Book post

(see post of 18/11/06)
Kathy Reichs - 206 Bones - 8
Scott Mariani - The Sacred Sword - 8.5
David Baldacci - Zero Day - 8
Rod Pennington and Jeffery A Martin - The Fourth Awakening - 6
Rob Hamilton - the Whitechapel Murder Mystery - 7
Scott Mariani - Passenger 13 - 8
Jonathan Kellerman - Compulsion - 7
John Grisham - The Litigators - 8
Ben Cheetham - Blood Guilt - 6.5
Robert Goddard - Blood Count - 8.5

London 2012 (am I allowed to say that?) - part 2.

If I couldn't get enthused by the Olympics, then I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn that I can get even less excited by the Paralympics.  That's not to say that I do not admire the dedication and effort put in by the disabled athletes and what they are doing, it's just that I'm not that interested in watching them do it.  So good luck to all of them, but while they're doing their thing, I'll be doing mine.

Sorry - I didn't see you.

One of those things that "everybody knows" is that carrots are good for your eyesight.  Now it's a fact that carrots are a source of vitamin A, and that vitamin A deficiency can result in poor eyesight, but we in the Western world get plenty of Vitamin A from other sources, so where did this urban myth that eating carrots will enable you to see in the dark come from?  Well in fact it was a piece of government inspired misdirection in WW II to offer an explanation as to why our fighter pilots were so successful at shooting down German bombers at night - the real reason of course was our use of radar which back then was top secret.  So eat your carrots - but if you're out in the dark, best carry a torch!

... some are more equal then others.

If we are to believe what we read, the outgoing Director General of the BBC turned down the idea of a statue of George Orwell outside Broadcasting House on the basis that he was "too left-wing".  Well, he was certainly a committed socialist, but the author of "1984" and "Animal Farm" - two of the most savage criticisms of totalitarianism and communism - too left-wing??  I don't think so!!

Apocalypse - now??

Will the world end on December 21st?  That's when the Mayan calendar runs out - and it's been going for 5,000 years, so it's got more going for it than some of the more recent "end of time" predictions.  But did the Mayans really believe that this would be the end of everything, or as others have suggested, that the calendar would simply reset to zero and start another 5,000 year cycle.  And is it worth taking any notice of these increasingly frequent doomsday prophesies?  After all, the world has been around for some four and a half billion years (sorry creationists, the facts are against you) and we humans, or our ancestors, have only appeared in the last two million years or so.  Put another way, if the age of the world is a day, then we humans first made our appearance at about ten seconds before midnight. So do you really think what we believe - or don't - has any relevance in the great scheme of things?  Oh, come on!!

How do you pick and choose?

Exam results in the news again - not, as for the last umpteen years, because the percentage of those getting good results has increased, leading to accusations that the exams are getting easier.  No, this time it's the reverse - the percentage of those getting good results has decreased (albeit marginally) and the accusation this time is that this is as a result of deliberate government pressure.  So what, if anything is going on?  Well, there are two ways of awarding grades.  Up to twenty or so years ago, what grade you got depended on how well (or badly) you did in relation to everybody else - so if you were in the top 10% say in a particular subject you might get an "A" - if you were in the next 20%, a "B" and so on.  But then the system changed and you were assessed not against everybody else, but against a set "line in the sand", so it might be for example that if you got 150 marks or better you would get an "A", between 100 and 149 a "B" and so on.  Problem is these "grade boundaries" as they are called are reset every year, and often retrospectively, leading to accusations that they can be, and have been used to achieve a certain result - for political or other reasons.  The current Secretary of State seems to want to go back to the "percentage" method, and certainly I would have thought that this method of ranking you against your peers would be more useful to prospective employers or further education establishments.

In off the red.

What are we to make of Prince Harry's "strip billiards" (which actually appears to have been pool) session?  My initial thought was "what a prat!".  If he'd been 17 or 18 you could have put it down to youth and immaturity, but he will be 28 in a few week's time for Heaven's sake, and is way old enough to know better.  Which invites the question - was this to some extent a deliberate act?  Was he seeking to send a message of some sort to who knows whom? Funny way of doing it, but you never know.  The Sun has broken ranks with the other newspapers and published a picture of the Prince in his birthday suit - it is, according to them, a matter of "freedom of the press".  That would be freedom of the press spelled M-O-N-E-Y then?

What Olympic legacy?

Remember the story of the street in London where the council removed the speed bumps so that the official Olympic cars could have a smooth ride, only to replace them once the Games were over?  Well here's an even more unbelievable one - a school gymnasium was identified to be used as a training hall for Olympic volleyball teams.  The school pointed out that their gym was a hot and stifling room - so much so that their pupils were limited to using it for just 15 minutes at a time.  So our good friends at LOGOC arranged for air conditioning to be installed.  You can see where this is going can't you?  Now the Olympics is over, they've taken the air con units out again!

Eat your greens - if you can afford them!

