[birthday] feb 29 is a special day

Happy Birthday, Grendel, who is four times less than the rest of us in age - Peter Pan eat your heart out! Come and get your cake, young man.

GREAT NIGHTWEAR PARADE

Well, some of the ladies have now obliged [raunchy] and a fifth has promised so things are looking up. Some gents have also submitted entries and it should be fun tomorrow.

You do realize, of course, that we don't necessarily need anything risque - it's just an excuse to show you on the blog. A pic vaguely in the field of "your nightwear" would be good and thanks to those who've submitted entries so far.

Send your nightclad bod to jameshigham@mail.com ! :)

[music post] do you usually skip it

When you see a fellow blogger's YouTube of some music, do you:

1. Listen through it once;

2. Give it a few seconds listen;

3. Make a quick comment on the post without actually listening and hope he comes over to your blog to listen to your music clip?

If you read something from the blogger extolling how great the music is, do you skip the post immediately?

The last dinner party I ever went to was a strange dinner for four. The dinner was fine but the problem came with the music. We must have each brought a dish and a disc from memory and I still remember the crisis.

I wanted to play the track below [which Oakenfold did a version of] but everyone objected. The other guy was next and he wanted to play some uptempo Paul McCartney and Wings and jollied me along - wasn't the old music the greatest? I said nothing and the two girls refused point blank.

Next was his girl and she wanted some romantic Demis Roussos which I liked too but no one else did. Lastly was my girl and she wanted Sting and Tatu and a few other things, part of which I found bearable and his girl did too but not him of course.

We ended up with no music because no one could agree. Now this is a worry because there was a time where each new song on the radio - virtually everyone listened to it and loved it. Even in the late 90s, it was rare for people not to like Back Street Boys. But generally, the thing has fragmented, splintered and I wonder why.

And it's really depressing when there's music we bop to but no one else does. So we live within our earphone world, listening to our own music which we think is so cool. We'd love everyone to share it and they feel the same way with their music and yet no four people can agree.

[uk funding] on all but important projects

Here is British "powers-that-be" mindlessness at its worst:

Gemini South and Gemini North [astronomical facilities] are only now reaching their full potential after 15 years of development.

Is the UK in there as a major world player, now ready to reap the benefit from the facilities? Yes, yes they were. The word is "were":

Having invested something like £70m in their development, the UK currently puts about £4m into the consortium each year to maintain these remarkable telescopes.

Researchers were therefore aghast when the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), which looks after UK astronomy funding, announced its intention to negotiate a withdrawal from the Gemini consortium.

Its Gemini partners (which include the US, Canada, Chile, Australia, Brazil and Argentina)) were also upset by the decision and moved swiftly to throw the UK out. They even removed UK flags from observatory buildings and the UK's name from the consortium's website.

Stating the obvious but they were already investing heavily, the STFC and they decide to pull out? We can't even begin to scratch the surface of what this says about the UK mindset, the way things are funded in our country and so on.

Immediate links for now:

Universe Today

Wiki on the STFC

STFC Funding Crisis: Astronomy.

All right - looking at funding crises generally in the UK:

* University physics departments are facing the worst funding crisis in more than 20 years following government budget cuts, academics warn today.

* In the ombudsman's annual report 2002-2003 (HC 760) published in June, she said that she had completed three further investigations into long term care since her special report in February 2003. These have “highlighted serious deficiencies in eligibility criteria and assessments, which had resulted in severe financial hardship in some cases and had widespread implications for other people in a similar position”.

* Then the bomb drops when you get further down the ACE website and read: "Here is a list of the 65 confirmed new regularly funded organisations for 2008-2011." It then continues: "A further 16 new investments are planned, details of these will be added to this page as they are confirmed. Here is a list of the organisations we are no longer funding." And that is the bombshell - over 200 [arts] organisations have been removed from the funding.

* Ministers are being forced to abandon a scheme designed to improve teaching standards and discipline in schools as a result of this year's education funding crisis. One of the aims of the £59m programme was to give newly qualified teachers tips on classroom control and how to deal with unruly behaviour.

And so it goes on - rape crisis centres, youth work and so on. Ian Parker reports:

DK writes today of how the public sector debt is just continuing to rise, as it has done from the day that Gordon Brown took the reigns of the economy. How fortunate ... that Burning Our Money is prepared to take the time to work it out.

