Background There has been some recent political drama regarding proposed constituency boundary changes. It’s rather an unseemly mess and this post is not about the politics of that. Instead I’m writing here about why constituency boundaries are deemed important and, rather more significantly, why boundaries should not really matter. Why do boundaries attract such attention?… (read more)

Question: Could I beat Usain Bolt over 100 metres, if he ran and I biked? First thoughts: it might be possible, but I need to do some calculations to get an idea of whether it’s feasible or not. To win the Olympic Gold on Sunday, Bolt ran 100 metres in 9.63 seconds. That’s an average… (read more)

In line with the prediction I made at the end of the Kidlington Chess Congress in February, my new ECF chess rating is 159. This is my third-highest rating of all time and, given that those higher two were closely dependent on each other (both largely based on a cracking run of games I had… (read more)