Donald Noble's Website

BP may now be using the slogan[1] “Beyond Petroleum”, but that does not mean they are reducing the amount of oil they are extracting, just how they are carefully using ‘spin’ to make people believe that. Another very insightful article by George Monbiot: Still Drilling, which is well worth reading whether you’re an [...]

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Concrete Canvas is a fascinating concept in engineering, a self contained, self deploying temporary structure that can last for up to 10 years.

As far as I can see from the website, it is basically a fabric tent coated in concrete powder, with a plastic lining. To deploy, water is introduced to the bag, which starts [...]

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According to the BBC, a ramp has been designed that “_creates_” power as cars drive over it. BBC News story

On first reading it seems that the inventor has conveniently circumvented the laws of thermodynamics, and is creating power from nothing.

I assumed the ramp is to be used as a speed hump, to slow down traffic, [...]

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According to The Scotsman newspaper, the Lib Dems now back a bullet train link for Scotland’s main cities.

Stephen’s conversion appears to have been triggered by a visit to Shanghai in China earlier this month, where he travelled on the revolutionary 300mph Maglev train. The trains have no wheels and float above an electromagnetic field.

A Lib [...]

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A rather amazing sculpture, the subject of which is somewhat difficult to grasp, has been designed by Professor Ocneanu. It is a 3-diminsional representation, or shadow, of a 4-dimensional shape. More details at Science News Daily.

Another such four dimensional shape, which is perhaps easier to work out, is the tesseract. This is [...]

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