In the News

[Mike]

Good year for Oil companies; Bad year for British beaches. There has been a significant drop in the number of beaches reaching stringent clean water standards. The NW has the second poorest record (probably due to the industry and Sellafield). I wonder if this will be a good excuse to drop the standards?

[Mike]

The Mayan Crystal Skulls are deemed to be fakes made by modern tools. Bummer.

[Mike]

Exams are getting easier. This GSCE Music paper had all the answers of the back cover. This would mean that it is testing the intelligence of the pupils to get full A* rating by coping the answers!

A new bond book is being published on the 100th year anniversary of the original authors birth. I hope it is not too rubbish.

[Mike]

A cool 256GB SSD with read and write speeds four times faster than a traditional hard disk have been unveiled. Bring it on. No more start up times for HD's are coming our way. This will also mean that the 32gb and 64gb disks will be getting cheaper and easier to install in iPhones. . ..

[Mike]

Oxford University is trying to raise money from alumni and philanthropists to generate £1.25 billion this year. They are hoping to make the donations into an endowment fund to keep the University on a level playing field with the other top Universities in the world.

Personally I don't want to see Oxford University drop in prestige. It would be a big loss for the country, don't know if I care enough to donate though. I mean, after all, will £5 really help?

[Mike]

Wired have real time images of the development of a HIV virus. Disturbing but they should help to develop a cure for the virus.

[Fez]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tyne/7414311.stm

an open letter to mr bruce charlton:

dear sir,
i hope this letter finds you well as i understand it cannot be easy to balance oneself on such a lofty pedistal. thank you for reminding us all that it is an obvious mark of idiocy for anyone of the lower classes to attempt to better themselves, because as you say the working class are just not intelligent enough to cope with the windy, overblown, self-important type of arseholes that are currently running our higher-education establishments. you are a visionary of a better future for this country sir, and i can only hope your superiory brain doesn't develop a fatal tumor from the strain of having to think so much, and that you die a jibbering wreck in a nasty nhs hospital surrounded by the working class oiks we all despise so much.
yours sincerely,
lord ponsomby.

ps. on behalf of the working class that did go to university and get a degree: fuck you. choke on my qualifications you self-satisfying prick

[stimpsonslostson]

Its not immediatley clear whether he's suggesting that the lower classes are such because they are less intelligent or that they are less intelligent as a result of growing up in the lower classes. Nature vs nurture rears its ugly head once again.
As someone who works with the so called educated every day, most of em couldn't find their own backsides without using both hands!

Oh, BBC are reporting that Micro$oft are producing windows touch! When are Apple going to start their legal action? Especially over the pinch and pull motions which are direct rip offs!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7422924.stm

I especially like the comment that

"We'll sell 290 million PCs and Apple will sell 10 million Pcs."

so no competition then?
P

[Mike]

Seagate are hoping to release a 2TB solid state drive within the year. Woot!

Wired have a new bionic arm for those people who have been subject to an unexpected amputation etc. It looks quite slow compared with a normal arm, however, the jump in performance from the others shown in the video are impressive (the others are basic sticks with hooks on the end). Not quite mind controlled but the person testing seemed quite blown away with the whole think and quips 'I can't wait to get one of these home, my wife has said she has loads of things waiting for me to do!'



MSN have a news article about 100 uncontacted tribes living in south america. So they flew a plane over head and took photographs just to scare them. They were about to loose arrows at it but the plane was too quick. There seems to be mounting worry that international law is not protecting them or their land sufficiently. The biggest worry is the whole disease and infection as with Colonial times.



Finally is there any country without a space programme? Well Nigeria and Algeria both do so maybe not. The image is the best part of the article to be honest.

[stimpsonslostson]

Emo Kids aren't happy shock!
The Times has reported that Emo kids think they are getting unfair press coverage. Two words. CHEER UP!

How many emo kids does it take to screw in a light bulb? 3. One to replace it, & two to write a song about how they miss the old one.

On a related note they report that My Chemical Romance are being blamed for a girl committing suicide! (The original article is in the Mail ) The best quote from this is...

Many of the alluring women of our time - Nigella Lawson, Debbie Harry, Chrissie Hynde, Sophie Ellis Bextor, Lily Allen - have a touch of the Goth about them.

Lily Allen. GOTH?!?! Who writes this rubbish!

But its another case of the media blaming pop culture for societys issues. (Marilyn Manson and Columbine being another prime example.- no one is blaming Britney for teen pregnancies I notice!)

On a lighter note, I spotted this.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/ar ... ngers.html
Chris Evans and Scooter is good. Janice and Donnatella Versace always amuses me.

p

[stimpsonslostson]

Oh, in response to the thing about remote tribes, wasn't Bruce Parry (or alteast his team) accused of introducing the flu to some tribe or other?

edit: Found it, not neccessarily Bruce, but a british film crew...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... feed=media

p

[Mike]

The Scientist who coined the term 'Global Warming' has proposed a solution that calls for giant artificial tree's to act as CO2 scrubbers to convert the CO2 into a mineral or liquid (what we really need then would be a power source that uses CO2 and only produces water as a by product). The only downside? They are made from a special plastic. What is plastic made of I hear you ask; Oil. What is the cost of oil at the moment? About $130-135 a barrel and rising fast as the economies worldwide weaken.

Great idea, but very bad idea to use an oil based system to achieve it. Oh and it would cost £303 billion pounds a year to build and maintain and would take 60 million of the devises to zero out the CO2 produced worldwide (not reduce the volume already in the air).

Thinking pessimistically, if we did build 60 million of these things, they civilisation collapsed and we were not producing any CO2 then the natural stock of the gas would be diminishing rapidly, trees and plants would become extinct and we would turn the planet into a Mars like barren wasteland. Cheery aint it?

[Mike]

Woman Marries Eiffel Tower and is yet allowed to travel internationally. Strange old world isn't it? Not only that but the physcial relationship with a piece of fencing is just weird. That is what sex toys were invented for, after all.

Tower running will become the marathons of yesteryear. Apparently.

[stimpsonslostson]

ok, if Mike's going to lower the tone I thought I'd raise the stakes- Guinness world records have acknowledged the worlds largest fake breasts!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... ounds.html

maxi mounds... ha ha. Shame she's a munter.

fake bus stops stop alzheimers patients wandering off. Is it wrong that I find this vaguely amuzing?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... g-off.html

p

[BarcelonAl]

The bus stop thing is a little amusing, but also quite a good example of 'thinking outside of the box'!

Did anyone else do a double take at the guy they quote in the article's name?

"It sounds funny but it helps," said Franz-Josef Goebel, the chairman of the "Old Lions" association.

Franz-Josef Goebel...

Oh, and you're right about the fake boob woman...definite munter!