[match tricks two] try before you check

Lay out 18 matches to form 6 triangles.

Can you move 2 matches to make 8 triangles?

Give up?

Try these as well:

Matchtricks 1
Matchtricks 3

[the great disaster of 2011] commemorated in parliament

One of the best bloggers going is North Northwester and this is one of the posts which make him what he is.

Set in 2015, it's the tale of the Great Disaster of 2011:

The Queen opened a joint session of Parliament , leading the surviving 230 Peers and 173 UK Members of the Commons in prayer for the dead of London and Birmingham.

The Leaders of the Houses of Lords and Commons, the Speaker Sir John Redwood, the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition Sir Frank Field, the leaders of the Liberal Democrats and also the six MPs of the Patriotic Front, along with the leaders of the newly-formed Royal Celtic League consisting of most of the formerly nationalist parties of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all joined Her Majesty in hoping that the civilian rescue workers, returning armed forces, and survivors would continue to bring ever greater order and security to the blasted and still burning areas of the Home Counties and Midlands.

They also praised the Welsh and West Country Shire Civil Contingencies Divisions managing the diminishing but still dangerous levels of airborne fallout.

Well worth a read, North Northwester.

[wireless nation] disconnecting with planet earth

Australia is not a bad litmus test for trends of the future, as long as one takes one's own national specifics into account:

About 2 million people are considering ditching their fixed-line home phones, as Australians move closer to becoming one of the world's first wireless economies. For the first time this year, the communications giant Telstra has had more mobile phone subscribers than fixed-line subscribers. Mobile phones now outnumber fixed lines by more than two-to-one.

There are 105 mobiles for every 100 people, making Australia one of the most saturated markets in the world behind South Korea, with 114 mobile phones for every 100 people.

Although research has shown the decline of fixed lines has been relatively slow, declining by 1.7 per cent a year since 2004, research by the Australian Communications and Media Authority shows as many as one in five consumers have considered dropping their fixed line subscriptions to save money.

In Britain, the giant BT has just about got the landline game sewn up and their advantage is pressed in that a BT line is one of those tick boxes which helps you to credit and really groovy things like that, which converts you from a non-person to a person. A DVLA full licence is another. However, BT is so bureaucratically hopeless that many react agaisnt it, go for Virgin or whatever and pay the price later for things which don't dovetail quite as easily as before.

And let's face it - mobiles are expensive to run, the hidden charges outweighing the benefits. So what Australians seem to want is the flexibility and convenience, at a small cost. The good life, in other words. On top of that is the way mobiles are now so much more - cameras, organizers and so on and so on.

I phone springs to mind.

With Ms Fox pushing hard for everyone to be connected to the net, with Obama intimating he can take over the net as and when he wants and with people connected in phonespace and cyberspace through the ubiquitous Facebook, command and control is looking shipshape and full steam ahead.

[japan's first lady] interesting former life

Good thing or bad thing?


Miyuki Hatoyama is a free spirit who likes to 'eat the sun' and says she's been to Venus in a triangular spaceship. Oh, and she met Tom Cruise in a former life -- he was Japanese. The 66-year-old Hatoyama, a former singer-dancer in an all-female theatrical troupe and the ex-wife of a Japanese restaurateur in California, met the new prime minister, now 62, while he was studying engineering at Stanford University.

Right, right, fine. I wonder what colour the spaceship was? Also, I've been thinking - if Tom Cruise was Japanese in a a former life, that might explain a lot about him and about vampires.

[ronald reagan] might as well have been today

This one is via HGF. I'm amazed how sharp he was and on the ball but that was the image projected on him to be forgetful in later years. What a topical speech for today:

[fireside chat] at the end of the evening

This is a Night Post. It could not see the light of day and tomorrow I'll most likely look away. Tiberius Gracchus said he didn't like people getting personal about themselves on their blogs because he doesn't know those people.

That's fair enough but about a year ago I ran an extensive survey on this site as to what people liked and didn't like. It might be time for another survey soon because the reader base has changed somewhat. However, at the time, many liked the first person singular posts of mine the best, especially about my Russian experiences.

Personally, I like personal tales now and then with other people. I get uneasy about someone who never reveals anything about himself. Also, in a music vid, it's nice to see interraction either between the band members or between the band and audience. I don't mean the excruciating sing-along and clap-along thing where the singer pauses to let the audience sing out of tune. No, I mean real interaction, often impromptu.

Age

There was an article I saw in the MSM, in passing, on the topic of being too old over 35 and I had to smile. 35 too old? Anyway, the author was worrying about why he was still single when all his friends had paired off or married and they, naturally, considered he had a problem, which made the situation worse. There's no one more callous than a couple who care, except perhaps for a happy couple who care.

