h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Job vacancy - apply to become the scariest mascot in football:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-36686461

Another job vacancy at the BBC - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-36707266

"I have never worked with a more committed and driven team" (Top Gear) -- I guess they were driven all right.

What is it with everybody quitting all of a sudden. No only do we have no political party leaders (Pro-Brexit Tories, Anti-Brexit Tories, Labour - potentially, Greens, Ukip), now we've lost both the Top Gear presenter and the Partick Thistle mascot on the same day!

To be fair, Labour haven't had a leader for a long time.

Clearly their trouble is that the PLP are still largely New Labour.

Miliband tried to coax them back towards some of the principles of the Labour movement, but I think it was too big an ask for him when he didn't have the backing of the membership and unions. Corbyn's got that now, and he's not going to back down.

It will probably end in an SDP-style split, but the absence of a Liberal party makes it difficult for that kind of alliance.

Maybe the Tories will split, and we'll end up with a wider centrist party - the kind of thing that they have in Europe

I can't see Corbyn going anywhere, and I don't want him to.

He's managed to achieve quite a lot as leader of Labour, even against the right wing PLP he's having to "work with". It's just that mainstream media hasn't been reporting on it.

He's been facing calls to resign for over a week, and he's stuck his ground. Eagle keeps saying that if Corbyn doesn't step down she'll stand against him in a leadership contest. For over a week. He's still there, she's still threatening. Time to put up or shut up. And she's doing neither.

I can see a split coming where the left wing of the PLP merges with the Greens though - their aims and policies are pretty much indistinguishable from each other and it would allow that section of the far left a platform. Initially at least.

If the Centre and Centre-Right of the party can get it's act together and look coherent, does anyone think that the Unions might switch their support to them? Interesting that Jack Dromey and Harriet Harman were both on Momentum's deselection hitlist as both have very strong union links.

This week's Private Eye has got six photos on the cover (Cameron.May, Gove, Farage, Corbyn and Johnson)- the first time I've seen that many.

Bad science writing from the BBC, regarding the Juno probe now in orbit around the planet Jupiter:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36710768

"...No previous spacecraft has dared pass so close to Jupiter; its intense radiation belts can destroy unprotected electronics. One calculation even suggested the orbit insertion would have subjected Juno to a dose equivalent to a million dental X-rays...."

I love the "even suggested..." bit. Is this a dangerous dose of radiation? Why, then, compare it to something as harmless as a dental X-ray? Millions of people have those, and I don't hear about related deaths. In any case, why compare the human body's ability to absorb radiation to that of an electrical device?

Schoolchildren read this stuff. The BBC should know better.

{/rant}

On the bright side, we will get a magnificant view of Jupiter's teeth.

I tend to agree with you Icy - the comparison of something you have not conception of to something else you have no conception of is never a good one.

I recall after Gulf War 1 the BBC comparing the amount of oil gushing out of the destroyed oil fields to the number of Olympic sized swimming pools they would fill. Why not just give us the figure in litres or pints for gawd's sake?

However, X-rays are indeed dangerous ionising radiation and the dose equivalent to a standard X-ray is a pretty common one - Horizon used it a lot when they did a documentary about the current state of Chernobyl and its surrounds a few years back.

Most of the early X-ray experiments were performed on their discoverer's wife. She did die from it.

I also had a nurse more or less refuse to X-ray my femur a couple of years ago as the dose was high because it's a thick bone and if I had broken it I'd probably already have been dead from internal bleeding apparently.

You or I don't get exposed enough for it to be an issue but the people who do X-rays carry dose meters on their person (we have them in our labs too where X-rays are used a lot) and will be stopped from doing it once they reach the annual/monthly dose limit. Airline staff have a similar issue from cosmic radiation as planes fly so high they get especially high doses of radiation just from being up there so much.

The relative doses and resulting exposure from ionising radiation with different types of matter (metal, electronic equipment and say, flesh and bone) is very complicated and way beyond the realms of that article. It doesn't offend me.

Not sure why they need the word 'dental' in there though.

Unsure about the scale of lies peddled by vote Leave campaign recently.

A very disturbing article in the Guardian...

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/20/accuracy-is-for-snake-oil-pussies-vote-leaves-campaign-director-defies-mps


And he's in our governing parliamentary party

I'm guessing that's a sketch and not a representation of something that actually took place.

The unluck of the Irish: a jockey falls off his horse, suffering head injuries, but then the ambulance arrives and drives over him, breaking his leg:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/horse-racing/36713693

Orcus, we have a standin for a vomit smiley.



I like to think the dragon had too much .

It's the Politics Sketch all right. And it's from April.

This is an excerpt from the actual session though http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJjShkGCa4c

Second rant of the day refers to Jeremy Hunt's comments on today's junior doctors' ballot, in which they rejected by 58% to 42% the new contract (affecting weekend working hours, etc)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-36714792

The bit that annoys me is:

"...The vote was open to 54,000 BMA members - junior doctors and medical students in their final two years of their degree. Over two thirds took part. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt highlighted the turnout, pointing out that it meant only 40% of those eligible actually voted against the deal..."


Now, I could do the maths if you insist, Mr Hunt, but, take it from me - that result is statistically significant. If you were to somehow force the other third of the junior doctors to vote, it's astronomically unlikely they would vote for the contract in such numbers to turn that 58/42 into an overall 49/51.

And this is coming from a guy who, having been presented with a 51.9/48.1 result earlier in the week immediately announced (despite his support for Remain) that it was a foregone conclusion that the country overwhelmingly wanted Brexit. I agree that that result was statistically significant too, however it carries some serious questions about regional and age polarisation, as well as hideous disinformation being peddled as fact. There's no question that the doctors' ballot was anything other than free and fair.

{/rant}

Sorry I missed that was a sketch and old- oops.

Yes they can't have it both ways on voter turnout.