The French government has launched an online game that challenges taxpayers to balance the national budget of nearly 300bn euros ($373bn).
Budget Minister Jean-Francois Cope says the game, called "cyber-budget", will allow citizens to pretend they are in charge of the national finances.
They can make decisions about spending revenue and cutting taxes.
Mr Cope says the game is as realistic as possible and includes having to present a draft budget to parliament.
The game was launched on the website www.cyber-budget.fr.
Players face national and international constraints on their budget choices and the game includes negotiations with other ministers and unexpected events, the French news agency AFP reports.
"The idea is that when we cut taxes, we can't do it without creating deficits," Mr Cope told French television ahead of the launch.
"It allows each person to get familiar with how [the budget] functions.
"In this game each French person can pretend they are the budget minister and make decisions to understand how much each [ministry's] budget costs, education spending, military spending, how it's all organised and see what kind of decision we can take when we want to cut taxes."
As budget minister, Mr Cope has to ensure France stays within the EU budget deficit limit of 3% of GDP.
http://www.cyber-budget.fr/ - in French.
Sunday, June 11, 2006
The science behind the swerve
Adidas's Teamgeist World Cup ball has already been criticised by Germany and Arsenal keeper Jens Lehmann for its unpredictability, but is there any scientific basis for perennial concerns over swerving balls?
In the early 1950s a young Brazilian midfielder nicknamed Didi invented the swerving free kick. He realised that a ball kicked with spin would deflect significantly in flight.
It is no accident that the technique emerged first in the South American game. The leather ball of that era was very prone to water absorption and the weight increase made it much less responsive to the aerodynamic forces caused by the spin. This was seldom a problem in the warm, dry conditions of Brazil but a serious drawback in Europe's winter game.
Not until a ball with a synthetic, impermeable surface was introduced in the 1960s could the technique catch on. European players then became as adept as their Brazilian masters and a long line of expert free-kickers stretches from Didi to the present day.
Few can forget David Beckham's marvellous last-gasp equaliser against Greece in 2001. This wickedly swerving and dipping shot took England to the 2002 World Cup in Japan and Korea and England's recent warm-up games against Hungary and Jamaica show that Beckham is back to top form.
It took the modern science of fluid dynamics to understand exactly what happens in a swerving free kick. When a football moves through the air at low speed the air flow separates from its surface at characteristic points.
A sphere is not a very efficient aerodynamic shape and when this early separation occurs turbulence is created behind the ball. Turbulence always causes drag and if things remained like this a football would be a very sluggish object when kicked.
Above a certain speed - about 12 mph for a football - a miraculous thing happens. Turbulence begins to move backwards, producing a boundary layer - a layer of very thin flow very close to the ball's surface - and this has the effect of causing the air flow to cling more closely to the ball's surface.
Turbulence is reduced and the drag plummets. When this happens we say that the boundary layer is "tripped" and since most of footballs' actions such as kicking or throwing take place above the critical speed the ball can be moved around in a pacey manner.
When the ball rotates the boundary layer remains tripped but the air flow separation around the ball is distorted. Separation occurs earlier on the side rotating against the flow and later on the side rotating in the same sense as the flow. This causes a pressure differential and a deflecting force which is responsible for moving the ball in the air in a free kick.
It was not realised for many years that the boundary layer was tripped by surface "imperfections", in fact by the slight indentations where the ball's panels are joined together.
More panels means more seams and greater aerodynamic stability but panel designs have varied enormously over the years. For example, the familiar hexagon-pattern ball has 32, the classic English model 26.
The new World Cup ball, Adidas' Teamgeist, has only fourteen panels, however. Might this be the factor behind the disquiet expressed by Jens Lehmann? To see why this might be so we can take a look at a very simple object, the baseball which has only two panels separated by a continuous seam.
Baseball pitchers conventionally swerve the ball by throwing it with spin. This "curveball" is very similar to a swerving free kick and the rotating seam trips the boundary layer in much the same way as a football does.
Occasionally though, pitchers serve up a wicked delivery known as the "knuckleball". This bobs about randomly in flight and is very disconcerting for batters. It happens because pitchers throw the ball with very little spin. Then, as the limited seam rotates lazily in the air flow, it trips the boundary layer at certain points on the surface.
This causes an unpredictable deflection which may be completely reversed when another portion of the seam rotates into the critical position. The key, of course, is to ensure a very low spin rate, easier to achieve in a baseball throw than a kick. But this does occasionally happen in football and then the panel pattern can have a big influence on the trajectory.
The Teamgeist ball with its 14 panels is aerodynamically closer to the baseball than either English ball with 26 panels or the 32 panel hexagon pattern. So no problem when the Teamgeist spins but watch out if it is kicked with a very slow rotation rate.
Goalkeepers are often criticised for punching or palming away balls which are moving unpredictably, rather than catching them cleanly, but they can be forgiven if they are facing football's equivalent of a knuckleball.
There will be plenty of spectacular scoring free kicks at the forthcoming World Cup and elite performers like David Beckham, Thierry Henry and Ronaldinho must be itching to get the ball at their feet. Watch the slow motion replays for the tell-tale movement of the markings on the ball, the best indicator for revealing the kind of spin applied in the shot: sidespin for players like Henry and Ronaldinho but a vital component of topspin when Beckham unleashes his special delivery.
Most of all look for the rare occasions when the shot produces little or no rotation and the frantic efforts of the poor goalkeeper struggling to come to terms with the ball's chaotic, meandering flight path. We are in for an enthralling four weeks of football.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5048238.stm
In the early 1950s a young Brazilian midfielder nicknamed Didi invented the swerving free kick. He realised that a ball kicked with spin would deflect significantly in flight.
It is no accident that the technique emerged first in the South American game. The leather ball of that era was very prone to water absorption and the weight increase made it much less responsive to the aerodynamic forces caused by the spin. This was seldom a problem in the warm, dry conditions of Brazil but a serious drawback in Europe's winter game.
Not until a ball with a synthetic, impermeable surface was introduced in the 1960s could the technique catch on. European players then became as adept as their Brazilian masters and a long line of expert free-kickers stretches from Didi to the present day.
Few can forget David Beckham's marvellous last-gasp equaliser against Greece in 2001. This wickedly swerving and dipping shot took England to the 2002 World Cup in Japan and Korea and England's recent warm-up games against Hungary and Jamaica show that Beckham is back to top form.
It took the modern science of fluid dynamics to understand exactly what happens in a swerving free kick. When a football moves through the air at low speed the air flow separates from its surface at characteristic points.
A sphere is not a very efficient aerodynamic shape and when this early separation occurs turbulence is created behind the ball. Turbulence always causes drag and if things remained like this a football would be a very sluggish object when kicked.
Above a certain speed - about 12 mph for a football - a miraculous thing happens. Turbulence begins to move backwards, producing a boundary layer - a layer of very thin flow very close to the ball's surface - and this has the effect of causing the air flow to cling more closely to the ball's surface.
Turbulence is reduced and the drag plummets. When this happens we say that the boundary layer is "tripped" and since most of footballs' actions such as kicking or throwing take place above the critical speed the ball can be moved around in a pacey manner.
When the ball rotates the boundary layer remains tripped but the air flow separation around the ball is distorted. Separation occurs earlier on the side rotating against the flow and later on the side rotating in the same sense as the flow. This causes a pressure differential and a deflecting force which is responsible for moving the ball in the air in a free kick.
It was not realised for many years that the boundary layer was tripped by surface "imperfections", in fact by the slight indentations where the ball's panels are joined together.
More panels means more seams and greater aerodynamic stability but panel designs have varied enormously over the years. For example, the familiar hexagon-pattern ball has 32, the classic English model 26.
The new World Cup ball, Adidas' Teamgeist, has only fourteen panels, however. Might this be the factor behind the disquiet expressed by Jens Lehmann? To see why this might be so we can take a look at a very simple object, the baseball which has only two panels separated by a continuous seam.
Baseball pitchers conventionally swerve the ball by throwing it with spin. This "curveball" is very similar to a swerving free kick and the rotating seam trips the boundary layer in much the same way as a football does.
Occasionally though, pitchers serve up a wicked delivery known as the "knuckleball". This bobs about randomly in flight and is very disconcerting for batters. It happens because pitchers throw the ball with very little spin. Then, as the limited seam rotates lazily in the air flow, it trips the boundary layer at certain points on the surface.
This causes an unpredictable deflection which may be completely reversed when another portion of the seam rotates into the critical position. The key, of course, is to ensure a very low spin rate, easier to achieve in a baseball throw than a kick. But this does occasionally happen in football and then the panel pattern can have a big influence on the trajectory.
The Teamgeist ball with its 14 panels is aerodynamically closer to the baseball than either English ball with 26 panels or the 32 panel hexagon pattern. So no problem when the Teamgeist spins but watch out if it is kicked with a very slow rotation rate.
Goalkeepers are often criticised for punching or palming away balls which are moving unpredictably, rather than catching them cleanly, but they can be forgiven if they are facing football's equivalent of a knuckleball.
There will be plenty of spectacular scoring free kicks at the forthcoming World Cup and elite performers like David Beckham, Thierry Henry and Ronaldinho must be itching to get the ball at their feet. Watch the slow motion replays for the tell-tale movement of the markings on the ball, the best indicator for revealing the kind of spin applied in the shot: sidespin for players like Henry and Ronaldinho but a vital component of topspin when Beckham unleashes his special delivery.
Most of all look for the rare occasions when the shot produces little or no rotation and the frantic efforts of the poor goalkeeper struggling to come to terms with the ball's chaotic, meandering flight path. We are in for an enthralling four weeks of football.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5048238.stm
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
The Man Who Saved the World Finally Recognized
Sirens blaring, warning lights flashing, computer screens showing nuclear missiles on their way, one man in charge of a red button labeled “START” - that’s start a retaliatory strike — and a roomful of people at their terminals and switchboards waiting for him to push it. Sound like a typical Hollywood Cold War cliffhanger?
It was indeed just like in the movies, says the man who was poised over the red button over twenty years ago, except “in the movies, Hollywood specialists and directors can stretch a little situation into half an hour. In our case, from the time I made the decision to when it was all over, it was five minutes max.”
Stanislav Petrov was a Soviet army officer monitoring the satellite system for signs of a U.S. attack, the year was 1983, and his instructions, if he detected missiles targeting the Soviet Union, were to push the button and launch a counter-offensive.
He didn’t. Minutes later, no missiles came; months later, the frightening data across his monitor was determined to have been a system glitch. Today, the Association of World Citizens is calling him “the forgotten hero of our time,” a title befitting the man whose responsibility had been to start World War III.
http://www.mosnews.com/feature/2004/05/21/petrov.shtml
It was indeed just like in the movies, says the man who was poised over the red button over twenty years ago, except “in the movies, Hollywood specialists and directors can stretch a little situation into half an hour. In our case, from the time I made the decision to when it was all over, it was five minutes max.”
Stanislav Petrov was a Soviet army officer monitoring the satellite system for signs of a U.S. attack, the year was 1983, and his instructions, if he detected missiles targeting the Soviet Union, were to push the button and launch a counter-offensive.
He didn’t. Minutes later, no missiles came; months later, the frightening data across his monitor was determined to have been a system glitch. Today, the Association of World Citizens is calling him “the forgotten hero of our time,” a title befitting the man whose responsibility had been to start World War III.
http://www.mosnews.com/feature/2004/05/21/petrov.shtml
Friday, May 26, 2006
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
5-1
New Adidas Football
OMB match ball - £75.00
Match Ball of the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany. Adidas have been the Official Supplier of the World Cup Match Ball since the 1970 tournament held in Mexico. Thermal-bonded seamless surface gives more predictable flight and better touch. Unique pre-curved panel shape creates a perfectly round ball for greater accuracy. Graphics printed beneath a durable transparent film so they won't wear off over time. 100% polyurethane thermal-bonded outer with latex bladder. White/black/gold
WE SAY:
The world cup final itself will see the first appearance of the special gold version, which has been designed to colour co-ordinate perfectly with the German goalie's strip as it flashes past him from an England boot.
OMB match ball - £75.00
Match Ball of the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany. Adidas have been the Official Supplier of the World Cup Match Ball since the 1970 tournament held in Mexico. Thermal-bonded seamless surface gives more predictable flight and better touch. Unique pre-curved panel shape creates a perfectly round ball for greater accuracy. Graphics printed beneath a durable transparent film so they won't wear off over time. 100% polyurethane thermal-bonded outer with latex bladder. White/black/gold
WE SAY:
The world cup final itself will see the first appearance of the special gold version, which has been designed to colour co-ordinate perfectly with the German goalie's strip as it flashes past him from an England boot.
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Light's Most Exotic Trick Yet: So Fast it Goes ... Backwards?
