04/05/2011 by paul.

I guess that one bonus from the recent ‘royal’ wedding, is that there is now a small chance that some intelligent genes may finally get inserted into the ‘royal’ line

Posted in daily stuff | No Comments »

16/04/2011 by paul.

Have just received junk mail from the ‘vote no to AV’ people.   On the back page it says “AV leads to broken promises”.
Now how can anyone say that…we have never had AV, so there is no experience.
An accurate and testable statement would be “Elections lead to broken prosises”….of that we do have experience

Posted in daily stuff, Having a moan | No Comments »

04/04/2011 by paul.

I think that I agree with this guy

http://www.youaredumb.net/archive/all/2011/4/4

Posted in daily stuff | No Comments »

21/02/2011 by paul.

Don’t you just love this one !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV5w262XvCU&feature=player_embedded

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

02/11/2010 by paul.

Posted in daily stuff | No Comments »

04/09/2010 by paul.

See Amazon is offering 50% off Tony Blair’s book …..Hmm! still don’t want to buy it.
If he fibbed about the WMDs, then I doubt that his book is that accurate 

Posted in daily stuff | 2 Comments »

23/07/2010 by paul.

Was down the pub last night and a friend mentioned an interesting comparison between the BP oil disaster and the Union Carbide Gas disaster.
The BP oil disaster caused the death of 11 workers, which of couse is a tragedy, and an immense amount of damage to the environment in the Gulf area, and possible else where in due course, plus considerable damage to the local economies . The oil drilling operation was operated on behalf of BP by a third party, under the control of BP.  US is a powerfull country and estimates for the total cost to BP range from $3.2bn to $100bn.
In 1984, Union Carbide India Ltd, owned by Union Carbide USA, caused an estimated 3787 deaths through a gas leakage. The causes for both the BP oil disaster and the Union Carbide disaster are though to result from failure to act upon known weaknesses in operating proceedures and equipment.  India is a poor company with limited power on the wortld stage and the people killed were poor people. The total cost to Union Carbide, as negotiated with the Indian government, was $470M…..  

Hmmm!

Posted in daily stuff | No Comments »

22/07/2010 by paul.

Just thinking about some of my favourite quotes: 

“To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take up exercise, get up early, or be respectable” ….Oscar Wilde

“Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes. Then, when you pass judgement, you’re a mile away… and you have his shoes.” …..anon 

“if they sent the bigwigs to the front, then the war would be over just like that !    Hans Fallada

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.
Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.
But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it. - Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha

And crawling on the planet’s face , some insects called the human race.
Lost in time,  and lost in space … And meaning.” Richard O’brien

fates of men….we play and are played and the best we can hope for is to do it with style” Terry Pratchet

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.” - - Richard Dawkins, Unweaving The Rainbow, 1998.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

08/07/2010 by paul.

One of the many blogs that I have been reading, is
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/
which is very much concerned with atheist v christian right issues (evolution v creationism).

My sympathies do not lie with the christian right (nor with any idiotic religious views) and I felt that it all came together the other day, when sitting in a traffic jam. I was looking at the boot of the car in front, when I observed a snail, crawling up the boot lid of the car. Clearly, the owner of the car had been to the local tip the previous day and left behind, after the garden waste had been removed from the boot, was the snail. It occurred to me, that the snail, whilst crawling up the lid of the boot, had no more idea or understanding as to the nature of its immediate surroundings, as we have to the nature of our existance, meaning of life (if there is one) and all the rest.  Any attempt by anyone to impart to the snail, an understanding of the nature traffic jams etc. would be a futile as any attempt to explain the nature of our existance to us.    

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

06/07/2010 by paul.

I have been pondering on the use of the plastic tongs in Tesco (or other supermatkets, I guess) at the bread counter.
The tongs are placed in the bread roll bins, inferring that you should use them to select your bread rolls and place the rolls into the plastic bag for the check-out. I think that it is meant to be a sort of hygene issue.
I always pick up my rolls with my hands and take them to the check-out and I am dying for someone to tell me off and insist that I use the tongs to handle the rolls. 
I want to ask the manager of Tesco, what exactly is the roll of the tong ?.
If I pick up my roll and take it home, as far as I can see, any germs on the roll, assuming that it has not been rolling around on the floor behind the counter, at any time, are my germs.  Also, if I use the tongs, I will transfer the germs from the previous customer to use the tongs, to my hands, and then in due course to the roll.    Also, if I use the tongs, I will transfer my germs to the tongs and then in due course to the next customer to use the tongs.
It strikes me that the tongs are an excellent means of transferring germs around….but I suspect that those who placed the tongs in the bread bin, meant quite the opposite.         Perhaps, as soon as anyone has used the tongs, an assistant rushes out and sanitises them before they are used by the next customer …!!!    Hmm! I doubt it.
So, come on supermarket manager, ask me to use the tongs…please….then I can ask my question.

Posted in food, daily stuff | No Comments »