That Way Madness Lies

I read in the Mail that the government, or the bureaucracy, is to ban the taking of photos of the happy couple signing the church register. I've only got their word for it of course as the story only seems to appear in the slightly more rabid Evening Standard, but these you can't imagine them making it up. Okay, so you can.

It's all to with data protection, or so we're told. That, or the photographed couple might make a mistake or splodge the register with an ill-aimed fountain pen while concentrating on the snapper. Yeah, right.

Or that some nefarious person might sneak a peek at the soon to be conjoineds' signature and so copy it and steal away their persona.

By far and away the worst excuse:

"Taking a photograph could be construed as a copy of the entry and a breach of the Crown Copyright. There are four entries to a double page so the details of another marriage could also be photographed."

Of a public record? One I could buy for £7? Give me strength.

It's all Relative

Magnetic Non-personality

I haven't written anything for ages partly because I've been busy at work and too whacked in the evening to think about it, but mainly because I seemed to run out of things to write about. I did start a post on an eventful outward holiday journey to Cyprus which culminated in Master P losing his passport less than an hour after landing, but I decided to spare his blushes.

(It turned up eventually, four days into the week-long holiday, but only after many phone calls locally and to the UK, the rigmarole of reporting it to the police who couldn't have cared less, downloading the various forms at an internet cafe, trying to figure out how we could get two passport photos of him (they don't do photo booths in Cyprus) and plotting a round trip to Nicosia and the UK High Commission.)

But I digress. What prompted the post was not my son's 'lesson in life', but an email that crossed my inbox today, one that listed all the various consultations that the government is going through. There were 15 in total, most of them by NICE, the one that caught my eye though was on proposals to implement the European Commission Decision on safety warnings on toys containing magnets.

I downloaded the PDF and according to the executive summary:

"The hazard, which previously had been little appreciated within the toys industry, is the ability of magnets to attract each other, or to metal parts, through human tissue when swallowed or inhaled."

First, I question the use of the word 'ability'. The online dictionary defines this as:

1. power or capacity to do or act physically, mentally, legally, morally, financially, etc.
2. competence in an activity or occupation because of one's skill, training, or other qualification: the ability to sing well.
3. abilities, talents; special skills or aptitudes: Composing music is beyond his abilities.

Which suggests that magnets are making a concious decision as to whether to attract other magnets or metals (actually just those containing iron if O-level physics serves) and clearly they don't. Surely it is a property rather than an ability?

Pedantry aside, how is that the toy industry hadn't appreciated that this is what magnets do? Surely that is the why they incorporate them in toys because of their magnetic properties?

And attracting other magnets and metals through human tissue? Well yes they can if they're the sort they use in MRI scanners (that's the point) or the electromagnets they use in scrap yards, but magnets found in kids' toys?

And inhaling magnets? How's that done? A bit of magnetic dust perhaps, but a bit of attractive snot hardly seems a great hazard.

Don't get me wrong: anything that makes the world safer has my full support and I'd rather not have teddy bears with pins in them for kids to swallow, or toy trains painted with leaded paint. Little magnets might fall into that category, but somehow I doubt it.

The consultation asks six questions, but the second is the most telling:

"Do you agree with our assumption that large businesses (manufacturers, importers and retailes) would comply with the warning requirement regardless of Government intervention?"

As in large business playing Herod? Not the best marketing ploy eh?

Become a Lunatic

It goes without saying that when someone dies there is a hole left behind. Especially when you thought that someone would live forever. In this case, the once partner of my late father-in-law. No names, no pack-drill, just a love of life. As witnessed by this non-PC lyric.

It has a tune and a song, but I have neither the technology or the voice to give it its true worth. Be thankful:

Outside a lunatic asylum
I was picking up stones
Along came a man and he said to me
How much a week do you get for doing that?
Thirty bob.” I cried
He looked at me and shook his head
And this is what he cried
Come inside, you silly bugger, come inside!

