Wind. </span></b><span style="color: red;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>Coincidentially (or is it?), the practically
extractable wind energy per sq metre in the UK seems to average about 2 Watts
per square metre ,so we could get to the target by covering the entire country
with wind turbines at the optimum spacing. Actually, probably only about
two-thirds of the country has wind-speeds high enough to justify installing
turbines – but we can probably make up for that by employing off-shore area. If
we wanted only to replace current electrical power generation as end-use then
about an eighth of the country would do. If a quarter of current electricicity generation
is the target<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">,
then about a thirtieth of our land area would suffice. </span></b>This begins to
sound more feasible, and is indeed about what the UK
is currently aiming for, I think, and not far beyond what has already been
installed in Denmark,
Germany and Spain.
That amounts to an average output of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">4 GW</span></b>, which assuming a <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">20% load factor</span></b> requires <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">20Gw of rated
capacity</span></b>, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">only</b> about<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;"> 10,000
two-megawatt turbines</span></b>, an investment of only around <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">20 billion pounds</span></b>
in today’s money. A wind-turbines-on-all-hills policy seems to be going ahead
in Spain, where
I suspect<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;"> wild
country is still viewed as wasteland,</span></b> pending romantic poetical
publications by their equivalents of Wordsworth, Coleridge and Ruskin. More of
Wordsworth’s view of the Lake District later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Averages, however, conceal fluctuations from
zero to more-than-we-need. Wind-generated power needs to be stored for when
required, a knotty problem considered below.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">The sun, the sun! </span></b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even in this country, it’s often burning down
at the rate of a full kilowatt per square metre – from 10 sq metres, the
footprint area of your house maybe, we can replace a 1 litre of petrol (10Kw) in an hour!
Alas, however, there are clouds, low sun angle and winter - cutting into the
potential is the<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> knife of the long
nights!</b> (not quite original – a rockband got there first). So the average
power available in the UK
is only 100 Watts per square metre. Still, the human body, lazing in the sun all
year would absorb about 2.4kWh per day;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>2 kiloCalories if it could ALL be
converted into food. So what about:</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">Sun via Biofuel? </span></b><span style="color: red;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>Europe’s best plants in bright sunlight
and warmth can achieve <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">about 2% efficiency</span></b> in converting our 100 W per
square metre average sunlight into carbohydrate fuel; but the effect of cold
and their tendency to have evolved to switch off in low-light conditions
reduces this in practice to <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>somewhere in
the region 0<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">.2
to 0.5 W per sq metre</span></b>. What proportion of our agricultural land
could we spare? Well, as much as two thirds of our land area is classified as
“agricultural”, but only about a quarter as “arable”. We still need to eat, and
upland pastures would be very inefficient at producing biofuel, so I think 10%
of our land area is the absolute maximum that could be utilised, so for the
whole country that brings the Watts per metre down to <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>0.05 to 0.02 watts per metre </span></b>– like
hydro, symbolic rather than significant. </div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Was it <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">Fred Hoyle</span></b> who remarked that the sensitivity of
photosynthesis to different light wavelengths suggested that life had evolved
on a planet with a different solar spectrum to our sun and had arrived here
from space via meteorites. Certainly, if we want to propagate our form of life
in the Universe, something like sending out exploding warheads of poppy-seeds
might well be the best way (but doing the maths is depressing). Plants utilise
the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">red and blue
ends</span></b> of the visible spectrum, but with a big hole in the middle –
hence the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #00cc00;">green
colour of leaves</span></b>, reflecting or transmitting the unexploited
wavelengths.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Are scientists even now working on<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>genetically modified plants that would
utilise the whole visible spectrum? Their all-sunlight-absorbing leaves would
of course look <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">BLACK.</b> The era of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">black grass </span></b>will
then be upon us. Scientists would assure us that they’d built in safeguards
such as susceptibility to a modified Roundup, in case the gene spread – but
black plants being so much quicker-growing, they’d inexorably oust those old
outmoded green species – <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">England’s Black and Pleasant Land</span></b> would soon be
upon us. A fantasy? “Imagine my surprise” to open an issue of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scientific American</i> at an article
entitled <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: red;">“Reinventing the Leaf “</span></i></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Researchers are devising artificial leaves that could…..convert
sunlight and water into hydrogen fuel, which could be burned to power cars,
create heat or generate electricity, ending dependence on fossil fuels.” </i>These
particular leaves would, however, be entirely artificial and non-propagating.
Phew! The present aim is to get 10% efficiency in convertion of sunlight to
fuel energy.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">Sun via photovoltaics </span></b>Currently, photovoltaics are
very expensive financially and dangerously greedy for rare metals or expensive
silicon products. Nevertheless, they are encouragingly efficient – about 16%
conversion of light energy to electricity is the current standard, 20% the
current commercially available limit, 30% to 40% achievable but so far only in
the lab. So that’s 16 W per sq metre. If we put 20 sq. metres of photovoltaics
on the roofs of 25 million buildings, that is 500 million sq metres, we’d be
covering only a five-hundredth of the UK land area, so our watts per sq metre
on average is down to (surprise, surprise.. about<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;"> 0.03 W per sq. metre </span></b>– pretty
trivial once more – and the capital cost of that, even at £100 per square metre
(well below current costs) would be £50 billion.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">Sun via Ground or Air-source Heatpumps</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></b>There is an example in the building where this diatribe was originally presented (the
Derbyshire Eco-centre), a plant said to be able to produce some 20kW of
underfloor heating for an input of about 8 kW – an efficiency of 250% - about 4
x that obtainable from the most efficient gas-burning boiler or from
combined-heat-and-power fossil-fuel generating stations. MacKay estimates an
energy flow into the ground, derived from solar-heating as <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">3 to 5 W per sq metre</span>, </b>averaged over<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;"> </span></b>the
whole day and year, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>much lower than the
100 watt average flux because of reflection and the low conductivity of soils
and rocks. But at least we do have a figure in the right ball-park again! The
trouble is, our dwellings, offices and factories are packed into rather less
than 10% of our land-area, so the heat energy extractable in or adjacent to
urban areas is going to be only <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">0.3 to 0.5 W per sq metre </span></b>averaged over the whole
country. Nevertheless, such a reservoir could supply enough heat for a high
proportion of dwellings. Air-source doesn’t apparently suffer from the limits
of ground-source, but could surely have the effect of significantly cooling the
local air on winter’s days. One might not want to live downwind of a major
conurbation. With airflow halted by evening temperature inversion would the
bowls in which Cromford and Wirksworth lie become intolerably frozen? Would the
cold air of Wirksworth, perfumed by the tobacco of outside-the-pub smokers<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">, pour over the lip
of Cromford Hill</span></b>, right by the Eco-centre, to immerse the
Cromfordites? I haven’t done the maths on this yet…..</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">Tide and Wave Power.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></b>The potential around the UK
is considerable<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">,
our islands are breakwaters</span></b> upon which the Atlantic
presses and around which the tides are divided and accelerated. The energy
extractable turns out, once again, to be in the 2 W per sq metre area – to
match our demand, we have to find ways of harnessing wave and tide over areas
of sea comparable to the area of the UK
– again a daunting task.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="color: red; font-size: 14.0pt;">We could do some maths for
Wirksworth</span></u></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
25 sq kilometres sounds about right for the area of the
parish, 3 miles by 3. 200 people per sq. km, not far from the English average.
There’s no hydro, wave or tidal power (<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">are there small tides on Carsington Reservoir</span></b>,
though – a project for Anthony Gell school?). Wind it must be. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
25 x 1,000,000 sq metres x 2 Watts per sq. metre – 50,000 kW,
50 megawatts, which amounts to 10kW, or 240kWh per day, for each of the town’s
5000 persons – sounds very useful; just the sort of level we need. – more than
enough on average if a bit short of peak demand. But to generate that, with
turbines that on average deliver no more than about 20% of their rated power,
we would need to install wind turbines rated at 5 times the desired average
power output: 250 Megawatts –<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;"> 100 very large state-of-the-art 100 metre-tall turbines. </span></b>10
x10 at 500 metre intervals. Puts the Carsington or Matlock Moor projects rather
in the wind-shadow. Cost say £250 million or £50, 000 per person, about
£125,000 per household. A lifetime’s mortgage for everyone – that’s the sort of
cost we’re looking at.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Tidal power is predictable, but predictably<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> variable</b> over the year’s lunar cycles.
Solar power is fairly predictable, but VERY variable over the day, Wave and
wind are very unpredictable. We’d need to store lots of energy from the good
times to see us over those windless, and perhaps waveless frosty winter nights
and cold-snap weeks.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="color: red; font-size: 14.0pt;">Storage by Slartibartfast</span></u></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You may recall Douglas Adams’ revelation in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy </i>that
the Norwegian Fjords were designed on the planet <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Magrathea </b>by planetary-architect <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Slartibartfast</b>, who won an award for the design. I asked him to
redesign a fjord to store enough energy to keep the UK’s
lights on during a period when the wind doesn’t blow. Let’s assume we’ve
installed enough wind energy to provide in ideal conditions a quarter of our
electricity generation capacity: 10 gigawatts (ten thousand megawatts, ten
million kilowatts) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To replace this
during a windless <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">hard-as-iron week in the deep midwinter</span></b> we need to
store 10 x 24 x 7 gWh– about<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2000 gWh<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>= 2 x 10<sup>9 </sup>kWh, which equals 6 x 10<sup>9</sup>
megajoules, 6 x 10<sup>15 </sup>Joules of energy. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Alas for<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> Slartibartfast</b>
– his greatest work, the celebrated<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> <span style="color: red;">Sognefjord</span> </b>would have to be sacrificed to
progress. The Sognefjord is a deep trough about 100Km long and typically 5 Km
wide. We just need to dam up its mouth and a few side arms at Balestrand,
Hoyanger and Ardal and pump-store energy therein as raised seawater – like the
Dinorwic or Ben Cruachan schemes in the UK
but on a rather larger scale. Dinorwic can store about 1.5 GWh – so we need
about <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">1300 Dinorwics</span></b>
(this ties in nicely with MacKay’s estimate of 400 Dinorwics to store two days
wind energy) Slartibartfast pointed out that as the fjord empties back down to
sea level when generating, the dam will need to be twice the average water
height. I won’t bore you further with the details, but, remembering that we
need 1 joule of energy to raise 1 kg through 1 metre<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">, Slartibartfast’s design requires a dam height
of 2000 metres, or about 6500 ft.</span></b> A less obtrusive policy might have
been to use the wind-generated power to empty out the Fjord to that depth
(refilling it to reclaim the electricity) – but it’s average depth is less than
1000 metres. The high plateau above the Fjord’s mountain walls lies at about
1500 metres above sea-level, so Slartibartfast reports that he can’t meet the
full spec, but can guarantee only about 4 or 5 days emergency supply. We haven’t
put this proposal to the Norwegian Government yet, though there are already
plans to lay a high-tension cable under the North Sea on
the pretext of adding to the flexibility of the European Grid. If the
Norwegians charged a 5p per kWh premium to give the energy back, they’d earn
£75million every <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>time the Fjord was
emptied from 1500 metres. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not to be
sniffed at, it might be a return on the capital cost??</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="color: red; font-size: 14.0pt;">Energy density</span></u></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mechanical energy, such as hydro-power is, indeed, a very
volume-consuming way of storing energy. The so-called energy density,( measured
in kWh per cubic metre, say) is very low – imagine trying to run a car on the
energy from a descending pendulum weight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We could alternatively manage the job of storing the week’s UK
windpower energy using an oil tank of volume 2 x 10<sup>8</sup> litres, i.e. 2 x 10<sup>5<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></sup>cu metres, or 200 metres by 100 metres
by 10 metres tall – about the size of the Argos
distribution centre you pass on the A38 the other side of Burton on Trent. An
oil-tanker-full in fact. Liquified natural gas would do just as well. But has
only about two thirds the energy density of diesel oil. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I suspect that some such project may well be
in hand, so the Sognefjord may be safe, at least until the oil and gas run out.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="color: red; font-size: 14.0pt;">Saving Energy</span></u></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know what any <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">Transition Wirksworth</span></b>, Transition Matlock or
Sustainable Youlgreave persons are going to say. Hold on, we all know that <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">SAVING </span></b>energy
is a far better and cheaper way to go than trying to generate our present
demand from renewable sources. Indeed the whole message of what I’ve said so
far is to point out the appalling scale of any meaningful renewable energy
project - disruption of great swathes of land and sea, tens of billions of
pounds of investment. Can’t we reduce our demand instead? <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
saving energy isn’t easy either</span></b>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">RULE OF HALF</span></b> seems to me to apply almost
universally. We <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">could</span></b>
