You just have to read this piece. It’s ostensibly about the role of the dreaded “Press Information Officer” in enforcing embargoes on journalists, using the example given by Mr Aeron Haworth of the University of Manchester. Against his better judgement, Mr Haworth himself starts commenting on the article and digs a deeper and deeper hole.
I suspect this particular Officer is about to be demoted to the ranks, as Mr Haworth’s conduct could be of the type prefaced by mis-.
via Embargo Watch
…like a little old lady with a handbag.
According to the BBC, one of the potential robbers was detained at the scene by members of the public and another three arrested by the Police shortly afterwards.
There are many things about this country that are in decline, but I firmly believe that our Little Old Ladies are the finest in the world.
Yesterday one of my thousands of hundreds of dozens of several readers drew my attention to the fact that the following frightening vision appeared on my blog, courtesy of Google adverts.
These apparently edible objects are enough to give anyone nightmares, even without eating them. Does anyone know what on Earth they are? Are they indigenous to Newcastle? That wouldn’t surprise me..
I recently mentioned in passing that the rodent control executive whose services I had cause to call on told me that most of his time these days is taken up with controlling an epidemic of moles whose activities are annoying the hell out of local people, especially those with lawns. On the way to work the other day I took a couple of pictures near the River Taff in Bute Park which show how severe the problem is…
If all this is the work of one critter he or she’s been very busy indeed!
Now, what was that line again?
“The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine to-night in the snouting, velvet dingles)..”
Walking into work this morning I was almost run over three different times by three different vehicles. The first was near the car park in Sophia Gardens, where there are signs and road marking clearly indicating that there is a speed limit of 5 mph but where the normal speed of cars is probably more like 35; the guy who nearly killed me was doing about 60.
Next, in Bute Park, a heavy lorry belonging to the Council, engaged in some sort of “tree-management” business, thundered along the footpath past me. These paths used to be marked 5mph too, but the Council removed all the signs when it decided to build a huge road into the Park and encourage more vehicles to drive around inside. The lorry wasn’t going as fast as the Boy Racer of Sophia Gardens, but the size of the truck made it just as scary.
Finally, using a green light at the pedestrian crossing at Park Place I was narrowly missed by another car who had clearly jumped a red light to get onto the dual carriageway (Dumfries Place) leading to Newport Road.
I have to say things like this aren’t at all unusual, but it is the first time I’ve had three close encounters in one day! Although most car drivers behave responsibly, there seems to be a strong concentration of idiots in Cardiff whose antics are exacerbated by the hare-brained Highways Department of the local council. There are many things to enjoy about living in Cardiff, and the quality of life here is very good for a wide range of reasons, but of all the cities I’ve lived in it is by a long way the least friendly to pedestrians and cyclists.
If only Cardiff were like Copenhagen, one of the loveliest and most liveable cities I’ve ever experienced, partly because of traffic policies.
PS. In the interest of balance I should also point out that I was once actually hit on a pedestrian crossing in Cardiff by a bicycle steered by a maniac who went through a red light. In this case, however, I did manage to push him off his bike as he tried to get away, so he ended up more seriously hurt than I was. I was hoping that a friendly car would run over his bike, which was lying in the road, but sadly that didn’t happen.
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.
The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 280,000 times in 2010. If it were an exhibit at The Louvre Museum, it would take 12 days for that many people to see it.
In 2010, there were 408 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 790 posts. There were 99 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 30mb. That’s about 2 pictures per week.
The busiest day of the year was December 8th with 2078 views. The most popular post that day was (Guest Post) The GREAT10 Challenge.
The top referring sites in 2010 were reddit.com, twitter.com, andyxl.wordpress.com, facebook.com, and Google Reader.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for telescoper, flaming june, peter coles blog, in the dark, and logo.
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
(Guest Post) The GREAT10 Challenge December 2010
5 comments
Flaming June June 2009
13 comments
Doubts about the Evidence for Penrose’s Cyclic Universe November 2010
51 comments
Unravelling Cable September 2010
54 comments and 2 Likes on WordPress.com
The Joy of Natural Units March 2010
18 comments
My next-door neighbours were having one of their Wagnerian rows so I decided to take a walk in the park rather than listen to any more hysterical screaming and smashing crockery. Actually I’m glad I got off my backside anyway because it’s actually rather warm outside, at least in comparison to the last few weeks. It feels more like autumn today rather than the depth of winter.
Although the thaw has cleared almost all the snow from Bute Park, it has thus revealed quite a few signs of damage. Here and there branches have been sheared off by the weight of accumulated snow and ice. In this example two bits have fallen off, but the damage to the tree doesn’t look serious.
Occasionally, though, something much more spectacular has obviously happened. Take a look at this tree, near the riding school, which has been completely destroyed.
The trunk of this one seems to have been cleaved apart by forces pulling in two directions. Half the tree has fallen over the fence to the right and the other half behind the fence to the left. I’m glad nobody was nearby when this happened, but I bet it would have been quite a sight to see a big tree fall apart like this!
Since it’s New Year’s Eve I thought I would take the opportunity to wish you all the best for 2011.
Having recently read the STFC Delivery Plan it seemed appropriate to use the same style for my New Year’s greeting, but then I found Laurie Taylor in the Times Higher had beaten me to the idea and has given me the chance to indulge in a spot of shameless plagiarism:
Time has come to turn our faces towards the future that is to come. Time to evalulate our personal strategic objectives and intended goal outcomes. Time to contemplate our game plan, examine core competencies, reinforce best practices, break out of our silos, exert maximum leverage, evolve new synergies, and maximise our skill set.
I wish you all a very happy New Year going forward!
OK, so the piece that prompted it was a bit silly, but this is an excellent riposte.
Assuming all goes well – which may not be a wise assumption given the weather – I’ll be off tomorrow for the Christmas break, so I’ll be closing down for a while. Unless I don’t make it up North, in which case I might be doing the odd Yule Blog after all.
I wish you all the complements of the season, and leave you with this little clip featuring the late great Peter Cook. It’s from a series of short programmes made for BBC2 and shown at Christmas in 1990. They pretty much sank without trace, but I think they’re brilliant. Anyway, I hope this brings a few minutes of seasonal cheer!
In the Dark 