Project Blue Beam

I used to follow apolyptic conspiracy theories quite closely. I remember Nexus Magazine first reporting HAARP - a spin off from Reagan's SDI project, a massive network of antennae in Alaska. It prompted much speculation and protest at the time. People said it was a new mega weapon designed to attack nations using low frequency waves to modify weather systems, or even to provoke earthqakes.

Inevitably, several significant earthquakes in a short space of time has caused HAARP's profile to rise again, and fears that the US is now actively using a superweapon to which we have no defence seem rife over the internet, with a #haarp list on Twitter.

It seems odd to me when the US is clearly engaged in a fight over control of the planet, exerting economic and military pressures on countries to align themselves with the dollar economy, not the Euro; to supply fuel to the west, not to China.

This war is physical and can be seen - mainly in the middle east, but also in Eastern Europe and Latin america. The US will swoop on any country that threatens stabilty but can't fight back, and use economic and diplomatic threats against the rest of us.

With this clearly visible war going on, I just do not understand why people retreat into fantasy to create futuristic space age weapons for the US to use against us.

The latest is Project Blue Beam. It ties in with an odd phenomena seen over Norway last year, and the fact that a black, charismatic liberal is now president of the USA. Two years ago the internet was alive with speculaiton of how how quickly Obama would be assassinated, or ways in which "THEY" would prevent him from exercising any power. Now he is in office and seems to be treading a very similar path to previous liberal Democrats,ie, bogged down in economic crisis, wars not of his own making, and battling to get his agenda through Congress; it seems the conspiracy internet community has switched over to believing that Obama is one of THEM. He is an agent of the anti-christ. Or something. It's fascinating. But it's bonkers.

MI5 can't be trusted to tell truth

Winner of the "No shit sherlock" award for February!!

The following is an edited version of the article - but I cannot be arsed putting in quotes and that sort of nonsense.

The Court of Appeal said MI5 officers had suppressed evidence of their alleged involvement in the torture of Binyam Mohamed while he was imprisoned by the United States.

The court has now ben successfully challenged by the media over decision to remove a paragraph from a draft judgment because of an objection raised by the Government.

In the restored judgment the judge accused officers of having a "dubious record" over the "coercive interrogation" of the former Guantanamo Bay detainee. Lord Neuberger said some officers had been less than frank about what they knew about Mr Mohamed's ill-treatment.

The paragraph in question explains how MI5 had stressed to a parliamentary committee that it "operated in a culture that respected human rights and that coercive techniques were alien to the service's general ethics, methodology and training".

Lord Neuberger's final paragraph says: "Yet in this case that does not seem to have been true: as the evidence shows, some Security Services officials appear to have a dubious record relating to actual involvement, and frankness about any such involvement, with the mistreatment of Mr Mohamed when he was held at the behest of US officials."

Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the all-party group on rendition, said the case showed that MI5 had also misled MPs: "The [Commons] Intelligence and Security Committee has been misled by the Secret Services on their knowledge of Binyam Mohamed's mistreatment.

"Every bit as troubling, the passages released yesterday reveal concern among senior judges that Foreign Secretary David Miliband may also have been misled by the Security Services. This would render the Foreign Secretary's assurances on rendition wholly unreliable."

So - MI5 lied; Miliband lied, and then the judge tried to lie. Even now that the truth is out it's couched in weasle-words to try to save political face for New Labour.

We do have to face the truth here - MI5 is a law unto itself. It lies o the government. It breaks the law. It seeks to cover up the truth. there is no reason to believe that this case is a one off - there is testament after testament from released prisoners that MI5 were involved in the torture.

Let's face it people - our government and its agents acts like a criminal neo-nazi state without regulation; they placate us with lies and cover-ups; and scare us with fictional or exagerated threats to manouvre public opinion in favour of removing rights, deceipt, secrecy, and illegal wars; they tell us we're like children who need to be protected from harm. We hide behind their skirts like little frightened lambs and thank them for it.

