Lord Snoop of Dogg

Snoop gives a shout out to a Cardiff vegetable fancier, and the latest thing Straight Outta Compton is a cricket team.

What ever can be next? 50 Cent's macaroons on The Great British Bake Off perhaps?

Bread and butter

After coming across a five star review of food writer Michael Booth's latest I took a gander at his blog where I discovered that:

.... the latest food trend in SE Asia: buttered bread. I am not making this up.

Plain, white, sliced bread, just like your common friends used to eat when you went round their's for tea in 1976, with cheap marg and a limited range of toppings. They can't get enough of it in Thailand.

"Bread and jam" is the height of exoticism in Bangkok. I am absolutely delighted by this development.

Word of Mouth

Nine of us assorted adults and children went to see Johnny English Reborn yesterday and all laughed like drains from the beginning until the last moment.

Highly recommended, especially for English people who need cheering up after crashing out of the World Cup.

Storied

As Wales cruise through to the semi finals of the World Cup, here is a great story about Christopher Judd that I have lifted from his sister on facebook:

My BROTHER decided on Tuesday to go to New Zealand to watch Wales v Ireland...he jumped on a plane on Wednesday leaving his wife to sort out accommodation...the airline lost his luggage and Karen could not find a room for love nor money...in desperation wrote on a welsh rugby site asking for help...Warren himself seems to have got invloved somewhere and he is now comfortably staying with Gatland's sister...the last I heard he was chewing the fat with John Inverdale!

Quantitative Easy Street

The Bank of England has said it will inject a further £75bn into the economy through quantitative easing (QE).

I wouldn't mind getting some of that. Where are they giving it out do you think? I wonder if there'll be a queue at the Post Office?

Steve Jobs

I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

The lines above are from commencement address Steve Jobs delivered at Stanford in 2005 (see Icons passim). He'd already been diagnosed then with the cancer that I presume killed him. This means that it is before he sold Pixar and became a billionaire, before the IPhone and before the IPad.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

To Be Frank

One single incident serves as a perfect illustration of just what an extraordinarily unusual and charismatic person the US musician Frank Zappa, who died in 1993, must have been. In 1968, a year that saw the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, a man turned up on the doorstep at the Log Cabin, the ramshackle, open-all-hours-to-all-comers crash pad in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, that Zappa and numerous other weird people called home. "My name is Raven. I brought you a present," this stranger announced, handing to Zappa a transparent bag, apparently filled with blood, before pointing a revolver at his chest.

Calmly, Zappa cajoled and manipulated Raven into walking with him, and numerous spectators, including Zappa's 24-year-old English secretary, to a nearby lake. He then persuaded everyone present to start throwing things into the water, including Raven, who threw in his gun. The secretary, Pauline Butcher, threw in a twig, which "floated on the algae" causing her to look round "apologetically". After that, Zappa, shoved the bag of blood back into Raven's hand, saying: "You must leave now." Raven did. Immediately exhorted by the many witnesses to call the police, Zappa refused. Why? "Because if I call the police, the police will arrest him and he'll go to jail and no one deserves to go to jail."

I didn't think it was possible for Frank Zappa to go any higher in my estimation. After reading the story above, I realise I was wrong.

Happy Now?

Different happy chemicals produce different ways to experience happiness.

Endorphin happiness is triggered by physical pain. The body's natural morphine masks pain, which allowed our ancestors to run from predators when injured. Humans experience endorphin as euphoria, but it obviously did not evolve to trigger a constant feeling of joy. You would touch hot stoves and run on a broken leg if your brain were always releasing endorphins. Nature saves them for moments when they help you do what's necessary to survive.

Dopamine happiness is triggered when you get a new reward. When you see a finish line, your brain releases dopamine. It's nature's reserve tank of energy. Dopamine keeps you going until you catch the prey you've been stalking, even when the chase is long and frustrating. If you surged with dopamine all the time, your energy would be depleted when you really needed it. We evolved to save dopamine for those moments when an important goal is within reach.

Oxytocin happiness is triggered when we trust those around us. It promotes bonding between mother and child, and between sex partners. It's stimulated when you're with a group of like-minded people, or when you get a massage. But we did not evolve to feel oxytocin happiness all the time because there's no survival value in trusting people who are not trustworthy.

Serotonin happiness is triggered when you feel important. Animals release serotonin when they dominate a resource. Their serotonin falls when they cede a resource to avoid conflict. Being one-up feels good, but conflict can cause painful injuries. The brain is constantly analyzing information to balance the risk of pain against the satisfaction of winning.

This is all very well, Furry Happy Monsters, but for me it has always been booze that smears the vaseline on the lens of reality.

I catch up eventually

The Bomber was playing at the King's Mini Rugby Festival yesterday.

I noticed when I was there that King's is in fact KCS Old Boys' RFC, whose parent institution is King's College School, and that the school is hosting Sir Max Hastings tomorrow night as part of Wimbledon Bookfest.

Fiona who runs the festival has a son who plays for mini rugby for Wimbledon (though in a different age group for Ben) so he would have been at the tournament as well I imagine. We saw her at the film course on Saturday (Ben and Jonnie's movie The Love Professor is surprisingly good) and bumped into the family at Rutsfest (Icons passim) earlier this year.

Strange how the vortices of socialization spin.

Just when I thought I was out...they pull me back in.

Beyond Teleology

Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand.

It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust.

You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements - the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life - weren’t created at the beginning of time.

They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode.

So why are you such a loser?

Cahiers du cinéma

Ben and Jonnie are on a Make a Film in a day course, that is being run as part of Wimbledon Bookfest, I am going back to see their masterpiece at 4:30 this afternoon.

I laughed when I was filling in a waiver when I was dropping them off as I had to put a signature to an agreement for photographs to be taken of them.

Short of Walt Disney it is pretty difficult to make a movie without photographing anyone so it seemed rather a redundant question. I imagine however, that it is some bureaucratic diktat as opposed to something dreamed up by the good burghers of the Young Film Academy.

