Brian Micklethwait's Blog
In which I continue to seek part time employment as the ruler of the world.
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Most recent entries
- Brian Micklethwait’s New Blog starts now
- Now you see it now you don’t – then you do again
- Quimper Cathedral photos from a year ago
- Another symptom of getting old
- Quota photo of a signpost
- Three professional Japanese footballers play against one hundred children
- Sculptures and scaffolding
- There is no day that can’t be improved by seeing pictures of how they weigh an owl
- Meeting Oscar again
- A musical metaphor is developed
- Mobile phone photoing in 2004
- France is big
- Pink windscreen
- Just kidding
- Capitalism and socialism in tweets
Other Blogs I write for
Brian Micklethwait's Education Blog
CNE Competition
CNE Intellectual Property
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This has so far not been this blog’s most glorious week. The Lords pictures are all recomposed and ready to go up, but I still have to recompose the patter in between them. The effort to rescue the Word file today ended in failure, very quickly. Tomorrow maybe. Like I say, doing it is much easier than blogging it. So, more stream of consciousness drivel.
Here is a quote from an otherwise extremely forgettable romantic comedy, called Failure to Launch, concerning which critical responses have veered between okay and vomit. Sarah Jessica Parker to Matthew McConaughey:
Do you want to spend the rest of your life having fun? Or do you want to spend it with me?
I watched that last night, while redoing those pictures. I thought it was well-executed garbage. Is this better than good stuff badly done? Often.
On the right, a different picture, of my friend Michael taken by my friend Elena, with Michael’s mobile phone.
Next, cricket news. Today, Justin Langer played his first and according to the BBC maybe his last game for Somerset, against Surrey, who took an uncharacteristic hammering in the field. Somerset made 668-8. of which Langer made 342. So, he shows up for one game, and not even one game in Somerset, scores a triple century, and immediately buggers off back to Australia. How cool is that?
Very cool indeed, unlike the London weather. However, my refrigeration by hot bath (see previous posting but one) is working amazingly well, even if no commenter has yet explained it. The latest effort is hopeless. You just stand something cold next to something hot, and the hotness is drained out of the hotness. But the point is, refrigeration makes coldness out of nothing. Obviously if you put very very cold stuff next to averagely cold stuff, the cold stuff gets even colder, but that’s only if you start with very very cold stuff. With a lot of coldness you can obviously contrive some moderate coldness. But that’s not refrigeration. Refrigeration is when you don’t have any very cold coldness to start with, only some electicity, but that at the end of it, you have icecubes etc. As the man said: How do make a small fortune in sport? You start with a large fortune.
News re the Middle East. President Bush today summed up his view with one of those calculated Presidential asides, along the lines of: If Hizbollah stop with all their shit, then it’s problem solved. Google google, yes, here we go:
“See, the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hizbullah to stop doing this shit and it’s over.”
Hizbollah, Hizbullah, Hezbollah. I vote Hizb Allah.
Michael Portillo, on BBC1’s late night TV poltical chitchat show thought this latest Bushism to be unpardonably “simplistic”. Ah yes, two plus two equals four. How primitive. We sophisticates know better.
And that concludes today’s obligatory posting. On this blog you get guaranteed quantity (one posting per day) but quality fluctuates wildly, between postings and, as today, within postings.
On Bush’s comment it isn’t simplistic it is stupid. Yhe US has spent decades telling Syria to stop interfering and get the hell out of Lebanon and now he wants them to start stirring again?
jan, before you embarass yourself calling my president stupid, it might be helpful to try to read something other than NYT or Guardian on the subject.
Syria HAS been involved in Hizbulla’s activity: they fund it. They pay for it. Syroan/Iranian money for aHiz action. Tell me if you still didn’t get it.
Iran and Syria never stopped interferring. Only this time they went too far.
Tat - (sigh) - does anyone ever read what is in front of them rather than what their prejudices tell them is there?
I didn’t say Bush is stupid - I said the comment was.
I didn’t say that Syria wasn’t interfering - I said that the US had been trying to stop them interfering for decades and now seems to want them back.
So please - before you embarass yourself by commenting on something that isn’t there - read the words!
His comment wasn’t stupid either.
Syria and Iran are Hizballah’s bosses. They give orders to the bastards. They can direct them in any way they want. So what Bush is saying, this time they should direct them to stop the shit, or be eliminated. What’s stupid about going after the puppeteers rather than puppets? The ball is at Syria’/Iran’s; now it’e their time to call their dogs off. That’s what he’s saying - and I would call him tragically naive, but not stupid.
Simple “wanting” Syria to stop interfering, as was practiced by Clinton &Co;, and sadly continued by our State Dept during Bush’s time didn’t seem to do much good, is it?
Of course, I would prefer Bush not saying anything anymore, but give the orders to send missiles to Iranian nuclear facilities.
Brian - you don’t need very cold stuff to cool things down - all you need is a temperature difference. If all you have is cold water, then you can’t get to ice cubes, but using the stuff in refrigerators, as Mike explained in the previous post, you can. The purpose of the electricity is just to pump the stuff around. Did you never come across a gas fridge? They had them when I was a kid.
Depending on where you stand you can actually heat or cool your house with the same process. Look up heat exchangers on Google.