In the past few years, scientists have found ways to make light go both faster and slower than its usual speed limit, but now researchers at the University of Rochester have published a paper today in Science on how they've gone one step further: pushing light into reverse. As if to defy common sense, the backward-moving pulse of light travels faster than light. Confused? You're not alone.
"I've had some of the world's experts scratching their heads over this one," says Robert Boyd, the M. Parker Givens Professor of Optics at the University of Rochester. "Theory predicted that we could send light backwards, but nobody knew if the theory would hold up or even if it could be observed in laboratory conditions."
Boyd recently showed how he can slow down a pulse of light to slower than an airplane, or speed it up faster than its breakneck pace, using exotic techniques and materials. But he's now taken what was once just a mathematical oddity—negative speed—and shown it working in the real world.
"It's weird stuff," says Boyd. "We sent a pulse through an optical fiber, and before its peak even entered the fiber, it was exiting the other end. Through experiments we were able to see that the pulse inside the fiber was actually moving backward, linking the input and output pulses."
So, wouldn't Einstein shake a finger at all these strange goings-on? After all, this seems to violate Einstein's sacred tenet that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.
"Einstein said information can't travel faster than light, and in this case, as with all fast-light experiments, no information is truly moving faster than light," says Boyd. "The pulse of light is shaped like a hump with a peak and long leading and trailing edges. The leading edge carries with it all the information about the pulse and enters the fiber first. By the time the peak enters the fiber, the leading edge is already well ahead, exiting. From the information in that leading edge, the fiber essentially 'reconstructs' the pulse at the far end, sending one version out the fiber, and another backward toward the beginning of the fiber."
Boyd is already working on ways to see what will happen if he can design a pulse without a leading edge. Einstein says the entire faster-than-light and reverse-light phenomena will disappear. Boyd is eager to put Einstein to the test.
So How Does Light Go Backwards?
Boyd, along with Rochester graduate students George M. Gehring and Aaron Schweinsberg, and undergraduates Christopher Barsi of Manhattan College and Natalie Kostinski of the University of Michigan, sent a burst of laser light through an optical fiber that had been laced with the element erbium. As the pulse exited the laser, it was split into two. One pulse went into the erbium fiber and the second traveled along undisturbed as a reference. The peak of the pulse emerged from the other end of the fiber before the peak entered the front of the fiber, and well ahead of the peak of the reference pulse.
But to find out if the pulse was truly traveling backward within the fiber, Boyd and his students had to cut back the fiber every few inches and re-measure the pulse peaks when they exited each pared-back section of the fiber. By arranging that data and playing it back in a time sequence, Boyd was able to depict, for the first time, that the pulse of light was moving backward within the fiber.
To understand how light's speed can be manipulated, think of a funhouse mirror that makes you look fatter. As you first walk by the mirror, you look normal, but as you pass the curved portion in the center, your reflection stretches, with the far edge seeming to leap ahead of you (the reference walker) for a moment. In the same way, a pulse of light fired through special materials moves at normal speed until it hits the substance, where it is stretched out to reach and exit the material's other side [See "fast light" animation].
Conversely, if the funhouse mirror were the kind that made you look skinny, your reflection would appear to suddenly squish together, with the leading edge of your reflection slowing as you passed the curved section. Similarly, a light pulse can be made to contract and slow inside a material, exiting the other side much later than it naturally would [See "slow light" animation].
To visualize Boyd's reverse-traveling light pulse, replace the mirror with a big-screen TV and video camera. As you may have noticed when passing such a display in an electronics store window, as you walk past the camera, your on-screen image appears on the far side of the TV. It walks toward you, passes you in the middle, and continues moving in the opposite direction until it exits the other side of the screen.
A negative-speed pulse of light acts much the same way. As the pulse enters the material, a second pulse appears on the far end of the fiber and flows backward. The reversed pulse not only propagates backward, but it releases a forward pulse out the far end of the fiber. In this way, the pulse that enters the front of the fiber appears out the end almost instantly, apparently traveling faster than the regular speed of light. To use the TV analogy again—it's as if you walked by the shop window, saw your image stepping toward you from the opposite edge of the TV screen, and that TV image of you created a clone at that far edge, walking in the same direction as you, several paces ahead [See "backward light" animation].
"I know this all sounds weird, but this is the way the world works," says Boyd.
Source: University of Rochester, by Jonathan Sherwood
"I've had some of the world's experts scratching their heads over this one," says Robert Boyd, the M. Parker Givens Professor of Optics at the University of Rochester. "Theory predicted that we could send light backwards, but nobody knew if the theory would hold up or even if it could be observed in laboratory conditions."
Boyd recently showed how he can slow down a pulse of light to slower than an airplane, or speed it up faster than its breakneck pace, using exotic techniques and materials. But he's now taken what was once just a mathematical oddity—negative speed—and shown it working in the real world.
"It's weird stuff," says Boyd. "We sent a pulse through an optical fiber, and before its peak even entered the fiber, it was exiting the other end. Through experiments we were able to see that the pulse inside the fiber was actually moving backward, linking the input and output pulses."
So, wouldn't Einstein shake a finger at all these strange goings-on? After all, this seems to violate Einstein's sacred tenet that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.
"Einstein said information can't travel faster than light, and in this case, as with all fast-light experiments, no information is truly moving faster than light," says Boyd. "The pulse of light is shaped like a hump with a peak and long leading and trailing edges. The leading edge carries with it all the information about the pulse and enters the fiber first. By the time the peak enters the fiber, the leading edge is already well ahead, exiting. From the information in that leading edge, the fiber essentially 'reconstructs' the pulse at the far end, sending one version out the fiber, and another backward toward the beginning of the fiber."
Boyd is already working on ways to see what will happen if he can design a pulse without a leading edge. Einstein says the entire faster-than-light and reverse-light phenomena will disappear. Boyd is eager to put Einstein to the test.
So How Does Light Go Backwards?
Boyd, along with Rochester graduate students George M. Gehring and Aaron Schweinsberg, and undergraduates Christopher Barsi of Manhattan College and Natalie Kostinski of the University of Michigan, sent a burst of laser light through an optical fiber that had been laced with the element erbium. As the pulse exited the laser, it was split into two. One pulse went into the erbium fiber and the second traveled along undisturbed as a reference. The peak of the pulse emerged from the other end of the fiber before the peak entered the front of the fiber, and well ahead of the peak of the reference pulse.
But to find out if the pulse was truly traveling backward within the fiber, Boyd and his students had to cut back the fiber every few inches and re-measure the pulse peaks when they exited each pared-back section of the fiber. By arranging that data and playing it back in a time sequence, Boyd was able to depict, for the first time, that the pulse of light was moving backward within the fiber.
To understand how light's speed can be manipulated, think of a funhouse mirror that makes you look fatter. As you first walk by the mirror, you look normal, but as you pass the curved portion in the center, your reflection stretches, with the far edge seeming to leap ahead of you (the reference walker) for a moment. In the same way, a pulse of light fired through special materials moves at normal speed until it hits the substance, where it is stretched out to reach and exit the material's other side [See "fast light" animation].
Conversely, if the funhouse mirror were the kind that made you look skinny, your reflection would appear to suddenly squish together, with the leading edge of your reflection slowing as you passed the curved section. Similarly, a light pulse can be made to contract and slow inside a material, exiting the other side much later than it naturally would [See "slow light" animation].
To visualize Boyd's reverse-traveling light pulse, replace the mirror with a big-screen TV and video camera. As you may have noticed when passing such a display in an electronics store window, as you walk past the camera, your on-screen image appears on the far side of the TV. It walks toward you, passes you in the middle, and continues moving in the opposite direction until it exits the other side of the screen.
A negative-speed pulse of light acts much the same way. As the pulse enters the material, a second pulse appears on the far end of the fiber and flows backward. The reversed pulse not only propagates backward, but it releases a forward pulse out the far end of the fiber. In this way, the pulse that enters the front of the fiber appears out the end almost instantly, apparently traveling faster than the regular speed of light. To use the TV analogy again—it's as if you walked by the shop window, saw your image stepping toward you from the opposite edge of the TV screen, and that TV image of you created a clone at that far edge, walking in the same direction as you, several paces ahead [See "backward light" animation].
"I know this all sounds weird, but this is the way the world works," says Boyd.
Source: University of Rochester, by Jonathan Sherwood
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Guy Goma - Congolese Data Cleansing Hero
Meet the BBC's guest editor (and other accidental heroes)
It was a moment of pure TV gold. When Guy Goma sat in the BBC's reception, he was waiting for a job interview. Minutes later he was broadcasting live to the nation, a hapless victim of mistaken identity. Here we salute those who, without ever meaning to, stumbled into the limelight - and brightened our lives.
One minute you're sitting in a reception area, then some bossy woman stands in front of you saying: "Come with me." The next thing you know, you're being led through a Kafkaesque nightmare of corridors. Perhaps he should have smelt a rat when they sat him in a chair and began applying make-up but, as he said: "I thought it was part of the job interview."
The story of Mr Goma is not one of stupidity. A cab driver who moved to England from the Congo in 2002, Mr Goma was at BBC TV Centre for an interview; he had hopes of becoming an IT assistant. He couldn't have known that the chap on the sofa nearby - also called Guy, in this case, Kewney - was an IT consultant waiting to go on live TV and be interviewed about the Apple vs Apple dispute. So when somebody said to Mr Goma, "Guy is it? About the IT thing?" he went along with it.
Viewers of the most-watched TV interchange in months - hundreds of thousands of people have now viewed the clip online - have reacted with a mixture of delight and sympathy at the key moment when the BBC's Karen Bowerman introduces Goma as "Guy Kewney, head of newswireless.net". Across his expressive face flit a dozen expressions in a second - mainly shock, fear, guilt, remorse, embarrassment - and guile as he wonders what to do next. But in the television age, you just keep going.
Ms Bowerman asked: "Do you think now more people will be downloading online?" to which she received the pithy reply: "Actually if you can walk everywhere you are going to see a lot of people downloading the internet and the website and everything they want. But I think it is much better for development to inform people what they want and to get the easy way and so faster if they are looking for it." After this the item was brought to a close.
The clip was posted on the internet and Mr Goma is now expected to make a fortune as an instant celebrity. "If he got himself a good agent, he could certainly have a good couple of months," said Max Clifford, hopefully. "If someone was creative, it could turn into a quarter of a million pounds this year."
John Walsh
Ed Devlin
Although reality television, as a genre, is still in its adolescence, the medium is already littered with the forgettable stories of those who try, and fail, to change their lives. But in 2001, a burger-flipper from Gateshead called Ed Devlin captured the imagination of the nation - or, at least, those who were watching Channel 4 one night at 9pm - with his humanity, humour and talent.
Faking It viewers witnessed Devlin's transformation, under the tutelage of Gordon Ramsay, from a grease-sodden snack-man to a producer of exquisite seared red mullet good enough to fool a trio of industry experts. It was a conversion Devlin was, at first, unwilling to undertake.
"It's like hell," he said. "I'm glad I don't have to live in his head. What's worse than death? Being Gordon Ramsay for the rest of your life."
But once Devlin had overcome his difficulties with the ranting, raving nature of the professional kitchen and his mentor, he soon warmed to his task. And, such was his skill in the final test - where he served his now famous red mullet followed by duck and then chocolate fondant - that the trio of judges declared his meal a "triumph".
Devlin had the chance, after his appearance on Faking It, to become a chef in his own right. David Laris, another of his trainers, offered him a job as a trainee chef at Mezzo, the restaurant where he works, but Devlin declined. He has returned to his original job, flipping burgers in the North-east, and only his friends are now in the enviable position of tasting his haute cuisine.
"I don't think I could cope with that environment day in and day out," Devlin admitted. "You're either cut out for it or your not."
Devlin may not have been cut out for life as a big time chef, but, for a few fleeting weeks, he made a convincing impression of someone who most certainly was.
Ed Caesar
Sarah Nelmes
According to Voltaire, at the end of the 18th century, 60 per cent of people caught smallpox and 20 per cent died from it. Whatever the exact figures, one thing is sure - smallpox was one of the biggest killers in Europe, and even those who survived the disease were left horribly disfigured.
So imagine the triumph when Edward Jenner, a rural British physician, made a discovery that would go a long way to eradicating smallpox for ever. And imagine his gratitude to the unintentional heroine of the piece - a milkmaid called Sarah Nelmes.
Jenner had heard tales that sounded promising - milkmaids never seemed to contract smallpox. The thinking was, that due to their continual proximity to cattle, and hence cowpox, milkmaids became immune to the deadlier virus.
In fact, some years before, a Dorset farmer had tried something similar. During the smallpox epidemic of 1774, Benjamin Jesty had, using a rudimentary version of the technique Jenner would employ, induced immunity in his wife and two children by exposing them to cowpox.
