Brief notes
Just a quick round up of things that have caught my attention over the last few days:
1. There’s a new diet drug that’s been approved for use in the UK, despite fears that it can cause depression and an increased risk of suicide - especially for anyone already taking anti-depressants. So, when you feel down about being overweight, take Rimonabant and feel really bad about how fat you are! But provided that a drug is approved by NICE it doesn’t matter how bad the side effects are - or how many other drugs you have to take to cure the side-effects! We all know that there is no miracle cure for obesity; if you want to lose weight, you’ve got to change your lifestyle and diet permanently.
2. Apparently, the US have said that they won’t recognise Zimbabwe’s elections this week, and Mugabe’s knighthood has been stripped. Even worse, England have cancelled the 2009 cricket tour of the country. Is it just me that thinks that none of this is going to make any difference? Let’s face it, Mugabe is prepared to kill the opposition to make sure that he stays in office. Why does he care if a cricket tour doesn’t go ahead?
I seem to remember a few years ago that the US and the UK decided that they needed to intervene in Iraq because of the human rights record of the country’s leader, Saddam Hussain. Mugabe’s human rights record is worse than Hitler’s, yet all we’re now doing is taking away an honorary knighthood? Could it be that Zimbabwe doesn’t have anything the West wants, so we just leave them to get on with it?
3. As well as being in trouble with race stewards for his mistakes over the last couple of Grand Prix, it seems that Lewis Hamilton is now wanted for burglary.
4. File this story under “There’s no smoke without fire”: Once again, John Leslie (former Blue Peter TV presenter) has been caught up in allegations of rape, dating back to an incident in 1995. He hasn’t got The Titmuss to stand by him this time, so how will he cope?
5. When I first read this story, it went into a bit more detail and I promise you that the driver was a woman, who’d put the automatic transmission into drive when she meant to put it into reverse. The current version of the story leaves out those details, but I think the pictures say it all. And I love the fact that the driver of the Toyota wasn’t in the mood to give interviews!
Brief notes
1 First and foremost, congratulations to Eastbourne Borough FC who were superbly victorious in their play-off final last night. We’re moving up into the Blue Square Premier League next season; national football for the first time in the club’s history. The guys done good!
If you saw the match on Setanta and wonder who the hell Health Plus are, they’re the company I work for who have been sponsoring Borough this season. We’ve also been helping them out with various supplements which coach Nick Greenwood has said have had a positive effect on the results this season. It’s nice to make a difference!
2 More stories to make your blood boil in the news today. The teenage killers of Kodjo Yenga have been given ‘life’ sentences and the judge has recommended they serve at least 15 years. So that means they’ll be out when they are in their late 20’s, early 30’s. Hardly life is it? Lock the door and throw away the fucking key. In these days of being too pussy to have a death sentence, life should fucking well mean life!
3 Apparently the latest edition of the Rough Guide that deals with England is coming in for a bit of stick, because it describes us as “overweight, alcopop-swilling, sex- and celebrity-obsessed TV addicts”. Seems fairly accurate to me.
4 Wikipedia, and the parent company Wikimedia, are coming in for a bit of stick, too at the moment because of various comments made by their second-in-command. I haven’t really been following the story but from what I’ve seen it seems like the “pedia” in their name might have a totally different meaning from now on. (Also here and here) (Thanks to Calacanis for bringing this one to the Wolfs attention).
Brief Notes
Sorry for the lack of posts over the last few days (I really have failed that Blog365 challenge, haven’t I?) but I was working over the weekend and didn’t really spend too much time in front of the screen for most of the last five or six days. Also, I think I’m going through one of those periods where nothing is really flagging up as being worthy of spending the time to write about; I find that I’m not one of those bloggers who can just sit in front of the machine and write - I have to have something that I want to say, or a news story I want to comment on. So this is just going to be another in my series of Brief Notes posts.
1. Ozh has updated his updated Absolute Comments plug-in, which caused me some confusion for a while. In version 2.1, he’s created a separate my_options.php file for holding some of the user settings (they used to be in the main file). Initially, I thought he’d dropped support for threaded comments, but then after checking out his website I realised what he’d done. If you don’t use this plug in already, check it out - it makes replying to comments on your blog so much easier.
2. In related news, WordPress 2.5 continues to be rather underwhelming. It’s not causing any problems for The New Wolfs Howl, but I haven’t really come across any of the new features that were so trumpeted at the launch. But it seems to be stable, which is good.
