Are they planning on landing crewed rockets like this, or is it ‘just’ the boosters? Previous results and the margin for error/time from detecting a problem to a massive explosion don’t seem compatible with having people balanced on the top. But maybe it’s no worse than the launch once they’ve tested enough? I suppose you have to do something like that for mars/moon missions or no one’s getting back to orbit, but they at least have lower gravity.

‘Routinely’ probably isn’t the right word, you still need someone to have taken contaminated medication shortly before the test. There’s a bit on the numbers on her website linked above, key points being:

From 2015 onwards, as the testing equipment became more advanced, the percentage of samples that returned a positive test for a diuretic steadily increased.

In the years 2014 and 2015, 0.14% of samples were positive for a diuretic. By 2019 that figure had increased to 0.24%.

In June 2021, WADA introduced their minimum reporting limit of 20ng/ml for 6 diuretics. That meant that any test at that level or below would not be reported at all. This limit was backdated for the 2020 and 2021 testing figures.

In 2020, with the figures adjusted for the new minimum reporting limit for the 6 diuretics, the percentage of samples positive for a diuretic suddenly dropped back down to 0.14%, the lowest seen since 2015. In 2021, that figure was 0.13%, the lowest since 2012.

The sudden drop in percentage of positive tests from 2019 to 2020 represented a 42% reduction in the number of athletes returning a positive test. Comparing the 2021 figures with the 2019 figures, we see a 46% reduction in positive tests.

But what does this actually mean? It means that at least 40% of the tests carried out could have been positive at a level indicative of contamination. I say “at least” because you must remember two things: the minimum reporting limit was only introduced for 6 substances (out of at least 37); contamination can cause concentrations well above 20ng/ml depending on the substance and its half-life.

Based on the 2019 and 2021 figures, it is possible that 316 athletes returned positive tests due to contamination in 2019 alone. This estimation is only for the 6 specific diuretics. The real figure is likely to be much higher.

Lizzie Banks’ case has made it a bit more complicated to know what to think when athletes blame contamination – obviously there is the “well they would say that” angle, but she makes her case pretty well, in lots of detail, and the process and reasoning from UKAD/WADA is pretty poor at best.  Main points being that with tests getting more sensitive, there’s loads of medication like paracetamol that has some degree of contamination, well within what’s allowed by pharmaceutical manufacturing standards, and which a few years ago would never be detectable. But now it is, at least at the labs with more modern kit, and while testing labs need to be able to meet a minimum detection level, there’s no minimum reporting threshold for some very common contaminants, even though the testing agencies know this is an issue

Podcast is worth a listen: https://audioboom.com/posts/8509557-an-interview-with-lizzy-banks

Or there’s the written version on her website: https://lizzybanks.co.uk/

But in the spirit of the thread – the first finisher in the 1904 Olympic marathon did 11 miles of it by car. Then claimed once caught that they only crossed the line as a joke and didn’t intend to claim the win. Slightly mad race for everyone else too, between the dehydration, hallucinations, brandy and strychnine.

Quote from James Vowles in the bbc practice report isn’t encouraging for Sargeant’s F1 future. If only there had been some warning signs last season…

Team principal James Vowles described the crash as “frustrating”, saying Sargeant ran wide because “he didn’t quite realise where he was with where the grass was on the outside and put a wheel on the grass.

“What you saw here wasn’t a driver making a mistake because they were pushing to the limit. It’s a very different type of mistake, a frustrating one by all accounts, because it wasn’t on the limit of what the car could do.

“There was far more turning potential in there. He just didn’t know where the car was on track relative to where he expected it to be anyway.”

costs more if you pay on the app than at the machine

And they have the nerve to call that a ‘convenience charge’. It is more convenient, but for the people collecting, not for me, so why am I the one paying for it?

Is there actually a plausible mechanism these days to get the kind of short term/overnight gain they used to get from blood doping? I’ve always assumed the biological passport would put a stop to anything like that.

Doesn’t mean they’re all clean, given the history of the sport you’d be brave to rule out anyone being (carefully, micro)dosed to the gills, but if that’s the case then it’s been the case for the whole tour. So the relative performances today can’t really be explained by doping and you’re back to the usual sporting stuff. Maybe it’s a question of how much you think it’s built on a foundation of pharmaceutical assistance.

There’s parallels here too with public health/’nanny state’ stuff on things like smoking, junk food, gambling etc. Adults should be allowed to make decisions that other people don’t think are a good idea, but it’s not a fully informed decision if you’ve got a massive company with a huge marketing budget pushing you one way and no one arguing the opposite.

