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

Good grief this is complex, owing to my ineptitude I am incapable of working with 2 windows open and so this may take weeks possibly years to type...though I wouldn't need to if it weren't for bloody BTinternet...stupid printer...stupid computer...Gaaaaaa

I hate my computer and I hate BT, prior to BT I could vaguely use my computer with some form of competence, since connecting to BT all I want to do is throw my computer out the window (no jokes about Windows because I hate that now too). Nothing works and I'm very cross with it...I have been on hollydaze, I have been calmed, I have returned and now I am less calm owing to the fact that in order to get the computer to some vaguely convincing state of operation I now have no Jaguar screensaver, no mooing cows, no printer, no Outlook express (which has been deleted along with the address book which I obviously didn't have a copy of because I wasn't expecting someone to delete it and so now I have no way of contacting anyone ever and if they try to respond to me I'll never know because I don't have an Outlook Express), no scanner and Internet Explorer 3 which is unbelievably poor, instead of the quite good I.E 5 all of which worked before BT but is now completely buggered and will never work again... Did I mention I hate my computer? And I now hate Microsoft because all this software is there's so it's evidently their fault rather than mine because I was just the trusting idiot who had it installed on the computer along with the stoopid BTinternet which I also hate...and to say I never use the word hate this means I really, really dislike it...

Anyway...I'm not annoyed That wasn't convincing was it? O.K I'm not annoyed with you just many other things... such as BTinternet, my computer and microsoft Oh yeah and UCAS...and university in general...and trains...and cows...and Orange...and my laptop...and Giancarlo Fisichella But on the other hand I do have a Suntan...although I'm slightly annoyed with that because it's really really brown and nice and tanned and then there's big white strap marks which look exceptionally foolish...but I do have a SUNTAN!!!

Btw, I'm not going to lower myself to your childish level by mentioning that whilst you may have got your suntan by sitting in a traffic jam in your opentop Lotus, I got mine by lying on a beach, swimming in clear blue seas and climbing up hills and cliffs before buying delicious icecream and cake...nor will I mention the fact that as the weather was so good the skies were really clear and the nights were really warm so I was able to go to the nearest cliff everynight and lie and watch the stars whilst listening to the waves on the rocks below...I'm just not going to mention it at all just like I'm not going to mention the new date of my 'bestest scam in the world' which is actually even better than the last one particularly due to the fact I've arranged for someone to drive me and so it can't possibly fail...she says

I don't make my computer moooo for my benefit, it just likes it so I'm only too happy to placate it if it means there's a slight chance of it working in the future I mean I tried to stop it. After I'd done it and realised how annoying it got I unchecked the box but it carried on doing it anyway purely out of badness...that's the kind of thing that computers tend to do to me Anyway I still don't like cows but the mooing's quite funny, besides I only dislike cows because they're so inherently evil, if they weren't trying to take over the world then maybe I'd tolerate them I do actually realise that you are somewhat dubious about my claims but I have remembered evidence to convince you otherwise, Gary Larson is on my side, go into heffers (hehehe...sorry, I can't take that word seriously ) and look at the Farside books find "The Unnatural Selection", turn to the centre and all will be verified

As for the womble I'm no longer impressed with it due to the fact that having returned to an empty house at about 2am I wandered into my room and sat on the bed without turning the light on so I didn't wake my cat up, only instead of sitting on the bed I sat on the womble on the bed and it started singing "remember you're a womble" and terrified me Anyway, in a struggle to become more mature I have stopped buying toys (when end of year sales figures are down 50% you'll know why) and instead of the usual trash I buy on hollydaze (there was a magic ball which was so tempting...not sure what it did but it had to be good because it said so on the box ) I returned only with an 1856 copy of Miltons Poetical works and a large box of toffee...oh yeah and a suntan

Hmm, you knew what I was talking about? Now that is impressive...although I'll take your point of it being scary as if you understand my mad ramblings imagine what that says about you

That was your psychobabble? hmmm, nearly as convincing as most of my essays I don't think I said I resent losing I think I resented the fact that you'd claimed I'd lost when I evidently never loose

Pubs. There's that place in Ireland where they have the comedy festival that's just one long street of pubs and about 4 houses, that'd be a cool place to g

How can you not know what fabreeze is? Honestly, you're either a very tidy and organised person or you're just so messy you've never found the two month old half finished sandwich underneath a large pile of clothes Fabreeze is a wonder spray which removes the smell of manky-ness when anything goes...errr manky It also removes the smell of cigarette smoke so it's possible to wear your favourite dress in the pub one night and then waft it near some fabreeze before wearing it to the theatre the following night (obviously with different people to those who you went to the pub with as that'd be madness otherwise )...which is obviously one of the major problems with having favourite dresses

I can so say Bleargh to dark chocolate because it's yucky and horrid (and I'll scweam and scweam and scweam until you admit it ) but I've already explained this to you somewhere else so you'll have to go and read it there I thiink it was in that puzzle thing which I randomly distructed with the introduction of chocolate provisions...I'll call it figure 1.1 and then it'll not be classified as laziness or my inability to work out how to have more than one window open at a time Anyway, cous-cous is scary, it's like bulgar wheat, it's delicious when anyone else cooks it but if I try it ends up in a solid lump which is actually carvable...and it starts off as tiny grains then expands into nourishing food just by adding water, if it does that whilst you're watching it imagine what it could do if you take your eye off of it and actually eat it

O.K I now know the outcome of the seal being missing but I'm sure you do as well now so I'll just mutter about how it can possibly be a half infringement, either it's cheating or it's not, it can't be in the middle

And I was asking how to spell barbecue rather than BBQ (I think it was the q that confused me ) because as I never use apostrophes in the correct context anyway it makes very little difference whether BBQ's has one or not...although for the record I think it should because other wise it looks foolish

Y'know to say you're so intelligent it's taking you a long time to figure out not to ask me about psychology because you surely must have realised by now that you're never going to get a concise answer
Right then, once more I shall ramble off on a tangent (although rambling off on a tandem would be more interesting...) about mental ages and intelligence O.K, Gould, 1982 "A Nation Of Morons", decided to show how data (Results of Col. Yerkes' Army Alpha Beta tests) can be interpretted to support existing theory (hereditarian intelligence theory). Gould himself didn't actually do anything except dispute everything Yerkes found so mainly it's Yerkes who proved Americans are idiots but still In 1914 Yerkes wanted to help Psychology become established as a science and so devised a mass IQ testing programme which was used on 1.75 million WW1 army recruits. The tests were supposed to show innate IQ and so had three different levels of ability, the Alpha tests used for literate recruits, the Beta tests used for those who failed the Alpha or who were illiterate and the Individual Interview which was used for Beta failures. Yerkes then took the results and calculated the mental age of recruits in order to provide them with appropriate placements within the army. The mental age is used in comparison with chronological age in order to give the IQ level (incase you were wondering that'd be IQ = MA/CA x 100/1) but is also used alone to show levels of intelligence such as an MA of 1-3 is an idiot, MA of 4-7 is an Imbecile whilst an MA of 8-12, the average American, is a Moron. However, Boring (told you he was better than Dement) then took 60,000 results and analysed them further and came up with 3 'facts', the first being that the average mental age of a white American is 12/13 hence recoverable Moron status He also decided (and this is where everything becomes decidely more dodgy and annoyingly racist) that European immigrants could be graded by their country of origin into a rank order of IQ with Dark skinned, Southern and Eastern Europeans having the least IQ and light skinned, Northern and Western Europeans having the most IQ. His final 'fact' was that negroes have the lowest IQ of all with an average Mental Age of 10.4. he then suggested that the reason the US IQ's were so low was because of interbreeding with negroes, immigrants and "the poor and feeble minded". Both Boring and Yerkes analyses had a huge impact on American law and in 1924 an immigration restriction act was published which stated that only 2% of any race recorded in the 1919 census could emmigrate into the US, and any race not recorded would be barred. This meant that immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe was severely slowed and so between 1924 and 1939 6 million Central and Eastern Europeans were forbidden entry, many of whom are likely to have ended up in concentration camps due to Yerkes tests.

Unfortunately, up until Gould no-one thought to question the validity of the findings (although Brigham who also helped with the tests tried to retract their conclusions in 1930 when he saw the damage that was being caused and realised the flaws in their study but this was ignored by the government) and so the law stood. However, what Gould found was (as you'd expect) a hugely ethnocentric study where anything which could be done to make immigrants and particularly negroes look stupid was done both by Yerkes and the army officials. The two main areas of bias are with the tests themselves and the administration of the tests. In respect of the tests themselves the Alpha and Betas were extremely culturally biased, asking about American history and American sportstars. Also the Alpha tested literacy but literacy reflects education not innate IQ which the tests were alledged to look at, as the recruits had varying educational backgrounds it was likely the white Americans would've had more training than their counterparts and so would have had a higher level of literacy and thus seemed more intelligent. Finally the Beta tests were meant for illiterates but still required the use of pens and paper and needed sums and symbols to be completed which many of the illiterate recruits would not have been familiar with. In terms of the administration Yerkes put immense presure on the army officials to get as many tests completed as soon as possible and in turn they put pressure on the recruits to finish as soon as possible meaning that many Alpha failures were not put in for the Beta. Also many camps didn't bother to seperate the recruits due to time pressure so put all the recruits in for the Alpha tests and then didn't allow them to do the Beta and the individual interviews were hardly ever carried out. As well as this many of the army officers showed hostility to those who failed the Alpha and to negroes in general and so didn't allow them to sit the Beta at all which was in stark contrast with the white americans who were often trained for the tests and some camps actually recruited the most intelligent soldiers to take the Alpha and ignored the others. Yerkes managed to 'prove' that the 3 Boring conclusions ( ) all showed that those who had been in America for the longest achieved the higest scores on the tests whereas those who were unfamiliar with the American culture did the poorest and also dragged down the average mental age of all the recruits due to being placed for the wrong test. In conclusion this is a great example of how screwed up psychology is and why no psychological study should ever be trusted and is probably a waste of time anyway...although I could just be saying that to prepare myself for my results

See, now you've learnt not to ask questions on psychology, you very cleverly learnt not to mention Blade Runner so you didn't have to read pages of over analysis of eye symbolism and unicorns but for some strange reason you still persist in allowing me opportunities to waffle for ages

Hemisphere deconnection...Hmmm *thinks how do I come up with an excuse for my poor use of English, gives up and changes subject* ... so Beetroot what's that all about?

Anyway, the right hemisphere isn't smaller I think it's just called the minor hemisphere because it's not linguistc and verbal so probably doesn't seem as prominent as the left. Also I don't think it's just about thinking linguistically, more about talking and verbalising thoughts instead...oh help Language and Thought *will be restrained, will be restrained, will be restrained*...mmm Sapir Whorf Hypothesis...wow Chomsky...Gaaaaaaaaa *grabs hand away from keyboard and runs away to avoid excessively long essay on English which is surely to follow*...

Phew that was close, foolish man mentioning that, you just want to be glad I'm feeling in such a kind mood or else you would have been subjected to pages and pages then

"Pedantic = highly/over educated person who displays his/her knowledge" hmmm So tell me oh wise one what's the difference between pickiness and pedantry? I'm very interested to know... *notes the ironic side to this conversation* ...hmm hello black kettle

Did you voluntarily move to London or was it a work thing? I doubt I'd cope in London it's kind of like Bristol and I'm beginning to think that's even worse than Birmingham

Hmmm Pets Corner? err, you go to the bottom of the hill, turn right, go along, over the top of the M1, left at the roundabout, straight across at the next, go straight on for about five miles, turn left past the woods, straight on for about 1 1/2 miles, turn left, go straight on for maybe 6 miles, then follow the sign posts...sorry just saw my suntan again, it looks even better next to a black top ... and it's on your right...although it's near Worksop to

Of course I got distracted by a leather jacket it was gorgeous and in the sale, even the cow would have bought it back As for my vegetarianism...ummm...well I'm not eating it...errr...I was helping it because it got too hot during the summer...ummm, they just unzip the cow and don't actually kill it...errr Anyway it's not the killing of the animals that disturbs me as noted by the fact that I love the smell of bacon and pork and lamb and....mmmm...sorry, yeah I just don't like the way animals are treated before they get killed (btw this is your cue to start laughing at the explanation which is about to follow ). If the animals were happy and were just killed then that'd be alright but if the animals have been trapped in tiny transporters with no food or air for 24 hours and before which they were in tiny enclosures then I think that's wrong. See now this is where any thought given to my argument kind of falls down so I'll save you the bother and give you the script You say "so you'd eat happy animals who loved and enjoyed their lives and were taken straight out of their nice big sunny fields where they'd be given lots of tasty food and allowed to play with their families and friends in a happy fashion?", then I say "err, yes" and then you say "but you won't eat really depressed and miserable animals who have no family or friends, have never known happiness and would probably rather be dead?" and then I say "errmm...yes" and then you say "so you'd gladly eat happy animals who want to live but not sad animals who want to die?" and then I look confused and go "nooo, you don't understand, if they were happy it'd be all right", then everyone goes "mmmm quite" which is when you start laughing because I'm probably the only vegetarian who actually tries to eat meat and has to be restrained by her mates

Right so you don't collect Beanie Babies you just have lots of them with their labels still attached...and are they in little glass 'houses' so they don't feel the cold and you can keep an eye on them? (says the collector of F1 models who screeches if anyone attempts to touch her limited edition black Ferrari test car...where's that kettle gone...)

Oh that Ratbert, one of my mates loves Dilbert and keeps trying to make me read the cartoons but I prefer the Farside so I tend to ignore them Anyway, why's Spike not a childrens thing, whichever one we're talking about I bet children would love him...just about every 8 year old stands and shouts Buffy at TV screens and err, just about every 18 year old stands and shouts Spike at Rugrats

I think I have the same problem as you with films because I always end up seeing ones I don't want to at the cinema and then getting the video's out of the ones I meant to see but didn't either due to poor time keeping on my part or just general foolishness on whoever organised the cinema times/dates etc

I refuse to discuss the USA Footballer thing anymore as you're evidently never going to be able to admit you're wrong and being the kindhearted girl I am I shan't push you to admit your mistake

I don't think I've ever been to see an Opera, I've listened to loads but because of my interest in literature I tend to prefer theatre.I think the nearest I ever got was Phantom Of The Opera and Les Miserable which I saw again recently...neither of which are operas but they have singing so I guess it's a start

Hmmm so you admit that Terry Wogan's great then? Y'know that virtually classes you as a radio 2 listener which I bet you've still not listened to despite the fact that I listened to radio4...admittedly only because my dad put it on and it was unavoidable but still it counts

How are your insurers only available over the phone? Clearly you're not trying hard enough...either that or you've never wanted to meet them Actually talking of your Lotus do you have a beard because I'm working on a theory of fast car owners as in the past week I've seen about 20 Lotus' (or possibly Loti) and every single one of them was driven by a bloke with a beard

O.K as I don't even know what an IP configuration is I have no idea if it's possible or not but it still doesn't work and can I just say "OY!" I did not break my printer! If I had broken my printer my brother would have a)shouted at me a lot more than he did and b) fixed it so its clearly not my fault but is instead BT's who I am going to moan at when I ring them tomorrow...either that or it's Zontas fault

Wow, you really don't watch much TV do you... Big Brother is where 10 (8 now because they booted out Sada and the lovely Andrew who should have been allowed to stay as he was a motorsport fan and raced single seaters and his brother is Formula Ford's Anthony Davidson) people get put in a completely sealed house for nine weeks with 24 cameras + microphones focusing on every room and every space including the garden, bathrooms, bedrooms etc. Each one of them has to wear a microphone at all times so that all their moves are broadcast live on the internet and edited for 30minute programmes every night. Every Tuesday they each have to nominate
two people to be kicked out, then the public votes on which one they want to leave until there's only one left and they win £70,000.

Sob, emails I remember them! Should be novel if I ever get it to work again as it's been down for about 3 weeks now and no-one knows so I'll have a ridiculous number of replies to write

Anyway, I shall leave now and continue to read my classics,
bye

Well either it didn't take you weeks to write this, as you feared, or you were fibbing about having been on holiday, and have really just spent the entire week writing this message...

*sympathy* on the whole knackered computer thing. BT are not to be trusted with anything, but I guess it's a bit late to be saying that.

What have UCAS done now?

I gather you had a good holiday then. Speaking of suntans, I was at a friend's barbecue this afternoon (although being strangely posh, her idea of a barbecue is a little different from what I'm used to - fine cutlery and china, and stuff that's actually been cooked properly on account of using what is in fact a gas cooker disguised as a barbecue), and she had, for reasons best known to herself, decided to apply some fake tan. Unfortunately not only did she rather overdo it, she got the distribution rather badly uneven, so her hands were a virulent orange colour! Most of us were too polite to mention it, but happily one of our less tactful friends turned up later and took the piss mercilessly! She should really get herself a convertible, or, at a stretch, I suppose sunbathing on a beach would pass muster as an extremely distant second choice.

You think the heifers are behind Heffers too? Have you heard the cow version of the THX sound system promo you get in some cinemas? I would run to Heffers directly to inspect this Gary Larson book, but I fear it would be shut. You do know, by the way, that not *all* of Gary Larson's cartoons are serious documentary?