What we hear - the odd glimpse of reality from behind our own internal iron curtain - is just the merest glimpse of another world. A world where democracies are a sham, where secret governments rule and manipulate politicians like puppets and voters like sheep.

Who is really in charge? Why do we keep believing their crap?

Wake up people!!!

Walk Out To Winter

Keeping myself in the SCS top 5 has been harduous. It's the most physically demanding thing I've attempted since I used to run half marathons regularly back in the late 80s, early 90s.

My physical fitness has been gradually sliding since back then; only since December 2008 have I begun to reverse that trend.

Having got to the stage where I can happily cycle 30 miles a day, the worst winter for 30 years or more arrives. I'm still cycling 30 miles a day, but it's harder than it should be. I cycled through the ice and the snow, and now I'm cycling through hail, sleet, heavy rain and winds gusting up to 50mph. It's having a heavy toll on the bike, on my cycling clothes and the contents of my no longer water proof panniers.

Every day I have a layer of grit over me and the bike. the grit is getting into all the moving parts of the bike, forcng me to make weekly visits to the bike shop, and I've been making little trails of grit everywhere i go - at work and at home.

Thursday I finally cracked and instead of cycling home, I jumped on a train. Then yesterday I got the bus and DLR into work.

This has left me about 50 miles short of my February target which I have to make up today and tomorrow. That's 20 miles today adn 30 tomorrow. Should be a doddle, as long as it doesn't start raining again.

Save 6Music

If they shut down 6Music then I'm taking my DAB Radio back to the shop. Both of them!!

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/bbc-radio-stars-hit-out-over-6-music-closure-plans-1911894.html

I've spent £100 odd quid on 2 DABs - at the time there were 3 or 4 promising sounding stations on the air....and a few in the pipeline. this was about 5 years ago. Since then only two of those promising digital stations remain on the air and none of the new ones came about. So I spent £100 for a radio which was effectively for listening to one station.
That station was 6Music. I also listen to Radio2 and Radio4, but you don't need a DAB set for those.

The end of 6 Music will spell the end of decent music radio in this country.

I quote:

"The Times claimed the measures are part of a plan, due to be made public next month, to shrink the corporation's overall services and focus more on quality over quantity."

In which case it seems odd to start with the station that plays the best quality music, with the best and most knowledgable presenters, and which continues to air the BBC's musical legacy of over 40 years, including the blessed John Peel Sessions.

Scrap radios one and two and not only do you save a lot more money, but the quality threshold will rocket upwards. Chris Moyle's and Chris Ebans' salaries alone should more than pay for 6Music's continued existence.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Save-6-Music/318069702319
Looks like I need to join the facebook group.

Also if they close 6Music down, they're going to have to rename Radio 7.

One more - then I'll Stop

Here's another blog entry about Bruce "The Brute" Anderson.

09 April 2009 1:27 PM

Horizontal discussions...

Have a guess to which political columnist this lovely story refers.

At the Tory conference in Blackpool in 2007, a packed corridor in the Imperial Hotel saw a certain hack in an advanced state of refreshment.

The slavering journo was busy casting a lecherous eye over a young female Tory activist despite her clear discomfort at his attentions. The hack in question was irritated when his advances were momentarily interrupted by a woman in a wheelchair trying to get past. "F**king cripple!" he muttered before returning to what is possibly the most excruciating chat-up line I've ever heard.

"My dear," he said. "I'd love to see you on the floor of the House of Commons....preferably in a horizontal position..."

It gets worse. He then suggested that he would love to see the woman in question undress for bed. He would like to hide behind a curtain and watch. "Then I could come out from behind it.."

Of course, none of the above has anything whatsoever to do with two equally eye-popping blogposts by Nadine Dorries HERE and Iain Dale HERE.

