I’m off on holiday for a couple of weeks and then have a conference out in Monterey so my posting may be a bit sporadic (read non-existent) until I get back. I hope to visit the museum at Los Alamos on my travels (assuming I’m allowed to) so I might have some good pictures to share on my return.

In the meantime I leave you with a story that broke in the UK this morning about the cause of an accident on a UK nuclear submarine in 2002:


A nuclear submarine crashed after tracing paper was used to mark its course, it has emerged.

HMS Trafalgar ran aground during a training exercise off the coast of Skye in November 2002.

A Royal Navy board of inquiry criticised the decision to put tracing paper over charts so student officers could not draw on them.

It said the tracing paper obscured vital information that could have prevented the crash.

Classic.

It reminds me of when the Royal Navy was awarded the Ignoble Peace Prize a few years back ‘for ordering its sailors to stop using live cannon shells, and to instead just shout “Bang!“’.