Worldometers

This is a fascinating website, which lists all kinds of running totals for different things going on in the world, from the world population to such interesting facts as the number of obese people in the world to the number of days until the oil runs out.

Well worth a look, although it’s slightly hypnotic!

Imogen Heap – Half life

I can’t wait to go and see Imogen Heap play live again – Mrs F and I have been to see her twice before, and she is truly magical presence on stage. This beautiful track, entitled Half Life, is from her new album Ellipse.

Statesman of the Year (WTF?)

Gordon Brown, Prime Mentalist of the United Kingdom (pictured left looking statesmanlike), despite being the most utterly incompetent holder of his office in history, has managed to be named Statesman of the Year by these people. Obviously the presence of Bono will be setting the alarm bells ringing for anyone reading this, but to highlight the stiff competition Gordo faced, I thought I would share the other members of the shortlist:

Gonzo the Great

A small Edam cheese

A Death Watch Beetle.

My understanding is that the early voting favoured the Edam Cheese, but unfortunately due to a misunderstanding about the lunch arrangements Henry Kissinger ate it. Someone then trod on the death watch beetle, and Gonzo the Great was discovered in flagrante with a chicken in the stationery cupboard.

I am sure all patriotic British people will join with me in congratulating the Prime Numbnuts Minister on this singular honour, which will no doubt be of great comfort to him in his enforced retirement at a remote secure hospital in the Highlands.

James Kirkup versus the Pandas

James Kirkup (day job – Political correspondent at the Telegraph), responding to the remarks of Spring Watch irritant Chris Packham, puts the boot into the Giant Panda on his blog here…

“Thank you Chris Packham, thank you. Thank you for saying something I’ve been trying to persuade people of for years. Pandas are pointless, wasteful and silly. They should die.

Let’s look at the facts here. A lot of conservationists argue that pandas are the victims of man’s actions, that urbanisation and industrialisation is killing the precious bamboo they need to live.

Eh? Bamboo? They are bears, but they eat leaves. Hello, excuse me? Panda bear. Bear. You know, large, aggressive carnivore. Big teeth, claws. Grrrr. You’re supposed to eat meat. What on earth is with the bamboo thing? A panda’s digestive system is still set up to digest meat. The reason they can only eat only one of the hundreds of different types of bamboo the world has to offer is that their guts aren’t supposed to break down bamboo. It’s elevating fussiness to the level of suicide. It’s like me eating only car tyres and gravel and then asking for sympathy when I starve to death. Idiots.

As for industrialisation and all that, well, hey, it doesn’t seem to bother other animals. I don’t see foxes complaining about cities. Rats seem able to cope with cities rather well. Countless other species seem to be able to deal with a changing world without going bleating to the WWF. This is evolution: adapt or die. Being cute and fluffy doesn’t give you any special rights, fatso.

Then there’s sex. Pandas don’t like sex. All that weird, zoo-keeper stuff about putting two of them in a cage and seeing if they’ll mate. Honestly, an animal either wants to perpetuate its genes or it doesn’t. And the idiot-bears clearly have some species-wide death-wish. Who are we to stand in their way? I thought the whole conservationism thing was about allowing nature to follow its own course without human interference?
Pandas don’t work. Let them go.

Incidentally, keeping each of the 150-odd pandas currently in captivity costs around £1.5 million a year. How many of our own species could we feed and house for that? We should turn the podgy oxygen-thieves out on their stupid furry ears and see how long they last on the streets with the foxes.

Actually, that would be a waste. After all, there must be some good eating on a panda. These are 300-lb grass-fed animals raised in organic conditions with exquisite care. At the very least it’s got to be worth a try. Panda steak, anyone?”

He’s got a point, though, hasn’t he!

Miss Fleet back in action

It takes more than a spiral fracture of the tibia to keep Miss Fleet away from the swings!

International Talk Like A Pirate Day

A quick reminder that tomorrow, like every 19th September, is International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Arrrrrrrrrrrr!

Thelma and Louise Junior

Miss Fleet (5) has spent the day demonstrating why it is not a good idea to jump off the top off the top of the climbing frame at school, hand in hand with your friend. Her friend appears to have survived unscathed. Miss Fleet, who presumably landed underneath, has a broken leg. She is being very brave.

Interesting Wheels

Walking in Abingdon today I came across a couple of splendid MG sports cars parked in the town square. The one on the right is an MG RV8, the crude but charming reanimation of the MGB manufactured between 1992 and 1995. The one on the left is intriguing. It’s got the nose of an RV8 but has the fastback body of an MG BGT. I hadn’t been aware that the RV8 had been produced in a fastback shell, and a bit of searching on the web has failed to turn up any evidence that any were. I regret now that I didn’t take a look into the cockpit to confirm my suspicion that what we have here is an old MG BGT with the nose of an RV8 grafted onto it, for the RV8 had a rather luxurious interior which was very different from the rather austere original MGB. The license plate (V-reg; 1979-1980) would tend to support his theory, assuming it’s not a vanity plate.

