Eunoia
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--> Most recent Blog Comments Policy Impressum Maths trivia Search this site RSS Feed Eunoia, who is a grumpy, overeducated, facetious, multilingual ex-pat Scot, blatantly opinionated, old (1944-vintage), amateur cryptologist, computer consultant, atheist, flying instructor, bulldog-lover, Beetle-driver, textbook-writer, long-distance biker, geocacher and blogger living in the foothills south of the northern German plains. Not too shy to reveal his true name or even whereabouts, he blogs his opinions, and humour and rants irregularly. Stubbornly he clings to his beliefs, e.g. that Faith does not give answers, it only prevents you doing any goddamn questioning. You are as atheist as he is. When you understand why you don't believe in all the other gods, you will know why he does not believe in yours :-) Oh, and he also has a neat English Bulldog bitch 'Frieda'. And her big son 'Kosmo'.
Some of my bikes
My Crypto Pages
My Maths Pages
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Monday, March 30, 2015
Single point of failure :-(Two engines, two instrument panels, two altimeters, two radios, and two pilots. One locked door. RIP Germanwings 4U9525 :-(Comments (1) : Saturday, March 28, 2015
In CEST tomorrow ;-)At 2.a.m. CET on sunday morning in Germany we move our clocks forward one hour onto 3 a.m. CEST (Central European Summer Time) thus losing an hour's sleep.This is as opposed to the US State of Indiana, who recently put their clocks back by several years. To be precise, 55½ years. In months, that's 666 :-( Comments (1) : Friday, March 27, 2015
Maths is hard....... to typeset in HTML4 {this blog is handwritten HTML 4.0 btw} :-(That's because HTML4 was designed for TEXTs which are linear strings, but maths (e.g. algebra, calculus, matrices, tensors) uses equations and formulae which are two-dimensional structured objects. Okay, okay, HTML makes provision for superscripts and subscripts, so it is easy to write x23 meaning the cube of the second element of an array. And there are special characters for the Greek letters often used, such as α β γ δ φ π θ etc. Similarly, they can be capitalised Α Β Γ Δ Φ Π Θ, but their exact appearance will depend on the font used on the target machine. Modern browsers support these, but it depends on the font. Some fonts have these symbols and others don't. Let's just look at solving a quadratic equation, as we all learned in school.
a.x2 + b.x + c = 0
The easiest way for me to display the general solution is to write it down on a piece of paper which I then scan, giving Total time is 8 seconds to write and 15 seconds to scan & resize. But it doesn't look particulary neat; OK for this blog but not for a professional publication. More complicated is to write the expression in Latex (another markup language to learn :-( ) and then use a Latex pre-processor to generate an image (eg : gif or png (which is scaleable), giving this neat png image. Total time is 60 seconds to write and 15 seconds to pre-process and 5 seconds to resize as needed, ignoring the weeks needed to learn Latex :-( Typesetting the equation in HTML is even harder. Despite objections from the purists (misuse of tables), I wrote a 2 column table. The "x =" goes on the left, the fraction on the right. For the formula I needed two Unicode special characters "±" and √ (most browsers can render these). But because of the squaring superscript on b2, I needed to increase the font size of the radic to 200%, thus √ . I also needed some CSS for the upper line and margins in the fraction. All in all, 22 lines of CSS and HTML just for this one simple equation :-( And it still isn't quite how I would like it to be (the central fraction line should be longer, as in the PNG graphic).
