flanerie.org

Professional interest made me track down the Barclays Bank tax avoidance documents today after the High Court ruled that we shouldn't see them.

Barclays think that it is less embarrassing to act (very) guiltily than it is to let us see the documents and judge for ourselves.

The documents themselves are pretty routine, setting out chains of spurious transactions in order to avoid tax. Example:

"The interest rate swaps between Barclays and its affiliates are £[381.4]m in the money for Barclays across Tranche 1 and Tranche 2. The economic benefit of the Transaction is derived from the Barclays group's ability to transfer the fair value gain on these interest rate swaps (which is currently unrealised for UK tax purposes) to the Counterparty without triggering a taxable gain."

What Barclays have done in not illegal, but it does have a very nasty whiff about it and Barclays should not receive a scrap of state aid. All special liquidity scheme help should be withdrawn and the bank can then be nationalised for nothing when it runs out of cash. Although one suspects that the board have tightened up their contacts so that such a scenario would result in massive pensions.

Not that I am without sin - I helped Amazon set up a very lucrative tax-avoidance scheme four years ago. It was worth around $1bn over five years, with $200-$300m of benefit per year after that.

The thing is, it is the government and HMRC that are to blame for all of this. The loopholes are very easy to find and the politicians have convinced themselves that closing them would drive businesses away. They believe, somewhat stupidly, that if businesses had to pay tax on all their profits, they would leave the UK. There used to be talk of 'keeping the City competitive' which seemed to mean letting foreign nationals pay no tax and letting big companies run rings around HMRC.

In reality, if everyone paid tax on all their earnings or profits, tax rates would be significantly lower and there would be less need to avoid them in the first place. Or at least we wouldn't be running a 10% budget deficit.

For all the spleen-venting going on at the moment, I doubt anything will happen to change the corporate tax landscape. Big companies can fund lucrative avoidance schemes. International companies can shift their profits to low-tax jurisdictions at will. Small companies get reamed.

Apparently the economy is going to hell in a hand-basket. I learned this quaint phrase from a Canadian and I really should have asked him what it actually meant.

A hand-basket sounds like a slow method of transport. Is it a rickshaw or a picnic basket? Going to hell slowly sounds pretty reasonably.

Either way, according to the media, everything is bad.

And yet retail sales in August were 3.9% higher than a year earlier. Strip out inflation and they were still up a smidgen in volume terms. So if, as we are told, Rome is burning (surely endangering the entire hand-basket), man + dog are happily fiddling.

On Saturday I tried to park in my local town centre on a mission to drop my ladies at the theatre and drop some books at Oxfam. All car parks were full.

On Sunday I went to Bicester Village to add some much-needed invigoration to my wardrobe. The queue to get in was over half a mile.

Crisis? What crisis?

Today is the most popular day of the year for couples to file for divorce.

InsideDivorce.com surveyed 100 UK law firms and 2,000 people who were either married, divorced or separated.

The survey found that one in five of all marriages are near breaking point, reports The Sun.

Family lawyer Suzanne Kingston, of Dawsons Solicitors, said: "If you're not spending time together then the issues between you are not so apparent because they are disguised by what you are doing on a day-to-day basis.

"But over Christmas people are spending longer periods of time together. There is also the financial worry and the impact of relatives.

"And at New Year people often make resolutions and think about what they want for the future."

[from El Reg]
HM Revenue and Customs has enhanced its international reputation for mislaying things by allowing 1.5kg of cocaine to go walkabout from a HMRC depot near Coventry airport, the Sun reports.

Warwickshire Police have confirmed they're investigating the "complete one-off", which saw the Bolivian marching powder evaporate from a secure lock-up for which "less than 10 people" had the password.

While acting chairman of HMRC David Hartnett told a public accounts committee he would be "very worried" if the Colombian naughty salt had been half inched, he did not rule out the possibility that it "could have been sent to be destroyed, to a court for evidence or to a laboratory".

Hartnett said: "I am very concerned about what has happened in Coventry. All I know is that an amount of cocaine - 1.5kg - is missing from the place it should be in a secure lock-up.

"What I don't know at the minute is whether this cocaine has been sent for destruction, or to a court or to a forensic science laboratory and the paperwork has not been done properly or it has been stolen. I am very worried if it is the latter."

While Warwickshire's finest scour the countryside for the missing charlie, HMRC is still looking for the details of the 25m citizens contained on two discs which went awol back in November.

To save you the trouble, were HMRC to compensate the disc-outrage-affected citizens with a percentage of the street value of the rogue stash of nose Ajax, it would amount, by our reckoning, to a paltry 3.6 pence worth of toot per head - way short of the minimum required to numb citizens' faculties to HMRC's quite astounding track record of carelessness.

[from the Grauniad]
A four-year-old girl dialled 999 when her mother collapsed, fetched her medicine - and changed into a Cinderella outfit so she looked smart for the trip to hospital. When Hannah Lerego had an asthma attack at home in Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, her daughter Olivia fetched her inhaler, stroked her hair to bring her round and described her symptoms to paramedics. Lerego, 30, said: "I don't think I would be alive without Olivia. When they asked if my lips were blue she said they were pink like hers but turning purple and she knew that for sure because purple is her favourite colour."

[from Ananova]
Malaysian doctors performed a 30-minute operation to free the testicles of a nine-year old stuck in a metal pipe after the boy slipped while bathing, a newspaper has said.

In response to a call from his brother in an adjacent room, the boy climbed up a partition in the bathroom, but slipped and fell on an uncovered metal pipe, trapping his testicles in the narrow tube, the New Straits Times said.

Medical staff answering the emergency call at the boy's home on the northern island of Penang were unable to remove the L-shaped pipe and had to call in firemen.

They used a hydraulic cutter to open both ends of the pipe before the child could be taken to hospital, shrieking in agony.

He was discharged after doctors performed a half-hour operation.

A dog swims more than 4km every day to nurse her newborn puppies who are stranded on an island.

The dog, already a celebrity in Chongqing city, is called Huahua by local people.

She gave birth to four pups at Shanhuba, which has become an island in the Changjiang River due to the heavy rains this summer.

Huahua swims 1.2 km to the island every day to nurse her four babies. Then she returns to the Changjiang River, following the flow of the water, to swim another 1.1 km to another part of the city to feed herself.

Each day Huahua does the whole journey twice, once in the morning, around 7 am, and again at 7 pm, at which point she stays with her pups on the island and returns to the city the next morning.

Huang Pingren, a pensioner who swims to the island everyday, says he discovered the amazing dog a few weeks ago.

"I was resting on the island, and found the unprotected litter of dogs. Then in the evening, around 7 pm, I saw a dog swimming to the bank and then running to the newborns."

Huang even published a story on the internet, describing the great deeds of the dog mother, and leading to an outpouring of enthusiasm from readers.

"Many citizens found me and said they wanted to do something, like contribute food or money, but I told them not to, since I was afraid too many visitors may scare the mom away."

Two days ago, the water rose again, and the mother has moved her children to a higher point on the island, reports Chongqing Evening News.

[from stuff.co.nz]
A German motorist surprised by euro notes swirling in the air around her car hit the brakes and collected a "substantial amount of money" before turning it over to police, authorities in Worms said.

A police spokesman in the small western town said the 24-year-old woman saw the money flying through the air in her rear view mirror late on Wednesday. She pulled over and tried to collect all the notes, unsuccessfully.

When police went with her to the scene they could not find any more cash.

A spokesman at Worms city hall said police were withholding details on the exact sum and location of the find in the hope of learning more about the money's origin.

According to Harvard Medical School, and why would they lie, sandcastles are more deadly than sharks, or at least in the USA. Frankly, it hardly matters since neither of them kills even a tiny fraction of the number that idiots-with-guns kill, but neither beaches nor sharks have clowns like the NRA batting for them, making them a soft fleshy target.
---

[Lifted from the New Scientist]
Sun, sand, sea and surf - the four Ss that spell the idyllic summertime vacation that most of us dream of. But wait, there's danger lurking in this gentle scene... No, it's not the scary shark fin cruising the ocean waves - it's the killer sandcastles.

Yes, research in the New England Journal of Medicine found sandcastles are more deadly than sharks - 16 deaths in the US since 1990 were caused by sandcastles, according to Harvard Medical School's Bradley Maron. Compare that to the measly 12 fatalities from shark attacks. Jaws is looking pitifully like a soft-touch.

The main hazard appears to be people lethally falling into holes they had dug - presumably for the moat - which means the sandcastles of America must be on a far more impressive scale than the ones I'm used to.

Alarmingly, in addition to the prospect of being consumed by their architecture, the bucket-and-spade brigade are at risk of infection from fecal matter. A study published this week in Environmental Science and Technology, found strains of E. coli bacteria that indicate unhealthy levels of fecal matter on US beaches and around Lake Superior. Yuck.

The researchers found two broad types of E. coli in the sand: those "deposited more recently", as team member Michael Sadowsky put it, and those "that have learned to kind of grow or reproduce in the sand," he said. Microbes survive longer in the sand than they do in water, they found, so you may want to wash after a day at the beach.

[Ripped from stuff.co.nz]
Holidaymakers who only say they plan to sightsee during a visit to Britain could find their tourist visa applications being refused, a monitoring body said in a report.

It is a standard reason given for not granting tourist visas, the Independent Monitor for Entry Clearance Refusals, Linda Costelloe Baker, found in her annual report.

Would-be visitors who have never before travelled abroad could also find it difficult to holiday in Britain.

Costelloe Baker cited one case where an applicant had been told by an officer: "You have never previously undertaken any foreign travel before and I can see little reason for this trip."

"This is a common reason for refusal," she added.

"Entry clearance officers can use some ridiculous reasons when refusing a visa for tourist visits," Costelloe Baker said.

She cited one case where an applicant who had previously travelled abroad was refused entry because the countries were "nowhere near the UK".

In another case the applicant was told he or she did not have a "sufficient command of the language for the purposes of tourism".

Costelloe Baker said in her report: "Well, if knowledge of the language was a requirement for travel, that would certainly stop lots of British citizens going on their hols."

Taking annual vacation in this country was not a good enough reason for one entry clearance officer, while wanting to visit friends near the seaside fell short for another applicant from St Petersburg because he had not said where he wanted to visit.

A would-be tourist who wanted to stay in a hotel in London while visiting friends in Surrey and Kent was turned down because the entry officer had misread it as Cirencester "far from his friends".

[Ananova.reports...]
A German bank manager has been jailed after he took £1.5m from rich clients' accounts and moved it to clients struggling with debts.

Bespectacled and balding, Peter Taubinger, 45, hardly fit the typical image of the glamorous hero robbing the rich to feed the poor.

But under his management, large sums were transferred from the bank, in the small town of Tauberfranken, after he decided poor people needed it more than the rich.

His efforts meant single mothers, pensioners, and even a young man made jobless by ill health suddenly found thousands of pounds credited to their accounts.

But he turned himself in after he realised he could not cover up what he had done any longer, and has now been sentenced to 34 months in prison on 168 counts of embezzlement.

Bauer said: "I felt for the unemployed and the poor and wanted to help them."

[the BBC surely dreamt that...]
A wheelchair user has been taken for a high-speed ride along a US highway after his handlebars became tangled up in the front grille of a lorry.

The back of the 21-year-old man's wheelchair was scooped up as he passed in front of a lorry leaving a petrol station, Michigan state police said.

The truck driver drove off, completely unaware that he had a new passenger.

