Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll
The late Ian Dury once postulated that:
Sex and drugs and rock and roll, Is all my brain and body need
And from this we can assume:
Need = Sex + Drugs + Rock + Roll
But, as the band Argent (not Kiss, no matter what their fan’s think) informed us:
God Gave Rock And Roll To You
As there is no God (my opinion, possibly not yours), the alleged deity could not possibly provide neither Rock, nor Roll. Therefore they cannot exist in this context. Hence:
Need = Sex + Drugs +0 + 0
Thus
Need = Sex + Drugs
Which seems a pretty solid mathematical proof for shagging and taking drugs.
As Mick Shrimpton, the former fictional drummer of Spinal Tap once said:
As long as there’s, you know, sex and drugs, I can do without the rock and roll.
Kinetic Energy
“If you hit a child at 40mph, there’s an 80% chance they’ll die. If you hit a child at 30mph, there’s and 80% chance they’l live.”
So, what are the physics behind this claim?
It must be something to do with the energy imparted to the child by the collision.
Kinetic energy, as we know (or can at least look up) is defined as:

Where Ek is the energy in Joules, m is the mass of the object in kilograms, and v is the velocity in metres per second.
For reasons that will be clear later, in this case I’ll pick a Ford Transit, so m=1800 (Average Kerb Weight over the various models is about 1800kg)
For the velocity, at 30 mph v=13.4112 m/s (so that’s v=14m/s in simple maths), while at 40 mph v=17.8816 m/s (v=18m/s simple).
Applying sums and stuff to these figures, we get the Kinetic Energy of the collision (assuming that the child was completely stationary in the road) to be:
- At 30mph: 176,400 Joules
- At 40mph: 291,600 Joules
Now we need to look at the average mass of a child. Using and approved method of randomization (5+D8), we’ll look at a 9 year old from the UK (but not in that way). One site (http://www.medindia.net/patients/calculators/Height_Weight_ForChildren.asp) came up with the idea of 39kg, which we’ll call 50kg for idiot maths sake.
So, following such a collision (using idiot pure maths, it being a perfectly elastic collision, and using a flat fronted vehicle – the Transit was the only one I had the figures on), the “exit speed” of the child would be:
- At 30mph: 84 m/s or 188mph
- At 40mph: 108 m/s or 241mph
Both are horrific speeds, but could never occur in the real world at the original incident speeds. No collision in the real world is perfectly elastic, and neither a Transit bonnet, nor children are made of perfectly elastic materials. Of course this won’t stop the Daily Mail from citing this as a scientific study at some point.
I’ve sort of lost track of where I was when I started on this, but is there any evidence for the 80/20 split? No, of course not.
Sure, hitting a kid a slower speeds will cause less injury to them. Driving slower is one way of ensuring this, but there is another:
“If the child was on the pavement and not pissing about in the road, it wouldn’t be an issue!”
Downfall / Lets Kill Hitler
Niece in Charity Plummet Incident
My eldest niece has decided to throw herself out of a perfectly good aircraft to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Clearly I’m not the only bat-shit insane member of the family.
Should you wish to donate, go this this page: http://www.justgiving.com/Kim-Killeen
Edit: This will happen on September 25th.





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