So that's why I don't usually write equations etc in this blog :-( Further online reading : Erik Neumann's page and Yucca Korpela's page. Having read both of those pages, try your hand at writing this equation in HTML :- You have until the end of the month to get the HTML right ;-) But remember, there's more to life than just maths ;-) Comments (5) : Wednesday, March 25, 2015
I say no soothVery few of us ever get the chance of an objective assessment of our abilities as an oracle, predicting the future. Simply because no-one ever wrote down what we said thirty years ago! Turns out, I was an exception; here's the anecdote, from an AI lecture of mine.Back in 1985, a discussion panel had been set up, aiming to educate government personnel, top civil servants, top industrial managers, press et al about what might be expected of Artificial Intelligence. Protagonists were to be Prof. Siekmann (pro-AI) vs. Prof. Hoimar von Ditfurth, so a right-royal academic battle was expected. Turns out that Siekmann got stuck in Madrid, so at short notice - and with NO briefing - I got to take his place. Given such a doughty and illustrious co-lecturer, I decided to play it low-key - no hype - only what I thought (in 1985) were realistic expectations. Now here we are, 30 years on, and I found the stenographers' transcription in my bookshelves. So I have the retrospective opportunity to compare today's reality with what I predicted 30 years ago. How do you spell Hubris? ;-) Page 10 predictions : Knowledge based expert systems (yes, but far fewer than I had hoped for). Intelligent teaching systems based on the explanation component of expert systems ( no, we use Wikipedia to look up human-written texts instead). Natural language access (yes, ask Siri). Automated knowledge acquisition not expected to be achieved (still not here yet). Intelligent Robots not here yet (but autonomous cars expected next year). Real-time arbitrary scene analysis not yet feasible (in a military context partially yes, otherwise not yet). So I was about half right. Page 22 prediction : automated investment advisor in every bank branch (no, no sign of that yet). Page 23 prediction : automated wide-spectrum diagnoses at every village doctors' practice (no, but many narrow-spectrum sensor based systems, leaving the doctor to do the deductions). Page 25 predictions : automated wide-spectrum diagnoses of failures in technical devices (no, but many narrow-spectrum sensor based systems). Page 31 prediction : upload parts needed (SW/HW) to a space-ship enroute. (Yes, but I missed the 3-D printer aboard the space-ship/ISS). Mentioned in passing : P.69 : speech-to-text typewriter (yes). Translating telephones (just becoming feasible). AI-programs making patentable discoveries (few and very far between). I think my boss at the time (H.F) set me up to do some marketing maybe, but our sales force didn't follow through. The parliamentary stenographers' transcript shows that the panel gave me a hard time for avoiding hype and pitching my lecture low-key, but that several members of the audience praised this approach, deeming it very realistic. Overall, I was only barely half-right, looking back with 30 years of hindsight. The Singularity (John von Neumann) : a runaway effect wherein AI will exceed the intellectual capacity (and control!) of humans.
So I said no sooth reliably, I'm no haruspex, because I don't even have a gut feel ;-) Meanwhile, Kurzweil predicts The Singularity to occur around 2045, whereas Vinge predicts some time before 2030. At the 2012 Singularity Summit, Armstrong did a study of artificial general intelligence (AGI) predictions by experts and found a wide range of predicted dates, with a median value of 2040 AD. I avoided the subject in 1985 - classifying it as hype - but still don't expect to see it in my lifetime (I'm 70 now). If you want HYPE nowadays, you could try reading Martine Rothblatt's keynote speech at SXSW this year :-( Something else I missed then was the ridiculous spread nowadays on the Amazon prices of a book of mine published that year (1985). Methinks the first used-book dealer is a bit of an optimist, the 2nd maybe a pessimist ;-) You also might like to know the one thing that Nostradamus got absolutely right :-) Comments (4) : Monday, March 23, 2015
