Mathew Browne

Gizmodo has published a few shots of a plane in Osaka getting hit by lightning. No more description required, just go over there and check it out.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/6940698.stm

I can’t believe some people still believe the myth that a duck’s quack doesn’t echo. Why the hell would a duck’s quack - a sound just like any other - not echo? Simply put: duck quacks (i.e. the quack is a sound wave), sound wave travels, hits surface, bounces back (i.e. an echo). Think about it - if it didn’t echo, it would be defying the laws of physics.

Of course it does, so where has this myth come from? Having read this story from BBC in 2003 and this article from Salford University, the common explanations are as follows.

Firstly, ducks are almost always outside. Think about how loud you have to yell to generate an audible echo when you’re outdoors, now think about how comparatively quiet a duck’s quack is. Seems unlikely - unless this is some 80-foot mega-duck - that the duck could quack loud enough for you to hear an echo.

Secondly, as reported here, it’s hard to hear an echo for a sound which fades in and out, such as a quack.

Thirdly, and perhaps most pertinently, people can be stupid. Someone started this “quacks don’t echo” stuff years ago, and it has been touted by “know-it-alls” as fact for years. It often appears on those “483 useless but interesting facts” that seem to get forwarded to my inbox every so often.

Spread this and dispel this absurd (though widely-held) myth.

At this rate it will cost £14billion

At the risk of sounding like an “Outraged in Oxbridge” letter to the editor of a broadsheet…

As if we weren’t a big enough target already, the country is spending billions on attracting people from all over the world to the Olympic games. The fact that the London tube system was bombed less than 24 hours after we secured the Games might prove to be an omen.

As usual, the price they’ve quoted is hugely underestimated (see the Millennium Dome, a hive of tourist activity and profit-making grand public events…)
As usual, the timescales they’ve quoted are slipping back (see the Wembley building site, sorry, “stadium”)

If the bookies would accept my bet, I’d gladly put a grand on the much-lauded Channel Tunnel - Olympic rail link not being completed on time. Sadly, the bookies learnt their lesson when a bunch of guys in hard hats in the Wembley area placed large sums of cash against Wembley opening on time.

I live in East London (the nice part not the grubby part, obviously) yet even I fail to see the long term benefit to anyone other than the contruction firms who will secure sizable chunks of the billions to build the various arenas and Olympic village, then afterwards convert the lot into “luxury Olympic apartments” and make a fortune selling or letting them out to the ever-increasing Canary Wharf workforce. (There’s another rant about Canary Wharf-types, but I’ll save that for another day)

All this heavy investment in an area which - if you’re a New Scientist reader - stands a good chance of being underwater in 50 years. Leave NuHackney and NuStratford drown and run to the hills!