Whatever it’s history, it’s a very handsome vehicle, as is it’s soft-top cousin parked alongside. Abingdon was the home of MG for many years, although the Abingdon plant had closed long before the RV8 was built.

Let There Be Music

According to iTunes I listed to more Prefab Sprout than any other band. As a result this has been an exciting week as Monday saw the release of a new album by the elusive North East band, now consisting only of founder and resident genius Paddy McAloon.

Lets Change The World With Music was written and recorded in 1992, and sat for the last 17 years in the legendary McAloon archives alongside other long lost (and possibly apocryphal) unreleased albums. Calum Malcolm has worked his magic on the demo tapes which sound surprisingly fully-realised in their released form. I’ve been listening to it for the last couple of days, and it’s great.

UPDATE – An interesting interview with Paddy McAloon, by Neil McCormick for the Telegraph.

Handy Cut-out-and-keep Swine Flu Info

From the helpful health professionals at EatLiver

Majestic Vulcan

While attending the 40th Wedding Celebrations of Mrs Fleet’s Uncle and Aunt today we were treated to the magnificent sight of Vulcan XH558 on its way back to Brize after displaying and flying past at various locations in the South of England.

The last time I was conscious of seeing one of these stunning delta-winged nuclear bombers airborne would have been at Abingdon Airshow as a small boy – probably thirty years ago now. It was wonderful to see the last flying Vulcan in action again.

Sadly I didn’t have my telephoto lens on the camera so the image is very poor, but what a glorious sight nonetheless.

Women and childred first! It’s Gordon!

Martin Day, whose enthusiasm for the noble art of photoshop knows no bounds and who usually deploys his art in the cause of making Gordon Brown look stupid, has excelled himself with this latest offering, on display in its original setting here.

Walk on the wild side…

These trailers for the BBC series Walk on the Wild Side are hilarious… I’m very sad that I missed it when the program was shown earlier in the year!

The Rock

While in San Francisco I took the opportunity to visit Alcatraz – something I haven’t done before. The Alcatraz Night Tour was highly recommended to me, as it is longer and more detailed than the tours that are run during the day (and also suited my schedule as I was in SF for work and consequently not free during the day). Suffice to say I’d highly recommend it as well. It was bitterly cold (as San Francisco can be during the summer) and the Bay microclimate and it’s trademark fog were much in evidence, but the boat trip out was great fun and the tour both informative and highly entertaining.

Fog City lives up to it’s name

The Island of Pelicans

The Lighthouse and the remains of the Warden’s house

Water Tower

Alcatraz Island looking towards the Bay Bridge

The Rock

Alcatraz Cell

The entrance to the Administration Building

Lighthouse, with the cellblock behind

Watchtower at Dusk

Leaving the Island

The photography isn’t up to my usual standard as I used my little Ricoh compact rather than the Olympus DSLR, but the chilly greyness and forbidding aspect of the island comes across quite effectively I think. I hadn’t been aware that many of the staff of the Federal Prison lived on the island. It must have felt very isolated as the last boat of the day pulled away each night, although by many accounts the guards had happy family lives while some of the most infamous prisoners in US history lurked but a few metres away.

I’d highly recommend anyone visiting San Francisco taking the night tour of Alcatraz… a very informative and enjoyable 3 hours.

A Long Wait

Apologies for the long break in blogging – after my very enjoyable trip to my favourite city San Francisco the Fleet family spent a lovely week in Dorset, of which more detail later.

While in SF i had occasion to need to synchronise the inbox of my work laptop via the rather flaky WiFi connection – whereupon I was faced with a rather alarming ‘time to go’ message by Outlook, which I snapped with the iPhone.

Fortunately my elderly Dell soon regained its sanity!

Off to San Francisco

Apologies for the lack of blogging of late – I’ve spent the last week or so caring for ill family and then being ill with some loathsome lurgy myself. I am now off to San Francisco for work for 4 days. San Francisco is my favourite city, bar none, and I haven’t been there for many years so I am looking forward to reacquainting myself with it.

Darth Vader gets Owned

From EatLiver…

Garden Visitor

This evening while watering the garden I encountered this fine fellow resting on the step of the conservatory.

Copy… Paste…. Wait…..

I am a PC user at work (though a Mac user everywhere else!) so I certainly recognise this situation!

From xkcd.com – never less than excellent!

The Further Adventures of Cecil

Cecil the Slightly Camp Garden Gnome has made a cameo appearance on this blog before when he went for a ride on a John Deere tractor, but now the show-tunes loving garden ornament has fallen victim to Rothmans, (pictured above wearing a very avantgarde pair of black sunglasses) who likes nothing more than grabbing Cecil from his usual resting place (out of sight of the house, as he is rather vulgar) and carrying him to her favourite lurking place outside the wendy house, where she will then sit and cuddle him for ages. What Cecil thinks of this isn’t known, partially because nobody has asked him, and partially because he is made of plastic.

While we are on the subject of Cecil, here he is showing a remarkably cheerful demeanor given that he is up to his waist in snow.