Risking their jobs :-(Perhaps the most valuable thing an office worker has is his/her job, because employers regard office staff as a commodity, i.e. interchangeable. Fire one? Just hire another. Office drones.Thus it was with some surprise that I read a report (by gfk fuer papersmart.de) that one quarter of german office-workers steal office supplies from their employer, risking their job for cheap items (€1 to €10 ?). Half of those who confessed did not even have a bad conscience. The El Cheapo items being stolen, in order of popularity, were : ballpoint pens (24c each), paper (3 €/box), paperclips (3.30 €/box), envelopes (3 €/box) glue (2.50 € ea.), files (1.30€ ea.), paper-punches(6€ ea.), blank CDs(12€/box), pocket calculator(6€ ea.), toner(6€/box). All of these are cheap items, nothing worth risking your job for. What were these thieves thinking (if at all?) ? Friday, March 20, 2015
As the moon drifts away...There was an eclipse of the sun today, but it was only partial (¾) here. The track of the total eclipse started south of Greenland, moved across the Faroes (islands in the Atlantic between Scotland and Iceland) and Svalbard (Spitzbergen) and ended up at the North Pole. The sketch on the left shows the partial eclipse as seen from here, the moon is near perigee today. And it is Spring equinox too :-)We live at a lucky time in the history of our planet, as we still see total eclipses AND sometimes annular eclipses. This is because the moon has a 5½% eccentric elliptical orbit around the Earth, when it is closer we get total eclipses, when it is further away we see annular eclipses, because moon and sun subtend almost the same angle as seen from the Earth. But let us look at the situation in the (far) past P, now N and the future F. The tidal effects of the moon extract energy from the Earth-Moon system. The Earth's rotation is slowed by the tidal effects (by about 2 milliseconds per century) and the moon drifts away from the Earth by about 1½ inches per year. In the sketch above (NOT TO SCALE), we see that in the far past (P), the moon was much closer to the Earth and so blocked out the sun for longer at total eclipses. Conversely, in the far future (F), the moon will be much farther from the Earth, so there will be NO total eclipses, but only annular (=ring-shaped) eclipses. At our position now (N) we get total eclipses when the moon is at perigee (362,600 kms away) but annular eclipses when the moon is at apogee (405,400 kms away) in its elliptical orbit. BTW, don't you think that "As the moon drifts away..." would have been a great title for a psychodelic rock song? Stones, Hendrix, Hawkwind, Oldfield? Comments (2) : Wednesday, March 18, 2015
World Wide Cafe´sThere are Cafe´s (coffee shops) which are crap. Undercapitalised "pop-up" coffee shops in London (UK) are included in some of the worst. Narrow door leads into long tube-shaped quasi-corridors disappearing into the darkness at the back. Ankh-Morpork is better. People who left school with no formal qualifications describe themselves with the high-falutin' title of Barista - the coffein equivalent of a soda-jerk - and giving themselves airs for being able to press a button on a machine :-(Now I'm no expert in the coffee itself, we'd have to get friend and fellow blogger Renke - coffee addict and aficionado - to rate the coffee there, but I do like the place to have a nice flair, an ambience, an atmosphere. I'm not too keen in the traditional Vienna Cafe´s, too dark inside and full of third men in wet raincoats wearing piebald shoes. I prefer a Cafe´ with lots of light inside, or even with seating outside in the summer (as long as it's not right on the street, with its stinking noisy traffic). There's one just off Ghirardelli Square (in San Francisco), I think it was called "Black Point", which has a great view across the bay towards Sausalito, which I like. They did good small snacks too :-) There's another in Faneuil Hall (Boston) called "Red Barn", part of a Massachusetts chain as far as I know. Although the ambience comes from the great Faneuil Hall market, the beans were roasted nicely. But the biggest surprise for me was finding there is a modern Cafe´ in Novosibirsk! Novosibirsk is the third largest city in Russia; bang in the middle of the country, on the river Ob. Think Siberia, grey and bleak, I thought, but in summer it has a pleasant climate. Anyway, my tip (and this is for you, Ivan) is to stay in the Kranskky Prospect area, then stop over at Cafe´ Pelman just for the flair (cheap, modern furniture, but they do good snacks). Turns out it's part of a chain, there are three in Moscow too, right on your doorstep, Ivan :-) They now have a website, enable scripting to see the photos. Mind you, Novosibirsk also now has a KFC and a bunch of other western chains, so its got creeping capitalism already, not just the usual Soviet-era derelict children's playground with a rusty ferris wheel :-( BTW, follow that link for a bunch of photos showing you what Novosibirsk looks like nowadays. Comments (7) : Monday, March 16, 2015
