John Peters

@johnthejack

Unbeliever (political & religious), Wales rugby, #c4news, porridge, tea, #MEcfs 'Obvious but wrong' Also JTJ on the other place

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John Peters@johnthejack· Jul 11

Letter in Times today

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Dunblane murders
Sir, Rupert Lowe (“Right-wing leader calls Dunblane one murder”, Jul 10) is chillingly out of touch with what that day meant to those of us who were there. Sixteen children and their teacher were murdered; 15 children were wounded.
I had recently moved to Stirling to manage BT’s telecommunications across the south of Scotland. On the day itself, several of our engineers were working in the school on the telephone system. In the following days we worked around the clock to expand the town’s telephone capacity as the world’s media descended. Many of our engineers were local and knew families affected; the shock ran deep. Soon afterwards, I walked into Dunblane at first light. The town was silent, misty and almost empty. Thirty years on, that quiet walk — and the loss it represented — has never quite left me.
John Varley
Sidmouth, Devon

John Peters@johnthejack· Jul 10

Here nearly 2,000 tennis balls a day are processed, sorted and distributed to all the matches, with more than 65,000 balls used over the course of the championships. (£) www.thetimes.com/sport/tennis...

John Peters@johnthejack· Jul 8

Modern life #583 The ‘Maga communist’ chanting ‘down with USA’ at ayatollah’s funeral (£) www.thetimes.com/us/american-...

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As a teenager Hinkle was an indistinguishable “Bernie bro”, pictured with a T-shirt supporting Bernie Sanders as he twice stood unsuccessfully for the city council in the small city of San Clemente in Orange County, California.

He cast himself as an environmental activist, and was pictured surfing with Tulsi Gabbard, who later switched allegiances to the Republicans and became Trump’s director of national intelligence.

By 2020 Hinkle had moved on to becoming an online political influencer, and his views became increasingly unpalatable for the major social-media platforms. YouTube and Twitch banned him for spreading disinformation, and by 2024 he became a regular feature as the voice of a sympathetic American on China’s and Russia’s state-controlled media. He is now back on YouTube.

John Peters@johnthejack· Jul 8

Good and deserved obituary of George Howarth in Times today. (£) www.thetimes.com/uk/obituarie... Includes the origin of Mandelson guacamole myth. @rentouljohn.bsky.social

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The by-election was also the origin of a story that has been mis-told thousands of times to the detriment of one Peter Mandelson, then Labour’s director of communications. The campaign headquarters was in Kirkby and Jack Straw, later to become home secretary, was sent to oversee the campaign, accompanied by a young East Coast American called Shelley. One day she went to the fish and chip shop opposite and on the counter spied a bowl of mushy peas. “That looks delicious,” she said. “Is it avocado?”

The story was told in a diary column and then repeated again and again until somehow it was lodged in the collective memory that the words had been spoken by Mandelson, although in the way it was told about Mandelson the word used was guacamole rather than avocado. When Mandelson left as communications director in 1990, Kinnock arrived at his leaving do bearing avocado and chips. But he did know the difference between mushy peas and avocado.

John Peters@johnthejack· Jul 6

As @dsmitheconomics.bsky.social points out, that black hole for defence not quite what it seems. From: (£) www.thetimes.com/business/eco...

Before I get onto my main theme today, I just wanted to say a word on behalf of the black hole society. You will have read or heard reports that there is a black hole of £4.7 billion in the outgoing prime minister’s defence plans.

There are, though, a couple of problems with this. One is that these reports have fallen into the trap of cumulating four years of changes into a single figure. It is a trick beloved of governments when they want to exaggerate future spending plans, but we should not do it.

The actual gap, about £1.2 billion a year, is not a black hole, barely qualifying as a dove-grey one. It is 0.08 per cent of this year’s planned public spending — less than a thousandth — and if officials cannot find that down the back of the Treasury sofa, they are not doing their job.

John Peters@johnthejack· Jul 6

Marine heatwave in the sea around UK coasts www.thetimes.com/comment/regi...

There is, however, another heatwave — in the sea. A marine heatwave is under way around much of the Welsh and English coastlines, the Channel and the southern North Sea, both at the sea surface and deep below where temperatures are about 2C above normal.

