Gramp's Grumps

The death of Bob Simpson reminds me of when I used to watch him in Sydney grade cricket. I particularly remember a century in a little over ...

 As I said after Australia's 2022 election ( https://grampsgrumps.blogspot.com/2022/05/who-to-eliminate-in-stv-preferential.html ), we s...

Speaking of AI and quantum and English: I just saw this insanely impressive talk: https://youtu.be/rGAynRTUMVI?si=h4jpSsZC2D5RZcBG. May I sa...

Subtyping fits naturally with our human view of reality. Consider these sets of individuals: Dogs, Cats, Humans, Crocodiles, Mammals, Quadru...

In the round of 16 in the Open World Bridge Championship, Romania trailed China by 5 going into the last set of 15 boards, but lost by 34. I...

There are team competitions and mixed teams, there are pairs and mixed pairs, there are individuals and ... Well, before we get to that, an ...

The West is in conflict with the governments of Russia and China, but should be trying to send a message of future peace to the people. For ...

"Emergence" is a term for the way a large system with simple rules can give rise to more complex behaviour. Our universe has multi...

How do interest rate rises bring down inflation. This is something we never think about since superficially it is obvious: people and busine...

Like governments of Left and Right before, the current ALP government in Australia has expressed the obvious fact that we can't move fro...

The era of personalised medical advice is arriving at last. Australia's new sun guidelines  vary the advice by 3 skin types. Well, it...

BBO (Bridge Base Online) has a lovely system for practicing declarer play. Here is the B-8 problem in level 4: The suggested solution says ...

We hear about AI attaining consciousness or sentience or other non-scientific attributes. This distracts from the real and substantive issue...

We used to think that space was empty, the sun was a benign source of energy, stars were quietly doing their sun-like thing. It has slowly d...

 Veritasium has a briliant video explaining entropy Entropy always increases if anything at all is happening. It is tempting to think that t...

  Flood-proof Moveable Buildings There is a confluence of problems relating to housing: A warming world brings more rain, and recent experie...

When we burn wood in a very hot, low oxygen, environment, then the resulting charcoal is mostly the wood's carbon, and it is in a conven...

Low carbon now, renewable later We need to keep CO2 levels down over the next 30 years. We also need to be ready to start pumping CO2 out of...

We are failing to correctly address climate change because many people have been seduced into thinking it is a subplot of some bigger proble...

I just saw a video where Brian Cox said "there is exactly the right amount of matter to make spacetime flat". An obvious explanati...

The Cricket law body needs to respond to the controversy about the Bairstow dismissal. Something like this: "It is not intended that th...

 This video blew my mind: It describes how, in some species, monogamy leads to a system where families are so interrelated that they become ...

I have long thought that nuclear energy was our only hope to prevent and recover from global warming. So I have watched a lot of videos abou...

Central banks have an impossible job because the currency is in an unstable equilibrium. If prices go down then people hurry to sell and put...

  How important is vitamin D? Modern humans started in Africa near the equator, and couldn't successfully move north to Europe till they...

This essay is about human culture and its relation to evolution. Some use culture to encompass useful information and skills that is passed ...

Carbon has two advantages that make it the mainstay of our energy infrasatructure. One is that it forms molecules that are liquid at the tem...

[update: this turned out to be sadly wrong.] Currently I rate Anthony Albanese as the smartest PM Australia has ever had. His new government...

 There's still some denial, there's still some anger, but mostly Australia has moved on to bargaining ("we'll just buy carb...

The world is belatedly waking up to the fact that there is no route to net zero without a huge amount of nuclear power. The existing PWR rea...