Frankly I think that singing "Remember you're a womble" is a pretty placid reaction to being unceremoniously sat on. Surreal, yes, but what, did you expect it just to sit there quietly?

"Evidently never loose"? Well I don't think I'm in a position to comment on your loosing, but at least you're not trying to deny that you lost. Realising that you were simply in denial before is a great step forwards, congratulations!

Mmm...Pub... All pubs and just 4 houses? Sounds great, although I imagine you'd get tired of having to walk past the houses to get to the next pub after a while. Clearly something should be done.

As for Fabreeze, I can assure you that I am definitely neither tidy nor organised, and I can produce any number of independent witnesses to back this up - my capacity for generating squalor is legendary. I'm not sure how I'd know if I'd found a finished sandwich - by the time I've finished with one I've usually eaten all of it, but in general the liklihood of me abandoning food anywhere is slim. I also don't have any favourite dresses - I just don't look good in them sadly. And I generally avoid wearing the same shirt twice without washing it, so I guess fabreeze isn't a whole lot of use to me.

Dark chocolate is manna from heaven, you are clearly mad and I claim my five pounds. (That's 5 pounds of dark chocolate please.) Well anyway, if you ever find yourself in posession of any dark chocolate you know where to send it. Hmm... Carvable amorphous cous-cous. Still, not that I've ever actually tried to cook it - I'd always just vaguely assumed that it spontaneously materialised in other people's salads.

I could go on forever about apostrophes. I got into an argument with a friend over this. (Well, an extensive discussion; no actual shouting or name calling.) I simple said that most people tend to think of the 's ending as being the way to indicate possession in English, (e.g. The dog's b******s) and so the common mistake of writing it's as the possessive is actually pretty logical and consistent, and it's just arcane and unhelpful that this isn't actually 'correct'. She then supplied the stock argument about old English morphology, and how the One True Apostrophe Rule (it indicates a missing letter; that is all) works just fine in this scenario, so long as you know what the Old English possessive looks like, and that the possessive form of the pronoun 'its' never had an extra letter, so there's no need for an apostrophe. I was aware of this argument, but decided to dig out a copy of Beowulf and a handy reference on Old English, and discovered that whilst this appears to be a reasonably explanation, there's actually about as much evidence to support the argument as there is to make the argument look wrong. So I adopted the time-honoured scientific method of ignoring all the details that failed to support my theory and presenting the rest. I used this to try and corner her into either admitting that she was wrong, or adopting a position which, as I think I put it, is something that only a peverse determination to win an obscure argument could possibly justify. In retrospect I can see how this must have seemed a little rich under the circumstances. Anyway, she wriggled out of it by, as she put it, "redefining the parameters of the debate", or as I would describe it "changing the subject"...

So when Gould demonstrated that Yerkes' results could be interpretted as supporting theories of hereditary intelligence, was he doing so in order to try and discredit Yerkes? I don't know anything about what particular axes these people had to grind, so I'm not sure how to interpret this - was Gould pro or anti the theory of hereditary intelligence? What about Yerkes? Anyway, these tests Yerkes made the recruits take, I'm making some assumptions about what you said here, so please correct me if I'm wrong: (1) both Alpha and Beta tests yielded an IQ score, and (2) a 'fail' simply meant a score below a certain IQ, below which the test results were deemed unreliable (just as with modern IQ tests, where I gather that the test results are only supposed to be valid between a certain range, and if the results fall outside of that range, a different test must be used to get an 'accurate' result), hence the use of multiple tests. Is that right, or have I filled in the details wrong here?

Anyway, if a 'mental age' (as determined by these tests) of 12 is average for Americans, I would say that the scale is out of kilter - calling it a 'mental age' appears to show some preconceived notion of mental development which (according to these tests) bears no relation to the reality. On what basis were these tests supposed to be accurate measures of 'mental age'? Of course IQ tests only really tell you how good the subject is at doing IQ tests, but it I were examining results from these things, and discovered that the average ability of the population was, according to the tests, below average, I'd say I'd designed my tests wrong...

I'm guessing my observations aren't especially contentious - the conclusions drawn about correlation between race and mental ability seem pretty clearly specious, not to mention pernicious, so the fact that none of the bits leading up to there seemed to make a lot of sense doesn't seem so suspicious... Although as you go on to say there were specific reasons for the bias here - a very common problem which also occasionally wreaks havoc in the software world: the American Cultural Assumption... And in this case, it seems, a wilful example of it. But I still don't see how anyone could take a statement such as "The average mental age of an American is 12" - it's just patently absurd!

I wouldn't ask you questions if I wasn't actually interested in this stuff by the way. So since you seem happy to type all this stuff in, I don't see why you think I might be regretting it!

Beetroot?

Pedantry is a gratuitous display of arcane knowledge, (such as highlighting the difference between pedantry and pickiness), whereas pickiness is disagreement born of excessive attention to detail in an argument. It's possible to be picky without having to be especially well-informed - keeping a sharp lookout for minor inconsistencies in what someone else is saying is typically sufficient. So for example, pointing out where someone has contradicted themselves might be pickiness. Pointing out that someone has failed to consider the etymology of a particular word they chose and hence missed its utter irony in the context they chose to use it would probably count as pedantry. I suppose a very quick summary would be this: When you contradict someone, if you were only able to do so on account of having had, say, a classical education, then you're probably being pedantic. If on the other hand you were able to contradict someone purely by listening to what someone said, then you're probably just being picky. It doesn't really matter - the important thing is that the other person is wrong!

So they're really pretty different. The only reason people tend to confuse the two is that the kind of people who are highly pedantic are usually also pretty picky. So it's easy for the distinction to be lost if you learn the meanings of the words by example alone (as most of us must).

I voluntarily moved to London on account of work, if that makes any sense. I had decided that I was going to move to London, so I set about looking for work in London. The particular area of London I ended up in was determined by the job I've got. The fact that I will soon be moving back to the same area (Hammersmith) is because I really like it last time I was there. Why do you think you wouldn't cope in London? And it's not especially like Bristol, I don't think. My stalker doesn't live in London for one thing.

Actually I wasn't planning to try and attack the basis of your vegetarianism... I was just interested - I know a lot of people who are vegetarians, but the reasons people make that choice seem to be pretty varied.

The Beanie Babies still have their labels because I don't like taking a knife or a pair of scissors to a cuddly toy. It seems cruel, somehow. Where are they? One of them's sat on the end of the synth keyboard to my right. (An ostrich, in case you were wondering. Just occurred to me that I should have bought an 'Emu' synth...) Quite a lot of them are sat around the computer in the other study here. A fair few are lounging around on the bookshelves in the front room. Some more are just sat around on tables here and there.

Hold on, I thought you were *working* at a cinema, how on earth do you manage not to find out about dates and times for films?

Hmm... I'm not a big fan of musicals, so I don't really go with the idea that The Phantom of the Opera is all that much like Cosi Fan Tutti. (And I don't expect most of the people who like musicals would particularly enjoy most operas, before you accuse me of being a snob. ) Hold on just a second! "I tend to prefer theatre" I don't know if this is worse than the Radio 2 admission - remind me again just who it was earlier in this thread accusing me of being some kind of fuddy duddy for liking theatre! Anyway, if you particularly like theatre, you might not like opera much - the acting is usually pretty atrocious. It's part of the charm, but I've tended to find that people who like theatre find it bad enough to put them off opera.

My insurers are only available over the phone because I went through a broker (and I know where they are based) but they just re-sell some proper underwriter's policy. I guess I could probably locate the real insurers and see them face to face, but remind me again why I'm supposed to be doing the legwork. Wasn't this to get *you* covered on *my* car? And no, I don't have a beard. Right now my sideburns seem to have grown about as far down as the bottom of my ears, but I think even this may be too far, and I have no intention of letting them get any further. Are you sure it wasn't the same bloke 20 times? I went on holiday with over 40 Elise drivers last year, and there were very few beards.

I have managed to see Big Brother since you mentioned it. I'm not quite sure how I missed it, but there it is. I saw the one where Andrew got the boot. He struck me as a little dull and somewhat self-centred, but compared to most of the other people in the house, pretty inoffensive. I discovered today that one of my friends sometimes leaves the web site thing where you can watch them any time up all day when he's at work!

Hope the email gets better soon.

Anyway, I was singing the halibut song...admittedly it's unlikely that you would have heard it before but still if I'd been reciting Shakespeare I would've only had one "Oh"...now is that being picky or pedantic

I didn't take me weeks to write it because using all my skill and ingenuity I worked out how to have two windows open at the same time...or I could have just pasted it into word but I tried Anyway you'll be pleased to know that whilst I was attempting to make the computer work I managed to correct the time which I've been attempting to do for about two years so something goods come out of this

Thanks very much for the warning I shall remember not to sign up for BTinternet... oh bugger Aaah well I guess it could be worse...ummm...the speakers still work so I can still play music...errr and I guess without e-mail I have a lot more time to do errr stuff... ummm...I'm sure it'll be fine when it feels like it, it'll get bored with being stubborn soon and fix itself

UCAS as such have done nothing they're just a useful institution to apply blame to. I guess I've just slowly become completely disillusioned with the whole education system thing (hence my sixth form is a hotel attitude ) having been on the receiving end of misplaced blame and stuff from teachers at school and then being told I was going to cambridge and then just dumped to sort myself out when they turned me down because of a problem which was mainly my schools fault and which they already knew was a problem but didn't think to mention it because they didn't want to dishearten me...and now I just realise that I don't want to go to Uni yet and so I'm going to annoy everyone and wander off on a gap year to do what I want to do as opposed to what they want me to do and then I can reapply apply to cambridge having corrected the thing they were unhappy about so that they'll let me in due to sheer persistency... having said that I can't wait to see their faces next week when I go to get my results and then reveal that their star pupil isn't going to Uni yet, should be most amusing

Yeah I had a brilliant holiday, even when I started being followed by a 12 year old who was trying to pull and when I was told by the local lads that I was cool but that Sheffield was not so could I pretend to be from Derby because that was better...and when I realised that there was no mobile signal unless you walked up a mile long 1 in 3 hill up the steepest path ever known to man... other than that it was brilliant

OOOH Guess what I just fixed the printer, me all by myself THE PRINTER WORKS THE PRINTER WORKS LALALALALALA

Hmm so no under cooked steak and over cooked chicken at the barbecue then? Does she not realise that the idea of barbecues is to make sure that nothing is properly cooked, drop everything on the floor at least once and then feed half of it to the neighbours dog before going in doors and getting a take away? Although thats not applicable to family barbecues. At family barbecues I think the idea is to arrive at 5, stand around with wine whilst listening to swearing and shouting coming from the barbecueing area and every now and again wander over to ask if it's done yet before being threatened with a skewered kebab until the food is finally served (with cous cous) at about midnight by which time most people are too pissed to eat so all the tastefully prepared Vol au Vonts (or something spelt correctly), side salads and dips are left uneaten because you weren't allowed to touch them until the food was ready I like barbecues!

I doubt the heifers are responsible for heffers because that wouldn't be subtle enough, they've probably gone for something much more inconspicuous...possibly C+A's which stands for Cows Attack which is why it's shutting down, clearly it's nearing the takeover time and they need all their staff trained and ready to ambush

Anyway I just laugh at heffers ( ) because it's a good word, I assume by your instant reference to cows that the colloquial meaning of heffer hasn't managed to infiltrate Cambridge yet but if it had you'd know why I was laughing

I also think it's very rude of Heffers to shut when you need such an important book...maybe I should open a 24 hour book shop because I bet there's millions of people the world over who are trying to convince others that cows are evil but because they can't get Farside books, so no-one believes them and by the time the shop opens its too late because the cows have already killed them...which is why there's not many loonies running round shouting "the end of the world is moo" because before they get the chance they've been sought out by the grand high cow master and kidnapped to some undisclosed location where they're used as practice for the cunning cow takeover methods...either that or I just have a vivid imagination

Gary Larson's pictures aren't cartoons they're accurate still life pictures, he sketches them in the field and then goes back to his desk where he morphs them into cartoons so that the cows don't realise what's going on

Hey, why the sympathy for the womble? I'm the one who will be permanently scarred for life, never able to look a womble in the eye again...although I do have to agree I feel most people would protest somewhat more forcefully if they were sat on

Hmmm as for loosing who's the one in denial now, relocation of the blame good tactic but as a fake psychologist I can charge you £50 to tell you that by trying to claim I'm in denial it's obvious you're repressing some deep rooted fear of loosing...open up, admit your defeat

I seem to think that the houses were on one side of the street and the pubs were on the other so I think you'd be alright. I reckon a problem would only arise if you were in one pub and the act was really bad (e.g Joe Brand) but all the other pubs were full up due to really good acts (say Reeves and Mortimer, Eddie Izzard, Graham Norton and Paul Merton) and then you'd be stuck wandering aimlessly around without any alcohol to keep you company Wish I could remember where it was as it sounded really good...obviously I heard about it whilst listening to Radio Two so...

Hmmm, sadly I feel I'm going to have to challenge you once more although this time only for the crown of the messiest person around...I can destruct a room within a minute of entering it and whilst I tend to blame it on aardvarks (who are notoriously untidy) my friends have now christened me with an oh so amusing nickname which shall remain a secret until I get very drunk and tell everyone I don't think it helps that all my best friends are obsessively tidy...in fact one of the most ironic things was when I got given one of those joke herbal sachets that are meant to improve organisation and tidiness and within two days I had genuinely lost it However, I think I have now reached a peak as the week before last my brother returned home from Uni giving my mother strict orders to change all his bed covers and hoover because he was bringing his girlfriend home too. Sadly I'd moved in there when my room got too messy to live in so there was no bed nor was there any carpet to hoover. Never mind says my mate, he'd just carry it all into the study and we could dump it in there until my brother left again. Sadly that too was in a state of decay as I'd moved in there after my room got too trashed. The eventual plan was to move all of the stuff from my brothers room and the study into my room which not only took all day (admittedly that's because Adrian was attempting to be helpful and throw away rubbish and everytime he put anything in a black bag I retreived it again...although he did give up after I fetched out a plastic Jurrasic park cup from McDonalds which I got free with a happy meal when the film was first released...but it could have been a collectors item one day ) but rendered my bedroom unenterable and so I had to move out and spend the next three days sleeping on my best mates floor

I think you should try and cook Cous-Cous, actually no, try and cook Bulghar wheat as I think that's the main problem because I love bulghar wheat and it just turmns to rubber whenever I attempt it, and that way you'd realise how complex it actually is...and don't cheat with one of those pre-prepared packets either

I have trouble with apostrophes as they're either rampant or non-existent...either way I agree with both the answers as surely they're both right as long as you look at the context within which they're used. Besides try teaching a 3 year old that an old english possesive form of the pronoun its does not miss out a letter and so doesn't need an apostrophe but only in certain contexts

Yerkes was an ardent Heridetarian theorist whilst Gould seems to just be a random psychologist who ran out of people to con money out of and so decided to write a study. Rather than actually doing any research he realised it'd be a lot easier if he just used someone elses results and then critiscised them.

As for the tests themselves I don't know if they'd be classified as unreliable if someone failed I think they just saw it to mean that the person was too stupid to do the test and so had no intelligence. Bear in mind that this is 1914ish and IQ test had only been invented in 1905 and prior to this people just used to use head size as a measure of IQ

In terms of the mental ages that was only established in 1908 when they still felt that all Americans were intelligent and every other race/culture was ignorant so whether or not their boundries for categories can be trusted is a valid point. However, as they were only testing (and badly testing at that) soldiers they were likely to only be getting a narrow age range anyway so no actual 3 year olds would have ever been tested. Also the average mental age was said to have been lowered by the immigrants who also took the test and generally scored very low or failed as they were not familiar with the American language or culture. So whilst it was taken as a true test of mental age at the time it obviously wasn't because the tests were so unfair.

As for accepting the mental age, you still need to remember this was 1914. I assume that the majority of people in the US army who were soldiers would have been from the 'lower classes' and these were the only one's tested not the generals and colonels who would have been members of the upper classes. So as it seems likely that only the educated would be reading psychology or science journals and only the upper classes would have been educated to such a high degree it surely seems unlikely that they would have challenged the view of lower classes and immigrants being significantly less intelligent than them.

Hmm, how could you possibly dislike me rambling on about the subject which we all tended to survive by sleeping through the two years...