Passing motorists told police, who found the man unhurt - but still attached to the front of the truck.

He had been kept in his wheelchair by a seatbelt.

Police in the town of Paw Paw, Michigan, said the unidentified man told them "it was quite a ride", but complained only that he had spilled his soda.

The truck reached speeds of 50mph (80km/h) as it drove down the Red Arrow Highway.

After several miles the driver pulled over at the depot of a trucking company where police then told him about the man on his front end.

He refused to believe there was a man in a wheelchair stuck to the front of his truck until he saw it for himself, police said.

[Sadly the BBC did not deem it in the public interest to name the perp...]
Bomb squad officers called in to blow up a suspicious package found it contained a packet of chocolate buttons and a vibrator.

Post Office staff in Hasland, Chesterfield called in police when they heard the package making a noise.

Mansfield Road was closed off for an hour and a half while the bomb squad carried out a controlled explosion.

A police spokesman said: "Officers had no way of knowing what was inside the package. But it gave us a giggle."

He added: "They had to act on the information available and had to do what they thought was right. Thankfully it was nothing more serious."

[the BBC, hopefully mistakenly, report...]
A virus contracted through oral sex is the cause of some throat cancers, say US scientists.

HPV infection was found to be a much stronger risk factor than tobacco or alcohol use, the Johns Hopkins University study of 300 people found.

The New England Journal of Medicine study said the risk was almost nine times higher for people who reported oral sex with more than six partners.

But experts said a larger study was needed to confirm the findings.

HPV infection is the cause of the majority of cervical cancers, and 80% of sexually active women can expect to have an HPV infection at some point in their lives.

It is important for health care providers to know that people without the traditional risk factors of tobacco and alcohol use can nevertheless be at risk of oropharyngeal cancer
Dr Gypsyamber D'Souza, study author

The Johns Hopkins study took blood and saliva from 100 men and women newly diagnosed with oropharyngeal cancer which affects the throat, tonsils and back of the tongue.

They also asked questions about sex practices and other risk factors for the disease, such as family history.

Those who had evidence of prior oral HPV infection had a 32-fold increased risk of throat cancer.

HPV16 - one of the most common cancer-causing strains of the virus - was present in the tumours of 72% of cancer patients in the study.

Risk factors

There was no added risk for people infected with HPV who also smoked and drank alcohol, suggesting the virus itself is driving the risk of the cancer.

Oral sex was said to be the main mode of transmission of HPV but the researchers said mouth-to-mouth transmission, for example through kissing, could not be ruled out.

Most HPV infections clear with little or no symptoms but a small percentage of people who acquired high-risk strains may develop a cancer, the researchers added.

Study author Dr Gypsyamber D'Souza said: "It is important for health care providers to know that people without the traditional risk factors of tobacco and alcohol use can nevertheless be at risk of oropharyngeal cancer."

Co-researcher Dr Maura Gillison said previous research by the team had suggested there was a strong link.

But she added: "People should be reassured that oropharyngeal cancer is relatively uncommon and the overwhelming majority of people with an oral HPV infection probably will not get throat cancer."

A vaccine which protects against cervical cancer caused by HPV strains 6, 11, 16 and 18, and also against genital warts is available and the researchers said the study provided a rationale for vaccinating both girls and boys.

But whether the vaccine would protect against oral HPV infection is not yet known.

Dr Julie Sharp, science information officer at Cancer Research UK, said: "There is conflicting evidence about the role of HPV, and this rare type of mouth cancer.

"As this was a small study, further research is needed to confirm these observations."

"We know that after age, the main causes of mouth cancer are smoking or chewing tobacco or betel nut, and drinking too much alcohol."

[New Scientist reports...]
HOW much pain would you put up with to help your friend? Less than you would for your close relatives, but more than you would for a charity, according to a study that looked at the basis of altruistic behaviour. For women, however, best friends rank higher than cousins, while men put all family members ahead of friends.

Psychologist Elainie Madsen of the University of St Andrews, UK, and colleagues asked 137 participants from various cultural backgrounds to inflict pain on themselves in return for a reward given to a specified person or charity. Subjects were required to squat against a wall in a sitting position, which caused pain in the thigh muscles. The longer they chose to hold the position the greater the pain, but the bigger the reward for the beneficiary. The more closely related the beneficiary was to the participant, the longer he or she held the position. Charities, however worthy, inspired the smallest sacrifice (British Journal of Psychology, vol 98, p 339).

There's an intriguing gender difference. Women tended to spread their efforts more equally among relatives than men did, as well as putting up with more pain for best friends than for cousins. This could be down to the fact that in many societies women tend to move away from their families. "Women have to get along with everybody - including their mothers-in-law," says Phyllis Lee of the University of Stirling, UK.

The other possibility, says co-author Robin Dunbar of the University of Liverpool, UK, "is that females are just more social".

Middle-aged, male, holding a senior position in the finance department. I guess that would be me....

[The BBC report...]
Middle-aged male senior company executives who have been employed for a long time are the main perpetrators of fraud, a survey suggests.

The international KPMG Forensic study found that white-collar company fraudsters often commit more than 20 separate frauds before being caught.

Instances of fraud could go on for years. Typically, it takes between one and five years to detect a fraudster.

Finance departments are the most prone to fraud, the accountancy firm added.

While building up a profile of a typical fraudster, the accountancy firm looked at 360 company fraud cases across the UK, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

In 60% of cases, senior managers were the perpetrators; of which the overwhelming majority were middle-aged and male.

The perpetrators seniority allowed them to commit multiple offences over a long period of time before detection.

Over half the fraudsters actually committed more than 20 separate offences.

"Status in the company makes it easier for them to bypass internal controls and inflict greater damage on the company," Richard Powell, partner at KPMG Forensic in the UK, said.

"Given the repeated and extended nature of most frauds, companies need to work extremely hard to detect frauds earlier, through tighter internal controls, data analytical tools, and more widely publicised fraud reporting mechanisms," Mr Powell added.

Interestingly, it was more often a colleague blowing the whistle on fraud which led to the criminal being detected, rather than the triggering of internal anti-fraud measures.

Overall, KPMG branded many internal controls within companies as "weak" and called for them to be improved.

As for the scale of losses, among the cases examined by KPMG, the average fraud was 1m euros ($1.4m; £680,000).

Often firms had little prospect of getting this money back and had to bear the loss themselves, the group added.

[ananova report...]
Walt Disney has unveiled a range of 34 bridal dresses inspired by films like Sleeping Beauty and Beauty And The Beast.

The dresses by designer Kirstie Kelly were unveiled in New York and cost between £755 and £1,500, reports Metro.

Bridal couples can already choose a Disney-themed wedding with rides in a Cinderella carriage and appearances by Mickey and Minnie Mouse in formal attire.

Packages start at £2,000 but average about £13,500. Disney's new line of gowns is aimed at couples with a tighter budget.

"We are enticing them to step up without breaking the bank," said Jim Calhoun, executive vice-president for global apparel at Disney Consumer Products.

If successful, the wedding gown collection could be extended to include other Disney Princess-branded fashions and home furnishings for adults.

"If it really is the lifestyle opportunity we think it is, then it opens up possibilities beyond the day of the wedding," added Mr Calhoun.

According to a news item on the BBC, entitled "Sickies 'make up 12% of absences'", we are a bunch of slackers and it is costing the country dear.

"Overall workplace absence, including genuine illness, cost the economy about £13.4bn in 2006, the CBI added.

Workers took an average of seven days off sick in 2006, it said.

This was about half a day more than in the previous year and equated to the loss of 175 million working days."

Which just goes to show how lacking in imagination the BBC is. Not that it stops there, the entire news media ran the same shoddy statistics.

'Costing the economy' is an odd notion, since money just moves between different pockets.

Try this for a different spin, taking the flanerie.org approach to life:

Economy Boosted by Workplace Welfare
New figures show that 750,000 workers would lose their jobs if workplace sickness absence was reduced to zero, increasing the jobless rate from 5.5% to 8.0% of the workforce.

Economists warn that such a dramatic increase in unemployment could push the economy into deep recession by reducing retail sales and triggering a house price collapse.

See? It just takes some lateral thought rather than being solely focused on profit at the expense of common sense.

... buying scanty underwear.

[the BBC report that...]

There really is something in the way she moves, according to researchers.

An hourglass figure has long been perceived to be the ideal figure for a woman to have.

But New York University researchers have found that to be found attractive, a woman had to move in a feminine way - swaying her hips.

Men, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper found, were more attractive if they moved with a "shoulder swagger".

The waist-hip ratio has long been thought to be key to Western perceptions of attractiveness, with a small waist and bigger hips the ideal combination.

Marilyn Monroe, and now Beyonce and Jennifer Lopez are famous examples of women with that figure.

Its popularity may be down to media images, or because Western women do not need to have strong and muscular bodies in order to carry out manual labour, unlike women in developing countries.

But the US research, which was also published in the journal Psychological Science, suggests they would never have achieved their sex symbol status if they did not move in the right way.

Not just measurements

The team carried out a series of studies involving over 700 participants who were shown a variety of animations and videos of people moving.

Some showed shadow figures, where it was not possible to see if it was a man or a woman, while others obviously showed a man or a woman.

No matter which format was being used, the participants rated women or "female" figures as more attractive if their hips swayed as they walked, while men were more attractive if they had the characteristic shoulder movement.

The research also confirmed the waist-hip ratio assumption, with women's attractiveness being rated higher if their waist-hip ratio was small and men's being higher if their ratio was large.

The ideal waist-hip ratio for women is to have a waist measurement which is no more than 70% of their hip measurement.

But Kerri Johnson and Louis Tassinary who led the research, say their work shows attractiveness is not as simple as the difference between two measurements.

Writing in PNAS, the researchers said: "The body's shape and motion provoke basic social perceptions, biological sex and gender - ie masculinity or femininity respectively.

"The compatibility of these basic precepts predicts perceived attractiveness."

The team say their findings only apply to Western cultures, and other societies will judge attractiveness depending on their most prized feminine and masculine traits.

Dr George Fieldman, principal lecturer in psychology at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College said: "This is quite plausible.

"It's the movement which attracts, and not just the waist-hip ratio per se."

He added: "It would be interesting to see what the ideal combination of measurements and wiggle is."

I guess this is some kind of school event although I have a lingering suspicion that it is a job interview at Google

Here is an interesting story from the New Scientist. Seems to make sense, although applying the same logic would mean that ginger people would have trouble getting laid.

----
Jealous man seeks partner for meaningful relationship. Tall, handsome, blue eyes, looking for blue-eyed women only.

Why? Because men with blue eyes are drawn towards blue-eyed women, and prefer to choose them as their partner because this can provide reassurance that the woman's babies are theirs too.

When surveyed, blue-eyed men find pictures of women with the same eye colour significantly more attractive than those with brown eyes, whereas neither brown-eyed men nor brown-eyed women show any preference for eye colour, Bruno Laeng of the University of Tromsø, Norway, and his team have discovered.

The effect is seen in real relationships, too. Blue-eyed men are more likely to be romantically involved with a woman of the same eye colour than they are with brown-eyed women, or brown-eyed men are with a partner of any eye colour (Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, vol 61, p 371).

Blue eyes are a recessive trait, Laeng explains, so two blue-eyed parents should produce a blue-eyed child, while a child with any other eye colour must have been fathered by another man. Blue-eyed men seeking a partner unconsciously know this, Laeng claims, and select women of similar eye colour to ensure they can more easily spot if they have been cuckolded.

