(Dujon) And the sun goes round the wrong way, and the weather charts are all arse-about-face and Christmas day's in the height of summer. If you came back here you'd be totally confused. Loads of rain here, BTW, 129 mm in December and some thunder earlier today, most unusual for this time of year here. I see that rather ominously your drought is set to continue due to El Niño.

Sounds like the cricketers can blame the whether, with no rain expected no chance of a draw in the last test, just a white wash.

First day back and up late after a half hour lie in. It all seems funny peculiar the roads in were as clear as a bell and the office is slightly muted.

[Duj] Apols for introducing a note of sense into the conversation, but fit or not, you should get help lifting something that heavy and that awkward to that height. If you got your muscles fit, then did your back in hefting something awkward, you'd really want to kick yourself. (Although again obviously it's better to get someone else to kick you instead.)

[Rosie] How dare you! Australian bore indeed. ;-)
[SM] Yes, but too late. I did my back in years ago. The doctor's advice? "Give it some exercise". Hmmmm. Sounds like some sort of miracle cure for a broken arm: "Give it a bit of a bend each day". Of course he was right - as far as I know my problem is only muscular and not a spinal disc matter. Right, back to my sit-ups.

(Duj) Sorry, old bean, it was an occident.

[rab] Terrific pictures, and it looks like a nice place to... wait a minute... in the earlier picture that man across the road is arguing with his wife... then the sun is lower in the sky and you can see him carrying out a box... wait, he's looking up. He's seen me! He's coming across the road! Damn this wheelchair, if I try to get out he'll just catch me on the landing!

<desperation>Whatever you've read in the papers no-one can possibly know whether 2007 will be the warmest year ever in the UK but globally it might well be so.</desperation>

[rab] You'll be happy to know that your Windows page is already the number one Google result for a certain three word name for a thing what helps keep windows shut. (Don't want to name it here and skew the results the next time this page is spidered.)

I hope that's what they are actually called - it's what it said on the quote, and the chap who measured up referred to them as such (I could hardly keep a straight face).

What on earth possessed you to look, anyway?

I guess I'm just kinky for ironmongery. Or brassmongery. Or whatever they monger to make these things. I thought it was an interesting fastener and I wondered if it was just a UK thing so I went looking around.

[Dan] Wouldn't it be more accurate to say this is the only site that calls them [the name that must not be mentioned]? Not trolling, but all the other hits I got in Google called them something slightly different (but with the same initials). By the way, I loved your "Rear Window" bit. It provided a moment of cheer in an otherwise lousy Friday.

[SM] It's possible that it's local dialect.

[rab] Good point. I am a long way from where I was brought up and occasionally, when I'm not concentrating or when I'm tired, say something "regional" that has people looking at me weirdly. I told some Canadians that I would "put the snack on" a Yale lock so they could come and go without a key. No-one understood what I was talking about.

I seem to have killed the conversation. Sorry rab.

Your mother is a big hippo.

Sierra Mike] It's always been a "sn*b" for me

I use 'sneck' or 'snyb'. Sneck is fairly normal Northern English as evidenced by this.

There has been a fair amount in the press and tv amout the goings on the the BB house. I feel part of the problem is that swathes society in Britain encouraged by the media has lost respect for itself and civility towards others. The mantra is ‘you are no better thatn me no matter who you are’ whether that is a doctor, priest, police, MP, prince or Queen. It is a matter of bringing everyone down to the tabloid level. Are those we are to look up to the highly paid footballer and their WAGs, the instant celeb or winning pop idol.Is it possible that headlines of cultural intolerance and ignorance really do reflect the essence large sections Britain today.

The behaviour in BB is what you'd expect from forcing pretty stupid, ignorant attention-seeking people together. Naturally they bring out the worst in each other. The racism, though we could certainly do without it, is fairly routine and widespread among certain types and makes one wonder what rarified parts of the atmosphere the media inhabit. There are pages about it today's Guardian, for instance. The more disturbing aspect of BB is that it is broadcast at all and is regarded as entertainment by large numbers. How edifying to watch dimwits getting on each others' tits! The participants abase themselves simply to be on TV but they shouldn't be exploited in this manner.

