Hasn’t it been cold lately! Here in the South of England, so far we have only had about a week of days going down to –5°C around sunrise, but our news bulletins have been showing conditions in North America.  Even Tallahassee has been down to —8°C (data: Accuweather)

I used to listen to Alistair Cooke’s Letter from America, and I am reminded of  conversation with a New York Taxi Driver, on a cold and windy day, beginning with the driver:

Veritasium has come in for quite a bit of stick recently over his videos on electricity. However, recently I came across this one, entitled The Man Who Accidentally Killed The Most People In History. It contains so much history, most of which I already half knew, but now have a much clearer picture. I am sharing it here, not only because of its interest as regarding science and technology, but also because I would like to ask readers their opinion as regards whether the title is appropriate.

Elec-trickery? In the eponymous British children’s television, a magician called Catweazle finds himself transported from the 11^th to the 20^th century, and all sorts of things like motor cars, telephone (“telling bones” as he call them) and electricity (“electrickery”).  Now, in the 21^st century, we find ourselves wanting to keep the power going without ever-increasing the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide, OK in the days of the dinosaurs, but the Sun was not quite so luminous then. So here are some informative videos I have watched recently on efforts to achieve this.

1  Thorium

Future of Thorium Reactors and Nuclear Energy

This video which appeared two weeks ago greatly surprised me, making me realize how little I know of what is known about these objects.