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
Do Historians Ignore Facts?
Terry Deary, the author of Horrible Histories, thinks so and said as much on BBC Breakfast this morning.
I agree!
I once dealt with an archaeologist, who analysed a database of fragments found in peublas all over the South Western United States with Daisy. When we analysed the whole database we got totally different answers to those of an eminent professor, who’d discarded all of those entries that didn’t fit his personal theory.
A lot of people have been saying that the riots were caused by X and doing Y will stop it. Have they even got any facts, and if they have have used all the facts to get the answer.
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?
DLR Extension Delayed By Thefts
According to this article, the new extension to the Docklands Light Railway has been delayed by thefts.
Hopefully, it will open at the August Bank Holiday.
I have a feeling that this is the first section of the DLR, that hasn’t opened on time, so that’s not a bad record, considering of all the bits of the railway, this is one of the least important and won’t really be needed before Eastfield opens.
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!
And Now There Are Six!
I had a special delivery today from IKEA containing a set of draw sides for my cabinet.
Six Left and Two Right Sides
As you can see they did the safe thing and set a complete set of two left and two right sides.
I can’t fault IKEA on this one and must give them 10 out of 10 for customer service.
I can make an appeal to anybody who has a Stolmen two drawer chest in white with missing left sides, I’ve got four spare ones.
Bye-Bye Virgin
I’ve now been without my landline for a couple of weeks now. Although, I didn’t realise it for some days, as I was away and also because most of my friends phone me on my mobile number.
So on Friday, I did what I should have done when I moved in; I signed up with BT.
Today after a very long phone call, I cancelled Virgin. I did eventually get someone sensible, but as I had to ring on my mobile and I phoned them for perhaps twenty minutes, I suspect it wasn’t cheap.
It did however cost me over seventy pounds to get rid of them.
Hackney council today wrote to me saying that I could get rid of five heavy items a year by just giving them a call. If disposing of Virgin and their useless service were so easy.
Incidentally, all of their cabinets round here have had their doors stolen.
A Typical Virgin Cabinet in Hackney
In my experience, electrical equipment doesn’t like working in exposed conditions.
I shall now be using BT for phone and broadband, Freeview for television and the pub for watching football on Sky.
The Anonymous Widower 