Snoop D-O double G

Snoop in a Cardiff City jersey. Now I've seen everything.

Catch a Fire

The new kindle fire has been announced.

Forget about memory - Kindle Fire gives you free storage for all your Amazon digital content in the Amazon Cloud. Your books, movies, music and apps are available instantly to stream or download for free, at a touch of your finger.

That might not mean a lot to you, but I've bought the first four series of the Big Bang Theory from Amazon on DVD and managed to mislay the third without seeing it. Absurdly, I've got the cardboard dust cover but not the plastic case. What I wouldn't have given last night to have had it served up from the cloud so I didn't have to segue from series two to four.

The Boy Looked at Johnny

Glancing through facebook this morning, I noticed that Johnny Boon has changed his profile photo to a shot of him and the Bomber giving a demonstration at Greenwich in 2008 - see Icons passim.

I didn't know it was possible to be sentimental about the Muay Thai elbow chop (Cherng Sork) but it seems it is as I am strangely moved.

Putting the bite on me

I've been in the dentist's chair all morning.

She's rebalancing my bite to stop me cracking my public facing upper teeth by clenching my bottom jaw over and in front of them.

It should only take about eight months.

Next time we meet I will be wearing a red carnation in case you don't recognize me.

I swear I use no art at all

Here are Ben and Halex at paintballing on Saturday.

Who would it have been do you think that dropped his gun on purpose, gathered the relic in has arms in Tomb Raider and raced home under hostile fire cradling it in his arms? Could it have been the same cool customer who delivered the bomb from the bus in Terrorist Attack into the heart of the enemy camp (admittedly aided by Rayburn and his riot shield)?

I cannot tell a lie, it was the same person, and it was me.

Bookfest

Wimbledon Bookfest 2011 starts on Saturday.

Lord of the Flies

Whether you need to top up your energy levels and refuel for an afternoon of adventure or you want a refreshing drink after a hard-fought battle, make sure you visit the Delta Force shop located in the basecamp. Drinks, crisps, sweets, chocolates, paintballs and armoured gloves are available for purchase from the shop, as are pyrotechnics.

Pyrotechnics? The Bomber, Rayburn and I plus assorted feral ten and eleven year olds are facing off against Jonnie, his father Andy and their gang of savages at Homewood paintball centre all day today.

Prodnose: What's your prediction for the fight?
Clubber Lang: My prediction?
Prodnose: Yes, your prediction.
[Clubber looks into camera]
Clubber Lang: Pain!

R.E.M. R.I.P.

I always rather liked Michael Stipe & Co.

The Latest Findings

Tall people have less trouble retrieving objects from high shelves than those who are shorter, British researchers have found.

"When feeling out of sight for the the ends of being and ideal grace," the report's authors say, "subjects who were able to grasp items found it easier to collect them than those whose fingers merely brushed their objectives."

The key variable appears to be the distance from the balls of the feet to the end of an extended arm. Ratios of arm to leg length were found to be statistically insignificant.

Interventions such as standing on a chair, however, might also invalidate what are still preliminary conclusions according Dr Charles Suet at the University of How's Your Father in Croydon.

I think I'm in love

I contacted Amazon yesterday about breaking my kindle. I just pressed the magic button on this page and they phoned me straightaway.

Even though I broke the reader by my own stupid fault, they are going to send me what they call an out-of-warranty replacement for fifty quid rather than the £152 a new 3G model usually costs.

All I have to do is send back the old cracked model at their expense.

I am hugely impressed.

(Kudos to the burglar who had read about this scheme on some bulletin board or other.)

PS While I'm sharing the love, Tefal sent me a free replacement lid for my Actifry in double quick time, so good for them also.

Buns of Steel

I sat down on a bench at Balham train station on Saturday and broke the screen on the kindle that was sitting in the back pocket of my jeans. This is the payback I get for developing my glutes to a level of solidity that has to be measured on the Rockwell scale, I suppose.

Interesting I really have no choice other than to get a replacement straight away what with the reading I'm doing at the moment and the various books (the new Murakami, Matt Polly's latest etc.) I have set up to be conjured to my account by the magic of whispernet as they are published over the next month or so.

My next kindle is also coming with a steampunk themed gelaskin. I think this is because I am a ponce. I can't really come up with any other explanation that covers the bases.

they come not single spies

Man who dedicated his life to helping vulnerable in Africa dies. That's Tom Quinn who was in primary school with me. We called him Russian for reasons that elude me, and I recall having a punch up with him at the bus stop.

He seems to have had his revenge by growing up to be a better man than I will ever be.

Rest in peace with the victims of Gleision.

Today will be sombre.

Evolution

My, what interesting statistics.

I'm with Chris. It was better with The Ramones.

African American Indian

The U.S. government is at odds with the Cherokee Nation over its decision to expel the descendants of black slaves from its ranks.

The tribe, the country’s second-largest, revoked the citizenship of 2,800 black members last week. The move cut them off from health care, food stipends, and other services, the Associated Press reported.

It followed a decision by the tribe’s Supreme Court that upheld a 2007 constitutional amendment limiting the Cherokee Nation to those with Cherokee blood. That excluded the descendants of slaves who had been owned by wealthy Cherokee individuals until being freed after the Civil War. In an 1866 treaty between the tribe and the U.S. government, those “freedmen” were guaranteed full tribal membership rights.

What a world. Once the brown-eyed have vanquished the blue-eyed, then purged the hazel-eyed; only then will the right-handed be free to chase the left-handed to the ends of the ruined earth.

Trader is nicked after £1.3bn loss

AP UBS shares have recouped some of the losses they suffered in the wake of its announcement that it suffered an alleged $2 billion loss due to rogue trading.

I'm against it

Telegraph: David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy have arrived in Libya, their first visit since Col Muammar Gaddafi was ousted.