NEW YORK: A three-year-old boy fell from the fourth-floor window of an apartment in New York City, but was caught by a passerby, police said.

The boy was caught by a 39-year-old man passing under the window, police said in a brief statement. The boy was taken to hospital with just minor cuts and abrasions to his head and face. Police are still investigating and gave no more details.

"This is the week of heroes in New York," New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said, when asked by reporters about the incident.

On Tuesday, New York construction worker Wesley Autrey jumped onto subway tracks to pin down a stricken stranger just in time to allow an oncoming train to pass over them.
[from stuff.co.nz]
----

A similar thing happened to me a few years ago. I was walking along the road on a crisp February morning and I caught a cold.

SEOUL: The South Korean government is handing out gifts for office workers who promise not to visit brothels this holiday season.

"If you promise yourself to make it a healthy night out at the end of the year, and if you recommend this to others, we are giving lots of prizes," the Ministry of Gender Equality said in an Internet posting.

The ministry is offering to pay companies whose employees pledge not to buy sex after what are typically alcohol-soaked, year-end parties.

A ministry spokesman confirmed the campaign but declined to answer questions about it.

But a ministry official told the Korea Times daily: "Korean corporate culture that includes heavy drinking is also what makes buying sex acceptable as a way for male-bonding, which is proving to be a hard-to-break ritual."

The ministry is offering movie tickets based on the number of employees who pledge not to visit prostitutes as well as a cash prize of 1 million won ($1077) for the company which enlists the most employees in the campaign.

Many South Koreans were bewildered by the plan, saying it was a waste of money and gave the impression that South Korean men cannot keep away from brothels.

"Do they really think men buy sex every time they have a dinner party?" wrote one Korean on a comment page of the South Korea's largest daily Chosun Ilbo.
[from stuff.co.nz]
----

A tragic story all round, with a supposed predilection for hookers amongst partying office workers balanced by the govt's reliance on promises. It does also seem somewhat stacked in the favour of big companies.

Anyway, the staff at flanerie.org have all signed up to a hooker-free end of year.

NEW YORK: Can't resist a quick shake and peep at that present under the Christmas tree? You're not alone, with a US survey finding one in five adults are present peekers.

The survey of 2,287 US adults by research firm Harris Interactive found the main culprits tend to be women, with 21 per cent unable to resist the temptation for a sneaky peep compared to 15 per cent of men.

The younger 18 to 34 crowd also have less self-control than the 35-plus crowd, with 32 per cent taking a sneaky look compared to 12 per cent, according to the survey that was conducted on behalf of Yahoo! Shopping.

Gift wrapping expert Christine Fritsch, author of the book "Gifted Wrapping", suggested hiding present for children up high and trying to disguise adult's presents.

For example put an electronics box on the outside of a non-electronics gift to throw off expert peekers.

"If you put a smaller box within a bigger box, you can curb a lot of peeking," she said.

She also suggested wrapping the present as soon as you get home and leaving off the gift tag until the last minute.

And don't use a gift bag.

"That's just way too easy to peek," she said.

---

Alternatively, be so disorganised that you don't get around to wrapping anything until Christmas morning. At least I have managed to buy some presents though, which is an improvement on previous years.

An angler has broken his own record for landing the world's heaviest carp - with the same fish he caught last time.

Gary Hagues, 34, hooked the 87lb 2oz fish while on a holiday he won for catching it last time, reports the Sun.

Derbyshire golf professional Gary battled for 30 minutes to land the carp at Rainbow Lakes in Bordeaux, France.

The fish had grown - it weighed 83lb 8oz the first time he caught it.

Gary said: "It was as strong-willed as it was the year before. Maybe it will get even bigger."

Experts said setting a new record twice with the same fish was a million-to-one chance.

---

Experts? Experts in what? I reckon if you fish in the same lake the chances of catching the same fish, and it being a bit heavier, aren't quite so remote.

More to the point, winning a holiday for catching a record fish, and the holiday being to the same place, seems a bit of a bum deal. Unless your idea of a quality holiday involves freezing your knackers off while chain-smoking and reading Razzle. In which case, start packing your waders.

The BBC reports that:

"A gunman has been found dead after storming a school in Germany, injuring a teacher and several pupils."

And it strikes me as rather tricky for one person to storm a large building. I guess if he screamed a lot he might have given the impression of storming, but it might well be that he merely ambled into the school and shot a few people.

Admittedly, "A gunman has been found dead after ambling into a school in Germany," doesn't make as exciting a start to a news story.

It reminds me of the British politician in the 70's who accused an opponent of 'going around the country whipping up apathy"

Scarborough is cancelling its ceremonial switching-on of the Christmas lights - because it's too popular.

Ten thousand visitors came in December 2005 - but fire officials say only 2,000 can safely attend, reports the Daily Mail.

So instead of turning families away - or face a compensation claim if someone was injured - council officials have cancelled the event altogether.

Penny Marsden, an independent councillor and shopkeeper, described the decision as 'a joke'.

"This is a joyous occasion when children come out to enjoy the start of Christmas - and we are going to rob them of it," she said.

But council chief executive Jim Dillon said: "A vast amount of hard work by all parties has been carried out in looking at ways of staging the event safely, but we all feel the risks are far too great."

The message appeared on all similar signs around Crawley at about 6.45am.

Thousands of motorists travelling into the town would have been subjected to the unsavoury advice.

The signs normally display the number of spaces available in the town's car parks and were installed about four years ago.

A spokeswoman for Crawley Borough Council said the authority had received no complaints from the public, just calls advising them what had happened.

She said: "It is disappointing someone would do this.

"The car park information system was hacked into.

"Crawley Borough Council officers took immediate action to remove the offensive words when this was brought to their attention.

"The system and network are not the council's and are maintained by a contractor. Measures have now been put in place to prevent any further attacks.

"Our apologies for any offence or distress caused.

"Nowhere is foolproof - if hackers can get into Pentagon computers then I am sure they would have no problem with ours."
[full local newspaper story here]

12 October 2006

TORONTO: An animal rights group has called for a North American theme park operator to cancel a competition in which people will try to break the world cockroach-eating record.

Theme park operator Six Flags Inc, based in New York, is staging the contest as part of a promotion leading up to Halloween in which it is also offering customers free entry or line-jumping advantages if they eat a live Madagascar hissing cockroach.

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said it had been flooded with calls from children, adults and even anonymous employees of Six Flags opposing the record-breaking contest and the overall promotion.

"Insects do not deserve to be eaten alive especially for a gratuitous marketing gimmick," PETA spokeswoman Jackie Vergerio told Reuters.

The competition to beat the world cockroach eating record is being held on Friday at a Six Flags park in Gurnee, Illinois. Anyone who beats the record will win a season pass for four people for 2007 with VIP queue-jumping status.

Competitors will try to break the current world record, which is held by Ken Edwards of Derbyshire, England, who devoured 36 Madagascar hissing cockroaches in one minute in 2001.

However Six Flags spokesman James Taylor said the only complaints the company had received were from people who did not have the opportunity to sign up and eat a cockroach because

only 12 of its 30 parks in the United States, Canada, and Mexico were participating in the promotion.

Taylor dismissed any health concerns, saying the cockroaches were raised in a sterile environment and were as safe to eat as shrimp or lobster with high nutritional value.

Madagascar hissing cockroaches are large, wingless cockroaches that can grow up to 7.6cm.

Taylor said no one who had indulged in this rare delicacy had complained.

"It's something that's supposed to be scary, it's icky, it's gross, it's Halloween fun and it's just one small part of the haunted houses and thrilling rides going on."
[liberated from stuff.co.nz]

A first aider suffering a suspected heart attack received a pager message sending him to his own emergency.

Roger Flux, 66, a volunteer community responder for Hampshire Ambulance Service, had chest pains in bed at his New Forest home.

Roger Flux an emergency first aider with Hampshire Ambulance Service at his home in Ashurst, New Forest, after being scrambled to attend his own suspected heart attack /PA

His wife called 999 as a precaution and paramedics were on the scenes within minutes.

It was then that Mr Flux got a pager message scrambling him to the emergency at his own house.

He said: "I was on call that evening and during the middle of the night I had severe chest pains right across my chest and jaw.

"In a couple of minutes the ambulance crews were here and investigating and in the meantime I asked my wife to get my response bag.

"While I was sitting down my pager went off, telling me to attend to a man with chest pains. Then I looked at the address - it was my own."

By the time cardiac specialists at Southampton General Hospital decided it had been a false alarm, Mr Flux saw the funny side of it.

"At least it shows the system works," he said.
[nabbed from ananova]

A Japanese speed-eater has crammed in another world record.

Takeru 'Tsunami' Kobayashi came out top in Boston's first-ever lobster roll eating challenge.

Kobayashi ate 41 rolls in 10 minutes - the previous world record was 22.

The other challengers managed 25 between them, reports the Boston Globe.

Speaking after the win he said: "I think I could eat some more."

Crazy Legs Conti, a Massachusetts native and 11th-ranked competitive eater in the world, said Kobayashi's edge is in his ability to stay focused.

He said: "He is tapping into something that the greats like Lance Armstrong and Tiger Woods know: the game is not on the field. It's in your mind".

Kobayashi is famous for holding the world record for eating 53 hotdogs in 12 minutes.
[teased out of ananova]
---

This article just prompts questions. Not least of which, how did Crazy Legs Conti get his name?

Well, kind of.

News has reached flanerie central of hypoallergenic genetically-modified cats (BBC story here). I am all for a bit of kitten action but I think the boffins have focused their efforts in the wrong area this time.

Sure, some people are allergic to cats. These people are usually allergic to a whole range of other things too. These people are a menace and should be excluded from society.

Meanwhile, cats are predisposed to be run over by cars. I used to own 50% of a cat called Biggles, and he was run over twice. I am still bitter about the money I spent rebuilding him the first time. Bastard.

So what we need are cats with genetically modified street smarts, and quickly. Those hypoallergenic cats are $4,000 each and it will only be a matter of days before one of them looks like a discarded toupe on the highway.

Having a memory like a goldfish could actually be a good thing, according to a Sydney scientist who has spent 10 years proving fish are not as dumb as we think.

Fish are not the bowl-circling dimwits we imagine and could be as socially able as monkeys and elephants, Dr Culum Brown of Macquarie University says.

The biology lecturer has spent the past decade putting fish through learning and memory tests, which he says shows they are much deeper thinkers than they look.

For a start, Dr Brown says the three-second memory of goldfish is a myth: "It's completely ridiculous that an animal could survive without a memory."

Fish are so clever, Dr Brown says, that those schooled in survival skills can even teach their captivity-raised peers how to get by in the sea.

To help prove his theories, Dr Brown put rainbow fish into a tank with a mock trawler net with a single hole and watched how long it took them to find an escape route.

"Without any prior experience the fish learned where the hole was in about five runs," he says.

A year later, the same fish managed to find the hole on their first try, which Dr Brown says shows they easily recalled the skills they had learned.

In another study, Dr Brown scared intertidal gobies from a rock pool and as they dived for safety found they plopped precisely in surrounding pools.

"This suggests that fish are able to form mental maps similar to those people use when planning a route to a familiar destination," he says.

Dr Brown also studies "social learning" among fish, where fish trained to recognise predators and wild food teach captivity-bred fish how to survive.

"Fish can be trained en masse and then used to train other fish," he says.

