Strangely Perfect

Healthcare Woes Lying sick in bed this morning listening to a Radio 5 phone-in about the “state” of our Accident & Emergency (A&E) healthcare system here in the UK, I was struck by the failure of the radio show’s producers to engender the expected flurry of tales of woe and poor service. Happy and Immaculate [...]

Guillotine and “The Reign of Terror” Funny how I missed this during the summer – I was in hospital, I think. This video is Henry Paulson, stumbling and squirming, as he struggles to evade quite simple questions for someone in his position.  (I talked about his deceit last year here and here, at the start [...]

I remember an old  Tommy Cooper gag that went something like this; I went to the doctor and said,  “Doctor, doctor.  It hurts when I do this”  (Cooper raises his knee upwards to demonstrate) The doctor said, “Well don’t do it, then“ The point is that it’s exactly like our prolific consumption of carbon-based fuels, [...]

Introduction This is a quick test to see if the Windows 7 Live Writer facility works.  There are a host of formatting options, so let’s see what it’s like? The picture is of Blyth Power Station chimneys when they were knocked down. The significance to myself is that it’s where my father was a Charge [...]

A Possible Start to Personal Details Theft? Here’s how it works… Some time ago I made a posting on the odiously chubby internet bankrupteer and millionaire self-publicist Robert Allen (see link here).  As part of this investigation I used the name “Morton” coupled to my spam magnet email address in order to see what would [...]

The Intense Debate Install Story Along with some theme and plugins changes I’ve recently done, I’ve also had a play with Intense Debate (ID), a system complete with WordPress plugin for managing comments. Phase One Last week using my old theme I couldn’t get anywhere with the comment import. It kept crashing out at 9% [...]

There’s a lot of hatred in the UK that we all have to pay a ‘licence’ fee to watch TV. Some people say that it gives quality and independence to the Corporation. Others have commented on the corridors full of empty champagne bottles… Recent scandals like the Jonathan Ross affair have seen the BBC ‘fined’ [...]

This is an unashamed plug for the Warrington Cycle Campaign. Their dedicated work over the years has now brought in the first real 20mph zone in their town (see here).  Elsewhere on the website, is an article called The Effect of Cycle Lanes on Cyclists’ Road Space. (pdf file) … Have a look.  The photos [...]

Introduction While fishing around for some chords I came across azchords.com – as you do.  They’ve a shedload of Google ads and I accidentally hit the banner ad while trying to get rid of pesky popups (why do sites still do this now?)  I was taken to the website of someone called Kevin Hoeffer and [...]

Data, and Trust in Science The Burden of Proof is on Science but ’twas ever thus…. The arguments from climate change sceptics ultimately hinge around the general perception of aloofness and intangibility that hang round science and scientists.  The trouble is that some people are basically innumerate and no amount of trying will make them [...]

Two news items this week display the different fortunes of different sorts of pirate. First we have a Pirate ‘washes ashore with cash’ from Monday when the Somali pirates en route home from collecting their ransom for the Sirius Star super-tanker capsized.  Most swam ashore without the loot, one kept the loot and drowned – [...]

Truly this car is the pits. -and here’s how.. The engineers seem to have responded with the most short-term planning possible to a demand from the BMW marketing department to make the company look green now that sales of their monster cars are down 40%.  Some “ad” bloke has said “clean electricity, that’s the way [...]

Despite the huge sums of money thrown at the banks and the immensely costly rescues of many by their respective national governments, the share prices of those banks and the rest of the stock markets in general, continues to be volatile, but with a general downward trend. Why so? It’s because the market makers are [...]

“NOD32 has pulled out another nasty from an email that arrived today on one of my spam honeypot addresses.  Unlike last time, this time the identical (to me) message contains a Worm instead of a Trojan as an attachment.  NOD32 identifies it as an exe file inside a zip file called “a variant of Win32/Nuwar [...]