Dubitable Darwin DeviceThere are some products on offer on the internet so dubious that I think they should be banned from the market. I'd call the purchasers Darwin Award candidates. Darwin Awards are assigned posthumously to those who die by their own hand, doing something really stupid.The latest example is the "Belt-Dummy" as an attachment for your keyring. It is the metal tongue from a car's safety belt. The idea is that you plug this into the safety-belt socket to stop the car's incessant whining that you haven't belted up! How stupid is that? For less effort than undoing the belt-dummy from your key-ring and inserting it, you could just actually plug the safety belt in its socket, getting the benefit of added safety in the event of a crash. This isn't a belt-dummy it's a belt for dummies! :-( While talking about dubitable devices, I read that Apple have now announced their smart watch. A device which lets you do (some of) what your smartphone can, but which needs you to have a smartphone anyway, to operate it. Talk about superfluous; who needs that? They claim hundreds of Apps have been written for the iWatch; rest assured most of them will be crappy. iFart now on your wrist? :-( Sunday, March 15, 2015
Vacation readingAs usual, I took too few books with me on (the Lanzarote) vacation; just four. So after four days I'd finished them and turned to the hotel's lounge "library" for two more. The hotel had only 8 rooms so the choice was limited, just 41 books, some in German, some Spanish, and some English, which previous guests had left there. My first choice was a bad one: Peter Kay's autobiography. He claims to be a UK comedian, leaving school without any formal qualifications, and it showed :-( The second book was much better, weird and convoluted humour, Tom Holt's "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of sausages". So much better, that upon return home I have ordered two more Tom Holt books (used, via Amazon) : "Doughnut" and "Blonde Bombshell". I haven't started them yet (as the post just brought them), but the cover blurbs sound encouraging. I'll let you know how I liked them.Just 7 hours after writing that first paragraph, I've now finished reading "Blonde Bombshell". A most enjoyable book, a strange mixture of science-fiction, comedy, and the detective-story style where you and the protagonist are always struggling to find out what is going on! In this respect, it has the same recipe as "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of sausages" :-) Just 3 hours after writing the previous paragraph, I've given up trying to read "Doughnut", which I found exhausting and not nearly as well done - either in comedy or SF - as the two aforementioned books. Swings and roundabouts. Comments (2) : Saturday, March 14, 2015
Top Gear-Knob ;-)Top Gear TV-presenter Jeremy Clarkson - seemingly in need of some Anger Management training - has gotten himself suspended by the BBC. Sadly the program Top Gear has also been withdrawn by the BBC, somewhat of an overreaction IMHO.In view of this, I propose a new gear-change logo for Clarkson, to be known as The Top Gear-Knob ;-) Comments (3) : Friday, March 13, 2015
Ave atque ValeThanks to the wonderful interconnectedness of the Internet and the young lady who wrote his obituary, I have just discovered that an old friend Len Mor died last year. Requiescat in pace.Len was an Australian who lived most of his later life in France. He and I worked together 1969/1970 writing a Cobol compiler for Telefunken in Konstanz and I'd lost track of him since our ways parted. He is survived by his wife Ros and daughters Rebecca and Rachel(whose zeroeth birthday party I vaguely remember). Len was much more sporting and health-oriented than I am; he played squash all his life. I am more the lazy sod, but we'd each tease one another back then "Your lifestyle will kill you first". So I was right:-( Thus I will be drinking a Scotch and toasting your memory, Len. You had a good life. Friday the 13th also brings the sad news that pTerry died yesterday aged just 66 after the increasing ravages of Alzheimer's disease. Sir Terry Pratchett was my favourite fantasy author; I have all of his Discworld books, most of his books for children as well, and all his short stories. He became an active campaigner for assisted dying and has influenced the UK government on this subject to some extent. All his fans will miss him; expect an outburst of empathetic obits. His legacy will live on. It aten't ded! What an 'embuggerance' :-( Noli timere messorem! Comments (3) : Wednesday, March 11, 2015
