Special Guest Blogger: Enrico Fermi

My childhood in Rome was a mix of gelato and geometry, my father taught me two things that stayed with me for a lifetime which was never trust a neutron that looks too calm and never skip that second Espresso.
While other kids were busy playing marbles, I was busy counting them and that was when I realised that numbers could be both a hobby and a weapon, my mother would say, 'Enrico, you’re a genio, you’ll solve problems faster than a pizza delivery guy on a Vespa and i did end up creating the famous Fermi calculation or the quick‑and‑dirty estimate.
My University life in Pisa was a blur of chalk dust, late‑night debates in the caffè and an early fascination with the big questions such as what are atom's made of and why does my non‑na always forget where she put her glasses?
In 1921, I was invited to a conference in Rome. The room smelled of tobacco, fresh coffee and the faint perfume of caffè latte which is the holy trinity of any Italian academic gathering. There, I met a young, disheveled man named Niels Bohr and we spent the evening discussing quantum mechanics, my favorite pizza toppings (pepperoni, of course), and the best way to convince a committee that a theory was worth funding.
Fast forward to 1938, when I finally received the Nobel Prize in Physics for my work on induced radioactivity and a job on the secretive, top secret we‑don’t‑talk‑about‑it‑at‑family‑dinners Manhattan Project because then the world was in a heated race to harness nuclear energy both for power and, unfortunately, for weapons.
In a desert outpost bustling with the brightest minds of the era, all hunched over blackboards covered in equations that looked like they were written in a different language, my job was to provide quick, back‑of‑the‑envelope calculations that could tell the project leaders, 'Yes, that implosion will work, or no, we’ll blow our stupid selves up.'
Skip on again to 1950 and the moment which made me famous, explaining why, after all these years, we still haven’t gotten a postcard from the Martians which still confounds scientists, sci‑fi writers and late‑night Bloggers.
I was sitting at a lunch table in in the cafeteria of the Los Alamos laboratory, enduring a less than perfect espresso while watching a group of young physicists argue about the feasibility of interstellar travel and one of them asked me if the universe is so old and so vast, why the heck haven’t we heard from any aliens yet?
I sipped my espresso, stared at my sandwich, then at the ceiling, and thought: 'If even a tiny fraction of those stars host technologically advanced civilizations, why haven’t we heard from them and said, 'Well, let’s do a quick back‑of‑the‑envelope calculation. Suppose a civilization could colonize the galaxy in a million years which is a blink of an eye compared to the universe’s 13.8‑billion‑year age. If even one out of a thousand planets develops intelligent life, then we should be swimming in alien radio signals by now, right?
They looked puzzled so i continued, 'If we assume each civilization lasts for a hundred thousand years then the galaxy should be teeming with active civilizations. Yet all we hear is the cosmic background radiation and the occasional glitch from a faulty satellite. Hence, the paradox is the universe looks quiet despite all the reasons it should be noisy so where are they?'
And that is the Fermi Paradox, named after yours truly because I was the first to raise the question at the Astrobiology conference at Green Bank, West Virginia. I didn’t invent the paradox, I just voiced it and the rest is Astrophysical history.
To answer my own Paradox, it could be that  the space between Worlds is just too great or that maybe we’re looking in the wrong wavelength, like sending an email to a group that are still communicating by smoke signals, or they have seen us and seen just how warlike we are and sensibly swerved us or even they are here observing us but we just cannot see or recognise them or, just maybe, we really are alone in an infinite Universe.
There could be someone looking up at the night sky in another part of the Universe wondering whether someone is out there and pondering the same paradox but after spending so long working alongside nuclear material, my body was wracked with Cancer and I died aged 53 and never did get the post card from the Martians so whether you’re a physicist, a poet, or a curious kid who thinks Fermi is a type of Italian cheese, remember that the next time you see a flicker in the night sky, it might just be an alien trying to figure out why we keep asking, “Where are they?” while we’re busy arguing over whether the pizza topping should include pineapple (It shouldn't by the way).

Hot, Warm or Very Warm?