all use cars that are <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">twice as efficient</span></b> (i.e smaller and less overpowered);
we could all <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">insulate
our houses</span></b> and change to more efficient condensing-boiler or
heat-pump warming – and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">halve</span></b> our household energy needs ; we could all
recycle metals, paper, plastics, glass, which reduces the energy needed to make
new finished materials, typically by – guess what – a <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">half</span></b>. Maybe we could fly half as
often ( I can’t help much here as I don’t fly at all – What never? Well….hardly
ever.). But that only<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;"> halves </span></b>our energy consumption – and how are we going
to force people to do that? Only about <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">10% of us</span></b> at the outside take any practical
interest in these matters, and most of what we do is talk. Tony Blair for
Instance:<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: red;">“Unless
we act now, not some time distant but now, these consequences, disastrous as
they are, will be irreversible. So there is nothing more serious, more urgent
or more demanding of leadership.”</span></i><span style="color: red;"> </span>(October
2006).Two months later, responding to the suggestion that he should SHOW
leadership by not flying to Barbados
for holidays: <span style="color: red;">“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a
bit impractical actually….”.</i> </span><span style="color: black;">The Lord of
the Manor declines to halt another <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Tragedy
of the Commons</b> …. You can interpret “Commons” either way.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="color: red; font-size: 14.0pt;">Embedded Energy</span></u></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A big almost logically inevitable problem is that if we
spend less on driving or heating or flying, we’ll have more to spend on something
else, and absolutely everything we eat or buy has oodles of energy embedded (to
use the customary term) in it. In the table below are some examples.</div>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="1" class="MsoNormalTable" style="margin-left: 115.0pt; mso-cellspacing: 1.5pt; width: 403px;">
<tbody>
<tr style="height: 42.6pt; mso-yfti-irow: 0;">
<td style="height: 42.6pt; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Material</span></b></div>
</td>
<td style="height: 42.6pt; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Energy cost<br />
(mJ/kg)</span></b></div>
</td>
<td style="height: 42.6pt; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">kWh per kg</span></b></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 14.7pt; mso-yfti-irow: 1;">
<td style="height: 14.7pt; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red; font-size: 11.0pt;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium" title="Aluminium"><span style="color: red;">Aluminium</span></a></span></div>
</td>
<td style="height: 14.7pt; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">227-342</span></div>
</td>
<td style="height: 14.7pt; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">100 ( 0.6 kWh per drink
can)</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 13.95pt; mso-yfti-irow: 2;">
<td style="height: 13.95pt; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red; font-size: 11.0pt;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cement" title="Cement"><span style="color: red;">Cement</span></a></span></div>
</td>
<td style="height: 13.95pt; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">5-9</span></div>
</td>
<td style="height: 13.95pt; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">2 - 3</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 14.7pt; mso-yfti-irow: 3;">
<td style="height: 14.7pt; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red; font-size: 11.0pt;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper" title="Copper"><span style="color: red;">Copper</span></a></span></div>
</td>
<td style="height: 14.7pt; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">60-125</span></div>
</td>
<td style="height: 14.7pt; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">20 - 40</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 13.95pt; mso-yfti-irow: 4;">
<td style="height: 13.95pt; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red; font-size: 11.0pt;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic" title="Plastic"><span style="color: red;">Plastics</span></a></span></div>
</td>
<td style="height: 13.95pt; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">60-120</span></div>
</td>
<td style="height: 13.95pt; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">20 – 40 (0.7 kWh per drink
can)</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 13.95pt; mso-yfti-irow: 5;">
<td style="height: 13.95pt; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red; font-size: 11.0pt;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass" title="Glass"><span style="color: red;">Glass</span></a></span></div>
</td>
<td style="height: 13.95pt; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">18-35</span></div>
</td>
<td style="height: 13.95pt; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">6 - 10</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 14.7pt; mso-yfti-irow: 6;">
<td style="height: 14.7pt; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red; font-size: 11.0pt;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron" title="Iron"><span style="color: red;">Iron</span></a></span></div>
</td>
<td style="height: 14.7pt; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">20-25</span></div>
</td>
<td style="height: 14.7pt; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">7 - 8</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 13.95pt; mso-yfti-irow: 7;">
<td style="height: 13.95pt; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red; font-size: 11.0pt;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brick" title="Brick"><span style="color: red;">Bricks</span></a></span></div>
</td>
<td style="height: 13.95pt; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">2-5</span></div>
</td>
<td style="height: 13.95pt; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">1-2</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 42.6pt; mso-yfti-irow: 8; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;">
<td style="height: 42.6pt; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red; font-size: 11.0pt;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper" title="Paper"><span style="color: red;">Paper</span></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: magenta; font-size: 11.0pt;">Petrol/Diesel</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: magenta; font-size: 11.0pt;">Food</span></b></div>
</td>
<td style="height: 42.6pt; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">20-25</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: magenta; font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>30-35</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: magenta; font-size: 11.0pt;">45 (non vegan)</span></b></div>
</td>
<td style="height: 42.6pt; padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">7-8<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(6 kWh per kg back by burning)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: magenta; font-size: 11.0pt;">13<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>kWh per Kg</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: magenta; font-size: 11.0pt;">15 kWh for average diet</span></b></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I slipped petrol and food into the bottom of that table just
to point out that nearly everything we use is similarly energy intensive- but
of course we don’t burn or throw away the THINGS we use – or do we?? Well, as
I’ve said above, we can recycle materials other than food and fossil fuels, and
that reduces the figures in the above table by a factor of two or three (MUCH
more in the case of Aluminium) – but every time our possessions go through the
recyle cycle, they are still absorbing typically 5 to 10 kWh per kilogramme. A
car, incidentally, even if kept permanently in the garage has an embedded
energy equal to about 100,000 km of driving. The only solution in my opinion
is:</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="color: red; font-size: 14.0pt;">Becoming Poorer</span></u></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, how can we reduce our energy consumption down towards a level
that might be sustainable? We have simply to consume less of EVERYTHING;
substitution just won’t do. (Prodnose: what about playing golf instead of
flying?) A free-market economist would jump in here and say – “no need to
worry, the MARKET will take care of all that, as fossil fuels get scarcer and
mining them more expensive, energy prices will rocket and, hey presto, we’ll
all get poorer automatically”. The market, however, has a way of getting
hysterical, of booming and busting, and it only works efficiently if <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">EXTERNAL COSTS</b> are charged to the
producer – which they blatantly are not. Sainsbury’s pay me nothing for the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">time I waste stuck
at their bloody traffic lights!</span></b> And, given the contemporary very
long-tailed income distribution, the details of “leaving it to the market”, in
terms of social injustice and conflict, might be very unpleasant.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="color: red; font-size: 14.0pt;">Prudently Looking Ahead</span></u></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Market is not<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;"> allowed</span></b> to be very good at sorting out
international problems, either. Unexpected political and military conflicts get
in the way. Our position in the UK
and in Europe generally is one of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">fragility</span></b>, our supply routes by air,
sea, rail and pipeline stretch far across the globe. Twice last century,
U-boats came close to winning wars by a successful blockade of Britain.
We only grew our own <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">pit-props AFTER</span></b> the first war (too late). After
the post-second-war unification of Western Europe the
potential aggressor became the Soviet Union, and -
surprise, surprise! - they built up a very large submarine fleet – over 100
nuclear and many more diesel-powered, based initially on WW2 German designs – I
wonder why?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pit-props should have been
on the pre-first war defence budget and, likewise, the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">excess cost of generating<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>energy locally</span></b>, and that means
from renewable and nuclear sources, should be considered as<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;"> part of today’s defence budget</span></b>; <span style="color: black;">an alternative to maintaining a “global military reach”. We
can become more secure </span><span style="color: black;">AND</span><span style="color: black;"> poorer at one stroke. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>To quote the Economist of September
4-10<sup>th</sup>. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Renewables in </i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Germany</i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> are growing more quickly than in almost any
other EU state…but that is only because consumers pay a large subsidy, some
Euros 10 Billion last year.” </i>Great! They’re making themselves poorer! Such
a better use of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>high-tech
expenditure<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>than our out-of-date <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">white-elephant Trident</span></b>
system.<span style="color: black;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="color: red;">Political Stance</span></u></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, can Transition Wirksworth, Matlock, Middleton and Youlgreave
have any significant effect? Directly, the answer is a resounding <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">NO</b>. Indirectly, the result might be to
help educate a public opinion that will make <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red;">very big central government action possible </span></b>.
And that’s a remarkable statement, coming from Dave Scarthin, a classic
anti-government, pro-small-business suspected closet Thatcherite. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Oh, and I briefly mentioned the baleful effect of Wordsworth
on our attitude to wilderness, re-branding the useless wastes of the Lake
District as a Shrine to Natural Beauty. A contemporary bard has
taken up arms. Whether he’s for or against the Lakeland Poets and for or
against Wind Turbines is of course a matter of literary interpretation. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="color: red;">Reflections in Windermere<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>by William Wirksworth</span></u></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
I wandered lonely as
a cloud</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
That floats on high
o’er vales and hills</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
When all at once I
saw a crowd,</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
A host, of silver
windermills.</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Lake
and trees were hid by sails,</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Motionless despite
the gales.</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Occasionally one
turned, like star</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
That shines but
rarely, hid by cloud.</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
They margined each
high fell and scar;</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Round every bay
another crowd.</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Ten thousand saw I at
a glance,</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Each one in need of
maintenance.</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
The waves beside them
danced but they</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
With gearbox jammed
could scarcely turn.</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
A poet could no more
be gay</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
At sight of so much
money burned.</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
I gazed - and gazed –
took one more gander,</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
How all that cash
could help Ruanda!</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
For oft when on my
couch I lie,</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Nought else to do in
power cuts,</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
They flash upon the
inward eye</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Those warm,
remembered, fossil nuts.</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
The light’s come on!
– Where’s Dorothee?</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Boil the kettle!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cup of Tea!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dave Mitchell, Scarthin Books.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Written as a talk to “oppose” Evan Rutherford at a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wirksworth Festival Special</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Café
Philosophique</i></b>, at Derbyshire Eco-Centre, September 2010; <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>tidied up September 2012</span>Dave's Diatribes & Whimsieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716766140541138396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1524596922391321367.post-17166896669933100562013-03-07T06:50:00.001-08:002013-03-08T07:14:21.019-08:00The Scarthin Way -How Independent Bookshops can Survive?<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“We’re just here to
get some Lunch”; How can Independent Bookshops Survive?</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Can bookshops survive on the High Street – or anywhere else
for that matter? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By sticking obstinately
to our well-tried ways perhaps? To quote the opening of our own bookshop leaflet:
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Welcome to the picturesque performances
of this ancient trade, daily and free of charge! Growing since 1497 (or was it
1794), free of plans, budgets, missions statements and piped music…</i>Or
should we be going with the flow, “growing” our footfall, offering wi-fi,
downloads and Kindles – not forgetting coffee. Scarthin Books has long had a
busy café; only today I overheard the phrase, spoken into a mobile phone, that
heads this article. At least the speaker finished by saying <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“</b>but afterwards we’ll have a mooch
around in case there’s any books we want.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Popping into Janette Ray’s little rare-book shop, in a
historic York thronged with
half-term visitors, I was handed a leaflet listing no less than thirteen
booksellers in the City. How can so many survive, even in York?
