Using Three Words in Place of One

I recently heard the phrase 'piece of data'.

The single word 'datum' would suffice'.

Temperatures and Colours

The cover of this month's copy of The Garden has a picture of some orange flowers with the caption Hot Heleniums

Reds and oranges are often referred to as 'warm' or 'hot' colours, while blues are commonly considered 'cool'.

The opposite is the case. Within the visible spectrum, blue light is the most energetic, and red the least.

The 'warmth of reds' is a cliché copied by people who don't pause to consider what they are saying.

More fumbling with numbers

This morning's Radio 4 news broadcast mentioned the discovery of about 48 tons of silver near the Irish coast, and claimed it was worth nearly a billion pounds.

That sum seemed implausibly large, so I checked current silver prices (about 17 pounds per ounce) and calculated a value in the region of 29 million pounds. Some people seem unable to tell whether or not numbers make sense.

Incidentally there are three different 'tons' in use; fortunately they differ by only a few percent.

The metric ton (or tonne) = 1000 kg

The imperial ton (long ton) = 20 hundred weight = 2240 pounds, roughly 1016 kg

The short ton = 20 short hundred weight = 2000 pounds, roughly 907 kg

Americans use the short ton

I used the imperial ton in my calculation

Fear of Precision

I've often noticed that news media prefer vague terms like 'large, 'tiny', to numbers. I may have blogged about this before.

A couple of days ago the BBC television news reported early results of an election in Libya, saying that one group had achieved a 'landslide victory'

I checked on the BBC website and found that the 'landslide' in question amounted only to winning 39 of 80 seats filled from party lists.

Taking Footballers too Seriously

Towards the end of last year, two footballers were rude to each other in the course of a game. One of them complained that the other used especially rude words, so there was a prosecution leading to a prolonged court case, extensively reported on air.

It  amazes me that people could be so solemn about something so silly.

Railtrack Emulates Procrustes

Yesterday I visited Bletchley Park, travelling by train and changing at Bedford.

On the return journey there was a discouraging announcement that we had been relegated to the slow line to avoid another train that had broken down.

As we approached Wellingborough there was an announcement that some passengers must have found even more alarming. We were to use the short platform at Wellingborough, presumably because we were still on the slow line, so there would be room for only the front of the train. Passengers in several of the rear coaches would therefore not be allowed to alight and, those whose destination was Wellingborough were bidden to travel on to Kettering, alight there and wait for a train to take them back to Wellingborough.

If only trains still had doors passengers could open at will, those inconvenienced could just have jumped down onto the track and walked to the platform.

Summer Heat

This is the first year I've needed to switch on my heating at Midsummer. I'm using only one heater, the one in the kitchen where I have breakfast, but it's still a first.

'Black' Market

What is called a black market is the result of a failed attempt to avoid a market.

One of today's news items was about a so called 'black market' in tickets to Olympic events.

Had tickets been auctioned there would have been no black market and the proceeds would have been greater diminishing the final loss (or increasing the profit, in the unlikely event of there being a profit).

Our Versatile Police

I notice that undercover police are now allowed to have sexual relations with those they are observing, to help maintain their 'cover'

see:this article in the Standard

I wonder if the bishops will have anything to say. Perhaps they are so obsessed with the spectre of gay marriage that they haven't noticed.

Profligate Economics

Listening to BBC Radio 4 this morning I heard an economist suggest that we needed higher inflation to revive the economy.

The Keynesian remedy for recession is a combination of budget deficit and inflation. However we have both, and the economy is still in recession, though only just.

It does appear that what stimulates the economy may be not deficit and inflation per se but increasing deficit and inflation, so the proposed remedy risks precipitating hyper inflation.

Jumbled Languages

News broadcasts keep referring to an entity they call 'Bayern Munich'

I suspect that the name is actually 'Bayern München' Rendering that into English would give 'Bavarian Munich' Either the German form, or the English, would be acceptable, but the mixture of languages irritates me.


I wonder why the umlaut was followed by a change of font and ink colour.

Google Analytics

I was alarmed by the EU restrictions on the use of cookies, fearing that without Google Analytics I should have little idea how frequently my site is visited.

I checked the statistics collected by company that hosts my website, and realised that everything I need to know is available there. I also found that Analytics seems to have been detecting only about a third of the visits to my site.

I guess that many people set their browsers to reject cookies, so that their visits are not recorded.

Apparently I shall be better off without Analytics.