My Phone is telling me that it is 21°C today but over the next few days it could hit 31°C and technically for Spring that is 'Very Warm' but next week it would officially 'Hot'.
The Met Office has a classification of Terms used to indicate temperature which is basically how much above the average temperature for the season it is hence as May is Spring still, 31°C is  more than 7°C above the average of 18°C hence 'Very Warm' but in June, when it is Meteorological Summer, it will be 6°C above the average of 25°C hence it is 'Hot'.
Today at 21°C it is officially 3°C above the 18°C Spring average so they call it 'Rather Warm' which is the top rating for Spring but as we are heading towards Summer, when would we be technically correct for the temperature of the day?
The Average for a UK Summer is 25°C so anything from 33°C upwards is classified as 'Very Hot', 31°C/32°C is 'Hot', 29°C/30°C is 'Very Warm', 27°C /28°C is 'Warm', 26°C to 24°C is 'Normal', 22°C/23°C is 'Rather Cool', 20°C/21°C is 'Cool' and any days below 19°C are 'Very Cool'.
So now you know and you have the perfect answer to the idiot we get every Summer who says 'Hot Enough For Ya' by answering: 'Actually as it's 28°C today, technically it's not Hot, it's Warm Enough For Ya' which will leave you feeling an immense sense of inner pride.

Why Capitalism is Crap Example 7,946,727

This week was a great example of why we need more Socialism and why the Capitalist Pig Dogs are taking everyone for a ride.
First up was the Tesco Supermarket who announced profits for the last financial year of £2bn and then on the same day, the Nationwide Building Society reported a £1.49 billion profit for the same period.
As Tesco is owned by major institutional investors, the bumper profit will be shared out to its shareholders but as the Nationwide is owned by its customers (members), their profit is to be shared out amongst 4 million customers who will receive £100 into their Nationwide account.
Sums up nicely the Capitalism mantra of a business is there to to generate profit and maximise returns only for its owners and the Socialist mantra of collective ownership and spreading the profits amongst its members.
That is the problem with the Capitalist Society we have, it is run for the few while Socialism is run for the many so  just imagine how much better off we would be under Nationalised industries and you can blame Margaret Thatcher and the Conservatives who in the 80's went on an orgy of
privatising the rail, utility, mail and water industries while selling us the line that it would make them more efficient, generate investment, lower costs and save jobs while in reality all it led to was large scale redundancies, prices sky-rocketed and the previous British companies are largely in the hands of a small group of investors who pay themselves billions in dividend payouts
We need more companies in our hands who will use the profits for the good of everyone and not just for the good of the few and that my friend, is why Socialism is good and Capitalism sucks.  

Special Guest Blogger: Alice Kessler

Ah, it's my turn to stare into the proverbial mirror and try not to scream at the reflections staring back. I say reflections, it's the plural because of course, I’m me, and also her. We’re twins. Identical.
Yes, it’s me, Alice. Or Ellen. Honestly, even we get it wrong sometimes. We’re the Kessler Twins, purveyors of high-kicking chorus lines, and the only women in 1960s Germany who could make lederhosen look vaguely sexy.
We escaped East Germany and our first big break came in 1957 when we were discovered at a Viennese opera house, where we were performing an interpretive dance routine to O Sole Mio in matching berets and tap shoes. The producer took one look at us flailing in unison and declared, 'Mein Gott, they’re like one person' and thus the Kessler Twins were born. Or re-born. Honestly, we were born in 1936. But nobody counts that as a career launch.
For two decades, we pirouetted, sang off-key, and smiled through our teeth at men who said things like, 'I could never tell you apart', touring the world! Well, Europe.
And Margate. And once, very briefly, a holiday camp in Blackpool where the audience clapped halfway through our opener because they thought it was over. A fair reaction, really.
We were asked to represent West Germany in the Eurovision Song Contest 1959, finishing in 8th place with Tonight We Want To Go Dancing and we graced the covers of magazines and we were offered film roles and during the 60's when we walked into a room, people noticed. Not because we were brilliant, mind you, but because we were exactly alike.
We never had children. Not from lack of trying mind you, but we were inseparable so instead of husbands we adopted a parrot named Klaus, who could swear in three languages. He outlived us both, which is frankly rude.
We died, you know. Quite uneventfully, at exactly the same time, of course, because we couldn’t even manage death individually.
For a brief, glitter-sprayed moment, we were seen. We came. We chorused. We confused people and bowed out together in a joint suicide pact.
Ellen had suffered a stroke and we both had heart problems so we slipped off to Grünwald, and an assisted dying facility and the magnificent Kessler Twins took their final bow, in unison as always.