Tim Harford (of BBC more or less) did a podcast on this sort of thing recently – evacuations from theatres and stations, including a Vaudeville illusionist and the Kings Cross fire. General point was that the concerns about panic are valid but can be overstated compared to the risk of no one moving until it’s too late. https://pca.st/episode/dadff9db-574f-4303-936e-50e744b1cf29

The episode and actually the whole series (cautionary tails) are really good. Recurring theme is “actually, it’s a bit more complicated than that”, but the point is usually made via a couple of really interesting stories.

If you’ve already got a desk with a computer on it, a PC but sharing the existing screen/keyboard/mouse via a kvm switch might be best? Doesn’t sound like you need high spec so can get pretty small PCs

Kvm switches

Micro PCs

Now she has Manchester Marathon, then 3 weeks later, London

You might want to check the dates, aren’t they on subsequent weekends – 16th/23rd April? Recovery is overrated, right?

I didn’t get in, partly relieved it saves on logistics. But I did tell myself I’d enter Manchester if I didn’t get in, so no excuse to put that off now.

Presume you mean the £15 inflatable ones? I think all decathlon bodyboards are radbugs. We bought a couple, for 5 and 9 year old kids, for a holiday by plane where foam wasn’t a (sensible) option. They don’t have a rigid plastic bit, came in a pouch about 20x20cm.

They’ve loved them, albeit more as oversize pool float/mini lilo than ‘serious’ bodyboard. But that’s what they’d do with anything, just means I can’t comment on how good it is for that. More robust than your average pool inflatable but not at the level of proper inflatable SUPs/kayaks if that’s what you had in mind.

I wouldn’t worry about the odd scuff or bit of rough treatment but repeatedly sliding down dunes is probably pushing your luck. But I’d expect the same thing to snap foam ones in half so not sure that helps with which to get.

(and I think they should probably stop now)

From a sporting point of view yes, but I suspect the commercial people are quite happy with all the public whining.

There was something Massi said on the radio, while mercedes were saying they hadn’t been told that Verstappen had been ordered to give the place up, that sounded like he had gone to speak to one or both teams in person. I did wonder if he’d want to do something like that to be able to tell them to just knock it off, in a manner that he might not have wanted broadcasting…

Seems a shame Bottas wasn’t within 5s of Verstappen, that way they could give Verstappen a 5s penalty to effectively take off 3 points. Then assuming they’re both in the top few places next race you’d still have the championship going to whichever beats the other without having to worry about who needs to be x places back, but without Verstappen having the mentality that he still wins if they take each other out. Not sure if there’s another way to do that.

Of course it shouldn’t work like that, they should just enforce the rules and penalties should be based on actions not consequences, but I think that principle went out of the window a while ago.

Isn’t he planning on doing MTB at the Olympics, so has switched focus to that after the classics? Not sure about plans after that.

Presumably as a top rider for ineos he’ll be on a pretty good salary, how many top MTB racers are on >1M/year? Making allowances for the Olympics is one thing, letting your top guys break themselves mountain biking shortly before the Tour de France is another.

Surely if the problem with clearing it off is that rear brakes aren’t as heavily loaded, the only responsible thing to do is heavy braking while driving flat out backwards?

Anyone else still following this? Pip Hare’s videos have been good, and sounds like she’s been doing better than expected with an older non-foiling boat. And if that wasn’t enough, in the last week or so she’s lost a wind sensor so her autopilot was crippled, and had to change a rudder, and is still going and sounding cheerful.

There’s a video of her practicing changing the rudder in the harbour before setting off, and a few bits from changing it just now. I’m still struggling to get my head around how you could do that at sea, never mind in the southern ocean in a narrow gap between gales.

There’s also a recurring them off “I’m knackered and there’s a massive storm coming and I’m thousands of miles from land but I’m having a cuppa so it’ll be fine” which has at least two elements I can relate to.

Huh, hadn’t seen that before. Still quite impressive for their first bike to be good enough to win a world cup on the first go, but then they do make mx bikes, and their riders weren’t bad.

Back on topic then, has anyone checked 2020 Honda engines don’t say Mercedes on them if you take the lid off?

Didn’t Honda run a DH MTB team for a few years, including developing some pretty good gear box bikes? Then they left the sport and destroyed the bikes and never shared the designs. If that’s their approach for a niche sport they have no interest in, it seems a stretch that they’d share technology that is pretty fundamental to their main business. Suppose it all depends on the price though.

the sake of a quick temp check it seems odd not to do it

It’s false reassurance. A one off check with a proper medical thermometer isn’t a reliable way of detecting covid, and the contactless ones can have an uncertainty that makes them near pointless. You might detect someone with a fever, but you also get lots of people thinking “I’ve been checked, I’m fine” and being a little bit less careful about the stuff that matters.

