Oil Drum Lane

Moving on from the visions of writers and filmmakers to the grand schemes of politicians, architects, planners and sundry other idealists and sometimes crazy people. I am not a fan. Too much energy and time are wasted on megalomaniac schemes far removed from the needs and desires of most of the population. In the 1800s, at the behest of Napoleon III, Baron Haussmann turned a pestilential and overcrowded Paris into the ‘city of light’ of the Belle Époque. But the boulevards and open spaces owe as much to the wish of authoritarian governments to make it easier to control riots. In the long run it didn’t help Napoleon much; he was deposed after France came second in the Franco-Prussian War and ended his days in southeast London.  Boulevard Montmarte   Those lessons were not forgotten when they rebuilt Berlin and Warsaw after WW2. In contrast, the English, who preferred a laissez-faire approach to grand plans, rebuilt London after the Blitz in much the same way as they had respo...

My notes on this site primarily focus on places and histories, topics about which I have some knowledge. Some of them are yoga for the imagination, for example, the attempts to visualise prehistoric landscapes and posts on exoplanets and film sets. By contrast, my aim here is to explore a boundary of what we CAN imagine about reality. Worryingly, it involves physics and maths, so I will be plumbing the depths of my ignorance as well.  The starting point is what science tells us about the reality of our universe, and to try to make sense of it. It is the difference between knowing that E=mc² and knowing that it implies that you can't exceed the speed of light.  Scientists and mathematicians tell us that there might be different realities and different dimensions. If so, what I want is to know what these parallel worlds might be like, and because I cannot understand or articulate the maths, I want a picture, a map or a credible thought experiment.  First, though, I have to ...