Jamie123

Since the early 1970s, the UK has had the most ghastly mish-mash of metric and imperial units. Temperature is always in centigrade, but for people's heights some people use feet and others use metres. Distances on road signs are always in miles and speed limits are always in miles per hour. Beer and milk are nearly always sold in pints. On the other hand, petrol (gasoline) is usually sold in litres, though fuel efficiency is always quoted in "miles per gallon". To make things easier still, a UK gallon is not the same as a US gallon. Thankfully a mile is the same in both countries.

This is the table from the Highway Code I was referring to: I just bunged your numbers and ours into Excel: Your stopping distances are more than twice ours. Maybe yours are a worst case scenario (assuming flood, ice and snow all together). I'm not sure what I'm supposed to get from the diagram of the car and the dog (except that it does illustrate what I said about low-lying perspective). Maybe the accompanying text would have explained it.

I have lots of important work to do, and consequently I am wasting my precious time writing letters to politicians which I know are going to go straight into the bin. (The letters that is - not the politicians. (Though who knows?)) Anyway, I thought this lunchtime's effort might be of more than passing interest to some of you: The Right Honourable Louise Haigh MP, Secretary of State for Transport, 33 Horseferry Road, London SW1P 4DR Dear Ms. Haigh, Safe Stopping Distances: Proposed New System I am writing to you as Secretary of State for Transport, to express concerns I have had for many years about safe stopping distances, and to propose a possible solution. I am a chartered physicist, have been an examiner for A-level mathematics and mechanics for many years, and therefore feel I am qualified to express an opinion on this matter. My father (who is in his 80s) is fond of saying that you should leave “five car lengths” between yourself and the car in front. This was probably the advice everyone was given in the 1950s when he learned to drive, and I expect many older drivers still hold to it. However, it is not very useful because (i) “five care lengths” is almost impossible to gauge accurately from a driver’s low-lying view, and (ii) it takes no account of vehicle speed. Another commonly quoted rule is to leave a two second gap between yourself and the car in front. (A TV advert in the 1980s told us to recite “only a fool ignores the two second rule” which takes almost exactly two seconds to say.) This does appear in the Highway Code in Rule 126, and is an improvement because (i) it is easily implemented by means of a fixed point on the road, (ii) it eliminates the mental trigonometry of converting oblique perception to “car lengths” and (iii) it increases the distance automatically with speed. However, the distance associated with 2 seconds scales proportionally with speed, and this is not a good model of stopping distance, especially when the speed is high. If braking force is constant then the energy absorbed in coming to a halt must equal this force times the stopping distance, which must in turn equal the initial kinetic energy one half mass times velocity squared. The distance is therefore proportional not to speed, but speed squared. We must also add to this the “thinking distance” (the distance the car travels between the driver perceiving the need to brake and when he/she actually begins braking), and this distance is indeed proportional to speed. To its merit, Rule 126 does include a table of data consistent with this model. I can remember having to learn this table (or one very similar) as a teenager, and being examined on it in my test. However, it is completely useless unless you can judge exactly what “24 car lengths” looks like from a driver’s low-lying perspective. However, if you do the algebra you will find that the time associated with the “true” stopping distance is a linear function of speed: specifically, if you start with 0.65s and add 0.35s for each 10mph you are travelling, you will get almost the exact stopping distances quoted in the Highway Code. For example, if you are travelling 60mph, that is 0.65+6*0.35=2.75s, during which the car travels 73m – exactly what Rule 126 states. It takes about 0.65 seconds to say “stop time” and 3.5 seconds to count briskly from 1 to 10. Therefore, if you’re travelling at 60mph, quickly say “stop time one two three four five six” and you will just about have covered the required stopping distance. I have performed this experiment, timing how long it takes me to say this phrase for each speed. Further research would be needed on how long different people take to say the phrase, but I think you will agree the Highway Code stopping distances are reproduced quite accurately: Stopping distances do of course depend on road conditions: drivers could be recommended to say the phrase twice when driving on wet or icy roads. Thank you very much for your attention. Yours sincerely, etc.

Yes and it's fun too! 😜

There aren't many churches around here that would need a sign like that! This one must be doing something right! I agree though. Instead of turning people away they should have held the service outside.

It's right there in the Pogues song:

I remember once years ago trying to explain Spongebob Squarepants to a colleague who (then) had no kids and had never heard of him. His observation (based on my description) was that it wouldn't be much use trying to give Spongebob Squarepants a wedgie!

Found it: (Why are US city cops always Irish?) I knew it reminded me of something. Who could ever forget...

I found Crusader Rabbit. I somehow thought you meant a live action filmed mouth superimposed on the drawing. Now that would have been creepy! On the subject of cheapo cartoons, I can't help remembering the Captain Kremmen segments from the Kenny Everett show c.1978: Trigger warning: racist humour.

I don't believe I've ever seen that. Yes it does sound creepy.

You're not thinking of this by any chance?

Which famous playwright was afraid of Christmas? Noel Coward

Why can you never hear a pterodactyl going to the bathroom? Because the P is silent.