SOURCE: http://waugh.standard.co.uk/2009/04/horizontal-discussions.html

more on The Brute - Torture advocate, bully and misogynist

this is from a blog by Iain Dale, a Tory writer and broadcaster.

http://www.iaindale.co.uk/biography.php

Defending Nadine From The Brute

Iain Dale 11:40 AM

http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2009/04/defending-nadine-from-brute.html

Last night I spoke at an event organised by the public affairs consultancy Weber Shandwick. A panel of four of us mulled over what might happen under a future Tory government, and whether David Cameron would be beholden to the right. The other speakers were Andrew Haldenby from REFORM, Nadine Dorries and Bruce Anderson.

I have to say I was appalled by the behaviour of Bruce Anderson towards Nadine. Throughout her speech he interrupted, and when he wasn't interrupting he was whispering very loudly so as to put her off. The thing is, I had predicted something like this would happen, so before the event started I surreptitiously changed the seating so she didn't have to sit next to him. Anyway, Dizzy has just pointed out that Nadine has already described the evening on her Blog so over to her...

Bruce Anderson was bloody rude. When I arrived at the event, Iain went up to the top table and moved around the name places. When the Chairman asked him what he was doing, Iain said, “she’s not sitting next to him”.

In that blonde way I have it kind of went over my head, until we began to make our presentations. Everyone did their five minute introduction/speech. Bruce Anderson spent his intro berating Gillian Shephard, and then went on to state that there was not one single female MP in the Conservative party fit to be in a Conservative cabinet.

I stood to reply, at which point Bruce Anderson began to talk, loudly, to the person sat next to him, and he carried on and he did not stop. It was incredibly off putting.We then took questions. When I was asked to speak Bruce decided he would interrupt, when he was pulled up for this he then again, talked over me.
Iain lost it at this point and asked him why he didn’t shut the f**k up. I’ve never spoken on a panel quite like that before. Misogyny at its most blatant; from a man who mutters incoherently, constantly. He told me at the end of the evening that everything I had said had been wrong, which is why he had spoken over me.

“Really,"said I. “Do you think so? Because do you know what, almost every person here has just come up to me to congratulate me on how I handled myself in the midst of your rudeness and commented on what a complete misogynistic a**e you are. And I have to say, I agree. I would just have slipped the word fat in somewhere”.

I then gave him a kiss on both cheeks and left with Iain, as Bruce Anderson stood with red wine lips and teeth (easy to see as his mouth was wide open) and stared after us.

Actually Nadine got one detail wrong. What I actually said was: "Bruce will you stop being so fucking obnoxious".

UPDATE: Since I wrote this I have been inundated with 'Brute' anecdotes. I think THIS one from Paul Waugh takes the biscuit.

Stupid police

I do often wonder how stupid coppers really are.

This is from the Independent newspaper:

“His driving was so erratic I put my ‘blues and twos’ on and instructed him to pull off the motorway onto a slip road at Bowburn [County Durham]. I ordered him into my car, where he promptly sat on my sunglasses, breaking them. They were a Christmas present from my wife, who was not very happy.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/drink-driver-caught-after-making-vsign-to-durham-chief-constable-1909475.html

So the copper had left his sunglasses on his passenger seat and didn;t move them before he ordered the unpleasant drunk man to sit in his car. And the unpleasant man sat on his glasses. That is just stupid!!

This other story is far more serious:

Police failures contributed to the deaths of a couple shot by a gangland hit squad in Lincolnshire in a revenge attack, an inquest jury has decided. Joan and John Stirland were killed at their home in Trusthorpe in August 2004 in retaliation for a shooting by Mrs Stirland's son.

The jury found Nottinghamshire Police failed to share with their Lincolnshire counterparts, or properly act on, intelligence about the threat posed to the couple by Colin Gunn's gang.

Witnesses said the couple had been warned by police there was a threat but officers had not felt the Gunn gang were capable of murder.

