What I Learnt Today

  

 On this day,  June 16th, in 1904,  Leopold Bloom rose at 8am in his Dublin home. He walked to the butcher to buy a pork kidney, cooked it, and took it to his wife Molly for breakfast (yuck).

I’m not sure what happens to Leopold for the rest of June 16th as I must admit to not having read much further into the novel Ulysses, despite numerous attempts. It must be a good read though – the book was banned for obscenity for years.

James Joyce said that rather than writing a novel for a million readers, he preferred to write novels that one person would read a million times. I wonder what he would think of one reader who started his novel a million times.

 Joyce once prophetically said that he had “put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant”.

Fortunately, many people are much more literate than I, and many devotees of James Joyce now celebrate June 16th as Bloom’s Day each year, and reenact the path trod by Leopold.

The novel Ulysses was banned in America before it was even a book. But Sylvia Beach, proprietor of the Paris bookstore Shakespeare and Company, published it in 1922. The book remained banned in our enlightened Australia until 1953!

We have met Shakespeare and Company before in this blog.

What do you think is the most sold but least read book of all time?

 Jordan Ellenberg has formulated an algorithm to answer this question.

He’s called it the Hawking Index, after everybody’s favourite unread book, A Brief History of Time.

What’s your vote?

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Today marks the 800th Anniversary of the Magna Carta – the deal struck between King John and his Barons on June 15th 1215. Citizens would never again be subjected to the arbitrary rule of a tyrannical monarch but instead be ruled and governed upon foundations of accepted legal process.

Before ‘Horrible History’, the ultimate reference for all things related to British history has been, of course, ‘1066 and all that – a memorable history of England comprising all the parts you can remember, including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates’ (WC Sellar and RJ Yeatman, 1930)

This is the definitive ‘1066’ entry on the Magna Carta.

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Elon Musk has replaced Steve Jobs as the Internet’s ‘raddest’ man.

While he was an undergraduate at University, Musk asked himself “What will most affect the future of humanity?”.
He came up with five answers:

• the internet;
• sustainable energy;
• space exploration, in particular the permanent extension of life beyond Earth;
• artificial intelligence;
• and reprogramming the human genetic code.

Why work on small problems when there are big ones to solve?

Musk started with the Internet. He founded PayPal, and later sold it for a not-so-small fortune. Rather then retiring to a tax haven in the Caribbean, he moved onto the next two tougher problems.

SpaceX

Musk believes that if we are to ensure mankind’s survival, we need to be able to leave Earth and travel to other planets.

In 2002 he started ‘one of the most unthinkable and ill-advised ventures of all time’, a rocket company called SpaceX. ‘The aim of SpaceX is to revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.’

Against all predictions, SpaceX has been a tremendously successful company. It has flown cargo to and from the space shuttle, and now has a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to fly numerous cargo resupply missions. It is developing the capacity to transport astronauts.

Tesla Automobiles

While SpaceX was still in its infancy, Mush started working on his next problem – ‘sustainable energy’. Musk says of fossil fuels – “Given that at some point they’ll run out anyway, why run this crazy experiment to see how bad it’ll be?”

As Tom Urban writes

In 2004 Musk decided to multi-task by launching the second-most unthinkable and ill-advised venture of all time: an electric car company called Tesla, whose stated purpose was to revolutionize the worldwide car industry by significantly accelerating the advent of a mostly-electric-car world—in order to bring humanity on a huge leap toward a sustainable energy future”

Musk has a secret master plan.

• Build a sports car (Roadster, 2006) √
• Use that money to build an affordable car (Model S, 2012) √
• Use that money to build an even more affordable car (2017)
• While doing above, also provide zero emission electric power generation options

The Tesla Roadster was Tesla automobiles has now launched the very successful Model S fully electric car, aimed at the luxury end of the market. The all-wheel Model Sdrive version has a top speed of 250 kph and can go from 0-100kph in 3.3 seconds. It has the highest ever Consumer Reports rating of 99/100. It received 5/5 in the Australian ANCAP safety rating. It has a range of about 500km, and Tesla has built a network of charging stations across the USA if you need to go further (or you can plug into any power point).