See even you don't know about beetroot and you're alledgedly learned (that's learn-ed by the way ) so how they can expect others to I'll never know *pats herself on the back for managing to distract you from her foolish misuse of thus*

"pointing out that someone has failed to consider the etymology of a particular word they chose...would probably count as pedantry" Surely that clases you as pedantic rather than picky Anyway which ones the best to be because I have a nagging suspicion that in certain cases I may be both

Hammersmith...attempts to remember where hammersmith is by visualising the tube map...errr...ahhh oh that's about two stops away from Earls Court that's very handy

Don't get me wrong I do like London, it's great for a day or at a push a week when I go down to stay with relatives but I could never live there all the time.I mean currently if I walk across my front garden I can then walk two metres forwards and I'm in a wooded valley with a river running through the bottom of it. If I walk in the other direction for about ten minutes then I'm in open countryside again, if I go to the left I walk up a hill (past the pubs ) and I'm in another wooded countryside, go to the right and I'm at a big lake and open fielded area. If I go about ten miles I'm in the Peak district and on wild moorland if I go a bit further I'm in the limestone valleyed bit of Derbyshire. If I lived in London the only vague area of countryside I've ever found was near where my Aunt used to live in Billericay and even that was only a small foresty bit. I don't think theres any way I could cope with being in London for any period of time as I'd have to keep leaving every weekend to find some open space. I know the parks are really nice (last time I was in one these 3 business men ran past me hid behind a bush, stood laughing for a few minutes then ran to a bench, picked it up and stole it, then ran off down the path carrying this bench between them laughing all the way ) and I will admit to loving Covent Garden despite the fact that they have far too many mime artists outside the arcade bit, but the rest of London's far too claustrophobic hence me not being able to cope in London

You weren't going to laugh at me only wanting to eat happy animals?
Oh...that's a suprise...err, umm sorry

*clears throat and looks shifty* errr last night I was attempting to make my bed (admittedly I failed miserably, got caught inside the duvet cover and had to call for assistance but when I'm living on my own I'll use blankets...and disposable crockery...and teflon clothing ) and realised that I have a lot more beanie babies than I thought...but I would like to protest that I have never bought any of them and mine are all err...novel and probably don't count as beanie babies because they're not Ty.I mean a Snoffleophagus, a cookie monster , 2 winnie the poohs, 1 eeyore, 1 piglet, 2 Po's and some strange morphed unidentifiable thing which was bought as a joke as it was so bizarre do not really count as owning beanies do they...

Hey, I wasn't in charge of dates and times, I'm quite sure that had it had been left to me I'd have found out the right time as opposed to just looking shifty and saying "well it had good in the title" like certain others did

What's wrong with liking theatre? I'll admit that radio two is shameful by anyones standards and that if you were 18 you'd have every right to mock the theatre (although I wouldn't have told you if you'd been 18 so that probably isn't applicable) but if you'll read one of the other threads...possibly hello Tinkerbell although I got over enthusiastic and rambled on and on until the bloke got bored and left hence my concern about the psychology stuff ... you'd realise that I have never laughed at theatre. I think you'll also find that I never called you a "fuddy duddy" (for one I would never use those words... and no I didn't I was quoting just now ) for liking theatre mainly because I don't think you mentioned it, you said you went to see operas and if any ageist comments were made they were aimed entirely at your radio 4 habits

Hmm have you ever considered a beard or at one stage had a beard whilst owning the Lotus...aah well give it time Anyway you were getting me insured on your car because your such a nice, kind generous person...*thinks blatant flattery is unlikely to work here, aha bribary*... and I'd give you loads of dark chocolate

The strange thing about Big Brother is that it's one of those things you know you shouldn't watch but it's strangely enticing...

Anyway I'm now going to see if my computer will be less dead than usual and allow me to reconnect so I can post this...can't use work offline because the stupid thing doesn't have one anymore However, I have been given a Pentium2 Processor chip thingy which is apparantly useful but means I have to do something with jumps or jumping or something and some boardy thing which just went way over my head but I'm going to be talked through it in idiot speak so what can possibly go wrong...although I distinctly recall BT Jane telling me that to

Anyway, night

The halibut song eh? So is there any more of it? And that was pedantry, since you ask.

Well it sounds like you're finally achieving dominion over your computer. Or possibly over Greenwich Mean Time - you were slightly ambiguous.

*dons cardigan and slippers, picks up pipe, and tunes to Radio 2* Eh, in my day there were *two* useless institions - UCA and PCAS (for Universities and Polytechnics, before those became Universities too), what? So what was the technicality on which Cambridge (presumably Sidney Sussex) turned you down? By the way, a friend of mine from school was rejected from Cambridge (Peterhouse in his case), took a year out and reapplied and got in, so if you still want to go it can definitely be worth it.

So being from Derby's cool is it? One of my housemates is from Derby. Not that it's possible to tell - he moved down to Letchworth (bleargh! dull town not far from here) at a fairly early age, and of course had to lose the accent in order not to get killed in the playground... But not Sheffield then? Speaking of which I may be working very briefly in Sheffield soon. There's a company I might end up doing a few days of consultancy for over the next few days which is giving its address as Mosborough, Sheffield. (I have no idea where this is, I just agreed to work there...)

Anyway, glad the holiday was good. Where was it exactly? (Somewhere sunny, I gather. )

Overcooked chicken at a barbecue? Never heard of that - it's usually the chicken that's underdone. There is no such thing as an underdone steak. And no, she doesn't realise that the point of a barbecue is essentially to court food poisoning, preceded by 4 hours of hunger. Although vol-au-vents (well that's what my dictionary says, including the hyphens) at a barbecue sounds more like her kind of style. Many of the dips were left uneaten on account of the stupendous quantity of food supplied - I was pretty full by the time a third of the stuff that actually got cooked was done (as was everyone else). We ate loads to be polite, but there was a fair amount uneaten, and then I saw the pile of stuff that hadn't actually made it as far as being cooked yet!

Cows Attacks - isn't that a Tim Burton film? If it's not, it probably should be. So what does 'heffer' mean in your neck of the woods?

I'm sure you're right about cows and bookstores. It is, after all, the only logical explanation.

You'd better watch what you say - Orinoco has powerful friends. For all you know he's in league with the cows.

I might admit to a deep rooted fear of loosing if I knew what it meant, who knows? But since I'll have to decline your offer to charge me £50, I guess we'll never know. And you ask me "who's in denial now", well obviously the only reason you don't know the answer to that is because you're in denial.

Bearing in mind that I have no idea where this street full of pubs in Ireland is, (well, no more specifically than the fact that it's in Ireland) you can just make it up and sound just as knowledgeable as you would if you knew!

If you really are more messy than me then it must be pretty spectacular - I've won awards for my untidiness; I've had landfills named after me. I'm disorder incarnate. (And I'll just have to ask you your nickname in the F&F some time...) That's quite remarkable about your brother - I'm sure his girlfriend must have been very flattered that he, er, got his mother to go to so much effort! But back to the topic at hand, I once tried the tactic of only taking stuff you really need when you move - when you own more than one carful of stuff this is actually more or less forced on you anyway. But the usual problem was that I would then leave a massive mess at my place of origin and also accumulate a massive mess at the new place. I did this every year at University (and ended up having to make several trips to get all my stuff back home, even though I also had an inordinate amount of crap at home too)! I've since got worse - I've owned this house for almost 3 years, and because my friends have been living here most of that time, I've been able to live here on and off, and leave a whole load of my stuff here too. So I now keep generating entire *housefuls* of crap in 2 simulataneous locations. I think I need to burn most of my stuff... The problem is working out which stuff.

What on earth is Bulghar wheat? I hope it's nicer than it sounds! Actually now I come to think of it I don't really know what cous cous really is, I just recognise it when I see it cooked.

Re apostrophes, well quite... But a friend of mine was once a part-time proof reader and is obsessive about such matters of grammar and spelling. (A useful trait in a proof reader admittedly.) But if you think I can be picky, try sending her an email when she's in the mood for linguistic pedantry.

Ah, the old favourite - take someone else's work and pick holes in it - far less effort than doing your own work! (Strangely enough this is more or less what I'll be doing in Sheffield!) I'm not really quite up on the theory surrounding IQ, but a lot of it's awfully contentious anyway isn't it? Did you hear on the news today the supposed identification of genes that control intelligence, or some such? Both the left- and right-wing knee jerk reactions seem to have been pretty unpleasant. The argument being characterised as The Right Wing one appears, bizarrely, to be that this means eugenics is a good thing and we'll all be nazis before the decade is out, which seems, well, unlikely. Meanwhile a self-proclaimed left-wing reaction was "therefore what I'll do is not put my money into those kids who are going to do good anyway". So, intelligent kids doomed to fester and fade due to lack of attention from the education system. This raises the question "So how would that be any different from what we have now?" of course... I guess it wouldn't, it'll just be used to legitimize neglect of able students. Hey ho.

But back to the mental age of Americans. You say that in 1908 these were based around rather culturally-blinked assumptions, including that Americans were somehow more intelligent than anyone else. In which case I still don't see how anyone can start with this basis and draw the conclusion that the average mental age of the American population is 12. (Unless they also concluded that this result disproved their assumptions.) As you say, the tests were flawed, and their input wasn't representative of the population, but in that case I have to wonder how anyone could confidently announce anything meaningful about mental age. I guess it must be what you suggest - that they could happily discount the low result as the result of inferior breeding of the lower classes found in the infantry.

But anyway, I should probably stop ranting at you, since it's the arrogance and stupidity behind the original tests that's annoying me, and it's not really fair to take that out on you.

So, tell me about beetroot.

Hell, yes! Pointing out the difference between pedantry and pickiness is certainly pedantic. And I don't deny that I can be pedantic at times, I'm just more inclined to pickiness. It doesn't require me to know quite so much as a devotion to pedantry would. So in terms of level of effort I'd have to say pickiness is best. Pedantry can occasionally be more impressive. But both have a tendency to annoy people intensely.

Hammersmith is about as far West as you can get and still convincingly claim to be in central London. It's in Zone 2, which doesn't look so good, but you can walk to (say) the Albert Hall. Handy if you like the Proms. Which I do. But I'm going to just miss them.

Lack of countryside anywhere near London is, it has to be said, the major downfall. It's certainly not an ideal place to own an Elise - you have to drive for at least an hour before you get to any roads that present anything resembling fun, whereas here I only have to go for 5 minutes before I'm out on some country lane. I find the parks can just about mitigate the effect - some of them do a very good job of cutting out the rest of London. (Holland Park's my favourite, also within walking distance of Hammersmith...) But I do tend to feel the need to get out on a reasonably regular basis, fun place though it is.

If you have trouble with a duvet, then how are normal blankets going to be any better? The joy of duvets is that they're so easy. OK, putting the cover back on is a bit tricky, but I'll take that in preference to making a proper bed any day! (Plus I hate the way normal sheets are so constrictive - I can't get comfortable without untucking them first!) All crockery is disposable, so long as you have the will to make it so.

Nothing's wrong with liking the theatre, it's just when you said "How come you recall that it's not alright for an 18 year old to listen to radio two but think it's alright to go to the theatre?" I somehow intrepretted this as you suggesting that it wasn't alright to go to the theatre. I haven't been looking through your other threads though. And I know you didn't use the phrase "fuddy duddy", I was paraphrasing.

Have I ever considered having a beard? Yes, but not whilst owning the Lotus. I tried to grow one once, but after about a month (a) I found it to be intolerably itchy and (b) I hadn't mentioned it to my then girlfriend who I hadn't seen for 4 or 5 weeks because of holidays and such like, and thought she might be a bit upset if I turned up with a half-grown beard, so I just shaved it off again.

Yes - Big Brother offers that particular TV combination of compulsion and guilt. So who are you voting for this week? I think the next fad in TV will be something radical like, I don't know, maybe a well-written, well-produced and brilliantly-performed drama.

The term you're probably looking for is 'jumpers'. This is the confusing name given to little plastic and metal things that are designed to get lost and cause havoc inside a computer. They're too small to remove by hand, but are designed to fly off in a random direction at high speed when manipulated with pliers or tweezers. And a Pentium 2 processor may or may not be a good thing. Depends on loads of stuff like what you've got in there now, how much memory your machine has, how good the rest of its hardware is and so on. But it probably won't hurt, just so long as the machine is still working again afterwards...

Anyway, I foolishly agreed to go and do some work in one of my clients offices in London tomorrow, so I've got to be out of the house just after 7am. And I was so looking forward to spending most of this week in bed. Doesn't look like that'll work now if I do this Sheffield job too... So I'd better get to bed! Good night.

Sadly the halibut song was never fully appreciated by a mass audience and so its words are only known by a select few...well two to be precise. The whole song consists of the words I told you followed by the traditional halibut movement (If you've seen the Life Of Brian you'll know it, if you haven't "shame on you" ) which is given simultaneously by person 1 and person 2, person 2 then sings the line again and the halibut movement is used to finish the song. In larger groups this can be quite confusing due to the previously mentioned problem of only two people understanding what the hell is happening but with a little persistence it is possible to convince whole crowds of people that both of you are in fact insane

Whilst I would have loved to have corrected GMT and got rid of the stupid hour changes I only managed to change the time on my computer which whilst very useful for me doesn't seem to be much benefit to the rest of Britain who will still have to get up earlier at random times of the year

Ooh actually that brings me onto a fun piece of knowledge which I have gained...well I haven't actually gained it because I still don't know it but it's in my newly purchased book called "How much do you know?" although quite frankly I was shamed by my apparent lack of knowledge until I realised that being published in 1938 it was unlikely that I would realise that space travel is impossible, spring cleaning is compulsory in Hungary and that anyone from Australia is a wild savage who has never progressed past stone age mentalities Actually this kind of answers your disbelief about how anyone could think Americans had an IQ of 12 so I'll stick it in now and confuse you despite the fact this wasn't my fun piece of knowledge. Question "Are there stone age people still in existence?" Answer "Yes. Some of the Australian blackfellows are still living in a Stone Age of their own; they have not yet learned the use of metals - apart from what they may have picked up comparatively recently from contact with white men - nor have they attained any of the arts which raise mankind above the lowest level of savagery. The invention of the bow and arrow has been beyond their powers. Their hatchetts are made of stone, their spears tipped with stone or bone. They have no houses worthy of the name and no pottery, nor have they learned to cultivate the soil or domesticate animals. They can count up to four or five at the most; their character, intellect, customs and social organisations are at a stage of development which in Europe existed during the Stone Age". So there you go, although even I will admit that whilst I can vaguely explain how Gould could have been arrogant enough to believe all immigrants were stupid in 1914, I have no idea how this could have possibly been taught to English schoolboys in 1938, it seems beyond belief . . . although I have read the "Why is the white race so dominant entry" so I doubt this should surprise me

Anyway . . . my fun piece of knowledge. "What year had only 354 days?" Answer "The year 1752, when the Gregorian calender or New Style was adopted in England. The days between September 2 and 14 were omitted, greatly to the dismay of ignorant people, who imagined they were being cheated of nearly a fortnight, and who asembled in mobs, shouting Give us back our eleven days!" It's not so much the fact that the 14 days were taken which is fun more the fact that they have evidently invented a quote from the angry mob and the imagery it conjures up which really makes me laugh . . . still this is about the most sensible answer in the whole book

*cool you look like my dad now* The problem with my application was that I did a combined English language and Literature A-level, I knew this would be a problem which is why I had the foresight to ring round and check to see which colleges would accept it (however, this did cause a problem as I rang Jesus college and the bloke actually said "Jesus accepts you" which left me and my mate giggling hysterically on the floor and we had to hang the phone up. Admittedly it doesn't sound that funny now but at the time it was hilarious ) and so I applied to Sidney Sussex. Then when they turned me down I got a letter which went on about how they were disappointed to turn me down because I was just the sort of candidate they were looking for but they didn't realise I'd only studied 4 texts in my course so despite the fact that I'd read a further 60 classics off of a reading list and having talked to the other candidates it turned out I'd read a lot more than them anyway I had to be rejected. My school apparently knew this before they selected to do the course (we were the first and, having openly admitted to using me as a case study, we were also the last) but wanted to see how much of a problem it would be...my school was great!

