I was trying to find an appropriate topic to write about, but it didn’t take long to realise this would be impossible.  My view of the 8 weeks is totally polarised.  Looking back at what I have written, this should have been obvious: “my heart swells and I LOVE it”; ” I spent every moment I was alone crying in fear”; “I think I may actually enjoy it!!!”; “I did cry and the teaching assistant saw”.  This polarised view is exemplified in my writing from Tuesday night in contrast to feelings this evening.

Tuesday night

This takes every ‘have a go’ bone in my body

As perfectionism and fear of failure war

with the need to survive and the desire to thrive.

I am tired – 3 days left.

3 days and counting down the hours.

Total chaos reigns

the great storm where the disciples thought they were going to die

Jesus will you calm this storm?

And the desire to give in, label myself a failure and lay down peacefully – back out now while I’m ahead

The want to give up responsibility and be cuddled, cooked for, looked after, protected.

But this is not the way I’m going.

I must fully drink this path of chaos before

I can find the redemption

that will come with experience.

In contrast:

Today I made the decision to reject the advice I have been given to “be more horrible”.  When I am ‘horrible’, I strut around the room issuing commands and sanctions like some sort of sergeant on a power trip.  I finish the day feeling exhausted and angry that the behaviour has only got worse.  Today, in contrast, I was overly positive continually.  I still shouted at a boy and made him miss his whole playtime, as well as getting a crying girl to confess to pinching a reception class child. But generally I was sickly sweet, making a mahoosive deal of everything that was good; talking about choices like there’s no tomorrow.  Maybe it’s just because today was only a half day, but I enjoyed it.  I looked after the children who needed looking after and told off the children who needed telling off.

I’m also beginning to become actual friends with some of the other staff!  Bonding over chutney recipes and Doctor Martin boots…   There is hope!

What if we were to dump all the tea in the world into the Great Lakes? How strong, compared to a regular cup of tea, would the lake tea be?

Alex Burman

Weak, bordering on homeopathic.

The standard cup of tea, as described by the International Organization for Standardization in ISO 3103, contains two grams of tea per 100 mL of water.[1]Further ISO standards concerning tea include ISO 3720 (black tea), ISO 11287 (green tea), and ISO 14502-2 (the difference between black tea and green tea). The Great Lakes have a volume of about 22,600 cubic kilometers, which means we would need about 450 billion tons of tea to reach proper strength.

According to the Tea Board of India, one year's global tea harvest totals only about 4.8 million tons,[2]Using figures from this report extrapolated forward to 2014. only 1/100,000th of what we'd require to make Great Lake Tea. If we dumped those 4.8 million tons into the lakes, the resulting tea would be about as strong as if we'd dripped two drops of tea in a bathtub.[3]Technically, calling this kind of tea "homeopathic" is an exaggeration, since substances in homeopathy are diluted way more than this. Proper bathtub tea, of course, requires one 3-kg bag.

For better lake tea, we should find a lake with a volume of 240 million cubic meters (0.24 cubic kilometers).

Wular Lake in Kashmir is one candidate. Its volume varies with the seasons, but during the winter it's just about exactly the right size.[4]Unfortunately, it's shrinking. (For winter volume, see the chart on page 18 of that report.) India is the world's second-largest tea producer, so it's also conveniently located.

Ullswater, in the UK's Lake District, is another great candidate. With a relatively stable year-round volume of about 0.23 cubic kilometers, it would be an excellent site for brewing a global cup of tea.

Of course, while neither Wular Lake or Ullswater has ever been used as a giant teakettle, something like this was—famously—attempted in my own backyard in Boston. In 1773, a group of colonists disguised as American Indians[5]They dressed up as American Indians to align themselves politically with the Americas—against Britain—invoking the popular European stereotype of the free and noble savage.

The Mohawk people, the actual Indians who the protesters were mimicking, mistrusted the settlers encroaching on their land, sided with the British during the subsequent war, and afterward were driven from their homes by the Americans and fled to Canada. boarded three British ships and threw the cargo of tea—around 44 tons of it—into Boston Harbor to protest British-run tax policy.

Boston Harbor has a volume of about 0.44 cubic kilometers, which means that the "tea" brewed in 1773 would have been even more dilute than our Great Lakes tea. The harbor is also somewhat larger[6]The tidal range in Boston is so large (over three meters) that the harbor's volume at high tide is nearly double what it is at low. than Wular Lake or Ullswater, so all the tea in the world would still make Boston Harbor slightly too weak.

There's another problem: Heat. If you wanted to make tea from a lake, such as Ullswater or Wular Lake, you'd have to heat the water up. Is that even possible?

There's clearly enough stored energy in the world to do it. After all, we presumably heat that amount of water for tea every year already; we just do it in small batches around the world.

To heat up Ullswater to 80°C[7]Lots of people have very strong opinions on what this temperature should be. Please direct any corrections on this matter to What-If Tea-Related Complaints Dep't, c/o Her Majesty The Queen, Buckingham Palace, London SW1A 1AA. would take \(6.6 \times 10^{16}\) joules of energy—about 20 days worth of British electricity consumption. which is roughly what would be released if you dropped a water bottle full of antimatter in the lake.

Asking Britain to go without electricity for 20 days just to fill one of their lakes with tea seems like it might be a hard sell. Fortunately, there's an easier solution.

Boiling Lake in Dominica is a volcanic lake about 60 meters across. Its temperature varies, but it's often near boiling at the edges and vigorously boiling in the center. Measuring the depth of the lake is difficult, so it's hard to get an estimate of the total volume.