Rory Stewart a deputy governor of two provinces in southern Iraq in 2003-4, and the author of The Places In Between, about his 2002 walk across Afghanistan, is now a Conservative MP.

The last two decades of intervention suggest one thing: that interventions are intrinsically unpredictable, chaotic and uncertain. They can work: the international community played a prudent and constructive role in Bosnia, and the Bosnia of 2005 was far better than that of 1995. But in Iraq and Afghanistan, disorder and chaos seemed predestined. Guilt at lost lives, embarrassment, pride, fear of Islamists and hubris all prevented the West from acknowledging failure: instead of pulling back, they dived ever deeper. And their occupation bloated, warped and corrupted the fundamental structures – social, political and economic – of the countries they were purporting to help.

The lesson for Libya was that the West should not be dragged too far in and that it should anticipate chaos.

Read the whole thing.

No one is going to come out this smelling of roses.

The World is my Oyster

This is the idea Amazon has put to me this morning:

Are you looking for something in our Watches store? If so, you might be interested in these items.

* Rolex Oyster Perpetual Yacht-Master ll 116689
* Rolex Oyster Perpetual Yacht-Master ll 116688
* Rolex Oyster Perpetual Submariner 14060M
* Rotary AGB00027/W/05 Gents Two-tone Stainless Steel Bracelet Watch

. . .

Rolex Oyster Perpetual Yacht-Master ll 116689
by Rolex
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B003KV0QSW/ref=pe_vfe_td1

Price: £30,308.00

. . .

Rolex Oyster Perpetual Yacht-Master ll 116688
by Rolex
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004GYXO9U/ref=pe_vfe_td2

Price: £26,967.00

. . .

They must know something neither I nor by bank manager know.

Mindfulness Day

Yesterday, September 12, was the world's first Mindfulness Day. Started by Massachusetts-based Wisdom Publications, Mindfulness Day coincides with the 20th anniversary of the book "Mindfulness In Plain English."

Perhaps you could consider sporting a fully functional smartphone brain scanner consisting of a low-cost 14-channel EEG headset with a wireless connection to a smartphone (Nokia N900), enabling minimally invasive EEG monitoring in naturalistic settings?

Chicks will dig it.

The Luminous Fish Effect

My brother Vince - like Einstein and Pauli, once on the faculty of ETH in Zurich - tells me that the equations on the boards in The Big Bang Theory are valid physics. The Bomber - currently of Azeroth - tells me that the show's World of Warcraft references are all accurate to the last ostrich.

Perhaps I shouldn't have been so astounded when I read Glow cat: fluorescent green felines could help study of HIV in the Guardian?

"The GFP gene, which has its origins in jellyfish, expresses proteins that fluoresce when illuminated with certain frequencies of light" it appears, so even Sheldon's attempt to create Luminous Fish after reading an article about Japanese scientist who inserted DNA of jellyfish into other animals wasn't just plucked out of the air.

Half Time

The Bomber started throwing up yesterday afternoon and then regurgitated anything else I tried to get him to eat for the rest of the day. He can sip water but that is about the limit at the moment.

Wales are ten six down against South Africa at half time.

Ben's better than he was last night though, and Wales are improving after a terrible start so maybe things are looking up.

A Thousand Clowns

If things aren't funny then they're exactly what they are; and then they're like a long dental appointment.

My brother John got me the text of play (Icons passim) as a present and I've now found the films as a moody YouTube playlist. I'd still be happy to shekel out for a kosher DVD or iTunes download, but needs must.

Notes and Highlights

Kerala was probably the biblical Ophir from where King Solomon received apes, ivory and peacocks. It was at this period that pioneering Jewish traders seem to have first crossed the Red and Arabian seas to bring the pungent flavours of India to the Middle East and the Mediterranean world.

I'm reading the kindle edition of William Dalrymple's Nine Lives at the moment and I was struck by the passage above when I was passing time with it in the dentist's waiting room yesterday morning. (I actually had a little email correspondance with Dalyrmple about Kerala's St Thomas Christians before I went there over the 2003/4 New Year.)

So for the first time I used the kindle's highlight feature to tag the text. Actually I did it on the PC version when I got back the office, but Amazon synchronizes your annotations across all the platforms you use.

You can look at your notes on books at https://kindle.amazon.com/your_highlights.

This would be a great feature if you were studying.

AdChoices

The other day, after I booked a flight on easyJet for a friend at the Mills who doesn't have a computer never mind the internet, I was surprised to notice easyJet adds popping up for me on various other sites.

I wonder if the culprit is AdChoices?

While Google often shows you ads based on the content of the page you are viewing, we also show some ads based on the types of websites you visit, view, or where you interact with an ad or other Google product supported by Google's advertising services. In doing this, Google doesn't know your name or any other personal information about you. Google simply recognizes the number stored in your browser on the DoubleClick cookie, and shows ads related to the interest and inferred demographic categories associated with that cookie. It's our goal to make these ads as relevant and useful as possible for you. Google doesn't create categories, or show ads, based on sensitive topics such as race, religion, sexual orientation, or health.

I just stumbled on it. I am surpised I haven't heard about it before and that it is not more controversial.

the kiss did not result in any formal action

Am I the only one who finds the sex claims and the 'wild ways' of Microsoft bosses rather endearingly staid? "Miss Redmond denied the short-skirt allegation although Ms Chughtai confirmed Mr Negus asked her to flutter her eyelashes." The horror, the horror.