This means that when the heatwave on land takes grip this week, the surface of the seas will only have a limited chance to cool off, driving the marine heatwave to what is known as an “extreme level”, which is quite rare for the UK.

Already the Channel has been experiencing unseasonably warm conditions for much of this year, and now with strong sunshine and calm weather expected to last for some time this month, surface temperatures in parts of the North Sea are forecast to peak at about 4C to 5C above average in the coming days.

The seas in Europe are also experiencing even more dramatic heating, ablaze with red warning colours on ocean charts. At the end of last month, sea surface temperatures off southern France and western Italy had risen by about 6C above average, among the largest increases recorded in the seas of Europe this year.

The warming in both the UK and European seas has nothing to do with El Niño, which is brewing in the tropical seas of the Pacific and will eventually raise global temperatures much later this year.

However, on June 21 global sea surface temperatures did set a record high, reaching 21C, beating the previous record by 0.1C. And all the warming seas have wide-ranging effects — keeping the atmosphere warmer for longer, boosting energy for storms and increasing extreme rainfalls and flooding. In addition, warming oceans lead to rising sea levels and melting ice in polar regions, as well as stressing marine life.

John Peters@johnthejack· Jul 6

In 1986 I stayed with a friend at his grandfather's house in Leucate. The grandfather had only once ever left the village/town and that was during the war. From interesting obituary of Edgar Morin (£) www.thetimes.com/uk/obituarie...

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From 1965 to 1966 he spent a year in Plozévet, a village of 3,000 residents in western Brittany, observing the contrast between older people who still believed the Earth was flat, had never travelled the six miles to the nearest town and would not install gas or electricity because they were “afraid of fire”, and teenagers who adopted the latest fashions from the Left Bank of Paris, largely remained in education to 18 and understood the new nuclear power station nearby.

John Peters@johnthejack· Jul 4

Trick of turning invisible when it rains (£) www.thetimes.com/comment/regi...

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Imagine getting wet in the rain and turning invisible. This magical trick is conjured up by stripy tree snails to camouflage themselves from hungry birds.

When the snails are dry they have contrasting bands of light and darker brown colours, which makes the snails stand out on the dark tree bark they live on. But when it rains the coloured patterns vanish, turning the shells dark brown all over, a camouflage that makes the snails blend in with the tree bark and invisible to birds.

Recent research revealed how two different tree snails — Hypselostyla camelopardalis in the Philippines and Reinia variegata in Japan — turn their colours on or off thanks to tiny pores in the outer layer of their shells. The pores soak up water like a sponge, reflecting light to reveal a darker coloured layer beneath, so the shells blend in with the tree bark; but when the shells dry out, the coloured patterns rapidly reappear.

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Unlike camouflage colour changes in other creatures such as octopuses and cuttlefish, the colour change in the tree snails doesn’t use any energy. And this may be a useful feature for man-made devices, from smart materials in the home to environmental or medical sensors responding to moisture, without any need for an outside power source.

Another sort of colour change has been found in so-called sweat bees. When the weather is fairly dry the bees have a deep blue-green metallic shimmering colour, but when it turns humid the bees turn a coppery-green hue. The humidity may make the outer cells in the insect bodies swell and scatter light at different wavelengths, creating their colours, but whether the bees benefit from their colour changes is unknown.

Some plants also have the uncanny knack of changing colour when it rains. The delicate flowers of the skeleton plant, Diphylleia grayi, have bright white petals but when it rains they become nearly invisible. The petals soak up rainwater that seeps into air spaces between their cells, making them appear near transparent, except for thin white veins, which is possibly how the plant got its name, but what use this may be to the flowers remains a mystery.

John Peters@johnthejack· Jul 4

From another place, no attribution

John Peters@johnthejack· Jun 26

Oh dear

John Peters@johnthejack· Jun 23

Watch: the spider that catapults ants into its web (£) www.thetimes.com/uk/science/a... By @rhysblakely.bsky.social Amazing

John Peters@johnthejack· Jun 23

John Peters@johnthejack· Jun 22

How did people keep cool in Regency-era Britain? (£) www.thetimes.com/comment/regi...

