Rodent Origami May be the Key to A Long Life

Meet an African cousin, the Naked Mole Rat. Cute ain't he? Not all of us arrived in the UK with the Black Death, some emigrated to the colonies but usually in small close knit family numbers. Here you see the result of a lot of inbreeding. Apart from shedding the velveteen pantaloons we have had a considerable wallop with the ulgy stick and some orthodontics wouldn't go amiss. However, one benefit to the kissing cousins seems to have been some unusual proteins which are deemed to contribute to an extraodinarily long life...for a rat.
It's all to do with folding and unfolding protein molecules apparently, which fold and unfold periodically and, anyone who's tried to fold a Landranger map numerous times will tell you, the process causes damage and that damage causes ageing. So it seems that studying the process by which the naturist rodents practice their origami skills might help us extend our useful life for a few decades. Just think how many Twitters you could fit into that time frame. I can't wait. (via The Register )

What Happened to 'It Wasn't Me'?

It seems that there may be two other teenage fathers in the frame for 13-year old Alfie Patten's girlfriend's newborn. Crikey! Money and fame, no matter for what, seems to be a tremendous motivator. In my teenage years the very thought that your girlfriend might be pregnant was enough to make you change your identity as fast as possible and maybe even leave the country. Now it seems that a contract with The Sun and the resultant glare of publicity is enough to have these adolescents scrabbling for parental rights like dogs with a bone. One of them I note is 16. Doesn't this open him up to crimnal charges?

Spot The Discriminatory Headline

Saw this today. Still the height police work their devious plan to make the world conform to 'normal' standards. It has to stop. 

Oh bum. The headline on my news reader (NetNewsWire if you're interested) says 'BMW to shed 850 Mini workers' which aroused my silly headline antenna. Unfortunately the actual headline differs and makes me look stupid. No change there then.

Holy Hot Air Batman

You - could - not - make - it - up. Not content with bringing us the first electronic whoopee cushion, the owner of iFart, flatulence generator for the iPhone, is suing his nearest rival for... oh I can't be bothered to read any further. Life is too short. You read it. Anyway, one iPhone fart producer is suing another iPhone fart producer presumably because there are too many farts being produced on the iPhone and nobody, but nobody, has found a way to light them yet. This fart thing is getting out of hand or trousers or iPhone, I don't know which and frankly I don't care but I present it to you, who ever you are, for comment or despairing looks. You choose.

Oh My Another Press Mention

You know how it is, nothing for years then you're all over the news like an STD on a Club Med fortnight. And so it comes to pass. First a rat population explosion, then more rodents exploding in Yorkshire and now this. Whoeee guys we are finally getting our fifteen minutes. 

Heart Stopping Headline

This made me stop and look twice. Good subbing or poor use of English? The thought of a county-wide lemming-like popping made my blood run cold. That and the potential waste of all those yummy carcasses.

Opportunism Still in The White House

Sheeeit! Having just purged the White House of one type of vermin last month agents of poor old Uncle Sam are in hot pusuit of another bunch of opportunists. Plus ça change.

Off With His Head

OMG, the tumbrils are rolling and the knitting needles are coming out for the next public celebrity execution. Jeremy Clarkson's jibe at the PM has been declared 'unforgiveable' by the howling mob who've been primed by the Ross/Brand affair, stoked by the Carol Thatcher nonsense and are hard on the heels of the hapless overgrown schoolboy that is J. Clarkson (aged 141/2). This time the RNIB has been roped in to comment on the subject. 
Who's next, I wonder, in the Search For The Offended? I feel a new 'reality' show coming on. Wait a minute, you don't think we're already in the show, I'm An Intelligent Species, Get Me Out Of Here? 
Broad Geordie voice - This week the team will have to complete the difficult task of managing a global financial meltdown. Will they manage it and get fed next week? Will Gordon Brown overcome all odds to save the planet? Will his feeble attempts be thwarted by the cruelties of golliwog Clarkson?
Naw. Couldn't be. Could it? What do you think Mr Anderson?

Brown Savaged By Sheep

Jeremy, Jeremy you really should stay out of grown-up fights and confine youself to the boyish bollocks that you, Hammond and the other one regale us with on our screens. Even your insults are laughably childish. 'One eyed idiot' ? Please either up your game or STFU.

Ha! Told You So

BoJo leaps to the defence of 'sister'. Remember you read it here.

Prescience 101

No.1 in the No Shit Sherlock clips for today. Cost of Olympic Stadium Doubles. No comment required.

