Sydney harbour is lovely, although Eora history and archaeology do show that all of it is much changed since 1788 and earlier. What one sees as bushland foreshores were carefully managed lands looking very different. Studies are reported and referenced at www.sydneybarani.com.au/sites/aborig...

The lead itself is not so vestigial, though. From the 1920s for nearly 80 years tetraethyl lead was sprayed out from motor vehicle exhausts onto roadsides and any bordering lands. Most of it is still there. Imagine the cleanup job! Perhaps that is why the problem is never mentioned.

In 1984 the official NSW Christmas song went like this:
Neville Wran, Neville Wran, Neville Neville Wran,
Neville Wran oh Neville Wran oh Neville Neville Wran,
Hey!
Neville Wran Neville Wran Neville Neville Wran,
Neville Neville Neville Neville Neville Neville Wran! Hey!

'Why' is shorthand for 'Why should I/we/anyone learn or know this sort of thing? How is it relevant in my life in my world, my culture? How do we "live" this mathematics?' They are not asking for theorems or an explanation that involves more more 'non-lived' mathematics – that just begs the question

Where exactly XPT run at 160km/hr?

Yet in that era there were brilliant women physicists, and many decent, non-creepy men physicists, doing similar work. The advances for which he-whom-I-cannot-name is credited were, or would have been, made by others who are never quoted or eulogised. I live in hope that textbooks will drop his name

as well as the new hagiographies that appear every few years. There was some unspoken general agreement to enshrine his (supposed) genius, beside which his victims and their lives were worthless and not to be mentioned. He was enabled by a whole culture. The physics he did was being done by others

Not your fault. It's heartbreaking. The glorification and mythologising of such men seem unstoppable in the vox scientifica, let alone the vox populi. Celebrations of his birthday, deathday, bons mots, metaphors, his equation (which is simply a quantised complex wave equation), are endless –

Fitting, sort of...Schrödinger (yes that one) was a well-known and well-documented pedophile. He would be in the Epstein files today. He ruined not a few lives. At one point he went to the home of a 12-year old girl and demanded of the horrified parents that they give their daughter to him to abuse

Oh Trump is just a twisted perversion of a 1950s comic book character. He sees himself as an incarnation of Lex Luthor

That's because megalomaniacs have gotta declare themselves a god. Then the mortal inevitable (assassination most often) usually happens pretty quick.
Well I'm off to ruin the grandchildren's christmas! They, and especially their sensible parents, will love it

Santa is a creepy, terrifying, embodied mythological figure. No wonder babies and small children yell blue murder when parents try to put them on his lap. Their instincts are good and right. And later: kids are expected to internalise that it's ok to sit on a strange man's lap? That they should?

Lovely humble stop! Nearby there is a splendid upscale station, infinitely long with infinitely many evenly spaced metal benches and bins, serviced by an infinitely long train, where the Manager can always fit yet another bus full of travellers. QR calls it Townsville; I call it Hilbert's #mathsky

Sacking the perp is a strong deterrent – for a while, there. They move on. We do know that I) it is a pattern of behaviour, they are *always* serial offenders, and II) information is not shared. In this respect, cross-institutional industry and academic bodies could step up and play a powerful role

Feedback control means using a property of the system itself to internally convert uncertain or fluctuating inputs into stable outputs. As a metaphor for operation of a city, it means that governance should come from the people, not from developers or an elite. Implied in the article, but not clear

Well, regulate the engine then. If engines are not governed by feedback control their motions become wildly oscillatory and their productive purpose fails. Or, if the metaphor is valid for cities, gross inequalities set in. See also: centrifugal flyball governor, equations of motion

Students will love it! For various complicated reasons there was a culture of secrecy and non-acknowledgement of sources in European mathematics in that era, and it it now seems that Kerala mathematics was transmitted to Europe and adapted by the Newton-Liebniz community. We hope to join the dots.