The unanimous verdict also found that BT operators contributed to the couple's death by passing on information about them to Gunn and his associates.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8531150.stm

Everyone makes mistakes but the arrogance of the police often prevents them from responding to criticism or learning from their mistakes. My own experiences of the police have led me to believe that as a service organisation they lack even the merest shred of good customer services. Antagonizing and winding their customers seems to be their unique way of handling things. I remember only one good experience of dealing with the police: an officer who became known as the cycling policeman of Clapham. He was, however, later killed on duty.

Attempts to report road incidents have almost inevitably led to my own threatened arrest. That's one way of keeping crime stats down. So I've given up trying now.

Robert Reich

I saw him on Newsnight earlier this week speaking complete sense about Goldman Sachs and their extraordinary influence on governments across the world.

He has a very good blog too
http://robertreich.blogspot.com/

here's an excerpt from his Sunday, December 27, 2009 entry:

"President Obama and his economic team have been telling Americans we'll have to save more in future years, spend less and borrow less from the rest of the world, especially from China. This is necessary and inevitable, they say, in order to "rebalance" global financial flows. China has saved too much and consumed too little, while we have done the reverse.

"In truth, most Americans did not spend too much in recent years, relative to the increasing size of the overall American economy. They spent too much only in relation to their declining portion of its gains. Had their portion kept up -- had the people at the top of corporate America, Wall Street banks and hedge funds not taken a disproportionate share -- most Americans would not have felt the necessity to borrow so much."

I think that goes for the UK too.

The Brute - bullying hypocrite

Anderson - after condoning torture - decides to lay in to Gordon Brown over the allegations of bullying in the workplace.
And this message appeared underneath the article.

"Bruce...short memory man
dylanatstrumble wrote:
Is this the same Bruce Anderson who Private Eye re-named The Brute after his bullying ways with a young secretary. C'mon Bruce, tell it like it really is.
Are you really The Brute?"


this is from a blog by Iain Dale, a Tory writer and broadcaster.
http://www.iaindale.co.uk/biography.php
Defending Nadine From The Brute
Iain Dale 11:40 AM

http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2009/04/defending-nadine-from-brute.html
Last night I spoke at an event organised by the public affairs consultancy Weber Shandwick. A panel of four of us mulled over what might happen under a future Tory government, and whether David Cameron would be beholden to the right. The other speakers were Andrew Haldenby from REFORM, Nadine Dorries and Bruce Anderson.

I have to say I was appalled by the behaviour of Bruce Anderson towards Nadine. Throughout her speech he interrupted, and when he wasn't interrupting he was whispering very loudly so as to put her off. The thing is, I had predicted something like this would happen, so before the event started I surreptitiously changed the seating so she didn't have to sit next to him. Anyway, Dizzy has just pointed out that Nadine has already described the evening on her Blog so over to her...
Bruce Anderson was bloody rude. When I arrived at the event, Iain went up to the top table and moved around the name places. When the Chairman asked him what he was doing, Iain said, “she’s not sitting next to him”.
In that blonde way I have it kind of went over my head, until we began to make our presentations. Everyone did their five minute introduction/speech. Bruce Anderson spent his intro berating Gillian Shephard, and then went on to state that there was not one single female MP in the Conservative party fit to be in a Conservative cabinet.
I stood to reply, at which point Bruce Anderson began to talk, loudly, to the person sat next to him, and he carried on and he did not stop. It was incredibly off putting.We then took questions. When I was asked to speak Bruce decided he would interrupt, when he was pulled up for this he then again, talked over me.
Iain lost it at this point and asked him why he didn’t shut the f**k up. I’ve never spoken on a panel quite like that before. Misogyny at its most blatant; from a man who mutters incoherently, constantly. He told me at the end of the evening that everything I had said had been wrong, which is why he had spoken over me.
“Really,"said I. “Do you think so? Because do you know what, almost every person here has just come up to me to congratulate me on how I handled myself in the midst of your rudeness and commented on what a complete misogynistic a**e you are. And I have to say, I agree. I would just have slipped the word fat in somewhere”.
I then gave him a kiss on both cheeks and left with Iain, as Bruce Anderson stood with red wine lips and teeth (easy to see as his mouth was wide open) and stared after us.
Actually Nadine got one detail wrong. What I actually said was: "Bruce will you stop being so fucking obnoxious".
UPDATE: Since I wrote this I have been inundated with 'Brute' anecdotes. I think THIS one from Paul Waugh takes the biscuit.


