nourishing obscurity

Dean Jones was always outspoken and it cut short his test cricket career. A lovely strokemaker, he wasn’t quite as good at his defence but he still topped the averages. A very good player and one I once briefly met at the nets in Melbourne – nice guy. Now we have this: Dean Jones’s 2007 [...]

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Filed under: Society & human issues

‘Water poverty’ loans to utilities set to hit €4bn says The Independent: The EU plans to raise loans to the UK’s 10 biggest water utilities by 60 per cent to €4bn (£3.4bn) as they try to reduce the number of customers who cannot pay their bills. Council Tax and water are my two biggest, followed [...]

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Filed under: Politics & economics, Society & human issues

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Filed under: Politics & economics

Are you reading my boring words or ogling the pic? There is a feminist piece today which, heaven forbid, I actually half agree with: Music videos are essentially advertising, but the clip for Katy Perry’s California Gurls, top of the Australian charts, is the most cynical bid for market dominance I’ve seen in some time. [...]

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Filed under: Society & human issues

I saw a couple of their original members with a band at San Clemente street festival a couple of decades ago – they were wonderful on that hot day:

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Filed under: Politics & economics

Who is this woman? #  A group [which] belongs to the Muslim community … is angered by Facebook’s decision [to remove] a few hugely popular Islamic pages from the social networking site.  Fans of the removed pages are demanding that Facebook brings back those pages which did not violate any of the Facebook’s policies and [...]

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Filed under: Diversions, Politics & economics, Society & human issues

Barking Spider mentions the burqa ban in France and just how popular it is.  Some bloggers have written that it is quite un-British for us to do the same.  Just about everyone has his or her opinion about it although personally, I can’t decide. There are two reasons not to ban it, as far as [...]

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Filed under: Society & human issues

It’s simply been an  awful day, on a number of counts. Sliding scales are a good device to quantify feelings and so, on the Mood-o-meter, where 10 is a feeling of euphoria, 5 is OK and 0 is total stress, today is currently about 2.5, the reason being two critical and a few less critical [...]

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Filed under: Blogging, Society & human issues

There’s something very, very Icelandic about this: Only a handful of people showed up at the restaurant Nítjánda on the 19th floor of the glass tower in Kópavogur yesterday to accept free soup and bread. Twenty of the restaurant’s staff members had cooked 100 liters of soup, cream of vegetables, and set tables for 500 [...]

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Filed under: Society & human issues

Higgs boson discovery rumours ‘false’ Gosh, I’d never have guessed.

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Filed under: Society & human issues, Technology & ideas

Picture this after work – you’ve found a seat on the train and both you and the guy opposite are just dropping off when a 2 year old voice bellows from behind, in our half of the carriage: “Where’s Daddy?!!!” Then, for good measure: “Where’s Daddy?!!!” There’s a motherly sort of voice, also from behind: [...]

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Filed under: Leisure, travel & sport, Society & human issues

What a simply stupendous effort from the Queen of Attrition – Cherry Pie.  This Lady of the Gardens and Empress of the Board Games, doubling, in her spare moments as the boss-ess of the PCS, has no peer [to date].  Thank you once again for your esteemed patronage at this [not so] humble site.

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Filed under: Blogging

Interesting two days and certain things were confirmed that have seemed to be so for a long time. The first is that women make excellent administrators.  If they know the tasks, the margins they’re meant to make, the targets they’re meant to achieve, they’re very pernickety in getting that done.  Yesterday I was under one [...]

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Filed under: Society & human issues

OK, time to look at this World Cup prediction thingy – seriously, can an octopus predict a winner?  Did they put octopus-stimulating morsels or colours next to a team name and some human actually did the predicting or what? And if he could do that, what else could he not predict?

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Filed under: Leisure, travel & sport

Don’t know what you have planned between August 11th and September 10th but let’s have a UK wide swimming festival – the idea is to swim once a day and then eat and drink to conserve our energy.  Oh, one other thing – any pool which has put film over its windows is to be [...]

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Filed under: Society & human issues