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Space Station to add Second Starbucks!
U.S. Claims Leader of Al Qaeda-Affiliated Group in Iraq Only an Actor
鈥淚'm not a real terrorist, but I play one on TV,鈥 he admits.
Huge Ancient Underground Reservoir Discovered Beneath Darfur
But it's water, not oil, so U.S. not interested.
POLITICS
Poll: 鈥淣one of the Above鈥 Leads GOP Race
Closely followed by 鈥淭hey're All the Same鈥 and 鈥淣ot Another Rich White Guy.鈥
As reports from the pool ... er field ... 'flood' in ... a tasteless prolonged April fool 'springs' to mind. The situation beggars belief.
A propos Eddie, can you ask your nice Blog editor to adjust one of the blog categories ... to Venice Beach.
Er.. sorry!
To be very serious though, hearts go out to the 600 000 affected by outages and worse. Here, sur le Continent, we're only feeling the tail end of things ... thus far ...
Bush Briefly Transfers Power to Cheney During Colonoscopy
Cheney launches invasion of Iran but suffers mild heart attack and is forced to transfer power to Nancy Pelosi who orders troops out of Iran and Iraq, closes Guantanamo, ends warrantless wiretapping and fires Alberto Gonzales, but Cheney recovers, voids her actions and is about to launch invasion again when Bush comes out of anesthesia and resumes control.
Hi
Just listened to the article about animal testing. Very difficult to listen to - I'm vegan and struggle with the thought that we inflict so much suffering on animals. Surely, surely, we should all be working flat out to find a way not to do these tests - each person on the article acknowledged that these animals suffer - there simply must be another way. Most people in your audience with companion animals would not allow these tests to be carried out on their pets - what is the difference between your dog and a dog in the testing lab? Why is one looked after and the other allowed to suffer? I don't understand the differentiation. It is almost unbearably sad how blinkered we can be.
Regards.
Why does the 大象传媒 still insist in Metric measures ?
The water is 4metres or the river is 50 metres wide, or another 20 kilometres along the road.
Why ?
Even the bureaucratic EU has conceded we are to be "allowed" to keep miles yards etc.
Is the 大象传媒 worried it may be accused of being "Nationalistic" ?
Article regarding the proposed driving test for people reaching certain age. Sterling Moss's comments regarding female drivers not what one would expect from a station purporting to give "intelligent speech radio". Immediately turned off
Thanks for asking the right questions and managing to get a little more from Hilary than Sarah manages this morning.
Eddie
Despite my previous admonition, you and your cohorts are still saying:
SEKKER TREE
The work is: "SECRETARY"
Your lazy pronounciation is very irritating. I was inclined to report you to John Humphreys but he has now caught the disease.
The only one of you who apparently has an immunity is Carolyn Quinn, bless her!
Re: driving and age. My license says it's valid till the day before my 70th birthday. I've always wondered if they know something I don't ...
Sid
Regarding the recent item on Biofuel, instead of saying that the treasury "couldn't comment on tax issues out of the budget cycle" why can't you say that the treasury "fobbed us off with a lame excuse and didn't answer"? That sounds more like the truth.
Peter (4), I believe it's because those educated from the 70's forward, have been taught the metric system, and use it in every day life. I'm soon to hit mid-life (or the point at which life begins, according to a well known phrase) and I work in metric all the time. I'm an engineer, and all in industry now work in metric. The only countries that don't are the US and Canada, and even they add these measurements to drawings/documents, etc. What is the problem in the 大象传媒* using a recognised measurement system that is understood by a large proportion of the public (I include my parents, both in their late 70s).
*As a point of information, I am not, nor have I ever been, an employee of the 大象传媒, in case anyone believes I am here to push a "company" line.
Re the proposal to re-test older drivers, and Stirling Moss's ridiculous comments about women drivers. What was he going on about? The truth is I'm afraid that the state has far too much to do with scrutinising law abiding people, and graciously allowing them to do ordinary things which should be their right and not a state granted privilege.
Instead of re-testing people who go about minding their own business and doing no harm, why not make it mandatory to re-test those who speed, or break other traffic laws, whatever their age? These after all are the people who have already demonstrated their unfitness to drive. While walking this afternoon, I saw a number of people driving one handed while talking on mobile phones, smoking, and in one case eating a chicken leg. None of them were elderly. All of them were driving without due care and attention.
Ed Iglehart that was brilliant
Now that BP ain't got no contracts in Siberia, we should ask them to Tunnel from via Saudi, Yemen, Djibouti and detour via Chad in Darfur and suck up the oil
I pray to Allah that it an oil lake under Darfur.
Cheney will be there in thrice.
