My name is Fookes, Guy Fookes, the spook. 
Yes, Doubl’-O-K, so spell it right!
Licensed to kill, I am, and look!
I’m all tooled up and fit to fight.
You’ll want to know who runs my show.
A British ‘M’? A Euro-cell?
The Mossad? CIA? Er, no.
Thing is, I actually don’t know. Continue reading “‘A modern GF’ – a November pome”
My uncle used to visit us on many occasions when I was young and my father would share a few beers with him. They used to have a competition to see who could crush an empty can of beer into the smallest pulp. Their rough hands would destroy the piece of tin. This machismo impressed me for awhile until I posed the question- could they return the squashed can to its original state? Now the assault course on the Krypton Factor would be a breeze for these guys, this intelligence test part that I’d put to them was more of a challenge. Continue reading “Cans and cant’s”
Voyager 1 was launched. About the size of a small car it carries some cameras and scientific instruments. It has been for some years the most distant man made object from the Earth (Currently it is more than eleven billion miles distant from the Sun and receding rapidly). It may already be the first man made object to leave the Solar System.
Before leaving it did the Grand Tour of the known planets and sent back pictures of Jupiter’s Red Spot, erupting volcanoes on Io, traces of water under the ice of Europa and methane rain on Titan, all unexpected discoveries.
It flies on, with sufficient fuel for instruments and communications until at least 2020, it is, of course, nuclear powered.
Today was the day I’d been waiting for, with equal measures of hope and dread. Following the MRI scan and a few other tests, the chief neurosurgeon consultant was finally to deliver her verdict and my sentence.
As it happens, she was away on maternity leave, so I was seen by her deputy, an austere and awe-inspiring gentleman by the name of Brunovski (or something equally mid-European); he was as Aussie as they come, however. We sparred a little and he told me that my grasp of medical terminology and anatomy were crap. “Not so bad for a software engineer, though”. He ignored this and brought up a succession of images from the MRI on his computer display.
“Look at that,” he cried. “Can’t you see how absolutely normal it is?”
I couldn’t even see what it was, let alone judge its normality.
The bottom line is that I am no more likely than any other normal person to have another subdural haematoma – and no less likely either. “Forget it, put it behind you and carry on like any other normal person. Of course you can drive again. No, no paperwork necessary. Goodbye, good luck – and I’m quite sure I shan’t be seeing you again.” He had the grace to grin broadly as he shook my hand and ushered me out of his office.
Boadicea and I were stunned. It’s true that this is the outcome we had been hoping for, but it was so rapid, so clear-cut and so definite that we couldn’t take it on board immediately. Five months to the day, exactly, and life has returned to normality.
Wow! 😀
My close companion Backside has gone and done it. I was recently distracted by cherished colleagues’ voluptuous verses and he went and registered me at Twitter. Oldjanus@Oldjanus, as you might expect.
If you ever feel like following me, you’d better hurry because I can’t deal with more than a few thousand at once. Not that I’m saying much. It’s all very social, innit?
Before the multiplex took over the world there was an abundance of picture halls. Most of these cinemas were what were called flea pits. It didn’t matter that they were called flea pits, they were still filled to capacity. Affordable and with a wide variety of fare on offer, the films did a roaring trade with the populace. These were the days of the ice-cream lady with her tray of ice-cold goodies. The usher with a torch. The likeable greeter at the foyer. (Walmart retired greeters from their stores recently, a business update you might have missed) Cinemas employed a vast variety of people- from cleaners to admin staff.
My mother told me recently that my uncle James worked as a projectionist in one of the picture halls. And then she told me of the time uncle James turned up for work, let’s just say, worse for wear. James put the reels on wrong and the film played upside down. The audience were vocal in their consternation. James retrieved the situation and got things back to normal. He didn’t get fired. He continued working for a good few more years.
Cherished colleagues with an aversion seeking to feed their aversion to overpaid sports personalities should read on. Continue reading “Marooned on Sandbanks”
Warning: this is very long. It is a response to a blogger on MyT, who quoted some statistics.
If you are remotely interested in responses thereon, here is the post.
It was intended to explain a little more about the use and misuse of statistics, and how demographic projections are produced and their validity.
Some observations from the Pew Report.
All the statistics and quotations, unless otherwise attributed are from this report entitled “The Future of the Global Muslim Population -Projections for 2010-2030” and from here “Faith on the Move-The Religious Affiliation of International Migrants”
But before I begin, I would remind you of a particularly misleading video clip which has been doing the rounds for quite some time. This is one of the many examples of how statistics, and these particular numbers are wildly inaccurate, are used in an alarmist way.
This is a bit personal, and it’s real, but I have permission from Boadicea to publish it. So delicate flowers should perhaps read no further … Continue reading “Encounter with a latter-day Saviour”
Boadicea's Chariot 
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