My goodness - the UK is bankrupt, it seems. There's really no money left in Britain? Well there is, if you are a new region funded by the EU, especially through CP. See The Common Purpose across Europe. If you're a region, you realize how hopeless UK funding is and how "gravy train" EU funding is, along with all the attached strings:

Most British regions would prefer to be funded from Brussels than from the Treasury. "You are given funding as a result of objective criteria, and you have the certainty of being given it for a six-year period so you can plan," one UK regional official said. "But if it comes direct from Whitehall it all depends on politics, and it could all be taken away at any moment to be spent on health or education."

Yep, as John Trenchard shows, there's plenty of funding ... of the "right kind" in EU terms:

Yet more EU funding from another regional authority - the London Development Agency.


Even more funding , via the EU, courtesy of EMDA.


Yet more funding from the EU

So, in this happy EU frame of mind, they'll also fund solutions to real local crises, won't they? Er ... no:

Merseyside and South Yorkshire are to lose their "Objective One" status funds, given to regenerate poor areas.

To recapitulate - anything involving regenerating poor areas, local crisis management and genuine needs - the EU won't fund. But they will fund well-being projects, Arndale type centres and Anfield. Neither the EU nor the UK will fund national prestige projects, e.g. the Gemini observatories.

Interesting.

[cricket] questioned by a lady

Here's a lady going places. Get ye over to Nunyaa and peruse her take on cricket terminology. Brian Johnson eat yer heart out.

Firstly, Wiki quotes Brian:

In one famous incident during a Test match at the Oval, Jonathan Agnew suggested that Ian Botham was out hit wicket because had failed to "get his leg over." Johnston carried on commentating (and giggling) for 30 seconds before dissolving into helpless laughter.

Among his other gaffes, when Neil Harvey was representing Australia at the Headingley Test in 1961, was, "There's Neil Harvey standing at leg slip with his legs wide apart, waiting for a tickle."

The oft cited quote: "The bowler's Holding, the batsman's Willey," allegedly occurred when Michael Holding of the West Indies was bowling to Peter Willey of England in a Test match at the Oval in 1976. Johnston claimed not to have noticed saying anything odd during the match, and that he was only alerted to his gaffe by a letter from "a lady" named "Miss Mainpiece"

And here's Nunya:

I mean who wields his virgin wood waiting to see the first cherry ? What is with all the ball tweaking and dead balls , how many maidens are bowled over? Kind of like foreplay when the bowler makes a fast approach and doesnt follow through correctly and the batter has a pull shot.

Nunyaa also puzzles over some of the other terminology:

dead balls- called when a bowler aborts his run up without making a delivery, called when a batsmen attempt to run leg-byes after the ball has struck the batsman's body, but is deemed to have not offered a shot.

If you've ever wanted to understand cricket, this is your gal.

[lizard angst] ickes brought in

Desperate measures:

Harold M. Ickes may be Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s last hope for winning the Democratic presidential nomination. Nearly 40 years after attending his first Democratic National Convention, Mr. Ickes — who has survived losing presidential campaigns, grand jury investigations and a tumultuous stint in Bill Clinton’s White House — is back at another campaign.

Wonder if he's related to David? Different other name, I suppose. I just thought ... well ... her epithet, you know - the Lizard Queen.

[old friends] new friends, real friends

Let's face it, I ... er ... need the presence of women, especially thinking women I love and who like me and I adore the snow, I can't survive without either. I don't want to live where there is neither.

However, intellectual stimulation is another absolute essential and I get mine from fellow bloggers like Tiberius, Cassandra, Lord Somber and so on. When I can't get round to my fellow bloggers because of bloody RL, even if RL is warm and smiling, I get edgy.

When a fellow blogger goes down, broadening the topic a little, it's like a personal loss to me. Some of us are fretting about Kate, Lewisham's favourite daughter. Also, the blogrolls are in a mess - must get time to sort them. Just added Cherie Pie.

I don't like not being with my friends. It sets me on edge.

[party politics] children at play

It used to count for something

Bag rightly notes:

All politics seems to have come down to is poking one another in the chest and saying 'You did this' and 'No I didn't'. Soon it will be 'My dad is bigger than yours'. This can't be good for the country.

So glad Bag sees it and hopefully others as well. Party politics is the flim flam for the real agenda e.g. the EU swallowing up what was once a great country or else, on the other side of the pond, the assimilation by stealth of the U.S.A. into the SPPNA.

