Dork Scratchings

 I've just found this design I must have drawn when I was 16 I had a girlfriend at the time called Catherine with very long hair.  In fact it was so long she could sit on it.  Anyway, I was amazed at how much time she spent combing - about half an hour every day.  She'd start at the bottom and work her way up, combing all the way to the ends with each stroke. I thought that there had to be a better way, so I came up with this machine.  The two belts rotate in opposite directions and the angle between them gradually decreases so that it starts off just untangling the ends and ends up combing the whole length of the hair. Fortunately it never got built.

... One day. But I don't want to lose this important historical information - my offspring's height vs time! So I've converted it into a nice graph Using some code #!/usr/bin/env python3 from datetime import datetime from matplotlib import pyplot as plt table = [ (132.4, '10/7/11' ), (134.8, '14/9/11' ), (136.9, '2/3/12' ), (138.4, '7/9/12' ), (141.5, '25/5/13' ), (142.6, '23/6/13' ), (145.8, '15/3/14' ), (148.7, '15/11/14' ), (150.0, '20/1/15' ), (153.1, '8/6/15' ), (157.7, '12/11/15' ), (159.0, '21/12/15' ), (160.1, '7/2/16' ), (164.1, '12/6/16' ), (167.6, '27/12/16' ), (169.9, '4/3/17' ), (171.7, '14/11/17' ), (172.1, '6/6/18' ), (172.9, '24/8/19' ), (173.6, '2/4/20' ), ] def labelToX(label: str): d,m,y = label.sp...

Are we approaching the cladding crisis rationally? Cladding is in the news at the moment.  In response to the tragedy at Grenfell the UK government has introduced regulations requiring buildings with "unsafe" cladding to be patrolled.  This is obviously expensive and in most circumstances the cost is borne by the leaseholder.  The average paid per leaseholder is £137 per month (with a median of double that).  If we assume an average of two occupants per flat that comes to £822 per occupant per year. Obviously these actions may save lives.  But there are many other risks that we face day in and day out and it is worth considering whether we price these risks the same.  After all, that money has consequences - it has bankrupted people, particularly those who face the tail end of the cost distribution.  So let's try to work out how much car tax would be if we treated the risk of dying in a traffic accident in the same way, and loaded the cost per life ont...