These days we are told how many bookshops, as well as pubs, are closing, but we
still wonder how so many of both can survive, and the sobering reasons for
survival are often the same for bookshops as they are pubs: many offer only a
part-time wage to their owners and next to none for employed staff; many are
retirement pastimes; many are run for personal satisfaction by proprietors who
don’t need (even if they hope for) a significant income. How do you earn a
proper living as publican or bookseller these days?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Bookshops have opportunities not open to pubs. Firstly, two
of the York bookshops are run by
Oxfam, benefiting from the gift of stock, from voluntary labour and from
charitable status. I don’t know of any “charity pubs”, though there is a
growing movement to run both pubs and bookshops as “community” enterprises. Secondly,
several of the shops are in reality fronts for a radically different type of
business, namely the sale of valuable rare and antiquarian volumes through
private networks, catalogues, bookfairs and internet sites. The shop, with its
glittering stock of “handpicked” volumes, is not expected to sell much over the
counter, it is there to establish the credentials of the business and to
attract the rarities that are the real bread and butter of the well-connected, scholarly
proprietor; indeed two of the York shops are not even open to the public except
by appointment, and another warns the visitor that it is only “usually” open
during its business hours. I suppose some pubs have traditionally been fronts
for other related activities, the most respectable of which might involve live
music or nightclubs for teens and twenties, and many have now diversified into
selling coffees and meals – more about diversification later. The third
striking difference between the list of York
bookshops and the world of pubs is that, excepting Oxfam, none of the York
booksellers are part of a national chain. theres no equivalent of Witherspoon’s.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Wait a minute, you will be objecting, what about Waterstones
and W.H.Smith’s! You’ve found me out! I deliberately hadn’t mentioned that the York
leaflet lists only “secondhand and antiquarian booksellers” and it is these
that I’ve been discussing so far. What sort of animals are new-book bookshops? If
you go onto the web and search for the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Booksellers
Association</i> (BA) you will find that their database lists ten members in York,
not far short of the number of secondhand and antiquarian businesses. It seems
that new bookshops must be surviving too. This initial impression is
misleading; the York booksellers
include not only two branches of the <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>W.H.Smith newsagents’ chain, one Waterstone’s,
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a Wesley Owen Christian Bookshop and a
Blackwell’s University Bookshop, but also FOUR supermarkets – two Tescos and
two Sainsburys. In contrast to the TEN
independents out of thirteen second-hand and antiquarian booksellers, there is
only ONE independent out of ten new
bookshops– the Little Apple Bookshop in High Petergate. Sellers of old books
insist on individual freedom, sellers of new books are chained together. Survival
as a new bookshop seems almost to require being part of a chain, benefiting
from the advantages of scale in advertising and being able to buy at
preferential discounts. Relatively late entrants into bookselling, the giant
supermarket chains are now increasing their booksales (not “growing” them, please)
by double-figure percentages annually and are, along with Amazon and other
internet sellers, threatening even the largest specialist bookselling chains. What
hope can there be for the individually owned and operated independent
bookshops?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Despite the
domination of their subscription-base by giant chains, the BA has latterly been
trying to raise the profile of the Independents with shared marketing campaigns
and “Independent Booksellers Week”. Too little, too late, I fear; the number of
independent shops has shrunk by a third within the last decade. In this
situation, I was very surprised to find the Trade Association we’ve been a
member of for 38 years suddenly introducing a major price-hike to our annual
membership fee - for the first time in all those years, they are calculating
our subscription on the basis of our TOTAL booksales, not just sales of new
books, but sales of second-hand and antiquarian books too! </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Why have the BA finally caught up with the secret of
Scarthin Books (and before us, of Galloway and Porter in Cambridge,
for instance), that a good way to thrive is to sell both new and old books? It
seems that four years ago a survey of the American book scene revealed that an
actual majority of shops there do both.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In our shop, we realised from the beginning that being a substantial
stockist of second-hand books adds depth and excitement to an otherwise
predictably fashion-following new bookshop, while the stocking of new
up-to-the-minute books keeps a second-hand bookshop young, inviting and
inclusive, rather than gloomy and forbidding to the uninitiated. Customers
often trade in their old books for new, and some of those old books are like
old lamps to the collector. Children learn to like books and bookshops here in
a way hardly possible in a second-hand shop. Families and friends with diverse
interests can disperse to search for the latest TV cookbook or for scarce
out-of-print monographs on their enthusiasm – both have at least a chance of
success, and both may be diverted from new to old or from old to new. And of
course there must be a café. We never feel we have been truly welcomed or have
really made a place our own until we eat and drink there – whether it be a
friend’s home or a mountaintop, a museum or a bookshop - and a good bookshop is
a museum you can buy a bit of .</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Will the Booksellers’ Association succeed in a takeover bid
for ALL bookshops? It seems unlikely that
most secondhand and antiquarian dealers will be interested in joining, although
the ability to sell and exchange book tokens might be a carrot, and how will
their own associations, the Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association (PBFA) and
the Antiquarian Booksellers Association (ABA) react? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Should booksellers stick to well-tried ways or embrace
change? Why not embrace a change to the well-tried Scarthin way?</div>
Dave's Diatribes & Whimsieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716766140541138396noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1524596922391321367.post-1173485204036663442012-05-25T04:12:00.002-07:002013-03-08T07:09:02.215-08:00Musical Parenthood – the Agony and the Ecstasy<h2 class="page-title" style="color: #333333; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18pt; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">( All musical opinions here are personal and untutored)</span></span></h2>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Every year in Britain, year in, year out, around 700,000 babies are born but more than a million musical instruments are sold. You will not be surprised to learn that over 300,000 of these instruments are the recorders beloved of infant and junior schoolmistresses, and 200,000 are electric guitars – more than one for every two boys born. Acoustic guitars are not far behind, even if many seem to migrate to charity shops. More surprising is the sale of 300,000 portable keyboards – but perhaps many of these are Christmas toy keyboards for toddlers rather than band background blasters. That leaves about 200,000 for all the rest – woodwind, brass, “bowed instruments” and pianos, in which latter category digital models now heavily outnumber acoustic pianofortes, “free to collector” as they are often now advertised.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">So EVERY CHILD must surely be learning an instrument. Well of course they are – either their parents are musicians, in which case the tradition must be cherished, or Mum or Dad failed to become musicians themselves, in which case they are desperate for their children to do better. Perhaps most couples are “mixed marriages” – a musician with a would-be musician, and this can be an especially potent background.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">I’ve lots of personal experience of this – both as a semi-willing young learner myself (becoming a just-about-half-competent pianist) and as a single and a double parent ferrying my children to guitar, piano and violin lessons up dark and narrow back lanes in ingeniously secluded Derbyshire towns and villages. These days, the opportunities for young learners to perform in public are at least as great as in the mythical golden ages of the parlour song and of the competitive festival, perhaps greater than ever before. In addition to the annual concerts put on by instrument teachers and the Christmas and Easter concerts at school, there are the frequent performances by the Music Centres which have recently sprung up in nearly every town, rehearsing on a weekday evening or a Saturday morning and encompassing wind and string groups at every level from absolute beginners upwards. Well, nearly every level – every level except GOOD, you might think. Musical parents must steel themselves for about a decade of concert attendance at which your hands will be worn out by clapping and your seats made sore by sitting through far too many pieces played excruciatingly badly by far too many children including your own. The piano, at least, makes its own sound sound, and woodwind instruments, even the reedy recorder, can sound lovely at an elementary level, but teachers of other instruments seem rarely to select performance pieces that are both sufficiently challenging (not ALL on open strings) and can sound nice when played by learners. The intermediate brass will threaten to damage your inner ear, and as for strings! Well, the violin played by any but very skilled players makes a sound which is either excruciating or hilarious or both together. Every tune is out of tune and it is difficult to suppress either uncontrollable giggles or a tetanic grin of anguish. One of the most memorable ordeals of my youth was sitting in the front row of the choir, visible to everyone in the Grammar School hall, trying to keep a straight face and suppress an explosion of mirth during the mixed-masters-and-boys string quartet. Of course, our parental love and pride and the civic comradeship with other families does overcome the mirth and loathing and the tedium. It is wonderful to see how children so young learn to find their way through the intricately interwoven instrumental parts of consort pieces and how a generation seems to be growing up without the terror of performing that afflicts so many of their elders, myself particularly. Soon we will be as confident and competent as the Eisteddfodaued Welsh.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">And then, suddenly, after all those years of striving and suffering, there is a joyful emergence. Suddenly the string players are good enough to join the PDSO, the Peak District String Orchestra, Founded by Pat Curteis and now conducted by Ian Naylor. Every year, a highlight is the Peak District Music Centres Christmas Concert at the Buxton Octagon. In the first half, we listen to the long progression of all the preparatory, junior, training and intermediate groups. Apparently angelic children, some pieces flatter, some over-strain their capabilities. Uninhibited applause, a re-run of the growth of our own children condensed into an hour and culminating in Jason Curteis’ spirited conducting of the ambitious and almost-there Intermediate Strings. I sit up tensely, willing them to get it right, rejoicing in the sweet passages, lamenting those slightly out-of-tune high passing notes.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Then the dash and the queue for the interval drinks, peering over heads to locate those acquaintances seen four times a year before we find our seats again for the second half and the patiently-awaited turn of the senior group of all, the PDSO, to play. Their first piece will be the Adagietto from Symphony Number 5 by Mahler. There is a hush – and suddenly we are in a quite different world. Bows and the conductor’s hands are raised and still. There is movement, but at what moment did they begin to play? Silence has become an almost inaudible whisper; the whisper swells and then sweeps into the first full chords, and, once again I’m prickling with emotion. This is what all those years of practice and performance were leading too – this beautiful, to my amateur ears exquisite and finally professional, sound. The dynamic and emotional range, the rich colours, the intensity and control, the communication between the conductor and the players – the orchestra are an enchanted unity and we are spellbound. Instead of the customary telegraphed winding up to a thunderclap ending that composers usually lay on, this piece dies away as gradually as it began. Finally the sound is imperceptible. The bristle of raised bows is still, the conductor motionless. Is that the end? The audience in the Octagon is absolutely silent. We hold our breath. Then Ian lowers his hands. We explode into applause. I cheer. They’ve done it again! Maybe there were one or two moments when the texture wasn’t quite right, or the timing slightly ragged, but it is early days, only a term since their most senior and accomplished players left, as they must each year, to go to University or Music College. How can they survive that annual loss of their most brilliant? But every year they do. (and, stop press March 09, they have one more, another concert that again felt like the best ever!) What a privilege to hear such an orchestra – what a privilege to play in it!</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Not every piece will be performed with such intensity of course – there will be lighter or more rumbustious compositions during which the grins and shared laughter (which characterise the weekly practices) will be seen flickering round the benches – but every year Ian does come up with his Great Romantic Number, which will absolutely slay the audience. The first year I heard them play it was the shivery Nimrod of the Enigma Variations, then another Elgar, the Introduction and Allegro for Strings, then Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings – and this year the Mahler. Ian usually turns to the audience to introduce the Great Romantic Number, and his introduction goes something as follows – I hardly exaggerate at all, though I will stir several intros in together. The “greatest” actually applied to the Tchaikovsky.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">A few words about our first piece tonight. This is almost certainly the greatest piece of music ever written for string orchestra. The lyrical initial theme is taken and reprised in a climax that is technically about as near perfect as can be. Of course, Mahler wasn’t happy composing it, to quote from his letters:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">I am still working on the string piece, it will be as good as I can make it, I suppose, but how good is that? There is nothing for it but more discipline, work, work and discipline! (here Ian looks pointedly at the orchestra) Your ever-unhappy friend, Gustav.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Well, now we are going to play it for you – and it’s an extraordinarily difficult piece – it CAN sound like a landslide of lost notes – but it won’t when we play it, will it!! Here it is.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">So, when they didn’t win their category in the 2007 national youth final at the Birmingham Symphony Hall, we were all outraged – they wuz robbed! – how can there really be youth orchestras elsewhere in the land better than the PDSO? Well, I suppose there is Chetham’s School, and the Yehudi Menuhin. The wonder of the PDSO is how a consort of grade 6 and upwards (and upwards +++) players can be inspired to play so impressively together. Update: In the 2009 Festival of Youth Music the PDSO at last WON their category; we don’t yet know whether they will be included in the Albert Hall concert. This last Summer, as part of twinning celebrations, Derbyshire hosted the Toyota Junior Orchestra, who played with formidable professionalism, and our daughter Ruth generously admitted that they were, well, just perfect! – but then they are the so-focused Japanese who rehearse at the end of EVERY school day, not just once a week! The Toyota juniors paid a complement to their host culture by playing a Benjamin Britten piece at once enchanting and little-known to most of us audience, and also joined with the Derbyshire City and County Youth Orchestra for a mind-blowing symphony. The City and County Youth Orchestra gets together for short residential courses just twice a year and in a few days, often under under Peter Starke and the section tutors, work up a classic or a seldom-performed work that will have you standing up and shouting for an encore! I have the CD from a couple of years ago. Almost finally, I should mention the tumultuous Wirksworth Music Centre, one of the longest established, most various and most inclusive (even of adult learners and people from Matlock!) and therefore requiring most stamina from its audiences. A host of groups currently culminate in David Francis’ Senior Strings and Chris Dixon’s Senior Recorder Consort, small groups particularly hard-hit when players leave, but both getting better and better just now!</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">As regards singing, rather than playing, old school-choir and choral-society hands like myself have long been bewailing the decline of school singing, perhaps because it is seen as girlish in mixed comprehensives. No-one is coming through and we are all getting older, we observe, although there is now a new wave of popular everyone-can-sing choirs who are in great demand. Round here, The Fishpond Singers and Derbyshire Diva are sucking up all the singers and would-be-singers. Formed only a year ago and already making an intriguing sound, neither childlike or “adult” is the Derbyshire Youth Chorale, twenty odd young people drawn from Derbyshire schools and directed by “King Phil”. They paid a return visit to Japan in October for a very busy week of performance and workshops and were gobsmacked by the place and their reception.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">So, all is far from lost in the world of classical music here in Derbyshire; all that parental investment is worthwhile, the kids take off – and I haven’t even mentioned all the Rock Bands, and the Folk Groups, and the leaders and mentors who (sometimes) guide them, but that is another story, or rather stories.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">DJM January 09</span></div>
