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Ducks at Skiathos Airport

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Not the bird type of duck. That might possibly be dangerous:

But then this could have been quite nasty as well.

Skiathos is one of those places where the end of the runway is pretty much the start of a beach, and onlookers do gather to watch the shallow landings there. You might remember the infamous Maho Beach on St Maarten and the KLM 747s coming in to land there (webcam here, although the 747s don’t do that route anymore). But if anything, the south end of Skiathos Airport runway is even closer to the beach than even that:

Yes, that’s the Aegean Sea on the left and the runway on the right. We’re probably looking at about 30m between the edge of the apron and the edge of the water. I would measure the exact distance for you, but Google Earth has blurred the whole airport complex out in case the terrorists can’t work out how to use its sister app, Google Maps. Or… just go there.

Nothing to see here.

Bizarre.

Anyway, all of this preamble is because a Wizzair A321 Neo almost killed some onlookers by coming in PROPERLY LOW this week:

And that’s where the ducking comes in. The video is well worth a watch (plane lands at about 1 minute if you’re really pushed for time) and it also includes footage of the “famous” famous Air Italy 737-800 approach of 2013. But this one is definitely lower.

I don’t think anyone would have got hit if they hadn’t ducked (although Robert Wadlow would have got a new parting), but if you slow the video down to 0.25x speed and hit pause at the right place, you can see that the wheels are literally only 5m off the ground as they (just) pass over the guys standing at the Armco. (reference: A321 Neo wheel fully inflated is 1.2m diameter)

That’s a bit too close for comfort.

Quack.

Mass Karaoke

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Busy day today. The electricians and the gardener actually turned up (long story), so I’m making many things happen with their assistance. And my bum hurts. Not my legs, not anything else. Just my bum.
Still on a high from last night though.

OK, so if you didn’t click through, that looks really dodgy. But I played football for the first time in over a year and it was great. Glutes, though. Eina.

Anyway, as I said, busy day, so here’s The Pub Choir from Australia singing Kate Bush.

What happens when 1600 strangers have a few drinks, then learn to sing Running Up That Hill in 3 part harmony?

This happens:

Just really nice, the sort of nice that only comes when people are just having a really good time. Sure yes, I know that this is one of those songs that’s come to the fore again because of Stranger Things. And here’s another one of them, but this time with full attribution:

Eddie Munson 4 Ever.

Interesting graph

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From a famous mathematician.

Your chances of sharing a space with someone who is Covid positive, based on a given prevalence of Covid in the local population and a given number of people in the space:

So (using the arrow as an example), when 7% of the local population have the virus, if you share a space (supermarket, pub, restaurant, SA taxi) with about 20 people, there’s a 50% chance that at least one of them will be Covid positive.

For those that are interested in the maths, I’ve calculated the probability of at least one person in the room having Covid as 1-(1-p/200)^N Where p is the population prevalence as a percentage and N is the number of other people in the space.

In the UK at the moment, prevalence is somewhere around 4%: 1 in 25 people are positive. And that means that if you are packed tightly in any given space together with any more than about 90 people, there will be at least one of you who is positive…

Oh. Oh dear.

And yet there are still no precautions of any sort being put in place. Quite bizarre

Of course there are a few terms and conditions to Kit’s graph.
Some people might isolate if they are Covid positive. Some people might be Covid positive but asymptomatic. Some people might not have bothered getting tested, so they won’t know if they’re positive or not. All of these might affect the assumed prevalence.

And then, of course, just because you share a space with someone who is Covid positive doesn’t mean you’ll get infected (although, see headline above). That will depend on the size of the space (and therefore your proximity), the amount of time you and they spend in the space, the ventilation in the space and – of course – whether either (or both) of you is wearing a mask.

But it’s a super useful tool for just showing how likely any of us is to be sitting next door to someone who is positive. Lovely stats. Only mildly scary.

Who’s playing at Montreux?

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Lots of people: it’s a big festival. But three that I specifically want to see: a-ha (which is how I ended up on the Montreux website), Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, and Gabriels who have been doing some really amazing stuff lately.

And, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, all their sets will be available for livestreaming… live… as they perform.

a-ha are on at 11pm tomorrow (Friday) evening, Nick Cave 11pm on Saturday and Gabriels at 8:30pm on Wednesday the 6th July. All for free. Gratis. Mahala.

Click here for more details and for more free streams of other artists at the festival.