The Model S starts in Australia at $106,000. So I’ll wait for the widely anticipated Model 3, slated for release March 2016 and for sale early 2017. It is aimed to be very affordable ($35,000) and it is tipped that it will disrupt the automobile market.

SolarCity

As a spin off, Musk’s company SolarCity is the largest installer of Solar panels in the USA . Musk is also building the largest battery factory in the world.The Tesla Powerwall home battery (to be released later this year) will revolutionise the way we use energy at home, allowing the power generated from the sun by day to be stored and used at night (perhaps to charge our Tesla car).

As Richard Branson says

It’s a paradox that Elon is working to improve our planet at the same time he’s building spacecraft to help us leave it.

Wait, But Why?

Tom Urban writes about Mush and Tesla in his blog Wait, But Why?. This is my new favourite blog.

Urban explores each topic he writes on with enormous depth – digging deeper and deeper whenenever there is a concept that requires clarification. He likes to ‘get to the very bottom of things.

He describes it like this

The way I approach a post like that is I’ll start with the surface of the topic and ask myself what I don’t fully get—I look for those foggy spots in the story where when someone mentions it or it comes up in an article I’m reading, my mind kind of glazes over with a combination of “ugh it’s that icky term again nah go away” and “ew the adults are saying that adult thing again and I’m seven so I don’t actually understand what they’re talking about.” Then I’ll get reading about those foggy spots—but as I clear away fog from the surface, I often find more fog underneath. So then I research that new fog, and again, often come across other fog even further down. My perfectionism kicks in and I end up refusing to stop going down the rabbit hole until I hit the floor.

So the ‘Wait But Why?’ column on Tesla starts with Elon Musk, moves through the politics of energy, looks for the truth around climate change, delves into the science of combustion, and takes us right back to the ferns that became the fossils that became the coal that provide us with energy today. It deals with the issue of ‘the long tailpipe’ – are electric cars no better environmentally than petrol cars as coal generates the electicity that charges them? It is a very entertaining ‘long read’.

But don’t start reading the Wait But Why? story of Elon Musk, the Worlds Raddest Man, or Part 2, How Tesla will Change the World? unless you are ready to go and buy a Tesla.

You won’t have any choice afterwards.

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Cook Straight runs North-South, not East-West

The South Island is not immediately below the North Island – in fact the two islands overlap.

To travel from Nelson (on the South Island) to Wellington (on the North Island) you travel east and a bit south.

 

 

The Maori arrived in New Zealand relatively recently.

New Zealand was first settled by polynesians people who travelled there by canoe about 700 years ago, about 500 years before the Pakeha (Europeans) arrived.

 

 

New Zealand has no native land mammals

When the Maori first arrived in New Zealand, there were no native land mammals. Perhaps this is why their birds are flightless. There are lots of Weka birds (pictured), but most Kiwis have never seen a Kiwi in the wild.  There are now many introduced species, including 39 million sheep, 6.4 million dairy cows,  and NZ’s favourite import, the possum.

 

 

New Zealand may have been completely submerged 23 Million Years Ago

The islands of New Zealand are part of a continental fragment (Zealandia) that broke off from Australia about 70 million years ago. Many people believe that it was completely submerged 23 million years ago. 93% of the land mass of Zealandia remains submerged.

 

New Zealand has more earthquakes than I thought

About 20,000 earthquakes are recorded in New Zealand each year, of which 200  are strong enough to be felt.

Wellington in particular is prone to earthquakes.

Fatalities are generally uncommon – the two earthquakes that stand out are Napier in 1931, in which 256 people died, and the Christchurch earthquake of 2011, in which 185 people died. I think I’d rather have snakes.

 

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