Dave's Diatribes & Whimsieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716766140541138396noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1524596922391321367.post-44993643265885896502012-05-25T04:11:00.002-07:002012-05-25T04:11:45.721-07:00The Dave Mitchell Bookmark Collection: Meditation on a Theme<h1 class="page-title" style="color: #333333; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18pt; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;">Let’s go out for the day – I wonder what’s on this weekend? A quick scan of The Independent’s weekly listings comes up with Roger Bacon at the Tate Modern or Isamu Noguchi at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. What about Arlo Guthrie on tour, or Julius Caesar at the Tobacco Factory? Maybe something completely different – Blackburn Rovers versus Hull City, or An Evening with Joan Bakewell? What’s this – The Dave Mitchell Bookmark Collection? No, I think we’ll give that a miss.</span></h1><div style="color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;">Actually, it’s a fantasy that the Independent would even list my worthy exhibition. Having a collection of bookmarks must be a specific diagnostic test for nerds. I am indeed wearing an anorak even as I type this out. Within the anorak is a hairy sweater, on my chin is a less hairy beard and on the table lie my short-sight spectacles – and I used to be a Morris Dancer. In the old Eagle Comic days (yes, my age is uncool too) I would have been an applicant (failed) for the role of Giglamps, the weedy bespectacled swat of the fourth form. I remember that in comic strip adventures the resource and intelligence of Giglamps would turn out to be vital at a crucial moment, and indeed it is people like me, or as I try to be, that RUN THE WORLD! You un-nerds are all in our power. BEHAVE, or we’ll stop ordering books and let the lights go out! Alas, not much worldly status or wealth comes with the power to keep the Power on; maybe we’ll get our revenge by wiping your hard-drives…but the main thing is that some women really do go for us, despite the contrary myth.</span></div><div style="color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;">Stop rambling – the Bookmarks! I’ve been buying and selling second-hand books for 35 years “How long?” 35 YEARS. Between the buying and the selling I do usually open the books to make sure there are words inside (describing the bookseller’s quick appraisal-scan technique would make another article), and sometimes there is a bookmark inside as well – if it’s doing its job, then that is where the book will open. I promptly take the bookmark out and KEEP IT! Why?, or perhaps Why not? The deep motivation is probably an adaptation selected by evolution, the desire to combat the general increase of entropy, as evidenced by stamp-collecting and the general desire not to throw anything away – Collecting as a thermodynamic strategy. Nearer the surface, I think I am fascinated by the window bookmarks afford on cultural history, on styles of commercial art, on fashions, on social movements. Should nothing else from our civilisation survive, you could reconstruct our entire way of life from them – maybe.</span></div><div style="color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;">Now I’ve confessed. Maybe you will never grace these (many) steps again, preferring to frequent the (lesser) establishments of those more sporting booksellers who leave the bookmarks in. I have already been punished once for my cupidity, when I missed one of the most beautiful bookmarks I have ever seen, Victorian and in the shape of a champagne bottle, which a regular customer triumphantly showed me AFTER he had bought the book it was in, as if it wasn’t enough to be escaping with all our most precious volumes.</span></div><div style="color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;">How many bookmarks have I accumulated? Ivan, our book-pricer, and I seem to fill a pocket file every few months, and after a year’s overfilling they get too thick for the filing cabinet and have to be stored somewhere else. I keep finding nests of these bulging files in odd corners of the house and shop, with labels like Bookmarks IV, 1983-85. Supposing I put aside only one bookmark a day (and we have a throughput of more like a hundred second-hand books a day) then that’s some 350 a year. Multiply by the aforesaid 35 years, or 49 times 25 times 10 if you are a mental arithmagician – and you come out with about 12,000. Is that a lot?? End to end they wouldn’t even stretch for a mile, let alone “to the moon and back”. Certainly no gull-infested EC Bookmark Mountain. At ten to the square foot, I could exhibit them on twelve hundred square feet of wall space; say 150 feet of eight-foot high wall, or around the walls of a single 50 foot by 25 foot room in a museum or art gallery. The Dave Mitchell Bookmarks Room. We could even do it in the shop – if I first got rid of the books. I can’t, so has any kindly curator out there a spare room in an art gallery? It would make a change from all that white space with a video, an arbitrary installation and a bored curator in the middle, like they do at the Arnolfini. Contemporary Art galleries do seem to follow in the tradition of Thorstein Veblen’s concept of Conspicuous Consumption – “Look how much expensive city-centre space we can afford to do nothing with.” Why not waste the space another way – by letting the Dave Mitchell Collection of Bookmarks see the toplight of day. The only expense would be blu-tack. Actually, no – displaying them without damage is a challenge, even if you are content to see just one side. It might be necessary to cut 12,000 holes of just the right sizes in several reams of card sheets.</span></div><div style="color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;">If I can’t exhibit them, then what? Maybe I could get a Ph.D. bursary to study them. I already have a Ph.D. – are you allowed two? It would be nice to be a “Dr. Dr.”, I think they have them in Germany. Some Aspects of the Unwitting Testimony of the Bookmark? Certainly bookmarks do constitute a witness to social life and its changing emphases. Lots of flourishing private and public organisations seem to think that they just haven’t made it if they are not, in addition to the TV programmes and the Books-of-the-Series, up there in bookmarks alongside the libraries, the margarine adverts and the anti-litter campaigns. I suppose that bookmarks can be viewed as moles, or sleepers or fifth-columnists, going to ground between the pages of quite unrelated and innocent books, ready to leap out and influence the unsuspecting reader at any time for centuries to come, books being a long-lived species (see our article on <a href="http://216.172.178.73/~scarthin/the-ecology-of-books/" style="color: #006699; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">The Ecology of Books</a>). Maybe the whole point of bookmarks is that there is no need to go to an exhibition; they are out there waiting to assail your eyes whether you like it or not, telling you to wash your hands, visit the citizens’ advice bureau or insure your life. Bookmarks – benign influence or virulent influenza? Yes, there’s definitely scope for a grant-application somewhere here, but I need classical scientific or medical terms for bookmark and bookmark-collection – any suggestions? <em>Compilatus Libersignorum?</em></span></div><div style="color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;">If all else fails, I suppose I could start slipping the old bookmarks back into new books – we have some 40,000 new volumes in stock, we could put a historic bookmark in nearly every one of them. Could be a good marketing stunt!</span></div>Dave's Diatribes & Whimsieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716766140541138396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1524596922391321367.post-16239205881438324152012-05-25T04:10:00.000-07:002012-05-25T04:10:36.405-07:00Phil’s Court Report: A Christmas Carol 2009?<div style="background-color: #e5f7ff; clear: right; color: #444444; float: right; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: left;"><img align="right" alt="" height="240" src="http://www.scarthinbooks.com/images/RecyclingSnow600.jpg" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); padding: 5px;" width="320" /></div><h1 class="page-title" style="color: #333333; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18pt; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;">A Derbyshire bookshop owner is facing what a judge has described as a lengthy jail sentence for breaching health and safety regulations involving his staff and customers.</span></h1><div style="color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;">Conditions at Scarthin Books of Cromford were described as Dickensian and worse than a Victorian workhouse.</span></div><div style="color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;">Derby Crown Court heard how the eccentric owner Dr David Mitchell, 65, made staff risk their lives by climbing into a tiny cupboard above rickety ancient stairs to remove cardboard boxes for recycling and then haul them for miles across ice and snow to fill up his van.</span></div><div style="color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;">One shop manager, Wendy Cooper, 59, broke her fingernail and suffered a fractured eyelash in the trek across the wilds of Derbyshire. Other staff suffered similar injuries.</span></div><div style="color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;">Mrs Cooper told the court: “How can a woman of my age and in my condition expect to lump bloody great sheets of cardboard across treacherous roads and fields in the snow. It’s not on. But we’ve all suffered intolerable hardship and we are often made to carry out tasks which are in blatant breach of health and safety regulations.”</span></div><div style="color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;">The court also heard how Mr Mitchell would walk through a shop full of customers wearing a cap and nightgown counting money and complaining that people weren’t spending enough. Customers were also subjected to constant obnoxious smells although, in his defence, Mr Mitchell said this was caused by cabbage cooking in the café.</span></div><div style="color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;">John Pidcock, 84, the shop’s expert on rare books said he was often forced to work. On one occasion, he told the court, he fell through a window when he lost his balance while carrying boxes of books during gale force winds.</span></div><div style="color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;">Guy Cooper, a manager at the bookshop for 119 years, said although Mr Mitchell allowed staff a day off at Christmas he made them work until midnight even though there were no customers after 6pm. “We mostly had to vacuum, polish and feed Dave’s chickens,” said Mr Cooper.</span></div><div style="color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;"><img align="right" alt="" src="http://www.scarthinbooks.com/images/ChimneyBuilding_400.jpg" style="border: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); padding: 5px;" /><span style="background-color: white;">Defence barrister Barrel O’Laffs said his client, who pleaded guilty to<strong><span style="color: green;"> 31 breaches of the Safety At Work Act</span></strong>, had not been able to make any improvements to the shop since buying it in 1974 because all profits went towards restoring a ruin in his garden.</span></div><div style="color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;">“I know I didn’t have planning permission but it’ll look very nice when it’s finished. I know a very good builder who only charges me £5,000 a day.” said Mr Mitchell.</span></div><div style="color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;">The judge Mr Justice Bertrams bailed Mr Mitchell to appear in court again in the New Year and told him “Unless you start looking after your staff, valuing them, making them warm and paying them a living wage you’ll go to jail for a very long time. It is clear throughout this case that you have also spent far too much money buying second hand books. This must cease.”</span></div><div style="color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;">Mr Mitchell said he would try but the current economic climate meant he had difficulty feeding his own family because he had to maintain the shop’s stock.</span></div><div style="color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;">Mr Mitchell admitted outside the court he had promised the staff a very large Christmas bonus for looking after the business while he went on sabbatical leave. “Unfortunately, it won’t be as big as they think” he said. “Oh, and a Merry Christmas to all my customers.”</span></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />Dave's Diatribes & Whimsieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716766140541138396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1524596922391321367.post-45308491566656321462012-05-25T04:09:00.002-07:002012-05-25T04:09:26.563-07:00The Good Ship Scarthin<h1 class="page-title" style="background-color: #e5f7ff; color: #333333; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18pt; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #444444; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;">Composed by the Lewd Lady of Church Lane for Christmas 2008</span></h1><h3 style="background-color: #e5f7ff; color: #333333; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">The Waves (and Grumblings in the Fo’c'sle) seem to have risen higher since <em>The Ballad of Scarthin Books</em> of Yesterchristmas</h3><div style="background-color: #e5f7ff; color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;"><br />
<em>Well, here we are again, dear friends,<br />
At Scarthin’s Christmas do,<br />
Despite the fact that finances<br />
Are deeply in the poo.</em></div><em style="background-color: #e5f7ff; color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;"><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">We brush aside the credit crunch,<br />
Shrug off the Wall Street crash,<br />
For we, the cabin staff and crew<br />
Are clearly on the lash.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">Our skipper squints myopically<br />
At his aperitif,<br />
Then smiles a happy, gappy smile,<br />
For he’s mislaid his teeth.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">He’s always losing something,<br />
Like cheque-book, specs and bag,<br />
But when the timbers resonate,<br />
We know he’s lost his rag.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">He steers us blindly into storms<br />
And battens down the hatch,<br />
Yet still the bilges fill with dross<br />
That we just can’t dispatch.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">Our pilot on the poop deck<br />