Hmm, I wouldn't say that Derby was cool my brother lives there and personally I think it's a dump but I guess that's influenced by spending a lot of time at my brothers student house which was errr, interesting to say the least, I never knew so many things could go mouldy I reckon if you went there for a day they have some cool shops and pubs but other than that the main basis of Derby being cool seemed to be the skate park and the Xtreme sports festival so it's probably a fairly narrow view

As for your work in Sheffield, I think you may have been somewhat misled as to the size of Mosborough but still...In fact when I think about it you may have been misled when told it was Mosborough as far as I'm aware it's called Mosbug as all the letters came off the sign around about the same time Sheffield became reknown as Sneffiela
Anyway even though you probably know where it is now I shall proceed to give you directions as I've finally found a useful thing for me to put in one of these posts Which Company is it by the way as I can give you exact directions right to the door then.
Right, I'm assuming you'll be coming up the M1 so whilst you're parked in a traffic jam around about junction 29 you'll be able to look to your right and see Hardwick Hall (which was owned by Bess of Hardwick and my best mate works there so you can wave to her) then having gone past junction 29 you'll be able to view Bolsover Castle (no idea but it has really good firework displays and is also home to many animals) before turning off at junction 30 which will be sign posted Eckington, Barlborough, possibly Clown and Renishaw. Despite the fact that this does not say Sheffield take it anyway because if you wait for one that does say Sheffield you'll get lost beyond belief and end up at Meadowhall...which would be a good thing but probably not if you're trying to get somewhere. Err, anyway as you come up the slip road you need to take the first exit at the roundabout which is sign posted Eckington and Renishaw. Drive down here avoiding being distracted by the dodgy dealings going on in the layby to the left or the freak trying to swerve across the carriageway from the road on the right. You'll pass a scraggy looking garage on your right which as far as I'm aware has never had a customer. Continue down the hill being very wary of the junction about half way down which has a pub to the far side of it, many crashes occur here so go very slowly and don't get squashed. Having gone past this continue going very slowly as there is a speed camera with film in it hidden in the bushes on your left, it's very efficient and is mean and evil...You should now be in Renishaw, you'll be able to tell this by the tasteful array of caravans on your right silhouetted against a backdrop of manky old colliery and factories, on your left will be a working mens club and pub whch has just recently been renovated from the shed which it was previously. Carry on up the road avoiding the large hole which may or may not have been covered by the time you get here but as it's been "work in process" for about a year now I wouldn't count on it. On your left you should now have a row of distinctly dodgy shops helpfully selling oak furniture but as you carry on over the brow of the hill you'll see a very good restaurant/pub on your right called the Sitwell Arms and another garage which never has any petrol on your left. Once more be wary of a blind junction on your right which is opposite a scrap yard, also beware of the large field of cows to your right who are all trained in the martial art of trampling very quickly towards you in an attempt to kill. There's now a golf club on your right which normally has a carpark full of Lotus', TVR's, Ferraris, Mercedes and BMW's but will probably not now I've said it so carry on round the sharpish left bend and over a railway bridge. You'll then drive down a long road which for some strange reason everyone crashes on so don't, to your left is Renishaw hall (owned by Sir Raresby Sitwell who I used to sit next to in church services when I was tiny and who has a very nice Jag) and to your right are bits of Renishaw hall golf course. Having followed the road along you'll be at a bend which has many turnings into Eckington none of which are the ones you want (unless you fancy a) buying a model F1 car at a ridiculously cheap price from the post office, b) laughing at the 12 year olds trying to look cool by sitting on Costcutters wall, c) getting food poisoning from the Indian restaurant which has changed owners about nine times in as many weeks or d) going to the greatest hardware shop in the world and talking to the nice bloke who works there) so carry on to the right going past a well disguised army training centre on your left and Eckington show ground/ field on the right (which for reference has the best conker trees anywhere in the area). Stop at the traffic lights which are always on red, to the left is Eckington church and more conker trees and many more pubs, to the right is an obligatory old man on a bench (he has long white hair, a green jacket and an optional dog) who I guarantee you will be sat there, up the hill to your right is Halfway, Crystal peaks shopping centre with cinema etc and Morrisons should you be hungry. Ignore all this excitement and go straight across and up the hill suppressing the temptation to either go to Beefeaters or the You Can Hire with free Bouncy Castle. The hill is alleged to be 60mph although I don't think there's a sign saying so but it drops to 40 at the top and then 30 about a foot later in a helpful fashion, to your left you have Eckington hall and about an inch further on you have Mosborough hall both of which do great food/alcohol. Keep going over the brow of the hill and there'll be a bus which cuts in front of you to the left and a taxi which pulls across from the right, observe with joy the many pubs (but do NOT go in The Vine or The British Oak as you are liable to get in a fight...actually the last time I went I got caught up in a fight hence the newly hired HUGE bouncers and mass security systems) and then observe with laughter the sign which says proposed road works July 1997 and the blocked off road which has still not been unblocked Anyway, on your left is The Admiral which does the best fish and chips, further on is The Queen which is equally good as my mate used to work behind the bar but they're on a gap year now so that's irrelevant...err you are now in Mosborough and there's no where to park except possibly next to the Queens in the small carpark which is also next to a phone box which randomly works on occasion if it feels like it but never if you need a taxi because you've returned from the many pubs
Hmm anyway I still can't figure out where you could possibly be doing work in Mosborough but I suspect they're claiming to be in Mosborough and are actually nearer to Halfway but if you tell me the name I'll give you full and comprehensive (if slightly useless) information as to the fun things to do nearby...having written all this I now realise there is a distinct possibility it's a complete waste of time as you'll probably be staying in a hotel somewhere thus rendering my directions useless as you'll not be arriving from the M1 Amusing thought has just occurred to me, when would you be coming up to Sheffield if you did and if you did would you be staying in the Moathouse?

Hmmm I've just realised that I've written 2 full sides (yes sadly I'm back to Word ) in order to get to the 3rd paragraph of your message...I'm really going to have to do something about this

As for the barbecuing trust me when I say that it is definitely possible to overcook chicken particularly if you allow me to do it because I tend to get distracted, stick Rosemary sprigs into the flames and then incinerate the whole thing...Metz burns quite well to And I would suggest that a cow is an underdone steak...

Seen as how you're possibly coming up to 'my neck of the woods' I could suggest that you find a female and call them a heffer and then judging by the reaction you'd work out the meaning but that would be evil even for me as you may end up with a black eye (no girly slaps in Sheffield just full on brawls ) ...hmm how to describe a heffer...I guess it's kind of like calling someone a dog only with them being really err heffery as well...I don't know how to describe it it just is

I'm glad to see you're coming round to my way of logic, I was beginning to worry that you didn't believe my knowledge of the plans cows have

I hope you're not suggesting that a womble of mine would be in anyway affiliated with a cow? The insult

I know what loosing means... Generally it's when anyone says the opposite of me because if I'm always right then they must be wrong and if I always win then equally they must loose Btw you can't decline the £50 charge because I've already billed you for it, that's what being a fake psychologist is

Errr, I think it's in Northern Ireland and it begins with a k and has many l's in it...now how can you possibly say that you don't know where it is

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!! Don't even think about burning any of your stuff, I mean honestly what kind of example is that to be setting! Stuff is sacred and if everyone went round burning their excess stuff then there'd be no stuff left for other people to accumulate and if we didn't accumulate stuff then, well, we might as just surrender to the cows now. Why do you think the cows are in the fields whereas we are in the houses? (well the main houses, obviously not the cow houses because no one would dare go in there) the reason the cows are so bitter is because when they were about to attack they decided to burn all their stuff so as to make more room for important attacking stuff, but then they realised that they couldn't attack with attacking stuff unless they had general stuff to hide behind but it was too late because having employed the help of sheepsis to burn their stuff for them (It's very hard to do with hooves much easier with sheepy feet) they neglected to see how stupid the sheep were and so all their houses and attacking stuff and stuff stuff was burnt and so they were flushed out into the fields where they now sit plotting their next move...

And I don't know why you don't believe me, you've seen chicken run and that was a film so it was evidently documenting real life...

Bulghar wheat is delicious if other people cook it...much like pearl barley which is also delicious but only to me It's actually very similar to cous cous only with more taste and a lot nicer because it's a bigger grain and should allegedly go less globby when cooked. You see Cous cous is semolina and so is genrally limited to being served with stuff or disguised under stuff as it's not particularly nice but Bulghar wheat can be served on it's own marinaded in some sort of oil based dressing and then mixed with tiny chopped pieces of cucumber and peppers... However, it does tend to be a thing that only I eat as well so maybe that's not such a good example

People tend not to like proof reading my stuff as I have a tendency to make up words when I can't find one to describe what I want...whilst I think that this is perfectly reasonable as this is obviously how new words come into circulation apparently many people don't share my view

Hmm, I think I already defended Gould earlier, aah well it's not like any of the rest of my messages have ever made sense! Was that you ranting by the way, if it was you're very mild mannered I thought you were just being questioning

Hmmm Beetroot...ooh look a comet!

There was a pedant in Taming Of the Shrew (TOS for short ) , I think he was the only one who didn't pretend to be someone else in an annoying and confusing manner so I quite liked him...although there wasn't a picky so I don't have a comparison

So when you move to London there'd be really no point in hanging on to the Elise would there...I mean you'd be just as well loaning it to me for my driving test

Hmmm, I would like to defend my stupidity now Whilst I may be exceptionally foolish even I can cope with laying a duvet on a bed, my problem was that having washed the duvet cover I could no longer get it back on the duvet. This is a particular problem as the duvet cover is double duvet size and I am not, therefore the only sensible way which I have found to put it on is to crawl inside the duvet cover then drag the duvet in before bouncing on top of it to flatten it, then crawling back out the duvet cover and doing it up...unfortunately if this goes wrong and you end up underneath the duvet then you're stuck in there forever until someone hears your muffled screams and comes to get you out
Btw you didn't actually think I'd be 'making' my bed did you? Honestly what an absurd suggestion...

In order to clear up any further confusion I didn't mean that it's not alright to go to the theatre I meant that it's not alright to admit you go to the theatre when you are 18 and surrounded by a load of people who are also 18

Hey don't joke about voting, as sad as it may seem this week I may be forced to phone in as I can't bear to listen to Caroline for another week especially when they're trying to get rid of the lovely Tom... you see and once Caroline goes Nichola will be the next one out which will be a brilliant thing as her accent and constant wandering round in thongs is extremely annoying. *adopts granny hat* I mean it's cold enough in London at the best of times but if you wear a thong constantly it must be freezing


I have to touch the jumpers? No-one mentioned that, I thought I was just changing the settings which they worked on...*goes to fetch list of 22 idiot steps to installing new stuff*...hmmm blimey this looks complex "set JP1 to CMOS RAM discharge jumper (pin 1-2)" ...yes well...errr I can do steps 7 to 22 that's just changing connections about errr... oh and I can do step 5... I wonder how important steps 1,2,3,4 and 6 are... hmmm it can't be that hard can it... oh having just looked I have a pentium MMX in it, that sounds old...ooh it looks fun though just like a GCSE electronics project...I'm going to kill it aren't I? *wonders how easy it'd be to transport a computer on a bus to Derby*

7am? As in the other one? Pure foolishness is all that I can say! I woke up at 1pm today and was mighty proud of my achievements

Anyway I'd better go now because by the time I've deleted all the trash which word has added to this it'll be time for Ally McBeal and having missed it for the past three weeks I'm starting to have withdrawal symptoms Bye!

I have seen Life of Brian several times, although evidently not recently enough. I can't get the image of the Monty Python sketch where Michael Palin and John Cleese slap each other about with fishes out of my head, which seems to be preventing me from remembering the traditional halibut movement. But I can see how convincing crowds of people that you're insane would be useful. If they reintroduce conscription I'll have to learn it.

Whilst the arrival of British Summer Time does herald the unholy prospect of having to get up an hour earlier on a regular basis, it does have one redeeming feature: when GMT comes back it means that you get to spend an extra hour in bed again! I think what's really required is a way of getting the benefit of the clocks going back without the inconvenience of having to put them forward. Massive restructuring of the planet to achieve a 25 hour day should do it. Or regular trips far afield so you just keep getting up an hour later every day, and when it starts to get ridiculous, you just fly to a time zone more aligned to where you are. I'm now getting a slight feeling of deja vu here, so my apoligies if I've already subjected you to these, my plans for when I rule the world.

When your book says that anyone from Australia is a wild savage who has never passed beyond stone-age mentalities, I initially assumed they were talking about the post-colonial population rather than the indiginous one. Anyway, it's always scary to read a book from another time (albeit a fairly recent one) which reflects the falsehoods that were effectively received 'wisdom'. Makes you wonder what a list of today's truisms would sound like to someone 60 years hence.

What year had only 354 days? Am I allowed to count the years where I have voids in my memory which add up to about 11 days? Anyway, how can you be so sure that the angry mob didn't elect a spokesperson to state their case?

I look like your dad? Um... If you say so. Anyway, that's shocking behaviour from your school. What do you plan to do to convince them to admit you when you reapply? Are you going to set about studying more texts in your year off in evening classes or a self-taught course or something? I've no idea what sort of options there might be for this, I'm just thinking that if the college liked you (and it sounds like they did), then if you can come back to them next time round and demonstrate exactly how you're going about rectifying what they regarded as the problem, then they should be fairly impressed. (By the way, if you do reapply, I gather that it looks best to reapply to the same college - they know you're really keen to be there that way. If you apply somewhere else, they'll probably ask you why you didn't apply there last time round, and want to know why it is you think they're second best...)

Judging any town by its student residences is a little harsh.

I'm not sure if I've been particularly mislead about the size of Mosborough - I got that off the company address. Thanks for your highly extensive set of directions. I now have my hotel booking by the way - I'm in the Sitwell Arms. I assume you know where that is, since you described it as "a very good restaurant/pub".

Actually it is possible to both overcook *and* undercook chicken on a barbecue - it's not uncommon to have raw chicken lovingly coated in a thick layer of charcoal. I suppose I just regard the charcoal as par for the course with a barbecue (in fact I always got the impression that this was supposed to be the point!), so on average I regard such a piece of chicken as undercooked. I suppose you could leave it on for a day or two, but I always got the impression that the law of barbecues was that no matter how thoroughly nuked the outside was, it could always do with 'just a few more minutes' by the time you get to the middle! I've never tried burning Metz, although a friend of mine once decided to empty a glass of dodgy apricot brandy over a barbecue which several other people were leaning over (committing their own acts of random arson). The sheet of bright green flame that shot up was very impressive, as was the sight of all the people gathered around scattering suddenly.

Whilst I find your practical suggestion that I find out what 'heffer' means through experimentation highly admirable as an erstwhile alleged scientist, I think I may just pass on that one. So would 'ugly cow' be an approximate translation then?

You already seem to have turned against the womble in question, so is it so very implausible that it's in league with the cows?

Well if you've billed be as a fake psychologist, I'll see if I can obtain a fake £50 note...

I don't think I'm all that likely to burn my stuff (well, not deliberately anyway), so don't worry. Just so long as I keep it safe from the cows and chickens.

Ah, I didn't realise cous couse was semolina. The fact that it's used to hold stuff that tastes of something else makes sense - semolina is one of the most unpleasant desserts known to human kind.

There's nothing particularly wrong with making up words - as you say, how else would words come into existence anyway. However it does rather tend to annoy proof readers, because they're usually obsessed with contemporary rules of grammar and spelling.

Well I probably hadn't started ranting yet, but I could tell I was about to launch into an attack of the stuff you were saying which, since you were just putting forward someone else's point of view, wouldn't really have been fair, so I stopped myself in time. And some people find my style of questioning a little hard to deal with - I've known some people react to a persistent line of questioning as a personal attack! And text-based communication can aggravate this kind of thing, so I was holding back to be on the safe side. Fortunately it seems you're not ridiculously sensitive, so perhaps I should have carried on regardless.

Beetroot flavoured cornettos? Yuck!

I thought TOS stood for The Original Series. But I guess that's the kind of thing that happens to your mind when you share a house with a science fiction fan. (Although she doesn't actually like Star Trek, TOS... So she finds it a particularly apt abbreviation. ) But interestingly there is no noun to describe someone who is picky (apart from 'awkward git' possibly), so presumably Shakespeare was unable to incorporate one.

When I move to London I expect I'll do with the Elise what I did last time - keep it somewhere outside of London and go and drive it at the weekend. Nice try though...

Ah yes, double duvets... I'm reasonably tall and I still have trouble with them. I suspect they're only designed to have their covers fitted by two people. My usual approach is to scrunch most of the material up, but find the two corners furthest from the opening, and put these both where I can get to them. Then I fold the duvet in half, so I can get two corners close to each other. Then I get two corners of the duvet into the two corners of the cover I prepared earlier. I then try to make sure that at least one edge of the duvet is inside the cover, but with the corners of the duvet still at the corners of the cover. Then I hold these corners through the cover, draw my arms apart, and give the whole thing one huge shake. When all is going well, the duvet cover miraculously unfolds itself down the length of the whole cover in one movement, and then it's just a matter of minor adustments and doing up the buttons. However you've got to watch that there isn't anything fragile like a lampshade or a small animal in the path of the far end of the duvet, which has a tendency to whiplash during this operation... And occasionally it just goes totally wrong anyway...

Ah, thanks for clearing up the confusion about the theatre. Oh the joys of peer group pressure.

My housemates voted to get rid of Tom! I though this was a little unfair, but they think he's dull. (Actually one of them didn't notice him for the first two weeks!) They reckon it will be more entertaining for Caroline. But she does seem spectacularly annoying to me... Cold in London? I take it you don't go there much in the summer. I was there all of yesterday, and let me tell you, cold was not a word that sprung to mind! I think a thong is probably pretty practical if you've not got air conditioning.

Changing jumper settings means unplugging them from one position, losing them, cursing for about 10 minutes, eventually picking up the machine and shaking it to see if you can get it to come out, then losing it on the floor, cursing for another 10 minutes, finding it, trying to remember which setting it was on before you unplugged it, and then plugging it onto what you really hope is the correct position. (I have done this many times... I also have a collection of spare jumpers for when one inevitably gets lost.)

By the way when you do the CMOS RAM discharge jumper, it may well spark alarmingly - you're basically flattening a battery very quickly (intentionally by the way), so it's occasionally surprisingly loud.

Anyway, by for now.

