Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled ………. penguins?
But who was Peter Piper, and what is his connection with penguins?
Rand and Patel
We have our own Ayn Rand. We have a Home Secretary cast in her image. We have Priti Patel.
A confusion of units
Gravity units are a mess. About half of all surveys have their results reported in the c,g,s unit, the mGal, and half in the S.I unit, which differs by a factor of ten. And very few people have any idea of why the Eötvös unit is defined in the way that it is.
The partitioning of Timor
Alone among the islands between Borneo and New Guinea, the middling-sized island of Timor stands out as a land of two masters. The western part belongs with all its neighbours, as part of the Republic of Indonesia, but the slightly larger eastern part is the main component of the independent state of Timor Leste,
In praise of postal workers
Are schools and hospitals really in danger, as one modern-day follower of Ayn Rand claims, of being taken over by ‘unionised postal workers’? Should Covid-19 not have made us realise, if we hadn’t already, that postmen and women, delivery workers, shop workers, warehouse workers, lorry drivers, home healthcare providers and childcare workers deserve both adequate pay and our respect?
Mohorovičić geophysicist
There is no doubt that Andrija Mohorovičić deserves to be remembered. The work he did laid the foundations for the use of earthquake waves in understanding the Earth, but brilliance has not always been enough to ensure that a scientist is remembered. His work might easily have been overlooked, or lesser men might have received the credit, but this is one case where the right man has been honoured.