Similar to the argument about false reassurance from masks, but here the benefit is much smaller.

@kelvin I read that a while ago (it is fairly old in this context). I think they sound a little too confident in their conclusions, but the main body is fairly clear about the limited sources of information that it’s drawing on, which tells you what you need to know about the level of uncertainty.

The viral load paper is different in that it has fairly good data, albeit with relatively low numbers from children, but then makes a claim that the data doesn’t appear to support by trying to be too clever in their analysis.

It’s all a slightly moot point now anyway – more widespread school re-opening and contact tracing (if it’s any good…) should provide lots more information about the risk of spreading. I hope there is more detailed information than the graphics in kimbers post though, otherwise we still won’t know if the transmission is between students or staff/parents.

To Kelvin – there are some issues with that viral load in children paper, it may actually show the opposite to what they claim:
David Spiegelhalter blog

But with a long enough straw, pre-filled (following the syphoning idea), wouldn’t the water high enough up be above orbital escape velocity? In the absence of some other force holding it in, that would start flinging water out of the top of the straw.

We’d presumably fill it with a jug from the top of the space elevator.

For the specific parts, a few years back lego got a new big cheese because they were losing money, and one of the first things they did was get the designers to really cut back on the kit-specific parts, after their use had increased lots (6000->12000 parts, then back again). The reason being that it made manufacturing lots more expensive (lots more moulds to design and make) but with little in return. Changes like that probably take time to filter through, so there’s probably lots of fairly recent Lego with loads of specific (cheating) parts, but not as many in the newer designs.

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-lego-made-a-huge-turnaround-2014-2?IR=T

(Edit: misread the date. 2004, not 2014. Slightly longer than ‘a few’ years ago then.)

crash after the finish

Vettel doesn’t exactly look blameless to me. Hard to believe, I know.

Darren Heath blog, I think.

Fair to say he’s not a fan:

Ferrari really are a horrible team right now. Dismissive of interest, completely devoid of any grace, charm or humility, they exude an aggressive arrogance that is bitter in its mien and wholly unpleasant to experience.

I’ve spent a few minutes on the gov.uk website and there appears to be nothing in there in relation to dealing with spouses during consumer complaints.

No, but there wouldn’t be. They can’t share personal data, or use it themselves, without consent of the subject. There aren’t really any exceptions, for good reasons. Also bear in mind that even not obviously personal data can be useful if it links up other data or allows re-identification of anonymized data from a different source.

The suggestion I used (from someone on here) is to bookmark this link: http://singletrackworld.com/wp-login.php?redirect_to=http%3A%2F%2Fsingletrackworld.com%2Fforum
Instead of the forum URL itself. Either gives you the login box on its own, or the (logged in) forum if already logged in.

Our trust has recently been buying places in care homes so we can get discharge ready patients out, keeping everything else moving.

Can’t fault the logic, but it’s a pretty stark example of social care cuts costing the NHS more – it’s not a subtle but real increase in admissions due to poor home care, it’s not increased costs from generally poor public health, it’s just cold hard cash from an already stretched hospital budget paying for social services.

taken out of political control and into our own hands where we can choose. Private model is the only way to do that

But that’s not what’s happening or likely to happen – the current model is NHS England (basically department of health) or local groups commission a service from one provider for each area. More of those services being from private companies instead of public NHS makes no difference to choice.

But even with a more radical change, genuine choice depends on people being able to make an informed choice between several viable options. That’s almost impossible in healthcare, beyond the very basic “I went private to see someone faster about my knee” type scenario. For surgery, or oncology, or diabetes management, or radiology, or for countless other specialist areas it’s impossible for most people, including those working on other areas of healthcare, to know what’s really important. We end up with people thinking that private is better because they had nice chairs in the waiting room and a better cafe, never realising that the same problems (or worse) with staffing and equipment meant they’d received pretty average care.

There’s also the risk if you duplicate services that certain conditions or procedures become too infrequent for staff to maintain competency/familiarity, with fairly well known clinical risks – even with the current model, there are some specialist departments that cover a huge area because that gives better care, at the expense of local treatment.

So the Tories are a) Deliberately sabotaging it and also b) running it as well as everyone else’s.

The Tories aren’t running it in the day-to-day sense, and even the last reorganisation left a lot of the basic model relatively unchanged. It’s quite possible for the fundamental system to be relatively efficient while the very top level (ie political) management is actively undermining the whole thing to try and make a private system seem more appealing.

