High temperature (although admittedly not as bad as yesterday afternoon). Sore throat — can hardly speak, and the idea of eating food causes me to wince with the antipation of pain. Bah. Not much to say therefore unless I have any draft posts kicking about I can dust down, or I feel better later on. [...]

It’s not often that I come across a book which I think everyone should read. Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear, by Dan Gardner, is one such book. Risk tells us about how we are constantly misled in every day life about how dangerous things are — drugs, cancer, paedophiles, knife crime, terrorism — [...]

Sorry? Did I hear that right? Newcastle might actually sign someone who isn’t a youth triallist, unattached or otherwise available for a free? It appears that, according to The Guardian and a couple of other media sources, that Newcastle have agreed a fee for Bolton’s Kevin Nolan. He’s one of them central midfielders that I [...]

I’m sure by now you have heard of the film, Slumdog Millionaire. For a start, I mentioned it in my post Slumdog Review, where I described a review of it given by an un-named source. It has also been nominated for ten Oscars, eleven BAFTAs, has already won five Critics’ Choice Awards, four Golden Globes [...]

The BBC were doing some vox pops this morning to try and understand how well ‘the man in the street’ knows about science. I presume this somehow related to the news that the government are trying to stop people perceiving science as something ‘elitist’.. Unfortunately, they rather missed the boat on two points, the most [...]

After allowing the Environmental Health chappie time to read my emails, I gave him a ring to find out what the situation was. Now, I’ve got no complaint with him: he’s got to do his job, and if you get a complaint, you investigate it. Perfectly logical, and I have no problems with the way [...]

Environmental Protection Act 1990 I am writing to you as I have received a complaint regarding an audible intruder alarm that sounds intermmittently at your home. The above legislation can allow the property to be entered by warrant and the alarm disabled should it be found that a statutory nuisance exists. I would ask you [...]

A few days ago, I read on the BBC that Twitter was now enjoying the tweet smell of success. Use of Twitter, the mobile phone-based micro-blogging service, rocketed nearly 1,000% in the UK over the past year, according to industry analysts HitWise. For the first time, the site has seen more visits than “social bookmarking” [...]

Apologies to those of you with delicate sensibilities who don’t like swearing and references to genitalia. I’d suggest you’d stop reading now. There are two elements to ‘male toilet reactions’. Firstly, it’s the considered: what do you do in particular circumstances? Secondly, it’s the instinctive quick reactions necessary when… well, we’ll get to that. Firstly, [...]

Or at least, that’s what we’ve been led to believe. Barack Obama has been sworn in as US president (twice). The celebrity cargo-cult that has been worshipping him pretty much since shortly before the election would seem to suggest that he is the Messiah, and that Barack is going to lead all of us, whether [...]