When I Have The Inspiration, I Stage An Easter Bunny Massacre. Also It's April Fools' Day, So I Wanted

Where I grew up (initially): Great Chesterford

Going back to Great Chesterford with my current eyes was quite interesting. I hadn't realised (as no 6-year-old would) how pretty the village centre was, with many charming houses and thatched cottages. The nearest town, Saffron Walden, is even better, but I'd need to go back and visit properly. This time, we just passed through there to go to the shops - and pick up a bunch of biscuits and sweets I remember from my childhood!

Said sweets and biscuits are very nice, of course, but also a tad underwhelming. I remember feeling disappointed by the size of Party Rings the last time I bought some, and I had a similar sense of underwhelming when passing near the school. The wall along the street was much higher in my memory, as was the hill at the back of the playground - in my mind, it was a proper hill! But take into account the fact that I was so much smaller back then, and it all checks out, really!

The old school building itself was apparently built by a single person between 1845 and 1849. Chesterford has a very rich history, dating back to Roman times (and if nothing else on the topic, I remember dressing up as a Roman at school once), and the church dates back to the 13th century. The village's biggest claim to fame is probably having been the home of Germaine Greer, a feminist author from the 1970s, for a few decades.

Schauinsland

Since it's been mentioned in the comments on the previous post, we might as well have a look at the Schauinsland, a 1284 m peak on the outskirts of Freiburg im Breisgau. Only 7 km from the Schwabentor, the base is accessible by bus, before boarding a 3.6 km gondola lift ot the summit.

Opened in 1930, the Schauinslandbahn was the first gondola lift built for continuous operation, with the cabins running through each end station at slow speed to turn around while letting passengers off and on. The cable car takes the riders up the hill, offering panoramic views of the Black Forest. And then there's the view from the tower at the summit... I visited in summer, but it must be fantastic in winter too.

The cable car is not the only transport infrastructure to be found on the mountain, as mines operated there until the mid-20th century, so some mining railways with preserved vehicles can be found. Some of the tunnels can be visited (though writing this post reminds me, I haven't been inside yet).

For Vectron!

Produced since 2010 by Siemens, the Vectron is a modular locomotive platform with various engine options - AC electric, quad-voltage for use across Europe, "last-mile Diesel" option for parking, Diesel motors, dual mode/hybrid... It hauls both freight and passenger trains. But the main reason I've wanted to mention the Vectron is...

this Mitchell and Webb sketch!

This is from series 3 of That Mitchell and Webb Look, which was aired in 2009. The Siemens Vectron was officially launched in 2010, so it's fair to say that the name appearing in both is a coincidence. However, when I see a Vectron, it reminds me of this sketch, so it's harder for me to take this train seriously!

But it is serious business, as it is one of the most common locos in continental Europe. Only Iberia (due to using a different gauge) and France (because if it ain't Alstom, they'll oust 'em) don't see much of them. The examples shown here are from Germany, Switzerland and Slovakia, and were all pictured in the same area of Germany. The quad-voltage version in particular allows companies to carry freight all over Europe, they're virtually borderless.

Yet here I am, still snickering at the name, by Vectron's beard!

The CFTR's steam train

In a serious rain shower, the Chemin de Fer Touristique du Rhin's train stops at Volgelsheim station, where the association that maintains the line has its museum. The train itself is made up of former Austrian carriages built in the 1920s with what I suspect were 2nd and 3rd class seating.

The locomotive is a T3 tender built around 1900 at Graffenstaden, just South of Strasbourg, for the Alsace-Lorraine Railways. At the time, the region was under Imperial German control, hence the Eagle logo and German inscription "Elsaß-Lothringen" above the number. The association has two of these, nicknamed Berthold and Theodor. These are supported by small Diesel engines; on our trip, one of these hauled the train to the depot, where the extent of the association's work is on display. The active engines are maintained here, while others are being restored.

Peut-être un jour? - To run again one day?

The town of Breisach, on the other side of the Rhine and therefore in Germany, is visible, and a boat carries passengers across the river from near the depot.

Statement on my Instagram regarding Meta's moderation policy updates

Meta's updated policy on hate speech can best be described as... "weird", I guess.

The highlighted sentence, which is factually inept, is what is causing the uproar. Political and religious discourse on homosexuality, or any other group of people for that matter, does not use, and has never used, unsubstantiated allegations of mental illness or the word "weird" in a light or "non-serious" way. They are always used with the ulterior motive to discredit and stigmatise, and make exclusion of said group, a core element of the law & order doctrine they aspire to. But this is now explicitly permitted on Facebook and Instagram.

The law in most European countries currently does not allow this double standard on hate speech. While this does offer protection to all citizens in the applicable countries, the fact that Meta is in open disagreement with these protections, regardless of the reason, is something to think about.

I will be evaluating my presence on this platform [Instagram] in the coming days and weeks. Meanwhile, a normal blogging schedule will be maintained on the companion Tumblr. Cheers.

