MH370 - Pieces Of The Puzzle

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Could A Fire Have Caused The Loss Of MH370?

There has been a great amount of idle speculation and misinformation about the missing flight MH370 in the media and around the web.  Much of the news story has been colored by idle speculation bordering on xenophobia regarding the stolen passports. 

That is no way to solve a puzzle.

New battery management technology could boost Li-ion capacity by 40%, quadruple recharging cycles

Long-life laptop battery the tech industry doesn’t want you to have ?

Fed up with the dwindling battery life of his BlackBerry Bold 9000, Carleton University chemistry student Tim Sherstyuk took a straightforward problem to his electrical engineer dad, Nick: Could the two of them come up with the technology to make a standard lithium-ion battery last longer?
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Glastonbury - Britain's Oldest Glass Town

According to Wikipedia and many other online sources the origin of the name Glastonbury is unclear.  On the contrary, it could not be more clear.

While idly thinking about a long-ago visit to Glastonbury Tor I chanced to reflect on the name Glastonbury.  What, I wondered, was the true etymology of the name.  The 'witrin' in the old Celtic name Ynys Witrin seemed to me to resemble the Latin term for glass.  The modern Welsh equivalent 'ynys gwydr' means 'glass island'.  Could the 'glas' of Glastonbury mean glass?  What then of 'ton', which so often means 'town'.  Surely the name should be Glaston or Glasbury.  Why the apparent redundancy?

Goodbye Ohm - Hello Heisenberg

Research reported earlier this month shows that electrical resistance in nanoribbons of epitaxial graphene changes in discrete steps following quantum mechanical principles.


In plain language, electron transport in a new variant of graphene doesn't obey Ohm's law: the resistance of the material is independent of current.  However, unlike the case with a normal conductor where you can stick a multimeter across any two points on a wire and measure the voltage, if you probe this new material you increase the resistance.  Shades of Heisenberg.

Speaking With a Forked Tongue

My regular readers will likely have noticed that I thoroughly enjoy chasing down the truth behind things which are commonly accepted as facts.  I am fortunate to have the gift of being able to spot cracks in arguments as well as glaciers.

I am currently heavily engaged in a legal matter concerning a witness in court who, shall we say,  seems to have been somewhat uninterested in assisting the court in its determination of the true facts.

There is a phrase about not telling the truth, not now so common as when I was a child, but still in frequent use: "he speaks with a forked tongue".