Anyway...Halibut *does traditional halibut movement* I can't believe you don't know the movement! It's right after the "Halibut if it's good enough for Jesus it's good enough for me!", "Stone him", "Halibut", "Stone him", "Halibut", "Stone him" etc etc...And it is very useful honest, if you ever need a distraction causing just tell me and I'll show you how effective it is. F'rinstance, imagine if you will me in conversation with ex and ex's new girlfriend who happens to be one of my 'friends' who 'forgot' to tell me they were together, my best mate sees me ready to start random tirade of abuse/laughter so shouts Halibut, we both do traditional halibut movement, they are confused, we run away laughing in a moment of distraction, everything is fine and happy See "Halibut, the fish with uses"

I can see your point about the extra hour in bed when the clocks go back but it doesn't actually work because you go to bed later and people wake you up an hour earlier because "that's the time it really is"...when you rule the world maybe you should just invent a law that allows people to get up at anytime before mid day and still be on time for work because that'd definitely get votes Although I am intrigued as to how you will be ruling the world when I've already decided on world domination as my chosen career route...as far as I'm aware no-one's ever managed joint world domination before and as I have plans for the containment of Birmingham I think I should be allowed to go ahead with my plans

Having never been to Australia my only factual knowledge comes from
'Neighbours' and Oscar Wilde so evidently they've passed the Stone Age as everyone in Ramsey Street is intelligent...Sadly I have now lent the book to my friend so I no longer know anything and have reverted to Mill On The Floss on the grounds that if it's that dull
at the start it has to get better as the narrative develops

Hmmm, I still have my doubts about the presence of an angry mob and to be honest with you I am also suspicious as to how accurate the book was I mean how can they know for sure "who invented Strawberry Jam?"

When I said you look like my dad it was more the description of the pipe and...well actually it was just the pipe but stillAnyway as far as I'm aware you are able to tie your hair back which does indicate that you're not bald which also suggests you don't look that much like my dad

My school have actually admitted they were wrong and have now changed the courses back to the traditional ones but they were always doing stuff like that and I or my year were generally at the receiving end. I once questioned them on it and their excuse was that they knew I could take it which should really give you an impression of why I may have encouraged the smallest of arguments with certain teachers

Anyway how am I going to persuade Cambridge to accept me...At first I thought gifts and bribery but then I found out that you can take A-Levels in one year so I'm going to sit a full literature course whilst reading every single book which could be considered a classic and many more which aren't as I think that'll work out cheaper than champagne

As for judging Derby by it's student areas I think it's a fair estimation but if I can't use the tip that is my brothers house (although that is mainly the inside so maybe that's not entirely Derby's fault...I still can't believe they laughed at me for cleaning the kitchen ) as a judge how about the people who I know living there? Admittedly they're all students as well but still

...oh now I'm confused...this bits in the other post so where do I answer...errr...hmmm...can't believe you missed the old man, he's always there, he's like the town monument

Aaha, barbecues...I have just returned from another which luckily was a daytime barbecue so we managed to eat at about 6 Although I'm not so sure it was a barbecue as all the food was cooked even the chicken and there was cheesecake...mmmm...whereas the traditional barbecue would have trifle or rum bananas

As for burning things on barbecues the best stuff tends to be rubbish but I was prevented from doing that by my mate who was muttering about how irresponsible I was being due to toxic gases from plastics and stuff...but to me the obvious thing to do having set Marshmellows on fire (pink ones work best but if they do actually set on fire they taste horrid afterwards...) is to shrink the packaging Actually whilst my mates parents were away a while ago we found out that fairy liquid burns really well...*thinks should probably explain how we found this out*...y'see having welded vast amounts of stir fry to a wok we decided to be sensible and soak it, sadly we failed to let the wok cool down and added the fairy liquid first as opposed to the water, this resulted in very fun chemistry like experiment with fairy liquid globulising and zapping round the wok before igniting...admittedly this didn't actually aid the wok's recovery nor did it smell particularly nice but once the fumes had gone it cleaned quite well

Is a heffer an ugly cow...hmmm...err n

Whilst the womble refused to comment when questioned I have studied it's movements closely and can safely say it has had no contact with anything other than four black and white blotched horses which I saw it approaching in the field over the road...

Paying for my psychological expertise with a fake £50 note seems very unfair I mean how am I ever going to set up a successful fake psychology business if I can't con people out of money

Why can I smell burning...hmmm...wonder what's on fire, I put out a tea towel last week but...oh oh...

It's alright it was only my mobile charger overheating slightly...

Yey someone finally agrees with me about semolina No matter how many times I attempt to persuade people to stop eating what is in effect glue, they still persist and claim it's delicious...I just can't see the attraction...mind you people used to eat Toast Toppers and they were horrid to

If proof readers had read Shakespeares work before he was allowed to put on performances there'd be...well much fewer words than there are now! I mean honestly there are people who try to tell me that fwop isn't a word...evidently it is because if I slapped them with a halibut and shouted "fwop" then they would have been and so it is...*thinks maybe I just need to work on my defence some more*

Whilst you can feel free to use a 'persistant line of questioning' please bear in mind that I have tendencies to do the same thing and as I also have tendencies to never admit defeat you may find yourself getting quite frustrated as I continually defend something which is wrong or else I just turn the questions round and answer all your questions with a question...either that or I'll just get bored and repeatedly write 'why?' Anyway if you think you're particularly questioning I ought to refer you to someone else I know. I met this bloke in the EEI forum and we started posting questions to each other until the messages got to about 24 pages each. We then moved on to e-mails and started 'discussing' philosophical concepts and debates, the last one of which was prompted by me discussing Jackson Pollocks 'Convergence' and how it was meant to ask unanswerable questions. He then questioned the existence of unanswerable questions and eventually he ended up questioning the whole meaning of life in what must have been one of the longest and most confusing e-mail conversations ever. Whatever I wrote he would question, whatever he wrote I would question and so on until we ended up with pages and pages of answers and questions all of which were still attempting to answer whether unanswerable questions existed or not...eventually we both agreed to give up as we'd completely wrecked each others view points on life but I just thought I'd assure you that your questioning is not particularly brutal

Errr I think I said comet...if anything you should be talking about beetroot flavour reindeers, I mean I know my writings illegible but I thought my typing was a bit better

Yeah I didn't like Taming Of The Shrew either so TOS was equally appropriate for that...well until we saw the RSC production and no-one else quite understood us and just thought we were being disruptive teenagers Mind you it did also get renamed the Whipping Of The Hamster and I don't think they understood that either

Hmmm, I've decided I don't want your Elise anymore, I'm not driving on roads anymore...You know I warned you about the particularly viscious cross roads well as my test is even sooner than the soon it was last time my parents finally conceeded to allow me to drive the car...all was going well until the stupid car chose today to break down, imagine if you will the look of horror on my face when I was half pulled out from the scary junction, in the middle of the road and the engine cut completely and the car wouldn't restart...and no I didn't just stall it, the car has kapputted

Err thanks for the instructions of how to put a duvet on although I am now very confused but I shall attempt your method on Friday...if you don't hear from me after that please don't worry I'll just be stuck in the duvet having lost the bit of paper and forgotten the next step Although I have to admit it might not be a good idea as whilst my method is almost good as it's generally alright to crush the stuff on my floor, if your method attacks things higher up on shelves and the like I may end up breaking everything or worse still bursting my Elmo balloon

Hmmm...do you know I think that's the first time I have ever heard a thong being called practical And I do spend a lot of time in London in the summer because I normally go and stay with my aunt but if you go down in October for the motor show and attempt to hack your way through the crowds to get to Earls Court I can't help but feel you'd get a little bit chilly...besides Nichola also wears that huge dead emu feathery thing round her neck so it can't be that warm in the Big Brother house

Just in case you hadn't noticed by the fact that I'm here "MY COMPUTER IS WORKING" I have a shiny new chip in it and once more it is my friend...it still refuses to shut down properly but I have Internet Explorer 5 back and my e-mail is at least pretending to work (I have the icon back it's just the actual e-mail programme thing seems to be a bit shy and is still hiding ) so yeah

Anyway I'm off to read the sports section and sob at the fact that Hakkinen now leads the championship,
Bye

Morning. Sorry for the delay in replying by the way - been a bit busy of late.

Ah, I think I know the bit you're talking about now. Wasn't it "All I said was that this halibut was good enough for Jehova"? Anyway, it sounds like a valuable debating technique, I look forward to using it.

Anyone who unnecessarily wakes me up an hour early with an excuse as flimsy as "that's the time it really is" is taking unnecessary chances with their own welfare. Actually now I think about it, I would probably find it too much like hard work to achieve ire under the circumstances, so in fact the worst they risk is probably an unedifying and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to get me to move... And don't you think that midday is a bit early to expect people to get up by? Mere containment of Birmingham? That seems dangerous - it might escape. I say nuke it from orbit. Anyway, perhaps we should form some kind of pact where if one of us gets to rule the world first, we'll let the other be Vice Evil Overlord or something.

"Everyone in Ramsey Street is intelligent". No, I'm afraid you've lost your grip on reality there. I'm going to have to send for the men in white coats. And my experience with books that start out dull is that they don't necessarily get any better...

They actually claim to know who invented Strawberry Jam? Seems implausible somehow... Finding out who the first person to mass-produce it could be moderately convincing, but I'm pretty sure Strawberry Jam's a pretty old bit of technology!

At least the school have admitted that they were wrong. But their excuse seems pretty lame. Meanwhile, most Cambridge colleges are fairly amenable to bribes, but I think there's a bit of a sliding scale for outlay vs reward. The typical entry point is actually to start giving modest amounts of money after having graduated from the college - this is a great way of getting invited back to your college for lunches, dinners etc. which, if you went to a college that has a particularly good culinary tradition (e.g. my college...) is definitely a Good Thing. Sadly I think if you want to actually gain admission on the back of a bribe, things are probably a little harder. Again I suspect it's easier if you are a post-graduate - if you can fund your own research and living costs, then this will probably make it somewhat easier to become a member of any given college (people who have funding and are merely looking for a place usually have a much easier time getting admitted than people who are also looking for funding, which is typically in pretty short supply in academia). But as for being an undergraduate, well, I'm not aware of anyone having done it - being a member of the royal family appears to be the only guarantee. I know that in America, offering to build, say, a new wing for the library, or a new hall of residence will typically guarantee undergraduate admission for you children in most of the universities, but this sort of thing appears to be less common in the UK, even in Oxford and Cambridge (who admittedly used to do this thing as a matter of course about a hundred years ago...)

So all in all, I suspect that the bribe route is not the right way to go just yet. (And offering to bribe your average college with Champagne is likely to get expensive, given the quality of most college's wine cellars!) Sitting a full literature course in your year out seems to be exactly the sort of thing that they'll like, since they cited that as the main reason for rejecting you. The other thing you could do is think about planning some kind of research project or something. I have no idea what this might consist of in your field, but anything that shows an active interest in what you want to study that goes beyond the minimum requirements to qualify for admission will look good. (Also provides a topic for discussion in the interview - I know if I were interviewing someone who was reapplying I'd ask them what they were planning to achieve in their year out.)

Possibly I was concentrating on something else when I should have been looking for the old man - staying on the road maybe. The speed limits are all rather high round there - there were bits with 50 or 60mph limits which would long ago have been reduced to 30 or 40 round these parts. (And probably festooned with traffic 'calming' measures to boot.) The only local monument I paid much attention to was the golf club car park, which was sadly devoid of all of the TVRs and Ferraris you promised me - it was mostly BMWs with the odd Saab and Volvo.

Hmm, barbecues. Well I've only made it to one this year. My sister just invited me to one at the weekend, which would be great - she's a great cook, and being a vegetarian, would be likely to produce a wide selection of nice side dishes that would provide something to eat whilst the meat is burnt slowly over the course of 4 or 5 hours. And her husband works for a wine importing company, and so they always have an improbably good selection of drinks on offer. Annoyingly though I can't make it - I've got to go to a wedding reception in the evening. Still, I guess there'll be booze aplenty there too.

How do you do cheesecake on a barbecue? And why are pink marshmallows best? Do they burn with brighter colours? Or do you just have something against the colour pink? I've never tried burning fairy liquid, which is a little odd given how enthusiastic a pyromaniac I was when I was younger. The plastic rings that hold six-packs together (that's drinks, rather than well defined torso muscles) are great fun - they tend to melt and burn at the same time, so if you hold them up high, you get little spluttering burning bits of molten plastic streaming off from the rings in a rather attractive fiery waterfall. But be careful what you do it over - the plastic's usually still molten by the time it hits the ground (or carpet, or cat, or whatever...)... Burning it over water is fun - the plastic resolidifies as it hits the water, so you get these little frozen splats of plastic!

Black and white blotched horses eh? Hmm... Clearly stating their allegiance to the cows. The next thing you know, all the computers you use will turn out to have been supplied by gateway!

I like your relaxed attitude to the burning: what's that burning smell? ah, it's just something burning - that's OK. How did you set fire to a tea towel last week?

I always assumed that semolina was just one of the many ways that my school had devised to make the pupils suffer. It came as a great shock to discover that some people actually eat the stuff by choice!

I have no problem with the fact that you take refusal to admit defeat to extremes. I much prefer discussions/arguments where the other person fights back. I've just had the odd email conversation (and even the occasional face to face discussion) where I inadvertently upset someone by being too persistent. So these days I start out a little more cautiously. But if you don't think I'm being brutal, I clearly need to step things up a little. So, why do you feel the need to answer a question with the question 'why'? What's the EEI forum by the way? Of course the only problem with that kind of discussion is that it can have a bit of a tendency to converge on existential nihilism, which I think has the dubious honour of being the least interesting philosophical outlook possible.

Ah, now I go and check, you did say comet, yes. I misread it as cornet. So, what comet?

You don't want my Elise any more? And just as I was about to offer it to you as a gift. Ah well, I'd better keep it for myself then. Anyway, sounds like a less than ideal place to break down... But if you are fazed by the prospect of an unreliable car, then sadly TVR's record doesn't exactly shine here. (Neither does Lotus's - I think it's what comes of basically building race cars for the road. The ability to go for a few thousand miles between breakdowns is actually pretty good for a race car!) Anyway, a suggestion for if you find yourself in this situation again: if the engine has died completely, and you're stranded somewhere obstructive, you can always try driving the car on the starter motor. It won't be especially comfortable, and it won't do the motor a lot of good - if you run for more than about 5 seconds like this, you'll probably fry the motor. But it can be enough to get you out of trouble.

Good luck with the duvet, but watch out for the whiplash.

I guess a thong for the motorshow wouldn't be practical - people would probably assume you were one of the models inexplicably hired to drape themselves over the cars who had simply got lost. And yes, London has usually cooled down a bit by October. But I'm not sure that Nichola's ostrich thing has anything to do with comfort. But then it can't be because she thinks it looks good, surely?

Glad to hear your computer is still alive. Is it noticeably different with its new chip?

Re: Hakkinen, Boo, hiss! He *can't* be allowed to win the championship 3 years running - that's just not on!

How come now my computer works the internet won't? Anyway once more I have resorted to typing in word so once more I apologise for random randomness...although technically anything which goes wrong can be blamed on the spider which was easily twice the size of me which I found lurking in wait for me under my suitcase. I'm telling you it was at least the same size as a small horse... Actually this just gives me proof that cleaning is a bad thing because if I hadn't finally decided to cave to the moaning from my mates and sort my room out I would have never attempted to unpack my suitcase which means that I would never have attempted to unpack my old school bag which was on top of my suitcase which means I would never have found the spider and I would never have run around squealing and then I would never have had to disturb my best mate to come round and remove the spider...so all in all tidying is now proven to be a bad and disruptive thing to my life, spiders lives and my mates lives...actually and my brothers life as I've now moved back into his room due to overwhelming fear of HUGE spideryness

I feel I should warn you that the halibut technique can only be used when at least one other person in the vicinity knows what you're on about. If you were to just randomly shout halibut and do the official halibut movement then that would be obscure and foolish as people would just show pity at your madness rather than confusion at your self acknowledged insanity

So you mean to tell me your mates don't just wander in your house and wake you up when they want to go and do something...you mean this is not normal? Hmmm...so tomorrow when I wake up to find my mate sitting at my desk pretending to be my alarm clock I should just whack him rather than rolling over and going back to sleep? ahhh

As for the standardised waking up time, midday may be slightly early but we have to leave something to allow people to get up early for...I mean this week the latest I've stayed in bed til is about 12.30 so technically when the new time system is introduced I'd be getting up early Although I also think that we should introduce a ban for overly enthusiastic morning people, particularly those who try to wake up others at unearthly hours...my best mate gets up at about 7am every day even at the weekends, the only time she has ever stayed in bed for longer was when I stayed over at her house and having kept her up talking all night she managed to stay asleep til about 10.30...Although I should class that as one of my proudest moments as due to the fact that I never went to bed, technically I was up earlier than her

No you see Birmingham doesn't get to stay with people living in it, the people all get contained somewhere else, instead the city is demolished until it's small enough to fit into the minnelium dome and then all the dogs who were kept trapped in battersea dogs home are allowed to roam free and happy through the streets. Besides we have to keep it so that Bristol *shudders* is made to look slightly better

Hmmm, this pact...what kind of fun would the Vice Evil Overlord get to have, surely once whichever of us was ruling (which btw I think is unfair as you have an...*attempts vague mathmatical sum type thing and gives up*... err, you've had more time to practice) had taken all the fun stuff like removing Birmingham, Bristol and Barnsley (Oooh all places beginning with B, that's a coincidence) from the map and shipping all the cows to some remote island there'd be very little mayhem left for the vice evil one to cause! Although having said that I will note that you instantly assumed the ruler of the world would be evil rather than just eveil or having fun so hmmm

Evidently typed sarcasm doesn't work for me...I mean so far you've believed that I was alert and awake in the mornings and now you think I believe 'Flick', 'Toady' and 'Dionne' are intelligent...unless yours was sarcasm...hmmm so confused Anyway why are the men wearing white goats and are these men attractive?

