Strangely Perfect

Introduction Two items on today’s news demonstrated the vast contrasts in our humanity. Stardust probe finds ‘subdued’ comet crater & Japan halts whale hunt after chase by protesters. Our Absolute Ingenuity and Progress The absolute ingenuity of us humans and how far we have come since our cave-dwelling days is supremely demonstrated by the return [...]

What is the Best Backup for Windows in a Small Home or Office? Which Windows Backup?  A History. Over the years I’ve tried many systems for backing up crucial Windows data.  Currently for small-scale backups I use the ubiquitous and almost bullet-proof flash drives, my current one tipping the scales at 8Gb.  But for major [...]

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 [...]

Arnold Stang Dies The voice of Top Cat, the excellent cartoon series of my childhood has died at a good old age. He’s also in one of my favourite bits from the film “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”  About half-way through the clip below he’s one of the two gas station attendants who [...]

Something I never thought could happen, given everything that James Williamson has said, is the news that 2010 sees the return of Williamson to play ‘proper’ guitar with The Stooges. ( ‘Proper’ comes from Iggy’s historical description of the band a few years back while speaking to Melvyn Bragg.) This is the interview (for a [...]

Twitter Today’s news that actor Stephen Fry, famous for his uptake of all new gadgets and one-man publicist for Twitter, is “thinking about giving up on Twitter” got me thinking.  (see Fry ponders leaving Twitter site ) Apparently he thinks there’s too much aggression and unkindness around….. well, dah? Not that I’m disagreeing with the [...]

As MP’s expenses come to the fore again, Peter Mandelson spoke on Radio 4 this morning and did his usual self by not explaining anything and being perfectly unclear about everything!  Listen hear here! Thank god the interviewer cut him off. The question was “Have you got much sympathy with MPs who’ve claimed under one [...]

Continuing on From…  What Killed Flight AF 447 Since the search for the ‘black boxes’ of Flight 447 was abandoned a few days ago (20th Aug 2009 – see news item),  only 3 days later, Nature’s On-line version has published reports of the jet things I was going on about in my first article about [...]

Atlantic Ocean Floor Profile Following the (as yet unresolved) crash of the Air France airbus on flight AF 447, much has been made about the ocean floor having huge cracks and being very uneven.  Most atlases, online and TV news reports say this and back the statement up with visual imagery of the bathymetry.  See [...]

Harriet Harman For the last week or so, the highly paid Paxman has become obviously annoyed at the continuous devious behaviour from every politician he’s interviewed.  They all say “we understand the public’s anguish” – but, as Paxman notes, they do fuck all about it.  As many have noted, if you go into a shop and [...]

What Brought Down the Air France Jet over the Atlantic? Just my tuppence worth.  The best current info on the subject is Wikipedia which has peer reviewed sifting and not a load of speculative ‘maybes’.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AF_447 Also, check http://www.weathergraphics.com/tim/af447/ for good weather, navigation and aircraft info. Prescript Aside from a bomb, which has never [...]

MP Expenses and Privileges Scandal Let’s make one thing absolutely clear: Apart from 635 MPs and the somewhat fewer UK MEPs, NOT ONE PERSON IN BRITAIN THINKS ANY DIFFERENTLY FROM ME! *** We all think that they’re all a bunch of spivving crooks who’ve let everyone down.  To compound the felony, they will even get paid [...]

Sex Videos As time passes, we see the Buddhist concept of “karmic retribution” really coming into view with all the latest happenings with wacky backy Jacqui Smith, the (as I write this morning) current Home Secretary for HM Gov in the UK.  The continuing saga of her rule-bending expenses and her husband’s adult activities while [...]

Mark Cavendish wins by 11cm over 185km! Gazzetta della sport run the race and have a Mario Cippollini interview here.  Websites and news agencies across the globe are full of Cavendish’s win but in Britain it’s a 15 second radio item and well-buried articles on the BBC etc.  Most UK news even forgets to mention [...]