Peers through his telescope;<br />
No orders in the offing, help!<br />
There is no bloody hope.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">“We’re doomed, we’re doomed”, his Guyness moans,<br />
“No time to fiddle-faddle;<br />
For, methinks, that we are up<br />
Shit Creek, without a paddle.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">“What say we mount a mutiny<br />
Proclaiming UDI,<br />
Stick head honcho on a raft<br />
To do a Captain Bligh?”</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">“No, no, calm down”, his good wife soothes,<br />
“We have to ride the storm.<br />
We’ve got the crew to do it, see,<br />
There’s brains, you know, and brawn.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">“Our purser, for example, has<br />
A very high IQ;<br />
He’s also big on other things,<br />
Like dumplings, cake and stew.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">“He’s magic with the sextant<br />
Punctilious with the log,<br />
And when the yardarm has been passed,<br />
He dishes out the grog.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">“He is a cognoscente,<br />
And for our benefit<br />
Displays his erudition. Yes,<br />
He is a shining wit.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">“First Mate Phil’s a bonzer bloke,<br />
A wizard at the wheel;<br />
He trims the sails and tries to<br />
De-barnacle the keel.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">“But Captain and Commander<br />
Loves the little sods;<br />
He thinks it’s quirky to display<br />
Moth-eaten gastropods.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">“So, under cloak of darkness,<br />
Phil and Bosun Dave,<br />
Scrape the little buggers off<br />
Into an unmarked grave.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">“The bosun’s into teddy-bears,<br />
But otherwise he’s sound;<br />
He’ll always fly the flag for us<br />
And never get us drowned.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">“He whistles all of us aboard,<br />
Diverts us with a jig,<br />
Performs the sailor”s hornpipe,<br />
Then slopes off for a cig.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">“Our not-so-ancient mariner<br />
Stoppeth one of three<br />
And buyeth books both old and rare<br />
To swell his Ivanry.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">“Full oft he sitteth on the deck<br />
And telleth wondrous tales<br />
That helpeth our poor matelots<br />
Forget all their travails.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">“There’s Orpheus, our Midshipman,<br />
Who’s musical to boot.<br />
He can quell the raging storms<br />
By plucking on his lute.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">“We’ll send him up the ratlines,<br />
And say, “Now Mr Hunt,<br />
If you can pacify the waves,<br />
‘Twould be a cunning stunt!”</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">“The rest are able seamen,<br />
Jolly tars all told;<br />
There’s Plimsoll Pam and Jaunty Jen<br />
Though they are getting old.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">“They’ll never climb the mizzenmast<br />
Nor do the crow’s nest thing.<br />
Perhaps they’re just some jetsam that<br />
Himself can safely sling!</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">“And then, my love, there’s me as well,<br />
Supporting, never faltering,<br />
I keep a tight ship and ensure<br />
The seamen aren’t revolting.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">“I supervise the cargo and<br />
Facilitate the freight.<br />
Just like Magellan, I was born<br />
To circumnavigate.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">“I’m good at all things nautical,<br />
Can tie a mean Turk’s head,<br />
But when I splice the mainbrace, well<br />
My two cheeks flush bright red.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">“And don’t forget the cabin staff<br />
That scrubs this Ship of Fools,<br />
Nor, of course, the galley slaves<br />
Led by our precious Joolz.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">“With meagre rations they knock up<br />
Comestibles so fine,<br />
Like onion bargee, baked lascar<br />
And schooners full of wine.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">“And, so, you see, dear husband mine,<br />
Despite their many faults,<br />
You’ll never find a better band<br />
Of jolly jacks and salts.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">“They’ll guide us through the tempests,<br />
They’ll nurse our creaking craft,<br />
They’ll do it all for peanuts,<br />
Because, thank God, they’re daft!</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">“As for the ship in which we sail,<br />
Our listing, leaking lugger,<br />
If it collapses then ‘twould be<br />
A veritable bugger.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">“With decks held up by acro-jacks<br />
And timbers like a sieve,<br />
The chances are it will implode<br />
And none of us will live.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">“So, what’s the point of worrying<br />
Have faith in props and crew;<br />
We’ll reach the harbour then we’ll start<br />
The whole charade anew!”</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">At that the pilot smiled and said,<br />
“Each shipmate is my mucker,<br />
And as for you, my darling wife,<br />
You’ve always been my succour.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 15px;">“Together we will plough the main<br />
And grapple with the gales,<br />
We’ll even shoot an albatross<br />
If it improves our sails.</div></em><div style="background-color: #e5f7ff; color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;"><em>“So, Merry Christmas to us all<br />
Aboard the Scarthin Boat,<br />
May Santa Claus bring gifts enough<br />
To keep us all afloat!”</em></div>Dave's Diatribes & Whimsieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716766140541138396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1524596922391321367.post-35755001240087330452012-05-25T04:08:00.002-07:002012-05-25T04:08:43.041-07:00The Scarthin Slug-MoatThe Scarthin Slug-Moat (Slugmoat)<br />
<br />
Is the moat leaking? Has the hot sun evaporated all the water? Has it subsided at one corner, leaving the opposite corner dry? Have wilting leaves bridged the barrier? Are there actually slugs and snails trapped inside the perimeter? Has a heron taken the goldfish? These are some of the worries of the carrot castellan.<br />
<br />
A Snail’s Pace<br />
<br />
Snail-racing is an old Scarthin tradition. As snails (and slugs) are difficult to direct, we race then outwards from the centre of a sort of Darts Board with successive circles at 10, 15, 25 cms. etc. The fit snail can easily manange 10cms. per minute from a slimey start, getting up to a maximum speed of some 15cms. per minute, though a certain randomness in direction finding reduces the average cross-country range to no more than 5 cms., or two inches, per minute. On warm, damp Spring nights, when slugs and snails do their worst damage to the horticulturalist’s newly-emerging tender shoots, these predators have at least six hours of bird-free darkness in which to make it to their munching grounds and back, giving them a range of some 180 X 5 cms. – about 9 metres or 30 feet. A farmer can, perhaps, afford to lose much of the productivity of such a belt around the margins of a 2-acre field, a hundred yards across, but unless a gardener’s plot is more than 60 ft. square, measuring from the nearest hedge, wall, shrubbery or uncultivated path, then the slugs and snails will meet in the middle. One muggy night in May or early June and every delicious infant carrot will have been nibbled to the ground.<br />
<br />
When a problem is almost insoluble, there will be many solutions – think of the Doctor’s proven Cures for overweight, for arthritis, forgetfulness, cancer, melancholy or laziness – particularly when conventional medicinal magic bullets are distrusted. Even I, a classic pre-1968 square, scientific-optimist-Black’s-of-Greenock-Anorak eschew the magic bullet of the slug-pellet, having been told that birds will eat the victims and be poisoned in turn, but I refuse to turn to the alternative medicine of beer traps, milk traps (for those who don’t like wasting beer) or barriers of soot, sand, lime, crushed egg-shells or double-whammy combinations of the above. Nightly expeditions with torch and tin-can can be very effective in reducing the depredations of the wolfing-packs. In my hot youth, I used to hurl my catch over the roof of an adjoining bungalow, blissfully ignorant of their fate, or that of any passers by. Nowadays I self-righteously heave them into the woods or onto a neighbour’s wilderness. But can I keep it up over a wet Summer of rampant weed-cover like those of 2007 and 2008? Just one night missed, as with fox-and-hens or caterpillars-and-cabbage, can result in irretrievable loss. Sometimes I mark captured snails with white or fluorescent tippex (getting hard to find) before lobbing into the wild. This allows the statistician to make some estimate of the total snail population, as well as measuring their mobility.<br />
<br />
In the absence of slug-pellets, old wives masquerading as gurus crowd in – beer traps, milk traps (for those who don’t like wasting beer) or barriers of soot, sand, lime, crushed egg-shells or double-whammy combinations of the above are advocated but are tedious to install, can vanish in a night’s heavy rain and are at best only partially effective. My preferred solution requires capital expenditure but is then almost maintenance-free and has a working lifetime of years, perhaps decades. It is the SCARTHIN SLUG-MOAT (or for Google’s Sake SLUGMOAT).<br />
<br />
A four-metre length of four and a half inch (yes, the imperial measure survives in the width, but not in the length) half-round black or grey plastic guttering will cost you about �10. If you buy two of these, plus two two-metres lengths and four corner joining pieces, the total should be about �40 and, after a thumb-straining struggle to join them up you have the Slug Moat enclosing an area of eight square metres at a capital cost of �5 ($9 for international readers) per square metre. Of course, the cost arises from the linear scale of the boundary, while the area is proportional to the square of this. A hectare could be enclosed by four hundred metres of gutter and still only four corners at a cost of no more than a thousand pounds, a cost of 10p (18c) per square metre. In the Fenlands of Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire, most fields are surrounded by water-filled dykes, so if draw-bridges and tractor-washes were installed it should be possible to render both the slug and snail extinct over large areas, thus restoring the state of affairs achieved, according to Bede, by the prayers of St. Guthlac of Crowland in the seventh century. Bede recounts the saint’s perigrinations around the settlement of Snaildyke but the site of this is now lost.<br />
<br />
My aims are however more modest. Most gardens are not as flat as the fens, so the first need is to level the site, the partially-filled moat acting as its own spirit-level. Otherwise one end or corner may need to be raised on an earthen bank where erosion will produce gaps under the guttering through which the shape-changing slug can intrude itself. The second need, in hot dry weather, is for regular topping-up every couple of days, or a dry bridge may be formed. I have surprised the occasional particularly intrepid snail ducking its way through a shallow section, rather like a caver forcing a short sump! I have experimented by submerging snails on the inside of a bucket. The snail will leave its shell safely stuck to the side, but will emerge and questingly extend upwards. It will escape and survive so long as its extreme proboscis-end – and they are good at stretching themselves – can emerge above the water-line and reattach itself. The rest of the body and the shell (which cannot re-stick under the water-line) are then hauled up to safety. You can’t help but applaud. As a result of some natural occurrences of this experiment, there may be an evolutionary trend in our showery climate towards a ducking-ability in snails and slugs. At least they don’t yet swim. This hypothetical amphibious tendency does mean that the interior of the slugmoat should be swept for intruders regularly. You do not want to trap them INSIDE. In the warmth of even a wet Summer, insects will deposit eggs in the moat, which may become a seething soup of larvae and a significant source of midges. One solution is to introduce small goldfish to consume the eggs and larvae. Hence the final theoretical problem of defence against the HERON – a bizarre consequence of the defence against arthropods that I rather hope one day to encounter, and to which even I have not yet imagined the solution. DJM Sept.08Dave's Diatribes & Whimsieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716766140541138396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1524596922391321367.post-33860540141832231992012-05-25T04:07:00.002-07:002012-05-25T04:07:37.406-07:00Cistercian CricketPage under Re-development following Accidental Demolition<br />
<br />
Cistercian (or Castle) Cricket – Sample Rules<br />
<br />
I am personally a student of architecture and fascinated by mediaeval history, but I would no more want to inflict these wet interests on my family than I would want to sing madrigals in a pub bar. So when we go exploring ruins, it is with three main possibilities in mind – firstly to look for a memorable spot for a picnic, secondly to play hide-and-seek or one-two-three-out (Llanthony Priory or Bury-St-Edmunds Abbey ruins are good for that) and thirdly to have a game of soft-ball family cricket. The latter is always possible on unmanned sites but may require some cunning and discretion on “pay-to-get-in” sites, usually run by English Heritage, Cadw or Historic Scotland. There is no problem on ramifying sites such as Fountains Abbey, where there is lots of room and privacy beyond the East End of the Church or at castles where the defenses are still high enough to hide large parts of the Bailey from the Visitor Centre. The most delightful site for picnic and cricket I have found is Llawhaden Castle in Pembrokeshire, a classic Ministry of Worksed castle, with close-clipped green lawns surrounding high fragments of walls, towers, gatehouse and some other lower buildings, all surrounded by a dry moat and too out of the way to need more than a tiny carpark, and, mercifully, unmanned and open all year. Here the batsman can loft the ball into the moat, through high, yawning windows or into a ruined staircase. The ricochets are mutiple and baroque! Down through the woods in the valley of a little river is a classic ancient Pembrokeshire church, with its potential tower of refuge. As for Hide and Seek, by the way, the best two castles I know are Warkworth in Northumberland and The Little Castle at Bolsover Castle in Derbyshire. The important characteristic is that each of the several floors of these castles are linked by more than one flight of stairs, so that the hiders can move up, down and across, and the seeker know he/she must employ second-guessing, re-searching of already-searched corners and frequent doubling-back to have any chance of catching someone. Once there are TWO seekers, it becomes possible to close in on the remaining hiders, but at Warkworth, the complexity can still be used to great effect! Ah! Those days! Anyway, here, at last are some sample Rules of Family-and-Friends Cricket – TRIBAL cricket, at its best.<br />
<br />
1.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The ball shall be bouncy<br />
2.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There shall be only one batsman at a time<br />
3.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The umpire, if any, will have no authority<br />
4.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The stumps being against a wall, there need be no wicketkeeper<br />
5.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The bowler shall be related to the batsman<br />
6.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The pitch being in a secluded part of the lawns, there need be no interruption<br />
7.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Bowling is allowed, but chucking is encouraged<br />
8.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Runs are scored as usual, but in addition:<br />
9.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Any number of runs may be run<br />
10.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The batsman may also acquire merit by striking the ball into a window embrasure, turret, tower, dungeon, moat or undercroft<br />
11.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Especial merit accrues if the ball is struck into a garderobe<br />
12.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The batsman is out if the ball cannot safely be retrieved<br />