Update: Moulin Rouge has got new sails, and celebrated with some French cancan in the street.

Article France Info

Le moulin rouge du Moulin Rouge a perdu ses pales!

Was going to take a break from posting today, but we had a bit of breaking news out of Paris: the famous cabaret Moulin Rouge's red windmill has lost its sails! They fell off at around 2 in the morning apparently, cause unknown. No injuries.

Article France Bleu Paris

The "Witch's Eye" - Engelbourg Castle ruins, Thann

For what it's worth, Prince Albert II of Monaco is visiting Thann in the South of Alsace this weekend, as he is also Count of Ferrette. Held by the Austrian Habsburgs for a while, the title was bestowed upon Cardinal Mazarin, a prime minister to King Louis XIV, following the French conquest of Alsace in the 1640s. A member of House Mazarin married the Prince of Monaco in 1777 and that's how the title ended up where it is today. I don't plan to explain the origin of the other bazillion oddball titles the Prince of Monaco holds...

It's just a pretext to mention Engelbourg Castle, built by the Counts of Ferrette in the 13th century on a hill above Thann. The French Counts wouldn't benefit from it for too long: as it lay too far from the German border to be of strategic value, the same Louis XIV ordered its demolition in 1673. But, as you can probably tell from the photo, something weird happened during the process. The cylindrical dungeon came apart in segments, and one of these landed on its side. For whatever reason, it was left there, creating a unique landmark known as the "Witch's Eye", as an echo to the "Witch's Tower" in the town of Thann, but all it reminds me of is Polo mints.

A short hike uphill from Thann, it also offers nice views of the valley and the vineyards on the neighbouring hills.

Sangaku Sunday Bonus - what about the other problems?

In the sangaku series, we've solved two of the four problems on this tablet, the middle two, which I believe were the easiest to work on in terms of geometric arguments - we hardly ever used more than Pythagoras's theorem, though the second one needed some more advanced algebra to finish off.

Here's a quick look at the problems at each end of the tablet, and the main ideas I had to solve them.

On the far left, we have two circles tangent to one another (with centres A and B), inside a larger circle (with centre O) so that their diameters add up to the diameter of the largest. The radii of these three circles, respectively p, q and p+q, are known. The unknown is the radius r of the circle with centre C, which must be tangent to all three original circles (it has a twin on the right-hand side with the same radius).

This is quite quick to solve. Remember that tangent circles mean that the distances between centres is equal to the sum of the radii, e.g. AC = p+r, BC = q+r... Al-Kashi's theorem, which is a general version of Pythagoras's theorem, links the lengths of three sides of a triangle with one of the triangle's angles, and the triangles CAO and CAB have an angle in common, which yields the equation for r by isolating this angle in each application of Al-Kashi's theorem. The result is:

The problem on the far right seems to start in a similar fashion: two circles with fixed radii are offset by a fixed distance. A third circle has its diameter equal to the remainder of the diameter of one of the large circles: this radius can be calculated with little difficulty. What we want to do next is construct circles which are tangent to the two large ones, and the one previously constructed.

The radius of the circle with centre C1 can be obtained as above, but this method does not seem to extend to the subsequent circles, as O, D and C1 are no longer aligned, and there no longer appears to be a common angle in the triangles we want to work with. So I went for a parametric approach, understanding the curves that contain points that are equidistant from two circles. The red curve (which looks like a circle but isn't one) is the set of points at equal distance from the two largest circles, and we seek to intersect this with the set of points that are at equal distance from one large circle and the smaller one, the green curve. The intersection is equidistant from all three circles, so it is the centre of the circle we want to construct. Rotate and repeat for subsequent circles.

The general formulas are horrible and not worth showing, but this is another problem where I have been able to read the results on the tablet. The large circles have radii 61 and 72, and the offset is 23. The radii of the smaller circles, starting with the one in the middle and working outwards are:

17, 15.55, 12.292, 8.832 and 6.038 (I see 八, but I'll give the authors the benefit of the doubt as the top of the character 六 may have been erased by time)

The results with our exact formulas are:

17, 15.58, 12.795, 9.076 and 6.444

Rather close! As with the "three circles in a triangle", I do not know how the authors originally solved this problem.

Golden Week has begun in Japan, and this quick succession of public holidays ends with Children's Day on 5 May. It's for this occasion that the koinobori, or carp streamers, are brought out. Here are some flying over Asuka-gawa in Kashihara during my visit in 2018, with Unebi-yama, at the base of which Kashihara-jingû is located, in the background below.

My part of France is also on school break. With my homework done, it's time to get out and about again for my own Golden Week!

The conference went well, as far as I can tell, so here are a couple of low-sun views of Kashihara's preserved Edo-period area, Imai-chô, as an outro. The first building seems to be operating as an art gallery (maybe?), while the other is a neat little temple. Both are on the same street, 大工町筋, which Google Translate says could be Daiku-chô suji or Daiku-machi suji... or it could be something else, I don't remember reading the name myself on site.

Different place next.