Soft And Strong

There are some things that it must be really difficult to advertise such as toilet roll, diarrhea tablets and women's sanitary products but also on the list is the Military  who go with the tagline 'See the World' which is much more palatable than: 'Want to shoot people or get shot yourself?'
If anyone ever asked me if they should join the Military I would steer them away with a 'Are you mad?' but luckily for them i haven't been approached to write the tagline for the Army but it seems i don't need to because the young are deciding it isn't the life for them all by themselves.
Apparently there is a mounting recruitment and retention crisis across much of the Western world and especially in Canada, New Zealand, the United States, Britain and Australia but they have hit upon a new idea to boost struggling numbers, immigrants.  
Canada and Australia have recently relaxed their rules of non-Canucks and Aussies joining their military and a leaked document has revealed that Britain is considering following suit by ignoring the rule that only 15% of the regular army can be non-Brits although it does mention that this comes with a cost in the Canadian experiment which resulted in serious communication barriers, persistent cultural friction and tensions emerging along national lines.
Personally, I would still advocate a career in advertising over joining the military, even if you have to come up with a clever jingle or tagline for a product whose sole requirement is to be soft on your bum.   

Special Guest Blogger: Greek God Asclepius

So, I was bringing people back from the dead and Hades was getting tetchy because his underworld was becoming rather underpopulated and Zeus was worried I was upsetting the natural order of things. The balance between life and death. A bit rich, coming from a god whose main hobbies were transforming into animals and seducing anything that moved, but there you go.
He decided a lecture wouldn’t suffice so instead, he sent a lightning bolt.
One minute I was trying to explain to a newly-revived fisherman that, frankly, his time had probably come, the next—ZAP. A rather sudden, and I must say, terribly rude, end to my mortal tenure. No warning, no 'Hey Asclepius, can I have a word in your ear?' Just a celestial taser to the old coconut. The afterlife service was appalling, too. The lighting in Hades is simply dreadful for my complexion.
But it all worked out in the end. After a bit of a sulk and Dad Apollo had a word, and I was zapped back up to Olympus, given a constellation, and told to keep my resurrection tendencies to myself. So here I am. A star. Literally.
So, what’s the takeaway from all this, my dears? What wisdom can the original greek god of medicine impart?
Be nice to your doctor. Wash your hands. Don’t be a hypochondriac. And for goodness’ sake, if you see a symbol with a snake on a stick outside a building, make sure it’s the right one before you go in asking for a complex surgical procedure.
You might end up asking an IT Consultant for a lobotomy, and nobody wants that.

So Just How Great Was Guardiola?

If Pep Guardiola does leave Manchester City at the end of this season, he will do so with the shouts of him being one of the most successful and influential managers in Premier League history and certainly City have been the dominant force in the English game during his 10 seasons in charge with six Premier League titles, as well as FA Cups, League Cups and the Champions League which came at the cost of building the team for a tad under £2 billion.
For that outlay you would expect to be successful but it is the 115 charges of breaches of Premier League financial rules between 2009 and 2018 which cast a shadow over Guardiola's time in charge and the asterisk which is bound to be put beside the wins in the Footballing History Books.
An independent commission is yet to publish a ruling almost a year and a half after a disciplinary hearing concluded and with a year left on his contract, it is rumoured that he knows what is coming down the line and has jumped ship before it lands on the Manchester City doormat.
The punishment for failing to provide accurate financial information, failing to comply with Uefa's financial fair play (FFP) rules and breaches of Premier League's profitability and sustainability rules (PSR) as well as multiple charges that they failed to co-operate with the Premier League's investigation is going to be a very bitter pill to swallow, especially as Nottingham Forest and Everton suffered points deductions for 1 charge let alone 115.
The list also includes misreporting financial information with secret off-the-books payments to players and managers so City in wining so much, stand accused of subverting the Premier League rules that clubs had agreed to comply with as other clubs played by the rules while City spent more money on better players, and achieved their success.
If Manchester City are not on the end of unprecedented action than other clubs will join the fans in accusing the Premier League of a Whitewash, other managers have already cast aspersions on the Guardiola years with Jose Mourinho pointedly insisting he won his three Premier League titles with
Chelsea 'fairly and cleanly' and the La Liga president, Javier Tebas accusing City of 'financial doping' and the then-Liverpool manager, Jurgen Klopp, said City were in 'Fantasia land where they could buy whoever they wanted'.
Of course we will never know what Man City would have won if they hadn't been cheating and playing by their own rules but the asterisk beside Guardiola's achievements will, and should, taint his stewardship of the Citizens.