"What we've found is the latter groups of fish learn more rapidly when ... placed with trained fish."

The research could prove useful to the aquaculture industry, Dr Brown says.
[found on stuff.co.nz]
---

So I no longer have the memory of a goldfish, but not because my memory got any better.

A jogger who took a wrong turn during a lunch-time run in Florida ended up stuck in a swamp for four days.

Volunteers searching for Eddie Meadows, 62, eventually found him 'stuck like glue' in a bog, reports The Times.

Mr Meadows calmly asked his rescuers: "Do you have a phone? I want to call my wife."

He also asked for water and chocolate, before insisting that he should finish his run, jogging a short distance before he was helped to a waiting ambulance.

Police in Orlando said Mr Meadows had survived by sipping water from the swamp and avoided sun exposure because he was under a shady tree canopy.

Mr Meadows is in training for the Baltimore Marathon and leaves his desk at the University of Central Florida's research park every lunchtime to jog around the campus.

His wife, Ardis, and two grown-up sons appeared on TV to plead for help in finding him and 50 volunteers scoured the area.

Finally, Ron Eaglin was combing woodland on a remote corner of the university campus when he heard noises.

"I heard some sloshing off in the woods, it didn't sound like a deer, so I yelled: "Hello?" and then I heard: "Help, help, help, help"," he said.

"I said: "Are you looking for Eddie Meadows?", and he said: "I AM Eddie Meadows"."

This has to rank as the most unscientific scientific research of the week. Interesting though...

---
A UK scientist claims he has evidence of what he calls "telephone telepathy" - the phenomenon by which you think about someone and, lo and behold, the phone rings...

According to Reuters, Rupert Sheldrake reported on Tuesday the results of experiments which "proved that such precognition existed for telephone calls and even emails".

Sheldrake's guinea pigs gave researchers the names and phone numers of four relatives or friends. One of these was contacted at random and asked to give the subject a bell. Forty-five per cent guessed correctly who was on the other end of the line, Sheldrake told the annual British Association for the Advancement of Science shindig - "well above the 25 per cent you would have expected."

Sheldrake further commented: "The odds against this being a chance effect are 1,000 billion to one."

A similar test involving email yielded the same result, although the researchers' limited pool of testees - 63 for the phone and 50 for the email - coupled to the fact that only nine subjects were filmed across the two tests, prompted "some scepticism".

Sheldrake has vowed to continue his experiments, however, to prove what he believes is the "interconnectedness of all minds within a social grouping". Next up for scrutiny is text message telepathy. ®
[from El Reg]

Aussies, of course. No news on the pigeon though.

---

Five people ended up in hospital in Australia after a fight over a pigeon.

Four others were treated for minor injuries and all nine were spoken to by police in Melbourne.

Police were called after a fight broke out between two neighbouring families disputing the ownership of the pigeon.

The fight ended with five men taken to hospital with scratches, cuts, bumps and bruises to their heads and bodies.

The men were of varying ages, the eldest in his 50s or 60s, an ambulance service spokeswoman said.

A police spokeswoman said investigations were continuing and nine people were being spoken to over the incident.

China has added strippers at funerals to its burgeoning list of proscribed activities, the BBC reports.

Bare-assed ladies are apparently deployed at rural send-offs to boost mourner numbers, since "large crowds are seen as a mark of honour".

To show they mean business, the authorities have arrested the leaders of five striptease troupes, including two involved in a farmer's funeral in Donghai county, Jiangsu province on 16 August, which was exposed by a Chinese TV station.

Local officials subsequently ordered an end to the traditional practice - which they dubbed "obscene performances" - and declared that "funeral plans have to be submitted in advance", according to Xinhua news agency.

And just to make sure the ban sticks, the powers that be have set up a hotline where concerned citizens can earn cash rewards for reporting "funeral misdeeds".

For the record, the attendance at the farmer's farewell was estimated at 200. He can consider himself duly honoured.
[from El Reg]

Dolphins are stupid but happy, according to a South African researcher, and their brains are only as large as they are to keep them warm in the sea.

Paul Manger from Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand, argues that dolphins' large brains have fooled us into thinking they are smart. In reality, he says, the marine mammals couldn't outwit a rat, and don't have the sense of a goldfish.

Not counting humans, dolphins have the largest brain to body size ratio of any other creature on the planet. However, what Manger says is that since most of that brain mass is made up of so-called glial cells, rather than neurons, the size is irrelevant. He argues that the glia merely act as insulating material.

As Poirot would say, it is all about the leetel grey cells.

Despite this lack of "thinking" brain, dolphins are probably as happy as they look. Manger says they produce a huge amount of the neurotransmitter serotonin. This plays an important role in regulating mood, sleep and appetite. It is also often referred to as the happy drug.

Of course, any suggestion that dolphins aren't secretly playing chess in their spare time was bound to attract criticism.

Vancouver Aquarium's cetacean research programme head Dr Lance Barrett-Lennard says Manger's argument could be just as misleading as simply relying on brain/body ratios to inform us about the intelligence of animals.

He argues that dolphins' behaviour clearly indicates that they are highly intelligent.

"A dolphin could have a brain the size of a walnut and it wouldn't affect the observations they live very complex and social lives," he told The Globe and Mail. "They keep account of who their friends are with very complicated hierarchies and allegiances. The other thing is they have spatial maps. They know exactly where to go when they need to look for certain food."

Manger counters that dolphin behaviour supports his assertion that they are in the "two short planks" category.

"You put an animal in a box, even a lab rat or gerbil, and the first thing it wants to do is climb out of it. If you don't put a lid on top of the bowl a goldfish it will eventually jump out to enlarge the environment it is living in," he said.

"But a dolphin will never do that. In the marine parks, the dividers to keep the dolphins apart are only a foot or two above the water between the different pools."

He argues that if dolphins were really that bright, they would jump over tuna nets instead of getting caught in them.

Manger's research has been peer-reviewed and is published in Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society.
[lifted from El Reg]

David Copperfield says he's found Fountain of Youth
16 August 2006

MIAMI: The man who made the Statue of Liberty appear to vanish may soon claim to do the same for unsightly bags and wrinkles.

Master illusionist David Copperfield says he has found the "Fountain of Youth" in the southern Bahamas, amid a cluster of four tiny islands he recently bought for $US50 million ($NZ78.6 million).

One of his islands in the Exuma chain, Musha Cay, is a private resort that rents for up to $300,000 a week and the other islands serve as buffers to keep prying eyes away from celebrity guests on the white sand beaches.

Copperfield is coy about his reasons for the Fountain of Youth claim, but the man best known for entertaining with grand deception insists his archipelago also contains the legendary waters that bestow perpetual youth. Seriously.

"I've discovered a true phenomenon," he told Reuters in a telephone interview. "You can take dead leaves, they come in contact with the water, they become full of life again. ... Bugs or insects that are near death, come in contact with the water, they'll fly away. It's an amazing thing, very, very exciting."

Copperfield, who turns 50 next month, said he had hired biologists and geologists to examine its potential effect on humans but he's not inviting visitors to swim in or drink from it just yet.

It was a big news day on the BBC News website with my attention drawn in particular to:

Women 'must save for retirement'

Shit, really?

I suppose tomorrow we will have:

Children 'must go to school'

quickly followed by:

Food 'must be eaten'

Still, we do sometimes need reminding of the crushingly obvious.

BERLIN: A German scientist has been testing an "anti-stupidity" pill with encouraging results on mice and fruit flies, Bild newspaper reported on Saturday.

It said Hans-Hilger Ropers, director at Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, has tested a pill thwarting hyperactivity in certain brain nerve cells, helping stabilise short-term memory and improve attentiveness.

"With mice and fruit flies we were able to eliminate the loss of short-term memory," Ropers, 62, is quoted saying in the German newspaper, which has dubbed it the "world's first anti-stupidity pill."
---

Well fuck a duck.

1. Mice are the most intelligent species on planet earth anyway, so using them as test pilots is hardly going to yield useful results.
2. Fruit flies are utterly useless. The have DNA with about five base pairs. Maybe six. They are so simple you can rejig their DNA to make legs grow out of their heads.
3. Herr Ropers probably needs to use this pill on himself.
4. And a few politicians

NEW DELHI: They say it takes a thief to catch a thief, but India's Delhi Metro has hired a monkey to frighten off other monkeys from boarding trains and upsetting passengers.

The langur monkey, trained since the age of three months, has been patrolling monkey-prone stations on a leash.

In June, a monkey boarded a train at the underground Chawri Bazaar station and reportedly scared passengers by scowling at them for three stops. It then alighted at Civil Lines station.

The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation says it hopes the new hire will avert a repeat of that episode.

"It started working about a month ago and since then we've not had a single incident," said Anuj Dayal, a metro spokesman.

The langur's keeper – or langurwallah – is being paid 6900 rupees ($NZ245) a month.

Langur monkeys are similarly employed around the grounds of parliament and some government buildings in New Delhi.
[ripped from stuff.co.nz]

How full a man's stomach is can dictate the type of woman he will fancy, UK research suggests.

A study of 61 male university students found those who were hungry were attracted to heavier women than those who were satiated.

The hungry men also paid much less attention to a woman's body shape and regarded less curvy figures as more attractive.

The study appears in The British Journal of Psychology.

[etc etc]

They recruited male university students as they entered or exited a campus dining hall during dinner time.

They asked the men to rate how hungry they were on a scale of one to seven. Using these responses, the researchers selected 30 hungry and 31 satiated men to take part in the study.

The men were then asked to rate the attractiveness of 50 women of varying weights, all within a healthy range, who had been photographed wearing tight grey leotards and leggings.

The hungry men rated more of the heavier women as attractive than the men who were full up.
[full story on BBC Online]
---

The alternative spin on this is that being attracted to big units makes you hungry. As well it might.

A prison inmate pleaded guilty on Tuesday to sending letters to the FBI and secret service that included bomb and anthrax threats - as well as his full name and inmate number.

Donald Ray Bilby, 30, pleaded guilty in US District Court in Trenton to one count of false information and hoaxes after he sent five letters demanding authorities deposit $US20,000 ($NZ32,568) in his county jail inmate account because he needed money for bail, the US Attorney's Office said.

"I think it's fair to say we were not dealing with a great criminal mind here," US Attorney Christopher Christie said in a statement.

Bilby signed all the letters using his full name and inserted his inmate number beneath his signature. One letter to the FBI included demands for money, a piece of paper labelled "anthrax" and a white powdery substance that turned out to be harmless.

He faces a maximum of five years in prison after first serving a sentence for automobile theft.

More strange behaviour from the antipodes with this nugget:

--
A New Zealand policewoman has been allowed to keep her job, despite moonlighting as a prostitute.

The Auckland officer, whose name and rank have not been revealed, apparently took up the part-time work due to financial difficulties.

A police spokesman said although secondary employment was allowed, prostitution was "inappropriate and incompatible with policing".

Prostitution has been legal in New Zealand since 2003.
[continued on BBC Online]
---

Different countries have different standards and if prostitution is legal in New Zealand, and police moonlighting is allowed, then so be it.

In the UK police officers often moonlight as racist louts and occasionally get confused between the two personas. Senior police offers also like moonlighting as politicians, and one chief constable has become a blogger. It is the same one that said that English flags in Wales could cause racism and public unrest. I have yet to visit his blog, but I am hoping it is called 'The Police Intelligence Conundrum.'