13.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The batsman is out if the ball cannot legally be retrieved<br />
14.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The batsman can be bowled out, stumped out or caught out<br />
15.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The batsman can be adjudged out by general acclamation<br />
16.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Catches count, and attract special merit if the ball has ricocheted off any wall, staircase, buttress or other stonework not adjudged to be the ground<br />
17.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The game goes on until all are hungry, exhausted, bored or chased off by the custodian<br />
18.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The game will be memorable<br />
<br />
Beach Cricket<br />
<br />
<br />
The rules of Cistercian Cricket apply, except as follows:<br />
<br />
1.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The stumps being in the middle of featureless sands, there shall be a wicketkeeper<br />
2.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The wicketkeeper must be prepared to run a long way<br />
3.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The fielders must be prepared to run even further<br />
4.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There is no custodian<br />
5.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The participation of strangers cannot and should not be avoided<br />
6.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The fielding side may not dig extra holes in the wicket<br />
7.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>When mothers or girlfriends bat, the field shall crowd in menacingly<br />
8.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>When fathers, big brothers, or (especially) boyfriends bat, the field shall retreat respectfully<br />
9.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Children are rarely declared out<br />
10.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The sea is within the boundary of the ground<br />
11.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The players may agree that the sea can catch the ball (assuming the ball floats)<br />
12.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The incoming of the tide shall not stop play<br />
13.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The last man in (the sea) is the winner<br />
14.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Beware of flying bats<br />
<br />
An irrelevant but strongly-felt P.S.:<br />
<br />
Facilities: There are no facilities at this site other than the hotel. A direct quote from the Brecon Beacons national Park page on Llanthony Priory.<br />
<br />
I can’t let this mean-minded bureaucratic entry go un-derided. And that is my more polite second draft. I know what it is like to be a PRIVATE enterprise providing an unsubsidised public cultural service free-of-entry-fee while being ignored in the publicly-funded literature. It must be said that the Wikipedia article also fails to convey the unique appeal of Llanthony. This ruin has ALL the facilities you could possibly desire! (but ware opening times out of season) In particular, a vaulted mediaeval underground bar from which you can bring up your beer or your coffees, and lemonade and crisps for the children, and sit with your back against the transept wall in the westering sun while the children chase each other among the pillars. Nearby is a campsite; you can book an evening meal or bed-and-breakfast at the hotel; the arches of the Nave frame the moor-topped hills that bound this deep and winding valley and among which are the most wonderful (if muddy) walks and cycle- or horse-rides. There are other Wonders in and near this valley, Cwmyoy Church in particular, and see our pubs page. And there are TWO loos on hand. This Pub in an Abbey is of course an anomaly; no doubt Cadw would like to close the one off from the other and dowse the joy of experiencing mediaeval hospitality – just as English Heritage have managed to kill the experience of visiting a Castle in a Farmyard that used to entrance (can that be right?) the visitor to Wingfield Manor, near us in Derbyshire. For more than ten years I have been visiting the Vale of Ewyas annually. It neither withers nor thrives excessively and each return is a joy and a relief, though this year the Min. of Ag. bureaucrats had managed to outlaw camp fires. End of mini-diatribe. DJM Nov. 09Dave's Diatribes & Whimsieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716766140541138396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1524596922391321367.post-16497452212615721692012-05-25T04:06:00.002-07:002012-05-25T04:06:34.623-07:00The Two Cultures – the Latest Scoreby Idiot in Residence<br />
<br />
When I ”Googled” the following phrases for UK Web Pages, I got the following number of “hits”:<br />
<br />
Artist in Residence 141,000<br />
Writer in Residence 49,600<br />
Poet in Residence 21,600<br />
Composer in Residence 20,000<br />
Scientist in Residence 375<br />
Engineer in Residence 5<br />
Mathematician in Residence 2<br />
Idiot in Residence 0 (well, there’s one now!)<br />
<br />
I rest my case! (Prodnose:) “What case?”<br />
<br />
Comments encouraged! Dave Mitchell<br />
<br />
P.S. Googling the World leads to somewhat less stark results, America is less benighted and even has a few hundred “idiot” hits, many care of Harvard University, where “typically English humour”, under threat in the U.K., maintains a tenacious hold in its new home!Dave's Diatribes & Whimsieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716766140541138396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1524596922391321367.post-16560658546183845782012-05-25T04:05:00.000-07:002012-05-25T04:05:28.961-07:00Fibonacci Goes to the LooFibonacci has a Pee in Pisa<br />
<br />
Not many people know thatLeonardo de Pisa, better known as Fibonacci, came upon the celebrated sequence of numbers named after him (usually called his series or just theFibonacci Numbers) during a visit to the loo which he made, as he tells us in his Liber Abaci, on a Spring day (“dius vernalis”) during the year 1198. The term urinal is derived of course from the Latin verb urinare, to urinate, water your horse, point Percy at the porcelain or otherwise euphemise.<br />
<br />
This was not Leonardo’s first visit to the official Pisa peeing place, and he had had many opportunities to observe the reluctance of patrons to stand next to each other while performing. Whenever possible, new arrivals would make for a stall well separated from other customers, the aim being to leave at least one empty stall between you and your nearest neighbour.<br />
<br />
It ocurred to Leonardo to wonder how many different ways there might be of accommodating clients at the urinal such that no-one would have his privacy invaded by another standing right next to him. Being a mathematician, his irresistible instinct was to consider not merely particular cases, but to consider the general case of a urinal with n stalls and to search for an algorithm (a term newly borrowed from the Arabic) with which to arrive at the solution to this general case. Suppose we designate an empty stall by a zero (a concept but lately imported via Arabia from far-sighted Hindu sages) and an occupied stall by the number 1 (unity). For instance, a seven-berth urinal with three occupants might be represented by (1,0,0,1,0,1,0), this being a case obeying the no-near-neighbours rule. Then, beginning with the zeroth case, a urinal of size zero, we can list all possibilities:<br />
<br />
Number of stalls zero: only one case, there being no possible patrons: ()<br />
Number of stalls 1: two cases; one patron, no patrons; (0), (1)<br />
Number of stalls 2: three cases; (0,0), (0,1), (1,0)<br />
Number of stalls 3: five cases; (0,0,0), (1,0,0), (0,1,0), (0,0,1), (1,0,1)<br />
Number of stalls 4: eight cases; (0,0,0,0), (1,0,0,0), (0,1,0,0), (0,0,1,0), (0,0,0,1), (1,0,1,0), (0,1,0,1), (1,0,0,1)<br />
<br />
A curious sequence, thought Fibonacci, I cannot easily see how it can be expressed in terms of n, the number of stalls, but the generating algorithm is clear enough, I can obtain each term simply by adding the previous two, yielding the sequence<br />
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, … and so on ad infinitum (or ad urinatum?).<br />
<br />
Leonardo has cheated a little by inserting a first term rather difficult to interpret. The modern reader may like to check a few higher order cases. Having an Italian love of symmetry and the spheres, Fibonacci goes on to consider the case of a circular urinal – presumably reached axially via a spiral staircase( to the top of a tower? Could the lean of Leonardo’s local tower have been caused by water weakening the soil beneath the foundations) so that the array of stalls is joined round behind, finite but boundless. The result of this investigation is not so celebrated, but has an interesting feature. The reader might well like to derive the sequence and algorithm and contemplate the male self-repugnance that is implied!<br />
<br />
Calculate while you Urinate! (to our male readers; ladies just calculate while you imagine)<br />
<br />
translation and commentary DJM January 2008<br />
<br />
Incidentally as this article had climbed only to page fifteen when I Googled worldwide in November, still not many people know of the above; so welcome to the select set of those who are not members of the set of those who don’t know of the above.Dave's Diatribes & Whimsieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716766140541138396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1524596922391321367.post-54900017804871212662012-05-25T04:04:00.002-07:002012-05-25T04:04:24.963-07:00Hill-Fort Football A Brief History and Hitherto Unwritten Rules<br />
<br />
Even if we discount the testimony ofAsterix the Gaul, it is certain that the inhabitants of Maiden Castle played football. Everybody at all times of history has played football – using tight bundles of willow, inflated pig’s bladders or empty wasps nests sewn over with leather (maybe). Every Peak District footballer knows about sloping football pitches and the advantages to one side or the other (usually the home side) that they infer (infer, infer ?? - try confer). One of the oldest and most curious forms of sloping-pitch football is Hill-fort Football, originally played among the ramparts and ditches that protected iron-age hill-top townships – until the Romans came along.<br />
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Hill-fort football has the advantage over, for instance, Fell Football, as practiced in the Lake District, that you don’t usually have to descend a thousand feet to retrieve the ball before taking a goal kick. The goal is set on the crest of a grassy, earthen rampart, preferably sheep-nibbled to improve the bounce. The goal can be as narrow, or as wide as is needed to produce a sporting game – the deeper the ditch or the steeper the bank, the wider the goal, maybe the whole perimeter of the fort for earthworks as mighty as those of Maiden Castle or Old Sarum. There may me just one goalkeeper, or rampart-holder, or many. Stationed at the bottom of the ditch is one attacker or many. If there is a ditch on either side of the rampart then so much the better, for the advantage of the rampart-holder is materially reduced if he or she is bombarded by ascending balls from both sides at once. The aim of the attackers is simply to boot the ball past or over the head of the rampart-holder and (preferably) into the further ditch. When this occurs the successful attacker and rampart-holder change places. The game continues until those in the ditches concede defeat or until all are lying panting in the flowery grass. Mixed-sex games do not last very long.<br />
<br />
The search for iron-age hill-fort foot-ball goal-post post-holes (to twist the tongue with a thicket of hyphens) has not yet born fruit. It is not that a great deal more digging is needed but rather that enough archaeologists need to be convinced of the reality of the sport, for archaeologists generally find what they seek, being selected largely for their imaginative powers of interpretation.<br />
<br />
Becoming now too old and infirm to effectively fulfill my wonted role as formidable ditch-bottomer, I must be content to hand on the knowledge of this ancient and modern pastime of Merry Britain to further generations.Dave's Diatribes & Whimsieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716766140541138396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1524596922391321367.post-45596479794356120842012-05-25T04:03:00.000-07:002012-05-25T04:03:26.143-07:00Butler, Butler, turning right…Is the first line of a satirical ode that, from internal evidence, was written in 1955: The full text is as follows :<br />
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Butler, Butler, turning right In the forests of the night<br />
Canst thou say who is to be Next Prime Minister but three?<br />
<br />
Treasury or Privy Seal Which is best to do a deal?<br />
Or a Secretary of State? Or wilt thou just co-ordinate?<br />
<br />
Leader of the House or what? Can it be that there are not<br />
Traditions whereby those who lead Automatically succeed?<br />
<br />
What the time and what the tide? Time is always on thy side:<br />
Thou art only fifty-three; Who knows what the tide may be?<br />
<br />
… Can we fairly put it thus Say that thou hast missed thy ‘bus?<br />
<br />
R.A.Butler was in fact (I think) appointed Lord Privy Seal in the Autumn of 1955. Famously, he never did become Prime Minister, but added celebrity (and Prince Charles) to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1965. The Trinity clock,telling the hours Twice over with a male and female voice, as Wordsworth recollects in The Prelude, used to punctuate my late-night lab-note writing-up. But I am straying into a thicket of hyphens . (Try Googling that, as a test of web-penetrability!)<br />
<br />
P.S. another verse by the same author is remembered to concern Woodrow Wyatt, including Wyatting has broken out or similar phrase.<br />
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DJM 22nd. November 2007Dave's Diatribes & Whimsieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716766140541138396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1524596922391321367.post-6639977652460252382012-05-25T04:02:00.000-07:002012-05-25T04:02:18.979-07:00M25 Cycle RaceCYCLATHON M25<br />
<br />
The question of who was first to cycle completely round the M25 is controversial. The late Forster Quinn claimed to have pedalled the 118 miles in 6 hours 35 minutes and 11 seconds (but 2 minutes 14 seconds could be subtracted for a pee into a newly-pebbled French Drain near the Sevenoaks junction). He began his (anti-clockwise) ride just before midnight on Saturday June 15th 1986, wearing a “Motorway Maintenance” fluorescent jacket and carrying bogus electronic equipment and transmitting aerial, which seem to have worked because, though several police cars slowed for a chat, none became suspicious. The Dartford Tunnel (the bridge not yet having been built) was, as he put it, ”The scariest thing since the Mont St. Bernard!” Memorably, pedalling east just before the M11 junction Quinn reported passing another cyclist travelling west on the opposite hard shoulder. With the exception of a “cheery wave” the two ignored each other, so the identity and itinerary of this other pioneer remains a mystery.<br />
<br />
Has this pioneering achievement ever been repeated? Quinn, alas, died last year, with his achievement almost forgotten. Despite extensive private enquiries, reading of cycling journals and “Googling” I have drawn a blank. In the twenty three years that have ensued, the M25 has become some three times busier, CCTV coverage is now continuous and specialist policing highly organised. It is extremely doubtful that any attempt would last for more than five or ten miles. We all seem to have internalised the ban on pedestrians and cyclists from motorways so meekly and completely that trespassing in Buckingham Palace Grounds is more frequent, while railway lines are relatively over-run with explorers. However, all this is due to change for just one day next Summer in a unique spectacular organised by the British Olympic Society to give the world a foretaste of the spectacles to be expected at the London Games of 2012!<br />
<br />
After prolonged consultations with industry, tourist, motoring and cycling organisations, the Department of Transport has sanctioned the COMPLETE CLOSING of the M25 for a period over the Spring bank Holiday Weekend. Just think:<br />
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M25 CLOSED!<br />
<br />
<br />
