Abercrombie and Fitch
I don’t wear designer brands and especially those that are obvious to others in the street.
So I was rather amused that Abercrombie and Fitch are reported to be getting angry about a reality TV show in the United States, where some of the odious cast wear their brand. Incidentally, I generally don’t use American brands unless I know the company’s policy on the environment, workplace policies, the death penalty and other matters. As an example you’d never see me in Asda, but I do buy products from Microsoft.
I Thought Spain Was a Catholic Country
There is news today, of protests today over the visit of the Pope to Spain.
The authorities say that the visit is self-funded, but with record youth unemployment and other problems , the protestors feel the money could be better spent.
If the Pope really wanted to help this world he could change his stance on birth control. Something that is used by most Spaniards.
Banks Cut Services To Pay Bonuses
The Royal Bank of UK Taxpayers has now decided that a good proportion of its customers must use a restricted set of cash points.
Obviously, the savings will be going to pay banker’s bonuses and Fred the Shred’s pension.
The Facebook Two
Two men have been given substantial prison sentences for trying to organise a riot in Chester by using Facebook. as the BBC reports here. But they must have been two of worst riot organisers in history as no-one turned up.
Perhaps, the good people of Cheshire, have more morals, than these two have common sense.
You don’t send people to prison for this type of crime, especially when it would appear that nothing got damaged and no-one got hurt.
What they need is some form of creative community punishment. Perhaps, there is a derelict site that could be converted into a garden! Or some coal that needs painting white!
One is certainly appealing, and I’ll be very surprised if the sentence stands.
Drunk In Charge of a Coolbox
You can hardly believe this man could be so stupid.
I suppose his only defence is that he is from Queensland.
The Last Imperial Legacy in the United States
A letter in The Times yesterday, explains why a city block in the US is the size it is.
City blocks, and indeed much of North America, were laid out in imperial measurements, many of which are still used today
Sir, Tim Teeman said in the Saturday Review on Aug 13th states that “200ft is the length of a city block”. Not so: it is 198ft, because that equals 66 yards or 3 chains or 12 rods, the units by which the whole of North America was surveyed and laid out, within the system of customary measures that still prevails there and survives unofficially in Britain.
I suspect that very few measurements in English cities, towns and the countryside are just how they were originally laid out or modified. They’ve just done the pavements outside my house, and I suspect the road is now about a centimetre narrower, as they’ve replaced the kerbs round the trees, which of course have grown since they were last replaced. I wonder if the Dutch company worked to Imperial or Metric units. I suspect that if they measured everything, it was the latter, but I suspect most of it was well done using the Mark One eyeball.
Solicitors from Hell
We’ve all used bad solicitors in the past, but few of us have done anything about it. But Rick Kordowski did according to this article in The Independent.
According to The Times yesterday, the solicitors don’t like what he’s doing and are turning their legal guns on him.
I’m reminded of the old American legal joke.
Q. What do you call a thousand American lawyers at the bottom of the sea?
A. A good start
Why Does Regeneration Create So Many Ugly Buildings?
his question was asked in the BBC web site and this article is what Owen Hatherley said.
The last paragraphs are about Leicester.
This is the site of the Leicester Science Park, where new things should be able to occur. A sign says “starting on site summer 2010”. There is no sign of it a year later.
What there is, is a new housing development. Little detached boxes in cul-de-sacs, designed for two purposes – maximising car parking and maximising profit. Each house has a little neo-Georgian porch, what the developers call a “gob-on”.
What you notice is the emptiness. Not just the huge empty wastes outside, but the empty-headedness of a society that has abandoned all hope that it could create something better than this bloody mess.
I think he’s thinking on the right lines.
For a start my new lifestyle proves that you can live without a car. But you do need a house with lots of clean space to work, socialise and relax.
C and I also brought up three kids in a tower block. Good ones certainly work and my middle son looks back on that flat in the Barbican with its superb views and lots of space with affection. My late younger son liked it so much, that when he first setup home it was in the block next door.
Too many though the Barbican is ugly. But not to the many who’ve lived there!
Could a Balaena-Like Structure Be Used As a Wind Power Platform?
Last night I was watching reports on the BBC about the Ormonde Offshore Wind Farm.
Again, I can’t help thinking that a Balaena like structure could be used. It would be tall and thin and the wind-turbine could just be lifted onto the top.
It would be built in a shipyard horizontally and would have a steel tank at the bottom to give it stability. As with the original Balaena weight and the gum-boot syndrome would keep it in place.
It would also be towed out horizontally and then upended by filling the tank. I proved that this would work nearly forty years ago and I’m sure if you get the sizes right, it would be very stable. You then just lift the power unit on the top in the normal way.
But then I’m no structural engineer. On the other I have a memory like an elephant and never forget anything useful.
Where is Buckminster Fuller when you need him?
Heroic Lesbians
A friend pointed me to this story entitled Heroic Lesbians; wherefore the silence, on a Luxembourg web site.
It describes how a married lesbian couple, got in their boat and rescued dozens of teenagers, who were swimming away from the guns of Anders Behring Breivik on the island of Utoya.
The article questions why the story has not been picked up by mainstream media.
My view is that it wasn’t because of their sexuality, as suggested in the story, but because the rescue was carried out by two women and that just doesn’t fit with those that run the average newspaper. One heroic woman is front page news, but two show up men in a bad light!
The Anonymous Widower 