Oy don't tell me that, how do you ever expect me to read the whole book (rather than just the first two pages, the last two pages and a select amount in the middle) if you go round telling me it's not going to get any better! Anything that dull must have a more interesting purpose and no matter how subtle it may be I shall find it...I bet by the end of it the Mill and the Floss have been converted into a family water park and the random woman who's name has still not been revealed will be happily standing on her bridge and admiring the scenery without worrying about whether she has to be back or not

I'm glad it's not just me who was dubious about the Strawberry Jam claims, I was amused by the entire concept of claiming to know who first ate it but everyone else defended saying that it was perfectly reasonable just as we know who discovered the Penicillin/penecillin/peniicilin/penicilin thing. Admittedly my argument that we still don't know if Fleming did discover it or just whether he was just the first person to record it probably didn't bring them round to my view...apparantly it was just awkwardness

So there's no possibility of me bribing Cambridge? Hmmm, I'll reserve my judgement til Tomorrow and then I'll tell you but I still think it's possible, especially as one woman had a really cute kitten (which sat on my knee throughout the interview but had apparantly visciously attacked everyone else who went near it )and I'd bet if I sent her photo's of my cat accompanied by cat food she'd let me in

The obligatory man on the bench was there today and I have since found out that he was being the obligatory man by the church whilst you were here so that's why you missed him You think the speed limits are high around here? I guess having learnt to drive here I've never really considered it especially as driving at high speed is a lot easier for me than driving at slow speeds...my instructor says I'm the only person he's ever taught who actually seems to have more control at 60/70mph than at 30mph which is possibly quite worrying... Actually when I think about it there's nowhere really fast which shouldn't be...if you drove from Renishaw to the pub at the top of the hill (the one which is handily next to the Moss House bit where I assume the company you went to was) there's only really one road and that's mostly 60 because it classes as countrysidey bit. Although Killarmarsh (which is right at the traffic lights and along abit) has many fun chicanes and speed ramps which have been put in as traffic calming measures...sadly they haven't realised that the only people who speed in Killamarsh are the boy racers and having seen their cars they're not going to care if they wreck their suspension because it's practically non-existent anyway

I would like to point out that I did say that once I'd told you to look out for the Golf Club cars they wouldn't be there so really it's your fault because...errr...it is

Ooh hang on this is vaguely related to cars. I have just got in from the greatest film, ever, I finally persuaded people to see Gone In 60 Seconds despite the fact that I had no idea what it was about and the first thing I saw was Ferrari and then Porsche, Mercedes and Lexus'and GT's and then more Ferraris and the whole film was basically a parade of high performance cars being stolen at excessively high speed and doing great stunts with Nicholas cage stood setting fire to things...It is so good and you have to go and see it as soon as possible because then you'll have loads of time left to go and see it over and over again

Surprisingly enough the cheesecake wasn't actually cooked on the barbecue although that would have been novel...I bet you could though because to bake pastry blind you wrap it in foil and stick dried peas on top so I'm sure incinerating it on a barbecue would have the same effect

Pink marshmellows are best to use because they set on fire quickest but also because they're quite manky and the white ones taste better so to nuke a white one would be unacceptable And it's definitely not that I'm against the colour pink because I think it looks good...on other people...and other things...err ok so I don't like the colour pink

As for burning sixpack holders don't you think that's a lot of effort for what can basically be achieved by sticking your finger in candle wax and globbing it on anything? Although it has to be said that given the choice I'd much sooner melt plastic

Talking of burning it's not that I had a relaxed attitude to the burning mobile phone charger and carpet, it's just that there weren't actual flames just molten plastic and heat...had there have been flames I would've probably run round squealing for a bit first Also compared to past burning things in my room this was fairly minor so it didn't seem that important, the last time I set fire to something in my room (other than the desk because that doesn't count and it could've happened to anyone) was a lot more painful so I squealed a lot about that...although it was my fault as I may have had a plastic torch too close to a very hot bulb which may have in turn melted the torch which kinda got the curtain a bit hot so I woke up thought oh burning, moved the torch to prevent the burning but didn't connect the two and then ended up with a torch welded to my hand...so all in all a small burning modge wasn't too concerning How did I set fire to a tea towel? See this is where it becomes clear that you're underestimating my powers of messyness as otherwise you'd understand how simple it was for me to wreck a place within ten minutes of entering the room. Strictly it wasn't my fault as I'd left the grill on for the next person to finish cooking but possibly forgot to tell anyone, a tea towel was then put on top of the grill and about an hour later I was on the phone and saw smoke coming past, my mate suggested I went and looked but I continued on the phone as I assumed it was nothing important but then when the smoke alarm went off I went in and found large fire on top of the oven and smoke filled room...I then told my mate to wait a minute as once more I picked up the flaming object (really should learn to connect fire with pain ) and dumped it in the sink before I opened the window and carried on talking on the phone

I'm often surprised by the level of trash some people eat...particularly gherkins, which are the one food group which I have never understood the point of but many people eat them as well!

Hmm...whilst you say that you have no problem with me taking arguments to extremes I can't help but feel you'd change your tune if you suddenly found an essay style e-mail which just waffled on for pages and pages but never actually came to any point as this is generally my way of winning arguments via computers...If you're really lucky you'd get about 50 web pages attached as well so by the time you'd read them all you'd forget what the original subject up for debate was and will just assume I'm right I'd also like to point out that having lived with a genius elder brother for 16 years nothing you can argue will seem brutal, this was the bloke who presented me with a certificate on the day before I sat my GCSE's to prove that I was a completely stupid and would never achieve anything in life so you see whatever you said would seem fairly polite Anyway why do you feel the need to question my use of the word 'why'? Oh sorry the EEI forum is the Exclusively Eddie Irvine Forum which members of his fan club talk about F1 and other Eddie related matters...in reality this season we sit and discuss just about anything but and selectively come in with 'Hmming' noises after races and articles about his hair or who's the most recent one of us to have had dinner/drinks/met his parents...it's all very serious Anyway I wouldn't say our discussions were nihilistic as there was no way you could have said that either of us were lacking in belief, I think the main point was that as he was older than me (and you come to think of it )we both had very different perspectives on life and whilst each of us started with really strong beliefs about most things we kind of ended up merging and then swopping view points whilst still arguing against each other...it was all great fun Besides all philosophical perspectives can become boring if you're not actually believing what you're saying, quite a lot of people seem to just quote from books in order to mention philosophers names or theories without actually using their own ideas so I think this tends to be where nihilism occurs as they end up contradicting themselves so much they have to follow the route of scepticism...although that's just my opinion

What comet? *thinks shouldn't have started this distraction technique* err the reindeer it just flew past my window closely followed by prancer, blitzen and err snowdrop and twinkletoes...

Actually TVR's have got a lot better recently even Jeremy Clarkson admitted that they have a high reliability so there you go...although Nicholas Cage is now my new hero so maybe I should start quoting him

Sorry have to do this "Nichola's going to go, Nichola's going to go, lalalalalala,
Nichola's going to go"

My computer is working fine now, we have reached a new understanding in that if I stop saying I hate it and prevent myself from hitting it with stuff then it'll stop enacting revenge and crashing, exploding, dying horrendously and deleting files at random...well so it says My internet still doesn't work though but I think that's more to do with the curse of BT!

Finally I'd just like to say that I'm glad it's not me who feels that anyone other than Hakkinen winning would be good as there's something intrinsically wrong with him winning three times in a row just because he has the McLaren...I say stick him in a Prost and then see him win anything In fact I say stick Nicholas Cage in the McLaren and then he'd be even quicker than Schumi! Please do not ruin my worship of Nicholas Cage as whilst I realise he didn't do the stunts I am conveniently ignoring this fact...much like I'm ignoring that in 9 hours from now I may end up troughing chocolate and cake in order to drown my sorrows

Anyway, til then I'll hide under a cushion and I'm sure it'll all be fine Night!

The fact that as soon as your computer starts working properly, the inernet breaks, and vice versa is simply part of the whole balance of the universe. However the karmic balance feature of your computer can be disabled with the yin-yang icon in control panel. The spider, in this case, was an innocent bystander, although it is still not to be trusted. And you're right, suitcases should never be unpacked - you can always buy new suitcases.

OK, I shall have to train a team of crack halibut cognoscenti if this is going to work.

Um, no, by and large people don't wander in and wake me up. If it's really necessary, they will sometimes try and call me just loud enough that I can hear them if I'm already awake, but not loud enough to wake me. It has to be something pretty serious if they actually try to wake me up. (E.g. the time that one of them got stuck in a bedroom due to a disfunctional doorhandle, and made a lot of noise until I got up and helped them escape.) So unless they have a good excuse, violence is certainly justified.

I think it should certainly be illegal to get all self-righteous about being a morning type person. These people whose body clocks actually run at about 24 hours per day or less and never suffer from insomnia and who just wake up automatically at about 6:45am and wouldn't be able to stay asleep all morning of they tried - they're evil I tell you. Yet many of them like to claim that being an early riser is somehow virtuous, and that those who like to make the most of the opportunites for sleep that each morning affords are somehow morally corrupt or something. I think they should be forced to wash down pro plus with strong coffee every hour between 6pm and midnight so they know what it's like!

What's would the connection between Birmingham, the dome and the Battersea dogs home be then? Or is that where you're keeping all the people from Birmingham once you evict them?

It's a known fact that to be ruler of the world you have to be evil. Have you never watched a film? Anyway, I'm sure there'd be plenty of scope for evilness to share, but if that's really the way you feel about it, then I can lock you in the dungeons instead if you like.

I've often found that typed sarcasm doesn't work, so sorry I failed to spot that. And don't try and trick me into thinking I made a typing mistake there - I went back and checked, and they're definitely men in white coats. They couldn't be in goats - I know this because I already got their goat. (Anyway, would you *really* find a man attractive if he was in a goat? Yuck!)

How do I expect you to read a whole book? Don't ask me - I thought you were the one who did English and such. Anyway, standing happily on a bridge doesn't sound all that gripping to me, but either you must find practically everything interesting, or you've had your expectations lowered quite spectacularly by how dull the book is so far. I must go out and buy a copy so that I can deliberately not read it.

I think the main reason we think we know who discovered penicillin (your first guess was right according to my dictionary) is that papers were published on the subject. In fact he may well not haved been the first - and he is lucky to be remembered for it, since I understand that his research assistants did most of the actual work on it, and he pretty much failed to realise the significance to start with. I'd say it's pretty reasonable to assume that anyone identified as the inventor or discoverer of something is almost certainly not... Alexander Graham Bell is not the only person to have invented the telephone, he merely got his patent application in an hour earlier before the next most alert person to have invented it. (The patent office in the US actually use this in an advert to illustrate why patents are a Good Thing. To me it illustrates precisely what's wrong with patents, but never mind...) The person whose name gets remembered is probably the sneakiest or the one with the most political clout (i.e. the sneakiest).

Ah, so the man on the bench was indeed absent. I have clearly missed out. And the main reason I think that the speed limits are a little high is that there were a few blind corners which if you took them at the posted speed limit, you'd have real difficulty bringing the car to a safe halt if there was an unexpected obstruction round the corner, e.g. a stationary car, or a horse or something. Now strictly speaking that's OK - speed limits aren't supposed to indicate that it's necessarily safe to go at the posted speed, so you're supposed to use your judgement and slow down where necessary. But round here they take the nanny state approach of setting speed limits to be appropriate for the least safe bit of road in the vicinity, so you never get to exercise your own judgement. The stupid thing about traffic calming measures is that they tend to mean that lots of people brake for them then accelerate away from them hard, meaning that residents still get people travelling at much the same speed as before down their road, only now they're making more noise and pollution, plus there's far more likely to be a traffic jam during the rush hour. Brilliant...

I know you warned me that there might not be any good cars in the golf club car park, but that's not going to stop me from holding it against you.

I was wondering about seeing Gone in 60 Seconds, but I don't think anyone I know particularly wants to see it. I'm told it's got a Lotus in it too. (An Esprit, apparently.)

I shall set about burning some pink marshmallows at my earliest convenience then. Any other recommendations for mindless acts of arson while I'm about it? And believe me the six pack thing is much more impressive than candlewax.

OK, a smell of burning plastic is less alarming than actual flames. On the other hand it's often a precursor to actual flames (take my word for it - I did electronics at school, and the smell of burning plastic was a frequent event, as were small fires and minor explosions, which was the main reason I did electronics ). On the other hand it seems like you are an old hand at firestarting, so possibly my advice is unnecessary. And on general principals I didn't have any problem with the liklihood of you setting fire to a teatowel I was just interested in the details. It does sound mostly like it was whoever put the towel on the grill's fault (bit of a strange thing to do really), although again I find your laid-back attitude to smoke and other preliminary evidence of fire ("I assumed it was nothing important") impressive. Speaking of which, did you see Big Brother last night? I don't know why, but seeing that chip pan blazing away merrily in the background whilst they were training for the assault course made me laugh out loud.

Ah, winning arguments through extended misdirection. Well that can be quite successful, but used on me it mostly depends on how interested I was in the original topic. In cases where I am, I tend to drag the subject back (e.g. my latest volley in the discussion on Searle's Chinese Room elsewhere on this site (the 'Nice article' thread)), but otherwise I'll just let it drift, and find something else to disagree with in the new subject. The only way this really works against me is when someone changes the subject in a deliberate and focussed way (rather than through sheer quantity), and blatantly pretends that this is what the subject was all about in the first place. However I'm getting wise to that one too now. And why shouldn't I question your use of the word 'why'?

I wasn't accusing you of being a nihilist, I'm just saying that the main problem with an argumentative style that just questions the meaning of every question is that it often eventually leads down that path. Actually solipsism would probably be a more accurate description. (I tend to equate nihilism with existential nihilism, and associate both with solipsism, which isn't right and doesn't really help - sorry about that.)

And anyway, I don't think scepticism's all it's cracked up to be.

I'm prepared to believe that a modern TVR is fairly reliable...for a TVR. But I suspect it's still a pretty different level of reliability from, say, a Porsche. But I'd still prefer a TVR I think. (Not as much as a Lotus though. )

So it could be a good fortnight re Big Brother - last week Caroline went, and this week it could be Nichola. (I'll be fairly amazed if it isn't.)

Throwing stuff at computers does just tend to make them cross. And as I've told you before, the only sure fire way of getting a computer to work better is to swear at it.

I don't think it's particularly just because Hakkinen is in the faster car that I find offensive (although annoyingly he is clearly talented too - otherwise wouldn't Coulthard be ahead of Schui too?), it's more that I just dislike him as a person. Most of the drivers, when they win, I tend to feel vaguely pleased for them, but for some reason it just annoys me with Hakkinen. I think it doesn't help that he always looks so miserable when he comes in second or third, whereas most of the drivers always look delighted when they get a podium place.

Anyway, let me know when you've emerged from the cushions!

*runs in bouncing, dancing and squealing*
HELLO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
EEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Guess what????????????????
I have four A's!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Much excitement
And I've stopped sobbing and hugging now so I'm off to the ball...and my gown still fits despite chocolate troughing
And I have a matching handbag at last
Today is a good day

*Runs off squealing and bouncing and dancing*

Woohoo! Have a Y!

Don't worry I did...and worryingly there are pictures to prove it

OK so that was meant to be me grinning like this rather than random letters

'Tis OK - I had guessed as much.

So, how's the head? Or are you fortunate enough not to suffer from the aftermath of celebrations?

And how was the ball?

*Continues to sit bouncing*
*starts dancing*
*decides to sing her song too, "Clowns to my left, jokers to my right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you"*
*calms down briefly*
HELLO!!! I'm still in a excessively cheerful mood so this may be stranger than normal as I'll keep breaking into song. Thursday night was such good fun...possibly the greatest Thursday night ever...and as a result I may break into a dance routine as well Was quite sad too though, had to say goodbye to everyone and excess alcohol made that quite hard...we were supposed to be back at 2am ish but due to the fact that everyone was wandering round hugging me and then I was wandering round hugging them we didn't manage to get home til 4.30am Although that could have also had something to do with my navigational skills being less than effective after 8 hours of drinking, which is why we ended up about 30 miles away from where we should have been...but in my defence it really should be the drivers responsibility to navigate and as she was the only one sober she should have known better than to listen to me when I say straight on *starts singing again "It's raining men, hallelujah", and does the obligatory 6th form anthem dance ~bounce and kick and swing and bounce~* Hmmm really should calm down...and there are photos...