For the bit of healthcare I work in, a good chunk of the service is provided by a private company. I have no ideological preference either way,but let’s just say I’m far from convinced by the logic that private is more efficient – as a possible patient and as a tax payer I’d prefer that service to be provided by the NHS (as it is in some places).

It may well be just that one company, but at the very least it undermines the ‘public bad, private good’ message that is so prevalent through this whole debate. If anyone has a better idea for how to organise things then I’m all ears, but I think the standard of reasoning and evidence for why it will be better and what current problem is being solved needs to be a bit higher than “well it’s obvious, isn’t it?”.

Going fine until the awkward slippy turning into work (a hospital, as it happens) – slowed down knowing it’s a git, went around the corner fine, stood up to accelerate up the hill, somehow caught my bars on my shorts and found myself doing some off-bike acrobatics.

Technically I think I rolled out of it, but the bit when my head was on the ground with my feet in the air suggests I was rolling in the wrong axis.

First ride of any sort of the year too. Hoping my rides:crashes ratio improves.

Used a connecta sling here, can be used front and back, holds them against you. Think we used it until she was nearly 2 but she’s a small toddler. Comfy to wear for a long time, hip friendly for the sling-ee apparently.

Much, much better than trying to take a pushchair on a busy rush hour bus on anything like a regular basis.

But my god they attract hippies. And you’ve called it baby wearing, so there’s basically no hope for you.

We could build car parks with paths? Takes up space but makes it so much better.

There’s some similarity with cycling – a sudden increase in patient, competent driving would be great but it isn’t going to happen, so we need segregated space that reduces the risk from the known and hard to remove hazard. Family spaces sort of do that by avoiding a walk through cars.

As Horatio says, there can be a safety aspect – I’m quite happy to park far from the shop and walk, but in most car parks paths are non-existent so you’re shepherding a toddler or two along what’s basically a road, only with even more distracted and impatient people pulling in and out of spaces, while trying to carry stuff or push a trolley yourself.

I go with the approach of riding a bit further out well in advance when you see oncoming traffic, such that you obviously can’t both carry on as you are.

Then, most drivers will slow down and move over as much as possible, and you can gradually move back over, probably further in than originally positioned, and pass with a cheerful wave.

Otherwise, you have a clear sign that the driver is one of the sociopathic variety, so you still move over in the same way but are better prepared for the option of diving into the hedge/ditch if necessary.

damaged the result

Where they did really well and better than everyone had been expecting? Makes the point about losing the corrosive atmosphere more persuasive.

Is it a bit cynical to think that now this complaint has been upheld the wider investigation into the culture will say “turns out everything’s fine, it was just that one guy”.

” big ” slides in playgrounds

Come to Sheffield, we have loads. I think it helps that there’s always a convenient hill, so the top of a massive slide is still basically on the ground, so no big drops.

It means my three year old is constantly disappointed by slides in playgrounds elsewhere.

For the effect on background radiation, this sums it up nicely: I.e. a tiny percentage of a small percentage of a small amount. It’s the bananas you need to watch out for…

The less radioactive steel and lead thing always amuses me. The detectors used in primary standardisation of radioactive materials at NPL (they who define what units actually are, measuring single counts per second when we cheerfully inject 600 million times that much into people for bone scans) are shielded with lead bricks made out of the old roof of Hampton Court Palace, and in Sheffield we’ve got a whole body counter made from steel from a previous HMS Sheffield (not sure if coincidence or not – expensive before you have to name then decommission your own battle ship). Sadly it turns out being made from ultra-low background materials is little help when someone breaks a Cs-137 source inside the damn thing, so we don’t use that anymore.

We have a picky toddler who loves a good curry, makes me very proud. Well, fairly plain korma, but it’s a start.

Second the bolognese, possibly blended a bit to hide the veg if that’s a problem.

It doesn’t seem like a solution, and I’m not sure it’s a problem – is not a change to the criteria that determine success, is just an artificial and expensive barrier, it just seems vindictive. Maybe I’m biased, my first employer after leaving academia was a start-up that wouldn’t have existed without two ex foreign students bring able to stay living here. Bloody immigrants, coming over here, creating our jobs…

Anyway, back to Erasmus – I think it’s another entry in the list of thing that I wouldn’t worry about at all post-brexit if I had the slightest bit of faith in our government (or the opposition), but I don’t. I trusted the unelected, unaccountable officials in Brussels to do the right thing much more than our own politicians.