But people wilfully persist with the idea that party politics is somehow important.

[reality] welcome to the new child

Rearguard action from parents:

At times it has felt as if the only time the kids are turned off is when the tube is flicked on. During the school holidays the rules were no screens from 9am to 5pm and no screens after dinner. Our six-year-old spent far too much time asking how many minutes until 5 o'clock despite cupboards groaning with toys, books and bald plastic guys who look like extras from Prison Break. So No Screen February it was. And no, the kids weren't happy when we told them. And yes, we grown-ups were very, very scared.

There are plenty of conflicting studies about the effects of television, computers and screen toys on kids. And although their world will be one of digital information and entertainment, deep in my heart I'm with US psychologist Dr Aric Sigman who reckons telly is "recreational junk food for kids".

My television was stolen ten years ago and I never replaced it - the computer has all the news I need and films can be bought and played on it. It's a world in itself and yet there are things missing, such as the daily newspaper, sports results given live and so on.

More sinister is the world of games. Dave Johnson refers to board games:

Then it hits me. This has nothing to do with the act of playing games, and everything to do with the games we're playing. After pondering this I've come to the conclusion that most board games are microcosms that mirror our world; and the problem lies in the realization that these games are choosing to glamorize all the wrong aspects of that world.

Kids, by definition, originally have no life so they go out to get one and the first stop is their home computer. With parents abrogating their responsibility of subscribing to and instilling a moral code - it was thrown out along with the bathwater - in step the purveyors of the internet game.

So, minds which are still forming, influenced by glitter and simplistic solutions in a "revenge cycle", with added pornographic interpretations of gender roles - hell, I'm starting to write like a feminist - backed up by real porn which can be switched into at will - these are exploring and absorbing the New Reality.

One of my friend's sons is into it, as are all his mates too. Before coming over all "parental", we did similar things earlier. The urge to game is strong. Dungeons and Dragons was the thing way back when but that stuff is tame.

We had our own Game too, where twenty one people in seven separate houses played a game I'd devised about battles in three spheres - the ethereal, the temporal and hell - and all interrelated with each other. The game ran for three days and nights, washed down by liberal doses of substances liquid and otherwise.

So I'm not intrinsically against games per se and my real life is one big game but it does affect how todays new humans relate to the real world in any sort of normal sense. Give kids credit to differentiate between fantasy and reality but progressively the barriers are breaking down, generation by generation, values becoming diffused and warped, rampant across the late Gen X and Y's minds.

Gen Z is a whole new ball game and Hitler would have been delighted - this is the Aryan experiment taken to the limit - the New Child, based on no G-d, no rules, indiscriminate instant gratification of rage and lust as one wills, clawing one's way up the ladder and the worship of acquisition. In this world, the pesky parent is a barrier, a blockage to attainment of one's true enlightened self. Hence the need for state Mentors.

In the Brave New World, "I" is G-d and good human characteristics are channelled into pursuit of that goal. There are blogs all over promoting a twisted, seemingly utopian and beautifully worded but ultimately dystopian New Universe. We all know one or two of these and the sad thing is - in many cases it's not malice aforethought but lack of anything solid to latch onto into their own lives. So they invent a new reality.

Welcome to the child of 2010. Can he cope or as the Who put it in one of their songs about the cobalt blue New Child:

In suspended animation
My childhood passed me by
If I speak without emotion
Then you know the reason why

I have a feeling deep inside
That somethin' is missing
It's a feeling in my soul
And I can't help wishing

That one day I'll discover
That we're living a lie
And I'll tell the whole world
The reason why

Seems others feel the same way too.

[tramvai of dreams] currently drowning in venice

Remember that new word "uzhas", meaning "horror"?

Seems I wrote too soon yesterday, which was a fabulous day until the evening. Today the temperature saw fit to jump above zero and the mayhem on the roads has everyone stranded, huge lakes of water are ankle deep everywhere, girls' clothing and men's suits are drenched with muddy slush and the mood is ugly.

Had a shocker of a night, just got back from work and am scheduled to meet up with my ex-darling whom I still love to little bits. It's the only available day - doesn't augur well but we'll try to make the best of it. She's certainly easy on the eyes and in the arms - the question is whether I measure up today.

Had to laugh at Colin's latest - that's like us today. How are things in NA and Britain?

Everyone says it will drop again and there'll most likely be snow but it will be a wet imitation of itself and lots of sliding and car crashing will ensue.