Mr. Justice Cocklecarrot said “As it seems quite impossible to conduct in a normal manner any case in which these little gentlemen are involved, I suppose I may as well make a kind of summing-up. If the jury think that Mr. Rincewind was pushed from the ladder, they will consider his claim for damages reasonable. If, however, they are satisfied that he was not pushed but fell, as it were, of his own volition, their duty is clear. One thing that has struck me as odd about the case – apart from the interludes of lunacy which we have all deplored – is the fact that Miss Milton awaited the marauder, calmly allowing the ladder to be laid against her, as though she were a wall. She must have heard the approaching steps of this little bravo, and descried his face as it was advanced menacingly towards the goal of his unlawful whim – I refer to the perilously beautiful ear of the defendant. Now, Mrs. Webcross has assured us that ladder-gallantry is not part of the everyday life at her boarding establishment, yet Miss Milton expressed no surprise when she felt the ladder against her body, nor when she saw this little gentleman’s moon-face gazing up to her. I am puzzled; and I am bound to add that the two learned counsel have merely confused the issue by their prodigious display of idiocy and incompetence. I will end on that note. It is for the jury to make what they can of all this nonsense.”

Making it easier?

This is facebook's idea of how to make it easier to share your location God help us. There are six Buckingam Palace's sharing the same location in the fb universe. Steven Moffat could get an episode of Dr Who out of that.

Inspector Gadget

Our police auction system got a mention on the latest episode of the Gadget Show last week. It is fourteen minutes into http://fwd.channel5.com/gadget-show/videos/full-episodes/tgs-series-16-series-16-episode-3.

Fleeting as it was, it certainly seems to have sent a lot of traffic our way.

I also notice that we are mentioned on a Dominic Littlewood page on the show's site - see http://fwd.channel5.com/adv/more-from-your-money.

It looks like 2008's One Show film (Icons passim) casts a long shadow.

I give up

I'm just back from the Richmond to Windsor bike ride, I did Bikram yoga yesterday and my exercise log tells me I have been weight training more than five hundred times since I took up triathlons.

Now the Mail has come along to tell us Jab to end baldness 'ready in five years' using fat cells from sagging bellies.

I wish I had just stayed in bed.

Though and I are too wise

I made my second trip to the Globe (Icons passim) last night for a hugely enjoyable romp through Much Ado About Nothing that was curiously improved by having the butler from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as Leonarto.

It was only a fiver to stand with the groundlings. Why don't I go more often? I can tube it to and from London Bridge in no time at all, and the theatre's only a few minutes from the station.

Wales and England

At the start of the season Dai Greene complained that, despite winning European and Commonwealth titles in 2010, the world’s best 400 metres hurdlers had still probably never heard of him. Well now they have.

A gold medal for an imperious Welshman in the athletics world championship is good news. I am also pleased for the delightfully monikered Hannah England

one step forward, two back

Blogger's got a new interface. I can make neither head nor tail of it. How do I add a link for the title, for example?

Yours, confused.

Venus and Mars

The Cornell Creative Machines Lab has managed to produce stubborn, pig ignorant, insufferably arrogant and self important AI Chatbots with a taste for theologically naive religious controversy.

Can it be that the Turing test will finally be passed by an irrationally ranting and raving robot?

I live in hope.

quod scripsi, scripsi

I'm back in London after a Bank Holiday weekend in Cardiff.

There's no internet in my mum and dad's house but there is Sky Sport so I watched in disbelief as Arsenal were humiliated 8-2 by Manchester United.

Ans so it came to pass that Icons passim were right on the button:

They've got to play a resurgent Liverpool at home on Saturday and then Manchester United away the week after that. If they don't luck out against either of them, they could go into September with only a single point in the Premiere League.

The next home game at the Emirates is Swansea who haven't managed to score a goal at all so far this season."Get ready to feel the thunder!" as Po has so shrewdly remarked.

Radio Silence

We are off to Wales for the Bank Holiday weekend. I wonder where himself will want to go?

Jumpers for Goal Posts

It's good to see Arsenal through to the Champions League after last night's win in Italy.

Before football was run by supremely rich oligarchs, a jetset playboy such as myself would probably have found polo and motor racing more of a diversion.

I am still at heart more a merino than a Mourinho man.

Merino Wool from Wonderland Magazine on Vimeo.

White Water Rafting

We're going to Wales over the Bank Holiday weekend so I have booked the Bomber, his cousin and myself into Cardiff International White Water on Sunday morning.

The son and heir has done a sailing course at the Wimbledon Park Watersports Centre this Summer to complement the multi watersports course he did at the same place a couple of years ago (Icons passim).

I wonder if there is any central register I could use to record the courses he's been on? He mentioned that a few of the kids sailing had a log book of some sort but I've no idea what it was.

I spy with my little eye

Police images of looting wanted in Mitcham and Colliers Wood. Anyone with information should call Merton Police on 020 8649 3206.

Deep Dark Secret

Any comments you may have about yesterday should be sent to Deep Dark Secret (5.2% abv) - the award-winning liquorice porter - c/o Northern Brewing rather than to me.

Thank you very much.

What are we waiting for this Sunday?

I am waiting for the second coming
And I am waiting
For a religious revival
To sweep thru the state of Arizona
And I am waiting
For the grapes of wrath to stored
And I am waiting
For them to prove
That God is really American
And I am waiting
To see God on television
Piped into church altars
If they can find
The right channel
To tune it in on
And I am waiting
for the last supper to be served again
and a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (in Cardiff)

gnarly

Hola, amigos. Must run. I am off to a legendary International Skateboarding Spectacle with the Bomber and I am little behind schedule.

Data later, skater.

Butetown

Tiger Bay back in the day.

rekindle

I'm reading Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality on the Kindle at the moment. It is a splendid narrative indeed and retails for 99p only in digital form. I wonder how on earth the economics of that pan out?

I recommend it heartily to the science teaching Vince and the the science teaching Chris who sometimes pop their heads in here. (ETH in Switzerland, where Vince was an academic in an earlier life features quite a lot in the pages on Einsten, and Chris is the guy who introduced me to Amazon's e-book reader. It's all deeply intertwingled.)

In a related development I have pre-ordered 1Q84 (See Icons passim for Haruki Murakami) so I imagine that it will simply appear on the Kindle menu when it is published on 18 October. This has got to be the way forward.

