Clement Attlee.

Clement Attlee is widely considered to the greatest ever prime minister in British history, a view which I share, him being a socialist after my own heart. Attlee came to power in 1945, after the surprise defeat of wartime prime minister Winston Churchill. The coalition government during the war had again brought to the forefront of politics Attlee's labour party, previously having resided in a sort of political limbo.

The greatest challenge Attlee's post-war government now faced was poverty. Evacuation during world war two had brought to the attention of many people the shocking conditions in which many of the British poor lived. Attlee introduced a policy of reform during his six-year term of office, nationalizing many industries such as gas and steel and introducing numerous measures to help the impoverished, including setting up the NHS with his health minister Aneurin Bevan. He also supported Indian independence, followed a diplomatic cold war policy and still managed to control the volatile personalities within his cabinet such as Herbert Morrison, Ernest Bevin and Aneurin Bevan.

Also, he had a pipe.

Buckminsterfullerene Buckminsterfullerene Buckminsterfullerene

Buckminterfullerenes are carbon mollecules, thats all, really.

Well... there a little more complicated than that, the mollecular formula of a Buckminterfullerene is C60 so there are sixty carbon atoms in each sphere each is joined to three other carbon atoms with one double bond per each carbon atom.

This is a picture of the skeletal formula of a Buckminsterfullerene which is difficult to depict as its three dimensional.

If you were to count all the shapes you would find 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons.

Fact Time:

Each carbon atom has a free electron so it is free to move and carry and conduct electricity.

 

Each molecule has a diameter of 0.71 nano meters, but despite it's large size it has wave-particle duality (has both wave and particle like qualities) 

Although Buckminsterfullerenes sound like something that can only be found in labs; C60 molecules can be found in small quantities in soot.

 

FLASH....1..2..BANG! We're all going to die!

Sooo, how does the lightning get there?

The Lightning:

Dark thunderclouds form when warm, wet air surges upwards into the sky and cools dramatically.

Inside these clouds, some of the water freezes and strong air currents make this ice and water droplets bump together. This knocks electrons off the atoms in the ice and creates a builds up of static electricity. Positive charge builds up at the top of the cloud and negative charge at the bottom and attempts to escape to the ground, when the charge is released, its a bolt of lightning. When the lightning doesn't come down to earth, it creates sheet lightning.

The Thunder:

The lightning can heat the air around it up to 30 000°C - this is five times hotter then the surface of the sun!

This huge amount of heat causes the air to expand faster than the speed of sound. This creates the crash of thunder.

If the thunderstorm is not overhead, you can count the seconds between the time you see the lightning and the time you hear the thunder and divide this by 5 to find out how many miles away it is.

AND REMEMBER KIDS: Lightning always tries to find the fastest route to the ground, so don't stand under trees, sit in cars. If the car is struck, the steel frame conducts the electricity over the surface of the car to the ground.

Have you ever wondered why golf balls have dimples?

If yes, I must ask what is wrong with you. (YOU VERY SAD PERSON)

Anyhow, now I've asked the question, I feel obliged to give an answer.

What it boils down to is the two different types of airflow; laminar and turbulent. Laminar flow is characterised  by a system of orderly layers, with no eddies or irregular fluctuations. In simpler terms, the flow lines do not cross.
Turbulent flow then is where there is not a system of orderly layers; that the flow lines cross.

Laminar flow past a ball is bad; it forces a larger separation in the air flows, causing greater drag, so that the ball will not travel very well. However, the balls dimples cause the flow lines to cross, and creates a turbulent stream behind the ball, lessening drag.

Really, all I needed to say was that golf balls with dimples travel further... But that would have been no fun.

A Rant.

Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende became the first democratically elected Marxist leader when he became president of Chile in 1970, after his fourth attempt. Allende had been a medical student and subsequently went on to become minister of health. Once elected to president, Allende found Chile in a dire economic situation. He immediately started methods of nationalization and started redistributing wealth, while at the same time forging relationships with China and nearby Cuba.

However, America didn’t like having a communist nation so close to them, especially with its ties to Cuba, and what America doesn’t like tends to disappear. President Nixon ordered his advisor for national security, Henry Kissinger, to organise a coup to overthrow Allende. The CIA sent a taskforce into Chile, violently murdering the first person they tried to coerce into overthrowing Allende, chief of staff general Rene Schneider, when he refused before having success. They managed to stage a military coup, installing a junta under right-wing General Pinochet. On the morning of this Allende broadcasted a famous speech, saying he would not resign, finishing with “¡Viva Chile! ¡Viva el pueblo! ¡Vivan los trabajadores!“(“Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!”) Later that day Allende was found dead, and although it was declared suicide, there have been questions raised over this. In the following months Pinochet’s regime went on to murder thousands of its political opponents and install fascist-style restrictions in Chile, imposing strict controls on the media, suspending the constitution, banning all political activity and even closing down the Chilean parliament. He also tortured and exiled many, and destroyed Chile’s industry and agriculture.

Of course, America were no help for the people of Chile, even murdering many of the ‘dissidents’ who fled the regime, assassinating Allende’s peaceful supporters such as Orlando Letelier before attempting to cover it up. Britain’s right-wing prime minister of the time, Margaret Thatcher also provided Pinochet with weapons to enforce his tyranny and blocked the UN from investigating the breaches of human rights in Chile.

Pinochet was eventually voted out of power in 1989, although staying as commander-in-chief until 1998. In the same year he was arrested for his crimes during a visit to Britain. Before he was able to be extradited to Spain he was released home on compassionate grounds, where he was found unable to stand trial due to dementia, in 2001. In 2005 it was discovered that Pinochet had illegally laundered $28000000 during his rule. Pinochet died in 2006.

Thanks for him, America.

Dead or Alive.

I like viruses, I know I shouldn't as they are a classification that consists entirely of pathogens but I still like them.
There are 3 main parts to viruses, the genetic bit (made of DNA or RNA), a protein coat to hold it all together and some, more advanced viruses have a lipid envelope.
 Some viruses have quite simple shapes like helix's while some start to look more like living things.

My Favorite virus is this badboy:

His name is Enterobacteria phage T4 and he infects E.coli 

What else...

Oh yeah viruses have the most genetic diversity out of everything; plants, animals, archea etc but that's mainly because their DNA varies in shape so much as it's a large part of their overall structure.

Um...

I'm tired so i'm going to leave it there, i'll just do a really good blog next week.

Yay for a monopoly of organised violence!

According to a history professor I saw give a talk, that is what the state does. What's more, I agree.

He also said that the state is that which has law.  To enforce law, one must be the only person, or organisation (such as a government) to be able to have total control over the population.

A monopoly of organised violence follows this- normally administrated by the police force, or in extreme cases an army. If you are to disobey their law, they'll arrest you. If you protest violently against arrest, say with a firearm, it's within their rights to shoot you. Government controlled violence. It may sound horrific, but it's one of the only reasons that prevents us from descending in to anarchy and mob rule. In essence a revolution. History shows us that these are normally bloody.

An example of this is Egypt. If we follow this logic, it is no longer a state. It's army is not fully following the commands given by its government, and can no longer exert its monopoly. It can not disperse the hundreds of thousands of protesters marauding on the streets, so a overthrow of government is becoming more and more likely.

What will happen? Don't ask me - I'm only 17. It's not up to me...