Going round and round once again

The new Formula 1 season is under way. Brawn GP (formerly Honda racing, (formerly British-American racing, (formerly Tyrrell))) (Man, I do love brackets!) scored a dramatic one-two finish in the season opener in Melbourne on Sunday. And this by a team that almost didn’t make it to the grid, because Honda decided to pull the plug on their F1 program in December last year. Bet there are a lot of people in Tokyo kicking themselves right now, because that Brawn race car was developed with Honda money. And now Honda has nothing to show for it. Poor saps.

Summer is upon us. It’s always funny to watch people agreeing with Al Gore about global warming every April, and then promptly denying it in November. (No really, Madras has had fairly cool “winters” the last few years.) I’ve seen it happen enough times over the last few years. It almost seems cool in a way to blame bad weather on global warming and climate change, without actually knowing anything about either, and then simply crank up the air con. FYI chlorofluorocarbon refrigerant gases are still legal in India, even though there are non-CFC alternatives that will work with existing machinery, forget buying new compressors. So if you’re in the market for a new air con this summer, try to stay clear of those that use R-22.

I’ve been writing a science blog as well over the last few months. Not very regularly, though. If anything, it’s even more irregular than ymitif. Check it out if that part of you which wasn’t quite a nerd, but still liked poking, prodding and looking at things isn’t quite dead yet.