by admin | Jun 30, 2019 | The Long Read
In 1823 Basil Hall, a British naval officer who was the first person to measure gravity in the Galapagos Islands, advised anyone who might follow him in taking gravity pendulums overseas to recognise the “… advantage which … would arise from having the whole experiment performed in England, by the person who is afterwards to repeat it abroad, not under the hospitable roof of Mr. BROWNE … but in the fields, and with no advantages save those he could carry with him…”
by admin | Jun 29, 2019 | Uranie
It was Don Watts, my friend and former colleague in Australia’s Bureau of Mineral Resources (now Geoscience Australia, but we are going back fifty years here) who put me on to this. Don is a fan of Patrick O’Brien’s Napoleonic wars novels, chronicling the deeds and disasters of Captain Jack Aubrey and his close friend, the part–Catalan ship’s doctor and scientist Stephen Maturin. We are already getting a feel here for being in the world of the Uranie…
by admin | Jun 29, 2019 | Bouguer
In 1823 Basil Hall, a British naval officer who became the first person to measure gravity in the Galapagos Islands, advised anyone who might imitate him by taking gravity pendulums overseas to recognise the “….advantage which … would arise from having the whole experiment performed in England, by the person who is afterwards to repeat it abroad, not under the hospitable roof of Mr. BROWNE … but in the fields, and with no advantages save those he could carry with him…”
by admin | Jun 29, 2019 | Ayn Rand
According to an article by Fraser Nelson in the Spectator of 11 February 2017, “Just before Christmas, Sajid Javid performed a ritual he has observed twice a year throughout his adult life: he read the courtroom scene in The Fountainhead.” Nelson also reported that “As a student, Javid read the passage to his now-wife, but only once — she told him she’d have nothing more to do with him if he tried it again.” A sensible woman, obviously…