Back to the matter, as it were, at hand - Officer Goodhead of the Auckland police. I guess her influencing skills could be honed by her second career, but it is not difficult to imagine difficult situations. Arresting someone for lewd behaviour perhaps, only to discover that the offender is a 'client' from the previous night; or unintentionally 'hooking up' with a witness in a future trial.

The solution would be to keep it within the force. She could be the official force hooker, allowing her to make ends meet (apparently this is known as a spit-roast) while avoiding potential conflicts with the criminal justice system.

You see? There is a common sense solution to every situation.

Sharing a bed with someone could temporarily reduce your brain power - at least if you are a man - Austrian scientists suggest.

When men spend the night with a bed mate their sleep is disturbed, whether they make love or not, and this impairs their mental ability the next day.

The lack of sleep also increases a man's stress hormone levels.

According to the New Scientist study, women who share a bed fare better because they sleep more deeply.

Professor Gerhard Kloesch and colleagues at the University of Vienna studied eight unmarried, childless couples in their 20s.

Each couple was asked to spend 10 nights sleeping together and 10 apart while the scientists assessed their rest patterns with questionnaires and wrist activity monitors.

The next day the couples were asked to perform simple cognitive tests and had their stress hormone levels checked.

Although the men reported they had slept better with a partner, they fared worse in the tests, with their results suggesting they actually had more disturbed sleep.

Both sexes had a more disturbed night's sleep when they shared their bed, Professor Kloesch told a meeting of the Forum of European Neuroscience.

But women apparently managed to sleep more deeply when they did eventually drop off, since they claimed to be more refreshed than their sleep time suggested.
[continued on BBC Online]
---

This is so true for me. The best way of surviving a long term relationship is to have separate bedrooms or, even better, separate houses in the same street.

A pint-sized chihuahua known as Bertie is wreaking havoc in Otaki, rampaging around town, terrorising large dogs and children and causing state highway motorists grief.

Dog rangers say the tiny dog is a recidivist offender and has had them on the run for more than four years with his hell-raising antics.

Repeatedly jailed at the local pound, Bertie is a menace known to confront dogs up to 10 times his size, repeatedly lunging at and threatening to bite young children and using State Highway 1 as his playground.

The terror of Otaki is currently in custody but is an accomplished escape artist known to have fled his own home and the pound on several occasions.

Kapiti Coast District councillor Alan Tristram said he had met Bertie during a brief visit to the pound to collect his dog.

"I was very taken by him – there was something engaging about the way he looked at me," Mr Tristram said.

The council would not comment on the case or Bertie's fate.
[from stuff.co.nz]

This is one of my favourite headlines of the year so far. I also like the final sentence where the lazy kiwi cops just make up some shit rather than bothering looking for a missing person.

---

A severed human foot has been found on a beach by a man walking his dog.

Detective Ashley Gurney said the foot – in a black ankle sock and a dark blue Skechers velcro-strapped sneaker – was found on Himatangi Beach, near Palmerston North, about 1pm on Saturday.

Police are not treating the find – 3km south of Himatangi – as suspicious.

The left foot, around a size eight, belongs to a man and police believe it was only recently washed up on the beach.

"There's no sheared cut," Gurney said.

"To the naked eye it looks like the sea's pulled the body apart.

"It's been raging around in the water and nature's taken its toll."

There appeared to be no fish or animal bites.

Gurney said police were checking the find against any local missing persons, but would widen the search over the national database.

"We have no reason to suspect foul play at the moment – we're treating it as a missing persons," he said.

"We're really hoping for help from the public to identify the person."

The foot was sent to Palmerston North police station for forensic and DNA testing.

In the next few days it will be removed from the shoe and medically examined.

Gurney said the foot did not belong to missing pensioner Jim Alexander, who wandered away from a Palmerston North resthome more than a week ago.

Police believe Alexander may have fallen into the Manawatu River and drowned, but have not yet recovered a body.

A couple of medical items today, of the type that make your nuts retract to a safe place of hiding. I am not sure what happens to a woman in such circumstances. There is probably a website about it though. Anyway...

A man is on the run with his two-year-old son after a knife was plunged right through another man's face.

The victim spent most of yesterday with a 15-centimetre blade embedded in his head before Auckland surgeons removed it in a delicate operation.

During the attack the handle broke off the knife. The blade had entered the victim's face beneath his eye and penetrated the nasal cavity behind his nose. The point of the blade poked out on the other side of his face. [full story on stuff.co.nz]

---

Doctors say a large, dead section of 25-year-old electrician Sambhu Roy's skull came away on Sunday after severe burns starved it of blood.

"When he came to us late last year, his scalp was completely burnt and within months it came off exposing the skull," Ratan Lal Bandyopadhyay, the surgeon who treated Roy said on Wednesday.

"Later, we noticed that the part of his skull was loosening due to lack of blood supply to the affected area, which can happen in such extensive burn cases."

The piece came off on Sunday and hundreds of people and dozens of doctors now crowd around his bed, where he lies holding the bone.

[stuff.co.nz]

A safari park is warning visitors to remove England flags from their cars after a group of baboons began stealing them.

Knowsley safari park is warning visitors to remove England flags from their cars because baboons are stealing them.

The animals have built up a huge collection of flags in the monkey enclosure at Knowsley safari park in Merseyside.

Keepers at the park say the 120-strong troop of baboons have been known to help themselves to windscreen wipers but have now turned their attentions to the World Cup flags.

Safari Park general manager David Ross told the Liverpool Echo: "Many people are wisely removing the flags before they set off on the safari drive.

"But if they forget, the baboons usually take them and they've now built up quite a collection."
[from ananova]
---

One might be tempted to wonder whether there is much difference between a babboon with a flag and a regular football fan...

A thief who stole a World Cup ticket from a woman's handbag was caught after sitting down to watch the game next to his victim's husband.

The 34-year-old mugged Eva Standmann, 42, as she made her way to the Munich stadium for the Brazil-Australia game at the weekend and discovered the ticket in her bag.

But as he took the woman's place in the stadium he was met by her husband Berndt, 43, who immediately called security.

A Munich police spokesman said: "The thief found the ticket in the bag and decided to watch the game, not expecting to sit next to his victim's husband, who immediately informed officers on duty at the stadium."

[from ananova]

Ten cats in search of owners will spend the next 10 days in a New York store window, their every move caught on camera for a reality TV show on which they will compete for best sleeper and mouse-catcher.

The show is the creation of a petfood company and will be shown on cable channel Animal Planet, as well as on a website where viewers will be asked to vote off one feline contestant each day.

The cats, chosen from shelters around the country, will compete for loudest purr, most prolific sleeper and who can catch the most toy mice. Kitties who get the boot will be adopted into permanent homes.

Meow Mix, owned by Del Monte Foods Company, hopes the show will promote cat adoption - as well as their products, which will be the only thing on the menu.

Passerby taking a gander though a specially rented storefront on Madison Avenue in midtown Manhattan can watch the cats lazing about a luxuriously outfitted cat-sized house that includes scaled-down sofas, beds, a fish tank (with fake fish), kitchen and a porch, all put together by an interior designer.

"It's a Disney World for cats," said Meow Mix's Ryan Reed, in charge of ensuring the cats are well-cared for and well-behaved. Volunteers from The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals are also on hand to attend to the needs of the kitty stars.

Enjoying their final day of obscurity today, the cats seemed unfazed by attention from visiting media - most of the cats were asleep on the set, which was to be unveiled to the public.

A cat named Sam, from Dallas, Texas, stood guard on the home's welcome mat while Romeo, a Los Angeles native, lazily stretched out his six-toed paws before swatting a toy.

In the tradition of reality shows, the company will hire the top cat as "Feline Vice-President of Research and Development," responsible for taste testing and product feedback.

Biographies of the cats play up their personalities, but in reality, they're all pretty mellow, if not a bit dazed from all the attention.

"In real life they're all very sweet," said Meow Mix's Keith Fernbach. "But we try to give them a personality for TV."
[from stuff.co.uk]

AXE ATTACK shouts the headline from the front page of the local newspaper this week.

On further reading, and to quote the police, "The man... was not hurt or threatened during the incident"

More of an axe incident than an axe attack then, or perhaps even an incidental axe. The gist of the story is that 20 men, all carrying axes, broke into a workshop and asked the foreman, who was working alone, where the manager was. He said he didn't know, so the gang left. All very pythonesque.

The local rag does have a history of trying to make much out of little, including their campaign against the shooting of cats with air rifles. The evidence of such attacks was patchy at best and there is the lingering suspicion that the editor was going out at night in full camouflage gear to shoot cats and keep the story running.

But their best effort, for which you need to know that we are a very long way from the sea here, was "Wooburn man attacked by shark!"

A man returning to his home in Tønsberg late Saturday night got a nasty surprise when he found a snarling badger under his bed who didn't appreciated being awakened.

The man called police, who arrived on the scene but met massive resistance from the badger. The rudely awakened animal ran around the room and ultimately overturned the bed, prompting the police to beat a retreat.

It so happened, however, that the badger's resistance efforts ended up getting him trapped under the overturned bed, with his rear end up and exposed. It proved a perfect place for a hastily called veterinarian to give the badger a sleeping shot.

Two-and-a-half hours after the bedroom drama began, the vet crew could finally remove the sleeping badger, and the Tønsberg man could take his rightful place. On top of the bed.

[source]
---

This doesn't do much for the image of Norway's finest although I am not sure I would want to take on the striped psycho either.

I woke up and found a moose in my bed once.

In a “landmark development” researchers have created an “artificial penis” that has allowed rabbits with damaged penises to successfully mate. The urologists say that the procedure might one day help treat men with severe erectile dysfunction.

The technique involves a new method of tissue-engineering which enabled the team to use the animals' own cells to build the spongy tissue structure that makes up the bulk of the penis.

The functioning penises were the latest achievement of Anthony Atala and colleagues at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, US. This is the same team that hit the headlines in April with the first bio-engineered human bladders which were successfully implanted into patients.

blah, blah, continued here
---

I am not convinced that rabbits need the help - rabbits breed, as you might expect, like rabbits. But now I think of it, I have never seen rabbits getting jiggy. I have seen plenty of rabbits, I see them most mornings but they are eating, and not each other.

Maybe there is more rabbity sexual dysfunction that has previously been apparent.

Perhaps the childless ones are better off though - they can go on foreign holidays while the functional ones have to settle for camping with their 200 kids.

This is a complex issues and we need to think, THINK before we go inventing artificial rabbit schlongs.

Nay, of the month!

---
Breeder to dress cows as prostitutes

A Waikato cattle breeding specialist is to advertise its services by dressing cows up as prostitutes.

Ambreed New Zealand Ltd, in Cambridge, is understood to have contracted King Street Advertising, in Hamilton, for a photo shoot on a Waikato farm.

Hamish Bruton, marketing and communications manager for the country's second largest artificial breeding company, did not want to talk about the campaign as he wanted it to be a surprise to farmers.

Ambreed managing director Graham Bowen refused to comment.

Established in 1969, Ambreed's core business is dairy semen production and sales.

---
[from here]

Gotta love those Kiwis

The British have an issue with Germans, or at least they think they do.

It is all founded on an inferiority complex. The British and Germans are very alike - for a start both have Germans as head of state and both have appalling cuisine. But the Germans have always been more successful and this sticks in the craw a little.

Alongside comments about 'German efficiency', as if it is a bad thing, the typical gibe about the Germans is that they lack a sense of humour. This isn't true, not even remotely true, but inferiority complexes never let the truth get in the way of a good whine.