Gunner be a long season

I was at the Emirates last night to see Arsenal labour to a 1-o victory over Udinese in the first leg of their Champions' League qualifier.

They've got to play a resurgent Liverpool at home on Saturday and then Manchester United away the week after that. If they don't luck out against either of them, they could go into September with only a single point in the Premiere League.

What price Wenger then? Up until yesterday I thought that perhaps history would reveal Arsene's resistance to blandishments to splash the cash, and his insistence that the club spends within its means meant he was building an institution that would survive and thrive come the inevitable retrenchments in the game once the TV money dries up and billionaires tire of their playthings.

Now I have my doubts.

Concrete Circus

The Bomber and I injected some money into the local economy over the weekend by buying inline skates at the riot-hit Sports World store.

On Sunday we skated all the way back to his Mum's in Morden. I was as tired and as sweat stained as ever I can remember, even with my skates giving up the ghost (blade collapsing to an angle) some way from our destination. I imagine that they weren't designed to bear a load as heavy, clumsy and daft as yours truly.

Himself finished fresh as a daisy.

Cardiff City 3 Bristol City 1

Cardiff City yesterday climbed to the top of the Championship table after a comfortable 3-1 victory at home to Bristol City.

Today I will mostly be reposing in a a state of imperturbable tranquility.

Wales 19 England 9

A belter of a Test match. Fast, furious and a real kick in the pants for England. But let’s not talk about that load of rubbish because the Welsh effort was quite remarkable.

Wales will never, ever concede as much territory and possession as they did in an appalling first half for them and win a Test match. But what the heck. They did, through a combination of gritty, organised defence and an attacking display from England which moved from the inept to the laughable. You could see how much the victory meant to Wales. All of a sudden they are contenders again.

Today I will mostly be reposing in a a state of imperturbable tranquility.

QR Codes

I know I'm late to the party, but I'm starting to wonder of there's not a role for QR Codes in our various apps somewhere or other.

English Riots

The BBC has instructed presenters to refer to "English" instead of "UK" riots in case they upset residents of other regions.

In its latest dictum on how to cover the unrest, the corporation said it was changing policy "in recognition of the sensitivities involved for people in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland".

Quite right too.

Why not come along to AbbeyFest tonight? It is only a matter of a couple of hundred yards or so from the burned out Tandem Centre but the show goes on.

In the words of the incomparable Peggy Lee:

I stood there shivering in my pajamas and watched the whole world go up in flames.
And when it was all over I said to myself, "Is that all there is to a fire?"

Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is

My head in the clouds

SEATTLE, Aug 10, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- (NASDAQ: AMZN) - For over two years, Amazon has been offering a wide selection of free Kindle reading apps that enable customers to "Buy Once, Read Everywhere." Customers can already read Kindle books on the largest number of the most popular devices and platforms, including Kindles, iPads, iPhones, iPod touches, PCs, Macs, Android phones and tablets, and BlackBerrys. Today, Amazon.com announced Kindle Cloud Reader, its latest Kindle reading application that leverages HTML5 and enables customers to read Kindle books instantly using only their web browser - online or offline - with no downloading or installation required. As with all Kindle apps, Kindle Cloud Reader automatically synchronizes your Kindle library, as well as your last page read, bookmarks, notes, and highlights for all of your Kindle books, no matter how you choose to read them. Kindle Cloud Reader with its integrated touch optimized Kindle Store is available starting today for Safari on iPad, Safari on desktop and Chrome at http://www.amazon.com/cloudreader.

"We are excited to take this leap forward in our 'Buy Once, Read Everywhere' mission and help customers access their library instantly from anywhere," said Dorothy Nicholls, Director, Amazon Kindle. "We have written the application from the ground up in HTML5, so that customers can also access their content offline directly from their browser. The flexibility of HTML5 allows us to build one application that automatically adapts to the platform you're using - from Chrome to iOS. To make it easy and seamless to discover new books, we've added an integrated, touch optimized store directly into Cloud Reader, allowing customers one click access to a vast selection of books."

I've tried this out and it seems to work a treat with a UK account. It is interesting to see Amazon going down the same HTML5 online/offline route that we are currently recommending to clients.

End Game

Amazing news from the WBI time machine; it is more than four years (Icons passim) since the Burglar advised me on the Bomber's chess education.

It seems to have paid off as he beat me for the first time last night.

Here is the forfeit he imposed on me.

As an aside, when I read chess prodigy Josh Waitzkin's book recently, I was impressed to find him giving the same advice that the Burglar doled out in 2007. That is to say, when learning focus on end games rather than openings.

Lifetimes can be spent memorizing and keeping up with the evolving Encyclopedia of Chess Openings (ECO). They are an addiction, with perilous psychological effects. It is a little like developing the habit of stealing the test from your teacher’s desk instead of learning how to do the math. You may pass the test, but you learn absolutely nothing.

Most of my early rivals were gifted children, and they were prepared with hundreds of traps with which they could win right off the bat. Playing against these kids was like walking through a minefield, but I was good enough on my feet to navigate most of the danger. I often came out of the openings in a little bit of trouble, but then I took control. As our games progressed, my opponents moved away from their area of comfort while I grew stronger and more confident. They wanted to win before the battle began, but I loved the struggle that was the heart of chess. In both the short term and the long term, these kids were crippled [by their primary focus on opening study]

the bush telegraph

The Bomber came back home from the park a little earlier than I had required of him last night.

"Someone's sister got a message saying there was going to be a riot," he said. "So we all went home."

UPDATE: Riots spread to Colliers Wood Tandem shopping centre, says the local paper this morning, so I guess she was right.

I wonder if we will read any editorial comment about social media enabling non-feral kids to steer clear of this madness? I bet not.

the good life

I cooked some spuds from the garden on Saturday. This is the first time in my entire life that I have eaten anything I have grown myself.

By a strange coincidence, the Bomber and I also picked some blackberries in Wandle Park when we met up with the Hendries doing the same thing walking their dog, and plunged in just to be sociable.