Glad I'm driven these days.


Update

B-gg-r! She postponed our tryst because her left wheel fell off and she also had a shocker today, as most people have had in this cr--py weather. Right - there are two choices:

a. slash the wrists;

b. remind you of five optimists.

Five optimists

1. The term "panglossianism" describes baseless optimism of the sort exemplified by Pangloss's beliefs, which are the opposite of his fellow traveller Martin's pessimism and emphasis on free will.

2. All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery especially attracts those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers. Perhaps the hundreds of nitty frustrations drive away all but those who habitually focus on the end goal.

3. Sir Winston Churchill, speaking at the Lord Mayor΄s banquet, London, November 9, 1954, said: For myself I am an optimist - it does not seem to be much use being anything else.

4. The house of 2000, according to H.G. Wells, would have self-cleaning windows, and the floor would be easy to sweep because the architect would ''have the sense and ability to round off the angle between wall and floor.''

5. The economist Julian L. Simon's book, ''The State of Humanity,'' includes 660 pages of historical statistics and concludes with 2 basic predictions for the next century and any century thereafter: * Humanity's condition will improve in just about every material way. * Humans will continue to sit around complaining about everything getting worse.

* The true Christian [as distinct from the bible-bashing moralist] is an interesting creature - he's a pessimist but at the same time, a serene pessimist, optimistic about the goodness which can be rekindled in every person.

* The Left Liberal is the eternal optimist but the Marxist [of the Marx variety] knows that pessismism is the only realism as he's hell-bent on creating a dystopia with his mates, the g-dless PC relativists.

* The economist is shifting from a 2007 optimist to a 2009 pessimist.

* I believe the Love of my Life will glide across my path with her billowing hair and mantle of virginal white, whatever the true state of affairs in her garden.

[research] spilt some gravy, sorry

Wiki shot of animals for research

We all need to go out on the street and bring in some stray cats:

A study by the University of Minnesota’s Stroke Research Center presented Thursday at the American Stroke Association meeting found that people who had previously or currently owned cats were less likely to die from heart attack and other cardiovascular disease.cats may help prevent heart attack?

The study examined data from 4,435 people, ranging in age from 30 to 75, participating in ongoing research with the National Health and Nutritional Examination Study.

Uh-huh and how much did it cost in research funds to come up with that one? What about the study which found that enough LSD will kill people - by the way, how did they determine that?

Every six months or so a bunch of scientists get together and decide to administer what are called LD 50 tests to a population of animals, such as rats, monkeys or beagles. This is done to determine the level at which a Lethal Dose (LD) of any substance will kill 50 per cent of the population. This then allows the same group of scientists to issue pronouncements such as "Eating 50kgs of marzipan is not good for you and/or may result in death"

And the topics hypothesized on are all in the serious category, of course:

Their study of 329 drinkers in Los Angeles found that malt liquor drinkers are different from those who choose other tipples. Ricky Bluthenthal, who led the study, said malt liquors were both higher in alcohol than other beers and tended to be sold in larger containers.

"We found that the combination of these differences resulted in the average malt liquor drinker in our study consuming 80 percent more alcohol per drink than the average regular beer drinker," he said in a statement.

Quite serious studies, say the detractors - the research might seem spurious to the layman but it takes 90% of research for every 10% of result. This costs money. Er, yes - exactly how much money? I did a little cursory research and came up with people who are quite shy to exactly say. This was as far as they'd commit themselves:

A major problem arises for universities because funding from external sources rarely covers the full cost of research. The trend amongst external agencies is to provide less than the direct full costs of research, leaving the universities to "top up" not only the direct costs of a project but also to fund fully the indirect research costs ...

So it's necessary to turn to detractors to put a figure on it and it's not peanuts:

Circa 1999-2002, David Touretzky was given $338,334 in grant funds obtained from the National Science Foundation, to conduct experiments involving the use of rats and "Amelia" a mobile robot.

I think the one I love most of all is this:

We all know that women like pink and men prefer blue, but we have never really known why. Now it emerges that parents who dress their boys in blue and girls in pink may not just be following tradition but some deep-seated evolutionary instinct.

Researchers have found that there could be sound historical reasons why women have developed a heightened appreciation of reds and pinks, while men are drawn to blue.

In the light of the current economic climate, bird flu and so on, I'm sure you'd agree that colour research requires heavy investment and an overseas trip to some resort.