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Air India Flight 171 - Flawed EE Bay Water Ingress Theory

Air India Flight 171 - Flawed EE Bay Water Ingress TheoryRichard Godfrey, in many videos on the...

Air India Flight 171 Accident Summary - Key Findings

Air India Flight 171 Accident Summary - Key FindingsThe purpose of an air accident report is to...

Air India Flight 171 - Ask The experts

Air India Flight 171 - Ask The expertsAn open letter to H. Lawrence Culp, Jr., Chairman and Chief...

Air India Flight 171 - The Vital Seconds

Air India Flight 171 - The Vital SecondsThe Timeline - Vital Seconds.This timeline is constructed...

Patrick Lockerby

Retired engineer, 79 years young. Computer builder and programmer. Linguist specialising in technical translation. Interested in every human endeavour except the scrooge theory of accountancy. Interested... Read More »

Simon Singh Wins - US Law To The Rescue!

Apr 02 2010 | comment(s)

Simon Singh Wins - US Law To The Rescue!

The British Courts do not indulge themselves in bogus judgements - not even on April 1st.

This article is genuine.

A note on common law:

Both the US and the UK are common law jurisdictions. British courts will accordingly take note of US court judgements, but are not legally bound to follow them.

Occasionally, a judge will recognise that UK law is insufficient alone to secure a just result. In such circumstances the judge may be more inclined than otherwise to accept a sufficiently fair and just US ruling as providing a model and a precedent.

IPCC Says: We Give Up

Apr 01 2010 | comment(s)

I have been waiting for the expiry of the embargo on this story at midnight GMT. I am now free to publish what I am confident will be a major scoop for scientificblogging.com

IPCC Says: We Give Up

In a shocking new publication - "IPCC: The Final Report" - the IPCC concludes that its study of climate is ultimately futile since so few people are willing trust its findings.

The 10-page report is available only on national government web sites - the IPCC site will be shutting down some time in the next 24 hours.

Random Noise #21 : World's Most Dry and Remote Area

Apr 01 2010 | comment(s)

Random Noise #21 : World's Most Dry and Remote Area

How do you go about finding the world's driest, most remote area?

You could use a satellite, but that's exceedingly expensive.

You could send out questionaires, but that is unreliable.

Working on the reasonable assumption that you can't beat first-hand knowledge, I have worked out the following experimental method:

Start off into a remote region with just a bicycle and trailer with plenty of filled water carriers.

You will know you are in a remote area when someone points to the trailer and asks:
"What's that?"

The Mother Of Inquiries: Parliamentary CRU Report

Mar 31 2010 | comment(s)

The Mother Of Inquiries: Parliamentary CRU Report

The UK's House of Commons is often called the mother of parliaments. In reality that would be Tynwald, the parliament of the Isle of Man. However: a cross-party commitee, the House of Commons Science and Technology Commitee, has just published its report on the CRU affair. The two pdfs, free to download, come to about 2.7Mb of data.

31 March 2010 Eighth Report HC 387-I 387i.pdf and 387ii.pdf

Lego Turing Machine

Mar 30 2010 | comment(s)

Lego Turing Machine

I just came across a wonderful teaching aid:

Our success in implementing the Turing Machine as a physical device is exciting because the Turing Machine theoretical construct is such an iconic part of computer science. The Robotic Turing Machine is not in itself a practical machine, but it does illustrate the theoretical points made by Turing, and so could easily find application in the field of teaching. Illustrating the theory of a Turing Machine might be made easier with a physical machine at hand to aid in comprehension. Seeing a physical machine performing TM operations can be easier to follow than the typical java applet example and might give a better intuitive understanding of the TM theory.