Starting at 9p.m. on Saturday 29th. May, all entrance sliproads will be closed, preventing traffic from joining the motorway. Comprehensive diversions will be in place, though it is to be hoped that many people and businesses will re-schedule their travel arrangements. All normal traffic is expected to have left the Orbital Motorway by 11p.m., though the police do expect to have to escort a few eccentric drivers from the highway. Work will go on through the early hours of Sunday 30th to convert the clockwise carriageway into parking lots and through-access for logistical and emergency traffic, the anticlockwise carriageway being reserved for cylists attempting the full or part circuit. Curiously, intuition suggests that the “inner”, anticlockwise carriageway should constitute a considerably shorter circuit than the outer, but a quick revisiting of Pythagoras may convice you that the dffrerence is only of the order of a hundred metres.<br />
<br />
Ticket-holding and cycle-carrying vehicles will be allowed onto the parking areas from 3a.m.on the morning of Sunday 30th May with the OFF being broadcast from loudspeakers and flashed from overhead gantries at 8a.m. It is expected that most participants, particularly families with children, will cycle only for a few “pedules” of 10 miles or so each, and will then be transported back to their starting-points by a fleet of Bikebuses, more familiar on continental roads than in the U.K., which are simply coaches towing cycle trailers. In order to allow time for those who wish to make the attempt to cycle the full 118 miles, the Motorway will remain closed to normal traffic until midnight on the Sunday, so that normal congested traffic conditions will doubtless return on the morning of Bank Holiday Monday, 31st May<br />
<br />
How many will participate? The organisers are hoping that CYCLATHON M25 will dwarf even the London Marathon. Could this be the first single athletic event to attract more than a million participants – the World’s Largest Sporting Event Ever? No limit to entries is envisaged, but the sooner would-be particpants apply for tickets, the better the organising joint working party will be able to scale up its preparations. Please register your interest ASAP with The Department of Transport, who, as usual, will probably need a nudge to get them moving. Good luck on THE DAY!<br />
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DJM Scarthin Cycling Group updated 10/09Dave's Diatribes & Whimsieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716766140541138396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1524596922391321367.post-34086160520592886372012-05-25T04:00:00.002-07:002012-05-25T04:00:52.275-07:00Running up EverestActually,<br />
Running up AND down Everest<br />
<br />
<br />
On May 29th 1988, over the Spring Bank Holiday Weekend, Scarthin Books helped celebrate the thirty-fifth anniversary of the first ascent of Mount Everest , which may be taken to be 8,848 m (29,028 feet) high. With the co-operation of The Heights of Abraham and the sponsorship of Scarthin Books, a team of four by no means elite athletes set out to commemorate the first ascent by running up and down the full height in Matlock Bath. Masson Hill, which rises a full 240 metres steeply from the Derwent Valley, was an excellent location for this endeavour. An extreme runner could no doubt achieve this feat double-footed in under 24 hours, in our case we decided that a relay team of four would still find this a sufficient work-out! The team was made up of Oread Club member Rob Tresidder, Scarthin Books proprietor Dave Mitchell, both then in their forties, and Paul Hopkinson, Peak Park footpaths officer, and a friend, both in their twenties. Appropriately, the average age of the team was exactly 35 years.<br />
<br />
The precise altitude of the summit on Masson Hill and the base-camp outside Hopkinson’s Hotel on Matlock Bath Parade were surveyed by Fred Chapman and Mike Coveney, Civil Engineering friends, and independent verification of the attempt arranged. Each runner ran nine legs, Rob ( who, with a little help from many friends including myself, completed the Bob Graham Round later that year) had most left to run the 37th leg, and the whole team finally ran up West Bank to the point needed to complete the exact Everest altitude from sea-level. (Interestingly, the Bob Graham Round is said to involve 28,500 feet of ascent and descent in the 24 hours allowed.) Legs generally took about 18 minutes – maybe 12 up and 6 down – slowing to 20 minutes or more towards the end. Rob threw in a 17 minute leg which Dave just managed to pip at a few seconds under the minute. Obviously, elite athletes in their prime would easily lower these times, and the total overall time of 11 hours, 2 minutes and 7 seconds.<br />
<br />
We submitted this World Record, we presumed, to the Guiness Book of Records, but they turned it down as too route-dependent. Atually, selecting a good route was a large part of the fun. I trained for it myself by running up and down 900 metre Lake District heights several times, up to 11,000 feet (to mix units) in the day. Fewer, longer legs would perhaps be more satisfying. The gradient of the chosen route is obviously a factor; for ascent it should probably be as steep as remains technically easy, with the fastest descent perhaps by a longer, easily runnable route. At Matlock Bath, the up and down routes were the same. At the time, I heard of proposals to emulate our feat at the Wrekin in Shropshire and, even, up and down the stairs of a high building. The team could certainly be reduced to three members, indeed to two, which I would certainly have been able to cope with in youth or middle age. Now, I fear that the four man version would be beyond my running (if not walking) capacity. A Bob Graham could do the whole thing, and I have dreamed of that too! Life as a bookseller and serial father is too full. Why run up AND down, you might ask? Well, visual or radio/phone communication might make an “up only” event possible, with sufficient runners, but the satisfaction of passing the baton diectly, the exchange of commendation and encouragement, the team “bonding” would be lost.<br />
<br />
I missed the chance of doing it again at the 50th anniversary in 2003 – I was injured and, of course, “very pushed”. Now, after yet another renaissance in 2005 and 2006 I’m injured again. Maybe it’s “the end” this time. BUT, I have a new team in mind, so perhaps 2008 will see a fresh, “old fogeys’” attempt in the 50 and 60+ category??? Watch this site. No. better still, beat our record!!! (maybe you already have).<br />
<br />
Dave Mitchell 22nd. November 2007Dave's Diatribes & Whimsieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716766140541138396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1524596922391321367.post-88423218688543386212012-05-25T03:59:00.002-07:002012-05-25T03:59:53.205-07:00BREWUPA Diatribe (not the usual sort) on British Weather.<br />
<br />
It is time to welcome the reader to the Loyal but not so Ancient Society known as BREWUP!<br />
<br />
Formed to celebrate the wonderful climate of the United Kingdom.<br />
<br />
This acronym has been cunningly formulated so as to be our battle cry:<br />
<br />
UP with Br itain’s E xcellent W eather!<br />
<br />
Let us begin by quoting our National Poet – but who/whom might that be? Milton? McGonagall? Chaucer? Pam Ayres? Tennyson? Clive James?<br />
<br />
NO, who other than RUDYARD KIPLING, in the fourth verse of’The Roman Centurion’s Song;<br />
<br />
For me this land, that sea, these airs, those folk and fields suffice.<br />
What purple Southern pomp can match our changeful Northern skies,<br />
Black with December snows unshed or pearled with August haze<br />
The clanging arch of steel-grey March, or June’s long-lighted days.<br />
<br />
It is time these evocative lines were set to music by our National Composer – but who/whom might that be?<br />
Purcell? Lloyd Webber? Elgar? Lennon? Vaughan Williams? Sting? How about John Tavener?<br />
<br />
The Centurion’s sentiments are echoed by a frequent exile FROM Britain whose work seems to takes him to locations with extreme climates, whether tropical beaches, Alpine snowfields or burning deserts – namely James Bond. In Dr. No James regrets the hot ugly winds of the Caribbean and thinks longingly of the douce weather of England: the soft airs, the “heat” waves, the cold spells – “The only country where you can take a walk every day of the year” – Chesterfield’s Letters? Like Bond, I haven’t managed to track down this quote to Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman by Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield.<br />
<br />
To quote Taylor and Yates in their British Weather in Maps: British weather is made up of complex and baffling phases and sequences that defy classification and systematic interpretation. Let us rejoice in, not spurn such invigorating and fertile unpredictability, as does Marjorie Allingham in Cargo of Eagles: The rain was falling in a sweet, relentless fashion as it does in spring in London and it was all very peaceful and pleasant if uncompromisingly wet. Not that it is often wet in summer, or how could there be Test Matches, Wimbledon and innumerable Open Gardens?<br />
<br />
What is the programme of action of BREWUP? As the present membership (six) makes all meetings less than quorate, our mandate remains provisional, but our aim must surely be to celebrate our best of all possible climates for doing almost anything at almost any time of year! How absurd to flee to latitudes suitable only for shrivelling prunes and sun-drying tomatoes.<br />
<br />
Englishmen! You CAN be mad dogs in the mid-day sun of Britain! In between playing tennis at Wimbledon or cricket at Lord’s, run up a mountain (bare-chested but carrying the full British Mountaineering Council stipulated emergency clothing, shelter and food (no need to worry about drink), then pop down to the coast for a bit of digging in the sand, finishing up with a cream tea in the (Olde) Vicarage Garden! Sun-tan is out, Weather-beat is in!<br />
<br />
The Summers of 2007 and 2008 tried the faith of the fellowship of BREWUP. Can Britain’s weather really be The Best of All Possible Climates! Can faith overcome The Problem of Rain? All the subtleties of Meteorolgical spinning may be required, but will not be lacking!<br />
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Our fore-parents, unsoftened by unsustainable sun-seeking, gloried in the British climate during the poignantly-doomed Long Weekend of the nineteen-twenties and -thirties. The outdoor Lido Pools of the New Bath Hotel and the exposed Raven Hall Hotel were crowded with bathers, as photographs still on display show. Look now, and a dry, cracked-concrete cadaver occupies the site of our grandparents’ fresh-water frolics at Ravenscar, while a small group of us struggle to stop the paradisical New Bath pool going the same way.<br />
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The following, very cheesy, Boy Scout chant does conjure up some of the spirit of those days.<br />
<br />
The First appearance was in 1921 as a song in the Boy Scouts Gang Show.<br />
<br />
WOAD<br />
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What’s the use of wearing braces?<br />
Vests and pants and boots with laces?<br />
Spats and hats you buy in places<br />
Down the Brompton Road?<br />
<br />
What’s the use of shirts of cotton?<br />
Studs that always get forgotten?<br />
These affairs are simply rotten,<br />
Better far is woad.<br />
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Woad’s the stuff to show men.<br />
Woad to scare your foemen.<br />
Boil it to a brilliant hue<br />
And rub it on your back and your abdomen.<br />
<br />
Ancient Briton ne’er did hit on<br />
Anything as good as woad to fit on<br />
Neck or knees or where you sit on.<br />
Tailors you be blowed!!<br />
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Romans came across the channe<br />
All dressed up in tin and flannel<br />
Half a pint of woad per man’ll<br />
Dress us more than these.<br />
<br />
Saxons you can waste your stitches<br />
Building beds for bugs in britches<br />
We have woad to clothe us which is<br />
Not a nest for fleas<br />
<br />
Romans keep your armours.<br />
Saxons your pyjamas.<br />
Hairy coats were made for goats,<br />
Gorillas, yaks, retriever dogs and llamas.<br />
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Tramp up Snowdon with your woad on,<br />
Never mind if you get rained or blowed on<br />
Never want a button sewed on.<br />
Go it Ancient Bs!!<br />
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Copyright holders please contact us!<br />
<br />
As the quorum for motions to be passed is 6, the society remains verbose but otherwise inactive. If you would like to swell the membership by 14.285714% recurring, please contact David Mitchell, at Scarthin Books, Cromford, Derbyshire DE4 3QF, phone 01629-823272, fax 825094 or e-mail us at clare@scarthinbooks.com<br />
<br />
To quote Spike Milligan, or was it Neddy Seagoon,<br />
<br />
It’s all free, folks!Dave's Diatribes & Whimsieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716766140541138396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1524596922391321367.post-70605060261204460752012-05-25T03:58:00.002-07:002012-05-25T03:58:34.791-07:00A Lukewarm Reception will not be enough to forge the Olympic Pewter Medal!Since London last hosted the Olympic Games in 1948, the number of competitors has more than doubled and the number of countries participating more than trebled. In disciplines with measurable performances, the Olympic Qualifying Standards nowadays would have won Gold Medals sixty years ago. Yet despite the dazzling advance in the level of achievement of Olympic sportsmen and sportswomen and the inexorable increase in the competitiveness of events, the International Olympic Committee still awards (with a few exceptions) only three medals: Gold, Silver and Bronze in each event.<br />
<br />
The London 2012 Organising Committee is reportedly brainstorming as to how to follow the spectacular Beijing Olympics despite a budget that must be smaller in real if not in currency terms. Here is the answer:<br />
<br />
Introduce an Olympic Fourth-Place Medal<br />
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It is not simply that the level of competitiveness has increased so greatly over the last sixty years; the awarding of only three medals has always been inadequate. Most finals in athletics, swimming and rowing, for instance, are contested between eight finalists; it seems natural that the top half of these, four, should be graced with the additional honour of a medal (getting into an Olympic Final should itself be more recognised for the achievement it is). Surely no more advocacy is needed, only practicalities remain to be resolved.<br />
There is the question of who is responsible for the current paucity of provision of medals -the International Olympic Committee, I imagine, or has the London Committee the freedom to update medal-giving? Has the British Olympic Association any powers or leverage (pronounced to rhyme with beaveridge, not Beveridge)? Whoever you are, get off your conference seats and make some decisions, quick!<br />
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There remains, however, one significant area of controversy – of what should the medal be made? I have my own ideas, but asking friends and family has uncorked crates of creativity and lateral thinking hitherto bottled up, not all of which has been over-written in the soft-drive of short-term memory. We do have lots of choice – the periodic table lies open before (some of) us, and why not an alloy, or ceramic or plastic or other newly-fashioned material.<br />
To start at this silly end, why not a medal in teflon, lurex, lycra, gortex or velcro -generous sponsorship would be forthcoming. More naturally, how about crystal or clay or coal, or coal’s more precious relative carbon fibre, or could we afford a semi-precious mineral such as jet or topaz or amber? Amber Medal is nicely alliterative and the material was anciently worked, like gold, silver and bronze.<br />
<br />
Just a thought. Should we be choosing the BEST material for this medal however, wouldn’t the FOURTH-BEST be more appropriate?<br />
<br />
Whether for best or fourth-best place, metals pure or alloyed must surely be favourites, however. Tungsten has been tipped, but too morbid a sound; must be mined by Auks in Moria. Aluminium? Too many syllables. Copper? Already used in Bronze, likewise Zinc, I think. Tin? Strong historic links with Britain, at least since it attracted the first Roman invasion, but has a “tinny”, “tin-can” sound. Britannia Metal, or Sheffield Plate? Patriotic choices, but too much of a mouthful.<br />
<br />
There is another way of doing it of course, insert the lately more valuable PLATINUM at the top, for first place! It seems invidious so to demote Gold, Silver and Bronze to second, third and fourth and thus to seemingly devalue a century of previously awarded medals, but there is a precedent -the addition of A* as the top grade in English and Welsh GCSE and A-level school examination results, despite the doubt cast on the excellence of previous mere A grades. So adding in Platinum for first place might be a typically British solution – but might bring anathema rather than plaudits down on our heads from the watching world.<br />