What's On The Moon?

Humans first landed on the Moon 50 years ago and have already left 500,000 pounds of our stuff on the Lunar surface so what exactly have we left on the Moon?
Over 70 spacecraft vehicles remain on the Moon for the simple reason that they are heavy and not worth the cost to bring back and some of it is waste from the trip that the astronauts dumped when they got to their destination such as food packaging, wet wipes, 100 packets of human urine and excrement.
Astronauts also dumped tools and television equipment to make room for the 850 pounds of Moon rocks and lunar soil they bought back.
Then there’s also six American flags, a photograph of Charles Duke;'s family he left behind, two golf balls, a  plaque that reads: 'Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind'.
The Astronauts also left two medals that had been awarded to the late Soviet cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Komarov as well as astrogeologist Gene Shoemaker’s ashes so quite a decent haul of Earth stuff hanging around up there and once we get there properly, that will expand exponentially because us humans are messy buggers. 

I'm The New Long Jump Record Holder Apparently

During one of our lunchtimes chats, we had the discussion about if you was on a train and jumped up, would you actually land in the same place and after much backwards and forwards we decided in the view of passengers on the train, as you are travelling at the same speed of the train you are on, yes you would but to anyone outside of the train, no you would land a few metres further forward.
Someone actually came up with the maths which i tried to ignore as not to get a headache but the jist is that if the train is travelling at 100 mph (approximately 44 metres per second), and you are in the air for 1 second, you would land 44 metres further along the track than when you started.
Yep, bit of a headache to work out and i took his word for it because he is a bit of a brainiac but then we got BIG, planet sized actually because the Earth is careening through space at 67,000 mph or 29,900 metres per second so for that 1 second jump, when we land we have travelled 29,900 metres or 18.5 miles through Space.
That's three quarters of a Marathon in 1 second which is not only mind boggling but makes a mockery of the long jump World record which stands at a piffling 8.95 metres and i just beat while standing in kitchen and didn't end with me shaking sand out of my shoes.
 

Special Guest Blogger: Pam Hogg

If there’s one thing I’ve mastered in my 70-odd years as a Scottish fashion maverick, it’s leaving quite the impression. Whether it’s through my designs, my opinions on the eternal Scottish drizzle or my unshakable belief that kilts are not just for men (more on that later), I’ve certainly not done things half-cocked.
Growing up in Scotland, I learned early that fashion and functionality were two peas in a pod. While the pretty lasses in London were swanning around in flimsy cocktail dresses, we up here were stitching extra layers into our skirts to survive the April gales. But you know what? That bloody cold taught me something vital: comfort is key. Yes, even in fashion. Hence why my first design, a tweed skirt with a secret thermal lining, became an instant hit among office workers and the elderly.
I always fancied myself as a bit of a rock chick and in the 70s I played in several bands, one regularly supported The Pogues during their early days but i was creating a sideline of clothing some of pops greatest icons,  Paula Yates, Marie Helvin, Siouxsie Sioux and Debbie Harry.
The 1980s were a muckle turning point. I had tried to be the pop star without little success but in the early 80s I traded in my clothing market stall for a walk on the wild side of London’s fashion scene. I’ll never forget my first show, one critic called it a bagpipe exploded on a catwalk but my Scottish heritage was the backbone of my work.
My 'Patchwork of Perseverance' collection made the models look like they’d raided a skip and a grandmother’s attic, but good grief, it won awards.
It was then that i dipped my toes back into the World of Music when Debbie Harry asked me to support her 1993 tour so I cobbled together a new band, Doll, in five days, and in 1994 with the band firmly established, opened for the punk band The Raincoats.
I did come back to fashion in the 2000s, designing outfits for musicians including Rihanna, Björk and Kylie Minogue and when i lay dying of Cancer i knew that i had done my part to prove that fashion isn’t just about looking pretty, it’s about being bold, being weird, and being Scottish enough to know when to wrap up warm.