The Ashes: 38 days to go

Photo © Patrick Eagar

Catches win matches...

* The Ashes, 2005: Trent Bridge, 4th Test, August 27:

Adam Gilchrist, c Strauss b Flintoff, 27

Australia forced to follow on and England won by 3 wickets. An awesome, wide slip catch by Strauss helped turn the tide England's way, with the series tied at 1-1 after three games. With the final Test drawn, the 4th test was the true decider and Strauss made a great contribution. 

* 38 days to go now to the 2009 Ashes - and only the minor irritation of the 20-20 World Cup to get over in the meantime. Britain, indeed, has got talent.

Partial source: Wikipedia , BBC's excellent odds fluctuation chart

and Cricinfo archive

Joke #1

Q: What time does Andy Murray go to bed?

A: Ten-ish

Wild Hogs

Wild Hogs (2007) - IMDB 6.1/10

Tim Allen, John Travolta, Martin Lawrence and William Macy play four 50-somethings who set off on a road trip to assuage their mid-life crises. A few brief laughs interspersed by the unmistakable, deep-throated sound of four Harleys on a road to nowhere.

IWOOT #4 - Godin multiac

I Want One Of Those #4: Godin multiac ACS-SA Slim

Nylon-strung, cedar top, narrow, 1.715" neck width, 16" fingerboard 

radius, glorious black high-gloss finish. 

* Brilliantly used by Marcio Faraco.

* www.godinguitars.com

Social Engineering

From The Sunday Times leader 24 May 2009:

The answer is to make bad schools better

If you think social engineering is a myth, look no further than the admissions procedures used by a number of Britain’s top universities. Using information from the Department for Children, Schools and Families, the sinisterly named “DCSF standardisation measurement score”, universities such as Oxford and Durham are employing a points system to penalise entrants from the best state and private schools.

Social engineering well describes a system that uses a mathematical formula and GCSE results to provide applicants from poorer schools with a leg-up, handicapping those from good schools. Universities insist this is a fair way of spotting talented candidates who have been held back by poor teaching. Superficially it sounds reasonable – who can object to helping bright children from poor backgrounds? But there are deep flaws in this system. With the exception of Cambridge, universities have been slow to admit to using these methods. It has had to be dragged out of them. Yet students and parents have a right to know how their applications are being judged. The use of GCSE results also means many are being judged retrospectively. Having believed what mattered was A-levels, they now find the die was cast much earlier. Parents strive, rightly, to get their children into the best state schools. Others make huge sacrifices out of taxed income to pay for a first-class education. Now they find their sacrifices may have been in vain.

Not only is this wrong; it is tantamount to an admission that education policy has failed. As Chris Woodhead, the former chief inspector of schools, puts it: “The solution lies in the schools disadvantaged children attend. Labour has failed to raise standards in such schools and now wants us to believe that the problem is the elitism of our best universities.” It is not. Britain’s best universities are not so good that they can afford to be weakened. Social engineering is as bad for them as it is unfair for bright students who are being penalised for going to good schools. The government should instead concentrate on making bad schools better. That is the best way to serve the underprivileged.

* Click here for further reading from The Sunday Times 24 May 09, with additional formulae added for the online edition:

Top schools boycott ‘biased’ Durham. The leading university's entry system handicaps high performers

* The Cambridge GCSE formula is here

MPs - snouts in the trough

Some MPs in Westminster have been wallowing in it. With 25% of all MPs taking the p*!# out of their constituents by robbing us blind on expenses, it's time for a review of MPs' salaries. If they do a good job, pay 'em well. If they fiddle their expenses then get rid of 'em, call by elections all over the place and see if anyone else can do a better job - it shouldn't be too hard.

- I'd drunk too much at supper, my heart was all a'flutter so I lay down in the gutter,

And a pig came by and lay down by my side

- As I lay there in the gutter with my heart all a'flutter a fellow passing by was heard to say

- You can tell a man who boozes, by the company he chooses - and the pig got up and slowly walked away 

by Francis Ferrand 

Partial source: http://my.telegraph.co.uk/francis_ferrand

Victorious Gurkhas - VG Day

Pic: Joanna Lumley at The King's School, Canterbury in 2005 (photo by NEJ)

Glorious victory - well deserved - for both Joanna lumley and the veteran Gurkhas. 36,000 Gurkhas, who served with the British Army before 1997, will now be allowed to apply to live in the UK and bring with them their spouses and children under the age of 18. The Government backed down under intense media pressure, headed up by Absolutely Fabulous star Joanna Lumley, and made a u-turn.

