Notes on the notes on the book
Posted by:
fuzz (---.cableinet.co.uk)
Date: December 04, 2002 04:44PM
<HTML>p.33; Cirencester; market town in Gloucestershire, about 25 miles north west of Swindon. It used to be pronounced 'Sissiter', but so many incomers live there now that most people call it 'Sirensester'. It's not just foreigners who get confused, see.
----- As far as I know, it's been called 'Sirensester' for at least 3 generations, I'll check though
p.39; South Cerney; village in Gloucestershire, near to Cirencester, 10 miles from Swindon. It's very nice, I understand, although I've never been there myself.
----- I've been there, it's a bit like Penge.
p.76; matter is mainly empty space; this theory is no longer widely held by subatomic scientists. Apparently there isn't any empty space because the subatomic particles are never actually in one place at any given time. And anyway they are not discrete lumps of matter circling about one another like miniature planets, but 'shells' that fit over one another in some way. Search me.
----- Ah, a physics'y one, I knew the last few years hadn't been in vain, I know this one. Empty space is not empty, it's full of, well lots of things, so called 'Vacum Fluctuations'. Due to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle (a very Nextian part of physics that says that if you know how fast something is going you cannot know exactally where it is) it is possible to 'borrow' energy from the universe for a very, very small amount of time (about a hundreth, of a millionth, of a millionth of a millionth of a second). From this it is theoretically possible to borrow enough energy to create a particle (using the only equation that everybody knows E=mc^2), and it turns out this sort of thing happens all the time, leading empty space to be anything but. A seathing bubbling mass of shortlived particles. Truth is stranger than fiction in the quantum universe.
p.102; looped behind the Crunch; proponents of the Big Bang theory of creation sometimes speculate that one day all the energy created by the Bang will run down (entropy), gravity will take over, and all the matter expanding across the Universe will reverse direction, collapsing back onto itself in the Big Crunch. Which will then be followed by another Big Bang, and so on.
---- Ah another bit of physics. Whether the universe will collapse into a 'big crunch' or keep on expanding forever is a topic of argument between physists. It all depends on whether the universe is curved or flat aparently.
p.105; goldfishes to predict earthquakes; canaries down mines, yes, but has anyone heard of this peculiar practice, and if so, how does it work?
----- Other anmals that are thought to predict earthquakes/volcanoes include: Dogs, birds, turtles and, of course, cats.
p.133; Oldspot; the Gloucester Old Spot is a breed of pig.
----- Also the name of several pubs.
p.261; Marmite; yeast and vegetable extract, inexplicably popular for spreading on toast etc. Salty, smelly, brown goo. Known as Vegemite in Australia.
----- Either you love it or hate it. I love it myself.
p.269; Barchester; fictional setting for Anthony Trollope's political/clerical novels. (Never mind a way in, is there a way out again?)
----- Isn't also the name of a town in 'The Archers' (long running BBC radio soap)?
p.293; ENSA; The Entertainments National Service Association, which provided varying quality of entertainment to wartime troops. Alleged also to stand for 'Every Night Something Awful'.
------ I think this one's from Spike Milligan but I can't find the bloody reference right now.
Oh, and to anyone following Ben's banoffee pie recipie. When you boil the can of condensed milk, <b>don't let it boil dry</b>. Unless it's not your kitchen, in which case it's quite funny.</HTML>