Arts
Pumpkin time
By now, you will doubtless have figured out that I have a very keen interest in glass, so while we were visiting the lovely Northeast of England for a few days recently, we took the [more…]
Science
Health
Coronavirus – the first thousand days
The earliest stats on the coronavirus that I can find – numbers of cases and deaths – were recorded by John Hopkins university on 19th January 2020, with 204 cases and 3 deaths. There are [more…]
Economics
Pipeline Sabotage and the Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand
In the course of history there sometimes occurs events that are monumentally important yet were hardly noticed by much of the world at the time. The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 went [more…]
Economics
Reflections on The National Health Service – based on personal experience
Some seven years ago, after experiencing the dizzying effects of a very low pulse rate, I was given a pacemaker and, as an anti-clotting precaution, a blood-thinning medicine, which I was taking for several years [more…]
Book Review
The Adam and Eve Story
I came across this book that had been scanned into a PDF and loaded on a website. Not a book that I would normally read, but it piqued my interest. It proffers the theory that [more…]
Computing
The Pocket Calculator
Introduction Some of you may know that the Doc has been ill after falling off of a ladder. A very bad accident and I was lucky not to break anything (other than my confidence at [more…]
18th Century
One Small Step for Man… Brindley and the Trent and Mersey Canal
In an earlier piece, I mentioned the Trent and Mersey Canal, with its company headquarters in Stone, hinting that its history and the political shenanigans behind its construction might be worth an article in its [more…]
19th Century
The Rise and Fall of the Needle Gun 1841-1874
The Needle Gun Every once in a while in all fields of engineering there comes along an innovation that so revolutionises the existing technology that it makes long accepted ways of doing things obsolete and [more…]
Diary
A View From The Greenhouse; (The Shabbiness Of Public Service)
Autumn is upon us, misty mornings, shorter days and cool breezes from the west herald its arrival. In our tiny corner of North West England, little changes. Sheep get moved from field to field, taking [more…]