How to Survive an Earthquake – The Triangle of Life

Every year there are hundreds, if not thousands of earthquakes but the only ones to make the headlines are those that impact significantly on us humans. 2011 was a bad year for such events – I don’t need to name them as they will all flash into your mind as you read this.

For a while now I’ve been composing a blog post with the provisional title “The Ultimate Seismograph – How to Survive an Earthquake”. It describes an earthquake I was in and the very unique situation that transpired. While putting the finishing touches to it I realised that “How to Survive an Earthquake” demanded a separate blog post of its own, so here it is. [Read more…]

Santa Claus – An Engineer’s Perspective

Someone sent me this in an email quite a few years ago. It’s a gem! I don’t know where it originated or who holds the copyright, but with apologies and grateful thanks to the copyright holder … Here it is:

There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the Population Reference Bureau).

At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, [Read more…]

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Season's Greetings

Season's Greetings

I wanted to send some sort of holiday greeting to my friends and colleagues, but it’s difficult in today’s world to know exactly what to say without offending someone. So I met with my lawyer last night, and on advice I wish to say the following:

DEFINITIONS
“The Wisher” – Me.
“The Wishee” – You.
“The Wishes” – My Wishes, where the plural also implies the singular and vice versa where appropriate as inferred from the context.

GREETING
Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best Wishes for [Read more…]