Anyway Thursday night was much better than Thursday morning as amazingly I was on time to get my results!!!Me awake and out of the house at 10am, how impressive ...admittedly I was still the last one to get them at about 11.30 but that's beside the point...and it was my mates fault for crying as I then sat crying with her for an hour and a half conveniently ignoring the scaryness of collecting my own results...but I was on time to start with

I've drifted to irrelevancy again now haven't I? Oops I shall now endeavor to calm down and write something sensiblish *starts singing "Ooops I did it again, got lost in my..."*...sorry...there's just no excuse for Britney-)

Right then...would I be right in thinking you've never seen Father Ted? Just an observation no real relevance...

Anyway I have reason to believe that you made up the whole kharmic alignment of the computer in order to provide me with false hope...however, I found a refresh button which will hopefully have the same effect

As for the spider I hope you're not defending the eveil little creature! Honestly don't tell me you've been fooled into the "it's more scared of you than you are of it" mode of belief...the spider was not, is not and never will be innocent, it was sat in it's HUGEness visciously waiting to leap out and bite me once I attempted to tidy my room. But I am now wise to it, after leaping up and down a bit squealing I realised that whilst ever it thinks you're a hefty great elephant with a high pitched voice only matched by Celine herself the spider will go into defence mode and hide under anything it can to escape thus allowing me (well I say me...the possibility is there but it's highly unlikely) to trap it and allow it to parachute out the window Anyway you'll be pleased to know that three weeks after I got back from holiday my suitcase is still packed and now has more than ever in it as after the spider episode I took all the clothes off my floor and stuffed them in there...admittedly I am now limited in my range of clothing but I feel wearing evening dresses to cook my dinner is perfectly acceptable

Right, so this thing of waking me up at absurdly early hours of the morning is unjustified? I suspected as much but seen as how everyone else just found it funny to sit on the end of my bed at 9am I thought maybe I was just being lazy...but the way I see it whilst they're all being lazy at 2 in the morning I'm up bouncing about with energy *"the wonderful thing about tiggers, is that I'm the only one"* so really they're just mismanaging their days

As for the early morning people I agree and when we rule the world (I've decided that there's more chance of this occuring if we join forces) we should ban them...well not entirely as I'd loose my best mate but we should at least make it illegal to be excessively cheerful between the hours of 7 and 11am Having said that we need to put in an allowance for being at Silverstone because when I'm there I'm always up and bouncing around at about 4am so that has to be allowed

I need a connection in order to justify removing Birmingham? Hmmm, that's a novel idea Actually before I go any further I just ought to check that you don't have any connection with Birmingham as in one of our English lessons when we were studying accents I made a fatal error of starting on about Birmingham (I was led into it) and my plans for the population, only to be informed by my teacher that he came from Birmingham...still he didn't have the accent so he'd evidently had the sense to leave

I've seen many films where the ruler of the world is eveil...like the thing with the Rupert Murdoch parody...possibly Tomorrow Never Dies...with Pierce Brosnan as James Bond...and tuxedos...*"well I don't know why I came here tonight, I got the feeling that something ain't right"* Sorry...word association distracted me where was I oh yeah but as I've studied many films with evil people ruling *shudders at the memory of Blade Runner* I think I should reverse conventions and be nice...if you still feel the need to be an evil ruler I guess I could just go round correcting all your evil doings

Hehehe you actually checked to see if you wrote goats, hehehehe And I never said I'd find the men in goats attractive. . .I took them as two separate entities and merely asked if the men in general would be attractive

Having consulted a wide audience (well one English teacher) the Mill of Candy Floss apparently gets better fairly soon, it's allegedly meant to be one of the most moving books ever written...sadly I've now lost it but when it turns up I'll be the first to read it

As for patents I can see the advantage of them as for my graphics project we had to design and produce a torch with packaging. I made a camping torch which floated, had a base light and a illuminated side which was in the shape of a convenient lantern type thingy...anyway it was the kind of torch which I always want when I go camping and could never buy. It got sent off to be moderated, it returned with a A*, me think yeah, must've been good, the next time the innovations catalogue arrived I found an identical version of my torch (colour scheme and everything) which was hailed as the best new torch for outdoor use of recent years Sadly whilst I really want one I can't bring myself to part with money to buy something which I thought of and didn't think to market...still at least it was obviously a good idea

Anyway I have now retrieved my book and can tell you that (interestingly whilst I'm sat here flicking through this children's book I have just found an entry promoting the use of cocaine...told you I didn't trust this book ) I was actually misquoting the book of knowledge and it was redcurrent jam not strawberry jam but the answer to the all important question "who invented red currant jam?" is as follows; "This is a matter of dispute between England and France. In August 1937 the French unveiled an obelisk to the memory of Perrin Lamonthe, for whom they claimed an honour, at Velaines-en-Barrois. Lamonthe, they say, first made this delightful confection in 1364 (I'm sorry but how do they know this?). On the other hand, English cooks claim that Edward the 1st used the jelly a century before that date". So you see in the fascinating world of red currant jelly we have scandal

I don't know how you can be so relaxed about missing the obligatory man on a bench! Round here he's the main entertainment, if you go past the bench and he's not there then the whole day's just ruined. . . I mean without the synchronised shout of "obligatory old man on bench" then there's just no point in travelling on buses

And I don't think you should be so down on traffic calming measures at least you seem to be saying that people slow down in Cambridge, we just tend to get people accelerating throughout and shouting "chicane". . . oh wait that could just be me

I think it's very unfair for me to get the blame for you not seeing any cool cars when I did actually forewarn you. . . I generally accept the blame for most things but I did specifically take the time to absolve myself from blame here

You have to go and see Gone In 60 Seconds as it's the best film I've seen in ages and even my mate who has no interest in cars whatsoever grudgingly admitted that he thought it was brilliant to And it does have more than one Lotus in it I think it's just that I can't cope with the plural due to the apostrophe thing so I missed it out

Ooh phone ringing hang on . . . novelty, I've just been invited to Monaco, that's fun. . . wonder if I can justify it under a student loan? Does seem unlikely but it may be worth a try

Hmmm I know what else you could try burning but I don't know how much you'd appreciate it. . . purely by accident we found that white chocolate is extremely flammable and I mean extremely. We were melting it over the camping stove and we turned to look at the Duck which was eating our tent (bear with me this story has a point ) and when we looked back the pair of us were left holding our pen knives with a large flaming glob at the end. . . what's more interesting is that the level of sugar is so high that it's exceptionally hard to blow the flames out so you're forced to either leave the chocolate (which can never be tolerated) or you have to eat it whilst it's still on fire which is interesting to say the least...although it might just have had meths on it

Why do we seem to have turned to pyromania in all the topics? Aaah well I did electronics too. . . well I did my mates electronics project so I think that vaguely counts but we never set anything on fire. . . the only thing which ever involved flames was in physics when the lab set on fire but I think I've told you about that before. Actually we did set the graphics classroom on fire too but that was partly aided by our teacher so that didn't really matter

Do you know if I didn't know better I'd say that you've started watching Big Brother and actually following the episodes I did see the chip pan episode and for some reason it reminded me of something I'd do but I did wonder why no-one did anything to stop it burning, even I would have been slightly concerned by that. . . although the ceilings are very high in there Mind you talking of Big Brother, having watched every single episode since it started I missed the whole eviction of Nick thing. Whilst we were at the ball I was forced to escape outside and there were about five other people all stood ringing people to try and find out what happened with Nick so we missed that completely and I then I went out on Friday as well so I missed the special and that's like the most interesting thing that's ever happened

Hmm, you do realise you've just told me how to win an argument against you? Foolish man
Btw why should you be allowed to question my use of the word 'why'?

Hmm I see your point (yes this is me agreeing with something you've said) the Porsche 911 has to be more reliable as it can be driven through glass doors, road barriers, trucks and can escape police cars by driving straight through factories...

I don't think your method of swearing at computers is particularly useful...my computer and I have reached a very happy agreement and it's working perfectly well now, as long as I stop playing trashy arcade games on it it lets me stay connected for hours on end...*looks around carefully, decides to use a highly complex and intricate code* . . . neve eht tenretni si gnikrow ! I mees ot evah ekorb eht esruc fo tenretnitB

Hmmm just for the record, Hakkinen is ahead of Schumi on points alone and that's only because he has the more reliable car. Schumi is evidently the best and no further discussion is required Oh wait except to say that Jenson was robbed

Hmm having gloated about the internet I had better leave before it learns to read backwards and takes revenge,

bye

*watches Tinkerbell bounce up and down*
*starts to drift into hypnotised trance, so decides to stop watching...*

Isn't it "Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right"? Or are you on a different verse?

So you're in a good mood then? (I'm such an ultra-sensitive bloke that I can tell these things instinctively...) Raining men eh? So the weather in Snefiela hasn't got any less strange since your last SMS then?

And you are quite right, there is indeed no excuse for Britney. Something should be done!

But you are wrong about something else: I am quite familiar with Father Ted, and the spectacular Eurovision contribution to which you alluded. Two of my friends are, or rather were Catholics. They tell me that Father Ted is "essentially a documentary".

As if I'd ever make something up about a computer - I'm an expert, and no computer expert would ever do such a thing! *starts to look nervous and shifty, wondering if he's blown the entire industry's cover* And besides I said the spider wasn't to be trusted didn't I?

I think having your suitcase packed some three weeks after returning from holiday shows an admirable foresight and degree of planning for your next holiday, and is thus a wholly positive and good thing. And taking to wearing evening attire is simply evidence of being a class act.

No, waking you up at absurd hours in the morning is not funny, your friends are clearly twisted sadists. However there is absolutely no excuse for not being full of energy come the small hours of the morning, and people who were foolish enough to get up early have only themselves to blame. Anyone who says otherwise is clearly just wrong, wrong I tell you! (For some reason I never really took to formal debating...)

I think the rule would have to be that enthusiasm between the hours of 7am and 11am should be strictly forbidden *unless* there is at least one natural late riser around who is actually awake and enthusiastic, in which case there is clearly sufficient justification for a relaxation of the rules. Otherwise the death penalty should be mandatory.

I wasn't asking you to justify Birmingham's removal - clearly this should come at the top of anyone's list of moral principals. I was simply asking out of curiosity where the Battersea dogs' home came into it.

Tomorrow Never Dies is indeed the Bond film you are thinking of, with the rather excellent Jonathon Pryce as the villain. I've a feeling there's an alternate connection to Stuck In The Middle there - is Jonathon Pryce in 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead'? (It was after seeing Tim Roth in one of the leading roles that Taranteatime that he got him to star in Reservoir Dogs.) Failing that I'm sure there's a reasonably direct connection, probably involving Kevin Bacon.

OK, so would the men in coats, that's 'coats', be attractive? Shouldn't think so - if they're in white coats, they're probably scientific types.

Hey, English teachers can't be trusted - one of them told me that The Mayor of Casterbridge would get better. This turned out to be a lie, which was remarkable, given how tear-jerkingly dull the first chapter was. (I was given it to read once as punishment in a detention. Didn't like it much. Was very distressed when not longer afterwards it turned out to be one of my GCSE set texts. )

See what I mean? Patents are a means by which rich corporations get to wield an unjustifiable level of power over individuals and smaller companies - you can be almost certain that the company that sells your torch secured patents for its design. The vast majority of patents issued are not used to benefit investment in invention, they are used by big companies to buy power. It's not helped by the fact that the US patent agency has plaques over peoples desks to remind them that they are in the business of granting patents to their clients. (This is absolutely not what the part of the US constitution that makes patent law constitutional says.) And of course most of the rest of the world tries to align itself to America... Almost all of my experience with patent law is with big companies exploiting it cynically. Most of the situations I've come across where individuals have used it to protect their inventions it has been of dubious benefit, and in some cases simply cost them a lot of money and yet ultimately failed to deliver them the protection it promised. (Frank Whittle's patent on the jet engine being an obvious case in point - he spent a lot of his own money on this, but was ultimately shafted by the government, who were acting in the interests of big business, short-sightedly as it turned out, because GE, an American company, have probably cashed in more than anyone else on this, a British invention...)

I think the main problem I have with patents is that they're basically available to anyone who can afford them, regardless of the quality of the submission. I think they should be very much harder to obtain, but also a lot cheaper - if the patents granted actually met criteria that they are *supposed* to meet (i.e. must be original, non-obvious and creative) then you'd see the number issued each year drop to a fraction of the current rate. I've read a fair few patents, and most of them failed on all 3 counts!

Hmm... Cocaine was relatively respectable a few years ago wasn't it? Sherlock Holmes was supposed to be a regular user. Used to be the 'Coke' in Coca-Cola, from what I remember too. Ah, *red currant* jam, well that makes all the difference. It makes me so happy to know that there are people who dedicate their lives to such issues.

Well it depends on the kind of traffic calming - some of the measures have ramps on that you'll ground your car on if you don't slow down. But the ones that are simply unnecessary extra obstacles, yes, those just make it more fun. (Particularly in the Elise...)

It may be unfair for you to get the blame about the lack of cool cars, but hey, life's unfair. And you didn't so much as absolve yourself from blame as admit guilt in advance!

Inability to spell the plural of Lotus is a common problem, and one shared by Lotus Cars... On the Lotus mailing list, a frequent question is "What's the plural of Lotus?" to which the answer is "Whatever you feel like really - nobody seems to know." Lotuses is fairly popular, but not definitive. And apparently Gone in 60 Seconds also has a Lotus Elite in it. But I've still not seen it.

Monaco eh? *hmm...time for one of my casual references to my travels * When I was in Monaco last summer I found it pretty disappointing to be honest. It seems to combine the cramped conditions and oppressively crowded roads of London with frightening bicyclists-with-deathwishes more numerous than in Cambridge, and the atmosphere of the Northern Line in rush hour on a hot summer's day. Oh and it's a police state, which is fine if you turn up in a Lotus, but if your car looks shabby (or you look shabby and aren't in your flash car) they pull you over and ask you what your business is, and often turn people away, which is all a bit frightening. (I think there's one policeman for every 10 residents in Monaco.) And whilst Casino Square is OK, I suppose, mostly it's a bit of a dump. The view of it across the harbour (for which of course you have to leave the centre) is impressive I'll admit. Not pretty, but it's impressive... But that's about the best thing I can find to say about it, and I'm not in any hurry to get back.

But don't let me put you off.

I'm sure I'd appreciate burning white chocolate - it's not like I'd want to eat it. Oh, you did eat it. Whilst it was still at burning temperature. Hmm... That's almost as strange as preferring white chocolate to dark chocolate.

Why have so many threads turned to pyromania? Well, all things must eventually turn to dust...given some matches and sufficient boredom. If you did an electronics project without setting anything on fire, then surely you missed the best bit! Actually I didn't often set things on fire in physics practicals - I used to set things up carefully so that they would glow, white hot sometimes, but usually managed to stop short of flames - you can keep it going longer that way. Although as I think I mentioned I occasionally misjudged things and produced explosions. But one of my proudest moments was setting a ceramic sink on fire in a chemistry lesson. (My chemistry teacher was extremely annoyed when, after a year of messing about in his lessons, I got an A...)

Um, yes, I've become something of a Big Brother watcher... A friend of mine went and looked at the web site after the chip pan fire. Apparently the producers let it burn for quite a long time because they thought the people would do something about it, but when they realised that they were such a bunch of idiots that they weren't going to, they had to send someone in to sort it out... Now I didn't actually see the episode where Nick went, but I did see the hour-long special where he got found out by the house mates. It was great! Did you see tonight's? It's all a bit bizarre with this new person in. I wasn't sure that was such a good idea when I heard they were going to do it, but now she's there, it seems like quite a shrewd move - it's clearly pissed Mel off completely, and has thrown a spanner in the works for her flirting. Doing something like this to completely unbalance the group dynamic just when they had all got comfortable with each other and all the trouble makers had been evicted is probably just what was required, since it was in danger of getting a bit predictable. It's almost as though they planned it...

How do you know I wasn't just fooling you into trying an argumentative technique that wouldn't actually work? Why are you so concerned about who is allowed to question whom about their questions?

I've not actually read the 911 brochure, so I didn't realise that they were guaranteed to be able to do all of those things. Although frankly I'd have thought that it's most promising strategy for escaping police cars would simply be to drive much faster than they can... Oh and I now have someone else convince me that I want a TVR...

I think you've discovered the secret - say the name of your hellish internet provider backwards, and suddenly your internet connection starts working.

"Hakkinen is ahead of Schumi on points alone" And how many other ways are there of winning the F1 championship?

Anyway, it's late, must sleep. Bye!

*looks around and see's tumble weed blowing through the forum*
Yes well...I guess averaging a week to reply is not that bad...possibly...maybe
*hands over some dark chocolate as a peace token*
Err...Ooops?

Before I start I have to tell you that we have discovered that in actual fact the things which burn best on camp fires *giggles at the image which has just come into her head* are tracksuit bottoms...and for once it wasn't me who set them on fire There I was minding my own business lying on the grass watching shooting stars in the sky (that was added in case you started on about Reeves and Mortimer ) whilst absentmindedly melting marshmallows as we all sat round the camp fire and all of a sudden my marshmallow ignited, my mate blew it out but managed to blow the flame straight onto my leg allowing me a good ten minutes of amused squealing Still it did allow us to work out that the two boys in the tent next to us weren't actually very drunk but were French instead...

