Saturday, right after a couple of rainy days, probably isn’t the best time to go to the Disney Magic Kingdom. But, in spite of dense crowds of kids and parents, it was a great time. We couldn’t help but be inspired by parents and kids enjoying each others company.
Disney is great at handling masses of people. Even the in the lines snaking back and forth gave us a chance to talk with people, find out where they are from, take a few photos and generally just indulge in people watching.
After the fireworks display at 21:00, we joined the tide heading back to the parking lots. Here, the technical aspects of herding cats really shined. After a short ride on the monorail, we were directed to the trams. These seven car assemblies take thirty to forty people and kids in each car. Time seven, thats an average of about 250 per tram. At the peak, they were running 2.5 minutes apart, so 24 runs an hour for 5000 to 6000 people per hour. That’s an efficient movement of people. The lines ran quickly and except for an occasional child way overtired, everyone seemed to be in good spirits.
Happy pi day. Feel free to wave pompoms and chant with me:
3-point-1-4-1-5-9
we think pi is mighty fine
Wrap some ra-di-i a-round
their circle, and two-pi you’ve found!
Add “e” and “i” and toss in a boiler
plus 1 and 0 - you’ll get Identity of Euler!*
So the last couplet doesn’t scan - my favorite poet is [...]
As long as I’m insulting pet owners, let’s take a well-deserved swipe at people who buy exotic reptiles, because they are bad people, too.
Folks, if you need interesting possessions to make yourself seem interesting, find something less destructive to own than non-native reptiles.
Buying and selling them is destructive in two ways: The species get harmed [...]
Having survived Town Meeting day (a harrowing time in the local-newspaper business), I’m going to detox with the family at Lonesome Lake hut for a couple days, and see the crummy winter we’ve had up close.(Can I blame our low snowfall on Global Warming? No, I suppose I have to be reasonable, unlike the “DC [...]
My column in the Telegraph today starts out deliberately provocatively:
As a cat owner, I am comfortable making the following statement: If you let your cat outdoors, you are a bad person.
Oh, yes, you are. No matter what excuses you hide behind, you have chosen to release a wildlife-slaughtering machine on the great outdoors: You might [...]
Go is the finest of all board games. I was never able to raise myself above lousy - 15 kyu at the best - when I played regularly, but it still fascinates me.
If it fascinates you and you are a lot younger than I am, consider the Youth Go Tournament being held in Boston on March 20. Here’s the Web site. There are 17-and-under contests, and some for 12-and-under, with wicked cool trophies. $20 entry fee.
I suspect the level of play will be quite high - it’s a qualifier for the US Youth Go Tournament, and is held at the Greater Boston Chinese Cultural Association, a reflection of the way East Asian players dominate. Not for the faint of heart.
If you don’t know anything about Go but would like to learn, a group meets many weekends at the Barnes & Noble in Nashua to play. Email Peter Gousios(pgousios@myfairpoint.net) to learn more.
I can’t beat the lede on the AP story: ” A small robot looking for the source of a radioactive leak at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant is stuck in the mud.”
When it rains, it pours - especially when it rains tritium!
Here’s the story, hosted by the Free-Press.
The skepticism meter went into the red on this story from the Portland Press-Herald, due to shortage of details, but it’s fun to contemplate if nothing else: According to the story (read it here), an inventor wants to use effluent from the town’s wastewater treatment plant and hydroelectricity from the Royal River to produce hydrogen [...]
It is officially almost spring: I turned on the electric fence around the beehive yesterday. Bears are hungry when they wake up up after hibernating, you know. NH Fish & Game knows it: They’re telling people to take down their bird feeders, lest they lure a wayward bruin.
But as YouTube demonstrates, an electric fence will [...]
My home PC is a tower, that is located in my desk in a vertical partition just above the floor, which lacks a door. It has developed an occasional habit of instantly going black and then reverting to some Intel board error checksum message, one of those written in a large, clunky font. (It’s an [...]
Popular Science has teamed with Google to put all 137 years of the magazine on line. The site still has a few problems, but they are working to make it better.
http://www.popsci.com/announcements/article/2010-03/new-browse-137-years-popsci-archive-free
I have several boxes filled with issues going back to 1936 up through the 1950’s stored under the eaves of our house. I’ll still keep [...]
This isn’t really geeky, but since tomorrow is Town Meeting day in NH and many people will be voting on road-paving projects, I can’t resist: This is the blog of a guy in Britain who fills in potholes with dirt and plants flowers in them. “If we planted one of those in every hole, it [...]
Seacoast Online reports that recent storms washed away sand at the northeast end of Jenness Beach on the N.H. seacoast, revealing stumps of trees that are several thousand years old.
The instance of extremely low ebb tide and periods of increased storm activity have revealed the stumps of the cedar and pine trees, dating back more [...]
MIT’s Media Lab, which if nothing else is the highest-profile geeky place on the Eastern Seaboard, having generated more news stories than any equivalent space this side of Cupertino, Calif., has a new $90 million, 163,000-square-foot building. It’s not as funky looking as the Stata Center, which is probably a good thing - perhaps it [...]
Every once in a while I read a blog posting that really blows my mind. This is one that truely impressed me with not only good writing but explains just how big the universe is.
http://anotherj.blogspot.com/2010/02/space-and-numbers.html
Earle Rich
Click here to see my Google map showing large-scale solar, wind, hydro and nuclear plants in and around N.H., plus some intriguing alternative-power items in the region.
About this blog
David Brooks has written a science column for the Nashua (N.H.) Telegraph since 1991 (see recent ones here). It is now in the Concord (N.H.) Monitor, as well. He has overseen this blog since 2006. (E-mail him or call 603-594-5831).
Also contributing:Earle Rich is a jack-of-many-trades engineer with experience in wind turbines.
Shareware Report - now, alas, retired.