* Who are the Gurkhas? The Gurkhas have been part of the British Army for nearly 200 years. Originally enemies of the British East India Company army, their impressive fighting in the Gurkha War led the British to not only make Nepal a protectorate, but to allow them to fight as mercenaries (now soldiers) for their own Army.

Recruited from Nepal, these soldiers are known for their bravery and strength; an astounding 13 Gurkhas have been awarded the Victoria Cross, an honour given 'for most conspicuous bravery, or some daring or pre-eminent act of valour or self-sacrifice, or extreme devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy.' Every Ghurka carries a kukri, a curved Nepalese knife.

More than 45,000 Gurkhas have died defending British interests, with a further 150,000 injured in the line of duty.

Since the handover to Hong Kong in 1997, all Gurkhas with four years service were automatically entitled to live in Britain.

Partial source: The Sun

One Red Paperclip

Books recently read: 

* One Red Paperclip is an extraordinary tale of a Canadian who traded online up in steps from a paperclip to a house at 503 Main Strreet, Kipling, Saskatchewan in Canada. Great ingenuity and a modern-day fairytale of rags to riches - well, not quite, but a captivating story all the same. 

...and the story hasn't stopped at the house (click here).

* Narrow Dog to Indian River is the sequel to Narrow Dog to Carcassonne, written by an English canal boat owner (with a narrow dog, an essential part of the story, to match) who takes his unusual craft down the canals and rivers of the Eastern seaboard of the United States.

* Julie Walters's That's Another Story is a well-written autobiography of her immensely successful life as an actress, covering a path from her Oscar-winning performance in Educating Rita, via Petula Gordino in the wonderful TV series dinnerladies, Mrs Overall in Victoria Wood's Acorn Antiques and Molly Weasley in the Harry Potter movies, right through to Rosie in Mamma Mia!.. A truly funny woman and an entertaining read.

* Andrew Flintoff's Being Freddie - My Story So Far is not quite so brilliantly written(!), but takes us through the life of this injury-prone Lancastrian cricketer up until the vital part he played in England's amazing 2005 Ashes series win.

IWOOT #3 - Laurent Perrier Garden

Photo: Julian Desborough for Times Online. Julian's blog is here.

* I Want One Of Those #3. Simple, I just need a Laurent-Perrier Garden (Gold medal winner at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2009, designed by Luciano Giubbilei) - delivered and installed while I'm at work one day, please. Well, it would be a nice surprise...

* View a 360 degree panorama here.

Plasticine Paradise

Plasticine Paradise is the name of a surreal garden created by BBC Top Gear's James May at this year's RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Featuring a statue of the inventor of plasticine, William Harbutt, the plasticine flowers, fruits and vegetable plot little beasties have broken the rules of no artifical flowers and survived the weather to date. All in the name of art... The show was first held in the grounds of Royal Hospital in 1913 and now draws in 157,000 visitors each year, consuming 54,000 cups of tea and coffee, 28,000 sandwiches and 5,000 bottles of champagne. Stephen Fry's twitpic is here. 

* STOP PRESS (19 May 2009): The plasticine Paradise wins its very own Plasticine Gold Medal.

Pure genius: Blondie Vs The Doors - Rapture Riders

From My Favourite Sound music blog (link removed):

This song has been floating around for sometime now on bootleg records and now comes the commercial release of Rapture Riders that is now on the US dance charts and has 2 videos.  This is a mix of the classic moody Top 40 track by The Doors Riders On The Storm and the number one 1981 Rap classic Rapture by Blondie. This cd single is from Holland/Germany and so far is the only commercial cd single issued for this track. It was put together by Mark Vidler and is pure genius. It is a mixture of the rhythm track from Rapture and mostly the vocals of Jim Morrison, who sounds tremendous under a dance beat. It is set up like the rap/sung collaborations now– song then rap then song then rap. It is pure genius.

* Watch it on YouTube

Wolfram|Alpha - Beyond Google?

 Try it: (click image above, then type your search term)

* Google retrieves results by trawling the Web, comparing search terms with website content and displaying pages that match. Google doesn't understand our search; nor can it provide any information that hasn't already been published by a third party. In other words, it can answer only the questions that have already been asked, and answered, by content providers and Web publishers.

* British mathematician Stephen Wolfram describes WolframAlpha as a "computational knowledge engine". Not only does it understand the question, it has the mathematical, computational ability to work out an accurate answer. It's primed to answer factual questions related to financial and economic statistics, cooking, music, geography and much more, questions that haven't necessarily been answered by somebody else. 

So ... rather than looking up the answer to your search, WolframAlpha figures out what your search term means, looks up the necessary data to display search results as if answering a question, computes many answer, designs a page to present the answers in a pleasing way, and sends the page back to your computer. Interesting?

