the corner office

This article on tomorrow's 'solar tsunami' tries to walk the tight don't-mislead-the-public line between We're All Going To Die and The Northern Lights Will Be Pretty And Your Transistor Radio Might Crackle A Bit.

That would a reasonable inference, if it were not for the last line of the article:

A Nasa spokesman was unavailable for comment.

To which all reasonable-thinking people would respond 'Why's the spokesman not available? Where is he? Why aren't they answering the phones?'

I love seeing robot learning. Behold a robot arm learning to flip pancakes:

By the end of the video I was hovering between 'the movements look so human, it's freaking me out' and 'hmmm, I'm hungry.'

For the past 7-odd years that I've had this blog, my about page has said "I'm a won't-get-a-haircut-I-just-won't-dammit thirty-something South African." Now it just says "I'm a thirty-something South African."

It was long overdue, and finally it was time. The barber thought he'd died and gone to tonsorial heaven. "I ain't cu' 'air this long in the 48 'ears I been a barber," 'e says. (Which says more about the average Chislehurst hairstyle than my hair, which was long, but by no means Rapunzel-esque). "I'm a barber, I like to cu' 'air, I don' like all this fiddlin' abou'", he says more than once, "nowadays every'un jus' wan's a bi' o' fiddlin' about wi' 'eir 'air, I li' ta cu'" and "I'm 'avin' fun!"

I have made a new friend.

By agreement we experimented a bit. So we started out doing the short-back-and-sides with a mop on top. Kinda slick in a Gestapo officer kind of way, but I've never really aspired to looking like a Gestapo officer so decided to give that a miss. We went down to what he said was a 'French crop, been in fashion for 20 'ears nah.' That wasn't working for me either, so we decided to try a #4 all round. After more than decade of gravity, even a #4 was looking a little unruly, so in the end we went down to a #2.

Missus likes it and Leo approves. About 5 minutes after getting home from nursery school Mom asks Leo "have you seen that Daddy's hair's all gone?" "yeah it's all gone" mimics then looks again and the shock of realisation "it's all gone!", but thankfully followed by "it looks cool!"

So that's OK then.

... which isn't to say that I'm suggesting that people who accidentally hit the wrong pedal are deserving of being dead (I've come close to making that mistake myself), nor that I think that they're stupid in a Darwin Awards kind of way: what it boils down is that in the case of car drivers, nature is selecting against clumsy people and people with big feet.

(Guilty as charged on both counts).

You may recall there was a wave of Toyota Terror a while ago. While Toyota's cars did have problems, it may come as something as a surprise (not really) that a number of the near-death experiences were a result of Darwinism doing its damnedest:

The early results suggest that some drivers who said their Toyotas and Lexuses surged out of control were mistakenly flooring the accelerator when they intended to jam on the brakes.

Oops.

Ford Motor's financing division has withdrawn plans for a new debt sale, in what marks the first shiver in the bond market from the sweeping financial legislation signed by President Obama Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The Journal, citing market participants, said Ford yanked the deal, backed by packages of auto loans, because it couldn't use credit ratings in its offering documents, which is a legal requirement for such sales.

The new financial regulation makes it easier for investors to successfully sue credit rating agencies for assigning unrealistically high ratings. As a result, the three major agencies ... have said they'll no longer let bond issuers list their ratings in public sale documents.

You can argue for and against why the policeman who pushed Ian Tomlinson should have been prosecuted or not, and even with all the facts at hand I suspect most opinions would still come down to the level of sympathy one normally has for the police.

As for the now-outraged 'family', though... according to Wikipedia:

At the time of his death, he was working casually as a vendor for the Evening Standard. Married twice with nine children, including stepchildren - five girls and four boys, aged 15 to 32 at the time of his death - he had a history of alcoholism, as a result of which he had been living apart from his second wife, Julia, for 13 years, and had experienced long periods of homelessness. He had been staying since October 2008 in the Lindsey Hotel, a shelter for the homeless...

Separated for 13 years, long periods of homelessness, living in a homeless shelter at the time of his death... oh how that close family bond has been ruptured! The tragedy of it!

If Ian Tomlinson had quietly curled up and died as a John Doe in an alleyway in central London, I wonder how long it would have taken for the caring family to even notice. If there weren't TV cameras and stories to sell to the tabloids, what would they all be saying now?

A UK trader's been playing silly buggers and bought up the whole of Europe's cocoa supply. This is quite a daring move and might be bad news for the price of chocolate in the near future, but if this is of concern to you, or if you're simply trying to lose weight, then I'd urge you to click through that link and take a squizz at the picture at the top of the article. It might, just might help you to make peace with the idea of a reduced chocolate intake.

While European countries debate whether to ban the burka, Iran has been busy too. They recently banned Western hairstyles, including that cherished icon of Western civilization, the mullet.

What I didn't know is that the term 'mullet' was invented by the Beastie Boys, popularised by a song in 1994 called Mullet Head and an article they wrote for their record label's magazine. Here's the song on YouTube (gratis lyrics and mullet pics) and the article.

The challenge now is to find a way to slip that bit of trivia into conversation in the next week.

So today was fun. Mom's in London doing her thing at the British Museum, so it's a boys' day in. Perfect time for Junior to decide to start chomping on a coin, which turns into gag-gag, which turns into Dad's life flashing before his eyes and thinking jesus, I'm going to have to stick my finger down my son's throat, turns immediately into gulp-gulp-gulp then wait-a-minute-I've-just-swallowed-the-damned-coin then waaaaaah then oh-wait-I'm-OK-now and then back to as if nothing had happened.

Dad took Google's advice and took Junior to A&E anyway, where Junior got x-rayed (big-ass coin, in belly) and poked and prodded and sent home, with advice to Parental Units to listen very carefully over the next few days for a coin-on-porcelain 'clink' when it's toilet time.

Kids.