If BP had contracts worth 拢40 Billion same quantum as Al Yamama. Noboby would have noticed Litvinenko's death. Just a minor illness cconvienently forgotten just like BAE saga and associated graft. The vile Wahabis squeezed Blair's nut and fraud inquiry convienently dropped
Hi, When the flood disaster happened in New Orleans, my sister - in Ireland - went to her local police station, requested a permit, stood outside Tesco with a bucket and, over 3 days, collected over 9,000 euro to give to the various disaster funds. Is it possible for me to do something like this in the UK, I so want to help those unfortunate UK flood victims. I count my blessings every day and feel so lucky that I, or my family, do not have to endure these dreadful hardships.
The Archer's Storyline - a four minute advert for a 大象传媒 programme. Come on there is plenty of proper News out there. We don't need a puff piece for a programme few of us listen to (or want to for that matter).
The only good thing about tonights programme was NO Hugh Sykes.
Building on flood plains? Why not? Build the homes on stilts. Plenty of examples around the world. The 'ground floor' houses cars, garden tools, boats, etc. Plants grow to make things look better. Ramps for wheel chairs, etc.
Togolo
You missed some thing. We can grow a lot of "Weed" under the stilts.
There will be a one captive market. The Home Office.
Since The Archers is set in Borsetshire, a county in the West Midlands with its own microclimate, and which (until now) has not experienced any flooding, surely the new affordable housing should be built there.
There will then be no danger of building on a flood plain, because Borsetshire does not flood.
There will be a drought of Biblical proportions in Borsetshire.
The script writers are working on it now
大象传媒 will have to justify Licence payers fees
Markham (15),
"The only good thing about tonights programme was NO Hugh Sykes."
Somehow I suspect you may be in a tiny minority.
Happy Trails,
ed
Hello S Murphy
re - 4 -
Thank you for echoing thoughts many listeners surely share.
These days, in anticipation of the worst, I find myself turning into a spineless coward at the very mention of the word 'animal' let alone 'testing'. The reality does not bear thinking about. Today in society man does such terrible things to his own kind, that absolutely anything will go for animals is the ensuing logic. It is really tough not giving into deep depression over the situation. Ceaseless mobilization is the only way out.
My feeling too is that non vegetarians are as committed to animal protection rights as vegetarians and may form a larger constituency... This is said only because it seems important to include support to the cause from the widest possible audience. Over the years, for many reasons, my family has turned vegetarian but the point is animal rights not whether meat-eaters are wrong. Inducing feelings of guilt in a part of the community inhibits support for a noble cause.
Nice blogging with you.
Bests,
T
Paula Cantwell thanks for your help
Can you get FEMA to help us out here. I hear they are awesome. There is a poor black neighbour in Tewkesbury. I think they are OK. We can ignore them for a few weeks
At 05:59 PM on 23 Jul 2007, Paula Cantwell wrote:
Hi, When the flood disaster happened in New Orleans, my sister - in Ireland - went to her local police station, requested a permit, stood outside Tesco with a bucket and, over 3 days, collected over 9,000 euro to give to the various disaster funds. Is it possible for me to do something like this in the UK, I so want to help those unfortunate UK flood victims. "
If you do, send me some Paula, my fishpond overflowed and left duckweed all over the patio today. I've had a devil of a job scraping it up and could do with some largess if there's any going around. Thanking you in anticipation....
Truthyness
Are you a fruitcake? Just asking
anil (13),
I have to admit it wasn't mine. If you're amused by the like, follow the link above or, for a change, . ;-)
xx
ed
There are three branches of government: the Executive, The Legislative, and the Judicial. The Legislative and Judicial branches both report to the Executive (see chart). Underneath are various other parts of the government, like the Department of Justice, the Federal Courts, and the Republican Party, who all report to the Office of the President, who reports to the Office of the Vice President.
xx
ed
Thank you for the variety in your flood coverage. Having spent part of the day watching 24 hour news reporters asking flood victims for the umpteenth time how they felt at having no home and ruined possessions, I was glad you revisited Toll Bar and mentioned Carlisle. It's much too easy to forget people who have suffered as soon as their story is no longer new news.
And while I realise that not everyone is an Archers listener, I did find the explanation of it's unique climate and the scripting of inserts interesting.
But perhaps you could have found a more up to date interviewee than Stirling Moss!
Agreed, Anne P. On all points. But I think old Mossie was chosen BECAUSE of his age, like Enfield Snr. Shame his attitudes were, oh, dare I say it, antediluvian?
Two points:
1) Hearing how "The Archers" is put together is much more interesting than listening to the result.
2) I can't see how animal testing can be phased out except (among others) by continuing to experiment on animals.
Laboratory work on its own is not enough.
