I spent a part of the week in the company of some mining company people. No, not gold mining. Uranium mining.

This will be the next big thing here in a National Park.

WRONG!

I cannot march and carry banners but I do have a blog and a keyboard. Well, I do have until I overstep the mark.

Watch this space.

So how will you go in this week’s BBC News Quiz of the Week.

Last week there was no crown won while the Gitwizard and the Lady Eagle each scored 1/7 to share the hat.

This week I knew all the answers and  I got 4/7  – - -

Good luck

Previous Dunces.

10th Jul, 1/7, gitwizard, Mrs Eagle
3rd Jul, 1/7, archie, Mrs Eagle, Karen, sandy, Rob, Bunk Strutts,
26th Jun, 2/7, Karen, sandy,
19th Jun, 1/7, azahar
12th Jun, 2/7, sandy, azahar
5th Jun, 0/7, Daddy Papersurfer
29th May, 1/7, nursemyra
22nd May, 0/7, healingmagichands
15th May, 2/7, nursemyra
8th May, 1/7, Rob, sledpress,
1st May, 2/7,Daddy Papersurfer, sandy
24th Apr, 2/7, Rob,Daddy Papersurfer, azahar , silverstar98121
17th Apr, 2/7, sandy, Rob
10th Apr, 2/7, sandy, Daddy Papersurfer, anniegirl1138, Archie

Crown Winners (7/7)

29th Aug Buff
5th Sept Buff
12th Sept Daddy P
17th Octember Buff
26th Octember, healing magic hands
5th Dec. Buff
9th Jan 2009, azahar
6th Feb 2009, archie
20th Feb 2009, healing magic hands
27th Feb, 2009, Buff
20th Mar, 2009, healing magic hands
3rd Apr, 2009, sledpress
17th Apr, 2009, anniegirl1138, Buff, Archie
15th May, Buff
5th June, Buff
4th July, healing magic hands

Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colours. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.

Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky.

I haven’t had a chance to do any photography this week so I had to delve into my archives.

A cloudy day from a while ago.

I have found, hidden at the back of my bookshelves, a slim volume named “The Superior Person’s Little Book of Words” which was compiled by one Peter Bowler, a lexicographer who lives near Brisbane and collects old pewter.

Some of his words are irresistible. The first two entries contain the Superior Person’s Ultimate Flame. I must find a way include it in a usenet “discussion”.

ABECEDARIAN, a. (i) Arranged in alphabetical order; (ii) elemen­tary, devoid of sophistication. The present book may be considered by some to fit both applications. For a more in­teresting meaning, see unbelievers defence, the.

ABECEDARIAN INSULT, AN. ‘Sir, you are an apogenous, bovaristic, coprolalial, dasypygal, excerebrose, facinorous, gnathonic, hircine, ithyphallic, jumentous, kyphotic, labrose, mephitic, napiform, oligophrenial, papuliferous, quisquilian, rebarbative, saponaceous, thersitical, unguinous, ventripotent, wlatsome, xylocephalous, yirning, zoophyte: Translation: ‘Sir, you are an impotent, conceited, obscene, hairy-buttocked, brainless, wicked, toadying, goatish, indecent, stable-smelling, hunch­backed, thick-lipped, stinking, turnip-shaped, feeble-minded, pimply, trashy, repellent, smarmy, foul-mouthed, greasy, gluttonous, loathsome, wooden-headed, whining, extremely low form of animal life:

Out in the open farming country, there lived a farmer with a hobby. He collected tractors. He had big ones and small ones, red ones and green ones, and everything in between. And of course, all this machinery took a lot of space, so he had a number of specially constructed buildings.

But slowly, over the years, he got bored of his collection, until one day he decided to get rid of the whole lot, and he set fire to them.

A neighbouring farmer visited him, and found him standing at the entrance to one of the barns, sucking the smoke out of the building to keep the fire burning.

“What’s going on?” asked the visitor.

“Well,” he said, “I used to love these machines, but now I’ve become an ex-tractor fan.”

Which Will Shakespeare somehow wrote without knowing Buff.

WHO will believe my verse in time to come,
If it were fill’d with your most high deserts:
Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life and shows not half your parts.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say ‘This poet lies;
Such heavenly touches ne’er touch’d earthly faces.’
So should my papers, yellowed with their age,
Be scorn’d, like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be term’d a poet’s rage
And stretched metre of an antique song:
But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice, in it and in my rhyme.

What eyes that in these windows gazed
On these productive fields since razed
And now awaken from their dreams
Of all the longforgotten scenes
To find the vast expanse of grass
Is now just bitumen and tars.

xkcd, of course

Just like last week – this is for no apparent reason – - -

Oh, and I loved the book as well.

Once upon a time, there was a snail who was sick and tired of his reputation for being so slow. He decided to get some fast wheels to make up the difference. After shopping around a while, he decided that the Datson 240-Z was the car to get.

So the snail goes to the nearest Datsun dealer and says he wants to buy the 240-Z, but he wants it repainted ‘240-S’.

The dealer asks, “Why ‘S’?”

The snail replies, “‘S’ stands for snail. I want everybody who sees me roaring past to know who’s driving.”

Well, the dealer doesn’t want to lose the unique opportunity to sell a car to a snail, so he agrees to have the car repainted for a small fee.

The snail gets his new car and spent the rest of his days roaring happily down the highway at top speed.

And whenever anyone would see him zooming by, they’d say “Wow! Look at that S-car go!”

Thanks to regular reader and long-time string-thinker Cybe, here is a quiz which will test your knowledge of science.

I was lucky enough to get 12/12 but then I suffer from geekish moments.

The definition of an easy question is “One you know the answer to!”

Click the pic.

That depends.

It’s often said that the speed of light is constant, but it isn’t. Only in a vacuum does light reach its maximum speed of nearly 300,000 km per second (186,282 miles per second). In any other medium, the speed of light varies considerably, always being slower than the figure everyone knows. Through diamonds, for example, it goes less than half as fast: about 130,000 km per second, or 80,000 miles per second.

Until recently, the slowest recorded speed of light (through sodium at -272°C) was just over 60 kph (38 mph): slower than a bicycle.

In 2000, the same team (at Harvard University) managed to bring light to a complete standstill by shining it into a bee (Bose-Einstein condensate) of the element rubidium.

Rubidium was discovered by Robert Bunsen (1811-99) who didn’t invent the Bunsen burner which is named after him.

Astoundingly, light is invisible.

You can’t see the light itself, you can only see what it bumps into. A beam of light in a vacuum, shining at right angles to the observer, cannot be seen.

Although this is very odd, it’s quite logical. If light itself was visible, it would form a kind of fog between your eyes and everything in front of you.

Darkness is equally strange. It’s not there but you can’t see through it.

(From “The Book of General Ignorance”)