Lanzarote FunWe didn't spend the whole week just sunbathing & swimming on Lanzarote, so let me wrap up the trip report with a few photos of some of our (typical tourist) fun outings.Never having ridden a camel, I gave this a try for a short ride through the national park. There is an A-frame in the camel's back, with a seat on each side. After the guide had seated us, he looked at me critically and added a 20 kilo sand-sack to the outside of SWMBOs seat, so that we would balance. The poor beast of burden didn't like that and tried to bite me, which is why they have those sacking guards around their mouths! We were then tied in, using a "safety-belt" aka a piece of baling-twine :-( The guide then shouted something at the camel, which then stood up, hind-legs first, almost pitching me out of the seat as I wasn't expecting the lurch! The next couple of miles consisted of lurching and staggering with SWMBO and I hanging on for dear life. I'd never actually been seasick on land before :-( I could not even enjoy a camel toe :-( Next day, we visited some of the caves and took a guided tour through a longish lava tube, actually three tubes above one another. Attractively lit, which enabled my camera to capture some high-contrast views inside the lava tubes. The explanations were in Spanish (not my strong point) and what the guide said was English, although I didn't understand much of that either! The next day's schedule included an hour's ride in a submarine. So now I can say I've been to the bed of the Atlantic, even if it was only about 100 feet down! We got to see a shipwreck acting as an artificial reef hosting shoals of different fish. There was a large manta-ray who came to be fed; the submarine had accompanying divers who fed it (see photo above). The manta has a really small mouth, located on the underside of its body, see photo above. All the underwater photos are bluish because the water filters out the longer wavelengths (reds etc). Visibility was good, 30 yards or more. On the following day we headed north to the beach at Orzola, not for the beach but for the tall vertical cliffs there. In the winter, the wind often blows from the north directly onto the cliffs around this U-shaped cove. You can paraglide for HOURS! In fact it is difficult to get down! You need to head out to sea to lose altitude (1000 feet?) then head back to land on the town's football pitch as the locals do. Drier than landing on the spray-covered beach! From Orzola you can take a ferry boat around the north cape to the flat island of Graciosa, a nature preserve, for some hiking or mountain biking. The photo above is taken from Mirador del Rio, a 1500 foot cliff on the north coast of Lanzarote. Mirador del Rio was created in the mid-seventies by the aforementioned local artist César Manrique in his typical architectural style, integrated into the lava cliff. The views over the abyss are stupendous, my photos don't do them justice :-( Well, that's enough about our Lanzarote trip; back to being boring ;-) Comments (1) : Sunday, March 8, 2015
Putting it down safely...The papers here on friday were full ofHarrison Ford (72) had an engine failure just after take-off while flying a 1942 vintage open-cockpit Ryan trainer. A plane so light and so slow is JUST capable of killing you. But Ford responded correctly, no panic, he didn't even call Mayday. He aimed the plane at the golf course which is on the extended centreline of his departure airfield. He slowed to best glide speed, later to minimum sink-rate, judging by an amateur video. Unfortunately he clipped a tree at the last moment of his glide-in. He has minor cuts and lacerations we are told, nothing serious. Photo gallery of the plane after the mishap here. So well done, Harrison Ford, as the saying goes "any landing you can walk away from is a good one". And he could, so it was :-) As a flying instructor, emergency landings are something I'd practice a lot with my students until they could glide and put the plane down safely into a field of their choice. At the last moment, we'd restore power and fly away for another try. Glider pilots also spend a lot of time practising off-field landings, for obvious reasons. Especially when flying vintage small airplanes, I always have a task running in the back of my mind "If the engine fails NOW, I go for that field over there .... and if the engine fails NOW, I go for that country road/golf course/etc over there ...." Like you were wearing 7 league boots and striding through the sky. Your mental task