Read about it in Times Online: article 1, article 2.

IWOOT #2 - Yamaha DC7M4

I Want One Of Those #2 - a 7' 6" Yamaha Grand Piano with built-in Disklavier, a system that plays back everything you play. Simply amazing... 

* Yamaha Design

* Yamaha centralised piano production 2011 - Kakegawa

* 30 April 2009 saw the announcement that the last piano manufacturing factory in the UK (they made around 30 a day) will close in Nov 2009. Kemble, whose main shareholder has been Yamaha since the late 1970s, will no longer make pianos at their Milton Keynes factory. Joint MD Brian Kemble said: "During the 1980s recession Yamaha rode to our rescue, and thanks to them we have continued manufacturing for another 23 years. We owe Yamaha a huge debt of gratitude for this." I worked for them at Chappell's in New Bond Street, a music department store that they also owned, and also feel a debt of gratitude.

England's Galileo - Thomas Harriot

  

Thomas Harriot (1560-1621), a comfortably off bachelor living in the entourage of the politically controversial Earl of Northumberland, made a unique contribution to UK astronomy. July 26 2009 is the 400th anniversary of the first ever telescope observations and drawing of the Moon (several months before that of Galileo) made by English scientist Harriot in Syon Park, near Richmond, Middlesex. He also sailed to Virginia with Sir Walter Raleigh as a scientist/explorer.

The telescope is generally accepted to have been invented in Holland in the previous year, 1608. 

Harriot used a x6 magnification 'Dutch Spyglass' to observe the moon. On 3 December 1610, Harriot independently discovered spots on the Sun – which contradicted Aristotle’s classical view that the Sun was perfect and unblemished – while he also went on to draw the first plausibly accurate map of the lunar surface, monitor the motions of Jupiter’s moons (after Galileo’s prior announcement of their discovery), and to see more stars in the Pleiades than were visible to the naked eye.

Dating back, perhaps to his youthful friendship with Sir Walter Raleigh, Thomas Harriot seems to have been a heavy pipe smoker. He died of a cancerous tumour inside his left nostril on 2nd July 1621, at the age of 61. So in addition to all his other distinctions (he was an acclaimed mathmetician and 'one of England's greatest renaissance scientists'), Thomas Harriot may have been one of the first Englishmen to die from a smoking-related cancer.

View partial source: Telescope 400.

Listen to Dr allan Chapman's (Wadham College, Oxford) podcast here. 

2009: International Year of Astronomy. (UK site).

Thomas Harriot on Wikipedia.

The picture below is supposed to be of Thomas Harriot, but there is no clear evidence that it is. The debate is here. However, since there is no other picture in existence, it will have to do!

* The crowning glory of Syon Park's gardens is the Great Conservatory (which, of course, looks like an observatory), pictured at the top of this post. The 3rd Duke of Northumberland commissioned Charles Fowler to build a new conservatory in 1826, the first of its kind to be built out of gunmetal, Bath stone and glass. It was originally designed to act as a show house for the Duke's exotic plants and inspired Joseph Paxton in his designs for the Crystal Palace.

St Edmund, King of the Angles

   

Sculpture of St Edmund (1976) by Elisabeth Frink stands outside the remains of the great Abbey in Bury St Edmunds. 

*Click on photo to enlarge.

St Edmundsbury Cathedral in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk has many images of Edmund, King of the Angles, who was killed by the invading Danes in 869. A great Benedictine Abbey was built by Canute to house his remains and to celebrate his martyrdom; for over 1,000 years the site has been one of worship and pilgrimage.

The great, rich Abbey was sacked during the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII in the 16th century, but the smaller church built within the precincts of the Abbey remained, to eventually become a Cathedral in 1914. Recently the Millennium Project has seen the completion of the building with the addition of a tower, new cloisters and chapels. So, in 2005 the skyline of Bury St Edmunds changed with the completion of a magnificent 150 ft (45m) Gothic lantern tower. 

The painting, below left, by artist Ned Pamphilon, includes references to the many arrows that were shot into St Edmund to force him to renounce his Christianity (which he resolutely refused to do) and the wolf who, legend has it, guarded the severed head of the King.

  

Some Like it Hot (1959)

IMDB 8.4/10. A classic slapstick, black-and-white comedy starring Jack Lemmon (who just wins by a head the cross-dressing), Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe - its music theme made me re-watch it. 

