Sideswipe: October 21: Going without

A scarce resource.

For many people, the cost-of-living crisis is about enough food and making rent, but for those who can afford those basics, what else is consigned to the can’t afford pile? Take a walk in other people’s shoes ...

”Dental care is the first expense to go. Then the optometrist.”

“New tyres and a car repair - one will be this month after I get paid, but the new ceiling and plaster work in my dining room, we can’t afford. This will be the second Xmas we eat dinner with a huge hole above us.”

“I’m a contractor and don’t get holiday pay so I just never take time off. Fuel for leisure journeys, need to save it for work.”

”Using the tumble dryer. Trying to night toilet train DS and that’s resulting in a lot of wet washing hanging about.“

”We’ve stopped all the kids’ activities. They never did many but swimming, football and scouts have stopped. Scouts is cheap but a bit of a drive away.“

”The real issue now is mortgage rates – yeah, I know I’m lucky to even own my own home, but for how long? At this rate, I’ll be back to renting and flatmates at 54.“

”My mother has terminal cancer. I am a contractor so if I don’t work, I don’t get paid. I have taken a bank loan out to fly down south to see her every second weekend.”

Space advertising

There’s bad news for anyone who likes to look up at the sky and not see the words “Briscoes 1 day sale, on now!” as researchers have found that space adverts are not only possible today, but economically feasible. The team, from Skoltech and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, had previously looked at the viability of using small satellites known as “CubeSats” in orbit to display an image to people watching below. Now they wanted to explore if it was economically viable for advertisers to hire such displays, considering the huge cost of putting pretty much anything into space. As unrealistic as it may seem, space advertising based on 50 or more small satellites flying in formation could be economically viable. It would involve a complex satellite system orbiting the Earth and demonstrating pixel images to observers on the ground, and an ad appears as a constellation of bright artificial stars formed into an image that can be observed in a clear night sky for several minutes. But just because it can be done doesn’t mean it should be done. The team say that due to the proposed orbit, the advertisements could only be displayed at sunrise or sunset, where they won’t interfere with telescopes, adding that they would only be lit over high-density population areas (aka cities).

Classic teaching moments

A reader writes: “My mother was a teacher at Browns Bay Primary for many years. One day she asked her 7-year-olds, ‘What starts with M and picks things up?’ Hoping they would answer ‘magnet’, she was disappointed, to say the least, when they all eagerly yelled out ‘Mum’.”