By brother and I used to love this show. Those who think they remember it say was animated, but it wasn't really. Only the opening title sequence (which explained how the main character got his name) was animated. The show itself consisted of audio accompanied by still pictures. (This was quite common at a time when animation was much more expensive than now: Joe, The Wuffits and Teddy Edward used exactly the same format.) The premise: Mrs. Jellybun and her son "Little Blue" are anthropomorphic elephants (which you may consider an overused trope considering Babar, Bump, Edward Trunk and Mumfi). They are somewhat larger than the humans they live amongst, but nowhere near the size of actual elephants. They live in an ordinary house and wear ordinary clothes, and their pachydermic nature is never mentioned, though it is alluded to when Mrs. Jellybung gets sensitive about her size, or Little Blue bursts the ball while attempting to play soccer. The narration and all the voices were by Harold Purcell, who also wrote the stories along with his wife Iris. He had such a deep, resonant, very English voice. He could make it go up, such as when he was Little Blue's lisping teacher Miss Merryweather (who later became Mrs. Gittings after she married the woodwork teacher Mr. Gittings) and even lower when he was Little Blue's mother. I loved the way Mrs. Jellybun spoke: she was quite laconic and always addressed Little Blue as "boy". What I like best about Little Blue is he's no soppy namby-pamby ultra-virtuous goody-goody like that detestable elephant "hero" Mumfi. He (Little Blue) tries his best, but is still embarrassed to be seen with his mom when his friends are around. He surreptitiously continues to drink soda on a plane after he's been told to stop. ("It will make you want to go, boy!") He doesn't like it when his not-so-best friend Geoffrey picks on him, but finds it amusing when he (Geoffrey) picks on other people. Aside from his elephantine appearance, Little Blue is like any other kid. This kind of realism, combined with the bizarre surrealism does make it funny. We never (to my memory) learned what happened to Mr. Jellybun, although Mrs. Jellybun does have a brother Uncle Oompah who occasionally appeared. I have linked a playlist of the only three three episodes I have found on YouTube. This was a glorious underrated gem from the 1970s and I wish there was more to be had...

I don't think Russell M. Nelson did it to get away from the negative connotations of the word "Mormon" (blood atonement, polygamy, no beer or coffee, A Study in Scarlet and caricatures of the Osmonds) - though if he did it was a bad move. Who is going to say "Mem-bers-of-the-Church-of-Je-sus-Christ-of-Lat-ter-day-Saints" = 14 syllables, when the 2-syllable word "Mor-mons" is available?

"Books of Mormon"

https://www.foxnews.com/world/church-england-appears-stop-using-word-church-sound-more-relevant-study OK I'm doing something no good Latter-day Saint would ever do: I'm going to slag off my own church in front of members of another denomination. So we mustn't call a church a "church" anymore, because that might put people off who don't like the word "church"! How many other words are we soon not to be allowed to use? Much as I love the congregation I belong to, overall the Church of England (if I'm even still allowed to call it that) is going quite batty. GAFCON is looking ever more attractive!

Interesting fact about pooh-pooh: The first ever recorded pooh-poohing was in Hamlet act 1 scene 3: Or at least that's the first time it was called that. (I'm sure people have pooh-poohed each other since language was first invented!) Also it was only half a pooh-poohing since there was only one pooh! But I think the other pooh was implied. P.S. If you remember the play, this wasn't the only pooh-pooh poor Ophelia suffered. There's even a Pre-Raphaelite painting about it: Joseph Everett Millais "The Girl Who Got Pooh-Poohed (and how it ended up!)"

I wouldn't go that far. Just a pooh-pooher who pooh-poohs being pooh-poohd back. 😀

Why do people who pooh-pooh you get cross when you pooh-pooh them back? If they don't want to be "counter pooh-pooh", why do they pooh-pooh you to start with? I got pooh-pooh'd at church this morning. When Marjory and I got to the fridge to put the milk in, we found the fridge not working. We thought "oh no the fridge is broken" but when I plugged the kettle into the same socket box that didn't work either. So I plugged the fridge into another socket box on a different circuit it worked fine. However when I got back after church to make the tea and coffee the first socket was working fine, so I told the hall manager Jack and I said if it stopped working that once isn't there a danger it will stop working again? (You don't want everything in the fridge going bad because it's plugged into a socket which may stop working.) He just said "no". I said "how can you know that if you don't know why it went dead in the first place?" He then asked me a bunch of questions - had I checked this or that - but he didn't let me answer properly without pooh-poohing in. I told him I wondered if this same circuit might have been found dead in another part of the building by some other hall users who had then found the circuit breaker and turned it on again. It took me some time to articulate this theory because he kept butting in with his pooh-poohs, but then he said how would anyone else get into the room where the circuit breakers are without the key? I said, OK how do YOU explain the circuit going dead and then coming back on again? He said if I was going to get "aggressive" he was going away. I said "well you're not letting me finishing my sentences!" So he stormed off. That's what happens when you pooh-pooh a pooh-pooher! I did have another calmer talk with him later (when Marjorie backed me up about the fridge and the kettle not working) but what I got from him first time around was a right and proper pooh-poohing! And if you can't take a pooh-pooh back you shouldn't give one out in the first place! I hope you've enjoyed this little story of pooh-pooh!

This was about the interesting phenomenon of "pooh pooh", but it doesn't really qualify as a "current event"

I'm sorry I've developed a bit of a morbid fascination for this topic. None of us should be so outraged that we forget to pray for Sonya Massey's family. But a couple of updates: 1. The Fraternal Order of Police Labor Council have withdrawn their grievance against the Sheriff's Department and are no longer demanding Grayson's reinstatement. (https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/07/30/police-union-wont-fight-firing-of-deputy-who-killed-sonya-massey/74603216007/) Other police trades unions (particularly those who also call themselves "fraternal orders") are distancing themselves from that union. I think it's right they should support Grayson through his trial (that's what you pay a union subscription for!) but public tub-thumping making him out to be the wronged party shows utter disrespect to the victim and her family. 2. We now have the footage from Grayson's own bodycam, and many YouTubers have posted analysis of it. The Civil Rights Lawyer's video is quite good - it answers a few questions I had.

"Hold the red star proudly high in hand!"