In The Vanguard of a New Trend

No sooner do I finish my last post about Twitter than I read this in the Guardian by Bobbie Johnson which crystallises very well my growing unease about this whole internet phenomenon of 'social networking'. The net is just so uncritically voracious. It inhales ephemera like it's life depended on it and perhaps it does. But does mine? Do I care what Ross or Brand think about anything. They certainly haven't earned my respect for their elegant use of the language unlike Stephen Fry whose jotting's are both well informed and erudite and leave me feeling enriched rather than debased. Do I care about the minutiae of the lives of virtual strangers in anything but the most superficial way. And if I do imbibe this tedious diet of pixellated pasta how do I avoid information constipation?

I suppose the answer is, in cybespace as in life itself (where ever that is these days), one needs to watch ones diet and not allow Ross/Brand type plaque accumulation to clog up the arteries. Eject it with a good Fry-up. Begin a new trend.

What's that then?

Blogonic irrigation.

I don't believe you wrote that.

I'll get my coat.

To Twitter or Not To Twitter?

I've been a moderate Twitter user since Twitter first poked its beak over the parapet but, to be frank, I just don't really get the whole Twitter thing. Shorts tweets of peoples mundane random thoughts are just annoying and why the inane ramblings of millions of vacant brains, mine included, should be clogging up bandwidth is anyones guess. Anyway, I'm luke warm on the idea from the get go but then I learn that the Ross/Brand axis is twittering away good-oh and the whole idea begins to look like the chattering classes are beginning to invade every space I once thought I was safe in. It's as though every vertical surface of every city on the planet has been fly-posted with the dreary banalities of even drearier celebs. There's no escape except to vacate the twittesphere forthwith. I've already been driven from Radio 2 by this desperate duo I need a good reason not to be exiled from Twitter and thankfully here it comes in the unexpected form of Stephen Fry who, it would seem, is a Twitter user of some stature if his followers figures are to be believed. 

I still don't get Twitter but I'll give it one more chance because of Mr Fry. 

Lucky Twitter.

Rat Curse Strikes - Part the First

Shortly after a mention on this blog, wild Boris Johnson twin Carol Thatcher is in very hot water indeed for the use of the g-word in the hallowed and, it has to be said, shit-scared halls of the BBC. Apparently, as repoted in The Guardian, Ms Thatcher compared a tennis player in the Australian Open to a g-man (sorry folks, can't say it, PC police are everywhere and they know where I live ) and presenter Adrian Chiles and Jo Brand were so appalled that they immediately complained to the producer.
Carol Thatcher's response is eagerly awaited and whether Boris is going to support his twin is yet to be confirmed.

Is it just me or are these McCarthy-esque witch hunts on hapless reactionaries taking on a very dark demeanour. Messrs Chiles and Brand had already confronted the frenetic Thatcher immediately in private, do they really need the publicity so badly that they have to escalate what is probably a brain fart into a major diplomatic incident. The BBCs mimosa-like reaction is entirely predictable and no doubt Thatcher will be cast upon the stakes of correctness forthwith but really is this all that's exercising our minds at this particular point in history? I almost, repeat almost, feel sorry for her.

Oops bummer. It was a twitter post not this blog in which I compared Carol and Boris so the curse does not apply. Please completely ignore all of the foregoing.

All the same I don't think I've ever seem them in the same room. Hmm.

Waiting For the Other Shoe

I don't know if it still happens but when I were a lad shoe shops often displayed their wares outside the shop so that passers by could admire the fine leather-work and style of their footwear. Because, even in those far off rose-tinted days, scallys would abscond with a pair were any retailer foolish enough to provide one, only one shoe was displayed the demand for one shoe being rightly assumed to be low. Now, however ,if the trend for raining footwear on unpopular politicians continues or grows this enticing practice will probably have to cease. Still, they (the politicos) should think themselves lucky it's not white phosphorous.

A Snow News Day?

Blimey we must've had it easy all these years. No less than 5 out of the first twelve news headlines on my news reader from the Guardian concerned the snow that fell on Sunday night and, don't panic, continues to fall today. You'd think nothing else happend in Britain on Monday... sorry nothing else happened in London on Monday. For that's the clue folks. It snowed in LONDON! News and media tarts are so South-East-centric that anything that happens down there transcends whatever ocurs in the rest of the country, even the rest of the world.
As someone who was in my early teens in 1963/4 when the snow in Oxfordshire was higher than the roof of the van we were trying to deliver milk from, the light sprinkling of 2009 is laughably slight. But hey, I'm in Dorset not London. Who knows what wild beasts roam the streets of the capital.

Wrong Kind of Snow

The first meeting of a lobbying group for pop and rock stars was called off because of snow. Not the first time, I'll warrant, that powdery white stuff has affected the music industry's performance.