Rescue helicopter pick up plan for Tewkesbury
1 Upper middle class toffs + the horses
2 Lower middle class toffs
3 Middle class
4 Lower middle class
5 Middle class
6 Working class
7 Indians
8 Chavs without ASBOS
9 Bangladeshis running dodgy restaurants
10 Single parent black families
11 Pakistani taxi drivers
13 Chavs with ASBOS
12 Pakistanis
Lastly some Somalis. No point. Using chapati flour as an explosive!!!!!!!!! Can't even read a "terror manual" properly. Real loosers.
Anil @30
Did you ever try to get a horse into a helicopter?
If you ever decide to, please may I have the popcorn concession?
Chris
Of course. No problemo
We need just one Russian Mil Heavy-Lift Helicopter - I suggetst a MI-12 "HOMER" This chopper is bigger than a Boeing 727 jetliner & carry a payload of over 40 tonnes (36 tons). This beast can carry 90 horses and enough popcorn to feed all the population of Tewkesbury and a few surrounding villages and hamlets
Miliband the school boy will have to go cap in hand to Putin and beg for just one. Putin will tell him to bugger off
What a pity we cannot even have one
Damn!!!!!!!!!
Anil @ 32, I am still getting over being privileged to see someone who thought it was easy trying to load a horsebox with three horses only one of which had ever travelled in a box before. Almost as good value as the Moscow State Circus, and I didn't even have to pay for my seat on the straw-bale. So I reckon we could've cleaned up on tickets to watch horses that had never met a chopper being loaded onto one. Since it was my idea, I hoped to get a percentage of the total take.
As you say, Damn!!!!!!!!!
Chris
There is only one MI-12 "HOMER" Its an MOT failure. Probably needs a new battery. I am sure the Russians can get it up and flying.
If it crashes (very likely if a pop corn popper is fitted) and we loose 90 horses. All hell will break loose and Litvinenko affair will be forgotten. We will have to expel all the Russians diplomatic staff.
On a serious note the Russians do have large helicopters that can be very helpful to us. Under the current diplomatic circumstances we cannot get them. Pity
There are a few unkind comments on here. What was all that about the helecopter list ? abit distastefull if you ask me. Leave Hugh Sykes alone I think he's brilliant always brings every report to life as if you were actually there. I was on the bus in the Edgware Rd and saw three men sitting outside looking akward smoking their shisha (shee-sher ?) pipes as the shoppers passed and gave them funny looks and I thought of Hugh.
My next door neighbour had family in Tewksbury so I was getting all the info from her. I was just wondering what happens when people are displaced and can't get to work (assumming their work place is still dry) do they still get paid ? would they still get paid if their workplace is flooded and they are re-located ?
Re Ambridge it has appeared for quite a time that Blair is still PM and it is all nice and dry in Ambridge, the insert was rather mild I was expecting the Am to flood or something. Why not get Peter Donaldson to do a spoof newsread "now lets go over to Borcetshire where the Am has flooded..." etc I'm sure he'd love to do it he does the News Quiz' ones.
A thought that has struck me in the present flood crisis (well, in truth, it had struck me in November 2000) is that, with the current trend towards waterside living as the location of choice, an awful lot more people, and many of them pretty well-heeled, are going to find themselves periodically suffering the unwanted effects of flooding.
Whilst houses on stilts may be a solution in some cases (and I believe such a development has taken place in Lewes), the additional cost of building in this way, including the complexities required by the infrastructure to support such developments, isn't likely to make it widespread.
Another thought has struck me: I do hope Sequin doesn't rust in all that water!
Make her a nice cup of tea when she gets back to London, Eddie.
FF (11):
Yes, I was taught the metric system at school in the mid-70's, but at home - and in books and the TV at the time - everything was Imperial, so I learned to *think* in Imperial measures.
I have to approximate metres to yards to make sense of them, and I still have trouble converting kilometres to miles, largely because - to a precision of a few yards - it is exactly a mile from my house to the butchers, so that's a measure I *know*.
A few years ago, I committed to memorizing a conversion table from Centigrade to Fahrenheit because 20C doesn't mean much, but 68F is (for me) hot.
I know how many stones I weigh but I wouldn't have a clue about kilogrammes. When cooking or baking, I use my manual balance-scales with the big brass weights in ounces. It's all more real.
Even in science, there's something more satisfying about the speed of light being around 186,000 miles per second, rather than 3x10^8 metres per second.
So for me, so many inches of rain, resulting in flooding covering an area of so many miles, and a temerature of such and such degrees fahrenheit please...
Feline Inoxydable (38),
You're on the mark with the systems of measure. I think and visualise in imperial, but had my scientific education in metric. Fortunately, the metric came as a set of unconsciously memorised conversions, so I'm OK with a head full of numbers.