Oh yeah and just in case you were wondering, *smiles innocently* spending three days with your mates in the glorious 30 degree sun, lying at the side of rivers, paddling in streams, sun bathing in fields and walking through pretty valleys whilst intermittently reading, visiting pubs and munching on ice-cream, chocolate and marshmallows does allow you to get a very nice tan...just in case you wondered

Anyway... actually I think the lyrics are "Clowns to the left of me jokers to my right, here I am"...although that's just me being deliberately pedantic

I'm very impressed with your intuition about my good mood, I have no idea how you worked it out...And apparently "It's raining men" is our 6th form anthem, admittedly I never realised this until the ball, I always assumed we played it a lot in the common room because it was a good song...and I thought the synchronised dancing we did to it was just a fun thing Funny how you spend so long wanting to leave school but then when you've left it's quite sad isn't it...

*sits pondering the thought for a while before putting the song on very loud and singing along*

As for Father Ted being a documentary I always suspected as much as Father Jack bears more than a passing resemblance to my father...so much so that he actually has his own pet brick

My brother makes stuff up about my computer all the time f'rinstance he claims that BT internet is now working...most bizarrely though people pay him money to do it but then I've seen his website with all his latest computery discoveries on it and impressively he actually looks like an expert...but you never heard me say that because that's almost a compliment

And as for the spider, I don't actually think that you said it wasn't to be trusted, I think you actually said that the HUGE scary and vicious (that reminds me the cows I told you about stole my sunglasses and wouldn't give me them back so somewhere there is a cow in Hope (hehehehe) looking very smug and cool )spider with huge nasty sharp pointy teeth was an innocent victim in the whole suitcase/tidying episode...which is not true

By the way my suitcase is still packed although it has now been joined by a 65ltr rucksack which will also not be unpacked as I might wander off again soon...sadly this means that not only do I not have all my good clothes which I took on holiday I also don't have my walking clothes which means I am now actually limited to all the stuff I'd wear when I'm going out and all the stuff I'd wear to play with wood and tools (some people call it carpentry but I think that's going a bit too far )and things...which does make it quite hard to look sensibly dressed so I suspect I'm going to be forced to unpack soon

*looks around to check that no-one's listening to her scandalous news and then whispers* there's something horribly wrong happening...I keep waking up before 9am and on Friday...*checks once more*...I was awake and dressed at 8am and bouncing around outside in a cheerful fashion! I think my friends madness is starting to rub off on me and before long I'll be going to bed before 2am and actually being out of the house before midday...it's very worrying

Hmmm...I still can't help but feel that your ruling of the world may be a bit harsh, admittedly being enthusiastic about mornings *looks ashamed due to previous revelation* may be a crime but surely it doesn't warrant the death penalty? *starts to wonder whether joining forces to rule the world is such a good idea*

My Birmingham/Battersea dogs home plan may seem a bit harsh to some people so I don't think it's wise to broadcast it until after I've made myself ruler of the world as I doubt it'd help my campaign... although as you're planning on giving half the population the death penalty I think my ideas may seem quite mild in comparison

Jonathon Pryce wasn't in the Rosencrantz (gaaaa psychological reference!) thing, that was Gary Oldman, Tim Roth and Richard Dreyfuss and I'm surprised that Tarantino liked Roth in it as it was panned by most of the critics for being too long and serious...but I've not seen it so I can't actually comment As for Kevin bacon are you telling me that I've found someone else who understands the omnipotent Kevin Bacon thing? Finally! I've been telling people this for years and have proved it to be true on several occasions but still it takes hours often weeks for people to believe me Now lets see...

*Thinks hard about the possibility of attractive scientists* my last boyfriend was a physicist and he seemed attractive to start with ..nope I see your point, although George Clooney is a doctor in ER and doctors have to have vague scientific training so I guess that's a possibility...*realises her argument is somewhat flawed and so changes the subject*

As this is a night of scary revelations (well revelation and I'm going to force myself to stay awake tonight so I can sleep straight through tomorrow) I'd also like to point out that I am actually enjoying the "Fleece On The Moss"...but no it gets worse, not only am I enjoying it but I spent several hours of sunbathing time, reading it...but no it gets worse, not only that but *whispers* I got so entranced by it that it actually made me cry and I'm only on the 8th chapter...it's awful, next I'll be enjoying Far From The Maddening Crowd

In a vague reference to the patent thing what annoys me most is that people keep applying for, and being granted, patents for living things such as sheep and genes. I know there's all the stuff with the Genome (?) and I realise that it's alleged to be a great discovery but I don't see how one scientist can patent what is essentially a natural occurrence in humans...and to patent whole sheep that's insanity whether you altered the genetic code or not(which is also wrong from my viewpoint but I'll not start with that again)...and to patent genes for blue eyes and blond hair and the like is just reverting to the perfect race ideology...it's just wrong...but I'll stop myself before I start with "and another thing..." and move onto the arrogance of scientists as it may not go down too well

Coca Cola used to have cocaine in it? *looks dubious* Is that why the polar bears can talk?

Oh yeah and moving away from the "How Much Do You Know?" book I have an even more fun book now which we found when we were camping...well not exactly found we bought it, well I bought it my mate found it but the thought was there...I've forgot my point now...oh yeah the books called "180 games for one player" and it's so funny. It was written in the 1950s but we can't work out if it's meant to be serious or not. F'rinstance there's a game called 'Shortcut' where the aim is to take an hour long bus trip, get off the bus and find you way home, the thing is it has a bit at the end which says perfectly seriously something like "If it takes you more than two days to return home we suggest you find a new game, in actual fact you already have, it's called lost man"

I think the plural of Lotus should be Loti like the plural of Locus is Loci...although that's mathematical so maybe it's not to be trusted

So you weren't too keen on Monaco then? Yeah right, you can not call Casino square a dump My best mates boyfriend took her to Monaco last year and she loved it, my grand prix mates have been going for years and they love it too so I believe not a word of it Actually maybe I should have stated that I'd been invited to Monaco for a fortnight in order to watch the Grand Prix next year and as the friends I'd be going with are the ones I was telling you about who had dinner with Eddie's parents last time they went and were staying in the same hotel as Fisichello and know several of the team members...it should be quite fun

You think I've read the 911 brochure, you reckon I'd actually start reading something and finish it at the same time...aah well, nope all my knowledge is gained from Nick Cage and Bruce Willis films and as such is highly reliable and can be trusted As for having someone else convincing you that you need a TVR all I can say is that it's about time and they're obviously a very intelligent and sensible person with exceptional taste

Tb tenretni sah emoceb a eugav llehs fo na PSI tub nehw ti seod krow s'ti yrev doog dna s'ti eerf os sti ton oot dab...ylbissop...od ouy wonk taht I nac won epyt lyraen sa ylkciuq sdrawkcab sa I nac sdrawrof, od uoy kniht s'ereht a tekram rof siht tros fo lliks? I dluoc ekam ym senutrof

Ahem...anyway what I meant was that whilst Hakkinen (pah he did it again and once more it was due to the Zonta's fault!) may be ahead on points he is not ahead on skill, talent, racing aggression, charisma and general greatness like Schumi is...unless of course Schumi's up against Jenson in which case my loyalties start to become confused...much like when he was up against Jacques in 97

Anyway, I'm off to feed a vicious rabbit so, night

Hello! I was beginning to wonder if you had abandoned h2g2 in favour of SMS! *gratefully/greedily accepts dark chocolate* Yum! Thanks!

Tracksuit bottoms... Hmm... So I'm confused, did they actually fire, or just 'burn' in the sense that they burned you on account of being coated in red hot liquefied marshmallow? French? Drunk? It's so hard to tell the difference.

I thought you already had a tan? Anyway, I'm *still* having to resort to driving round in the Elise to get a tan. Such a shame. I went for a good drive yesterday and today. (Same route both times but in opposite directions...) It never cease to amaze me how much fun that car is!

Do you find the chocolate, ice cream, marshmallows and reading actually help with the tan? Given your predisposition to superheating marshmallows I can see how that might work, but I don't quite understand with the rest of it!

Well anyway the important thing is that you were wrong first time about the lyrics.

As far as I can remember I had absolutely no regrets about leaving school - I couldn't wait to leave, and then when I'd left I was really happy about it... But then I guess I was a bit of a miserable sod when I was at school. (I got better though. Right after leaving school as it happens.)

As much as your father might resemble Father Jack, presumably he's not actually a catholic priest?..

BT Internet working? That'll be the day. They just launched their ADSL service. Well, announced it anyway. Allegedly I live in a place that's supposed to get it early (I live about a 10 minute walk from the science park, so we have quite an up-to-date telephone exchange nearbye), but knowing BT it'll be months before it's available in reality. And once they start actually making it available, no doubt the impact of selling people high-speed always-on unmetered net conections will overload their network so much that it'll all stop working completely. Maybe I should just get cable modem - that's actually available in my street now! (I know this because a friend has it and it actually works!)

How exactly did a cow manage to steal your sunglasses? Wouldn't they require opposable hooves to put them on? And I called the spider an innocent bystander, not a victim, and made it *quite* clear that this epithet was specific to the case of your computer's problems. I don't think it had anything to do with your packing at all!

You realise that eventually you'll have so much stuff packed that you'll run out of clothes. In the past my solution to this has been buying more clothes, so I now no longer have enough place to put my stuff... But credit cards are definitely a fine alternative to unpacking in the short term.

Hmm... Too much fresh air and walking around I'd guess - well, I always used to wake up much earlier when I was hill walking. Possibly my morning rules are a little harsh, but then how else will people learn? Do you think maybe I should have a three strikes and you're out rule? Anyway, it wouldn't mean the death penalty for half of the population for long - we'd soon breed out any natural inclination towards getting up in the mornings.

I knew Gary Oldman and Tim Roth were the leads in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern but I had a feeling he was in one of the peripheral parts. Too long and serious? I thought it was really funny! Anyway, film directors don't have to like mainstream films, they just have to make them. (I know a few people who work in the film industry, and they're all trying to make big budget blockbuster type films, but the kind of things they actually like to watch are all much more obscure.) As for Kevin Bacon, I was referring in particular to the 7 degrees to Kevin Bacon theory - the idea that everyone in the world can be connected to Kevin Bacon in 7 or fewer steps.

For example, Kevin Bacon stared in JFK as Willie O'Keefe, and Walter Matthau (1) was in that film as Senator Long. Walter Matthau also starred in IQ (as Einstein) with Stephen Fry (2), who was (but may no longer be) involved in a film which my friend Ivan (3) had as a pet project for a while in the film financing company he works for, and he went to school with me (4). So my Bacon factor is no greater than 4. (There may well be an even more direct route, although I'm not sure how it might work.) So I guess that would make your Bacon factor 5 or lower, depending on whether you can find a more direct connection of your own without needing to drag me into the equation.

*looks dejected and wonders what the chances of brushing away the fact that I did a science degree are*

I'm glad you're enjoying your book about Kate Moss's thermal garments.

I have to admit that I don't really understand how genes can be patented either. I can just about see how it might work for new genomes produced as the result of genetic modification, but being allowed to get a patent on natural genetic sequences seems somewhat mad. I have to admit that I'm not completely clear on exactly what the patents are being granted for though - I think there may also be some for work done on identifying what various genes actually do. This at least requires some effort to discover, but I still think it's a bit off as it is, as you point out, just a discovery! (I was fairly sure that one of the criteria for patents was that if the thing would be obvious or independently discoverable to anyone working in the relevant area, then the patent shouldn't be granted. So that should rule it out. But then patents have been granted for the process of taking two things and swapping them over - seriously!)

I think the whole issue of where genetic research might be going is a whole new can of worms - patents are probably just a minor detail in this debate since they expire after 30 years. (People in my industry get particular het up about patents because the industry has only been around for about 50 years, and things move so fast that a 30 years patent lifetime may as well be an eternity.) I suspect the impact of work being done in genetics right now will last far longer than that. A resurgence of eugenics is an alarming possibility, and I suspect that the only reason that it hasn't happened yet is that it is strongly associated with the Nazis. (Although eugenics were intellectually respectable across all of Europe before the war.)

And it's entirely possible that your thoughts on the arrogance of scientists wouldn't offend me - I really don't understand scientists who believe that what they are doing is revealing fundamental truths. Anyone who really thinks that (and I've met several physicists who do) would do well to listen to Richard Feynman's (a wholly remarkable physicist, nobel prize winner and bongo player) lectures on physics - there's one where he sums up science expertly in 3 steps: (1) we observe the world, (2) we have a guess at how we think it might work, (3) we test our guesses by performing experiments. When he gets to point (2) he gets a laugh from the students in the lecture theatre, but he comes right back at them and says "Don't laugh - this really is how we do it!" Science is essentially guesswork, and mostly incorrect judging by historical precedence - most of the highly successful scientific theories developed have either been shown to be not quite right, or were only developed in the last century so there's plenty of time to disprove them so far...

But many scientists seem to fail to understand that all of science is conjecture. It is conjecture which has been rigourously tested through experimentation, but it remains conjecture nonetheless - there's no way to prove that any scientific law is 'correct'. Scientists seem to have been elevated to this guru-like position in society where all you have to do is don a white coat and flash your doctorate and most people (journalists in particular) will just unquestioningly accept what you say. I believe the only reason that this has happened is that science happens to have been successful at doing magic, or something very like it. Scientists have, for many people, displaced the church: both make huge claims to truth and meaning, something which people on the whole seem to have a lot of hunger for, but science then goes on to provide very graphic and repeatable demonstrations of its ability to deliver on some of the promises it makes, mostly via engineering. (E.g. flying to the moon, or on a more directly accessible level, inventing mass produced cars.)

So because scientists can perform what appears to be magic, AND so many of them seem to believe that they really are understanding fundamental truths, they've gained a lot of power (especially over today's media). And we all know what power does...

However I think a lot of the problem with the excessive reverance given to scientists today comes from a combination of a small number of egotistical self-promoting scientists who will say whatever it takes to sound shocking enough to get yourself on the TV or the radio, combined with the fact that journalists encourage it - they actively egg scientists on to make unrealistically bold claims about the scope and applicability of their discoveries. If the people who interviewed scientists actually knew much about science, I don't think we'd be in this situation, since they wouldn't go so awestruck on us. Watching a scientist being interviewed today is like watching a politician being interviewed decades ago before the adversarial style came into fashion - they're allowed to say whatever they like and the interviews mostly just go along with it. Of course it backfires on the scientists from time to time - when the limits of knowledge become all too apparent, they then get accused of making claims they had no way of justifying. Of course this is fine, but it's a bit annoying for the vast majority of scientists who don't make a living out of appearing on TV...

I'm not aware of cocaine being a common cause of loquacity in bears, nor of halcination in humans, so I have no explanation for those adverts. But it definitely used to have cocaine in it, many years ago. Strictly speaking its original recipe used the plant from which cocaine is derived, but it certainly contained the active ingredient that people take cocaine for. This recipe was only used for 15 years, but it was actually a selling point to start with! Caffeine was introduced to replace the cocaine when that was outlawed by the US government.

Ah, but locus is Latin in origin, and has kept its Latin plural ending. (Not all Latin words do this, and some are changing - 'indices' seems be being replaced by 'indexes', which is a shame because I really like the word 'indices'. ) Lotus however is almost certainly not Latin. In fact only one person knows the etymology of Lotus - the widow of the late Colin Chapman (founder of Lotus). Chapman consistently refused to tell anyone why he chose the name, and his widow seems to be carrying on the tradition. Various theories abound, one of which was that the first race car he built was modified from a wreck he bought in an auction (and thus far the story is definitely true), and that it had 'LOT U5' as the lot number written on it, and the name stuck. Another is that it was short for Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious. Another is just that he liked the vaguely exotic connotations of the lotus flower. But in any case, there are no theories suggesting that it has anything to do with Latin (nor any Latin words from which it could have been derived, AFAIK).

However that doesn't stop a lot of people saying Loti...

I said Casino Square was OK and the rest of Monaco was a dump. (Which is not quite what you accused me of saying.) I stand by this claim. What did your friend like about Monaco then? I can see the point in going if you're likely to get to mix with any of the team members, but frankly I think I'd prefer Silverstone! Actually the area around the Nurburgring's rather nice, so that'd do too. (Spa's not too far from there, but unfortunately it's in the French-speaking bit of Belgium, so everyone's a miserable b*****d there! Shame, as it's a reasonably part of the world to look at.)

Sorry, should have said "trying to convince me" about the TVR thing. I still like my Elise too much to get rid of it.

Your backwards typing might have two applications, one of which is that it generates entertaining words like 'wonk' and 'sdrawkcab', and the other is that GCHQ might be able to make use of your encryption skills, but I don't think either of these will pay very well.

Hakkinen's really boring me now. It's enough to make me want Schui to win. Shame about Button on Sunday wasn't it? Would have been nice for him to get a podium place. (And if that manoeuvre on Trulli had actually worked it would have been devastatingly impressive.)

How was the rabbit? Vicious?

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