Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip

Heard young Scroobius being interviewed on the radio this week, some might label him a performance poet but he prefers to describe himself as a spoken word artist. Whatever, his words are well worth a listen and if I get the opportunity I will go and see them perform live.

Here is their latest single (which uses a sample of a Radiohead song), Letter From God To Man and comes with the following disclaimer:

"This poem isn't actually about religion. It is kind of irrelevant to the piece whether or not you believe in God or a God or anything like that. That's not the point......"




Last year's single Thou Shalt Always Kill is another fine track (this one is the Fatboy Slim remix). Just for a laugh here is them doing a X-Factor spoof.

If you want to check out tour dates then visit their MySpace page.

Rays Of Hope

Alzheimer's is one of the most debilitating diseases that anyone can suffer, while the effects in the early stages are mild the progression to the middle stage is heartbreaking to observe. This can occur within a a period of a few years or take much longer, short term memory degrades such that a conversation from 5 mins previously is not remembered.

There is now some hope for those in early stage, a very small clinical trial (321 patients) has revealed that after 19 months no further loss of mental abilities was seen. It will take at least 4 years and more trials before the drug becomes commercially available but at least now there can be reasons to be hopeful.

There are two amazing things about this story, the first being that the original effect of the drug on the protein believed to be responsible for the disease was observed as the result of a laboratory accident. The second is that the drug already exists and so should not attract a premium price, there may be undesirable side affects but if the results of further trails are similar those will be acceptable.

Kate Bush

Happy 50th birthday Kate!

Gives me an excuse to give this an airing

Dorset

Was down in Dorset visiting friends for the weekend and the weather was unusually warm and pleasant, our host is the captain of the second XI village cricket team and they were playing at home. He had to provide the sandwiches for the tea so we were treated to the sight of 4 loaves being transformed into 4 large piles of sandwiches.

We went along to the game for five hours to watch the “action” and were amazed at the age range of the players (from 13 to guys in their fifties), the game was played at a lovely small ground with your typical church spire visible in the background.



Some “spectators” leaving the scene early.



Ball in flight action.



The game ended in a losing draw, do not ask what that means as it would take me far too long to explain the scoring system. Thanks to D for these great photos.

News Roundup

What amazed me about this story was not that the judge decided that the name of the girl “Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii “ was inappropriate but that someone else had allowed the name “Number 16 Bus Shelter” to be given to some poor kid.

As one of the Discworld witches once said “I think that there should be some test for parents, in addition to the practical test”.

This must have been a very scary experience, a loud bang, loss of cabin pressure at 35,000 feet followed by a controlled descent to 10,000 – according to the passenger I heard interviewed this morning on the radio.

I made this same flight 25 years ago without any incident apart from a delay on the ground at Hong Kong while a part was swapped out on the flight deck. The pilot told us what was happening and then informed us that the doors would be closing to allow any smokers to light up and that free drinks would be served for the duration – best ground delay I have ever experienced.

Serenity/Firefly Quiz

Not sure that I have posted before about how much I enjoyed the series Firefly (created by Joss Whedon), cruelly cancelled by the network after only 14 episodes had been made. It had some fine characters and excellent story lines going on and deserved a much longer run than a lot of the stuff on TV. The only consolation was that a film was later made (Serenity) which did wrap up the story arc pretty well.

So here is another internet personality test, as ever I remain unconvinced that this thing is working properly given the result but here is how I scored.

Your results:

You are Malcolm Reynolds (Captain)

Honest and a defender of the innocent. You sometimes make mistakes in judgement but you are generally good and would protect your crew from harm.




Click here to take the Serenity Firefly Personality Test

The Colour Of Magic

While I was out of the country a TV film was shown based on the first two Dicsworld novels (The Colour Of Magic and The Light Fantastic) made by the same company which produced Hogfather. Luckily for me one of my friends recorded it and had saved the tape, so I had the opportunity to catch it for myself last week.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed it, David Jason made a surprisingly good Rincewind, Sean Astin excelled as Twoflower but Jeremy Irons really nailed Lord Vetinari and for me stole the show. There were one or two “shoddy” special effects but in the main they did not distract from a pretty faithful adaptation of the books, though they did have to leave some stuff out.

Judge for yourself by watching this clip, the good news is that they are working on another one for release next year – Going Postal – which should be pretty good depending on who they get to play Moist Von Lipwig and how the golems end up looking on the screen.

Air Rage

Read about yet another drunken Brit causing chaos in the sky yesterday by trying to open an emergency exit at 40,000 feet.

Then this morning at Paradise Driver's place read of another attempt to do the same thing in the US. At least this guy was not drunk but only suffering from mental health problems.

It reminded me of my flight back from Bali to Jakarta with lil' bro' earlier this year, we were sat by one of the emergency exits and before take off the stewardess came over and explained to us how to open the door in the event of an emergency.

Was aware that the EU had banned Garuda (Indonesian national carrier) from flying into Europe last year over a poor safety record but thought that getting these instructions was a wee bit worrying. On the occasions when I have flown in or just behind these seats I had never heard anyone being told how to open the door, so it came as a big surprise.

The flight passed without incident but those instructions will stay with me for some time.