Jenner knew none of this when he decided to test his theories by scraping the cowpox lesions on a young milkmaid and injecting the material into an eight-year-old boy, James Phipps. Phipps, as expected, went on to develop cowpox but, when Jenner injected him with smallpox some weeks later, he was unaffected.
In 1798, Jenner published his results to the Royal Society and medical history was made. But none of it would have been possible without the pox-ridden sores of a girl called Sarah Nelmes. Phipps, too, played his part - but the award for best accidental hero in a supporting role goes to the source of all this lesion-producing nastiness: a cow called Blossom.
EC
Swampy
The A30 is not a place where many have made their name. But then Swampy never was one to follow the crowd. In 1997, the environmental protester (real name Daniel Hooper) became a celebrity when he retreated to a warren-like complex of tunnels underneath a proposed extension to the A-road between Exeter and Honiton. The police eventually unearthed Swampy's fellow protesters, but he continued to evade them for seven days.
After emerging to the glare of the sun and the TV cameras, he went on to become something of a figurehead for environmental extremism in the UK, appearing on the satirical news quiz Have I Got News For You, and, later, taking a leading role in the Manchester Airport protests.
But the dreadlocked earth monkey's love affair with the media was short-lived. The tabloids soon discovered that Swampy had decidedly middle-class parents from Buckinghamshire. His mother, Jill Hooper, said that she had opened a bottle of champagne when she heard the news that he had emerged safely from his hole in the ground - hardly the image of a stalwart eco-warrior.
As the newspapers began to investigate Swampy's past, the protester, as it were, went underground once more. He now refuses to talk to the media, although there are reports that he has become a father, and is still occasionally seen at the odd environmental rally. Even in his absence, Swampy remains something of a hate figure for the establishment. After a Greenpeace demonstration at the International Petroleum Exchange on 16 February 2005, one trader was heard to remark: "Sod off Swampy!" The trader's outburst is now a popular T-Shirt slogan.
EC
Derek Bond
When Guy Goma was assumed to be Guy Kewney, it led to nothing more than an embarrassing few minutes in front of the TV cameras. But for a 72-year-old grandfather from Bristol, the consequences of being a victim of mistaken identity were a lot more serious.
Derek Bond and his wife were on holiday in South Africa in early 2003 when he was arrested on the orders of the FBI on suspicion that he was Derek Lloyd Sykes, who was on its most-wanted list, accused of a telemarketing fraud. He was questioned for several hours but released, only to be held a few days later in a holiday village.
Bond, a charity worker and Rotarian, bore a resemblance to the police photograph of Sykes posted on the Interpol website. Both men wore glasses, and they shared the same birth date, but there were discrepancies in hair colour and height. While Sykes was said to have worn a toupee, Bond had receding hair.
After spending two weeks in a cell in a Durban police station - where he slept on the floor, had no electricity and had only a crossword for company - Bond was freed because of the publicity surrounding the case. The circulation of a picture of Sykes led to the arrest of a man of that name in Las Vegas. Bond later returned to his holiday destination, having accepted a free holiday from the KwaZulu-Natal tourist board.
He sought compensation from the United States - which, his solicitor said, had pledged it - but in 2005, Derek Bond learnt that none would be forthcoming.
Simon O'Hagan
Jason McElwain
It was a scene straight out of a Kevin Costner movie. At Greece Athena High School in Rochester, New York, an autistic teenager called Jason McElwain was allowed to hang out with the basketball team. He was passionate about the game, his dreams were full of hoops and slam-dunks, but his disability debarred him from being taken seriously as a player. The coach, Jim Johnson, allowed him to be "manager" so he could sit on the bench and wear the team jersey. Like a mascot.
During the last game of the season, Greece Athena were ahead and Johnson thought it would do no harm to let the disabled kid go on: he could hardly screw it up with just minutes to go. In fact, McElwain went bananas. He sank a three-point ball. Then another one. And another. The opposition looked on in amazement. His own team regarded him in wonder as he slammed in six winners in a row, then a two-point shot. When the fusillade was over, he'd scored 20 points in three minutes. The audience was in uproar. His team-mates carried him off the court.
A video of the event was put on the internet, picked up by CBS and beamed coast to coast, until the entire continent was watching the kid from Rochester who'd become the new all-American sports sensation. Inevitably, President Bush came a-calling for a photo-shoot with the boy. His mother, though, produced the most moving tribute: "This is the first moment Jason has ever succeeded [and could be] proud of himself. I look at autism as the Berlin Wall - and now he's cracked it."
A film of his exploits is now in production...
JW
Walter Wolfgang
Walter Wolfgang is an unlikely terrorist. An 83-year-old lifelong Labour activist whose German-Jewish family sent him to Britain to escape the Nazis in 1937, Wolfgang was the author of unremarkable political tracts such as 1956's "Tho' Cowards Flinch". Indeed, until the Labour Party Conference of 2005, Wolfgang was little more than a footnote in his party's history.
But all that changed when, during Jack Straw's speech in defence of the Iraq occupation, Wolfgang had the temerity to shout "Nonsense!" Despite his outburst's accuracy and concision, several security guardsbundled the frail old man out of the auditorium, confiscated his conference pass, and held him, briefly, under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act. And all in front of a national television crew.
The incident provoked a furore. The Labour Party, aware of itscostly PR own-goal, apologised for its "heavy-handedness". Tony Blair went even further, providing a "personal" apology on Radio 4's Today programme. Wolfgang's pass was returned to him the next day.
When Wolfgang reappeared for the rest of the conference, he did so to a hero's welcome. Parts of the Labour Party and anti-war sections of the media embraced him, and his plight was even championed on the front page of a national newspaper.
"When you have an international debate that does not deal adequately with the international issues of the day," explained Wolfgang, "the least you can do, if someone is talking nonsense, is say so."
EC
Ali Dia
In the Guy Goma story, the person who was really left with egg on their face was the BBC News 24 presenter Karen Bowerman. Football manager Graeme Souness knows exactly how she must feel.
Ten years ago, when Souness was the manager of Southampton, he had a player recommended to him called Ali Dia. As the recommendation was supposed to have come from Liberian great George Weah, who was then World and European footballer of the year and the star striker for AC Milan, Souness decided to give the player a try-out.
Ali Dia's new team-mates noticed that he was strangely reluctant to exert himself in training, but no one made a big issue of the fact. Weah wouldn't have recommended a dud, would he? And anyway, it was reasoned, Dia hadn't been at the club very long and was probably still acclimatising to the way the game was played in Europe.
Souness put Dia on the bench for a Premiership match against Leeds United. His chance came after half an hour when star player Matt Le Tissier was injured. Within seconds, Dia had a first opportunity for glory, with time and space to score from all of 12 yards. He kicked the ball straight at the goalkeeper. Come the second half it was obvious that Dia was completely out of his depth, and the substitute was substituted.
Further research revealed that Dia was a 30-year-old amateur from Senegal. He didn't set out to dupe Southampton, he was simply hoping to get a few games somewhere. He also claimed not to have realised his contact was passing himself off as Weah. Dia ended up taking a business degree iat the University of Northumbria, graduating in 2001.
Nick Harris
Jessica Lynch
Jessica Lynch never wanted to be an all-American hero, but America didn't listen. In 2003, when Lynch was a 19-year-old supply clerk with the 507th Maintenance Company, she was captured by Ba'athists near Nasiriyah in Iraq. Nine US soldiers were killed in the ambush.
A little over a week later, Lynch was rescued. It was the first reported successful rescue of a US prisoner of war since the Second World War, and the first ever of a female American soldier.
On her return, Lynch claimed she was being manipulated by the media, operating under the orders of the US government."They used me to symbolise all this stuff," she said. "I don't know why they filmed [my rescue] or why they say these things... I did not shoot, not a round. I went down praying to my knees. And that's the last I remember." Lynch also stated that, contrary to reports, she had been well treated by her Iraqi captors, a position since corroborated by foreign journalists.
To make matters worse, in November 2003 the pornographer Larry Flynt said that he had bought "fully nude" pictures of Lynch from fellow soldiers. Ultimately, Flynt decided not to publish them, deciding that Lynch was a "good kid". For Lynch, who had never sought the limelight, it was conclusive proof that being a hero was much more trouble than it was worth.
EC
The Tamworth Two
They were actually a brother and sister and only five months old, but that didn't stop the media calling them "Butch" and "Sundance" as the brace of Tamworth Ginger pigs evaded capture, outran the law and stole the hearts of the nation for a whole month in early 1998.
Butch was a sow and Sundance a boar and they weren't supposed to live very long in the leafy environs of Malmesbury, Wiltshire. On 8 January, their owner, Arnoldo Dijulio, took them in a lorry to the local Malmesbury abattoir, V&G Newman's. When they were unloaded from the truck, some sixth sense registered in their porcine cerebella that they were too young (and too pretty) to die, and they suddenly legged it.
They squeezed through a fence, bravely swam across the river Avon (their first experience of swimming) and took off into the fields and the dense woodland around Tetbury Hill. As police and farm hands searched for them, the story in all its full anthropomorphic glory broke in the papers and on TV.
"Butch" and "Sundance" became hot news in America and even Japan. Viewers were appalled to learn that the pigs' heartless owner, Mr Dijulio, planned to reduce them to pork chops the minute they were caught, no matter how adorable their adventures. A full-scale rescue mission began.
Reporters from Tokyo to Texas arrived to cover the story, while the UK newspaper offered Dijulio money to save the pigs. Questions were even asked in the House of Commons, when the Home Office minister George Howarth said there were striking similarities between the pigs' predicament and that of the Conservative Party.
After a week of careless freedom, the pigs were seen rootling for scraps in the garden of a Mr and Mrs Clark. Butch was captured. Sundance escaped. The next day he was cornered in a thicket and shot with a tranquiliser gun. Bizarrely, a tabloid newspaper bought the pigs from their owner in return for exclusive rights to their (five-month) life story. Eight years later, they're still going strong, living happily together in a Rare Breeds Farm in Ashford, Kent, probably still bragging to their bored neighbours about their great escape.
Their adventures have been dramatised as The Legend of the Tamworth Two, broadcast on Easter Monday 2004 with Kevin Whatley as the pigs' evil owner, renamed Wolf. The film used real pigs, their actions enhanced by computer technology.
The executive producer Sally Woodward rhapsodised about "how the story of Butch and Sundance became a legend, of how Britain once again took the underdog to their hearts - or in this instance, the under-pig - and in the process briefly made them the most famous fugitives in the world."
JW
Diana Gould
It was 1983 and the run-up to the general election. In the Nationwide studio at BBC TV Centre, Sue Lawley was hosting a live phone-in with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who was confidently looking forward to a second term of office for the Conservatives.
Then Diana Gould, a 58-year-old geography teacher from Cirencester, Gloucestershire, came on the air. Her disembodied voice asked: "Mrs Thatcher, why, when the Belgrano, the Argentinian battleship, was outside the exclusion zone and actually sailing away from the Falklands, why did you give the orders to sink it?"
Thatcher replied: "But it was not sailing away from the Falklands. It was in an area which was a danger to our ships."
Revealing a geography teacher's precision, Gould persisted. "It was on a bearing of 280 and it was already west of the Falklands, so I cannot see how you can say it was not sailing away from the Falklands.
"When it was sunk," said Thatcher, "It was a danger to our ships."
"No," said Gould firmly, "You just said at the beginning of your answer that it was not sailing away from the Falklands, and I am asking you to correct that statement."
Rattled, Thatcher blustered about the exclusion zone, but Gould came back with the "north of West" bearing and would not let it drop until Gould was faded out. She became an overnight heroine: the woman who stood up to Thatcher, virtually accusing her of a war crime. Thatcher was furious and relations between government and the BBC were soured through the 1980s.
JW
It was a moment of pure TV gold. When Guy Goma sat in the BBC's reception, he was waiting for a job interview. Minutes later he was broadcasting live to the nation, a hapless victim of mistaken identity. Here we salute those who, without ever meaning to, stumbled into the limelight - and brightened our lives.
One minute you're sitting in a reception area, then some bossy woman stands in front of you saying: "Come with me." The next thing you know, you're being led through a Kafkaesque nightmare of corridors. Perhaps he should have smelt a rat when they sat him in a chair and began applying make-up but, as he said: "I thought it was part of the job interview."
The story of Mr Goma is not one of stupidity. A cab driver who moved to England from the Congo in 2002, Mr Goma was at BBC TV Centre for an interview; he had hopes of becoming an IT assistant. He couldn't have known that the chap on the sofa nearby - also called Guy, in this case, Kewney - was an IT consultant waiting to go on live TV and be interviewed about the Apple vs Apple dispute. So when somebody said to Mr Goma, "Guy is it? About the IT thing?" he went along with it.
