It seems like they were just yesterday.
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
On a recent flight, I had an interesting discussion with the man next to me. It turns out his job is to work with airports and airlines to streamline the process of baggage handling to reduce delays and misplaced bags and he told me how the system works. Apparently, there are miles of conveyor belts behind the scenes at airports that begin at the check-in counter and they have multiple sensors all along the way that use lasers to periodically check the barcode on the baggage tags to make sure that the bag gets transferred to the correct belt for the final destination. The sensors also check the times at each checkpoint and predict when it should reach the next checkpoint so that if a bag does not reach it at the expected time, an alert goes off and someone physically goes to see if the bag has mistakenly switched to the wrong belt, fallen off the belt, or has got jammed somewhere. He said that the goal is to have bags spend no more than 20 minutes in transit from one plane to another though they can often do it in 10 minutes.
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One of the features of science is that there is always a tension going on. We have standard paradigms that most scientists work within but on occasion a new result will turn up that seems to be violate the boundaries of that paradigm. What does one do then? Reject the paradigm and its associated underlying theory? Seasoned scientists know not to do that because throwing out a paradigm is not something to be undertaken lightly since good theories are hard to come by. What they do is treat the discrepant event as an anomaly meriting further study.
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As expected there were protests with amusing signs. This one was, I thought, quintessentially British, because no one takes tea and biscuits more seriously than they do.
The design of the standard passenger airplane seems to be pretty fixed where there is a central fuselage that houses passengers and cargo and the wings that provide the lift. But via David Pescovitz I learn that KLM is funding a new design where the central fuselage is eliminated and passengers and cargo are seated in the wings, as shown below.
Sri Lanka beat Afghanistan today in a rain-affected, low-scoring thriller, the third exciting game in a row after a dull start to the tournament. The quality of the cricket on both sides was decidedly less than stellar but Afghanistan was playing better for most of the game until their batting collapsed towards the end. Although Sri Lanka is technically the team I should support, given that I was born in the country and such tribal allegiances tend to determine whom one cheers for, I actually wished that Afghanistan had won. Beating a top ten Test match team for the first time in a World Cup match would have been an enormous boost to that war-torn country’s morale.
Sri Lanka meanwhile has been going through a woeful period, especially in the shorter forms of the game, and a loss to the lowest-ranked Afghanistan team would have been depressing for them but perhaps the shock that the Sri Lankan cricket authorities needed to realize that they had to shake things up in their administration, selection, and coaching. The only bright spot is that their current team captain Dimuth Karunaratne, appointed after a series of rapid-fire changes in the captaincy, is leading by example, batting and fielding well. It now requires his teammates, especially the batters, to step up.
So now we go on to tomorrow’s matches where India plays South Africa and Bangladesh plays New Zealand. Both games should be close. India has to be favored over the talented but underperforming South African team that has already lost twice and is furthered hampered by their ace fast bowler Dale Steyn being ruled out of the rest of the tournament because of a shoulder injury. New Zealand is favored to beat Bangladesh but the latter team has been surging, as seen in their upset win over South Africa.
This year has brought to light the large number of deaths on Mount Everest and the massive overcrowding taking place there. One would think that the danger involved in this climb would result in people who find themselves together on the peak being solicitous of one another and helping those in distress. Instead it seems to have bred a kind of callousness as people become so determined to get to the top that nothing, even the sight of others in obvious distress, will deter them. This article describes what the crowding has done to people.
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A woman threw a racial slur at a hotel desk clerk and was then upset that he refused to let her check in to the hotel. (Language advisory)
I called a FUCKIN NIGGER at work… this how it played out 😂 #KillEmWithKindness pic.twitter.com/2Mftkj2eOg
— NoFridayy🛸 (@craignofridayy) June 3, 2019
I am sure many of you have been dying to know what has been going on with the World Cup currently being played in the UK, so here’s an update.
There are ten teams in the tournament and the first round consists of a round-robin format with each team playing every other team, with the top four going to the semi-finals. Early betting favors India, England, and Australia (whose cricket organizations comprise the corrupt cartel) making the semi-finals, with England having a slight edge to win the trophy because of home-field advantage. South Africa and New Zealand are vying for the fourth spot.
The first four games were one-sided snooze-fests with England, West Indies, New Zealand, and Australia strolling to easy wins over South Africa, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan respectively, with Pakistan and Sri Lanka turning in particularly woeful performances.
But then things came alive with Bangladesh and Pakistan turning in thrilling victories against the more favored South Africa and England. Pakistan is living up to its reputation as the most mercurial of teams, going from pathetic in their first game loss against low-ranked West Indies to looking like world beaters in their second game against top-ranked England. You never know which team is going to turn up for a game, even if the players remain unchanged.
Tomorrow, Afghanistan plays Sri Lanka and has the opportunity to avenge its loss in the 2015 World Cup. India, the 2011 champions, plays its first match on Wednesday against South Africa. The latter team seems to never live up to its potential in these big tournaments and seems to be repeating that history this time too, already losing its first two matches. This makes New Zealand favored to gain the fourth semi-final spot.
Theresa May has become a pathetic punching bag, pummeled for one failure after another, the biggest of course being her utter messing up of the Brexit process. She leaves office ignominiously on Friday, June 7 but the British public will have one last chance to give her a raspberry when she hosts Donald Trump for a three-day state visit beginning today for which hundreds of thousands are expected to protest, including flying the Trump baby blimp.