I was astounded subsequently to see that 150g of blackberries go for £2 in Sainsbury's.

I hope to get around to the Telegraph's Blackberry and pinot noir jam recipe with the results of our foraging though I am unclear as to what pectin is or where you get it.

a hiding to nothing

Tottenham is in flames, rioting link it's 1985 again, and closer to home the police have closed Colliers Wood Rec after a stabbing.

Welcome to the weekend

the horror, the horror.

One-hundred and thirty years ago this month, William Gladstone's Liberal government passed an act which would change the culture, politics, and even the architecture of Wales, for over a century.

Sponsored by prominent Welsh nonconformists in the Liberal party, such as future Prime Minister David Lloyd George, the Sunday Closing (Wales) Act 1881 banned the sale of alcohol in Welsh pubs on the Sabbath.

The land of my fathers. My fathers can have it.

No Left Turn Unstoned

I practically wore out my impossibly glamorous imported Bantam paper back edition of Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test when I was still in school; I probably came to it via the One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest video and on from it to Hunter Thompson.

Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood’s MAGIC TRIP is a freewheeling portrait of Ken Kesey and the Merry Prankster’s fabled road trip across America in the legendary Magic Bus. In 1964, Ken Kesey, the famed author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” set off on a legendary, LSD-fuelled cross-country road trip to the New York World’s Fair. He was joined by “The Merry Band of Pranksters,” a renegade group of counterculture truth-seekers, including Neal Cassady, the American icon immortalized in Kerouac’s “On the Road,” and the driver and painter of the psychedelic Magic Bus. Kesey and the Pranksters intended to make a documentary about their trip, shooting footage on 16MM, but the film was never finished and the footage has remained virtually unseen. With MAGIC TRIP, Gibney and Ellwood were given unprecedented access to this raw footage by the Kesey family. They worked with the Film Foundation, HISTORY and the UCLA Film Archives to restore over 100 hours of film and audiotape, and have shaped an invaluable document of this extraordinary piece of American history.

I will be all over it like a cheap suit.

a hot dense state

Raj: If I could speak the language of rabbits, they would be amazed and I would be their king... I would be kind to my rabbit subjects... at first.... One day, I hold a great ball for the President of France, but the rabbits don't come. I'm embarrassed so I eat all the lettuce in the world.. and make the rabbits watch.

The Adhesive Duck Deficiency

Raj: Big or small, I don't like rabbits. They always look like they're about to say something, but they never do.

The Wheaton Recurrence

Koothrappali's leporine paranoia is one of the many joys of The Big Bang Theory.

Even Prodnose is speechless.

Prodnose: ...........

Drink and the devil had done for the rest

I am back down in Cardiff today for Jimmy's funeral (Icons passim) which is not really a suitable topic for these spin-drift pages.

Instead you shall have another entry in an occasional series of ludicrously parochial Welsh chest-beating posts.

Was Long John Silver a peg-legged Welshman? The real pirate could have born near Rhyl.

... according to the Daily Mail.

Hacked off

My Twitter account keeps on getting hacked via http://mobile.twitter.com/ - or perhaps more accurately that is where the dodgy posts come from

Twitter Mobile Webread, write, and direct messages access · Approved: Sat Jul 30 2011 12:36:07 (GMT Daylight Time)

The text above showed that it happened over the weekend. I revoked the permission yesterday, but it was reinstated last night. Time for a password change.

Why does every duck egg in the Western hemisphere seem to feel such a burning need to rain on my parade lately? Icons passim.

You can't get there from here

I met up with Kevin back in Cardiff over the weekend. The Bomber and his son got on very well which is a boon.

All in all, it is a long way from St Illtyd's to the Wall Street Journal.

Gimme

When I got the Bomber his XBOX 360 I could only get the 4GB version as that was all that was in stock. He says it is full now so I need to add this hard disk expansion pack to my shopping list.

Miss Rhondda Cynon Taf

I'm down in Wales and off the grid today so I am teeing this up on Friday.

In days when books like Bred of Heaven: One man's quest to reclaim his Welsh roots are being published:

Jasper Rees has always wanted to be Welsh. But despite Welsh grandparents (and a Welsh surname) he is an Englishman: by birth, upbringing and temperament. In this singular, hilarious love letter to a glorious country so often misunderstood, Rees sets out to achieve his goal of becoming a Welshman by learning to sing, play, work, worship, think - and above all, speak - like one.

And "the new Miss England beauty queen has a secret - she is a pure Welshwoman from the Valleys," who'd want to be anywhere else?

Curiouser and courier

When I got in last night there was a card on the floor saying that a package had been left with a neighbour.

I thought at first it must be another deliver in the great Littlewoods scam, but when I picked it up I could see that it referred to the initial delivery of the TV.

Perhaps I have had my head turned by the rerun of Sherlock, but:

a. I am sure that the card wasn't there in the morning, as I make go through all the junk mail I have acquired each Thursday morning and put it out for recycling.

b. This means the card came through the letter box three days after the delivery had been made.

c. A logical conclusion is that someone had the card, with the intention of picking the parcel up pretending to be me.

Gosh.

Looking out for myself

Littlewoods are going to pick up the mystery telly today (see Icons Heri).

It seems that some chancer set up an account in my name and ordered it, and other stuff, on the tick.

I am somewhat bemused however, as it is me rather than him who has got the swag.

I have been advised by the retailer that I am a victim of identity theft and to check my credit status at http://www.equifax.co.uk/ though I haven't yet.

The plot thickens. Watch this space.

Hunt for mystery benefactor

There was a knock on the door last night from a neighbour who had accepted a delivery on my behalf.

I've now got a Murphy 32 inch HD Ready Freeview Slim LED TV ( 2 x HDMI, 2 X Scart, 2 X USB, 1 X VGA and common interface. Gloss Black. Dimensions: H 21.2, W 30.8, D 7.5in).