* Crazy story, but it's a romp from start to finish: When two musicians witness a mob hit in prohibition Chicago, they flee the state in an all-female band disguised as women, but further complications arise when attractions set in... Lovely touches include Mr Mozzarella, who fronts the drinking club reception, the motor boat that only goes backwards and Marilyn singing the classic:

 

"I wanna be loved by you, just you, nobody else but you. I wanna be loved by you alo-o-one. Boop boop e doo..."

Know your Onions

Graham Onions, born 9 Sep 1982, plays alongside Paul Collingwood and Steve Harmison (plus Shivnarine Chanderpau)l when he's not on Test duty) at Durham CC. Known affectionately as 'Wills' because of his likeness to William Shakespeare, he had an outstanding test debut at Lord's in the First Test Match v West Indies May 5-8 2009, achieving 5-38 in the first innings, knocking over three West Indians in one over.

First Test match win v West Indies

England thrash the West Indies in the first Test Match at Lord's, thanks to a wonderful innings of 143 from Ravi Bopara, an extraordinary first-innnings, first-Test 'fivefor' from Graham Onions (5-38) and an excellent all-round performance with the bat (63), ball (6 wickets) and catching from man-of-the-match Graeme Swann. Thanks for the 6 dropped catches, Windies. Now on to Chester-le-Street next Thursday for the second game in the two-match series...

Adaptation (2002)

Only just caught up with this interesting movie. made in 2002. Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper all received Oscar nominations for it, with Cooper eventually the only winner as Best Actor in a Supporting Role. 

7.9/10 IMDB: '...It is about a screenwriter (played by Nicolas Cage) who is trying to write something original, in a day and age when everything has been done so many times, even originality seems to have become clichéd. He has a further problem, which is that he can't get out of his own head. And he is neurotic. He is hired by a major motion picture studio to do something almost impossible: write an adaptation of a non-fiction book about orchids so that it can be a regular Hollywood film. It sounds like a stupid thing for a studio to hire a writer to do, but of course, that's exactly what the Studio did with this film. Adaptation is based on the work of New Yorker writer, Susan Orlean. She is played by Meryl Streep in the movie....'

*  The characters draw you in and you want to know how the all-important 'last act' plays out. That, of course, is the trick of screenwriting, according to Brian Cox, who lectures as a screenwriting guru in the film.

John Laroche: Then one morning, I woke up and said, "Fuck fish." I renounce fish, I will never set foot in that ocean again. And there hasn't been a time where I have stuck so much as a toe back in that ocean. 
Susan Orlean: But why? 
John Laroche: Done with fish.

Elvis is alive and well in Glasgow

Return to Sender, by Sean Read (1996). The King of Rock'n'Roll was seen in fibreglass and mixed media at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow.

Bookie has a heart

Bookmakers Paddy Power refunded all losing bets on the Cardiff Blues v Leicester Heineken Cup rugby semi-final after it ended in a five-kicker penalty shoot-out that split opinion. Cardiff came back from 26-12 down after 74 minutes to end 26-26 the main game, but then went on to lose the shoot-out 7-6 to Leicester. 44,212 people enjoyed the first-time spectacle in the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff. A golden try in sudden-death extra time or even the toss of a coin might be better than this debacle?

Righteous Kill

The Godfather Pt II (1974). Heat (1995). Righteous Kill (2008) - Pacino and deNiro together. Good twist. IMDB 6.1/10.

* Two veteran New York City detectives work to identify the possible connection between a recent murder and a case they believe they solved years ago; is there a serial killer on the loose, and did they perhaps put the wrong person behind bars?

* Spider (played by 50 Cent): "Yeah, but if your boy come in here and go Hannibal Lecter on my ass, I don't want no Jodie f&*^@#g Foster coming through the door. I want the goddamn Marine Corps, man. "

The future of newspapers?

Plastic Logic is a company with offices in Mountain View (California, US), Cambridge (England) and Dresden (Germany), who are developing a full-size e-book reader scheduled for pilot release during the second half of 2009. Rupert Murdoch is CEO of New Corp., who publish millions of printed newspapers every day, almost all of which have declining print circulations and may (the jury's still out) be being 'cannibalised' by their own websites. Advertising is in the doldrums due to the worldwide credit crunch. 

So, where to next? Portable newspapers that are multimedia and can bolster cross-media ad sales? 

* Read Mr Murdoch's recent take on the subject (and News Corp. investment) here

Printed books already have alternative solutions like eReaders (Sony Reader, Ectaco Jetbook, iRex Iliad, Franklin eBookMan and Amazon Kindle), so why not newspapers? Plastic Logic, Hearst and Fujitsu (expensive) are all developing products, some with bigger screens and full-colour that would be appropriate for a new concept for portable, up-to-the-minute news consumption, maybe even with multimedia...

* View partial source: Gizmodo