We've been here before - the wet summer means that there is a shortage of home-grown vegetables, which will result in an unavoidable rise in prices.  We're already seeing the price of tomatoes up by about a third on last year, and there's warnings of more to come.  You just can't win, can you?

Oh dear, Mr Akin...

OK so this is an American story, but it seems it has its origins over here.  The said Mr Akin, a senatorial candidate, suggested that a woman who is raped is unlikely to conceive.  He used the rather strange phrase "legitimate rape" which is an obvious oxymoron, but the idea behind what he was saying goes back to the English common law in the 13th century or thereabouts.  The theory back then was that, in order to conceive, a woman must experience orgasm, and therefore if she does conceive, the sex must have been consensual. In English law, this idea had more or less been discredited by the 17th century, but  surprisingly is apparently still alive and well in at least some parts of the US!

I don't like....

...Mondays, as the song goes.  But apparently, there's something to it.  A recent survey has found that statistically, bad things are in fact more likely to happen on a Monday than on any other day of the week.  Why?  No-one knows, although there is a theory that the weekend is traditionally "dead time" and therefore what happens on a Monday is the accumulation of three days' worth of experience. You've had all weekend to mull it over, and on Monday you let it all out, sort of thing.  Best stay in bed, I reckon.

So what??

Does anybody really care what happens to Julian Assange?  Well, clearly there are those who do, so perhaps the question is - should we care?  This idea that he is some sort of knight in shining armour dedicated to protecting the public's right to know the dubious things their governments are getting up to strikes me as confusing cause and effect.  It may well be that the result of his activities has been to shine a light into some murky corners and to cause embarrassment to the US in particular, but I don't think his motives are that clear-cut.  If you look at the totality of his history, it seems to me that he's one of those people who do what they like simply because they can and they care little for what may result (good or bad) from their activities.  So why should we care?  As my Gran would have said - he's made his bed, and must now lie on it.

Look at it another way...

Nice holiday, and managed to miss most of the Olympics brou-ha-ha.  Couple of interesting facts - as suspected, we excel at "sitting down" events.  If you just look at the cycling, rowing, canoeing, sailing and equestrian medals, we beat the world by a country mile.  But a rather more sobering statistic is, that if medals were given for the last three places, rather than the first three, we would also head the medal table!

We're all going on a...

...fortnight's holiday to Lanzarote, so see you when we return  Cannot however go off without commenting once again (see post dated 29/8/08) on the suggestion that Michael Phelps is the "greatest Olympian" of all time on the basis that he has won more medals than anyone else.  Most decorated yes, greatest swimmer, almost certainly, but greatest overall?  Look at it this way - suppose you are a runner, a sprinter.  At the Olympics, there are three events you can take part in - 100 metres, 200 metres and the 4x100 metres relay.  If you are a swimmer specialising in 100 metre and 200 metre events, there are no less than twelve events for you to take part in - (deep breath) 100 metres freestyle, 100 metres butterfly, 100 metres backstroke, 100 metres breaststroke, 200 metres freestyle, 200 metres butterfly, 200 metres backstroke, 200 metres breaststroke, 200 metres individual medley, 4x100 metres freestyle relay, 4x200 metres freestyle relay and 4x100 metres medley relay.  So if such a runner and swimmer are on top of their game and sweep all before them, the runner will come away with three gold medals and the swimmer with anything up to twelve.  Does this mean that the swimmer is a "greater" athlete than the runner?  Or simply that they have had more opportunity to demonstrate their talent?

Where do you put the "s"?

You learn something new every day, they do say.  Well, thanks to correspondence in my paper, I learned something new the other day.  The question raised was - why when the plural of court martial is courts martial, is the plural of governor-general not governors-general but governor-generals?  And the answer lies in the hyphen. Court martial is two words with, unusually for English, the adjective following the noun, and where this is so you pluralise the noun - in this case, court. Governor-general on the other hand, because it is hyphenated, is classed as a single word and pluralised in the normal way, by sticking an "s" on the end.

Seriously??

I consider myself to be a fairly tolerant chap who is prepared to accept that we're all individuals with individual quirks and fancies, but even I was surprised and amazed at the story that Oxford University of all places has re-written its rule book on the formal dress code to remove any reference to gender.  So now fellas, if they feel inclined can wear a skirt and blouse and girls a suit.  Apparently, according to the Student Union, there is "an active transgender community" within the University.  I am somewhat agog! 

Imply / infer.

Do you know the difference?  Following an amazing swim by a 16-year-old Chinese girl, Claire Balding on the BBC commented "How many questions will there be... about somebody who can suddenly swim so much faster than she has ever swum before?". The internet was immediately swamped with people complaining that she was "inferring" that the girl was on drugs.  No she wasn't - she couldn't.  She might or might not have been implying such a thing - only she knows whether she was or not. What was happening was that it was those people posting who were inferring that she had made that suggestion.  The mantra is - I imply, you infer. People are entitled to read into what she said what they want, but not to saddle her with their conclusions.