Friday 16th November 2007

I got onto the train this morning for a ten-minute journey from Oxford to Didcot Parkway. I chose a seat by the window to look out onto the cold, bright world. Unfortunately, this vision of blissful winter commuting was shattered before I’d even left the station. A hugely fat woman plonked herself on the seat next to me (and about half of the seat I was occupying), dragging with her a surprisingly slim but numerous collection of American college kids. I’d say they were about 18 or something, but that’s largely to set the scene rather than a necessarily accurate judgement upon their ages.

They were heading to the Jane Austen Centre in Bath—presumably it’s impossible to appreciate the vomit-inducing romance in her infuriatingly girly prose without flying at massive environmental cost to the quaint little place it originated and taking home a few hundred Jane Austen pencils. Having discussed how excited they were to be going to find out more about Jane Austen (it didn’t take long), they started chatting amongst themselves, ostensibly with the aim of offending everyone within earshot, ie me.

‘Oxford men are, like so scrawny,’ explained one of the Yank girls, ‘I mean, Oxford rowers are just so much less hunky than, like, Stamford rowers.’

One of the boys had a theory: ‘It’s because, like, British people sign up to do “sport” but really just do drinking.’

I was surprised at how incensed this slur from the Americans was making me. I’m not that proud of how much of a hunk I am; I think part of it was my offence at the special Yankee gall to proclaim it at high volume in the local language (albeit an incorrect dialect thereof). I quite wanted to unsubtly cough ‘Matthew Pinsent’ and then beat them over the head with his four Olympic gold medals. Unfortunately, I didn’t have Pinsent’s four golds to hand, so instead I sat there in polite British silence.

The fat teacher wondered if perhaps we were too busy with academic commitments to indulge in enough rowing to become as hunky as those Apollos Stateside. The group doubted that this was possible.

Then, we approached Didcot power station (I did say it was quite a short train journey). ‘God, that’s, like, horrible!’ exclaimed one of the girls. ‘It’s like Springfield [off the Simpsons, come on, keep up],’ observed one of the boys. The Americans continued to gawp at this building as we pulled into the station shortly afterwards. It was clear that, like a building more than 150 years old, a ‘nuclear’ power station (like off the Simpsons!!!) is not something they see very regularly. Presumably the US is big and empty enough that there’s never a need to locate a power station in the vicinity of settlement.

This worried me on two counts:

  1. How stupid are the general public? I had a chat with a friend I met at the station and he said that most people he’s overheard on that train thought Didcot was a nuclear power station, on account of the cooling towers. How can these idiots be meant to make educated judgements on the future of our planet’s energy production if they don’t even know the basics about power generation? I mean, do people think we’d whack a nuclear plant right next to a train line and small town?

    I know nothing about power stations, I confess, but I know enough to know that I know nothing—all I was sure of was that it was a thermal power station, ie gas, coal, oil or, maaaybe, nuclear. Having looked it up on the Internet, I see that it burns coal and gas. So the people of Didcot and the passing American tourists on the rail system are safe from radioactive fallout in the case of a meltdown after all. Phew.

  2. The American girl said the power station was ‘horrible’. The Americans emit more carbon dioxide per capita than any other country in the World. She presumably doesn’t make the connection between these towering, steaming monstrosities and the magical fluid which shoots down the magical wires into her house, and powers her magical 42″ plasma TV. (I actually think that the titanic eggcups with their rolling plumes of steam are quite majestic—and I’m definitely going if anyone demolishes any cooling towers anywhere near me.) Does the lack of power stations near people’s homes over in the US mean that they have no idea where their electricity is from? How can we tell someone that they need to curb their electricity usage to fight climate change if they’ve not even properly grasped the link between electricity and power stations, let alone the rest of the complicated chain?

