Select Page

Randian medicine

One thing that a pandemic does is concentrate the mind on essentials, the availability of medical care being about the most essential of all. Here in the UK most medical care is provided to most people by the National Health Service, but ‘socialized medicine’ was, of course, anathema to Ayn Rand.

Santa Marta and the WGM2012

WGM2012 shows that the highest Earth-surface free-air gravity anywhere in the world is about +970 mGal in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in NE Colombia. But there are problems with those values.

Kate Cochrane

If she had been taken to Valparaiso Rose would almost certainly have found herself meeting another extraordinary woman who, like her, had married a sailor many years older than herself. But unlike her, Kate Cochrane had not been welcomed into her husband’s family.

Lock-down

My step-son lives in Torino, which means he has been on lock-down or more than a month. But he is lucky, because his flat, like most flats, even old ones, in Mediterranean countries has a balcony.

Pendulums and the Mascarenes

In 1819, between the 19th and 25th of May, Louis de Freycinet, with the help of some of his officers from the corvette Uranie, used pendulums to measure gravity in Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius.

The hope of rescue

200 years ago, it was the approach of winter that was to give the castaways from the Uranie their first sight of a potential rescuer, because was that which was driving the whaling and sealing fleets north