A close shave

Nearly had a disaster this morning! One of the newbies decided to go for a walk round to the other side of the bluff! Even in its unfinished state the test rig would have given the whole game away! Fortunately, Stingo was on watch.

Now there's a big sign in the research station which says "NO CLOSER THAN 3 METRES, EVER!" 3 metres being the closest any researcher or visitor can get to a penguin unless the penguin approaches them, which of course we never do. What no-one remembers in there is why. They think it's because we get frightened!

About 6 years ago, they had this French newbie. First day out, he approaches Bertie. Now Bertie takes pride in his appearance, some say obsessively so, forever preening he is. Well the newbie's dressed in a bright red ski jacket, yellow and green jumper, blue shirt and plaid overtrousers. Bertie's so shocked at such sartorial inelegance that as the newbie comes towards him, he faints clean away! Ever since then, there's been the 3m restriction. If only they knew!

So the newbie approaches Stingo. Gets to three metres and stops. He moves to one side to go around, Stingo moves as well, all the time eyeballing him! The newbie moves to the other side, Stingo tracks him. This went on for half an hour before the newbie gave up and mooched back to the station. To be fair, this sort of stuff happens all the time. It doesn't occur to any of the clods that we actually have real motivations, instead of instinct, for what we do!

Found the research I was looking for and, yes, he was timing me! Fastest he clocked me over snow was 51kph with an average of 44.6kph - you can see why I like doing it! Now I reckon that on ice, we'd best factor in at least 25% faster, less friction. By my calculations, that makes the ramp around 12.5-15 degrees up from the horizontal. We'll lose about 6% of the momentum at take off but should still have enough for the piece de resistance. Just had time to make a little paper template that we can 'sight' through to get the angle right before the researchers started coming back.

The gang are all now busy pushing snow like there's no tomorrow!

We don't have money, no need for it. We get everything we need or want without it. Besides where would we keep it? No pockets, no handbags and the nearest bank or cashpoint is in South Africa or the Falkland Islands, depending on which way you swim. We don't gamble either, well except at sea. Daily. For our lives. But I suppose that's different. We don't have much concept of numbers either. 1, 2, 3 then it's 'lots'.

So I wonder how do you deal with one indivdual who personally loses £2,000,000 (c$4,000,000) gambling or someone who loses £3,700,000,000 (c$7,000,000,000) of their employer's money or a bank (a bank, for Pete's sake, they hold YOUR money!) which loses £20,000,000,000? Do you know what those numbers mean? What 20 billion means to you? Can you convert it into fish, like how big would the shoal be? Do those numbers have remotely any meaning for you or are you just as impotent as us? You may be able to count to infinity but ultimately, it's just 'lots', isn't it? So in the three cases above, there's no difference is there? You just think there is.