So he was set up on a blind date and the talking began - all the self-justifications, all the sweepings-under-the-carpet, all the ego-protection:

Then poker came up in conversation, and my date said she loves to gamble, but she’s having a bad year. “How so?” I asked. She said she’s down $19,000. Nineteen. Thousand. Dollars! I thought, Wow, so you don’t want to work AND you’ve got a gambling problem? You’re quite the catch.

Hopeless with money, creditors after her, probably highly opinionated and quick to take offence, I'd warrant. With the years under the belt now, I wonder why I ever thought it OK to team up with someone who was as much of a liability as I was.

Most people in the family situation have their own problems - let's not dwell on those - a blog visit is to escape from those things for a while. The people outside of a relationship - while it is nothing like the problem it's made out to be and can actually give peace and quiet, can, if left too long, result in a certain eccentricity or weirdness creeping in to the person alone, something not really possible in the day to day running of a family.

Corners are cut, functionality can become the norm, diet suffers, whilst at the same time, choice of clothing suffers, a self-sufficiency takes over, a compact sort of enclosed, eccentric existence begins and the focus turns in on the self. At best, a sort of self-deprecating resignation finds its way into the voice.

I saw a man of about fifty in the street a few days back who was a bit different to the average person rushing about his business or a pensioner sitting at the bus station.

This man was not exactly blocking the way but he was visible, let's say and his attitude was friendly. Neatly turned out, seemed fine but for some reason I wanted to avoid talking to him. Why? Was it because he clearly seemed as if he wanted to talk? If he'd been having a coffee at the coffee point we might have spoken but not this way. These are the times I think I'm cruel. Would I have spoken to him if his wife had been hovering nearby? Quite possibly. A wife is a passport to acceptance, isn't she?

Singles are shunned

Once, in Narbonne, I went to a cafe by myself, a hungry traveller en route to Florence where a lady was waiting or so she'd promised.

The moment I entered the space, a waiter came up and shunted me straight to a table for one. Trouble was, there were four or five of these tables along the wall of the entrance way, all with men of my age or older sitting there, eating or sipping whilst waiting for the food, some of them trying to act as if they were busy - ferociously reading newspapers, taking slips of paper out of inside pockets, reading them and putting them back again ... and I just couldn't sit there with people coming into the cafe, quickening their steps just a little to get past all these single men, especially the women, on their way to the proper zone de bonhomie further into the cafe.

All the lonely people - where do they all come from?

Keep yourself in good order

All the single men or the divorced or the escapees from the tyranny of home and sometimes the difference seems apparent. It's almost as though the veneer of civilization corrodes when you've gone back to the single state, especially with men. The women I've known in this situation often keep house even more immaculately now that there's a bit more time on the hands but that's more rare in a man.

Like a person seeking work - it's best to keep to the old routines, to wake up early and work, to think of the things you were castigated for in your hitched days, to keep the place clean, to stay positive because the alternative is too terrible to contemplate. Even if you have no intention of ever getting caught again in a partnership, it's stil better to act as if you are keeping yourself eligible because life has a tendency to drop something on you when you least expect it.
How much space do you need?

I enjoy solitude far more than is meet and acceptable to a woman - it lets me get things done. However, not completely. My ex-accountant had an arrangement where they met for two days a week and both scheduled things around it. That seems extreme to me for the whole idea of a partnership is to relate. Myself, it's not how many days but whether time can be found in each day.

That's impossible with a family but in a one-on-one, it should be possible to achieve and therein lies the problem - the level of neediness of each person. Like space bubbles and how tactile you are - we have different needs.

No matter what the attraction, this sort of thing can drive two people apart, as you know.

Bad habits

Not so much picking your nose or silent-but-deadlies - hopefully we've moved past that but in other mannerisms. Some mannerisms can drive a person out of his brain and I'm one of the most sensitive to them. This habit of consciously touching parts of your own face and getting it to your satisfaction or kicking when sitting or whatever - it can be impossible to take.

People who like windows open at night, people who smoke, people who leave things lying about - gee, it's a wonder we can stand being with each other at all. I'm not as critical about it as the post suggests and there's such a thing as talking but it would need to be done sensitively. Done too sensitively, it can be worse.

Food tastes, side of the bed, one partner wanting to stay up half the night blogging and the other hoping for some nooky, one eating very, very late and the other used to 16:00 and a small snack at 20:00 - those two are going to clash.

Which leads where?

Just this - rather than go out to find someone, with its consequent disappointments, it might be better to allow a meeting to happen and then starts the process of likes and dislikes. Some can be compromised on but some can't. Someone who wants the windows all closed and taped up in winter and the room like a furnace - I'm afraid I have to sleep in the coolest room - the bedroom? You enjoy the boiling bed and good luck.

I've always thought it is the small issues which have to be sorted out first because the big issues are less emotionally charged and can find a solution or end the relations in one go. But a small annoying habit can nag and nag and kill the feeling over time. That's worse.