Ippoippo

There was quite an interesting story over at the BBC, about the Japanese political system.

I noticed he had five pieces of paper with densely typed briefings on his lap, one for each question I was expected to ask.
I started asking them but in the wrong order.
That prompted much harrumphing and agitated shuffling of papers from the audience of advisers clustered around us, but the prime minister, to his credit, soldiered gamely on.
The poor man looked like a puppet though, and the fact that he was clearly an intelligent, talented politician made the whole experience feel that much more depressing.

An amusing story, not sure how much has been embellished though. Actually, probably not much!

I have been mostly listening to…

… a bit of 宇多田 ヒカル (Utada Hikaru).
This time around, it was me who brought her latest album, but Yuko likes her stuff too.

Having said that, Yuko seems to like the more pop type stuff on the album, whereas I like listening to the more ballad type stuff (old fart that I am). Chills me out in the office I find.

Well, it’s only September 20th-ish… and we’ve been having good weather for the last week. Hell, Friday, Saturday and Sunday were really nice sunny days.

Ah well, never mind, make the most of it while we can.

This Saturday we headed up to Abergavenny on the train for the Food Festival. It was alright, and we picked up some good stuff (some English wine, duck hearts (which we cooked that night and were very tasty… much better than chicken hearts which I’m not particularly keen on), some smoked fish). It was very busy though, and to be honest, the £5.50 entry charge was not worth it. Never mind.

Talking of food… I see yet ANOTHER Japanese Minister of Agriculture has resigned. That department is a complete joke , to be honest.

Before I started writing this post, I started reading through some of the usual Japanese blogs I like to read… and then I came across this. Absolutely bizzare. Since when was that film a comedy!?

Gaggghhh, talk about over-sensationalisation!

Whilst it’s interesting to see some proper science stuff being reported in the mainstream media, the way it’s been done is just plain daft.

I mean all this talk of today being ‘Big Bang Day’. Then you have the reports about a the chances of the experiment going wrong and sucking up the earth in a black hole.
Well, that was never going to happen today anyway!! All they bloody did was turn the machine on, fire off some protons at (relatively) slow speed in one direction… then do it again in the other direction. There was never any intention of doing any proton beam collisions until October (if I recall correctly).

Of course, ‘LHC turned on’ isn’t exactly an attention grabbing headline is it

Mind you, this over reaction and fear-mongering has gone and had a rather negative effort with the report of a 16 year old in India committing suicide.

Meanwhile, the BBC ‘Have Your Say’ discussion has been invaded by the God Squad

10 Types of Republicans…

Have to admit, the choice of Palin as Vice-Presidential candidate seems somewhat mad… but if it means McCain not becoming president, then it get’s a thumbs up from me.