It seems to me that we could throw up a nationwide grid of the latest nuclear reactors, and we’d just have to teach kids in school that they were powered by chip fat and it wouldn’t be long before the entire population ‘knew’ how great chip fat power was, and how our continued eating of our national dish will power the UK into the 21st century. (Though we will have to scrimp on the fish if we don’t want to decimate cod stocks—potato scallops and pineapple fritters all round.)

Arrgh.

I also found out today about a recent paper by some Chinese chemists and its acronym content. I did an MPhys project into carbon nanotubes, and when reading papers for that I would see the commonly-used acronym, CNT, and wince slightly at how nearly it was a naughty word. But the oriental nanotechnologists have come up with a worse variant by using copper, chemical symbol Cu. Now, what can we call those for short?

Fishing through the paper for amusing quotes, the best is probably

It can be seen that the CuNTs (marked by dashed circle III) are quite uniform with smooth surface.

Ha ha ha. They did a double entendre (that, or they’ve got the best research job in the World but choose to describe it in rather vulgar terms).

And, just when you think things can’t get a lot worse, they grab some bismuth (Bi) and create BiNTs. Idiots!! They had a good ninety chemical elements to choose from. What are the chances of stumbling across the only other rude nanotube acronym* in the same paper?

If it weren’t April 1st today, I’d be despairing for the future of humanity.

It’s not. Shit.

* Other possibilities, linguistically if not chemically, include AuNT, BeNT, CaNT, CeNT, LiNT, PaNT, PuNT, RaNT, ReNT, RuNT, SeNT, TeNT and TiNT. Of those, PaNTs is slightly rude in the plural, and that’s it.

 

Comments

  1. Patel says (13:34 24/11/2007)

    So people think Didcot is a nuclear power plant because its got cooling towers like the one on the Simpsons ?

    Ah, the power of television - all you have to do now is persuade Matt Groening that his holiday is killing African children, and the world is yours...

  2. Cybin says (16:25 07/07/2009)

    Hi, sorry for the random very-late comment, but I feel I must defend these poor souls.

    I'm at a complete loss as to why you'd think that a nuclear power station wouldn't be located by or near a township. Within the UK of course this is false to believe - the Sellafield nuclear facility is within a km or so of Seascale, a costal township for example. (Funnily enough people who work at nuclear power plants also don't want to spend 3 hours commuting.)

    Instead it seems fine to you that one that creates heavy pollution (compared to most other power facilities including nuclear) is more suitable and reasonable to expect beside a township?

    I'm assuming that in your article you meant to imply that the American's decided it was a nuclear power facility and couldn't be any other type of power generator. However, if you meant that the first suggestion or best guess they made is that it is nuclear - is that really something to judge them on? And doesn't it sound like the average British subject also makes this assumption?

    Lastly, you come across as pointlessly offensive by referring to someone constantly as defined only by their weight. Sure, you can call the general public stupid, but your article is alienating and rude in general (don't forget that the stupid masses are a large amount of people) - perhaps that is your intention - if so, just ignore. Ultimately if you want to come across this way - it is your right (you judge them, I judge you, c'est la vie).

  3. Statto says (13:36 08/07/2009)

    Oh, come on, Cybin, they’re clearly idiots. There are tall chimneys next to the cooling towers spewing some kind of dark stuff. What do they think these are for, atmospheric distribution of uranium dust? It was not a first suggestion or best guess, nobody even thought to debate the initial hypothesis.

    At no point did I claim that the Americans were doing any worse than British people would. (Though if you enjoy being riled by anti-American sentiment, I’ve got some better examples here and here.)

    I’m sorry to have pointlessly offended you by using adjectives to describe people. Next time I write, I will only use neutral nouns which will make my prose tedious and difficult to follow, not unlike yours.

    Let’s be honest, though, the main reason you’re so uptight is because you found this page by Googling ‘didcott parkway nuclear’, which implies that you succumbed to the exact misconception this ’blog post is taking the piss out of, and spelt ‘Didcot’ wrong to boot.

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