It is certainly addressed to me but I didn't order it. I even tried logging on to the Littlewoods site to see if I had conjured it over the web and forgotten (though surely even I don't drink that much). There is no account with my email address.

I will try to get to the bottom of this mind-boggler, but in the meantime thank you very much anonymous admirer.

the law of genre

Breivik penned a 1,516-page manifesto titled 2083 - A European Declaration of Independence, under the pseudonym Andrew Berwick, which he emailed to 5,700 people hours before the attacks.[51] In the foreword, he refers to the attacks as "(...) sacrifices made in relation to the distribution of this book, the actual marketing operation". In the document he describes his background and discusses his political viewpoints.

I haven't read it but here is 2083 - A European Declaration of Independence.

Again:

In the foreword, he refers to the attacks as "(...) sacrifices made in relation to the distribution of this book, the actual marketing operation".

Dear God. Am I contributing to the success of massacre as a marketing operation? I don't know what to make of it at all. Suddenly Sean's The Ethics of Writing seems immediate rather than obscure.

Beginning amidst the tombs of the 'dead' God, and the crematoria at Auschwitz, this book, newly available in paperback, confronts the Nietzschean legacy through a Platonic focus. Plato argues in the Phaedrus that writing is dangerous because it can neither select its audience nor call upon its author to the rescue. Yet, he transgresses this ethical imperative in the Republic which has proved defenceless against use and abuse in the ideological foundation of totalitarian regimes. Burke goes on to analyse the dangerous games which Plato and Nietzsche played with posterity. At issue is how authors may protect against 'deviant readings' and assess 'the risk of writing'. Burke recommends an ethic of 'discursive containment'. The ethical question is the question of our times. Within critical theory, it has focused on the act of reading. This study reverses the terms of inquiry to analyse the ethical composition of the act of writing. What responsibility does an author bear for his legacy? Do 'catastrophic' misreadings of authors (e.g. Plato, Nietzsche) testify to authorial recklessness? These and other questions are the starting-point for a theory of authorial ethics which will be further developed in a forthcoming book on the interanimating thought of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida. Continuing the mission of the 'returned author' begun in his pioneering book The Death and Return of the Author, Burke recommends the 'law of genre' as a contract drawn up between author and reader to establish ethical responsibility. Criticism, under this contract, becomes an ethical realm and realm of the ethical.

I Don't Want to Be Right

A sombre WBI time machine powered reflection this morning; on August 25, 2007 I wrote:

There's a guy in an office on our floor editing a documentary about Amy Winehouse that is being put together by the record company as an extra for a live concert DVD. That is an insignificant thing in itself, but it has made me read the press on the apparent maelstrom of her private life with a little more attention than I might otherwise muster, and with the appreciation that there is a flesh and blood human being at the centre of it.

Reading like that it is so clear that the press cares for nothing but the spectacle itself, and would be vicariously delighted if she did manage to kill herself, that I can't help but feel grubby just following the coverage.

The word turns on its head as Russell Brand (whom I previously considered - without ever watching or reading him - as an ass) writes movingly and with some little insight and compassion about her life and death.

Sat Bains

I have fallen into the habit of playing cookery shows in the background on the BBC IPlayer while I am rattling the pots and pans.

Today I came across Sat Bains' chorizo eggs with scallops and coriander salt on Saturday Kitchen as I was conjuring an old-school Irish Stew. (Irish Stew in the name of the law!)

I haven't even tasted his dish yet and I want to have it for brunch every weekend for the rest of my life.

Love at first sight.

must give us pause

I always knew (Icons passim) that Marina Hyde could write.

Who knew she had a big beating heart?

My friend's benders with the stars were legendary, but it's his courage on the phone-hacking story that must be his lasting legacy.

The Day Today

I have to run out of the door to Buckingham Palace now, then go to Surrey Police this afternoon, before coming back for AbbeyFest so I have not time to tug on your sleeve today.

Did you know that Surrey Police named their HQ "Mount Browne" after me? Modesty forbids.

Great Technology

Here's the technology problem: you've got a warm, moisture-emitting object that also contains relatively dry components that you need to get from Point A to Point B with their form, heat, and chemical composition intact. Oh, and the top of the object is covered with a sticky, viscous substance. And you need to be able to do it by the millions, so the solution has to be cheap and mass producible.

The Bomber and I tried out http://www.peripizzagrill.co.uk/ at the bottom of the road last night. Who knew there was so much to it?

(None of it seems to be a NASA spin-off, unfortunately on this day of days.)

RIP

Uncle Jimmy died last night; a sad day for the family.

Plot Spoiler

The Bomber and I, like everyone else in this quadrant of the galaxy, went to see the latest and last Harry Potter movie over the weekend.

"There was more to Snape than an unchanging costume." Indeed, but - hands up - I did have an inkling.

the beginning of the end

“Let me turn to the reported displeasure of the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary of the relationship with Mr Wallis.

“At the time [I had] no reason for considering the contractual relationship to be a matter of concern.

“Unlike Mr Coulson, Mr Wallis had not resigned from the News of the World or, to the best of my knowledge been in any way associated with the original phone hacking investigation.”

No doubt that Sir Paul Stephenson was unwise to recuperate from an operation with a luxury freebie at Champneys, but he's certainly drawn blood from the PM with the paragraphs above. I am starting to wonder if the whole sorry saga might even bring down the government.

Judy in Disguise

Les paroles de la chanson Judy In Disguise (With Glasses) de John Fred & His Playboy Band:

Come to me tonight, come to me tonight.
Taking everything in sight, except for the strings to my kite.

The State of the Net

Son of Strelka

A guy the States has cut up the 2007 audiobook version of Barack Obama reading Dreams From My Father to create a whole new story.

In it—I will try to limit the spoilers—a demigod is born from a fruit tree, sets about creating the world, and eventually mates with a human woman to produce a son, called Stanley. "I was different, after all," explains the god-child. "A big yellow dog with a baleful howl, the body of a man, with well-defined thoughts." Stanley's journey is marked by armies of singing children, talking creatures with beating wings, wise Buddha, and apocalypses of falling buildings and burning skies.