Bruce Anderson on New Orleans - looks like he's racist too. These extracts are from an article written by Anderson about New Orleans:
"America is founded on work, responsibility and law. This is no more important item in the Bill of Rights than the unwritten one: that each and every American has the right to work his butt off. That is the basis of another right: this year shall be better than the last year and next year will be better than this year.
Not in New Orleans: that city is founded on laziness, irresponsibility and lawlessness."
"Large numbers of the descendents of the involuntary immigrants have spurned every opportunity to invest in the American dream. It's as if they regard the work ethic as tainted, because it was imposed on their forebears by slavery."
"I suspect that at least 90 percent of the looters were from one-parent families."
"The decisions which doomed New Orleans were taken years before Bush became President, including the one to build the city in the first place."

His one excuse would have to be mental illness. Or maybe he's just joking.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=191x10009

It seems he's a thoroughly obnoxious character; which is surprising as he looks so pleasant in his photographs.
As reported in Private Eye (No. 1129, P.4) :
"Bruce "Brute" Anderson recently penned a flattering if somewhat barmy book review in the Spectator. The book in question, The New English Kitchen by Spectator cook Rose Prince, got high praise from the Brute - but then the review went off at a peculiar tangent.
"The Orcadian piss-pot spent paragraph after paragraph praising Lord Salisbury (aka Lord Cranborne) and his pig-breeding enterprise.
"Why so? Because over the new year Anderson gatecrashed a Salisbury family holiday in Italy and infuriated them so much with his boorish drunken behaviour that he was barred from the house. Despite much banging on doors and several pleading phone calls, the resolute Salisburys refused to let the odious Brute back in.
"Anderson is running short of grandees whose hospitality he can abuse: only a few months ago the Eye revealed a hideous incident which earned him a lifetime ban from Lord Hesketh's house in Northamptonshire. Will shameless brown-nosing in the Spectator get him back on the Salisbury guest list?"


I've edited Anderson's Wikipedia page - I've added a section entitled "misogyny"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Anderson_(columnist)

UPDATE - My edit has been deleted. I'm guessing Brucie baby has threatened to sue Wikipedia in the past. Judging by the tiny entry Anderson has on Wikipedia, no-one has anything good to say about him, and wikipedia won't allow anything negative to be posted. They might as well delete the entry.

And as usual - the bully wins.

Abbey Wood - Erith - Dartford Ride

I set out with no firm destination mind today. I went past Abbey Wood - remains of an old abbey - and then out towards the Dartford Bridge via Erith. I managed to find a way of getting close up to the bridge - a riverside footpath which took me right under the bridge. superb views of what is still very much a working river.

Can We Torture Bruce Anderson?

I've always known that Bruce Anderson, who writes in the independent, is somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun. Reading his column usually has me shaking my head in bewilderment, and sometimes my blood boils, but I believe it's good to read what the opposition has to say so that it can be better countered.
But after reading this I have to ask if the man is entirely sane. The views expressed here are those considered mainstream in Neo-Nazi Chile, or Argentina, or Franco's Spain. Contrary to all the evidence which shows that torture doesn't work - he thinks it should be compulsory!
There's a lot to disagree with in this article. He suggests that it might be OK to torture the wife and child of a terrorist who has planted a bomb due to go off in a city like London. Apart from the fact that the scenario is completely unrealistic - I'm utterly lost for words at what a vile suggestion this is. Anderson seems to be taking his "Twenty Four" plots far too seriously; far from this sort of scenario - a more likely scenario is one where an innocent person in the wrong place at the wrong time is held for questioning, is unable to provide info, and the interrogators having been entirely indoctrinated to believe in hollywood's "Twenty Four" scenario consider that torturing this man is their duty. Innocent man cracks and blurts out garbage. This has happened over and over in Iraq.

