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.