The Guardian newspaper explored this phenomenon in an article today, and it is worth a read if you have the time. It ends with a few jokes submitted by Germans. I am not sure whether they illustrate my point or refute it...

Andrea Foss, 46, Schleswig Holstein

"What is romantic?" "I don't know." "When a man strokes a woman tenderly with a feather."

"What is perverse?" "I don't know." "When the chicken is still attached."

Tabea Rudolph, 26, Stuttgart

There are problems in the woods. The animals of the forest are always drunk, so the fox decides to ban alcohol. The following day, the fox spies a rabbit hanging out of a tree, clearly wasted. The fox ticks him off, and carries on his way. But the next day he sees the rabbit drunk again, and gives him a final warning. The next day, the fox does his rounds and there's no sign of the rabbit, but he notices a straw sticking out of a stream. Wondering what it is, the fox scoops it out, only to find a very drunk rabbit on the other end of it. "How many times do I have to tell you that animals of the forest aren't allowed alcohol?" says the Fox. "We fishes don't give a toss what the animals of the forest aren't allowed to do," says the rabbit

Gerhard Bischof, Bad Toelz, 57

A man jumps out of a plane for the first time. At 3,000m he tries to undo his parachute, but the cord fails. At 2,000m he tries to open the emergency chute but that doesn't work either. At 1,000m he bumps into a man wearing blue overalls, carrying a spanner. "Can you repair parachutes?" asks the first man. "'Fraid not," says the other. "I only do boilers."

Wolfgang Voges, 56, from lower Saxon

Three priests hold a meeting to discuss where life begins. The evangelical priest says, "No question about it, life begins when the child is born." "No, no," says the Catholic priest, "it all starts when the sperm meets the egg." "You're both wrong," says the Rabbi. "Life begins when the children have left home and the dog is dead."

I have been avoiding the book like Shmuel Goldstein might avoid a bacon sandwich. But then I don't know Shmuel Goldstein, so it might not be a great analogy.

I invented Shmuel. This is a journalistic method that is known as 'making shit up.'

If you are a real Shmuel Goldstein and got here after an egosearch (searching for oneself) then (a) shame on you; (b) what is your view on bacon sandwiches?

Moving on, or at least spluttering the tired engine of thought into life, I have found myself getting excited at the prospect of seeing The DVC on the big screen.

This doesn't change my view of the book. The book is shit. I have not read the book, but I know shit when I see it, not least because I have read plenty of shit in my time. The last thing I need is another book with no literary merit - I have sci-fi for that. Romance for chicks, sci-fi for guys. That's how it works. Chicks like people, guys like things.

But anyway, the movie will be cool . I see two or three movies a year (yes, that is pitifully few) so I can't be doing with any dross, but I think this one will be worthy of my fleeting attention span.

I already know the gist of the storyline - the Mona Lisa was painted by Jesus. Sweet!

Also, it portrays the Catholic church as a bunch of bastards which, well... it is not for me to say, especially not with the abusive comments I am receiving from elvis fans. But what I am thinking is... making the Catholic church look bad is not so difficult. I am thinking soft target.

Next week, 'Are lemons sour?'

West Wing finished for good last night. Or at least until they remake it. For a couple of years then.

Anyway, I have never seen a single minute of West Wing. I feel kinda bad about that.

Sorry.

A pet fish has been blamed for a house fire which nearly cost a woman and her two daughters their lives.

Kipper, an eight-inch catfish, is thought to have triggered the blaze when it fought with a rival in their tank.

Water splashed out of the aquarium and landed on an electric plug below, reports The Sun.

It sent a power surge up the tank's light cable which burnt the plastic lid which melted and dripped onto a leather sofa which burst into flames.

The blaze soon engulfed the lounge as Sharron Killahena, 25, and kids Nicole, six, and Kerry, two, slept upstairs in the house in Poole, Dorset.

Luckily a smoke alarm woke landlord Simon Justice, 25, in a different room, who woke the family in time to escape.

Their home was wrecked and their six fish died but Sharron said: "At least we are here to tell the tale."

---
[ripped from Ananova]

There seems to be a lack of karmic justice in this. The owners were clearly fuckwitted (both for having an exposed plug and for naming a catfish 'kipper') while the fish were innocent victims. Result: owners alive, fish dead.

Middle-aged people in Britain are healthier than their American counterparts, despite healthcare costing nearly twice as much per person in the US, according to a study released yesterday.

The research found that rates of diseases such as diabetes, lung cancer and high blood pressure among Americans aged between 55 and 64 were up to twice as high as in England. Americans also had higher rates of heart disease, heart attacks and strokes.

The study's authors said lifestyle differences such as smoking, drinking and obesity could not explain the difference. They speculated that more fundamental differences may be to blame.

"It was surprising to find such a big gap between the two countries," said lead author James Banks, an economist at University College London. "If anything, given the higher health spending in the US, we might have thought that health levels would be a bit better there." Per capita spending on medical care is £1,176 in the UK compared with £2,866 in the US.

The disparities were all the more surprising because the team made the two sample groups as similar as possible. They used data from about 5,000 non-Hispanic white people aged between 55 and 64. Other studies have found that ethnic minorities suffer from different health problems for genetic and economic reasons.

The team found diabetes was twice as prevalent in the US (12.5%) compared with England (6.1%), and heart disease (15.1% compared with 9.6%), lung disease (8.1% compared with 6.3%) and cancer (9.5% compared with 5.5%) were all higher.

To check that the results were not a result of Americans reporting more health problems, the team also compared measurements of substances in the blood such as cholesterol. These also revealed large differences.

But the disparity was not simply down to lifestyle differences either. In both countries about one fifth of the study group were smokers, but heavy drinking was more common in the UK. Obesity was more common among the Americans, but not high enough to explain the difference.

Professor Banks speculated that experiences earlier in life might be responsible. Perhaps childhood obesity left a health imprint that shows up later in life. "The obesity epidemic began later here, we are now catching up," he said. "If that is the explanation then this health gap may potentially be closing in the future."

Obesity rates among under-10s in the UK have risen from 9.6% in 1997 to 13.7% in 2003 and the British Medical Association believes this will lead to more heart disease and some cancers.

Another of the study's findings was that moving up the economic ladder improved health. "A lot of the discussion is about poverty - poor people have poor health and everybody else has reasonable health. But that isn't what the data show," said co-author Sir Michael Marmot, of University College London. "The higher you are the better your health, the lower you are the worse your health."

He thought the reasons for this gradient could also explain the health gap.

Although the economic gap between people at the top of US society and those at the bottom was larger than in the UK, the health gap was about the same, so the difference must be due to more than just inequality.

"It might be that the nature of an unequal society is affecting everybody," he said.

[lifted from The Guardian]

An Illinois man is suing a marriage guidance counsellor for having an affair with his wife.

Scott Buetow, 35, of McHenry County, had hired the therapist to improve his marriage, reports the Chicago Sun-Times.

But he claims that instead Dan Blair began an affair with his wife that caused the couple to divorce.

His lawsuit seeks more than £100,000 in damages from Mr Blair and the counselling centre where he works.

"He [Blair] had an obligation to provide services, and he willfully abused that for his own benefit," said attorney Hans Mast, who represents Mr Buetow.

Mr Buetow and his wife began seeing the counselor in April 2004 to 'strengthen and stabilise' their 10-year marriage.

While providing both joint counseling and individual therapy sessions, Blair allegedly started a secret romantic relationship with Buetow's wife.

Buetow filed the suit because he believes "he got a raw deal from the person he trusted and confided in," Mast said.

Buetow and his 36-year-old wife, who have four children, were granted a divorce earlier this year.

[ripped from ananova]

In many parts of the world, people celebrate Easter Sunday by giving chocolate - chocolate eggs, especially chocolate Easter bunnies.

But in Switzerland, a row over who owns the right to produce a specific Easter bunny has turned the day a little sour.

Lindt says only it has the right to make its trademark golden Easter bunny, with a red ribbon around its neck.

It is challenging Austrian company Hauswirth, which has been making similar ones for 50 years.

Chocolate company Lindt has been making its bunny since the early 1950s and it is hugely successful. It sells 60m of them every year.

To protect the design, the company copyrighted it in the year 2000.

"Our bunny is magical, majestic even", Lindt's managers say, "and we will protect it."

There is just one problem, other chocolate makers make Easter bunnies too. And the small Austrian company Hauswirth's golden bunnies have, yes, red ribbons around their necks.

The two rivals are now squaring up against each other in court. Lawyers for Lindt say the Hauswirth bunny must change its colours.

They have suggested bronze wrapping instead of gold and a green ribbon instead of red. Hauswirth refused and lost the first round in court, meaning the Hauswirth bunnies could not be sold.

In frustration, the company began giving them away, delighting thousands of children across Austria for whom Easter came early. Now another day in court has been scheduled but not until June.

Let's hope the chocolate hasn't melted by then.

[from BBC News]

A Chinese village splashed out on a fish banquet for more than 200 cats to thank them for their hard work.

Residents of Sanjiang, in Guangdong province, wanted to thank the cats for eradicating rats from their farms.

China Daily reports the village committee spent about £860 to purchase the cats which they released in about 250 acres of land to control the rats.

The move was a success and villagers decided to reward the cats for the good harvest they expect this year as a result.

The village suffered a rat infestation after snakes were caught and slaughtered by local residents in previous years.

[from ananova]
---

Apart from the quaint image of a banquetting table laid out with the ultimate fish supper, and cats wearing napkins, this is also a nice lesson in cause-and-effect. Snakes kill rats. If you kill snakes you then need to kill the rats yourself. Next year I guess they will be infested with dogs.

A German town hoping to be named Culture Capital of Europe has just noticed that council workmen laid a swastika in a cobbled street.

Officials at Goerlitz have apologised after the large Nazi symbol, which is forbidden in Germany, was laid into the pavement late last year.

It was done by workers employed by the local council to repave the pedestrian area and remained unnoticed for almost four months until a local resident complained.

A spokeswoman for the office of Mayor Joachim Paulick said: "This is a catastrophe, especially as we are hoping to be named Culture Capital for 2010. We will make sure it is removed."

[from Ananova]

---

A couple of angles here: firstly, I admire the subversive action of the workers, although it's a real shame it was a swastika. Had it been a phallic symbol they would have become flanerie heroes.

Secondly, the council need to show some creativity and reassign that area of street as a dog toilet or a vomiting zone, or something similar. I'm a genius, am I not?

Chefs at upmarket London department store Selfridges have created an £85 ($150) sandwich, to be sold in its Oxford Street food hall.

The principle ingredient in the snack will be Wagyu beef, a premium cut of beef imported specially from Japan.

Dubbed the “caviar of beef”, Wagyu has already proved to be a big hit in the US, prompting queues in New York for burgers made from the elite Japanese imperial cattle.

Also included in the sandwich will be Brie de Meaux cheese, thought to be one of the finest in France. Fois gras, black truffle mayonnaise, English plum tomatoes and red pepper and mustard confit also feature in the sour dough sandwich.

[from Retail Week]

Connecticut authorities have slapped a restraining order on a cat which, according to shaken locals in Fairfield, has subjected the residents of a quiet suburban cul-de-sac to a feline reign of terror during which it attacked several people and even had a pop at the Avon lady.

