The Anagram Tube Map
The title says it all. But if you must look at it, it’s here.
It’s just a pity, it’s not up to date.
A Profound Thought From George Clooney
This was supposedly said by George Clooney in an interview with the US edition of Esquire magazine.
Now that every human being on earth has a camera phone, where are all those UFO pictures?
Remember you used to see those pictures. Some guy just happened to have a Polaroid when the UFOs appeared?
Either it was all bullshit or my theory is that the Martians have decided, “Don’t go down there, man. All those fuckers have cameras now.”
He may not have said it, but think about it.
George though isn’t totally right, as I don’t have a camera in my phone.
Is This What Ed Milliband Needs?
Popbitch has pointed me to this site, which shows Newt Gingrich with various pets.
Perhaps Ed Milliband needs petswithed.com? Or perhaps we don’t?
Never Buy A House That’s Had Tenants In it!
When I bought my house about eighteen months ago, I liked it. I also got a good discount as it needed some work, as the tenants who’d occupied it on behalf of the previous owner hadn’t looked after it.
I still like it, but the faults in the various systems are a complete pain in the neck.
The cooker put in by the previous owner is totally unsuitable.
An Unsuitable Cooker
In common with every other appliance, there are no instruction manuals, but the biggest problem is that it is too big and stops the doors of the kitchen cupboards opening properly. It’s also a gas cooker, which I hate and the sooner, I can get rid of it and fit a proper electric cooker the better. To be fair to Baumatic, they did at least send me a manual, but that doesn’t help with its unsuitability.
The dishwasher has been wrecked and although it is a good make and I have the knowledge to make it work, I have decided that the best option is to get a new one, as all the baskets and shelves are broken and to get everything clean, you need to wash half the glasses and plates by hand afterwards.
But my biggest moan with the house is the underfloor heating system. When nPower fitted the new meter, they advised me to service the boiler which I did. It also needed a new control system, as the previous owner or the tenants had rewired things themselves.
It now works very intermittently, with the result the house is either stone cold or frighteningly hot. In cold weather, I have to ratchet up the controls and switch the boiler off and on to get any heat.
At least I’ve got hot water, although for the last few days the showers haven’t worked. I thought today, I’d have a bath, and I did, but then the water didn’t run out. Although to be fair it did eventually.
I can’t wait to sell my house in Suffolk, so I can get someone in to fix it all here properly.
I lost count of the number of times, I’ve phoned plumbers and they’ve said they’ll come and haven’t. But then there isn’t much work about!
I do have one worry about the heating and that is the problem might be that the house wasn’t very well insulated by Gerry the builder. So is heating the house, is a bit like pushing water uphill?
Roll on the spring, when I can switch it off.
Stratford’s Unwanted University
It has been announced that University College London is exploring the possibility of creating an additional campus at Newham, just to the east of the Olympic Park.
You’d have thought that this would have been welcomed by the people of the area. But according to a piece on BBC Breakfast this morning, the residents are against the plans. There’s a video here.
We need jobs and I suspect that those who will be moved, will get a new house, so surely this is a good plan. Or is it just the BBC saying that all development is bad.
I suspect if UCL were to build another campus in China or Malaysia, they’d be welcomed with open arms. And cheque-books too!
Miners Have a Go at the Iron Lady
The BBC has reported that the Iron Lady film has had protests in Chesterfield, which lost their coal mines, when she was Prime Minister.
My view is straightforward. Coal is a dirty fuel, that causes lots of ill health and is a major cause of global warming. Even with the small number of pits we have now, the death of miners is not unknown.
Mrs. Thatcher may have been the Prime Minister, who actually shut the mines, but in my view it was done about twenty years at least too late.
North Sea oil and gas, gave us the opportunity to abandon coal production and it should have been done in a managed and gradual way. I’d love to know, whether Prime Ministers before Mrs. Thatcher had thought of shutting the mines. After all, when the railways abandoned steam engines, a lot of coal wasn’t needed any more. So do those who want more mining jobs, want steam trains as well? And domestic coal fires, which created the smog of the sixties? Many days, I had to walk home from school in thick pea soup.
I should also say, that I’ve met quite a few people, from mining families and all were advised to get an education and avoid going down the pits.
How have other countries weaned themselves off coal? I found this article about the rise and fall of the German coal industry. It seems that German industry has managed to survive the loss of its prime energy source.
I suspect they have managed the run down of their industry much better. I can remember a proposal in The Guardian to use redundant miners to insulate our rather poor housing stock. Nothing happened, as far as I know!
We don’t learn either! Most of our vehicles are powered by fossil fuel, which don’t help the stopping of global warming. So when we bring forward proposals to help like wind, wave and tidal power, new electricity networks and rail lines, the Nimbys come out in force.
We can’t have it both ways, even if the Americans and the Chinese think they can.
I think I’ll prefer to go to hell on my two legs, a bicycle or a New Bus for London, rather than a fossil-fuel powered handcart.
RBS Is In A Downward Spiral
This morning RBS has announced another 3,500 job losses on top of 2,000 announced, just a few months ago.
I’ve always felt that RBS should have been allowed to go bust. I think now, that some of the employees who are still left, wish it had happened, as at least they’d now know where they stand. I suspect too, if they’d been put out of work at the time, they might have been able to have rebuilt their lives and careers since.
Now they are just in an awful state of limbo.
The country might be in a better state too, if the money used to prop up RBS had been used for more important purposes.
But saving RBS was just a bribe to Scotland, by Britain’s worst-ever Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. As he got voted out in 2010, it didn’t even work!
It’s All James Bond’s Fault
According to this article on the BBC’s web site, the general distrust of nuclear power is all down to James Bond. Here’s the first two paragraphs.
The evil villains in James Bond movies are being blamed for casting a long-lasting shadow over the image of nuclear power, says the president of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Prof David Phillips says that Dr No, with his personal nuclear reactor, helped to create a “remorselessly grim” reputation for atomic energy.
I won’t argue with the President of the Royal Society of CHemistry, but I will add a little story of my own.
In the 1960s, I worked on NMR spectroscopy or to give it its full name nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. The technique is summed up as.
Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, most commonly known as NMR spectroscopy, is a research technique that exploits the magnetic properties of certain atomic nuclei to determine physical and chemical properties of atoms or the molecules in which they are contained. It relies on the phenomenon of nuclear magnetic resonance and can provide detailed information about the structure, dynamics, reaction state, and chemical environment of molecules.
One of the guys I worked with at the time, Eddie Clayton, predicted that the technique would be used instead of X-rays in the future. We didn’t think he was right, but now of course nuclear magnetic resonance imaging is commonplace, with most hospitals having a scanner.
However because of peoples’ fears of anything nuclear, the nuclear has been dropped and it is referred to as MRi.
The Anonymous Widower 