I thought you had more sense
Working for a living? Take my tip,
Act bloody silly and become a lunatic!
For you get your meals regular
And a couple of suits beside
Thirty bob a week and your wife and kids to keep
Come inside you silly bugger, come inside!”

Sleep peacefully Muriel. Or wake the old devils!

Chav Central

Synchronisity

I'm a great believer in happenstance, those moments in time and space that seem perfectly choreographed and just meant to happen. Or synchronicity as Jung would have it, but it really does happen. Sometimes fictional, as in The Eagle Has Landed, and often the factual and mundane.

Take our hostess trolley. We've had it for the best part of 20 years and it has been an integral part of our Sunday roast dinner allowing, as it does, keeping everything hot until we're are ready to eat without stressing the cook.

We inherited it from Mrs P's sister and it came whole, but over the years it has become less effective. In particular the Pyrex dishes. We started with four, plus stainless steel lids, then went down to three, with prayers for the fallen.

Things came to a head at the weekend when one of the last remaining three dishes went west. Mrs P was distraught, as were me a Master P, future roasts in mind, so I hit the E-Bay button and was hit back by the the above.

There was a set of four such dishes at £25, Nothing special there then, except that there was just three minutes to go. I'm not much of an E-Bayer and yet some fast keyboard work secured the said Pyrex and stainless-steel lids for not much more, plus postage.

It does make you wonder whether there is a God. And whether He believes chance or chaos, or one of E-Bay and order, or is personal good-fairy, or, even better, some sort of evolutionary heat-resistant glassware!

House of Cards

Brilliant!

...But I Know What I Like

The Telegraph's Screen Break is rapidly becoming a favourite in my personal Brief History of Time Wasting, not for itself, but for the wonderful places it takes you. Like the above paper sculpture by Peter Calleson made from a single A4 sheet of the sort sitting in your printer's paper tray . Fantastic. And check out the other examples.

Then there is Shift, one of the most compulsive, original and challenging platform games I've seen in a long while.

The Heat is On

Despite all the divisions in the world on religion (and what a waste of time and lives that is) the one I struggle most with is the creed of climate change. It isn't that I'm in denial as climate change sceptic or that I'm a rabid environmentalist. I guess I'm what you'd call a climate change agnostic.

Take this, for instance, from the Guardian:

In 2004, 73% of the growth in global emissions came from developing economies, which comprise 80% of the world's population. However, when the scientists looked at total emissions for the year, they found developed countries, including the former Soviet Union, contributed about 60%.

Assuming carbon emissions are the problem, what does this tell us? That developing economies account four in ten people and yet less than three-quarters of the bad stuff? And the former Soviet Union weighs in with 60% which makes 143% even before I've weighed in with the CO2 tonnage of the 8,000 miles a year I do pootling about in my Fiesta.

See what I mean? The sums just don't add up, at least to the layman (sorry person) who spends so much energy re-cycling anything that would otherwise get chucked in the the bin to "save the planet".

Anyway, I'm still doing my best as an undecided voter, but the Angry Economist does make a case for a different take on this subject. And the money we are futilely wasting.

Web Wonders

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life?

I love this Tumblelog, Garfield minus Garfield -- it really works. I came across it courtesy of the Telegraph's Screen Break which is also worth a visit if you fancy an animated history of evil, an obsessive Bug Battle game or see if you can name all the US presidents in ten minutes of less -- I managed about half, being rubbish at the early ones.

Doggy Dos

Who says signwriters don't have a sense of humour?

Says it All

clipped from www.claybennett.com

Et Maitenant

I read in todays Sunday Time probably the best pun ever. It is attributed to the recently deceased journalist, musician, broadcaster and franglais exponent Miles Kington.

He claimed that the French Navy had adopted a new, uplifting call to arms for the greater glory and protection of their nation. In English it reads: "To the water, the hour has come." And in French: "A l'eau, c'est l'heure." (Think about it.)

Perfection.