The chilling Connecticut Post report into 5-year-old Lewis's antisocial tendencies recounts how the black-and-white longhaired cat - dubbed the "Terrorist of Sunset Circle" - would attack from behind and without warning, as two-time victim Janet Kettman explained: "I was walking along the sidewalk when he sprang at me. I never saw it coming, but that's how it often is. He comes at you from behind, springs and wraps himself around your legs, biting and scratching.

"The last time I had three bites and eight scratches and I ended up at the walk-in clinic. The Avon lady was getting out of her car when Lewis attacked her from behind. She ended up going to the hospital."

Eyewitnesses describe the beast as looking like Felix the Cat and sporting "six toes on each foot, each with a long claw".

Following her ordeal, Kettman called in Fairfield cops' animal control officer Rachel Solveira, who summarised the threat with: "I don't feel the cat could kill anybody, but it could latch onto people's legs and arms and bite and scratch to the point where they could be hospitalised."

Accordingly, Solveira slapped a restraining order on Lewis which, rather splendidly, allowed the tearaway limited freedom to leave owner Ruth Cisero's house "if Cisero gave him Prozac".

The cat declined to take his medication, and soon after escaped custody and laid into Maureen Bachtig, who recalled: "I felt Lewis's claw on my left leg and I shook him loose, he then lunged and clung to my right leg, leaving one very deep puncture wound, one long deep gash across the top of my knee."

As a result, Cisero found herself cuffed and Lewis indefinitively restrained within his domicile. She claims the neighbours have been tormenting the poor creature, spraying him with hoses and chucking eggs at the four-legged ne'er-do-well.

Cisero said: "I've tried to tell them to just stay away from Lewis and he will stay away from you; this has caused complete havoc for me. He's a cat's cat, he climbs trees and sits on people's roofs but now he's forced to be in the house all the time."

Lewis's incarceration is not the end of the matter. Cisero has applied to the court for "accelerated rehabilitation"* for her moggie, while the Avon lady Donna Greenstein filed a lawsuit in Superior Court against Cisero.

[ripped from El Reg]

Individually tailored condoms that are anatomically designed to fit each penis perfectly are going on sale in Germany.

Businessman Oliver Gothe, 36, is behind the Cologne-based company Lebenslust (Lust for Life), which has invented a system to make personalised prophylactics.

Using a machine that measures each member to produce a unique 3D computer image, Gothe then lets his customers choose the thickness of the condom and add extra details.

Gothe said: "These condoms will fit so well you will hardly notice you are wearing one. We can make them wafer thin or fist thick and 'engrave' them with your signature wrapped around the base."

The service will cost around £600 for a "large but an as yet unspecified number" but Gothe insists the price is worth it as his condoms are comfier and safer.
---

What I am wondering is... the machine that measures the 'member', how does it do that? And how are you supposed to 'get it up' ready for measurement?

There is a subversive comic genius at work on the BBC News website.

A prime example of the genius at work is this story on low cost housing:

---

Wilson Bowden starts £65,000 home

UK builder Wilson Bowden has launched its range of more affordable housing, with prices starting at £65,000.

A number of companies are looking to offer cheaper housing to meet a shortage in densely populated areas such as the south-east of England.

Wilson Bowden said on Wednesday that its i-Life range of homes would offer "an innovative approach to one- and two-bedroomed living".

The houses will range in size from 300 to 677 sq ft.

Planning approval already has been granted for 100 homes and building has started on plots in Balderton, Nottinghamshire, and Wootton, Northamptonshire.

---

Check out the photo! Of course the house is cheap - it's only 5ft high! How is the dude in the yellow shirt ever going to get inside? It's more of a waistcoat than a house. Marvellous.

Crikey!

[lifted from the Guardian here]
---

Two vets and a pharmacist were among 24 people arrested by police in Naples yesterday over claims that they fed Viagra to horses running in illegal races to make them go faster.

The arrests were part of a wider investigation into clandestine racing and betting in southern Italy. Police said horseowners and jockeys had also been arrested during the latest raids.

Prosecutors in Naples have been trying to stamp out illegal horse racing, which takes place on public racecourses after hours and attracts hundreds of gamblers. Stolen horses are often used. Some are fed powdered Viagra or other stimulants to improve their performances.

Colonel Mario Pantano, of the paramilitary carabinieri, said all of those rounded up yesterday were suspected of being in an organisation that runs secret races all over the Campania region and which had offshoots in Sicily and Emilia Romagna.

The criminal gang, not linked to the local Camorra mafia, was described as highly professional.

"They set up grandstands and betting parlours," said Col Pantano. "A great number of people turned out at weekends for the races, probably knowing it was illegal." The wide-ranging investigation, which started in 2004, has also discovered that horses have been doped with Viagra before legal races.

Police have so far seized property worth more than £3m during the raids. Last year, officers confiscated 80 horses and closed a racetrack that had been built without planning permission.

Having nailed my colours to the mast last week, I was highly entertained by David Hockney doing likewise in today's Guardian. He is on the other side of the debate and starts with a few very selective facts before going moving on to personal attacks. Such quality entertainment that I am tempted to change sides just to reward his penmanship.

Over to you Mr Hockney...

----

I can tell you don't seem to get it. I don't think the MPs know what they are actually doing. I do not have a high opinion of them. The case against the medical evidence about smoking is this. They have got all their statistics I have read them. I have read what they shout on the uglified cigarette packets, but I will make this observation.

In the Labour party - let's get a lot more human in our observations - the 80-year-old Mr Benn is a happy pipe smoker; Mr Robin Cook took up "healthy" fell walking, it killed him; same with Mr Smith; Tony Banks another non-smoking vegetarian health fiend falls over with a stroke at the age of 61.

What does one deduce from this? That fate plays part in life, that mysterious forces are at work on life, it is not all "material". The medical statistician cannot grasp this, but almost everyone else does. This is why people will always ignore the prude and prig.

Gorrdon Brrrown is a prig P.R.I.G., a dreary atheistic Calvinistic prig, who I'm sure will never be elected in England. He goes along with a "health lobby" whose view of life itself I detest.

I have utter contempt for it. I feel I am entitled to my opinion. I don't mind prigs but when they want to take my little corner as well, I have a right to argue against their dreary view of life contaminating mine.

I don't think the press know their readers anymore. I am spending time in provincial England. There is an anger you don't seem to know.

This utterly over the top legislation is tyrannical (mine Host gone for a Burton) and is spreading a dreadful intolerance.

New Labour has become the most bossy prober into lives. It comes across as very anti-English. The first thing they did was set up a parliament for the Welsh and one for the Scots. England is Britain according to them.

Mr Blair would not give a holiday for children for the Queen Mother's funeral; he did not want them to see the symbolism. The BBC didn't even see it.

Watching it I pointed out Van Eyck, Massacio Veronese, all the European grand tradition of pictures was there. To hell with it they say. Yet people were moved by it. The Daily Mirror thought no one would be interested. They haven't a clue.

You ask me: "What didn't we report?". You didn't report that you could smoke in hospitals and prisons but not pubs. It's barmy and just where bossiness leads. I repeat you should be ashamed of yourselves what you are supporting. There are plenty of no-smoking places, leave things to their natural path.

It's not just your job to give us an opinion but actually to report on things. You missed the ridiculous side of this. Wake up.

David Hockney, London

In this news story

...a Ferrari is destroyed in a crash at 6am. The owner escapes with a cut lip, and there is blood on the driver's airbag. The owner is over the alcohol limit.

But the owner claims he wasn't driving. A German guy called Dietrich was, but he ran away.

Erm, okay.

My lawyer would prefer it if I leave it to you, dear reader, to draw your own conclusions.

Sometimes you begin to wonder if the BBC is making shit up for comedic value.

"A disciplinary hearing has been told how a nurse allegedly hit a colleague with a frozen fish at a Kent hospital."

"[she] then said "give us a kiss" while moving the fish's mouth, the hearing was told."

"[she] also lied about her training record, misled staff about the availability of beds on Ward 8, and bound a clerk's head and mouth with bandages while he was on the phone."

Marvellous stuff. Full story here

I have in the past reported that I have my dancing shoes always within reach as I await news on Margaret Thatcher.

News of Thatcher the Musical wasn't quite what I had in mind.

Still, it's a chance to offload some surplus eggs in the direction of a hapless actor. Not that I would condone such appalling behaviour. Au contraire.

There has been much furore this weekend over the, er, furore over the Danish cartoons. Double furore. Eightore if you will.

Of particular note was a protester who was dressed as a suicide bomber. I have only heard about this on the radio, so don't know what he actually looked like, but he is repeatedly and consistently described as being dressed as a suicide bomber.

In Terrorism for Dummies, 'Chapter 12 - Suicide Bombing' it states 'In order to best gain access to the target, operatives should blend in with civillians as much as possible.'

So how could they know that he was dressed as a suicide bomber? Surely I am dressed as one too? Okay, a camp suicide bomber. Perhaps a suicide bummer.

But enough about me, what about him? I am beginning to think that perhaps he was carrying a comedy bomb - round, black, fuse sticking out the top, you know the drill. Usually these things have 'BOMB' printed on the side for the avoidance of doubt. It is the suicide bomber equivalent of a man on bicycle in the stripey blue shirt to represent a frenchman.

In which case the man needs a standing ovation rather than a good kicking from the fuzz.

At least Denmark is in the news for something, even if it is for stirring up a religious hornets nest.

As usual there is nonsense on both sides of the debate. The suggestion that the media should print anything it likes no matter how offensive is a weak one. The media have a respsonsibility to society as a whole and there are times when articles and opinions are left unprinted. Most media outlets shy away from antisemitic viewpoints even though there are people that genuinely hold these views.

There are certainly public interest grounds for reprinting the cartoons, but this needs to be weighed against offence that might be caused, and it seems that certain media outlets chose to show the cartoons simply to be controversial.

Equally, the celebrated cartoons may be offensive to muslims, but they are pretty small beer. If offended, write a scathing letter to the editor and never buy the paper again. The massed rallys and flag burnings are probably not representative of the general reaction of muslims, but because they are the most visible reaction they are what gets coverage. They certainly do little to bridge the cultural divide between islam and 'the west'.

There are plenty of rational voices using this issue as an interesting discussion point for matters of media, religion and politics, but they are being drowned out by those who would rather make mischief.

As reported in El Reg:
-----
A Florida teen pleaded guilty to manslaughter this week after using his blog to confess to causing an alcohol-fueled car accident. Blake Ranking, 18, a passenger in a car who seized the wheel and caused a crash that killed his friend and left another seriously injured told police he had no memory of the incident. But he confessed to causing the crash on his blurty.com blog three days after the October 2004 accident that fatally injured his best friend, 17 year-old Jason Coker, local paper The Orlando Sentinel reports.
-----

Blogging can be a cathartic process but I am not sure I like the precedent of confessing to crimes and misdemeanours on a blog.

While I have nothing as juicy as DUI manslaughter to fess up to, there are certainly more than a few morally questionnable episodes. For example, I once [deleted] the [deleted] of a [deleted], which most people would agree is pretty reprehensible.

I guess the plus-side is that blog surfing would gain a certain frisson.

Perhaps, in the spirit of 'I'll show you mine if you show me yours,' there should be an International Confession Day. Everyone gets to confess an action that was illegal, immoral, shameful or plain ugly that they have done in the last year and then gets the rest of the year to misbehave.

Obviously I am too much of a slacker to set this up myself, but it would be cool if someone did. To get you started, I have checked whether www.internationalconfessionday.com and .org are available, and they are, so get to work.