Viewers of the most-watched TV interchange in months - hundreds of thousands of people have now viewed the clip online - have reacted with a mixture of delight and sympathy at the key moment when the BBC's Karen Bowerman introduces Goma as "Guy Kewney, head of newswireless.net". Across his expressive face flit a dozen expressions in a second - mainly shock, fear, guilt, remorse, embarrassment - and guile as he wonders what to do next. But in the television age, you just keep going.
Ms Bowerman asked: "Do you think now more people will be downloading online?" to which she received the pithy reply: "Actually if you can walk everywhere you are going to see a lot of people downloading the internet and the website and everything they want. But I think it is much better for development to inform people what they want and to get the easy way and so faster if they are looking for it." After this the item was brought to a close.
The clip was posted on the internet and Mr Goma is now expected to make a fortune as an instant celebrity. "If he got himself a good agent, he could certainly have a good couple of months," said Max Clifford, hopefully. "If someone was creative, it could turn into a quarter of a million pounds this year."
John Walsh
Ed Devlin
Although reality television, as a genre, is still in its adolescence, the medium is already littered with the forgettable stories of those who try, and fail, to change their lives. But in 2001, a burger-flipper from Gateshead called Ed Devlin captured the imagination of the nation - or, at least, those who were watching Channel 4 one night at 9pm - with his humanity, humour and talent.
Faking It viewers witnessed Devlin's transformation, under the tutelage of Gordon Ramsay, from a grease-sodden snack-man to a producer of exquisite seared red mullet good enough to fool a trio of industry experts. It was a conversion Devlin was, at first, unwilling to undertake.
"It's like hell," he said. "I'm glad I don't have to live in his head. What's worse than death? Being Gordon Ramsay for the rest of your life."
But once Devlin had overcome his difficulties with the ranting, raving nature of the professional kitchen and his mentor, he soon warmed to his task. And, such was his skill in the final test - where he served his now famous red mullet followed by duck and then chocolate fondant - that the trio of judges declared his meal a "triumph".
Devlin had the chance, after his appearance on Faking It, to become a chef in his own right. David Laris, another of his trainers, offered him a job as a trainee chef at Mezzo, the restaurant where he works, but Devlin declined. He has returned to his original job, flipping burgers in the North-east, and only his friends are now in the enviable position of tasting his haute cuisine.
"I don't think I could cope with that environment day in and day out," Devlin admitted. "You're either cut out for it or your not."
Devlin may not have been cut out for life as a big time chef, but, for a few fleeting weeks, he made a convincing impression of someone who most certainly was.
Ed Caesar
Sarah Nelmes
According to Voltaire, at the end of the 18th century, 60 per cent of people caught smallpox and 20 per cent died from it. Whatever the exact figures, one thing is sure - smallpox was one of the biggest killers in Europe, and even those who survived the disease were left horribly disfigured.
So imagine the triumph when Edward Jenner, a rural British physician, made a discovery that would go a long way to eradicating smallpox for ever. And imagine his gratitude to the unintentional heroine of the piece - a milkmaid called Sarah Nelmes.
Jenner had heard tales that sounded promising - milkmaids never seemed to contract smallpox. The thinking was, that due to their continual proximity to cattle, and hence cowpox, milkmaids became immune to the deadlier virus.
In fact, some years before, a Dorset farmer had tried something similar. During the smallpox epidemic of 1774, Benjamin Jesty had, using a rudimentary version of the technique Jenner would employ, induced immunity in his wife and two children by exposing them to cowpox.
Jenner knew none of this when he decided to test his theories by scraping the cowpox lesions on a young milkmaid and injecting the material into an eight-year-old boy, James Phipps. Phipps, as expected, went on to develop cowpox but, when Jenner injected him with smallpox some weeks later, he was unaffected.
In 1798, Jenner published his results to the Royal Society and medical history was made. But none of it would have been possible without the pox-ridden sores of a girl called Sarah Nelmes. Phipps, too, played his part - but the award for best accidental hero in a supporting role goes to the source of all this lesion-producing nastiness: a cow called Blossom.
EC
Swampy
The A30 is not a place where many have made their name. But then Swampy never was one to follow the crowd. In 1997, the environmental protester (real name Daniel Hooper) became a celebrity when he retreated to a warren-like complex of tunnels underneath a proposed extension to the A-road between Exeter and Honiton. The police eventually unearthed Swampy's fellow protesters, but he continued to evade them for seven days.
After emerging to the glare of the sun and the TV cameras, he went on to become something of a figurehead for environmental extremism in the UK, appearing on the satirical news quiz Have I Got News For You, and, later, taking a leading role in the Manchester Airport protests.
But the dreadlocked earth monkey's love affair with the media was short-lived. The tabloids soon discovered that Swampy had decidedly middle-class parents from Buckinghamshire. His mother, Jill Hooper, said that she had opened a bottle of champagne when she heard the news that he had emerged safely from his hole in the ground - hardly the image of a stalwart eco-warrior.
As the newspapers began to investigate Swampy's past, the protester, as it were, went underground once more. He now refuses to talk to the media, although there are reports that he has become a father, and is still occasionally seen at the odd environmental rally. Even in his absence, Swampy remains something of a hate figure for the establishment. After a Greenpeace demonstration at the International Petroleum Exchange on 16 February 2005, one trader was heard to remark: "Sod off Swampy!" The trader's outburst is now a popular T-Shirt slogan.
EC
Derek Bond
When Guy Goma was assumed to be Guy Kewney, it led to nothing more than an embarrassing few minutes in front of the TV cameras. But for a 72-year-old grandfather from Bristol, the consequences of being a victim of mistaken identity were a lot more serious.
Derek Bond and his wife were on holiday in South Africa in early 2003 when he was arrested on the orders of the FBI on suspicion that he was Derek Lloyd Sykes, who was on its most-wanted list, accused of a telemarketing fraud. He was questioned for several hours but released, only to be held a few days later in a holiday village.
Bond, a charity worker and Rotarian, bore a resemblance to the police photograph of Sykes posted on the Interpol website. Both men wore glasses, and they shared the same birth date, but there were discrepancies in hair colour and height. While Sykes was said to have worn a toupee, Bond had receding hair.
After spending two weeks in a cell in a Durban police station - where he slept on the floor, had no electricity and had only a crossword for company - Bond was freed because of the publicity surrounding the case. The circulation of a picture of Sykes led to the arrest of a man of that name in Las Vegas. Bond later returned to his holiday destination, having accepted a free holiday from the KwaZulu-Natal tourist board.
He sought compensation from the United States - which, his solicitor said, had pledged it - but in 2005, Derek Bond learnt that none would be forthcoming.
Simon O'Hagan
Jason McElwain
It was a scene straight out of a Kevin Costner movie. At Greece Athena High School in Rochester, New York, an autistic teenager called Jason McElwain was allowed to hang out with the basketball team. He was passionate about the game, his dreams were full of hoops and slam-dunks, but his disability debarred him from being taken seriously as a player. The coach, Jim Johnson, allowed him to be "manager" so he could sit on the bench and wear the team jersey. Like a mascot.
During the last game of the season, Greece Athena were ahead and Johnson thought it would do no harm to let the disabled kid go on: he could hardly screw it up with just minutes to go. In fact, McElwain went bananas. He sank a three-point ball. Then another one. And another. The opposition looked on in amazement. His own team regarded him in wonder as he slammed in six winners in a row, then a two-point shot. When the fusillade was over, he'd scored 20 points in three minutes. The audience was in uproar. His team-mates carried him off the court.
A video of the event was put on the internet, picked up by CBS and beamed coast to coast, until the entire continent was watching the kid from Rochester who'd become the new all-American sports sensation. Inevitably, President Bush came a-calling for a photo-shoot with the boy. His mother, though, produced the most moving tribute: "This is the first moment Jason has ever succeeded [and could be] proud of himself. I look at autism as the Berlin Wall - and now he's cracked it."
A film of his exploits is now in production...
JW
Walter Wolfgang
Walter Wolfgang is an unlikely terrorist. An 83-year-old lifelong Labour activist whose German-Jewish family sent him to Britain to escape the Nazis in 1937, Wolfgang was the author of unremarkable political tracts such as 1956's "Tho' Cowards Flinch". Indeed, until the Labour Party Conference of 2005, Wolfgang was little more than a footnote in his party's history.
But all that changed when, during Jack Straw's speech in defence of the Iraq occupation, Wolfgang had the temerity to shout "Nonsense!" Despite his outburst's accuracy and concision, several security guardsbundled the frail old man out of the auditorium, confiscated his conference pass, and held him, briefly, under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act. And all in front of a national television crew.
The incident provoked a furore. The Labour Party, aware of itscostly PR own-goal, apologised for its "heavy-handedness". Tony Blair went even further, providing a "personal" apology on Radio 4's Today programme. Wolfgang's pass was returned to him the next day.
When Wolfgang reappeared for the rest of the conference, he did so to a hero's welcome. Parts of the Labour Party and anti-war sections of the media embraced him, and his plight was even championed on the front page of a national newspaper.
"When you have an international debate that does not deal adequately with the international issues of the day," explained Wolfgang, "the least you can do, if someone is talking nonsense, is say so."
EC
Ali Dia
In the Guy Goma story, the person who was really left with egg on their face was the BBC News 24 presenter Karen Bowerman. Football manager Graeme Souness knows exactly how she must feel.
Ten years ago, when Souness was the manager of Southampton, he had a player recommended to him called Ali Dia. As the recommendation was supposed to have come from Liberian great George Weah, who was then World and European footballer of the year and the star striker for AC Milan, Souness decided to give the player a try-out.
Ali Dia's new team-mates noticed that he was strangely reluctant to exert himself in training, but no one made a big issue of the fact. Weah wouldn't have recommended a dud, would he? And anyway, it was reasoned, Dia hadn't been at the club very long and was probably still acclimatising to the way the game was played in Europe.
Souness put Dia on the bench for a Premiership match against Leeds United. His chance came after half an hour when star player Matt Le Tissier was injured. Within seconds, Dia had a first opportunity for glory, with time and space to score from all of 12 yards. He kicked the ball straight at the goalkeeper. Come the second half it was obvious that Dia was completely out of his depth, and the substitute was substituted.
Further research revealed that Dia was a 30-year-old amateur from Senegal. He didn't set out to dupe Southampton, he was simply hoping to get a few games somewhere. He also claimed not to have realised his contact was passing himself off as Weah. Dia ended up taking a business degree iat the University of Northumbria, graduating in 2001.
Nick Harris
Jessica Lynch
Jessica Lynch never wanted to be an all-American hero, but America didn't listen. In 2003, when Lynch was a 19-year-old supply clerk with the 507th Maintenance Company, she was captured by Ba'athists near Nasiriyah in Iraq. Nine US soldiers were killed in the ambush.
A little over a week later, Lynch was rescued. It was the first reported successful rescue of a US prisoner of war since the Second World War, and the first ever of a female American soldier.
On her return, Lynch claimed she was being manipulated by the media, operating under the orders of the US government."They used me to symbolise all this stuff," she said. "I don't know why they filmed [my rescue] or why they say these things... I did not shoot, not a round. I went down praying to my knees. And that's the last I remember." Lynch also stated that, contrary to reports, she had been well treated by her Iraqi captors, a position since corroborated by foreign journalists.
To make matters worse, in November 2003 the pornographer Larry Flynt said that he had bought "fully nude" pictures of Lynch from fellow soldiers. Ultimately, Flynt decided not to publish them, deciding that Lynch was a "good kid". For Lynch, who had never sought the limelight, it was conclusive proof that being a hero was much more trouble than it was worth.
EC
The Tamworth Two
They were actually a brother and sister and only five months old, but that didn't stop the media calling them "Butch" and "Sundance" as the brace of Tamworth Ginger pigs evaded capture, outran the law and stole the hearts of the nation for a whole month in early 1998.
Butch was a sow and Sundance a boar and they weren't supposed to live very long in the leafy environs of Malmesbury, Wiltshire. On 8 January, their owner, Arnoldo Dijulio, took them in a lorry to the local Malmesbury abattoir, V&G Newman's. When they were unloaded from the truck, some sixth sense registered in their porcine cerebella that they were too young (and too pretty) to die, and they suddenly legged it.
They squeezed through a fence, bravely swam across the river Avon (their first experience of swimming) and took off into the fields and the dense woodland around Tetbury Hill. As police and farm hands searched for them, the story in all its full anthropomorphic glory broke in the papers and on TV.
"Butch" and "Sundance" became hot news in America and even Japan. Viewers were appalled to learn that the pigs' heartless owner, Mr Dijulio, planned to reduce them to pork chops the minute they were caught, no matter how adorable their adventures. A full-scale rescue mission began.