I find it easier to do joinery in millimeters than in 1 foot, 2 19/32 inches, but often use 3 inch nails...
68藲F as 'hot' shows you to be a real Scot! In Florida, they air-condition down to 75藲F and complain of the cold if it's less than 65藲!
And it's so much nicer to than hectares!
;-)
ed
Big Sis (36),
"with the current trend towards waterside living as the location of choice, an awful lot more people, and many of them pretty well-heeled,"
See this in the Furrowed Brow for an idea on a solution.
xx
ed
Chris
I agree Since it was your idea, I can give the popcorn concession. You get 50% of the total take. We can over charge the victims and do some crass profiteering - 10 quid for a small bucket of popcorn. For added value we can show really dire movies of flooding in Bangladesh. for another 10 quid.
We will be quids in.
Are in or out
My thoughts on measurements go this way:
The old Imperial measures developed over centuries because they fitted the uses to which the things they measured were put. So for everyday use, these measurements are likely to suit the people using them: they happened that way in the first place. Pints and gallons, ounces and pounds, were amounts that came to be agreed as convenient in real lives. The acre was the area that could be ploughed by a usual means in a usual time, for instance.
The shorter lengths were related to the size of bits of people so that one could easily see roughly how much was involved of timber or cloth or land. A single stride for someone with a 34-36 inside leg measurement is likely to be approximately a yard; a metre is just too long to be comfortable. (I just tried it, and that one works.) A foot is close enough to the distance from elbow to wrist for approximate measurement by most people, I suspect, and if one's forearm is much larger or smaller one can note this and adjust accordingly. An inch is close to the top joint of a finger, and one can choose which finger after measuring and then remember "that one is an inch". I don't know many people with convenient centimetres or metres about their persons for ready-reckoning. *grin*
The metric/decimal/whatever measurements originate with an urge to change things at the time of the French Revolution, and an attempt to be 'scientific' about the matter. They were not designed with people's use of them in mind, and they were imposed rather than evolving. A single gram is too small to be much use in the kitchen, and a kilogram too large; the ounce and the pound are simpler in ordinary culinary use, and much easier to approximate using a standard spoon as a measure. Four ounces is less of a chore to keep in the mind than 113 grams, and five ounces is definitely easier as a progression from that than 141.5 grams if one is remembering a recipe with one's wooden spoon in one's hand...
The other irritant about the non-Imperial measures is that there is too big a gap between one and the next: multiplying by a hundred is too much in usual circumstances. The difference in size between the centimetre and the metre, the gram and the kilogram, is inconvenient, and the intermediate measurements in tens don't get used -- nobody talks about the deci-thingy, that I have noticed, nor the deca-wossit.
Imperial units that weren't particularly useful outside specialised areas probably got lost anywhere outside those areas: the scruple is only much use to a dealer in precious metal, the pocket to one who sells lentils wholesale, and so on.
It seems to me that just as there were trades that used the bushel or the gill, whilst ordinary non-specialised folk got along with pounds and pints, the scientific trades could use the decimal measures without those having to be imposed on everyone else.
What's more, I find it very slightly insulting that whereas every previous generation was assumed to be able to cope with awkward numbers like three, four, twelve, fourteen and sixteen, in order to work out how much flour or wood or curtain material they needed, this one is thought so thick as only to be able to deal in units of ten at a time.
Chris
Your are a smart cookie
Do you think we should measure the flood depth in Tewkesbury in imperial or metric. Oh my god we are in 10ft of water or 3.048m. Help us
Roberto
Sorry mate. 大象传媒 don't do Liberaterian
Anil @43, I think we should measure it in depth against a human of average height, or two such if one is prepared to be drowned checking the matter. Either that or the Standard London Bus measure. We could of course go for the "shoulder high on a giraffe" standard (a continuation of the scale that starts 'knee-high to a military mule'), but many people don't have a giraffe available for ease of checking on that scale. The putative horses we have virtually available ourselves are likely not to be tall enough to be useful in this matter.
And if you will provide the helicopter, I'm in. Do you hold the relevant piloting licence, or will we have to count pilot's wages as being taken off the top as well as fuel and airport charges, before we do the split?
Chris
Giraffe!!!!!!! we can kidnap one from a Zoo and take him to Tewkesbury. London Bus is no brainer. At least the the Giraffe can swim to the said point and depth can be measured
I rang the Russian Embassy requesting a couple of choppers. A rude cold warriors told me not only did we the cheek to ask for Lugovoi now we want some choppers.
The deal is if we send we send Berezovsky and Ahmed the Chechen terrorist to Russia we get 2 may be 4 full blooded Ukrainian women, a case of Vodka and we can have lots of fun in the "mile high club" in a chopper of course
Anil @ 46, sounds from tonight's programme as if we are too late. Oh well.