Anderson berates a liberal friend (?) for only having experience of the courtroom; wheras I've noticed that the only people who seem to be in favour of torture are right wing journalists and politicians falling over themselves to appear to be tough on terrorism & cooperative with gang of crooks who until recently ran Washington. There is generally quite a lot of feeling against torture both within intelligence and within the military. See a documentary called "Taxi to the Dark Side" which explores the reality of a policy of torture which was carried out from 2002 to 2006 (at least) first in Afghanistan and later in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.
How many false alarms were brought about thanks to torture. How many innocent people were tortured, imprisoned and killed. how many ordinary Iraqis and afghans have lost parents in these vile illegal wars, and are now growing up with bitterness and hatred in their hearts? We call thse people extremists, but if my country was invaded, and my people treated like this, I too would have a blood lust, and a desire to takeout as many of my occupiers as possible. and i would be applauded by the likes of Anderson for it. But if we (US and UK) behave like Nazis, illegally occupying a sovereign country (Anderson refers to the decidedly undemocratic, autocratic, oppresive, aggressive, terrorist-sponsoring Pakistan as a "Sovereign country" and ally at one point unable to see the irony as he attempts to justify flattening soveriegn countries and allies Afghanistan and Iraq, and threatening Syria and Iran) then it's because we have righteousness on our side, though no-one can agree what we started the wars for in the first place; justifications for the wars shift like desert sands. Maybe I should avoid his column in future.
I'm sure the independent only print his stuff to provoke debate, but maybe it's time to call it a day for this clearly bonkers and unpleasant writer?

Valentine's Day Is Over

got up even later today. I had one pressing duty to perform today and that was to cycle 22 miles so that I didn't slip behind even further against m monthly target of 600 miles. after achieveing exaclty that I now sit at 290 miles ridden so far during February. I just have to claw back 10 miles in the next two weeks.

I worked out a three miles (and a bit) circuit around my home today - which I cycled round 7 times today. It's an enormously important step that I've taken doing this as it means I can set out to make up relatively small mileage totals when I have limited time or the weather is very poor.

It's all part of staying in the Top 5 of the Bike Radar Fourms SCS League. Currently, there are over a hundred cyclists taking part. this is my second year and I've finally reached a level of fitness where I can compete against quite seriously hardcore cyclists - in distance only.

Now I need to work on my speed. Another reason why the 3 mile circuit will work for me, as I can compare times for completion, and gradually improve over the year.

Sensitive Aspies

Since I was diagnosed as having Asperger Syndrome I've never accepted that I do not feel empathy. I've always been very sensitive to what others feel - abnormally so.

Well now this has been backed up with a new study (click on title)

"“There are those who say autistic people don’t feel enough,” says Kamila Markram. “We’re saying exactly the opposite: They feel too much.” Virtually all people with ASD report various types of oversensitivity and intense fear. The Markrams argue that social difficulties of those with ASDs stem from trying to cope with a world where someone has turned the volume on all the senses and feelings up past 10. If hearing your parents’ voices while sitting in your crib felt like listening to Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music on acid, you, too, might prefer to curl in a corner and rock."

I have Jon Ronson to thank for tweeting this information, and retweeting it at my request.

And I'm the only person I know who's ever listened to Metal Machine Music all then way through. Twice.

It's hardly surprising to any who knows me that I did not get out of bed early enough to follow up on my AtZomancy experiment. But it still stands there as a challenge for me - maybe when the weather's a little better.

instead, today, I got up around 10.30, immersed myself in the Independent, drank a huge quantity of coffee, and slowly, mentally prepared myself for venturing out into the cold wet outside world for a long cycle ride.