Reporters from Tokyo to Texas arrived to cover the story, while the UK newspaper offered Dijulio money to save the pigs. Questions were even asked in the House of Commons, when the Home Office minister George Howarth said there were striking similarities between the pigs' predicament and that of the Conservative Party.
After a week of careless freedom, the pigs were seen rootling for scraps in the garden of a Mr and Mrs Clark. Butch was captured. Sundance escaped. The next day he was cornered in a thicket and shot with a tranquiliser gun. Bizarrely, a tabloid newspaper bought the pigs from their owner in return for exclusive rights to their (five-month) life story. Eight years later, they're still going strong, living happily together in a Rare Breeds Farm in Ashford, Kent, probably still bragging to their bored neighbours about their great escape.
Their adventures have been dramatised as The Legend of the Tamworth Two, broadcast on Easter Monday 2004 with Kevin Whatley as the pigs' evil owner, renamed Wolf. The film used real pigs, their actions enhanced by computer technology.
The executive producer Sally Woodward rhapsodised about "how the story of Butch and Sundance became a legend, of how Britain once again took the underdog to their hearts - or in this instance, the under-pig - and in the process briefly made them the most famous fugitives in the world."
JW
Diana Gould
It was 1983 and the run-up to the general election. In the Nationwide studio at BBC TV Centre, Sue Lawley was hosting a live phone-in with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who was confidently looking forward to a second term of office for the Conservatives.
Then Diana Gould, a 58-year-old geography teacher from Cirencester, Gloucestershire, came on the air. Her disembodied voice asked: "Mrs Thatcher, why, when the Belgrano, the Argentinian battleship, was outside the exclusion zone and actually sailing away from the Falklands, why did you give the orders to sink it?"
Thatcher replied: "But it was not sailing away from the Falklands. It was in an area which was a danger to our ships."
Revealing a geography teacher's precision, Gould persisted. "It was on a bearing of 280 and it was already west of the Falklands, so I cannot see how you can say it was not sailing away from the Falklands.
"When it was sunk," said Thatcher, "It was a danger to our ships."
"No," said Gould firmly, "You just said at the beginning of your answer that it was not sailing away from the Falklands, and I am asking you to correct that statement."
Rattled, Thatcher blustered about the exclusion zone, but Gould came back with the "north of West" bearing and would not let it drop until Gould was faded out. She became an overnight heroine: the woman who stood up to Thatcher, virtually accusing her of a war crime. Thatcher was furious and relations between government and the BBC were soured through the 1980s.
JW
Tard Metal Hedz
"Airheads" meets "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" meets "I am Sam"
http://www.dumpalink.com/media/1147804177/Party_Animals
I am going straight to hell.
http://www.dumpalink.com/media/1147804177/Party_Animals
I am going straight to hell.
US releases 9/11 Pentagon video
The US justice department has released the first video of the plane crashing into the Pentagon on 11 September 2001.
American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the US military headquarters, killing 184 people, after it was hijacked as part of an al-Qaeda plot.
The release of the video, taken from a Pentagon security camera, comes after a Freedom of Information Act request by legal watchdog Judicial Watch.
The group said it hoped to dispel conspiracy theories about the crash.
"Finally, we hope that this video will put to rest the conspiracy theories involving American Airlines Flight 77," president Tom Fitton said.
Some theorists have suggested the aircraft was shot down in flight, and that the Pentagon was struck by a missile.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4987716.stm
>>Tommy Says: Still looks like a missile to me.
American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the US military headquarters, killing 184 people, after it was hijacked as part of an al-Qaeda plot.
The release of the video, taken from a Pentagon security camera, comes after a Freedom of Information Act request by legal watchdog Judicial Watch.
The group said it hoped to dispel conspiracy theories about the crash.
"Finally, we hope that this video will put to rest the conspiracy theories involving American Airlines Flight 77," president Tom Fitton said.
Some theorists have suggested the aircraft was shot down in flight, and that the Pentagon was struck by a missile.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4987716.stm
>>Tommy Says: Still looks like a missile to me.
NY releases 9/11 emergency phone calls
New York has released partial tapes of emergency calls from the World Trade Center on 9/11 for the first time.
Nearly nine hours of calls show the responses of emergency operators to callers amid the chaos of the attacks.
The words were released following a lawsuit filed by the New York Times and a group of victims' relatives.
In the video that accompanied this story on the BBC News website (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4866208.stm) we hear the voice of Christopher Handley who made an emergency call that morning, and said at the end of his conversation, "...alright, please hurry"
It seemed to give his father immense comfort to hear his son's last words, and even more apparent joy to hear that his son used the word "please". As his father says, "And it's nice that he said please"
I think that's a beautiful thing.
Nearly nine hours of calls show the responses of emergency operators to callers amid the chaos of the attacks.
The words were released following a lawsuit filed by the New York Times and a group of victims' relatives.
In the video that accompanied this story on the BBC News website (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4866208.stm) we hear the voice of Christopher Handley who made an emergency call that morning, and said at the end of his conversation, "...alright, please hurry"
It seemed to give his father immense comfort to hear his son's last words, and even more apparent joy to hear that his son used the word "please". As his father says, "And it's nice that he said please"
I think that's a beautiful thing.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Knock, knock, hello? ARE YOU THERE? ANSWER ME DAMMIT!
Most times I would write back, sometimes I do not if I have nothing to say or if I am in the middle of something. I don't think I am unusual in this, it seems to be how most people behave. Text messages and IM conversations are not synchronous communications. For example I would not simply ignore somebody if they were standing in front of me or talking to me on the phone. But that's the beauty of the asynchronous text and IM messages, it allows that.
Things to say when you're bored at work
1. I can see your point, but I still think you're full of s .
2. I don't know what your problem is, but I'll bet it's hard to
pronounce.
3. How about never? Is never good for you?
4. I see you've set aside this special time to humiliate yourself in
public.
5. I'm really easy to get along with once you people learn to see it my
way.
6. I'll try being nicer if you'll try being smarter.
7. I'm out of my mind, but feel free to leave a message.
8. I don't work here. I'm a consultant.
9. It sounds like English, but I can't understand a damn word you're
saying.
10. Ahhh... I see the screw-up fairy has visited us again...
11. I like you. You remind me of myself when I was young and stupid.
12. You are validating my inherent mistrust of strangers.
13. I have plenty of talent and vision; I just don't give a damn.
14. I'm already visualizing the duct tape over your mouth.
15. I will always cherish the initial misconceptions I had about you.
16. Thank you. We're all refreshed and challenged by your unique point
of view.
17. The fact that no one understands you doesn't mean you're an artist.
18. Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
19. What am I? Flypaper for freaks!
20. I'm not being rude. You're just insignificant.
21. It's a thankless job, but I've got a lot of Karma to burn off.
22. Yes, I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial.
23. And your crybaby whiny-assed opinion would be...?
24. Do I look like a people person?
25. This isn't an office. It's Hell with fluorescent lighting.
26. I started out with nothing & still have most of it left.
27. Sarcasm is just one more service we offer.
28. If I throw a stick, will you leave?
29. Errors have been made. Others will be blamed.
30. Whatever kind of look you were going for, you missed.
31. I'm trying to imagine you with a personality.
32. A cubicle is just a padded cell without a door.
33. Can I trade this job for what's behind door #1?
34. Too many freaks, not enough circuses.
35. Nice perfume. Must you marinate in it?
36. Chaos, panic, & disorder - my work here is done.
37. How do I set a laser printer to stun?
38. I thought I wanted a career; turns out I just wanted a salary.
39. Who lit the fuse on your tampon?
40. Oh I get it... like humour... but different
2. I don't know what your problem is, but I'll bet it's hard to
pronounce.
3. How about never? Is never good for you?
4. I see you've set aside this special time to humiliate yourself in
public.
5. I'm really easy to get along with once you people learn to see it my
way.
6. I'll try being nicer if you'll try being smarter.
7. I'm out of my mind, but feel free to leave a message.
8. I don't work here. I'm a consultant.
9. It sounds like English, but I can't understand a damn word you're
saying.
10. Ahhh... I see the screw-up fairy has visited us again...
11. I like you. You remind me of myself when I was young and stupid.
12. You are validating my inherent mistrust of strangers.
13. I have plenty of talent and vision; I just don't give a damn.
14. I'm already visualizing the duct tape over your mouth.
15. I will always cherish the initial misconceptions I had about you.
16. Thank you. We're all refreshed and challenged by your unique point
of view.
17. The fact that no one understands you doesn't mean you're an artist.
18. Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
19. What am I? Flypaper for freaks!
20. I'm not being rude. You're just insignificant.
21. It's a thankless job, but I've got a lot of Karma to burn off.
22. Yes, I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial.
23. And your crybaby whiny-assed opinion would be...?
24. Do I look like a people person?
25. This isn't an office. It's Hell with fluorescent lighting.
26. I started out with nothing & still have most of it left.
27. Sarcasm is just one more service we offer.
28. If I throw a stick, will you leave?
29. Errors have been made. Others will be blamed.
30. Whatever kind of look you were going for, you missed.
31. I'm trying to imagine you with a personality.
32. A cubicle is just a padded cell without a door.
33. Can I trade this job for what's behind door #1?
34. Too many freaks, not enough circuses.
35. Nice perfume. Must you marinate in it?
36. Chaos, panic, & disorder - my work here is done.
37. How do I set a laser printer to stun?
38. I thought I wanted a career; turns out I just wanted a salary.
39. Who lit the fuse on your tampon?
40. Oh I get it... like humour... but different
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Word of the Day
turgid \TUR-jid\, adjective:
1. Swollen, bloated, puffed up; as, "a turgid limb."
2. Swelling in style or language; bombastic, pompous; as, "a turgid style of speaking."
The famous Faulkner style was more than many could put up with. Its marathon sentences, its peculiar words used peculiarly, its turgid incoherence and its thick viscosity repelled.
-- Orville Prescott, "A Literary Personality", New York Times, July 7, 1962
Brown's novels are filled with the rigged episodes of melodrama and the turgid prose that passed for elegance among the literary circles in America before Irving and Hawthorne arrived on the scene.
-- "The Battle of the Books", New York Times, July 10, 1988
Many young Libyans prefer to get their news from the Internet rather than the turgid evening news programs filled with slogans and cliches.
-- Amany Radwan, "The Weird, Wired World of Colonel Ghaddafi", Time, February 6, 2001
The arm being bound, and the veins made turgid, and the valves prominent, as before, apply the thumb or finger over a vein in the situation of one of the valves in such a way as to compress it, and prevent any blood from passing upwards from the hand.
-- William Harvey, On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals
Turgid derives from Latin turgidus, from turgere, to swell.
1. Swollen, bloated, puffed up; as, "a turgid limb."
2. Swelling in style or language; bombastic, pompous; as, "a turgid style of speaking."
The famous Faulkner style was more than many could put up with. Its marathon sentences, its peculiar words used peculiarly, its turgid incoherence and its thick viscosity repelled.
-- Orville Prescott, "A Literary Personality", New York Times, July 7, 1962
Brown's novels are filled with the rigged episodes of melodrama and the turgid prose that passed for elegance among the literary circles in America before Irving and Hawthorne arrived on the scene.
-- "The Battle of the Books", New York Times, July 10, 1988
Many young Libyans prefer to get their news from the Internet rather than the turgid evening news programs filled with slogans and cliches.
-- Amany Radwan, "The Weird, Wired World of Colonel Ghaddafi", Time, February 6, 2001
The arm being bound, and the veins made turgid, and the valves prominent, as before, apply the thumb or finger over a vein in the situation of one of the valves in such a way as to compress it, and prevent any blood from passing upwards from the hand.
-- William Harvey, On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals
Turgid derives from Latin turgidus, from turgere, to swell.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Word of the Day
otiose \OH-shee-ohs; OH-tee-\, adjective:
1. Ineffective; futile.
2. Being at leisure; lazy; indolent; idle.
3. Of no use.
Mr. Federspiel's surreal flourishes and commentaries straddle the line between interesting and otiose. Most of the surrealism is pretty but pointless.
-- D. F. Wallace, "The Million-Dollar Tattoo", New York Times, May 5, 1991
Although the wild outer movements and the angular Minuet can take such clockwork precision, the Andante, with its obsessive, claustrophobic dialogues between strings and bassoons, seemed sluggish and otiose.
-- Tim Ashley, "VPO/Maazel", The Guardian, April 16, 2002
The umlaut he affected, which made no difference to the pronunciation of his name, was as otiose as a pair of strategically positioned beauty spots.
-- Peter Conrad, "Hidden shallows", New Statesman, October 14, 2002
One hazard for religions in which all professional intermediaries are dispensed with, and in which the individual is enjoined to 'work out your own salvation' and is regarded as fully capable of doing so, is that belief and practice become independent of formal organized structures which may in such a context come to be perceived as otiose.