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How did people cope with hot weather in Regency-era Britain more than 200 years ago? The better off had houses with high ceilings so hot air could rise, and walls were far thicker, which kept rooms and basements cooler for longer. Big sash windows with wooden shutters and cold tile floors also helped keep rooms cool, as well as draughty suspended timber flooring. As a last resort, handheld fans were popular.

The rich would also relocate to their country estates for the summer to escape the stifling heat (and smells) in cities, but ordinary people had to suffer in their hot homes.

One intriguing way to cope with hot weather was using ice. Long before refrigeration had been invented, big blocks of ice were cut in winter from frozen rivers and lakes, hauled upriver and stored in small ice houses. These buildings varied in shape, but were typically cylindrical or conical and mostly dug deep into the ground. They were brick-lined, providing strength and insulation with thick walls and also packed with straw or sawdust. A drain would carry meltwater away from the tightly packed ice blocks. The first ice house was built in England around 1620 in Greenwich Park, commissioned by James I, followed by another in Hampton Court. Eventually, the ice trade became big business with imports from the United States and Norway.

As well as preserving fish, meat and other fresh food, ice houses meant that the well-heeled could serve chilled drinks to their guests on even the most sweltering summer days. It was even possible to make ice cream — the first record of ice cream in England is from 1671, at a feast held in St George’s Hall at Windsor Castle.

John Peters@johnthejack· Jun 22

Letter in Times today

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Costs of air travel
Sir, Dr Simon Hayley (letter, Jun 20) is right to highlight the blind eye that successive governments have turned towards taxation of air travel, despite its known environmental impact and questionable economic contribution. His comments on Heathrow expansion also apply to Gatwick. The very high tax burden on so much of what we all earn, own or do (including death) means it is incongruous to continue to treat aviation so kindly. About half the UK population does not fly in any one year, but 15 per cent take 70 per cent of all flights, making this leniency towards aviation hard to justify.
Caroline Tayler
Nutley, E Sussex

John Peters@johnthejack· Jun 21

John Peters@johnthejack· Jun 20

Posted elsewhere without attribution

John Peters@johnthejack· Jun 20

Summer solstice is longest day but not the earliest sunrise www.thetimes.com/comment/regi...

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Tomorrow at 9.24am is the summer solstice in the UK, the moment in the year when the northern hemisphere will be most tilted on its axis towards the sun, giving us the longest hours of daylight of the year.

Even though this Sunday will be hot across much of the UK, the summer solstice is rarely the hottest day of the year — that usually comes in July or August when the land and seas have had more time to heat up. There are a few other myths about the solstice. The Earth is not closest to the sun on this day; that happened on January 3 and the furthest position of Earth from the sun will come on July 6. This is because the Earth’s orbit around the sun is slightly elliptical and the distance from the sun varies throughout the year.

The crowds gathering at Stonehenge to witness sunrise on the solstice are not actually seeing the earliest sunrise of the year. That moment has already happened, on June 17. The latest sunset will be on June 24 or 25, depending on the latitude. This phenomenon of the earliest sunrise and latest sunset is thanks to the tilt of the Earth’s axis and the shape of the Earth’s orbit around the sun overlapping.

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The dates of the earliest sunrise vary with latitude and the further north you go, the earlier sunrises get closer to the solstice until you reach the Arctic Circle, where daylight is continuous. The sun does not rise or set in the weeks or months around the solstice.

Even though the sun rises to its highest position in the sky on the solstice, in the UK the sun does not appear directly overhead — that happens at about 23.5 degrees latitude at the Tropic of Cancer.

No matter where you are on Earth at the June solstice, the sun reaches its most northerly position in the sky. At the winter solstice, it is at its most southerly position in the sky.