I just want to hug my knees in delight whenever I think about this.

Piscators

The Bomber pulled his first solo effort out of the Wandle yesterday. Though the picture is gone (see Icons Passim), the WBI time machine can still surprise me with the fact that it is five years ago that he first cast a line with John and family in a pool near The Barn.

Hide in plain site

“C.I.A. John,” the AP-profiled analyst-of-mystery responsible for tracking Osama bin Laden for more than a decade, has been spotted in a photo posted to the White House’s Flickr account.

Read the whole thing here:

It seems that although the man’s face was cropped out of the famous Situation Room photo, his pale yellow necktie was not. He also appeared to be unusually tall. The White House, as part of an all-out effort to trumpet its signature intelligence triumph, had released a number of photos on that day to media outlets around the world. Mr. Young simply checked the administration’s Flickr feed for shots of a man with the same build and taste in neckwear.

And there he was.

The Restaurant Inspector

Series 1 - Episode 6: Mamma Rosa.

The Mills' Italian appeared on a reality makeover show on struggling British restaurants last night. Fernando Peire, the director of London's Ivy restaurant, went undercover to sample the venue, food and service before revealing his identity and offering advice.

I know too many of the people who appeared in the programme to venture an opinion here without taking my life in my hands.

Head in the cloud

I finished Josh Waitzkin's The Art of Learning yesterday. It is an interesting hybrid of memoir and self-help book by someone who has competed at the highest level in two contrasting fields.

Josh Waitzkin knows what it means to be at the top of his game. A public figure since winning his first National Chess Championship at the age of nine, Waitzkin was catapulted into a media whirlwind as a teenager when his father's book Searching for Bobby Fischer was made into a major motion picture. After dominating the scholastic chess world for ten years, Waitzkin expanded his horizons, taking on the martial art Tai Chi Chuan and ultimately earning the title of World Champion. How was he able to reach the pinnacle of two disciplines that on the surface seem so different? "I've come to realize that what I am best at is not Tai Chi, and it is not chess," he says. "What I am best at is the art of learning."

I read a lot of it on my kindle on the Tube as I traveled to and from the West End on Saturday and then finished it on the netbook Sunday morning before I got up; the kindle software conveniently synchronizing how far I had read between the different platforms.

As I was reading I was naturally intrigued by the Searching for Bobby Fischer movie. Searching on Amazon, it wasn't easily available on DVD in the UK, but I could have got it as an ITunes download for £6.99, and think I probably would have if I had some sort of ITunes/TV connection set up, or perhaps if I was reading it on the IPad.

The days of books and DVDs are numbered.

DEC

I worked with DEC on the Haiti appeal (Icons passim), they are good people. Someone suggested to me yesterday that the BBC's coverage of the drought was pandering. I was disgusted. Pandering of what to whom?

(I'm aware that it is an intransitive verb, I just got carried away.)

Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be

Last night's post AbbeyFest party having degenerated into a spectacularly ill advised impromptu arm wrestling competition, I can hardly raise my coffee to my lips this morning.

None of us is getting any younger: Exhibit A

None of us is getting any younger: Exhibit B

The Expendables 2 can't come soon enough.

Mystic Meg should have seen this coming

Hat tip, "Skinny" O'Brien for the title and the video.

a terrible miscalculation of scale

It occurs to me that I may have started to harvest my potatoes a little prematurely.

........... They crossed vast reaches of space in a journey lasting thousands of years before reaching their target where they attacked the first planet they encountered, Earth. Due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was swallowed by a small dog. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy states that this sort of thing happens all the time.

Deal of the Day

After picking up a festival ticket from Kelkoo over the weekend (Icons passim), I got a 10 class Bikram Yoga pass for the new Wimbledon studio at a bargain basement £35 (as opposed to £125) yesterday.

Maybe the daily deal sites are here to stay as mashable suggests.

That said, I am unmoved by today's "Invisible STb Lingual Braces For Upper Or Lower Front Teeth for £995 from Behind Your Smile, Harley Street (£2700 Value)" proposition.

Vic & Bob's Afternoon Delights

New sketches from Vic and Bob, online courtesy of Fosters and not a TV channel in sight. It's a new world; slightly rippled with a flat underside.

Monday Morning Blues

Life Hacker: Now you can get away with cruising around Facebook at work, even when your boss is peering over your shoulder. Well, as long as the boss doesn’t look too closely. Even the laziest slacker can look busy in a jiffy with this interactive adaptation of many of Facebook’s functions. Simply go to HardlyWork.in, click “Gimme Dem Spreadsheets,” enter your Facebook credentials, and there’s your Facebook newsfeed, all done up to look exactly like an Excel spreadsheet.

Management Today: Never mind the austerity: UK CEOs are expecting to grow much faster than the economists seem to think.

The Big Feastival

I took the Bomber and a couple of his mates along to The Big Feastival in Clapham yesterday.

They got in free as under 12s and I had got a £35 ticket for £14 from http://www.kelkoo.co.uk/ which is a price comparison website of which I had never previously heard.

a shaving from the bench

Myself: So https://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer/?method=GET&path=680543528 gives me:

{
id: "680543528",
name: "Nick Browne",
first_name: "Nick",
last_name: "Browne",
link: "http://www.facebook.com/AWelshBornIcon",
username: "AWelshBornIcon",
gender: "male",
locale: "en_GB",
type: "user",
}

Prodnose: Why are you telling me?

Myself: It's a conversation starter.

Prodnose: That's a lousy conversation starter.

Myself: Oh, is it? We're conversing. Checkmate.

Time flies

AbbeyFest 2011 starts a week today with jazz on the band stand.

I have been astounded to realize that we are sponsoring it for the fifth consecutive year (Icons passim).

Come along one Friday or other.