Strangely Perfect

It Was 50 Years Ago, Today …when mankind left the gravitational confines of our Earth. A poor boy from the steppes, Yuri Gagarin, simultaneously became the first man in space and the first man to leave Earth and orbit it completely.  (This is something that took NASA several steps before John Glenn finally emulated the [...]

Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl, aged 23, of Ketchum, Idaho, is a member of the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, from Fort Richardson, Alaska.  He was captured in circumstances that aren’t clear and has appeared in a Taliban video (prev at http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghan-soldier20-2009jul20,0,4913063.story), seen world-wide. So far, it appears [...]

Introduction Simple. Live in County Durham, UK Don’t pass the driving test Drive a car, unsupervised, with your partner and her 6-year old child as passengers! Find a cyclist while driving around Make sure the cyclist is not wearing a helmet Knock over the cyclist with your illegally driven and thus un-insured car Make sure [...]

How so? As I write this post, a little spaceship is sat on Mars, basking in the relative warmth of the sun but still, in a very physically hostile place. I am (slightly) older than the “space age”, which most people would say started with the Russian Sputnik launch in 1957, so I have grown [...]

There’s a neat book just been released by a Nobel prize winning author Joseph Stiglitz, and Linda Bilmes of Harvard, that counts the true financial cost of the Bush conspired conflict. This is a BBC article and a similar one on The Guardian written by Aida Edemariam who met him. It’s a truly staggering piece, [...]