Plus Ca Change

The British Museum is running an exhibition about the Roman emperor Hadrian later on this month and one of the talking heads that I saw on last night's news mentioned the conflicts that the empire had in the Middle East back around 117 AD.

The previous emperor had expanded the empire by invading the Parthian empire (Iraq, Iran and surrounding areas) but Hadrian did not believe that these gains were defensible and withdrew his forces. Probably a wise move as the legions were facing cavalry forces, heavy armour and light horse archers – the archers were renowned for firing backwards as they rode away and some sources claim that this is the origin of parting shot.

He needed the troops to put down a revolt in what is now Israel and that proved to be successful, although there was another revolt 15 years later that required him to move legions from all across the empire to put down.

Is any of this starting to remind you of anything? Nineteen centuries later and the “West” is still embroiled in the region, does nobody read history any more?

Came across this video today and it made me laugh, enjoy.

Nothing To See Here

So why not head on over and read this fine post.

If you want to read a rational critique of why our society is screwed up these days then you will not find one better than this.

Written by a front line police dog handler it contains more sense than you will find in anything written by politicians or journalists.

Red Arrows

Was sitting surfing the web in DBA cottages yesterday morning when I heard the roar of very low flying aircraft passing overhead but they had gone by the time I got outside. Living under a Heathrow flight path such events are pretty rare and my brain started working overtime about the possible causes of the event. When it slowed down a bit I remembered that this is the week of the Farnborough Air show – a friend who lives nearby was out in his garden at the time and he confirmed that what I had heard was the sound of the Red Arrows flying very low overhead.

They are the Royal Air Force aerobatic team and perform regularly at air shows around the world, found this clip of them on YouTube which shows the sort of stuff they do.

Extra Golden

Came across this lot last week, an interesting mix of Western Rock and Kenyan Benga musical styles which I really enjoyed. The title of this one “Obama” seemed to be way out of left field until I read that his office was instrumental in the two Kenyan musicians getting the visas that allowed them to enter the US and play live gigs and then record the album from which it is taken.



For more information check out their web site.

Mark Kermode – Mamma Mia

Watched this online yesterday and it is right up there with his finest reviews (warning contains some singing and sedentary dancing), I almost fell of my chair as I was laughing so much. Finally, a reason to be glad that I was back home, while I was able to download and listen to their podcasts I had forgotten how entertaining it was to watch him in full flight.



This review of Hancock is not nearly as memorable as the previous one but was recorded live in the BBC commentary box at Wimbledon and has been included for anyone who has entertained the idea of spending a night out watching the movie.

Nothing To Say

Received some very sad news from a blogging friend this morning, life can be very cruel.

Know that you are in my thoughts.

Back tomorrow.

Animal News

This chilling tale comes from the Ruhr valley in Germany, essentially some psycho(s) have killed and decapitated around 30 pet rabbits over the last year draining them of their blood. Frightened owners have taken to hiding their hutches under cover or keeping their rabbits indoors.

Police believe that those responsible may be using Google Earth to track down the locations of likely victims and are concerned that they might step up their activities from rabbits to humans.

On a lighter note comes this story of a teenager in the UK who dressed at 07:30 and went to work before “noticing” at lunch time that she had been transporting a small baby bat in her bra all morning.

Now I have no experience of wearing a bra but think that an experienced user might have noticed the presence of a warm furry critter down there a tad quicker than 5 hours later.

Old One Eye

Now, I have always had fish down there in the “none to bright” department of the animal kingdom but those living in the fish pond out the back at lil bro's place changed my mind. Any time the shadow of a biped crossed their domain the would swim around in a frenzy underneath it expecting food to fall down from the heights.

They would ignore the dog's shadow if he stopped on the small bridge over them, but any human would set them off. We noticed one day after I had been there a while that the large grey coloured one only had one eye – did not appear to hinder his ability to feed as he was one of the largest in the pond.

Getting a decent snap of him proved to be a challenge, did not help that they would circle at a fast pace, eventually managed to get this one which is not brilliant but does show it's lack of a second eye.

Back In The yUcK

Landed early on the morning of the 21st, could not see anything on the external camera view from the plane as we descended until we were in the last seconds of the final approach. There was a lot of low cloud and an unpleasant cold drizzle falling out of the sky, temperature was an icy 13°C and as I finally escaped outside for a smoke I started to regret having left my fleece on one of the couches in the guest wing where it had lain for the last four months.

The weather picked up after a day or so and my brain finally arrived as well, spent 5 days trying to get my laptop talking to the internet without any luck. Every fix that was tried generated no progress and I finally decided to archive my data and reset it back to factory settings. An hour later and suddenly I was able to connect – and in my absence something had been done at my local exchange as my 2Mbps connection had been transformed into a 6Mbps one.

While aware that petrol had risen 16p a litre while I had been away the rises in the price of food came as a bit of a shock; bread, eggs, milk and pasta seem to be much more expensive than when I left – at least beer and wine prices remain close to what I remember them being.

Have been asked many times if I am glad to be back and that question has made me pause before answering every time “yes and no”. It has been good to catch up with family and friends, satisfy my addiction for a high speed internet connection and to drink some ale that is not a plain old lager.

On the downside, I miss the good weather, the coffee and the people that I left behind – so the jury remains out.

More regular posting should ensue from this point on – unless the sky falls on my head!