Gizmag have an article on a car which Tata is going to produce which runs on compressed air.  This means the only impact on the environment is the energy used to actually compress the air.  The exhaust fumes are just cool, unpolluted air!

The company says that the car will cost about R30 to fill up at air pumps at upgraded petrol stations.  It will then be able to travel 200 to 300 km with a max speed of about 110 km/h.

If this actually works it will be great for cities.  Almost no pollution and cheap to run.

What a beauty! I had never even heard of this species of cat until recently – the variety of nature never ceases to amaze. Clouded leopards have been in the news recently because some scientists have (somewhat controversially) claimed to have found a new species in Borneo.

I suppose that if you aren’t a geek (like me) you may not have heard of the “Net Neutrality” debate. I think that it’s actually quite an interesting (and important) argument.

What is net neutrality? Net neutrality is the principle that network operators (like Telkom or AT&T) should give equal treatment to all the traffic on their networks.

Currently, the internet blindly delivers data packets regardless of what they contain. The network just gets data and passes it on – no matter what is in there. This is what makes the internet flexible – anyone can send anything they want.

In the US the telecoms firms (AT&T, Verizon, etc) want to be allowed to charge content providers (e.g. Google, BBC, any web site) a fee for providing their content on a faster connection. In effect, they plan “express toll lanes” alongside the internet’s existing highways.

They are promising to leave the normal traffic as it is – they just want to have special lanes for people who pay more. Sounds fair(ish).

There are a few reasons why I don’t like this idea:

• Why would the operators upgrade the normal networks if they could be making more money by upgrading the expensive ones?
• This would tilt the internet toward the big sites. Little sites like www.alistairpott.com are going to be much slower than the big boys.
• Once a few sites pay up they will all be sucked in. If Google pays for faster delivery then Yahoo! will have to follow.

So I don’t like the idea of allowing operators to violate network neutrality. But, I hate over-regulation so I don’t think that over-strict rules should be put in place the preserve neutrality. As usual, I think the guys at The Economist have got the right idea:
“A minimal set of rules to protect net neutrality would still leave room for operators to experiment with new premium services.”

Google’s stance on net neutrality

Game theory model of the effects of removing network neutrality

Where would you come out if you were to dig a hole through the earth from Cape Town? Somewhere in the middle of the Pacific!

This site has a program which allows you to check out the opposite side of the world from any location. What’s pretty interesting is that almost all land on earth is opposite ocean (except at the poles obviously). Africa and Europe are opposite the Pacific Ocean; North America and most of South America are opposite the Indian Ocean.

I wonder if there is more too that…

What the? Lorem Ipsum you too man…

Actually, Lorem Ipsum is the name of the dummy text that is most commonly used for layout previews/examples. It’s used to show what a webpage/pamphlet/book/etc would look like populated with text. The guys who do this for a living know that the reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout.

So instead they use a passage of classical Latin literature written in 45 BC. The really cool thing (in my opinion) is that it has been in use since the 1500′s!

Here is a page devoted to it. Also has a generator.

March 14 is written 3/14 in the States. And 3.14 is Pi – so it’s Pi day.

If you don’t like the American date notation (it is a little silly) then we will have to wait for July 22 (22/7) which is a widely used approximation for Pi.

Pi day on Wikipedia

The weather was great, the crowds were out in force, and it was really fun to do the Argus again. Because I haven’t done it for a few years I had a late start group – 10h30. I even watched the earlier groups finishing the race on TV before leaving to start!

I hadn’t done much training (total 140km for a race of 109km) but I was able to rely on general fitness and I managed finished with a time of 3:57:39 – way better than my target. Still only good enough for 12,059th out of 28,706 finishers!

What a race…

Quite often in the past I have noticed that after turning on a shower, the curtain will billow in toward me – infuriatingly. I thought about it and figured that the hot water was heating the air in the shower and causing it to rise. This in turn would create a low pressure causing cool air from outside the shower to blow inwards.

However, this theory fails because the curtain blows in on a cold shower too… So I looked it up and it turns out this is a well known problem. A scientist (David Schmidt of University of Massachusetts) who specialises in fluid dynamics built a computer model of the problem which produced the results seen above.

Basically, the water flow is causing a vortex in the shower which lowers the air pressure and drags in the curtain. The effect isn’t very strong so it is easy overcome by heavier shower curtains.

Wikipedia on the effect
Detailed explanation

When Jules and I were in Kleinmond we saw a sign saying that there were some orchids growing in the fynbos. We wondered what makes an orchid an orchid. So here it is…

Orchids are the most diverse family of flowering plants – 25,000 species!

What makes an orchid an orchid?

• They have both the male and female reproductive structures fused into a single structure called a “column”.
• Every orchid bloom has 3 sepals (the leaves just around the flower) and 3 petals.
• They also (usually) have a highly modified petal called a lip, or labellum – a landing pad for bugs.

Other interesting facts:

• Vanilla is actually an orchid! It is the only orchid widely grown for non-beauty reasons.
• The largest orchid can grow to more than 20m long.
• The name “orchid” comes from the Greek root orkhis, meaning “testicle”.
• In their natural environment, each orchid species is dependent upon a specific type of insect to carry out its pollination.

There is an interesting article on the South African economy in a recent edition of the Economist:

Basically, it says that the South African economy is going very well. However, some people (e.g. trade unions) feel that this growth is not benefiting the poor enough and that the government should be taking more drastic steps.

In this kind of argument I always think of the Kennedy quote: “A rising tide lifts all boats”. I suppose their problem is that not all boats are lifted equally…

Here are some of the interesting excerpts from the article:

• “When South Africa’s apartheid regime conceded power in 1994, it also bequeathed an economic shambles. The government’s budget was in the red, interest rates were uncomfortably high, and the country’s economy was as distorted as its society. But this fiscal year, for the first time, the government is running a surplus.”
• South Africa’s economy “has grown by more than 4% in each of the past three years.”
• “About half the population falls below the poverty line, according to some estimates. And although the economy creates 500,000 jobs a year, unemployment remains stubbornly high.”
• “Local governments (municipalities) struggle to hire managers and engineers, leaving many essential posts unfilled”