Some breakfast cereal is made by taking corn porridge, spreading it out thin, and baking it. In the process, it tends to break up into little pieces as it dries. Often, a piece will dry on its surface with excess moisture inside, and when the moisture boils it forms a bubble, held in place by the dry exterior. Most such bubbles break in handling and packeaging, but sometimes a large, unbroken piece will fall into the cereal bowl intact, and the bubble allows it to float.
As a result, though cream does rise to the top, so do the biggest flakes.
I recently re-watched Local Hero (1982, Bill Forsythe). I was much struck---much struck---by the scene in which Mac visits the Happer labs in Scotland and one of the scientists is revealed to have developed a way to prevent the next ice age by shutting down the Gulf Stream.
That was sad. Hoyle also wrote a book on the ice ages in which he allowed his personal incredulity to prevent him from doing a little physics. Physics he could easily have done, of course.
Still a great scientist, and I liked the fiction, too.
Frontiers of Astronomy showed that he felt quite free to pontificate in other people's fields without doing much, if any, homework and that he was confident enough in his own abilities to dismiss obviously silly fads like continental drift. That was in the 1960s, I believe.
This is a surprise? After Hoyle on Archaeopteryx? I believe that the phenomenon is known as Going Emeritus when displayed by those with academic positions.
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Some breakfast cereal is made by taking corn porridge, spreading it out thin, and baking it. In the process, it tends to break up into little pieces as it dries. Often, a piece will dry on its surface with excess moisture inside, and when the moisture boils it forms a bubble, held in place by the dry exterior. Most such bubbles break in handling and packeaging, but sometimes a large, unbroken piece will fall into the cereal bowl intact, and the bubble allows it to float.
As a result, though cream does rise to the top, so do the biggest flakes.
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I recently re-watched Local Hero (1982, Bill Forsythe). I was much struck---much struck---by the scene in which Mac visits the Happer labs in Scotland and one of the scientists is revealed to have developed a way to prevent the next ice age by shutting down the Gulf Stream.
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(Anonymous) 2013-04-01 03:20 am (UTC)(link)Still a great scientist, and I liked the fiction, too.
William Hyde
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191', ra-SE HT RA DO LI
Coded message to the Illuminati?
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(Anonymous) 2013-04-01 06:42 pm (UTC)(link)I believe that the phenomenon is known as Going Emeritus when displayed by those with academic positions.