28 June 2011 (Tuesday) - Pi (and chips?)

Another morning wasted on the Star Trek Elite Force game – it’s a good game really. Mind you, I didn’t get to play it for as long as I was hoping. I found myself evicted from my own home. “My Boy ^TM ” had an appointment. He had someone coming round for some body art. Described as “some fit bird and her fit mother”; it was quite evident that my presence would queer his pitch.

And so to Tesco in an oven-like car. It’s been hot recently. So much so that I’ve had the air-con running in my car pretty much constantly. I’ve been told by so many people that this is a really expensive thing to do. But is it? I’ve done some finding-out. On average the extra fuel consumption by using air-con is roughly equivalent to the extra fuel needed to carry an extra passenger around. Or equivalent to the reduced fuel economy caused by reducing the car’s aerodynamics by opening a window. Or (over a year) roughly equivalent to the extra fuel needed to carry a car full of unnecessary junk around.

In short, it’s not an expensive thing to do at all.

Mind you, cars still go in the hot weather. Trains don’t. Having been scuppered by leaves on the tracks and the wrong kinds of snow in the past, today’s lame excuse is that the cables that power the trains are suffering from overheating. Thank heavens that trains in my neck of the woods get their leccie from a third rail.

Meanwhile mathematicians are in civil war. Pi-ists and Tau-ists are squabbling as to which mathematical constant should be the most natural to use. Being of a mathematical bent myself, I’ll give a hint here. Tau is lame. Pi kicks ass.