<br />
Personally I think the right choice is, rather obviously, PEWTER. This is, like bronze, a respected traditional alloy, one with a strong British pedigree and one which has been used for striking medals in two nations which wield particular influence in the World and whose support we would particularly need – France, the nation of Baron de Coubertin, founder of the Modern Olympics and America, still a colossus despite being nudged off the top rung by China. In France a pewter medal was struck to commemorate the Storming of the Bastille, in America in honour of President John F. Kennedy.<br />
<br />
You may think that the Olympic Fourth-Place Pewter Medal might be a laughing stock, well so it might, but only for a short while – and do we not need some humour to lighten the emotions of the medal ceremony? In any case it is interesting that, of the three medals thus far awarded at the Games, the Silver is somewhat marginalized as the least popular of the three -perhaps because it carries with it the failure to win, while the Bronze carries with it the simple pleasure of being up there on the rostrum, without the canker of near-miss if-only regrets. It is this wholesome pleasure in simply being present that would be transferred to the Pewter Medal -or the Medal of whatever Substance might emerge from the more democratic and protracted ponderings that this article MUST arouse.<br />
<br />
Finally, if the IOC, the London2012 or the BOC won’t budge, then the CITIZENS OF LONDON should award the medal themselves, inviting the nobly fourth-placed in each event separately, or in a GRAND FINALE out onto the streets to be honoured by the people! This could take place in Trafalgar Square, at Hyde Park Corner or could involve elevation in the London Eye and could even upstage the official medal ceremony.<br />
<br />
Come on London: here is how you can rise to new heights as an unforgettable host for the Olympic Games! – and after all is not London Pewter not the very best!Dave's Diatribes & Whimsieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716766140541138396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1524596922391321367.post-73616073078670277342012-05-25T03:57:00.000-07:002012-05-25T03:57:04.587-07:00The Ecology of Books<h1 class="page-title" style="background-color: #e5f7ff; color: #333333; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18pt; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 1.2em;">The Ecology of Books – Read them or Drive over them?</span></h1><div style="background-color: #e5f7ff; color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;"><br />
A book that’s really old is worth a pot of gold!</div><div style="background-color: #e5f7ff; color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;">Each aged tome deserves a caring home</div><div style="background-color: #e5f7ff; color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;">Today’s blockbusters? – turn to heat – or EAT !</div><div style="background-color: #e5f7ff; color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;">“I just can’t bring myself to throw away a book – any book” is a sentiment that a second-hand bookseller will hear almost every day. This reverence for books, widely-shared in our supposedly pluralist society, is not far removed from the fundamentalist practices of the strict Jew, who, for fear of destroying the name of God, hoards all obselete papers in a “genizah”, or the Moslem who considers any disrespectful treatment of a copy of the Koran to be sacrilegious. It would seem that horror at the execution of heretics AND their works, Nazi book-burnings, Ray Bradbury’s story “Fahrenheit 451″ and family memories of “book-binning” by ignorant executors are all indestructibly enshrined in our folk consciousness. Simultaneously, we cannot ourselves destroy books, yet fear that they might fall into the hands of philistines who gladly will. “If anything happens to me, my children will put the books in the skip – I just want to know they’ll go to a good home” is another sentiment frequently expressed by our older clients. What will ACTUALLY happen to our libraries “if something happens to us” is that executors, auctioneers, booksellers, market stalls, jumble sales, charity shops and “book-banks” will engage in a game of PASSING THE BOOK. No-one wants to be the one to do the dirty deed, each pretending that a good home will eventually be found for <em>Best Wine Buys 1967</em>, Macaulay’s <em>Essays</em> Volume 5 only, <em>The M.&S. Book of Collage</em> and <em>A Visitors Guide to Blenheim Palace</em>. Surely people are desperate for books in the Third World?</div><div style="background-color: #e5f7ff; color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;">These sentiments are now QUITE OUT OF DATE, and it is my business to convince you of that.</div><div style="background-color: #e5f7ff; color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;">The time taken to write a book hasn’t changed much over the millenia – maybe a month, maybe a decade, but more likely six months to two years of diligent toil on the part of the author. The difference is that before the age of printing, the “writing” was literal – the finished product being just ONE copy. Fear of fire sometimes restricted the work to daylight hours. Even in the early years of printing, the cost in human time of producing the paper, setting the type, screwing down the press, collating , folding, sewing and binding was so great that the value of each finished copy was still the equivalent of hundreds or thousands of pounds, and to destroy it was, in effect, to annihilate weeks of human life. Burning heretical books rather than the author himself was very effective. Nevertheless, despite the labour-intensive nature of early printing, over-production was becoming a problem in Rome as early as 1472. Forty books published in a year! Three hundred copies of each!! Too many printers were flooding the market. “Our house is full of printed books but empty of the necessities of life.” complain the firm of Sweynheym and Pannartz in their petition to Pope Sixtus IV protesting against the loss of their monopoly.</div><div style="background-color: #e5f7ff; color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;">What of today? The number of titles printed annually in Britain has doubled 17 times since Caxton started work around 1475. The production of perhaps 10 books per year in the late fifteenth century had become 1000 by 1725, 10,000 by 1922, 75,000 by 1991 and 125,000 by 2003. At first production doubled every ten years or so, but between 1500 and 1900 the doubling period slowed to about 50 years.. Now we are in the midst of a second, computer-generated printing revolution, with a doubling every 18 years. Perhaps a third of a billion copies of books are sold every year in the U.K., and yet this flood of typography is still accorded a reverence more appropriate to the days of illuminated manuscripts. How to compare the intrinsic worth of today’s assemblyline-printed books with the handmade products of yesteryear? How to decide the fate of these sacred volumes? As A P Herbert’s fictional rebel Albert Haddock debated during the war, how to decide whether a book should best be sent forward to the troops as reading material, or shredded and converted into shell casings?</div><div style="background-color: #e5f7ff; color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;">In an egalitarian world, the value of a human-being’s work, whether writer, printer, bookseller or reader, can be taken to be some 3000 Kilocalories per day- the energy in food we need to survive. Away with comparisons of merit and differences in wage-rates! ECONOMICS should become THERMONOMICS. Energy inputs in the form of fossil or renewable fuels, and from materials such as paper and leather, can be measured in the same units as human effort. Thus we can calculate the thermonomic cost of making a book, and compare this with the energy that could be recovered by destroying it! For instance, burning or eating a modern paperback book would release about 3000 kilocalories of energy, almost two-thirds of that obtainable by burning the same weight of coal and more than twice the energy from eating the same weight of Mars Bar.</div><div style="background-color: #e5f7ff; color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;">An illuminated manuscript on vellum, taking a scribe several years to complete can hence be objectively valued at several millions of kilocalories, a thermonomic value far outweighing its potential for warming barbarian vandals or for feeding their goats. A modern paperback, however, which can be sold at the equivalent of no more than one hour’s work, is worth only a few hundred kilocalories in human effort, about one tenth of its fuel value.(What, I might ask, IS the point of reading a bestseller that so many others have already read for you? – but that is another question). Publishers rarely resist the temptation to let the presses roll out another few thousand copies, at a “run-on” cost of pence each.</div><div style="background-color: #e5f7ff; color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;">All mass-produced modern books are worth far more as fuel than as repositories of human wisdom; it is our DUTY to recycle them.</div><div style="background-color: #e5f7ff; color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;">Recycling books, however, is not straightforward. As a second-hand bookseller, I am in the front line of coping with today’s overproduction, being widely considered to be the best staging post on the way to that GOOD HOME that everyone desires for their beloved but unwanted collections. In more than thirty years, many are the ways I have tried to dispose of books. Here are a few.</div><div style="background-color: #e5f7ff; color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;">SELLING. Sir Stanley Unwin remarked in his “The Truth about Publishing” that however difficult it might be to write, print or even read a book, the most difficult matter of all was to SELL it! He was right; we can sell no more than a quarter of the books we are brought, and no more than a half of those we accept. Over thirty years, this disparity has had serious consequences for my way of life and for the buildings I inhabit.</div><div style="background-color: #e5f7ff; color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;">CHARITYING. At two or three books for a pound, you can shift several hundred a day at the Village Fete, Festival, Wakes or Well-Dressing,- but two-thirds of your stock will remain at the end of the day.</div><div style="background-color: #e5f7ff; color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;">SURGERYING and SHOPDROPPING – smuggling magazines into dentist’s waiting rooms, or slipping books OUT of your poacher’s pockets onto the shelves in other bookshops, is a very satisfying operation but can only be employed on a small scale.</div><div style="background-color: #e5f7ff; color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;">DROWNING. Though the slightest damp can mar a book for ever, entirely destroying it by water is well-nigh impossible. After months under a brick in a bucket, it will bob to the surface readable and entirely unconsolidated for the purpose of:</div><div style="background-color: #e5f7ff; color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;">BURNING, which produces an unmanageable froth of ash from the unconsolidated book. Maybe a very large stove with a fierce draught would cope, but the fumes produced are almost certainly unacceptable.</div><div style="background-color: #e5f7ff; color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;">COMPOSTING. Inspired by a friend whose library had turned to soil in a leaky garage, we established the “Millennium Book Compost Heap”. After five years it had shrunk to a mass of grey clay with messages (“…try harder…” advised one fragment). Our analyst customer John Futter reported that, half the dried weight of a sample was useful organic “humus”, but that the levels of lead and zinc were some 300 and 200 parts per million – coming maybe from inks, maybe from the wear of the type used to print older volumes. Alas, the news came too late to stop us filling the “Jubilee” and “Saddam Hussein” bins. What are we to do with it all?</div><div style="background-color: #e5f7ff; color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;">PULPING. Authorities differ. NO BOOKS!! say some – the glue forms balls and gums up the machinery. Just mix them in says another, but it will reduce the market price, compared to 100% newsprint. Do we first remove spines, cloth bindings, laminated jackets? Almost certainly, your local waste-paper collection will reject books unless they are very well hidden.</div><div style="background-color: #e5f7ff; color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;">VOLCANO. Throwing rubbish down disused mineshafts is a Derbyshire tradition now frowned upon. Daily Telegraph satirist Peter Simple once had his impoverished book-reviewer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Peter_Simple%27s_characters" style="color: #006699; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">Julian Birdbath</a> living in a disused Peak leadmine; somewhere I have a letter of thanks for keeping Julian well supplied with the works of The Great Unread. It must have been he that occasionally set fire to a shaft-full, with spectacular results.</div><div style="background-color: #e5f7ff; color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;">TARMACING. Sources tell me that thousands of romantic novels have been mixed into the tarmac of motorway carriageways North of Watford, to improve their flexibility. Is this an urban myth (apparently not DJM Dec.08), or could RESURFACING finally solve the problem of RECYCLING THE BOOK?</div><div style="background-color: #e5f7ff; color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;">CORNISH HEDGE BUILDING Elizabeth Quarmby Lawrence of St. Ive (without the final S) reports: Here in Cornwall field boundaries are largely constructed of ‘Cornish hedges’, which are dry stone walls packed at the top with earth, which, in this mild, damp climate rapidly, and by design, become overgrown and turn into thick banks of vegetation. There is a tale that, back in the eighteenth century, the widow of a local clergyman, faced with disposing of her husband’s library, which no-one locally wanted and which poor communications in those days prevented her from exporting to somewhere where it might be better appreciated, used the books to build one of these ‘hedges’.</div><div style="background-color: #e5f7ff; color: #444444; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; text-align: left;">THE WHOLE HOLISTIC PROCESS Bob Lewis, from the Canadian Outbook has pointed out the potential poetry of processing holy books. Simply click on <a href="http://thisintothat.com/procedure.php" style="color: #006699; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">Tree of Knowledge</a>.</div>Dave's Diatribes & Whimsieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716766140541138396noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1524596922391321367.post-74994315376749681422012-05-21T05:41:00.002-07:002012-05-25T03:52:00.700-07:00Blackening Black Rocks<div class="wp-caption alignright" id="attachment_424" style="width: 610px;"><br />
<div class="wp-caption-text">Blackening Black Rocks</div></div><br />
It is not widely known that the<strong> BLACK ROCKS</strong>, the famous landmark and climbing crag that looms over Cromford in Derbyshire’s<strong> Peak District</strong>, are not naturally black, but owe their unique coloration to the generations-old custom of the annual <strong>Blackening of Black Rocks</strong> in which villagers equipped with buckets, brushes, ladders and ropes anoint the crag with a black fluid prepared according to an ancient and secret recipe. The 2007 event, part of the<strong><em> Celebrating Cromford Festival</em></strong>, was made into a short film by<strong><em> Derbyshire and Derby Groundwork</em></strong>, a well-known charity active in recording threatened local customs. <br />
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Controversy surrounds the blackening ceremony, which many consider to be a pollution of this natural beauty spot. Though some ecologists are in favour of the custom, pressure is mounting on the County Council to ban it. Nevertheless, the event, which took place as always on<strong> May Day</strong>, was a great success. <br />
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Plans are fermenting to record, while there is still time, other vanishing customs of the Peak District; we will look favourably on any offers of generous funding from research institutions, grant-giving bodies, European agencies or Bolywood impressarios.Dave's Diatribes & Whimsieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08716766140541138396noreply@blogger.com0