Meanwhile I will get to work on some acts of turpitude.

Study: Cows Excel At Selecting Leaders
[ripped from the Discovery Channel]

The findings suggest that, at least among these animals, individuals are not necessarily "born leaders," and that bullying, selfishness, size and strength are not recognized as suitable leadership qualities.

"The fact that in groups of animals of different age, leaders are amongst the oldest animals suggests that it's not innate, but the result of previous experience," said Bertrand Dumont, lead author of a recent Applied Animal Behavior Science paper on leadership in a group of grazing heifers.

Dumont is a researcher at INRA, the national institute of agricultural research in Saint-Genès-Champanelle, France.

He added, "Usually leadership and dominance are not correlated. In other words, leaders are not the strongest animals."

Dumont and his team observed a group of 15 two-year-old heifers at a farm in France. During the day, the cows were allowed to graze on a rectangular plot of cocksfoot-covered land that was separated from another plot by an alleyway.

This second plot was planted with patches of ryegrass, which the cows particularly like to eat.

Whenever the herd was allowed access to this new feeding site, cow #7 usually was the first to investigate. When she was with the herd and then moved toward the new food site again, the other cows appeared to acknowledge her judgment and followed behind her in distinct social groupings of three or so cows.

Dumont told Discovery News that affinities probably exist between particular animals, and indicated that #7 might have had past success at leading the herd to new food sites.

He explained that "it's adaptive to the animals to follow successful leaders, as this will improve their own food research success."

article continues here

Unfortunately my man didn't win. My man was Andy, after I switched horses when Journey South failed to raise their game. Andy the binman, mana from media heaven, giving rise to appallingly unimaginative headlines such as, "he might be a binman, but he isn't rubbish." But he was up against pretty-boy Shayne who had several key qualities, including being pretty, having good looks and also being attractive. Not that I'm bitter. Well...

Now that X-factor has a winner, two things will happen.

Firstly, I don't have to watch commercial television anymore. This is a good thing. I don't have to see Kerry Katona in Iceland ever again. I don't have a particular problem with Miss Katona, but her breasts put me off my dinner. When she turns to camera, I duck. If anyone needs to know 3D television is a bad idea, watch Kerry and her bristols.

Secondly, the winner of X-factor will be bled dry by the music biz and then discarded. X-factor is about entertainment, not about creating music careers. As entertainment it is 24-carat gold, but all that really matters is sponsorship, advertising and phone line revenues. The X-factor winner gets a £1m recording contract, but out of that is taken studio costs, PR and marketing, travel and management fees. And most of that is controlled by Simon Cowell so he gets to take all of his million back. He trialled the model very successfully with last year's victim winner, Steve Brookstein

The final irony will be when Shayne's dry husk of a body is thrown into the trash and is collected by Andy the binman. It will be a TV special when it happens, and for £1 per call, you can vote for whether he goes to landfill or the incinerator.

I was reading the Stow Times yesterday, a monthly independent publication which concerns itself mainly with council, parish and schools news and the ongoing battle against gypsies.

A lot of spleens are being vented over the bi-annual horse fairs, but not having witnessed the pikey scourge personally, I will reserve judgement. It is hard to imagine though that they are any worse than the kagouled bobble-hatted ramblers that daily taunt the parish with their map reading skills.

But what did catch my eye was an article on beekeeping.

Jagger in a beesuit? What? A yellow and black striped furry suit, with fairy wings on his back and deeley-boppers on his head? Hard to believe.

I like the sound of cakes, but I am not yet sufficiently enticed to join. Perhaps if they had added '80% of our members are female and under 40.'

Over the last couple of years my television viewing has collapsed. This was mostly deliberate - TV sucks the brain out of your head and replaces it with 'targeted consumer messages.' I think I'll pass, but thanks for the offer anyway.

It is also because I lack the discipline to watch a weekly show. There was no point in me watching the first two episodes of Lost when I knew there was no chance of me watching the entire series.

I have reached the point where I now watch one single TV programme each week - the X-factor. Which is trashy, manufactured, money-grubbing... and fantastic drama.

This is car-wreck TV and I love it!

And wtf happened last night? Nicholas in the bottom two? He sang a great song perfectly. Easily one of the top three performances of the night. Meanwhile the simpering sappy Conway Sisters go straight through to next week. Surely some mistake your honour.

The final four should be Andy, Maria, Nicholas and Journey South.

And my prediction for the winner: Journey South. They are something different and they play from the heart, and in previous shows of this nature, talent has (eventually) triumphed over style.

The bookies currently have Shayne as clear favourite, but I think Journey South are going to keep picking up fans and Shayne can't survive on his good looks forever.

Of course, for pure entertainment there is no-one to beat Chico. He can't sing and can't dance, but he is 100% entertainment. He probably won't survive the next two weeks, but he has been fantastic value along the way.

It's Chico Time!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4311310.stm

The first meeting of the Asia-Pacific climate pact, scheduled to take place in November in Australia, has been postponed, the BBC has learned.

Announced in July, the pact of six nations aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through technology and voluntary parnerships.

It has been hailed in some quarters as an alternative to the Kyoto Protocol.

Green groups say the postponement shows that governments involved view the Kyoto process as more important.

[continued]
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Which is a tad disappointing. Maybe it is due to diary problems. And maybe it was always a cynical exercise in non-action.

At least there will be a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions due to the flunkies and hangers-on staying at home instead of junketing to Adelaide.

No, I don't know either, but a fine post by Lenin clarifies a little.

What I want to know is why no-one is asking the question: "Why did British troops kill an Iraqi policeman and are they under arrest for it?"

I only buy the Guardian on Saturdays so I figured I would wait until then to test drive the new format. However a combination of factors led me to buy a copy today. The factors being a post by Lilliebet about a new number puzzle in the Guardian and a train journey into London which would give me 25 minutes to kill. So I bought one and most lovely it is.

On arriving in London I was beseiged by people giving away free copies of the Guardian to promote its new format. Arse! I was offered four copies in 50 yards and for the fifth attempt I held my own copy in front of me as protection from evil. There might be a moral to this story, but it escapes me for now.

Anyway, as part of the relaunch they dropped Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury cartoon. That was Monday. Today a scraping apology appears, and the cartoon will resume next week. The Guardian is very good at making apologies (some might be tempted to suggest that it gets lots of practice), and it has even published a book of some particularly choice examples.

But choice examples happen on an almost daily basis in the Corrections and Clarifications section. To wit:

September 8: Brian Booth, the former vice chancellor of the University of Central Lancashire, who was listed in the Birthdays on page 24, September 6, died on October 24 2004. Apologies for any distress caused.

September 10: In previewing a TV programme, page 16, G2, September 8, we suggested the three members of an IRA unit shot dead in Gibraltar had planned to attack the Royal Anglican regiment. The Royal Anglian Regiment that would be.

September 10: We were right to say in a Country Diary (page 24, August 27) that the famous archaeological site of Starr Carr was discovered by an amateur, but he was John Moore, not Grahame Clark (whose name we wrongly spelt as Graham Clarke). Clark was involved in excavating Starr Carr, but did not discover it and he was not an amateur archaeologist.

September 13: In a photograph, page 24, G2, yesterday, Judi Dench is shown, not majestic as Queen Victoria in Shakespeare in Love, as the caption suggested, but majestic as Queen Elizabeth I.

September 14: In our retrospective look at the Manchester Guardian of September 12 1914, page 34, September 12, we inflicted on Winston Churchill the unlikely statement that the government was pledged to prosecute the war "to a vicarious conclusion". The original statement, as reported at the time, promised, more reassuringly, "a victorious conclusion".

And a couple from the book:

In 'The Perils of Loyalty', we referred to "the moral satin of Clinton's career". That should have read "the moral stain".

The building illustrating Simon Hoggart's Diary was not Cheltenham Town Hall, as the caption suggested. It was Boots the Chemist.

Lovely stuff.

An incredible natural disaster has occurred and it's almost as if the world wants to gloss over it. Sweep it under the carpet and avoid looking at the part of the floor.

There are some incredible stories being posted online. Here is one that shocked me, but tragically it is only one amongst many.

It is from The Interdictor, just regular heroes in irregular times:

From the Sinn Fein spokesperson on human rights (can I let that go without a comment? yes I can):

"We are against the exploitation of violence in any way,"

Marvellous stuff. [the full story is here in the Belfast Telegraph, and I picked up the tip-off in the Register]

A snippet from a BBC News story

It was at the Medway Maritime Hospital that he drew a picture of a grand piano and then apparently "stunned" health and social workers with his performance at the keyboard. [described in a previous BBC report as "a virtuoso performance"]

However, newspaper reports now suggest he was only able to play one note continuously.

Huh? Surely there is sufficient difference between a virtuoso performance on the Old Joanna and playing one note continuously for most people to be able to make a judgement.

Even I, when abusing my grandparents piano at a tender age, didn't believe I was creating anything other than a racket.

But there you go.

I don't really understand this story. Or rather I don't know the facts, or supposed facts. I do know that it is a big story here in the US, but my exposure to it in the UK has been very limited. I guess I should have kept up with Jack's posts on multiply.

To this extent, as far as this story is concerned, I am a non-American Joe Public, or the Man on the Clapham Omnibus, and as such my views are a hint, a sample, a flavour of how the world at large sees this story.

So this is what I know so far (and this is likely full of errors and omissions):

- Somebody in the administration (unknown) was pissed at somebody else (Mr. X). Mr. X might be a US ambassador to somewhere. He might also be an outspoken critic of the administration. Anyway, someone didn't like him.

- Mr. X has a wife, the unimaginatively titled Mrs. X, who is a CIA agent (as an aside, how cool is that?)

- In order to get at Mr. X somebody in the administration got a White House staffer (Karl Rove) to leak the fact of Mrs. X's employment to two journalists. Or Karl Rove did this on his own initiative.

- The journalists published the story and Mrs. X's 'cover was blown' (a quaint term; is it a camping reference?)

- Somebody investigated the facts surrounding the story and asked the journalists to reveal their source, which they refused to do. It went to court and the judge demanded that the source be revealed. One of the journos complied, the other went to jail and has been there for six weeks.

So that is what I know. Here is what I don't understand:

- Why did the journalists reveal the identity of a CIA spy? What is the national interest here? It looks like national disinterest to me.

- Once one of the journalists revealed the source, why was the other sent to jail?

- Didn't Karl Rove commit a crime by giving the story to the media? If so, what is happening about that?

The media seem to be very hung up on the jailing of one of their own. It reminds me of when a police officer is killed and the police chief says he won't leave in stone unturned in the hunt for the killer. Shouldn't that be the case whoever the victim is?

My other concern this morning is over a girl that is missing in Aruba (I don't know where Aruba is). It's Day 76, or something close to that. Why does this girl get nearly 3 months of coverage?

To begin with I assumed she was the daughter of someone famous, but I am doubting that now, and am plain confused. For sure it is a tragic tale, but other girls must have gone missing since without the merest hint of coverage.

US news media is not for the casual viewer. You either have to watch daily or not at all. Every story seems assumes prior knowledge. This is a scary country and I want to go home.

For some reason this one caught my eye:

Breast Milk For Sale
posted 08/11/2005

My baby won't take the bottle and I have 3 months of frozen breast milk. Mother and baby both in excellent health, baby is 11 months old and has had only 1 cold. Price Negotiable.

[from The Stranger]