[Rosie] The first series of BB was interesting, IMHO, as the participants were derived of most luxuries. They never quite had enough alcohol to get drunk. They didn't have pencils or paper. They had no clocks. They really struggled to get by. Hence, it was fascinating to watch how people interacted when derived of so many things that they would normally use to pass the time. These days, it has become more of a circus, with the blame lying on the shoulders of the producers for promoting ratings-grabbers to enter the house, in the knowledge that their behaviour is likley to cause headline-making outrage.
The behaviour that I have (albeit very briefly) witnessed recently on BB is, as you say, the norm in a large sector of British society. That the media causes an outcry over it is utterly hypocritical (as ever); that people are shocked and outraged by it is merely bandwagon-jumping. What needs to be addressed is the fact that, presuming most people in the world are racist to an extent, placing remarkably dim people in an environment where they are going to expose their deepest "instincts" (not sure that's the right word) is irresponsible, particularly considering how sensitively balanced the world is at present with regard to extremism - on all sides. I'd love it if everyone just relaxed a bit, frankly.

(Phil) I'll go along with all of that except possibly your last sentence. If you mean we should stop pretending to be shocked by some of the behaviour then I agree wholeheartedly but I don't think we should be relaxed about allowing this stuff on TV, certainly in its present form. It's no better than bear-baiting or cock-fighting, i.e. a distasteful spectator sport. My own instinct is to say to the contestants "You're on telly. Stop behaving like a complete arse, even if you are one" but that's hopelessly old-fashioned.

For Jade Goody-Nude to get on Celebrity BB by having been on BB in the past says something about the show. Probably involving the words "vanishing" and "own *rsehole". How about Religious Big Brother, involving a Protestant, a Catholic, a Shia Moslem, a Sunni Moslem, an Orthodox Jew, a Reform Jew, a Dawkins-esque atheist, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Rastafarian, and a Bahai?

[Rosie] No, that's not what I meant at all, although I see how it looks like that. And I agree wholeheartedly with your bear-baiting analogy. What I meant was that if people such as Jade Goody relaxed a bit, she'd probably enjoy her life a lot more, and this whole issue wouldn't have arisen.
[Raak] Throw in a satanist, and you might be onto something :-)

"Goody insisted on the show that she 'didn't say Shilpa Poppadom in a racial way'".

So that's all right, then.

(Phil) Jade Goody, despite her wealth, has little to be relaxed about. She's from the bottom of the pile and knows it and this is her chance to get back at the world in general. There are many like her and the problem is exacerbated by our class-consciousness though ironically India, with its caste system, is probably even worse.

I actually don't think that Stupid Jade is racist. I think she's just ignorant and a bully. Remember the first time she was on she didn't even know where Cambridge was and thought East Anglia was another country. She's picked on Shilpa cos she's pretty and an unknown quantity. Jade's head got far too big with fame and she wasn't clever enough to cope with it, and when she was insecure she attacked those outside her comfort zone.

I sometimes wonder, "where will this person be when they're 60?" Jade Goody at 60...

Thinking also of "where are they now?", today I chanced across this picture, which looks like a very ordinary businessman or politician. I was quite startled to realise who it was. The URL gives a small clue.

That is a bit of a surprise. I had to Google for the picture to find out who it was, though!

[Raak, Darren] Was just reading his "dangerous idea" at Edge. Profound knowledge of the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics or windy hallucinogenic rhetoric?

[Projoy] The dangerous idea was asking him the question in the first place.

Well, who is it then?

[Rosie] I'm sorry, but due to the indeterminacy principle it's not possible to know the URL of his picture and his identity simultaneously.

Yeah, that picture startled me when I saw it a few years ago. It's a portrait for a board he sat on. He's always been something of a hero of mine. He's the one who's not Zappa. Or IS HE??? You can see him a little better in this. There's a story about how he turned up for his audition carrying his laundry, the idea being that as long as he was going out he might as well get his laundry done so it wouldn't be a wasted trip either way. The pragmatic insouciance of this apparently impressed the casting director quite a bit.