Set off at noon, and headed straight towards Dartford, along the old Roman road (Watling Street), nice and staright as you would expect. After a few miles, had sufficiently warmed up that I was feeling very positive. Straight through Crayford, then Dartford, then diverted from the main road, up towards Temple Hill, then a right turn, a left turn, down a little residential dead end street with a pedstrian bridge which takes you over the M25, with stunning views of the Queen Elizabeth Bridge, and into a little countrified bit of North Kent which includes Greenhithe .

It isn't long before you're back onto the main road, a particularly ugly, dirty, and heavily used road which takes you between industrial yards, factories, car parks, railway yards and a non-league football ground in Northfleet.

This road, though fairly straight, is quite hilly, and I was constantly going from cruising down a hill to clicking back to a low gear to get up the next hill. I'm pleased to say I made every hill, a vast improvement from my performance a year ago.

I reached Gravesend and kept going. I did not attempt to follow the extremely poorly maintained (to the point of taking the piss) Sustrans route - Route 1 - instead stayed on the main road all the way to Rochester. Fantastic views across Hoo peninsula and the Thames Estuary. there was a huge cargo ship making its way upstream while I watched.

The weather deteriorated enormously in the next couple of hours. I made my way to chatham war memorial. A near replica exists in my birth city of Plymouth. In fact I felt strangely displaced, as if I was flitting between Kent and Plymouth as I moved around chatham.

I explored the war memorial, ate my packed lunch (care of Morrisson's marking down policy) and as rain threatened made my way down to the Chatham docks area. At this point I discovered that my salad had leaked and flooded the contents of my bag. I survived. My phone didn't.

Suddenly I was cold. A load of kids on mountain bikes turned up and were trying out tricks as I set off back towards home. I was fully prepared to bail out at any point when the rain and the cold became unbearable, but once in the stride managed to keep going all the way.

At home I checked my milage - about 48 miles. The longest ride of the year so far. Dunwich Dynamo beckons in less than 6 months and I'm well on the way to meeting that challenge.

Brain clue may explain condition's 'hug avoidance'

This news story was of interest today, being autistic myself (asperger syndome).
A bent X chromosome like the one above is characteristic of the condition
Delays at crucial points during the development of the brain in the womb may explain why people with a condition linked to autism do not like hugs.

Friday

Decided to play the AtoZomancy game today. Instead of using cards, I'm using what claims to be a true random number generator I found on the internet.

http://www.random.org/

I set it pick a number between 2 and 217 for the page - 30
then either A to E or F to K - represented by 1 to 5 - 2 or B/G
finally a number between 1 and 7 for the other coordinate - 2


I was given page 30, B2 which looks like this:

It's an area just south of elstree in NW London, about 17 and half miles out from central london.

Weather permitting, then, I will cycle there tomorrow. It should entail a 65 mile ride in total, which will be very good for my stats.

Arrest War Criminal Blair

Started by George Monbiot - this website is used to raise money for the arrest Blair fund. someone's had a go already and earned three grand as a result. The fund is intended to be in place until blair dies or is arrested and tried on warcrimes.

This is certainly justified after seeing his performance at the chilcott inquiry last week. The man is a compulsive liar. He contradicted himself and contradicted everyone else who appeared at the inquiry. He even contradicted something his wife said last year.

http://www.iraqinquirydigest.org/

Obamas Muddled Solutions

"The president is trying to please everyone, but he needs to take tough action to prevent the US economy's second freefall"
Click on title for Guardian article
the american economy is still fucked, it seems.


Worrying effects of climate change on the world's oceans: acidification
"the increased acidity of the seawater itself can literally begin to eat away at the outer surfaces of shells of existing clams, snails and other calcified organisms, which could cause species to die outright or become vulnerable to new predators."

Last week, researchers announced that they had been able to place, for the first time, original colors on a dinosaur—painting in striking stripes on Sinosauropteryx's tail based on new evidence of pigment particles.