The Breakfast Club (Poohstick)

It’s not what you think.  This is the game Christopher Robin played with Winnie the Pooh in many of their A.A. Milne adventures.

The basic concept is simple- find some sticks, drop them in a stream or river on one side of a bridge, see which one emerges on the other side first.

Since this a childlike and contemplative game it’s best not to choose a rushing torrent as your course and turbulence can make it difficult to determine stick identity when it emerges.  Your best bet is a slowly meandering waterway on a hot summer day with a broad bridge to enhance the suspense and encourage deep philosophical conversation while awaiting the outcome.  

If your nature is more, ahem, competitive there are some tricks (all very fair and within the rules and spirit of the game).  They involve, as you might expect, stick selection since it is the only variable under your control.

Revealed: how to pick the perfect Poohstick

Press Association

Wednesday 26 August 2015 03.52 EDT

Poohsticks, the timeless game made famous by Winnie the Pooh, Piglet and Christopher Robin, is not a game of chance, according to scientists – and there’s even a formula to win.

…

Egmont Publishing joined Dr Rhys Morgan, director of engineering and education at the Royal Academy of Engineering, to equip the 39% of people who already take time sourcing the perfect Poohstick with the formula to ensure they pick the speediest stick to sail to victory.

It comes after a survey of 2,000 British parents revealed that 41% of players take the time to personalise their sticks to ensure they take no chances in knowing exactly who wins.

It turns out that just 11% of Britons naturally pick the right sort of stick, with a third of people (30%) heading straight for a long and thin stick, which according to Dr Morgan is only half right.

The scientist, a father of two and avid Poohsticks player himself, said the main variables that need to be considered when designing the optimum Poohstick included cross-sectional area, density/buoyancy, and the drag coefficient.

The perfect Poohstick would be tubby and long, fairly heavy (but not so heavy it will sink to the bottom of the river), with quite a lot of bark to catch the flow of the river like paddle.

Science and Technology News and Blogs

• US astronauts drink recycled urine aboard space station but Russians refuse, by  Ellen Brait, The Guardian
• How a Volcanic Eruption in 1815 Darkened the World but Colored the Arts, By WILLIAM J. BROAD, The New York Times
• Garum sauce: ancient Rome’s ‘ketchup’ becomes a modern-day secret ingredient, by Olga Oksman, The Guardian
• Guy spots super-rare ‘living fossil’ a second time — 30 years later, by Michael Franco, CNet
• Dinosaur foot found on beach in Wales could be mini T-Rex ancestor, Press Association
• How do you go about embracing complexity? It’s complicated, by Duncan Green, The Guardian
• Aztec skull trophy rack discovered at Mexico City’s Templo Mayor ruin site, Associated Press
• Flash is dying a death by 1,000 cuts, and that’s a good thing, by Samuel Gibbs, The Guardian
• Here’s why fire fountains erupted on moon’s surface, Business Standard
• Want to read this article later? Maybe you should just print it out, by Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian
• Ancient Greek palace unearthed near Sparta dates back to 17th century BC, AFP
• Poland drought: Jewish tombstones and fighter plane uncovered as rivers run dry, Associated Press
• The Huge, Pricey Detectors That Capture Tiny Neutrinos, Katie M. Palmer, Wired
• Large-Scale Peer-Review Fraud Leads To Retraction Of 64 Scientific Papers, by Glyn Moody, Tech Dirt
• When surveillance is a feature, not a bug, by Joshua Kopstein, Al Jazeera
• Windows 10 doesn’t offer much privacy by default: Here’s how to fix it, by Sebastian Anthony, Ars Technica
• Windows 10 Reserves The Right To Block Pirated Games And ‘Unauthorized’ Hardware, by Karl Bode, Tech Dirt

Science Oriented Video

The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

–Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

Obligatories

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

I would never make fun of LaEscapee or blame PhilJD.  And I am highly organized.

This Day in History

News

• Deep support: Trump voters shrug off criticism, By Steve Thomma, McClatchy
• Sun sets on era of the Humvee as US military announces successor, by Peter Beaumont, The Guardian
• Many police departments spy on you without oversight. This must end, by Trevor Timm, The Guardian
• The Way GCHQ Obliterated The Guardian’s Laptops May Have Revealed More Than It Intended, by Jenna McLaughlin, The Intercept
• Guatemalan president faces growing threat of impeachment amid scandal, by Jo Tuckman, The Guardian
• World’s biggest car makers sued over ‘deadly’ keyless ignitions, Reuters
• Why plans for a new golf course have caused uproar in New Orleans, by Rebecca Burns, The Guardian
• Oil Industry Needs Half a Trillion Dollars to Endure Price Slump, by Luca Casiraghi and Rakteem Katakey, Bloomberg News
• Iraqi army generals killed in ISIL suicide bombing, Associated Press
• U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan, Taliban grab district, By Mohammad Stanekzai, Reuters
• Pentagon investigates alleged doctoring of intelligence on anti-Isis progress, Associated Press

Blogs

• The GOP’s nuclear option for Donald Trump: Why the only way to beat him is so scary, by Elias Isquith, Salon
• Sanders the populist, Trump the fascist: The truth about comparing two unlikely presidential contenders, by Paul Rosenberg, Salon
• The empire strikes back: The media-political elite’s campaign to destroy Bernie (and Trump) and restore order, by Andrew O’Hehir, Salon
• The case against Joe Biden 2016: Why remind Democrats he’s even less liberal than Hillary?, by Joan Walsh, Salon
• Real Household Net Worth: Look Out Below?, by Steve Roth, Naked Capitalism
• Currency Depreciations Don’t Boost Exports as Much as They Used To, By Swarnali Ahmed, Naked Capitalism
• “Clinton’s the One We Want to Run Against … We love Hillary … I want Donald Trump running against Hillary”, by Gaius Publius, Hullabaloo
• Mormon Church Won’t Abandon Boy Scouts Because It Can Still Discriminate, by Zack Ford, Think Progress
• WikiLeaks Attorneys Oppose Diplomatic Retaliation by UK Against Ecuador, by Kevin Gosztola, Shadowproof
• Wall Street Laundering Derivatives Trades Through Europe To Avoid Dodd-Frank, by Dan Wright, Shadowproof
• More Deaths Linked To General Motors’ Ignition Switches, by Dan Wright, Shadowproof