A 6th year is doing a chemistry project on various substances found in wine. So I need to go and buy a bottle of wine for a 17 year old, who will not be drinking any of it. Am I breaking the law? If Scottish licensing law is still the same as when I was running pubs, I may have to buy them a meal to go with it.
UK high-school level science technicians are in high demand. Part of the problem is relatively low pay compared to the skillset (~ยฃ20k-ยฃ35k). But on the upside, there's a lot of fun stuff like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkOJU2osgjY
Guising is the Scottish version of trick or treat - you need to tell a joke or do a dance or similar to get the treat. The joke of the year seems to be:
"Why doesn't Princess Elsa have a balloon anymore?" "She Let It Go."
@Theorem_Poem I see it two ways (cos I am NOT coming down on a side in geogastropolitics... ๐ )
There's those who say a kebab is anything cooked on a rotating spit....and fair enough.
There's those who say this is a great way to cook a bunch of minced whatever (and I'm a big fan of using all possible edible things), and I agree with this too.
But everybody is wrong, because the greatest kebab ever is my first one, aged 17, a Donner with extra chilli sauce after a night out in Dundee.
@Theorem_Poem Statistically it was probably Turkish. Or at least that corner of the Mediterranean coast. But wow...and other than the grease-laden meat, kind of healthy, a bigger dose of raw salad than most fast food here.
@Theorem_Poem We're actually arguing linguistics, aren't we? Like the claim that JFK's "Ich bin ein Berliner" actually translates as "I am a very specific donut" ๐
Watching an early Star Trek DS9 episode where Lieutenant Dr Bashir is trying to convince Crew Chief O'Brian that he doesn't need to call him "sir".
Amusing, as the senior students at school can call me Sir, Mr R, or Geoff, up to them, I'm not a teacher, they're going to work with people like me at uni and generally be on first name terms...and the school's behind that approach.
But there's one this year who is more formal with me...and that's fine too. It's funny, because.... (1/2)
@ZachWeinersmith It's well up there in the list of "most subjective topics". I love a well crafted limerick, but have never really got haiku. Beat poetry varies massively for me depending on topic. But maybe I'm weird...I tend to view it as essentially a form of data compression.
If something falls into a black hole the radial gradient in gravitational field means it gets "spaghettified". And yes, that's a real term used in astrophysics. For example, if you fall in feet first your feet will be pulled more than your knees, which will be pulled more than your hips, and so on. The effect increases as you fall, until your very atoms are strung out in a thread.
HOWEVER, if you drop a piece of spaghetti at an exact tangent to the event horizon it gets lasagnefied.
And here's the video...bit dark, sorry, trade off between seeing the LED light and seeing the setup. This is weird, one of those physics things that sounds like a fake at first. https://youtu.be/y0nIhu033bs
Playing with the Coherer Effect today, weird stuff. The setup is a circuit "completed" by balls of aluminium foil...but it's weirdly touchy about when it does and doesn't conduct. If it's close to conducting a nearby high voltage spark (piezo lighter in this case) will trigger it. A momentary disconnection will often break the circuit.
We've finally hit the point where the UK government is simultaneously complaining we are "full up" as an anti-immigrant message, and simultaneously saying we need to increase the birth rate.
Guess what - immigration is *far* better economically than babies. Babies take 16 years to develop taxable skills, and are heavily state-subsidised for those 16 years. Immigrants, on average, already have taxable skills.
Culturally, I see immigration as a plus too. Others don't. You judge that one.