3. We’re coming towards the end of the football season. Eastbourne Borough have two away games left to play, and it’s tight at the top of the table. Only one point behind leaders Lewes (but they’ve got two games in hand), it is mathematically possible for us to win the league. Of course, we need Lewes to do quite badly in their last four games and I’m not sure that’s going to happen. But if we don’t win, we’ll get a play off position so will still have a promotion chance.
4. I’ve been listening to a lot of internet radio recently - specifically, Virgin Radio Classic Rock. It’s old school rock (with some grunge thrown in every now and again - be warned) and has just played me Radar Love followed by Queen’s You’re My best Friend. If you ever listened to a radio show hosted by Tommy Vance, then you should really check it out.
Brief Notes
Its been a busy weekend, so I’ve not really been in front of the computer at all and haven’t had time to write any proper entries. There have been a couple of things I’ve wanted to comment on, though, so here’s another in my series of Brief Notes.
1. Sadly, Jeff Healey - guitar virtuoso - has died at the early age of just 41. If you’ve ever heard him play, you’ll know what a loss to the music world this is. If you haven’t ever heard him play, I suggest you start with See The Light, his 1988 Grammy-nominated album that really propelled him onto the world stage. (BBC)
2. A zero-emission sports car gets it launch at the upcoming Geneva Motor Show in a few days time. Developed by a consortium that includes Morgan, famed sports car manufacturers, this hydrogen fuel-cell powered car is showing the way that this type of car can really go. Who needs an ugly-looking hybrid car when you can have something beautiful like this? No word yet on whether it will actually make it into production (or how much it will cost if it does) but what’s exciting is that the development work on this type of vehicle is acutally moving forward. (BBC)
3. Unfortunately, Eastbourne Borough lost again on Saturday. We’re now four points behind league leaders Lewes, with the same number of games played. Hopefully, we can pull a couple of good results out of the bag over the last dozen or so matches of the season (and hopefully Lewes will have a corresponding downturn in form). Go Borough!
Brief notes
Just one of those round-up sort of posts that I do when I haven’t got too much to say about a subject.
1. In Formula One the off-season shenanigans continue, with Renault sure that they’ll get Alonso back for 2008, but the man himself not saying. Speculation is high that in 2009 he’ll be driving a red car. Meanwhile, Ralf Schumacher is touting for the McLaren drive by singing their praises, as well as testing for Force India, the team who have taken over Spyker. Finally, Pro-Drive will not be competing in 2008 because of a question of legality over their use of McLaren “customer cars”. Do we think that someone out there doesn’t like Dave Richards?
2. Arrington’s having a pop at PayPerPost again - in fact, a couple of times over the last few days. As a much better writer than I once said “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Is there something going on between PPP CEO Ted “Whoo” Murphy and Mr A? I think there could be. And Scoble used the ‘e’ word again in a recent blog post to describe PPP. Let’s get real, people, shall we? It’s only blogging; it don’t mean nuthin’.
3. If you’ve got a Canon camera of a certain vintage (go to this page and look for Case Id 37383 for details) you could be at risk of a fault that will stop the CCD functioning properly. Thankfully, Canon are offering free repairs for the fault (via an authorised Canon repair centre) and - having got my camera back today - I can confirm the service is speedy and the work excellent.
4. Eastbourne Borough are STILL unbeaten in the league - 16 games into the season - and are tussling with Lewes at the top of the table. The Boxing Day game between the two sides could turn out to be a promotion decider.
5. Once again, the tolerance of one culture unto another never ceases to amaze me. This time it’s the Sudanese, who have been rioting in (appropriately) Martyr’s Square, calling for a British schoolteacher to be executed because she allowed her class of six and seven year olds to name a teddy bear Mohammed. It’s good to know that all the different races and religions in the world continue to get along together so well.
6. There’s supposed to be a big announcement tonight by the British Inventors Society that will change the face of the world by introducing “something” that could produce climate-safe energy at 80% less cost. Think this is one of those wait-and-see type of things; after all, another British invention was supposed to revolutionise personal transport, but most people won’t have ever seen a Sinclair C5!
Update: 7. Forgot to say that The Wolf’s Howl passed a milestone of its own this week - it now has over 100 posts! Yay!! The first was on 21 March, and this one is number 106. That makes an average of one post every 2.4 days, which is a better rate than I ever expected to be blogging at. Whether it’s worth reading is another issue entirely, but then you’d be a better judge of that dear Reader than I would be.
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