Do We Need New Aircraft Carriers?
I was in India once with my late wife and somebody asked a guide, why India needed to keep such a large army. He replied in one word – Pride.
I have a feeling that we don’t need two massive ships, with their expensive aircraft. In fact, with the exception of the Falklands, have we needed the three smaller ones we’ve got already? Or does Gordon Brown, want to leave a legacy for all times. So perhaps they should be called Gordon Brown and Tony Blair.
If you want to read about the carriers and their costs and politics, go to Robert Peston’s blog.
But then if we cut out the carriers, we can cut out the Joint Strike Fighters and why not add Trident, which is up for renewal anyway. We could then give the troops in Afghanistan equipment better suited to that sort of task. After all I can just see Trident being used on the Taliban!
Brown only wants it for you’ve guessed it – Pride.
Universal Phone Chargers
I’ve got boxes of chargers and they’re all different.
But now they’ll all be the same.
This must be a good idea. But then I don’t agree with their choice!
The Dangers of Gas
I don’t like gas and for that reason I keep my propane tank twenty metres or so from my house. And the boiler is in an out-house. I also intend to go to some electric heat-pump system in the next few years. They have just got to get better.
So I was saddened to see this accident in Italy that has killed at least 15 and injured 50.
And people are recommending putting LPG into road vehicles. We worry about bombers, but more disruption is caused by transporting this explosive gas by road and rail.
Memories of Polythene
My first job on leaving Liverpool University was at ICI Mond Division in Runcorn. I actually worked in Research at Runcorn Heath and like the company itself, I think where I worked no longer exists. Or should I say I couldn’t find it when I returned to the area last year.
The process for making polythene, or more correctly polyethylene, was discovered by ICI at Northwich.
The first industrially practical polyethylene synthesis was discovered (again by accident) in 1933 by Eric Fawcett and Reginald Gibson at the ICI works in Northwich, England. Upon applying extremely high pressure (several hundred atmospheres) to a mixture of ethylene and benzaldehyde they again produced a white, waxy, material. Because the reaction had been initiated by trace oxygen contamination in their apparatus the experiment was, at first, difficult to reproduce. It was not until 1935 that another ICI chemist, Michael Perrin, developed this accident into a reproducible high-pressure synthesis for polyethylene that became the basis for industrial LDPE production beginning in 1939.
For some months in my brief period at Runcorn, I shared an office with L. H. (Bert) Cross, who told me quite a bit of the history of how polythene was made. He would confirm the statement in Wikipedia that it was created by accident, as the researchers were experimenting with high pressures on ethylene gas.
Bert was an infra-red expert and he had analysed the spectrum of the compound to confirm what it was and ascertain his properties. I won’t put all of the story in, as even now many years on, I don’t want to destroy confidences. But let’s say that he found some interesting properties of polythene.
I’m not sure if it was Bert who told me, but at first they had no idea of what to do with their new product. It was very expensive and suggestions that it could be used to stiffen wax candles were probably quickly discounted.
In the end it was Radar, that used polythene because of its unique insulation properties. Even today, you’ll still find polythene as the insulation in the high-frequency cable that connects your television to the aerial.
Later I went on to work at ICI Plastics Division, but strangely I never worked on polythene, its production or properties again.
Airport Security
There is an article in The Times today on airport security.
Philip Baum argues that we need to profile passengers and be smarter. I’ll give three cheers to that.
They must also get the technology right.
I have one of these new biometric passports with a chip in it. I’ve tried it several times at Stansted Airport to try to bypass the queues and it has never worked. But then last time, I noticed that the picture looks like I have brown eyes, when in fact I have blue. I pointed this out to the Immigration Officer and she said that is common and they look in detail at the face.
The Anonymous Widower 