“We have just passed over the Tongan Trench one of the deepest places on earth. I’m not much of a fisherman but maybe it hasn’t exactly been the greatest place to catch fish? I’ll just have to keep trying! The overcast skies have been making for some dark nights out here. The sky and sea [...]
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Filed under: Leisure, travel & sport
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Filed under: Diversions
Admittedly not suiting this room, except in hue, in the same way that cheap shoes detract from the rest of the outfit, nevertheless seagrass matting is well suited to hot climes and occasional rooms in northern climes, such as the conservatory. Similarly, rattan furniture is fine for the Raj and for Raffles in Singapore but [...]
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Filed under: Politics & economics
There’s no intention to teach my grandmother how to suck eggs here – it’s just thinking out loud, that’s all. The dilemma facing the Tory party member is daunting. Whatever those outside think, there is a bond, which I felt in Manchester, which goes beyond politics. The Tories were never a purely ideological party like [...]
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Filed under: Politics & economics
Two quotes of the day: If your parents smoked pot at Uni (and maybe worse) and regularly drink heavily and give you loads of money and let their daughters dress like mini Paris Hilton’s and sleep around and use the ‘F’ word in the house and watch porn on the internet and never go to [...]
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Filed under: Society & human issues
At what distance from the earth it is possible to see exactly 1/3 of the earth’s surface? Answer tomorrow morning unless anyone gets it. By the way, I wonder what’s going on here.
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Today was an interesting day and not all good. Now, in politics, as you know, there are a lot of people saying a lot of things and there are two main threads, one which you know and another you’d suspect. Firstly, Dan Hannan has his own ideas and his own plan has been put into [...]
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Filed under: Politics & economics
The issue of “dumbing down” is emotive and a minefield of only partial knowledge bases behind many people’s reasoning. Paul Trout, in Student Anti-Intellectualism and the Dumbing Down of the University, 1996, puts it this way: Sad to say, the problem of anti-intellectual students is … the result not only of misguided educational policies and [...]
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Filed under: Politics & economics, Society & human issues
Luck is a much debated phenomenon, with the pragmatic insisting that one makes one’s own. It certainly helps to be proactive and opportunities do seem to fall our way by being in the right place at the right time and with the right attitude but even so … I suspect that there is such a [...]
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Filed under: Society & human issues
It’s like some 50s sci-fi film: Pink, slimy and repellent, the Nomura’s jellyfish is an authentic horror of the deep that’s been assaulting Japan. Now the creatures have sunk a 10-ton fishing trawler. The boat was capsized off Chiba in Japan, as its three-man crew was trying to haul in a net containing dozens of [...]
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Filed under: Society & human issues
1. Duct tape art “My aunt uses duct tape, positioned sticky-side up, on her tables to discourage her cats from jumping on the tables. It works. However, it is not recommended that anyone puts duct tape directly on cat’s fur. I’ve obtained many many cat bites and claw scratches from that (every time after the [...]
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Mark Wadsworth’s garden furniture is here [for real]
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Filed under: Politics & economics
Burn, baby, burn! Well, I had to, didn’t I? For visitors from the Planet Zog who know nothing of this day:
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Filed under: Music
This continues on from the one post of many which most seem to be linking to. In order to get a government into power which represents the views of the bulk of the blogosphere and a substantial portion of the people, there are some fundamental principles which must be borne in mind: 1. Labour must [...]
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Filed under: Politics & economics, Society & human issues
I’m just amazed the matter even got to the vote: Three cities Tuesday — two in Ohio, one in Texas — voted to rip the things down. In College Station, Tex., the camera manufacturer and their subcontractors reportedly spent $60,000 campaigning to keep them in place, more than five times the amount raised by the [...]
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Filed under: Society & human issues, Technology & ideas
Reuters: Barclays Capital research showed that central banks that report reserve breakdown put 63 percent of new cash coming into their coffers between April and July into non-U.S. currencies. “There’s an incipient desire to reduce the dollar share of reserves, and central banks will use any opportunity to do it, provided it doesn’t cause the [...]
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Today is November 5th, Gunpowder Day and Dan Hannan and Roger Helmer have resigned the EPC frontbench. “We need a broad movement within the Conservative party that will push for referendums, citizens’ initiatives and the rest of the paraphernalia of direct democracy. I don’t just mean a referendum on Europe – though, naturally, that is the obvious place [...]
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Filed under: Politics & economics, Society & human issues
For what possible reason would you vote in someone like Carly Fiorina? She’s divisive, incompetent and stubborn in her incompetence, given to buzzwords, catchphrases, the Grand Plan and huge severance packages. One would have thought the Hewlett-Packard experience would have everyone wary of this move for the Senate. Psychologist Michael Maccoby called her a “productive [...]
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Filed under: Politics & economics
On yer bike, chum Sorry to go on about it: Never mind the detail of David Cameron’s non-referendum package: lots of it has been announced before, lots of it is techy and low-level, and the rest is still too vague to be meaningful. What matters is the message to his party. After years of flirting [...]
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Filed under: Politics & economics, Society & human issues
From Dearieme: I’ll gladly include your moments if you supply the url and it’s not embedding disabled. Some more: One of the best fight sequences ever: Matt Damon and Franka Potente in Bourne 1 in the haircutting scene or rather, its aftermath, has to be, for me, the most romantic moment in film because it [...]
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Filed under: Literature & performing arts
For the linguistically inclined: Find a word beginning with “p” which is singular, add an ‘s’ and it becomes plural, add another ‘s’ and it becomes singular again. For the mathematically inclined: Arrange the digits 1-9 inclusive so as to form two numbers, one of which is the square of the other.
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Denninger: Now here’s the challenge: The American People have had it with the job loss and with the vast and fast deterioration of their personal balance sheets and, more importantly, their cash-flow statements. But these problems were two decades in the making with both Democrat and Republican governments. They are to a large degree the consequence [...]
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Filed under: Politics & economics
This one was beyond the pale yesterday: There was uproar in Italy today over a ruling by the European court of human rights that the crucifixes that hang in most Italian classrooms are a violation of religious and educational freedoms. The seven judges, whose decision could prompt a Europe-wide review of the use of religious [...]
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Filed under: Politics & economics, Society & human issues
Resolve – that’s all it takes, overcoming the fear of fear. In the chapter on the Scouring of the Shire, from the Lord of the Rings: The hobbits find many foreboding spiked gates in the Shire, with angry Shirriffs trying to arrest them for Trespassing and Tearing up of Rules and the like. The whole [...]
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Filed under: Politics & economics, Society & human issues
The issue of the transport system in these dystopic times is a key issue and Lord T addresses it here: One of the key requirements for compliance with climate change is that we give up the use of our cars and start using public transport. After all it is more efficient to carry 200 people [...]
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Filed under: Politics & economics, Society & human issues
A selection from this sceptred isle
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Filed under: Music
Tomorrow On November 4th, between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., this site might go offline while we upgrade to the new WordPress. Comments made between those times might also be lost. Apologies for the inconvenience but it’s necessary to do this now before the theme is settled on. Blog theme and layout The Old Blogspot [...]
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Filed under: Blogging
A customer at a 7-11 store selected four items to buy, and was told that the cost was $7.11. He was curious that the cost was the same as the store name, so he enquired as to how the figure was derived. The clerk said that he had simply multiplied the prices of the four [...]
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Don't forget these either:
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