-- Lorne L. Dawson, "The Cultural Significance of New Religious Movements: The Case of Soka Gakkai", Sociology of Religion, Fall 2001
Otiose is from Latin otiosus, "idle, at leisure," from otium, "leisure."
1. Ineffective; futile.
2. Being at leisure; lazy; indolent; idle.
3. Of no use.
Mr. Federspiel's surreal flourishes and commentaries straddle the line between interesting and otiose. Most of the surrealism is pretty but pointless.
-- D. F. Wallace, "The Million-Dollar Tattoo", New York Times, May 5, 1991
Although the wild outer movements and the angular Minuet can take such clockwork precision, the Andante, with its obsessive, claustrophobic dialogues between strings and bassoons, seemed sluggish and otiose.
-- Tim Ashley, "VPO/Maazel", The Guardian, April 16, 2002
The umlaut he affected, which made no difference to the pronunciation of his name, was as otiose as a pair of strategically positioned beauty spots.
-- Peter Conrad, "Hidden shallows", New Statesman, October 14, 2002
One hazard for religions in which all professional intermediaries are dispensed with, and in which the individual is enjoined to 'work out your own salvation' and is regarded as fully capable of doing so, is that belief and practice become independent of formal organized structures which may in such a context come to be perceived as otiose.
-- Lorne L. Dawson, "The Cultural Significance of New Religious Movements: The Case of Soka Gakkai", Sociology of Religion, Fall 2001
Otiose is from Latin otiosus, "idle, at leisure," from otium, "leisure."
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Word Of The Day
harridan \HAIR-uh-din\, noun:
A worn-out strumpet; a vixenish woman; a hag.
With the insight of hindsight, I'd have liked to have been able to protect my mother from the domineering old harridan, with her rough tongue and primitive sense of justice, but I did not see it like that, then.
-- Angela Carter, Shaking a Leg
Whatever compassion we may feel towards Seraphie, charged with managing the Beyle household and provided with little in the way of emotional or material recompense, evidence scarcely softens Stendhal's portrait of an ignorant, vindictive, mean-spirited harridan.
-- Jonathan Keates, Stendhal
Even before that, for the first year and a half, as reports and rumors seeped out that she was a harridan, yelling and throwing things at subordinates as well as at her husband and his aides, she would often think to herself, "What's going on here? Why are some of these people slandering me or my husband on a daily basis? Why is all this stuff happening?"
-- David Maraniss, "First Lady of Paradox", Washington Post, January 15, 1995
As the vulgar, scornful, desperate Martha, Miss Hagen makes a tormented harridan horrifyingly believable.
-- Howard Taubman, "The Theater: Albee's 'Who's Afraid'", New York Times, October 15, 1962
Harridan probably comes from French haridelle, "a worn-out horse, a gaunt woman."
A worn-out strumpet; a vixenish woman; a hag.
With the insight of hindsight, I'd have liked to have been able to protect my mother from the domineering old harridan, with her rough tongue and primitive sense of justice, but I did not see it like that, then.
-- Angela Carter, Shaking a Leg
Whatever compassion we may feel towards Seraphie, charged with managing the Beyle household and provided with little in the way of emotional or material recompense, evidence scarcely softens Stendhal's portrait of an ignorant, vindictive, mean-spirited harridan.
-- Jonathan Keates, Stendhal
Even before that, for the first year and a half, as reports and rumors seeped out that she was a harridan, yelling and throwing things at subordinates as well as at her husband and his aides, she would often think to herself, "What's going on here? Why are some of these people slandering me or my husband on a daily basis? Why is all this stuff happening?"
-- David Maraniss, "First Lady of Paradox", Washington Post, January 15, 1995
As the vulgar, scornful, desperate Martha, Miss Hagen makes a tormented harridan horrifyingly believable.
-- Howard Taubman, "The Theater: Albee's 'Who's Afraid'", New York Times, October 15, 1962
Harridan probably comes from French haridelle, "a worn-out horse, a gaunt woman."
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Monday, April 10, 2006
New words for today
Gynast
Like a cosmonaut but an explorer of the vagina.
Emerican
An electronic representation of a resident of north america, complete with opinions, loud noises and a propensity for invading your country.
Like a cosmonaut but an explorer of the vagina.
Emerican
An electronic representation of a resident of north america, complete with opinions, loud noises and a propensity for invading your country.
Big Titters
I am working from home today and just saw and advert for a UK TV Gold weekend of carry on movies with the tag line "A Weekend of Big Titters".
Heh
Heh
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Pouring Ketchup - The full technical explanation
Are you one of those people who taps at the bottom of an inverted ketchup bottle, waiting in frustration for the sauce to pour? I am speaking of traditional ketchup bottles, not squeeze tubes, wide-mouth jars, or bottles designed to stand on their heads. Have you ever wondered if there is a right way to do it – a way that works, and makes scientific sense?
Yes, folks, there is a right way to do it, and it does make sense. Here is how, and why:
First, let's look at the most common wrong way to do it. Remember the old "anticipation" commercials from the 1970s? The bottle is held upside down, then the hungry diner waits... and waits. Most people I know attempt to improve on this by tapping the bottom (that is, the upper end when the bottle is upside-down). That may help, but not necessarily for the reasons you imagine.
Ketchup can be regarded as a highly viscous liquid, or a thixotropic (flows under pressure) solid. Neither term is exactly correct, but the problem is not what to call it. The problem is how to get the ketchup out of the bottle, in measured quantities, without making a mess.
In order for the ketchup to emerge, air must enter the bottle. With an ordinary liquid such as water, a very narrow (dropper) neck would prevent the displacement of water by, air, but even a ketchup bottle has a neck that is much to thick to prevent water escaping, and air rising in, when the bottle is inverted. In the case of ketchup, however, the sauce is thick enough that the gravitational pull on the ketchup does not suffice.
Ketchup will certainly fall, of its own accord. In the case of a partly empty bottle, tapping the base can expel some ketchup without the need for air to enter. This is because the air that is already inside the bottle can slightly de-pressurize. Tapping the inverted base may slightly liquify the ketchup, enough for some to drop out even though no air is taken in. But in a full bottle, the ketchup must move to the side so that the air can rise through the neck at the same time that the ketchup escapes. The weight of ketchup is not great enough for this to happen in most circumstances.
So, in the case of the full ketchup bottle, the problem can be divided into two issues: (1) How can I get the ketchup to move aside, so that air can enter on the opposite side? (2) How can I give the ketchup "extra weight," so that it will be pulled out of the bottle faster?
The first issue is solved by holding the bottle sideways, with a slight downward tilt, rather than upside-down. In this position, the ketchup naturally is pulled to the lower side of the neck, and the air naturally will channel along the higher side of the neck. Anyone who pours an ordinary liquid from a bottle knows this. Yet it is amazing how the experience is forgotten when it comes to ketchup.
Merely holding the bottle in the correct position is not very effective. It is necessary to "increase the weight" of the ketchup by applying some G-force. This can be done by making a fist, and tapping the bottle downwards against the fist, to bring the bottle to an abrupt halt. Don't hurt yourself! If your hands are delicate, you may try some other method of applying an abrupt stop to the bottle, provided that the stop is not rigid or fragile, and that you mind where the ketchup is going to emerge. Striking the bottle at the upper side of the neck is much less effective, since it applies the G-force in the wrong direction.
Tapping the inverted bottom of a full bottle – the customary way – is counterproductive. If you do that, most of the G-force will tend to keep the ketchup in the bottle. But now you know the right way, thanks to the amazing power of the Internet to unleash this kind of information. Of course, it would be possible to print instructions on the side of the ketchup bottle, but you wouldn't read them if they were there, now would you?
Yes, folks, there is a right way to do it, and it does make sense. Here is how, and why:
First, let's look at the most common wrong way to do it. Remember the old "anticipation" commercials from the 1970s? The bottle is held upside down, then the hungry diner waits... and waits. Most people I know attempt to improve on this by tapping the bottom (that is, the upper end when the bottle is upside-down). That may help, but not necessarily for the reasons you imagine.
Ketchup can be regarded as a highly viscous liquid, or a thixotropic (flows under pressure) solid. Neither term is exactly correct, but the problem is not what to call it. The problem is how to get the ketchup out of the bottle, in measured quantities, without making a mess.
In order for the ketchup to emerge, air must enter the bottle. With an ordinary liquid such as water, a very narrow (dropper) neck would prevent the displacement of water by, air, but even a ketchup bottle has a neck that is much to thick to prevent water escaping, and air rising in, when the bottle is inverted. In the case of ketchup, however, the sauce is thick enough that the gravitational pull on the ketchup does not suffice.
Ketchup will certainly fall, of its own accord. In the case of a partly empty bottle, tapping the base can expel some ketchup without the need for air to enter. This is because the air that is already inside the bottle can slightly de-pressurize. Tapping the inverted base may slightly liquify the ketchup, enough for some to drop out even though no air is taken in. But in a full bottle, the ketchup must move to the side so that the air can rise through the neck at the same time that the ketchup escapes. The weight of ketchup is not great enough for this to happen in most circumstances.
So, in the case of the full ketchup bottle, the problem can be divided into two issues: (1) How can I get the ketchup to move aside, so that air can enter on the opposite side? (2) How can I give the ketchup "extra weight," so that it will be pulled out of the bottle faster?
The first issue is solved by holding the bottle sideways, with a slight downward tilt, rather than upside-down. In this position, the ketchup naturally is pulled to the lower side of the neck, and the air naturally will channel along the higher side of the neck. Anyone who pours an ordinary liquid from a bottle knows this. Yet it is amazing how the experience is forgotten when it comes to ketchup.
Merely holding the bottle in the correct position is not very effective. It is necessary to "increase the weight" of the ketchup by applying some G-force. This can be done by making a fist, and tapping the bottle downwards against the fist, to bring the bottle to an abrupt halt. Don't hurt yourself! If your hands are delicate, you may try some other method of applying an abrupt stop to the bottle, provided that the stop is not rigid or fragile, and that you mind where the ketchup is going to emerge. Striking the bottle at the upper side of the neck is much less effective, since it applies the G-force in the wrong direction.
Tapping the inverted bottom of a full bottle – the customary way – is counterproductive. If you do that, most of the G-force will tend to keep the ketchup in the bottle. But now you know the right way, thanks to the amazing power of the Internet to unleash this kind of information. Of course, it would be possible to print instructions on the side of the ketchup bottle, but you wouldn't read them if they were there, now would you?
Thursday, March 23, 2006
My Word of the Day
pretentious /pre·ten·tious/
1. Claiming or demanding a position of distinction or merit, especially when unjustified.
2. Making or marked by an extravagant outward show; ostentatious.
1. Claiming or demanding a position of distinction or merit, especially when unjustified.
2. Making or marked by an extravagant outward show; ostentatious.
Cardio
Why do people say that they went to the gym and did 30 minutes cardio instead of saying they ran, or cycled for 30 minutes. Do they think it makes them sound cool? Maybe they think people won't understand the word cardio and have to ask, making them look stupid, but the joke is one the cardio person because when we do find out we'll just say, "Oh, so you ran for 30 minutes?"
Or maybe it's needed as the justification for paying for a gym membership. I mean who wants to pay £50 per month to go and run. You can run anywhere, right?
So 30 minutes cardio is well worth £50 per month, but 30 minutes running is not, apparently.
Or maybe it's needed as the justification for paying for a gym membership. I mean who wants to pay £50 per month to go and run. You can run anywhere, right?
So 30 minutes cardio is well worth £50 per month, but 30 minutes running is not, apparently.
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Cheese Related Idiocy
A woman who apparently thought a block of white cheese was cocaine has pleaded guilty to trying to hire a hit man to rob and kill four men.
Jessica Sandy Booth, 18, was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Authorities said Booth hatched the plot after visiting the intended victims' home and mistaking fresco -- a white, crumbly cheese common in Mexican cuisine -- for cocaine. That inspired the idea to hire someone to break into the home, take the drugs and kill the men.
The hit man she hired turned out to be an undercover police officer.
Jessica Sandy Booth, 18, was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Authorities said Booth hatched the plot after visiting the intended victims' home and mistaking fresco -- a white, crumbly cheese common in Mexican cuisine -- for cocaine. That inspired the idea to hire someone to break into the home, take the drugs and kill the men.
The hit man she hired turned out to be an undercover police officer.
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Support Department
Please, phone this number - 0800 097 4828. It's the number for the support department for a company called http://www.webhosting.uk.com - pretend your a thinking about buying hosting from them then ask a few choice questions:
What time is it?
Are jelly moulds compatible with a Windows server?
Can I connect to my database using a dvla dongle-sprocket?
How many roads must a man walk down?
Would you like a fish in your shoe?
Can I fist my database?
Can I pay in hedgehogs?
I would like to know why I am having problems with your skillet? I have gotten all the way to the clock out window and I have put in all my elephant details and it eggs. Why is the sky green?
