[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.