Frying Pan Lake in New Zealand, on the other hand, is the largest hot lake in the world. It has a volume of about 200,000 m³, and an average temperature of around 50°C—not quite hot enough for tea, but much closer than Ullswater or Wular Lake.

New Zealanders consume about 600 grams of tea per person,[8]Kerryn Pollock. 'Tea, coffee and soft drinks', Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 15-Jul-13 for a total of 2,700 tons of tea. If they waited until Frying Pan Lake got particularly hot, then dunked it all in at once ...

... they could brew a year's worth of tea in minutes.

I enjoyed this 2011 BBC documentary on the making of the McLaren MP4-12C. Just as fascinating as the car itself, is the glimpse into the McLaren way: perfection plus one.

The headquarters, where “you go home cleaner than you were before you came into work,” looks to me like a cross between set pieces from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Gattaca.

McLaren head, Ron Dennis on the working environment:

It’s less apparent that it [the building] is very clean. It’s less apparent that it’s odorless. It is also a constant temperature. We hold the whole building within 1° of 22°. There is no clutter in this building. Cluttered building, cluttered mind. It’s the attention to detail that I’m really quite well-known for.

Once Upon A Time In Wonderland started off as a normal sized spinoff series from Once Upon A Time. But now ABC is so happy with this unseen show, that they've upped the number of episodes for the first season. But they promise there won't be any filler episodes. Let's hope.

That's right — showrunners Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis (the Bartles & Jaymes of filler episodes in Once Upon a Time) have decided to kick their bad habit of unnecessary plot dwindling. According to the report in Entertainment Weekly, the increase from 13 episodes to an unspecified number is because of plot requirements, instead of the desire to build a random episode starring Lost's Boone and Shannon as Bill the Lizard and the Jabberwocky:

Wonderland creators Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis have a different vision for this show: a self-contained epic romance that’s planned in advance from start to finish — no filler! That means there will be no additional episodes ordered for the season beyond the first order, so the showrunners can break down the entire story before the first episode ever airs. That’s why there are more episodes being ordered now-ish, because the writers have figured out how many hours they need.

But we're still wondering. Which supernatural spin-off is more pointless: Once Upon a Time In Wonderland or The Originals?

Arne Olav likes to create ridiculous new species by splicing together two or more real animals. The resulting chimeras look like something right out a bizarre fantasy movie.

The work of Reddit user Arne Olav comes to us from PetaPixel which recently showcased his images. You can also find more at his Reddit submissions page.

Be sure to read the entire article at PetaPixel, which includes more images and an explanation from Olav about how he does it.

It’s now about four months since you resolved to:

• get in shape
• read more
• spend more time with your kids
• stop gossiping
• read the Bible this year
• learn to sew

How’s that workin’ out for ya?

If you made a resolution in January, you have almost certainly given it up, forgotten it, and basically remained the same person you were on December 31^st.

Why?

It could be that you didn’t really need to change. Or perhaps you sincerely changed your mind. Or maybe you already accomplished.

Yeah, right.

I can tell you—in one word—why you gave up on those New Year’s resolutions…

February.

In my neck of the woods, February is cold, dark, and desperate. We even made February one day shorter than even the 30-day months. That wasn’t enough, so we trimmed off another day.

February is a grind. You’re inside all the time. If you don’t have Seasonal Affective Disorder, you almost wish you had a diagnosis, some indication of why you want to stick icicles in your eyes. There’s snow and slush and more snow. Everybody bundles up and looks at the ground when they walk.

No one is grilling out.

No one is tossing a Frisbee around.

No one is smiling.

No one is stopping to smell the roses, because they’re under ugly white Styrofoam, like giant upside down coffee cups from church social hour. Oh, and those are covered by snow.

It’s enough to break anyone’s resolve. February is no time to make a change. It’s no time to kick a habit or start a new one. It’s the month to hunker down, to make do, to survive.

But May is a month with potential! The snow’s gone. The days are longer (and getting still longer). The slush and slop has all dried up. Flowers are starting to open. You leave your jacket at home. Baby ducks cross the road in front of you on the way home from work.

So how about some spring resolutions? The time is ripe! Choose what you will change. Make some plans. Tell a friend. Drop some pounds, lift some weights, throw some parties, smell the roses, and give someone a big sloppy kiss.

Now is the time. Tomorrow is Saturday. Most of the country’s going to have a pretty nice day (sorry, Tennessee). So start something good.

Who’s with me?

Mixed news everyone!

1. First and the most important: thank you everybody for your donations. We now have enough to secure our servers for the next two months or so. You can donate using Flattr or using bitcoins: 1JMYDeTaJHvfL6stbvwNdbY8zVqWfEnucU.

2. We’ve got an incredible amount of emails during last three weeks. There’ve been several days when all three of us were busy mostly dealing with user requests. If you believe that The Old Reader is missing something (and it surely is), please go to our Uservoice page, browse the issues (most likely, someone has already created your suggestion), and vote for the ones you like. Also you can see what’s already planned there. And please, check our Status page or subscribe to our Twitter account — we are updating these two on current issues.

We only have that much time during the day to spare on this project, and we would prefer to spend it making The Old Reader more reliable or implementing new features, not removing duplicate feature requests or explaining how to create a folder.

We are focused on making everything work for the vast number of users and feeds, for now this is our top priority.

(image by ProlificPen)

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We can’t pay you a huge pile of money, but we still have something interesting to offer.

4. Cool graphs, no?