Any others you can think of, please let me know how you get on.
Mike just phoned again:
"I just phoned him again, and told him I was James Brown, calling from British Telecom. I said we'd been getting complaints about his phone line, so could he tell me which Marmite switch his phone was on. He didn't know"
What time is it?
Are jelly moulds compatible with a Windows server?
Can I connect to my database using a dvla dongle-sprocket?
How many roads must a man walk down?
Would you like a fish in your shoe?
Can I fist my database?
Can I pay in hedgehogs?
I would like to know why I am having problems with your skillet? I have gotten all the way to the clock out window and I have put in all my elephant details and it eggs. Why is the sky green?
Any others you can think of, please let me know how you get on.
Mike just phoned again:
"I just phoned him again, and told him I was James Brown, calling from British Telecom. I said we'd been getting complaints about his phone line, so could he tell me which Marmite switch his phone was on. He didn't know"
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Alberto Gonzales - Twunt
Future American lawyers to be proud of.
... and Alberto Gonzales.
Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, spoke before law students at Georgetown today, justifying illegal, unauthorized surveilance of US citizens, but during the course of his speech the students in class did something pretty ballsy and brave. They got up from their seats and turned their backs to him.
To make matters worse for Gonzales, additional students came into the room, wearing black cowls and carrying a simple banner, written on a sheet.
Fortunately for him, it was a brief speech... followed by a panel discussion that basically ripped his argument a new asshole.
And, as one of the people on the panel said,
"When you're a law student, they tell you if say that if you can't argue the law, argue the facts. They also tell you if you can't argue the facts, argue the law. If you can't argue either, apparently, the solution is to go on a public relations offensive and make it a political issue... to say over and over again "it's lawful", and to think that the American people will somehow come to believe this if we say it often enough.
In light of this, I'm proud of the very civil civil disobedience that was shown here today."
- David Cole, Georgetown University Law Professor
http://explore.georgetown.edu/blogs/?id=11971
It was a good day for dissent.
... and Alberto Gonzales.
Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, spoke before law students at Georgetown today, justifying illegal, unauthorized surveilance of US citizens, but during the course of his speech the students in class did something pretty ballsy and brave. They got up from their seats and turned their backs to him.
To make matters worse for Gonzales, additional students came into the room, wearing black cowls and carrying a simple banner, written on a sheet.
Fortunately for him, it was a brief speech... followed by a panel discussion that basically ripped his argument a new asshole.
And, as one of the people on the panel said,
"When you're a law student, they tell you if say that if you can't argue the law, argue the facts. They also tell you if you can't argue the facts, argue the law. If you can't argue either, apparently, the solution is to go on a public relations offensive and make it a political issue... to say over and over again "it's lawful", and to think that the American people will somehow come to believe this if we say it often enough.
In light of this, I'm proud of the very civil civil disobedience that was shown here today."
- David Cole, Georgetown University Law Professor
http://explore.georgetown.edu/blogs/?id=11971
It was a good day for dissent.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Animated GIFs
Click on the picture to see it in all it's glory
Animated gifs are bad. Bad, bad, bad! This animated gif is so bad, I don’t have the words to describe just how mind-numbingly, jaw-droppingly bad it is.
If it has one useful purpose it is to serve as a cautionary sign to all those contemplating using an animated gif on their website. A kind of a modern-day "Abandon all hope ye who enter this place" – accompanied by a partially decayed, shrunken head on a spike.
Friday, January 13, 2006
Word Of The Day
sesquipedalian \ses-kwuh-puh-DAYL-yuhn\, adjective:
1. Given to or characterized by the use of long words.
2. Long and ponderous; having many syllables.
noun:
A long word.
As a sesquipedalian stylist, he can throw a word like 'eponymous" into a sentence without missing a beat.
--Campbell, Patty, "The sand in the oyster," The Horn Book Magazine, May 15, 1996
Plus he has a weakness for what we can mischievously call sesquipedalian excess: Look out for such terms as "epiphenomenal," "diegetic" and "proprioceptive."
--Jabari Asim, "Reel Pioneer," Washington Post, November
19, 2000
They walk and speak with disdain for common folk, and never miss a chance to belittle the crowd in sesquipedalian put-downs or to declare that their raucous and uncouth behavior calls for nothing less than a letter to the Times, to inform proper Englishmen of the deplorable state of manners in the Colonies.
--William C. Martin, "Friday Night in the Coliseum," The Atlantic, March 1972
... her eccentric family's addiction to sesquipedalians (that big word for "big words"), and her furtive passion for flossy mail-order-catalog prose.
--David Browne, "Books/The Week," Entertainment Weekly, October 23, 1998
Sesquipedalian comes from Latin sesquipedalis, "a foot and a half long, hence inordinately long," from sesqui, "one half more, half as much again" + pes, ped-, "a foot."
1. Given to or characterized by the use of long words.
2. Long and ponderous; having many syllables.
noun:
A long word.
As a sesquipedalian stylist, he can throw a word like 'eponymous" into a sentence without missing a beat.
--Campbell, Patty, "The sand in the oyster," The Horn Book Magazine, May 15, 1996
Plus he has a weakness for what we can mischievously call sesquipedalian excess: Look out for such terms as "epiphenomenal," "diegetic" and "proprioceptive."
--Jabari Asim, "Reel Pioneer," Washington Post, November
19, 2000
They walk and speak with disdain for common folk, and never miss a chance to belittle the crowd in sesquipedalian put-downs or to declare that their raucous and uncouth behavior calls for nothing less than a letter to the Times, to inform proper Englishmen of the deplorable state of manners in the Colonies.
--William C. Martin, "Friday Night in the Coliseum," The Atlantic, March 1972
... her eccentric family's addiction to sesquipedalians (that big word for "big words"), and her furtive passion for flossy mail-order-catalog prose.
--David Browne, "Books/The Week," Entertainment Weekly, October 23, 1998
Sesquipedalian comes from Latin sesquipedalis, "a foot and a half long, hence inordinately long," from sesqui, "one half more, half as much again" + pes, ped-, "a foot."
I've been tagged
The rules (apparently): reveal five weird habits about yourself, and then 'tag' five other bloggers. Here goes:
1. I pick my nose so much it bleeds sometimes.
2. When walking down a road or pavement with a line of bollards on it I have to smack the tops of the bollards. If I need to change direction before reaching the end of the bollards it makes me very anxious. Sometimes I carry on even though I have to go back to go the way I need.
3. I crack my knuckles, my wrists, my ankles, my chest and my neck.
4. I don't tidy up generally, merely arrange things into neat piles for later tidying.
5. Every so often I trawl through the mountain of paperwork in order to sort it and make important documents easier to find. This doesn't actually produce any good results and more often than not I have spent four hours to throw away a half dozen sheets of paper, but it makes me feel good.
Right then, time to tag five other bloggers. I don't know many bloggers, but the one I'll tag is Attu
1. I pick my nose so much it bleeds sometimes.
2. When walking down a road or pavement with a line of bollards on it I have to smack the tops of the bollards. If I need to change direction before reaching the end of the bollards it makes me very anxious. Sometimes I carry on even though I have to go back to go the way I need.
3. I crack my knuckles, my wrists, my ankles, my chest and my neck.
4. I don't tidy up generally, merely arrange things into neat piles for later tidying.
5. Every so often I trawl through the mountain of paperwork in order to sort it and make important documents easier to find. This doesn't actually produce any good results and more often than not I have spent four hours to throw away a half dozen sheets of paper, but it makes me feel good.
Right then, time to tag five other bloggers. I don't know many bloggers, but the one I'll tag is Attu
Monday, January 09, 2006
you've been tagged
I was tagged, and now you have been too. As a result, you have to tag some people - that's the law.
So there.
So there.
Sunday, January 08, 2006
Thursday, January 05, 2006
Simpsons creator praises Gervais
The Simpsons creator Matt Groening said Ricky Gervais did such a good job writing an episode of the hit US comedy show that he wants him to do more.
The Office star wrote and appears in the episode, which is due to be screened in the US in the spring.
Groening said Gervais was good enough to be a regular character, according to reports in the UK press.
"He caught our tone exactly, and then added his own Ricky Gervais/David Brent patheticness," Groening said.
"Everything you could ever possibly want from Ricky Gervais you get.
"It's possible we'll collaborate again... he should be a regular character. In fact, he should have his own cartoon series."
Gervais' character in The Simpsons is based on David Brent from The Office sitcom.
He moves into The Simpson household with Marge as the family take part in an episode of Wife Swap, while Homer moves in with his wife.
Gervais was invited to pen the episode by Groening, who is a fan of The Office.
He described writing the episode as a "dream come true".
The Office star wrote and appears in the episode, which is due to be screened in the US in the spring.
Groening said Gervais was good enough to be a regular character, according to reports in the UK press.
"He caught our tone exactly, and then added his own Ricky Gervais/David Brent patheticness," Groening said.
"Everything you could ever possibly want from Ricky Gervais you get.
"It's possible we'll collaborate again... he should be a regular character. In fact, he should have his own cartoon series."
Gervais' character in The Simpsons is based on David Brent from The Office sitcom.
He moves into The Simpson household with Marge as the family take part in an episode of Wife Swap, while Homer moves in with his wife.
Gervais was invited to pen the episode by Groening, who is a fan of The Office.
He described writing the episode as a "dream come true".
SETI and Intelligent Design
If you’re an inveterate tube-o-phile, you may remember the episode of "Cheers" in which Cliff, the postman who’s stayed by neither snow, nor rain, nor gloom of night from his appointed rounds of beer, exclaims to Norm that he’s found a potato that looks like Richard Nixon’s head.
This could be an astonishing attempt by taters to express their political views, but Norm is unimpressed. Finding evidence of complexity (the Nixon physiognomy) in a natural setting (the spud), and inferring some deliberate, magical mechanism behind it all, would be a leap from the doubtful to the divine, and in this case, Norm feels, unwarranted.
Cliff, however, would have some sympathizers among the proponents of Intelligent Design (ID), whose efforts to influence school science curricula continue to swill large quantities of newspaper ink. As just about everyone is aware, these folks use similar logic to infer a "designer" behind such biological constructions as DNA or the human eye. The apparent complexity of the product is offered as proof of deliberate blueprinting by an unknown creator—conscious action, presumably from outside the universe itself.
What many readers will not know is that SETI research has been offered up in support of Intelligent Design.
The way this happens is as follows. When ID advocates posit that DNA—which is a complicated, molecular blueprint—is solid evidence for a designer, most scientists are unconvinced. They counter that the structure of this biological building block is the result of self-organization via evolution, and not a proof of deliberate engineering. DNA, the researchers will protest, is no more a consciously constructed system than Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. Organized complexity, in other words, is not enough to infer design.
But the adherents of Intelligent Design protest the protest. They point to SETI and say, "upon receiving a complex radio signal from space, SETI researchers will claim it as proof that intelligent life resides in the neighborhood of a distant star. Thus, isn’t their search completely analogous to our own line of reasoning—a clear case of complexity implying intelligence and deliberate design?" And SETI, they would note, enjoys widespread scientific acceptance.
If we as SETI researchers admit this is so, it sounds as if we’re guilty of promoting a logical double standard. If the ID folks aren’t allowed to claim intelligent design when pointing to DNA, how can we hope to claim intelligent design on the basis of a complex radio signal? It’s true that SETI is well regarded by the scientific community, but is that simply because we don’t suggest that the voice behind the microphone could be God?
Extract from http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_intelligentdesign_051201.html
This could be an astonishing attempt by taters to express their political views, but Norm is unimpressed. Finding evidence of complexity (the Nixon physiognomy) in a natural setting (the spud), and inferring some deliberate, magical mechanism behind it all, would be a leap from the doubtful to the divine, and in this case, Norm feels, unwarranted.
Cliff, however, would have some sympathizers among the proponents of Intelligent Design (ID), whose efforts to influence school science curricula continue to swill large quantities of newspaper ink. As just about everyone is aware, these folks use similar logic to infer a "designer" behind such biological constructions as DNA or the human eye. The apparent complexity of the product is offered as proof of deliberate blueprinting by an unknown creator—conscious action, presumably from outside the universe itself.
What many readers will not know is that SETI research has been offered up in support of Intelligent Design.
The way this happens is as follows. When ID advocates posit that DNA—which is a complicated, molecular blueprint—is solid evidence for a designer, most scientists are unconvinced. They counter that the structure of this biological building block is the result of self-organization via evolution, and not a proof of deliberate engineering. DNA, the researchers will protest, is no more a consciously constructed system than Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. Organized complexity, in other words, is not enough to infer design.