watches smoke-plumes, wind-turbines, wavetops etc to keep a track of the wind direction, so you land more-or-less into the wind. See my article No turning back from May 2014. Sometimes our club would have spot-landing competitions onto an area we'd chalked out on the EDLP runway. A target line (no score if you landed short) followed R2L by 10 rectangles each 1 meter wide, as shown below. Come over the line at 1000 feet above the field, cut the engine to idle, carb-heat ON, and glide into the spot-landing area. Some people missed the whole area! If you bounced, the furthest touchdown counted. No score if short. Lowest score wins, flying instructors in a separate category. I got to be quite good at these. When visiting Oshkosh in 84 I took part in their spot-landing competition one day. Hubris! Wow, those Alaskan bush pilots etc are good at that! The judges were measuring distance from the line in feet and in the finals in inches! I did one spectacularly good one (for me) of only 18 inches from the line and still only ended up fourth! :-( Apropos that 7-league boot mental subtask : only one time did it make me really nervous. Way back well before 9/11, I had filed VFR from Paderborn in Germany to Biggin Hill (just SE of London) with Elstree (just NW of London) as my alternate. On approach to Biggin Hill the runway was suddenly closed (some guy had upended his taildragger), so I called ATC for vectors to Elstree (see black line on the map below). ATC vectored me right across the middle of London to "Stay at or below 500 feet, crossing traffic R2L for Heathrow (runways marked in red) above you". I have often wondered if they knew I was a single-engined 1969 Piper Cherokee! Visibility unlimited, the views were spectacular, but my camera was in my luggage :-( But my 7-league boot algorithm would have failed me, London is so built-up that despite parks and football-fields etc, 500 feet altitude does not leave you enough options and trading speed for altitude (in the event) was not part of my clearance :-( In 4800+ hours flying, I have only twice had engine trouble, once due to carburettor icing and once due to a split fuel line. Both times I had sufficient altitude to glide to small airfields nearby (albeit having to land downwind once), so no sweat, but I did call PanPanPan , I'll admit :-) Non vitae sed scholae discimus; we're learning for life, not for school ;-) Comments (3) : Friday, March 6, 2015
TomTom misses the boat :-(Iam a convinced user of SatNavs. I prefer to use TomTom devices, or at least I did until today :-( I like the TomTom because both SWMBO and I prefer their simple user interface and their biker's SatNav, the TomTomRider, has an option to plan a route from A to B not in the fastest time but along the curviest route, a great feature for us bikers :-)So we have 3 devices, one on the bike and one in each car. One of the car devices died yesterday, so I went out and got a new model 135. They cost less than €150, probably a repair would have cost more? However, the database on this model is buggy, it doesn't seem to know about major ferry connections. I uploaded all my standard routes onto the device, one being the trip to the Isle of Man, a Mecca for motorcyclists. It usually looks like this :- Ride 320 kms to Ijmuiden, NW of Amsterdam, take the overnight ferry to Newcastle (England) - alternatively to Hull (England) - ride across England to Heysham or Liverpool(from Hull), then take the ferry from Heysham or Liverpool to Douglas (IOM). All shown in the sketch above. Simple, easy, two half-day rides, two ferries. This new TomTom model 135 misses the boat though! See screenshot below. I would have me ride all the way to Calais (France), take the cross-channel ferry, ride from Dover up to Anglesey (Wales), take a ferry there to Dublin (Ireland), then another ferry back from Ireland to the IOM. What a stupid routing!! Just as well this is a car SatNav; I'd never do this route in a car anyway, always on the bike to the IOM. It seems their database does not know about the overnight ferries across the North Sea, nor does it know about the ferries to IOM from England :-( TomTom, you literally missed the boat! Update your databases asap, please! Wednesday, March 4, 2015
