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Understanding The Voynich Manuscript #4

Understanding The Voynich Manuscript #4 If not Latin, then what? Please see the links at...

Understanding the Voynich Manuscript #3

Understanding the Voynich Manuscript #3 Plants and the moon. For thousands of years, people...

Understanding the Voynich Manuscript #2

Understanding the Voynich Manuscript #2 An i for an i ? Not nymphs: women! There are...

Understanding The Voynich Manuscript #1

Understanding the Voynich Manuscript #1 Tom, Dick and Harry explain a statistical method. ...

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Patrick LockerbyRSS Feed of this column.

Retired engineer, 73 years young. Computer builder and programmer. Linguist specialising in language acquisition and computational linguistics. Interested in every human endeavour except the scrooge... Read More »

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What I Had For Breakfast #2

Four whole fried chickens, and a Coke.

My bike's got cop tires, cop suspensions, cop shocks. It's a model made before lycra was invented, so it'll run good on regular jeans and t-shirt - or the outfit described in the comments to What I Had For Breakfast #1.


I said I was going to reveal something about myself here, and I will continue to do so.  All you need do to extract meaningful data is to study psychoanalysis - or criminal psychology, whichever is least  likely to harm your street cred.


I am often accused of never finishing what I star
What is a BLEVE?

A BLEVE is a Boiling-Liquid Expanding-Vapor Explosion.

It is fairly common knowledge that removing the radiator cap of a vehicle with a hot engine will cause the ejection of boiling water.



Japan's Nuclear Emergency - The Straight Goods - Update


The latest reports coming from Japan indicate that the current nuclear emergency is not as great as some people had feared it might be.

Despite some media reports: there have been no reactor explosions.  Period.

Radiation levels are falling, according to the most recent news release by the Japanese government.
What I Had For Breakfast - Not Really

A short history of blogging

In the early days of blogging, a lot of people seemed to feel the need to share boring stuff about what they did all day.  A typical blogger would write stuff about what they'd eaten, where they had been, what their cat dragged in, etc.  And then came the bloggers who wrote some real cool stuff:

Do I know good science?
Not really, but I have watched a lot of Mr. Wizard and Quantum Leap, and I also worked at Sea World of Ohio (when it existed) for a summer. Hey, cleaning duck poop off the pavement taught me a lot about science!
Yvette Beaudoin
innergeek
Update: For the latest bulletins, please see my new article:
Japan's Nuclear Emergency - The Straight Goods - Update

original post begins here:
Japan's Nuclear Emergency - The Straight Goods

There is much speculative and inaccurate reporting in the world's media regarding the problems caused to nuclear power facilities in Japan by the recent earthquake.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company - TEPCO - is releasing frequent updates on the emergency situation which followed the earthquake.
Japan Quake - Media Up To Mischief

Edit - this blog entry is now out of date.  The complaint about 100 versus 1000 is now withdrawn.
Please see Japan's Nuclear Emergency - The Straight Goods - including comments - for updated information.

Original post below:

The media loves to abuse the deliciously ambiguous term up to.

Why do some reporters like to get hold of a range of values from a scientist or engineer and then quote the number at the scariest end of the range?