John Peters@johnthejack· Jun 20

Letter in Times today

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Airport expansion
Sir, The chancellor is convinced that expanding Heathrow will boost growth (“Reeves: We’ll bite the bullet on Heathrow expansion”, Jun 19), but business travel isn’t growing: it has fallen, as firms use online meetings instead. Expansion is predicated on a further large increase in leisure travel.
The Department for Transport appraisal published on Thursday assumes that expansion will shift employment into high-productivity sectors, particularly in London and the South East. It ignores the shift of employment into tourism as the number of tourists visiting the UK rises substantially. This is an astonishing omission, especially as some key tourist destinations are already concerned about congestion and overtourism. These will be relatively low-productivity, low-wage jobs so the net effect is likely to be a decline in overall UK productivity.
Demand for leisure travel has been boosted because it is taxed relatively little (exemption from VAT and fuel duty easily outweigh air passenger duty). The principle of “polluter pays” tells us that it should be taxed more heavily than other forms of expenditure. More rational tax policy offers a rare policy win-win-win: increased government revenue, reduced congestion and reduced environmental impact, avoiding the need for expansion at Heathrow.
Dr Simon Hayley
Bayes Business School, City St George’s, University of London

John Peters@johnthejack· Jun 16

Maybe it will, maybe it won't

John Peters@johnthejack· Jun 15

www.thetimes.com/comment/regi...

If night skies are clear this week, there is a chance to look out for a magical sight — stunning noctilucent clouds, the highest of Earth’s clouds, floating at the edge of space, about 80km (50 miles) high. Look towards the northern horizon in the twilight sky about 40 minutes to two hours after sunset and you may see the clouds glowing with ghostly silvery-blue threads, ripples or veils shining against the dark sky.

These are not only beautiful but also mysterious clouds. They form in the intensely cold, dry atmosphere of the mesosphere, which is at its coldest in summer, temperatures dropping below minus 120C, even though the lower atmosphere and surface of the Earth are at their warmest. The clouds are made of tiny ice crystals that also manage to survive in the rarefied upper atmosphere, which is so arid it is more than a million times drier than the Sahara desert.

The intense cold of the mesosphere is a vital ingredient for the ice crystals to form, gathering on dust particles that act as seeds for water to gather on. The dust is thought to come from the smoke of small meteors as they burn up in the mesosphere.

The silvery-blue colour of the clouds comes from the tiny size of the ice crystals as they catch the last rays of sunlight shining high up into the upper atmosphere after the sun has sunk below the horizon.

But these clouds are shrouded in mystery. It is not certain where the water in the upper atmosphere comes from, although it is thought that as the levels of methane gas are increasing, and as this gas breaks down, it releases moisture into the mesosphere.

Noctilucent clouds used to be exceedingly rare, and the earliest reports only came in the late 1800s. But in recent decades the clouds have become more frequent, seen more widely and earlier in the season and they are also shining brighter.

And even though noctilucent clouds are incredibly beautiful, they are also a very visible warning sign that increasing amounts of CO2 are making the mes…

John Peters@johnthejack· Jun 11

Dramatic clouds that inspired artist John Rogers Cox www.thetimes.com/comment/regi...

So much for Flaming June — this has been a sorry, soggy start to summer. But looking on the bright side, the rains have helped to lift the spirits of gardeners and farmers desperate for rain after the long dry spell in many areas.

The persistent run of low-pressure systems has hung over the UK like a wet blanket, but also brought skies blazoned with dramatic big, beefy cumulus clouds. On Tuesday there were some particularly striking skies, as armadas of billowing clouds sailed overhead like great ships, sparkling bright in spells of sunshine.

It was a scene reminiscent of the great expanses of sky painted by the American artist John Rogers Cox, who conjured up fantastic heaps of clouds in the prairies of his native Indiana in the mid-20th century. Most famous is Gray and Gold (1942), which shows the menacing power of billowing cumulus storm clouds set against fields of golden wheat, a captivating style of painting that was part of the magic realism art movement in the United States.

In Scales Mound (1974) an old tractor and plough stand forlorn and abandoned, cast in shadow in the foreground, while a bright yellow wheatfield and farmhouse stand further back. And towering above the entire scene are awesome pillars of cumulus clouds like gigantic fingers thrusting high up to the heavens.

These are quite unnerving works of art, made even more mysterious by the absence of people or animals. But one of Cox’s most enigmatic artworks was Cloud Trails (1944), showing near-luminous threads of silvery cloud set against what appears to be a twilight sky with a moon on a dark horizon. In contrast, a luminous field of harvested wheat stands in sheaves in the foreground with an old barn covered in adverts.

