I have not written about this since September, when the public was deeply outraged about the Milly Dowler case. It appeared that the dastardly Murdoch hacks were deleting messages from the abducted (and, as it later turned out, dead) Milly’s voicemail to make room for more, so that further riveting coverage could sell hundreds of [...]
[Schmallenberg, a modest town in North Rhine-Westphalia, about 25k inhabitants. The dots are outbreaks of Schmallenberg disease in sheep at the end of Jan 2012. Thanks to Bodlina and Wikipedia.] [The Catholic church in the town, photo by Stefan Didam, July 2006] Over the last month or two I have discovered the joys of listening [...]
Science is a human endeavour. Its practitioners are human with all their foibles and weaknesses. That is part of the miracle that is science. Despite such difficulties, the pursuit of science has succeeded in reaching a stable and useful body of knowledge which has enormously enhanced humankind’s mastery of the planet. I have lost track [...]
The Global Positioning System (GPS) consists of about 30 satellites in medium earth orbit (MEO), mainly launched in the 1990s, that broadcast extremely accurate time signals from on-board atomic clocks. The idea is that from anywhere on the planet at least 4 satellites should be visible and by comparing the received signals one can work [...]
The problems were posted here. Problem 1 Q. Show that (A) Q is a group, (B) it is different from D8, and (C) there are no other non-abelian groups of order 8. (A) The 8 elements are: 1, -1, i, -i=i-1, j, -j=j-1, k, -k=k-1. As usual, proving the associative law (xy)z = x(yz) is [...]
