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Genes
Today I went to a ‘bite-sized lunchtime lecture’ at UCL, and courtesy of Dr Sara Hillman learnt that a low birth weight child was a predictor of future diabetes in the father, and that in turn having a...
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Heads I win, tails you lose
In an article by Tim Harford, it was reported that only 25% of Labour MPs were able to correctly answer the question “what is the probability of getting two heads when a coin is tossed twice?” For...
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Show me the numbers
No really, show me the numbers. That was too fast…here’s a clip from a competition where people are adding together 15 3-digit numbers: ; ; The world record is 1.70 seconds. Mental images of abacuses...
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Football is not a matter of life and death
I attended a lecture this week on research between stress and heart attacks, where this chart (from a New England Journal of Medicine paper) was displayed, showing incidences of heart attacks in the...
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Chess
Over 98% of expert games begin with 1 of 4 moves, out of a possible 20: I used to play the Grob (1.g4) and did quite well with it. It’s a trade off, making a slightly less good first move to very...
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Half in, half out
More people live inside this area than live outside: You might also like this graphic of population density.
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Nuclear power deaths
A recent paper from NASA seeks to analyse total global fatalities attributable to nuclear power. They find that 1.8 million deaths have been AVOIDED over the lifetime of the nuclear power industry due...
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Zero waste, zero point
I attended a talk by Bea Johnson on ‘Simplifying Your Life’ this week. Her family has completely changed their lifestyle, e.g., …if your hair is short, you also have the “no-poo” option: rinse your...
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Sentences of note
Things I read / heard this week: Germany once prided itself on being the “photovoltaic world champion”, doling out generous subsidies – totaling more than $130 billion to citizens to invest in solar...
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Don’t mention the solar panels
On a flight this morning I began to think that the Bjorn Lomborg quote I heard yesterday couldn’t be plausible: Germany once prided itself on being the “photovoltaic world champion”, doling out...
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Genes
Today I went to a ‘bite-sized lunchtime lecture’ at UCL, and courtesy of Dr Sara Hillman learnt that a low birth weight child was a predictor of future diabetes in the father, and that in turn having a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Heads I win, tails you lose
In an article by Tim Harford, it was reported that only 25% of Labour MPs were able to correctly answer the question “what is the probability of getting two heads when a coin is tossed twice?” For...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Chess
Over 98% of expert games begin with 1 of 4 moves, out of a possible 20: I used to play the Grob (1.g4) and did quite well with it. It’s a trade off, making a slightly less good first move to very...
View Article