Oh, just found the "dangerous idea" on Edge. I'm half inclined to believe he's having them on -- it would be very like him -- but there's just enough consistent substance peeking out of it to make me wonder. Which, again, may be the idea.

(Projoy) It is now. This is very disturbing.

[Projoy] I incline towards either "windy rhetoric" or "leg-pull", especially compared with the other contributions there.

In fairness to others, here it is. It made more sense the second time I read it; at least think I saw about two thirds of what he was driving at. Unfortunately he tries to distill it down a little too far and leaves out about 90% of the exposition it would need to lift it out of Time Cube territory, with the result that it does read a bit like somebody trying to drag some subjectively experienced great insight back from an altered mental state by scribbling the key concepts on a notepad on the nightstand before the memory fades. I can't even say he's wrong, just that he doesn't really give you anything to analyze or dispute; he's reduced it to an overly simple set of vague declaratives, so even if you want to give him a hearing you just end up going, "um. Okay."

Scrolling down, I see that Laurence Krauss has a project for Darren:
The ultimate goal of physics, as it is often described, is to have a "theory of everything", in which all the fundamental laws that describe nature can neatly be written down on the front of a T-shirt (even if the T-shirt can only exist in 10 dimensions!).

I'm mucking out the house today. How does it get so much stuff in it?

The naughty stuff fairies cart it in in the middle of the night. If you make a present to them by leaving binbags full of stuff by the edge of the road once a week, you should find the amount of stuff eventually decreases.

(Raak) No, the foxes get it. So the fairies don't get their presents and just keep up the pressure.

[Irouléguy] I thought I'd posted this response immediately after your post, but still... when the physicists fulfil their part of the bargain, I'll do mine.

Darren] T-shirts seem to be real conversation killers.

(pen) Now do it with the words.

Had a look around the Vista web pages last night and the Vista Advisor. It looks like it will not be a simple upgrade from XP. There are many programmes it highlights that there may be problems or issues with but has big problems with Realtek and Kaspersky virus, both need to be uninstalled then reinstalled after. Some of the things it has problems with came preloaded on the PC suprised there were so many. The promo on the site looks good but that is the top end version not the basic Home version, so will be waiting a bit before taking the plunge.

I think I am being constructively dismissed. I have taken legal advice. More on this later.

[pen] You're doing the right thing. Keep us posted, and good luck!

[Pen] Ouch! A horrid situation however it pans out. It's too long since I was a union convenor and kept up with employment law, but make sure you follow all the procedures properly yourself such as following up internal channels even if you know in advance it won't make any difference. You should also keep records of everything, including as verbatim as possible notes of conversations. Best of luck.

[pen] oo-er. Stay strong.

[pen] eek! what Chalky and INJ said.

[pen] EEk! Oh no! Good luck.

[pen] Just been reading around the subject and it sounds pretty f'king horrible. Sympathies.

[pen] Loads of sympathy and good luck.

[pen] What rab said.

pen] Good luck!

[pen]Good luck with the lawyers.

I'm not familiar with the term "Constructive Dismissal" so I looked it up. Am I to understand penelope is being harrassed by her supervisors to the point she will quit?

Regardless, please add my best wishes that things resolve well for you, penelope.

At the risk of interrupting something serious with frivolity, I am amused by the fact that on some paperwork we have, the cost of registering a marriage is quoted per person. One wonders how many marriages between one, three or seventeen people take place.

After two conversations with a lawyer and some advice from my brother in law, three meetings, some steely bargaining (on my part) and a little compromise, I have a solution. For now. It's a big relief.

[pen] Glad to hear it.

Here (AU), since last year, businesses with fewer than 100 employees (99% of public sector firms) are exempt from unfair dismissal laws, and those with over 100 employees are able to dismiss anyone any time if they claim that part of the reason for the dismissal was for the "operational requirements" of the business. Being sacked on the basis of race, sex, age, pregnancy or family responsibility is still technically illegal, but pretty easy to get around.

(actually, the "operational requirementes/reasons" clause is available for all sizes of employer)

[flerdle] Well thank goodness I live in a country where working for a small firm isn't a discrimination in itself.

[pen] Indeed.