If this was indeed a twilight scene, it may be a rare artistic depiction of noctilucent clouds — the highest clouds in the world that lie near the edge of space. These enigmatic clouds appear only at twilight in the summer when the sun lies below the horizon but its dying …

John Peters@johnthejack· Jun 9

By @asherperlman.bsky.social

John Peters@johnthejack· Jun 9

John Peters@johnthejack· Jun 8

John Peters@johnthejack· Jun 7

Middle-aged men were more likely to speed than women in the same age group, and almost 70 per cent of speeding-related penalty points went to male drivers. (£) www.thetimes.com/uk/transport...

John Peters@johnthejack· Jun 6

Letter in Times today

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Stonehenge theory
Sir, Novel theories concerning the origins of Stonehenge appear almost as frequently as summer solstices. This year we are told the altar stone could have come from Scotland via Dogger Bank (“Stonehenge altar stone ‘came on glacier from Scotland’ ”, Jun 5). While science has proved the stone’s Scottish origin, how it was transported can only be conjectured. Robert Newall, who excavated at Stonehenge in the 1920s, once said to me: “The latest theory will never be the last; each should be judged by its plausibility.” I’m sure he’d have frowned at this one.
Peter Saunders
Former curator, Salisbury Museum

John Peters@johnthejack· Jun 6

Letter in Times today

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Sir, Solar farms cover approximately 0.1 per cent of the UK’s total land area. To meet net-zero targets, the government estimates that solar farms will occupy no more than 0.4 to 0.6 per cent of UK land. This land is not removed from agricultural use entirely, with sheep and poultry often grazing between the solar arrays.

In contrast, land used for equine grazing accounts for approximately 5 per cent of the UK, nearly 1 million hectares of agricultural land. This land is frequently compacted, carbon depleted and devoid of biodiversity, and often in areas close to centres of population where food could be grown for local consumption. Equine grazing increases the price of land, taking it beyond the reach of many people wanting to produce food. At a time when the UK is 65 per cent self-sufficient for food, and we face a climate emergency, these figures might inform any debate on land use.
Sue Cole
Lyndhurst, Hants

John Peters@johnthejack· Jun 6

Posted without attribution in another place

John Peters@johnthejack· Jun 6

John Peters@johnthejack· Jun 4

Seeing is believing — or is it? www.thetimes.com/comment/regi...

$In the recent heatwave, a magical sight appeared off the north coast of Cornwall. BBC Radio Cornwall reported the boat trip operator Mike Hancock describing how he saw a large vessel in the distance but which changed shape into something like “fuzzy tall towers” coming in and out of focus on the horizon. That then changed into three bendy horizons, turning into something like a “huge bear on the horizon” and eventually looked like the Greek symbol pi. In reality it was an aircraft carrier far off in the distance. This fantastic sight was a Fata Morgana, an elaborate mirage conjured up by several layers of warm and cold air sandwiched together over the sea. Instead of light travelling in a straight line, it was bent — or refracted — multiple times into a mirage that became so distorted that the aircraft carrier in the distance morphed into strange images stacked one on top of another, some of them upright and others upside down. The images became even more bewildering when they rapidly changed shape as the different layers of air shifted up and down. And conditions were particularly good for the Fata Morgana to appear, when the sea was cold but the air above was very warm in the heatwave. Fata Morganas have also conjured up other surreal visions in the past, such as turning ships, islands or icebergs into towers or turrets rising up from the water, and which perhaps explains the legend of the ghostly Flying Dutchman ship. The Fata Morgana phenomenon was named after Morgan le Fay, an enchantress who used her magical powers to change shape, and in Arthurian legend was the half-sister of King Arthur who was taught magical skills by Merlin the Magician. She also lived in a spectacular castle that appeared towering over the sea, luring unsuspecting seamen who mistook the castle for a safe harbour. As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow described in his poem Fata Morgana, when a “weary traveller” was fooled by the illusion of a magical land: “Fair towns with turrets high/ And…$