Little white lie

THE car parking space at Intu Bromley shopping precinct was tight. As I pulled in the passenger side mirror to leave enough room for the other driver to exit, I scuffed the left front tyre of my car on the post base which protruded out. A silly design actually.

To exit I had to shuffle across to the passenger seat as the other car was too far over. But I made sure that the Hackney cab, which was not black due to the ad emblazoned across it, had enough room via its passenger side door.

My twelve-year-old daughter had an iPad and one of the speakers had been playing up for months. At the Apple Store the staff were incredible. A diagnostics confirmed that the speaker was faulty and not up to its high standards. Rather than send the iPad off to be repaired, which was my daughter's fear, Apple changed it for a brand new one.

We were delighted!

We stopped off at KFC for a snack, popped into HMV for a movie - Captain Phillips, starring Tom Hanks, and Waterstones for a book.

The driver must have returned to green cab. The space alongside mine was now free.

I initially took it for a parking ticket. Jammed under the windscreen wiper was some notepaper, hastily ripped off from a pad. It had uppercase blue-ink handwriting. Six words. One began with a single letter: "U".

'What's it say?' my daughter asked.

'Nothing. It's just a piece of paper blown on to the the car!'

A little white lie.

Perhaps I answered too harshly. Perhaps too evasive. Perhaps she saw a shocked or bemused expression on my tanned face.

She tried to snatch the note.

I snapped at her: 'Leave the bloody thing!'

I decided long ago that I would protect her. They were just words anyway. Quite familiar words though.

Why then the need to hide them from my child, why the little white lie?

I crumpled up the notepaper, placed it in my pocket, surveyed the parking area.

No one in sight.

My mind flashed back to when I was my daughter's age. 'Half caste!' 'Half... breed!' 'Nigger!'

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names...? Names did hurt. Is that what the persons who wrote those words meant to do? Or was it coincidence?

As I exited Intu Bromley, I wondered if the CCTV cameras might reveal the identity of the person who placed the note (pictured below) on my windscreen.

What do you mean, I would like to ask.

Climate change?: history reveals the answer

It was reported in February 1945, that it was the wettest February since 1936. [Evening Telegraph - Saturday 17 March 1945.] In 1936 it was the wettest March ‘for 35 years’ in Scotland. [Evening Telegraph - Tuesday 31 March 1936.] Whilst records taken at the Meteorological Office at Kew recorded the wettest February since 1900. [Aberdeen Journal - Friday 02 March 1923.] The weather report for February 1900 recorded that it was 'the wettest in 25 years'. [Worcestershire Chronicle - Saturday 10 March 1900.]

Know where this is headed? If not read on...

In Bristol in 1876, William Denning recorded the wettest February - 2.874 inches of rain ‘in excess of the average‘ fell. [Birmingham Daily Post - Saturday 04 March 1876.]It comes as no surprise therefore, that, at Chelmsford in 1848 it was the wettest February for 20 years. [Chelmsford Chronicle - Friday 24 March 1848.] Not surprisingly, it was also the wettest in 20 years Manchester too. [Which may suggest that it was also wet in 1828 too.] In July 1819 it was remarked that July was the wettest month ‘upon average’. Usually it was December. Whilst in present-day England, the wettest months are seemingly followed by the longest droughts.

The effects of climate change it seems have always been with us.

47 Ronin: Slow-motion success?

For some movie investors in the past the theatrical box office was the primary place to gain a healthy dollar's return on an investment. But does it really matter that Keanu Reeves’ new film 47 RONIN failed to put bums on seats in its opening weekend? TheBigRetort says: No. Because it's all about loyalty... and patience

A theatrical release is no longer the primary source of income for a new movie - the additional returns from which lasts for decades not weekends.

The opening weekend results are the predictors on which the ‘book value’ of the asset is judged. The returns to the original (primary) investors over a future finite period are predicted from this.

But the release weekend of a movie alone does not indicate its eventual losses - or gains, surely? - just the cash flow back into risky investor pockets in a small time frame.

For every dollar returned they apparently need to see 25% - plus! Which, let’s face it, is not a bad rate of return for anyone‘s dime.

The problem is when these risky investors place their bets in the tens of millions a quick rate of return becomes ever-more ’paramount’. For the rest it’s a slow rate of return over decades.

It is on patience then and customer loyalty that 47 Ronin will eventually be judged, and not by the expectation of the quick-return 25% plussers.

So, cheer up Keanu.

Omega slow to admit error

We thought the ad makers at Omega were winding us up when we saw the recent ad for one of its watches in the Times online; which boasted, incorrectly:

“IN 1969 OMEGA DEFIED ZERO GRAVITY GOING TO THE MOON”

“IN 2013 OMEGA DEFIES MAGNETIC FILEDS (sic) ON EARTH”

Of course we know that Buz Aldrin did wear an Omega on the Moon. But what were the magnetic ‘fileds’ it was defying in 2013?

Erm, no such word seemed to exist in the English language?

Ooer!

We had this weird investigative tick in our heads: ‘fields‘ it said.

We contacted Omega via email to give its marketing department a quick ticking off, after all this was in The Times.

Unfortunately it was Christmas - and with little time on its hands, get it? - Omega didn't have a moment to spare in fielding a 'timely' response.

Enuff with the puns already!

Bet they must be going cuckoo in Switzerland.

