off skiing

I don't think I've mentioned this here at all, which is odd seeing as I've been looking forward to it for a while, but I'm off to Canada shortly to do of my favourite things - staying in a lodge in the middle of nowhere to ski mountains that are disturbed only by our small group and can only be reached by helicopter.

I'll be back in 10 days or so

posted @ 5:54 PM -

One of Africa's eternal wars seems finally to have come to an end, with a truce in Angola

posted @ 7:27 AM -

goal machine

"Brighton goal-machine" Bobby Zamora has just received his first international call-up. It's only in the under-20s, but that's still something of a landmark seeing as it must be the first time in at least a decade that the Albion have had any sort of England international, and it is a reminder of quite how young he is too - he's still got plenty of time to go from being a top striker in a small league to really hitting the big time....

posted @ 5:05 AM -

Gene therapy success

This is a remarkable and pleasing first: a baby who needed a bone marrow transplant but had no suitable donor has been cured by gene therapy, which was used to mutate his existing bone marrow into the healthy, immune-cell-generating form required, giving him a complete cure.

posted @ 5:31 AM -

Apparently it is an ancient custom in the Czech Republic to whip women at Easter to ensure that they stay beautiful and fertile. Strangely enough the continuation of this custom is causing more than a little controversy....

posted @ 6:44 AM -

Middle East Times: Support Israel and Palestine

posted @ 5:59 AM -

PCs for Africa

Disposing of used PCs is becoming a serious problem as the number being thrown out increases each year, and the machines leak toxic chemicals if they are just dumped. Meanwhile, a significant proportion of the machines being thrown out still work, but just aren't powerful enough for their owners to use or sell. This seems like a terrible waste, and now there's an alternative: A Ugandan scientist at Stirling University has set up a scheme to send used PCs to Ugandan schools, where they are in such short supply that machines that can't be sold in this country are valuable there.

posted @ 5:35 AM -

If BP can cut emissions....

Apparently BP have managed to cut emissions to 10% below their 1990 levels, ahead of schedule, and at no extra cost because the cost savings have matched the capital expense required. As the article points out, this rather undermines Dubya's insistence that the Kyoto Protocol is unattainable without huge costs to the economy....

Meanwhile, China has announced an investment programme in electric car technology. Same principle here - if they can do this why can't the US?

posted @ 4:06 AM -

I [vaguely] know these people. I'm not impressed.

posted @ 1:45 PM -

Thief Steals Swimming Pool

posted @ 8:30 AM -

Enjoy the silence

Because I tend to over-rely on the BBC as a news source, and I believe that relying too much on any one source is a mistake, I've gone to every other UK news website I can find to get more news about the anti-semitic violence in France. None report it. I know it's a bank holiday, I know the Queen mother died on the weekend, I know the Jewish community in the UK is not all that big, and I know that far worse things are happening in Israel than in France, but excuse me for being deeply offended and more than a little rattled that no-one over here seems to find this worth reporting.

Of course the Israeli and French press both give this a lot of attention, but that has just upset me more, because I learn from the Ha'aretz article that there have been far more attacks in France over the last few months than I had been aware of, all going unreported in the UK (I don't read foreign papers at all regularly, so my not seeing these reports elsewhere doesn't mean they weren't written). The French press (sensibly enough) give the best coverage of what's actually happened - Le Monde recounts the spread of attacks across the country as well as the clearest indication of how this has been building up over time - 405 attacks since September 2000, and Libération has an opinion piece the title of which needs no translation or explanation: L'Antisémitisme Resurgit À Lyon.

The fact that this was a predictable reaction to events in Israel and Palestine makes it no less disgusting or worrying that it's happened, and the failure of the UK media to even give it a paragraph in a "breaking news" section just makes things worse.

posted @ 4:43 AM -

Kristallnacht

Anti-semitic violence is back. I had expected this for some time, but being right is a particularly unpleasant feeling at this moment.

posted @ 4:08 AM -

Apparently I share my birthday with Björk, Voltaire, and someone whose first name is 'Odd'.

posted @ 2:05 PM -

D'oh! Nuts.

posted @ 12:18 PM -