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Bits and Pieces: Left Turns
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2–3 minutes·
No comments on Bits and Pieces: Left TurnsThe research at U.P.S. is paying off. Last year, it cut 28 million miles from truck routes — saving roughly three million gallons of fuel — in good part by mapping routes that minimize left turns. Incredible – something that seems obvious in retrospect, but in practice hard to implement. Interestingly, it wouldn’t work in…
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Bookmooch
Along with selling a whole bunch of games, I’ve started addressing the problem of my overflowing bookshelves. Granted, I only have two bookshelves, but I’m not really at a stage in life now where I have the space to keep hundreds of books. A couple of weeks ago, it was getting so bad that I…
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Bits and Pieces: Centuries
Weather In a book about weather (called ‘Weather’) that I’m reading, there’s a fact that blithely states: Driest location: The Atacama Desert in Chile has virtually no rainfall (0.08mm annually), except for a passing shower several times a century. Not several times a year. Several times a century. What impresses me about this is not…
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Transformers – not enough robots
That’s what this wonderfully incisive Movie Preview Review says, anyway: http://www.ifilm.com/efp I’m going to see the movie – for the robots.
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On the other side of silence
A little while ago I manage to acquire the last four years worth of In Our Time, a Radio 4 panel discussion that covers every subject under the sun in a very engaging and thoughtful manner. I’ve been working my way through the archives, usually alternating between topics that sound interesting (e.g. Agincourt, Tea) and…
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Ratatouille: A terrible experience
Update: Jen Winter has contacted me and apologised for the email, which I’ve accepted. All sorted now. Ratatouille is, by all accounts, a magnificent movie. Potentially Pixar’s best, and that’s saying a lot. And of course, it’s a very important film – these movies cost a lot to make and if they fail, that’s tens…
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A Dream of Madness
During a tour of the Pearl River Delta region of China, for one night I stayed at a place called the Ocean Spring Resort. It’s a new holiday resort surrounding a famous hot spring, with hotels, a theme park, spas, health centres, water features, pretty much everything that a resort needs. Oh, and it’s massive.…
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Arup’s Key Speech
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the values that companies hold, and how they influence what they do. Many companies have mission statements or tenets or core values; some of them adhere to those values, some ignore them, and some can literally be defined by them. But are they actually helpful, and how do you come…
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Yann Tiersen – a disappointment
A couple of months ago, I went to see Yann Tiersen play at The Scala in London. Mr Tiersen is, of course, the person behind the tinkling, cheery and immensely popular music to Amelie and Goodbye Lenin. Shortly before the gig, I discovered that he probably wouldn’t be playing just Amelie-style music, but instead he’d…
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