César ManriqueWhile we were on Lanzarote island last month, we made sure to visit the César Manrique foundation. César Manrique (1919-1992) was Lanzarote's famous artist and architect. The César Manrique foundation is located in one of the semi-subterranean houses in which he lived and worked. The photo on the left below shows the foundation's logo. The photo on the right shows one of his mobiles, all different, typically located on roundabouts / traffic islands on the major roads; almost ubiquitous.We both quite liked this mural of his in the garden of the foundation; rather in the style of Miro, we thought. Pity that cacti obscure some of it though. Part of his house was below ground, built in lava tubes. Some of the rooms, like this lounge, are built in lava bubbles of a 300 year-old volcanic outflow. Although I liked the unique architecture, I wasn't so keen on some of his paintings. This red and gold one I found just confusing. Not to my taste :-( One positive thing I will say though : he persuaded the island authorities to put a stop to high-rise buildings. So most buildings are just 2 storeys high. All painted white (to combat the sun); as we drove around in our tiny rental car (an underpowered Citroen, dammit) I found myself incessantly singing Pete Seeger's ditty "Little Boxes", just for the title, not the lyrics ;-) Comments (1) : Monday, March 2, 2015
The new €20 note : insecure already :-(Just last week the ECB (European Central Bank) announced the new €20 note, to be introduced into general circulation in November. The specimen notes now being printed in small numbers are for use by ATM (automated teller machines) manufacturers and manufacturers of vending and ticket automata so they can reprogram their machines to accept the forthcoming notes with their added security features.The ECB claims the new note (see picture on the left) has additional security features like holograms and see-through pictures of Europa, a mythological Greek figure. However, my eagle eye has noted a big INSECURITY feature, shown in the close-up on the right, where it reads EYPΩ ! That's Greek for Euro. So the European Central Bank has already made up what passes for its mind that Greece will still be in the Euro in november, regardless of whether various contributing(sic!) countries want a Grexit :-( Surely, this is the biggest INSECURITY for the Euro? And it implies that all "independent" votes by national parliaments are a farce. Which they are here anyway. Our weak-spined politicians insisted last week on throwing
more good money after bad, by granting Greece more Demand the Grexit NOW, as the only reasonable solution to their eternal begging! Back to the Drachma, devalue it until they learn to become honest and competitive again. And the next catastrophe is already in the pipeline : TTIP :-( Comments (2) : |
Recent Writings
Single point of failure In CEST tomorrow ;-) Maths is hard.... I say no sooth Risking their jobs :-( As the moon drifts away World Wide Cafe´s Dubitable Darwin Device Vacation reading Top Gear-Knob ;-) Ave atque Vale Lanzarote Fun Putting it down safely TomTom misses the boat César Manrique The new €20 note Dif-tor heh smusma Lanzarote Cactus Garden Lanzarote Lava Annual Clout Shoot Blogroll Ain Bulldog Blog Badtux... Balloon Juice Cop Car Curmudgeonly... Earth-Bound Misfit Echidne of the snakes Fail Blog Finding life hard? Hattie (Hawaii) Making Light Mockpaperscissors Mostly Cajun Murr Brewster Not Always Right Observing Hermann Pergelator Rants from t'Rookery Scary Duck Spork in the drawer Squatlo Rant The Magistrate's Blog XE Express Yellowdog Grannie Archive 2015: Jan Feb Archive 2014: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec This blog is getting really unmanegable, so I am taking the first 12 years' archives offline. My blog, my random decision. Tough shit; YOLO. Link Disclaimer ENGLISH : I am not responsible for the contents or form of any external page to which this website links. I specifically do not adopt their content, nor do I make it mine. DEUTSCH : Für alle Seiten, die auf dieser Website verlinkt sind, möchte ich betonen, dass ich keinerlei Einfluss auf deren Gestaltung und Inhalte habe. Deshalb distanziere ich mich ausdrücklich von allen Inhalten aller gelinkten Seiten und mache mir ihren Inhalt nicht zu eigen. This Blog's Status is Blog Dewey Decimal Classification : 153 FWIW, 153 is a triangular number, meaning that you can arrange 153 items into an equilateral triangle (with 17 items on a side). It is also one of the six known truncated triangular numbers, because 1 and 15 are triangular numbers as well. It is a hexagonal number, meaning that you can distribute 153 points evenly at the corners and along the sides of a hexagon. It is the smallest 3-narcissistic number. This means it’s the sum of the cubes of its digits. It is the sum of the first five positive factorials. Yup, this is a 153-type blog. QED ;-) Books I have written
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