But the adherents of Intelligent Design protest the protest. They point to SETI and say, "upon receiving a complex radio signal from space, SETI researchers will claim it as proof that intelligent life resides in the neighborhood of a distant star. Thus, isn’t their search completely analogous to our own line of reasoning—a clear case of complexity implying intelligence and deliberate design?" And SETI, they would note, enjoys widespread scientific acceptance.
If we as SETI researchers admit this is so, it sounds as if we’re guilty of promoting a logical double standard. If the ID folks aren’t allowed to claim intelligent design when pointing to DNA, how can we hope to claim intelligent design on the basis of a complex radio signal? It’s true that SETI is well regarded by the scientific community, but is that simply because we don’t suggest that the voice behind the microphone could be God?
Extract from http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_intelligentdesign_051201.html
Don't KNow What I'd Do
Last thought
in my head
Last phrase
'fore I go to bed
I send out to you
What else is new?
Cliche notwithstanding
Say 'bout love
You can expect to fall
In your case, baby
in spite of all
's always
a three point landing
Don't know what I'd do
I don't know what I'd do
without you
A wise old poet
he once said
'less you love somebody
nothing makes sense
Hard to admit
when you need someone
who knows you
Don't know what I'd do
I don't know what I'd do
without you
- Shelley Winters Project
in my head
Last phrase
'fore I go to bed
I send out to you
What else is new?
Cliche notwithstanding
Say 'bout love
You can expect to fall
In your case, baby
in spite of all
's always
a three point landing
Don't know what I'd do
I don't know what I'd do
without you
A wise old poet
he once said
'less you love somebody
nothing makes sense
Hard to admit
when you need someone
who knows you
Don't know what I'd do
I don't know what I'd do
without you
- Shelley Winters Project
Sexy Women with Machine Guns
Well all agree they are sexy, ok, but instead of sexy women what about OAPs in wheelchairs?
What the fuck is a toodle?
http://www.break.com/index/grannymachinegun.html
What the fuck is a toodle?
http://www.break.com/index/grannymachinegun.html
Eyw
http://www.youtube.com/watch.php?v=lmLymLS-k0k
There are some things the world is better off without seeing. This is one of them.
There are some things the world is better off without seeing. This is one of them.
201 Ways To Say You're Pissed
Beer, wine, and spirits come in all flavours – why shouldn’t our descriptions of their pleasant effects do the same? The National Pist proudly presents as many ways to say you’re drunk as we could think of while sitting around getting good and Guinness-headed. If there are any notable omissions, by all means rescue us from our ignorance and let us know!
Enjoy!
A. Addled, Ale’d, Alight, A few shades to the wind.
B. Bagged, Badgered, Ban jaxed, Bashed, Battered, Been drinking, Bent, Bladdered, Blind, Blasted, Blathered, Blitzed, Blotto, Boiled, Bombed, Brahms & Liszt, Buckled, Buzzed.
C. Cabbaged, Campaigning, Canned, Chevy Chased, Clobbered, Creamed over, Crocked.
D. Dead drunk, Dean Martinized, Decimated, Discombobulated, Dipsomaniatic, Dizzy, Drowned, Drunk, Drunk as a Lord, Drunk as a skunk, Drunken.
E. Etched, Ethanol engorged , Ethanolized, Etherized, Euthanized.
F. Fecked, Feeling it, Finished, Flushed, Flying, Frothy, Fruit looped, F*cked, F*cked up.
G. Gassed, Galvanized, Gin rummied, Glazed, Goosed, Green, Groged, Groggy, Guinness headed.
H. Had a few, Haggard, Hammered, Hanging, High, Hosed, Howling drunk.
I. In with Bacchus, Inebriated, In orbit, Intoxicated, Irish eyed.
J. Jagged, Jaxied, Jiggy, Jolly, Jugged, Juiced.
K. Killed, Kinked.
L. Laced, Lamped, Lashed, Leathered, Legless, lispy, Lit, Lit up, Liquored up, Loaded, Loo la, Looped, Loopy, Loose, Lubricated, Lush.
M. Mad, Mangled, Mashed, Melted, Merl Haggard, Merry, Minced, Monkey-full, Mottled, Muttled.
N. Newcastled, Nippy, Nailed.
O. Off me pickle, Off me trolley, Off my rocker, Oiled, On a campaign, On assignment for The Pist, On a piss-up, On the bottle, Out of it.
P. Painted, Paralytic, Past .08, Pickled, Pickwicked, Pie-eyed, Pished, Pissed, Pist, Plastered, Ploughed, Potted, Pole axed, Polluted, Puking.
Q.Quitted, Quintessential.
R. Ratted, Ravaged, Razzled, Reading The Pist, Rosy glowing, Rubbered, Rubber legged, Ruined, Rummed, Rummy.
S. Screwed, Scuttered, Sh*t faced, Shot, Silly, Slaughtered, Slammed, Slewed, Sloppy, Sloshed, Smashed, Snatered , Soaked, Sotted, Sous, Soused, Sozzled, Spangled, Spannered, Squiffy, Steaming, Stewed, Stitched up, Stiff, Stinking, Stink-o, Stone drunk.
T. Tanked, Tight, Tipsy, Toasted, Totalled, Trashed,Twisted.
U. Ugly, Under, Under the influence, Unsafe to drive, Unsober.
V. Vinic, Visiting the vicar.
W. Warped, Washed out, Wasted, Wellied, Wet, White washed, Wined, Wiped, Wired, Wrecked.
X. X’ed out.
Y. Yodeling out of tune.
Z. Zombied, Zonked.
Enjoy!
A. Addled, Ale’d, Alight, A few shades to the wind.
B. Bagged, Badgered, Ban jaxed, Bashed, Battered, Been drinking, Bent, Bladdered, Blind, Blasted, Blathered, Blitzed, Blotto, Boiled, Bombed, Brahms & Liszt, Buckled, Buzzed.
C. Cabbaged, Campaigning, Canned, Chevy Chased, Clobbered, Creamed over, Crocked.
D. Dead drunk, Dean Martinized, Decimated, Discombobulated, Dipsomaniatic, Dizzy, Drowned, Drunk, Drunk as a Lord, Drunk as a skunk, Drunken.
E. Etched, Ethanol engorged , Ethanolized, Etherized, Euthanized.
F. Fecked, Feeling it, Finished, Flushed, Flying, Frothy, Fruit looped, F*cked, F*cked up.
G. Gassed, Galvanized, Gin rummied, Glazed, Goosed, Green, Groged, Groggy, Guinness headed.
H. Had a few, Haggard, Hammered, Hanging, High, Hosed, Howling drunk.
I. In with Bacchus, Inebriated, In orbit, Intoxicated, Irish eyed.
J. Jagged, Jaxied, Jiggy, Jolly, Jugged, Juiced.
K. Killed, Kinked.
L. Laced, Lamped, Lashed, Leathered, Legless, lispy, Lit, Lit up, Liquored up, Loaded, Loo la, Looped, Loopy, Loose, Lubricated, Lush.
M. Mad, Mangled, Mashed, Melted, Merl Haggard, Merry, Minced, Monkey-full, Mottled, Muttled.
N. Newcastled, Nippy, Nailed.
O. Off me pickle, Off me trolley, Off my rocker, Oiled, On a campaign, On assignment for The Pist, On a piss-up, On the bottle, Out of it.
P. Painted, Paralytic, Past .08, Pickled, Pickwicked, Pie-eyed, Pished, Pissed, Pist, Plastered, Ploughed, Potted, Pole axed, Polluted, Puking.
Q.Quitted, Quintessential.
R. Ratted, Ravaged, Razzled, Reading The Pist, Rosy glowing, Rubbered, Rubber legged, Ruined, Rummed, Rummy.
S. Screwed, Scuttered, Sh*t faced, Shot, Silly, Slaughtered, Slammed, Slewed, Sloppy, Sloshed, Smashed, Snatered , Soaked, Sotted, Sous, Soused, Sozzled, Spangled, Spannered, Squiffy, Steaming, Stewed, Stitched up, Stiff, Stinking, Stink-o, Stone drunk.
T. Tanked, Tight, Tipsy, Toasted, Totalled, Trashed,Twisted.
U. Ugly, Under, Under the influence, Unsafe to drive, Unsober.
V. Vinic, Visiting the vicar.
W. Warped, Washed out, Wasted, Wellied, Wet, White washed, Wined, Wiped, Wired, Wrecked.
X. X’ed out.
Y. Yodeling out of tune.
Z. Zombied, Zonked.
Word Of The Day
sine qua non \sin-ih-kwah-NON; -NOHN; sy-nih-kway-\, noun:
An essential condition or element; an indispensable thing
Women's enfranchisement was crucial to them -- indeed, a sine qua non, since all other progress for which they worked, such as higher education and entrance into the professions, would be meaningless if women continued to be second-class citizens.
--Lillian Faderman, To Believe in Women
"Of the various attributes we fiction-writers require," he said, "one of the most important is detachment. Of course tenacity of purpose is the sine qua non, otherwise we'd never keep on with it for the year or two years or longer that it takes to finish the work."
--Barry Unsworth, Sugar and Rum
However we choose to define a classic, a sine qua non is that the material lend itself to reinterpretation in the light of changing circumstances.
--Matthew Gurewitsch, "A Country of Lesser Giants," New York Times, April 4, 1999
Sine qua non is from the Late Latin, literally "without which not."
An essential condition or element; an indispensable thing
Women's enfranchisement was crucial to them -- indeed, a sine qua non, since all other progress for which they worked, such as higher education and entrance into the professions, would be meaningless if women continued to be second-class citizens.
--Lillian Faderman, To Believe in Women
"Of the various attributes we fiction-writers require," he said, "one of the most important is detachment. Of course tenacity of purpose is the sine qua non, otherwise we'd never keep on with it for the year or two years or longer that it takes to finish the work."
--Barry Unsworth, Sugar and Rum
However we choose to define a classic, a sine qua non is that the material lend itself to reinterpretation in the light of changing circumstances.
--Matthew Gurewitsch, "A Country of Lesser Giants," New York Times, April 4, 1999
Sine qua non is from the Late Latin, literally "without which not."
Random Blog Site
So I was looking at my blog after posting and the next random blog was this
http://sellitaire.blogspot.com/
Which talks about the Mavalli Tiffin Room (MTR).
It's a sign.
http://sellitaire.blogspot.com/
Which talks about the Mavalli Tiffin Room (MTR).
It's a sign.
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
I've checked my email account about 30 times today.
Empty.
What the hell else did I expect? Dickhead!
:(
Empty.
What the hell else did I expect? Dickhead!
:(
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
My Journey
Today I begin a new phase of a potentially arduous and frightening journey. I am, all at the same time, excited, scared, and very unhappy. I am excited by what I may achieve, scared by what I will have to encounter, and unhappy about what I have to leave behind, even if only for a short while.
What I have to achieve is a greater sense of self and an improved level of happiness. An understanding of what I require in order to be happy. An ability to make my own decisions - decisions that will be well-informed, true to myself, and that feel right, at least right for me.
To achieve this I know I will have to encounter many things that I have not had to face before. One of these things is a new level of honesty with myself. I now have to be brutal in acknowledging what I do well and what I do badly, and not to dwell on the things I do badly, but to improve on them. And not just to understand what I do well, but to go and find new things that I can do too. Not just things that I can do well, but things that I can't - things that I can fail at doing, things that scare me, but that I will do anyway.
Ultimately I need to change. I think I have known this for a while, because I have known that I am not happy. And I think I am not happy because I am not happy with myself.
I feel cut-off and insular, and right now I don't understand why because I think I have alot to give. And I certainly want alot more than I have. Not in a materialistic way, but in a "spiritual" way. I have been guilty of laziness and apathy with my own life.
I have already made the decision that something needs to change, now I need to search both within myself and out in the big, wide world to understand what and why.
Wish me luck, I think I am going to need it.
What I have to achieve is a greater sense of self and an improved level of happiness. An understanding of what I require in order to be happy. An ability to make my own decisions - decisions that will be well-informed, true to myself, and that feel right, at least right for me.
To achieve this I know I will have to encounter many things that I have not had to face before. One of these things is a new level of honesty with myself. I now have to be brutal in acknowledging what I do well and what I do badly, and not to dwell on the things I do badly, but to improve on them. And not just to understand what I do well, but to go and find new things that I can do too. Not just things that I can do well, but things that I can't - things that I can fail at doing, things that scare me, but that I will do anyway.
Ultimately I need to change. I think I have known this for a while, because I have known that I am not happy. And I think I am not happy because I am not happy with myself.
I feel cut-off and insular, and right now I don't understand why because I think I have alot to give. And I certainly want alot more than I have. Not in a materialistic way, but in a "spiritual" way. I have been guilty of laziness and apathy with my own life.
I have already made the decision that something needs to change, now I need to search both within myself and out in the big, wide world to understand what and why.
Wish me luck, I think I am going to need it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)