Harry Bensley - Man in the Iron Mask: Hoax

Since publishing my findings on Harry Bensley, the Man in the Iron Mask, many people have asked for proof that he did not do what he said he did. Bensley claimed that he had trekked around the world, wearing an iron mask, pushing a pram, and living off the postcards he sold in a daring 'wager' with the banker J P Morgan. But now, the proof... that he didn't. TheBigRetort

 

Age-old lunar mystery

 

 

 From its earliest history, the moon was thought to be less geologically active than the Earth. But what is that stuff its plumes have been seen venting? TheBigRetort uncovers the pages of a forgotten lunar history:

Paisley Herald and Renfrewshire Advertiser - Saturday 09 January 1869

LUNAR VOLCANOES. On this subject the Academy of Sciences has received curious communication from Dr Montucci. The facts of the case are these: —At the request of the Bureau des Longitudes, the Messageries Imperiales had established a temporary observatory on Sarah Island, opposite Aden, for the purpose of viewing the eclipse of the 18th of August last.

The sky happened to be rather cloudy on that day, and the observer, M. De Crety, could not properly watch the phenomena until after the totality, when the weather cleared up. By that time one-third of the sun's disc was already uncovered, and M. De Crety then perceived three protuberances, not on the sun's limb, but on the moon's, a thing unheard of until then.

They were in the shape of three triangles with their bases attached to the border of our satellite, which they never quitted.

'I observed,' says M. de Crety, 'three luminous protuberances on the moons limb; they were feebly illuminated, and resembled the tops of mountains receiving light from the solar rays.’

‘Fifteen minutes later, two-thirds of the sun's disc having emerged from the moon, the same appendages were seen more strongly illuminated, and better distinguishable from the lunar disc; their summits had the appearance of metal in a state of fusion.’

‘After another quarter of an hour, the central protuberance diminished in altitude,' &c.

From this description Dr Montucci concludes that these excrescences have been either gaseous or formed of solid matter in a state of great division, as ashes; and, admitting that an optical illusion is here out of the question, the observer having made seven diagrams of the phenomenon, he endeavours to explain the mystery by supposing that at the time of the eclipse there was a chain of volcanoes in a state of activity on the posterior hemisphere of the moon, and close to its border, and that what was seen was simply the smoke or ashes-ejected from the craters.

He shows by calculation that an observer's eye could just skim the crest of a lunar mountain 18,000 feet high (there are much larger ones), situated on the posterior surface at a distance of five degrees from the border, so that the whole jet might be seen, while the crater would be out of sight. This, of course, is an extreme case, but the volcano might be larger or smaller, nearer the border or farther off, without endangering the principle on which his explanation rests.

End report

Loch Ness Monster: the truth

The Loch Ness Monster has fascinated the public imagination for decades. TheBigRetort uncovers movement in the waters of the loch, and finds not a demon but an altogether more simple explanation rippling beneath the waves of our imagination...

As a boy I was hugely intrigued by tales of a monster that had been sighted in a loch in Scotland. Down the years various attempts at capturing or photographing the ‘monster’ resulted in evidence that was fuzzy, or at best vague. The monster just refused to surface... In fact "Nessie" seemed quite stubborn.

 

When I was a boy I spoke as a boy and when I became a man I cast aside childish things - questioned everything and everyone and did the research, back and back I went...

In 1755, one of the most terrible earthquakes visited Europe. Curiously way up in the north, Loch Ness was also affected by the event. Did the seas rise, I wondered one night as I tried to sleep.

Over a hundred years ago, before the monster was sighted in the loch, a great earthquake occurred at Lisbon...

Many miles away the waters of Loch Ness were also disturbed by the event. [Aberdeen Journal - Saturday 21 September 1901.]

So the waters at Loch Ness were disturbed by earthquakes far far away; and long before the very first sighting of "The Loch Ness M-o-n-s-t-e-r".

[The Evening Post. - Saturday 21 September 1901] "THE EARTHQUAKE AT INVERNESS. ITS PECULIAR EFFECTS. DAMAGE TO PROPERTY. [Evening Post Special.] The populace of the town and the many visitors the Highland capital who experienced the earthquake shock on Wednesday morning will not be in hurry to forget what they underwent between the hours of one and two of the 18th day of the month the first year of the 20th century. Nor can they be blamed, for the shock was one like unto those in recorded history, fearsome and destructive, which are looked upon by the present generation as only "luxuries" of the past. The disastrous effects of Wednesday's catastrophe will never wholly be known, but such as are known are sufficient to show that it has been the most destructive earthquake ever felt in the Highlands.”

The newspaper report went on to highlight “PECULIAR EFFECTS“.

'An "earth wave" at Inverness had the most peculiar effect on the Canal, causing it to combine with the River Ness, and act as sort tidal wave.’

A terrible eruption had taken place on the bed of Loch Ness... This caused a huge volume of water to sweep northwards across the Loch.

Significantly the report intimates the true origins of the ’sea monster’: The earthquake had emanated from Loch Ness, ‘that loch which has many peculiarities, and which has baffled scientists in their attempt to fathom it.’

So: Loch Ness had long baffled scientists; before it started baffling the common (and superstitious) folk. Curiously, just one year after the creature was itself sighted, a prolonged shock was recorded at the loch in 1934. It lasted 15 minutes. And more shocks were 'felt' beneath the loch, suggesting that it was still active.

And so, it is from this dodgy ground and the resulting choppy waters that the Loch Ness Monster finally surfaced.