Merge Records has the video to M. Ward's Chinese Translation off his Post-War owlbum. Its an animated tale and I like the video and the song lots and lots.

 

Hackney council aren't very happy at being labeled the worst place to Live in the UK 2006, and have set up this I love Hackney e-card website where you can send an ecard to channel 4 and tell them Phil and Kirsty's sister were wrong. I'm never sure which bits are hackney and which are harringay and which are somewhere else. I think the great fabric shop on Mare street is in Hackney so its a thumbs up from me.

 

This week listen again to Marc Riley's Brain Surgery on 6music and hear the Divine Comedy playing Bad ambassador, Lady of a certain age and Raspberry beret in the studio.

 

Park the virtual car. A game Luke sent me which reminds me I probably should give up on the idea of learning to drive as I am generally rubbish at it. You have to park the car against the clock. In the real world I'm not that bad at parking (when the car is free of spectators).

 

Count in the Square - Trafalgar Square, 4th November . There's a climate change demo type thing planned in a few weeks in London. It doesn't seem very clear what they're planning to do exactly other than say climate change is bad.

"With street bands, entertainment, film, performance and speakers - come and be part of the greatest climate chaos event of the year."

 

Empire has a bunch of movie quizzes online at the moment. The latest one is on Back to the Future, I managed 16/20 which gives me a rating of Great Scott! You have to register to have a go though.

 

I got sent this email to my Cambridge account this moring, some gentle reading if you like that kind of thing...
The complete work of Charles Darwin: "This site currently contains more than 50,000 searchable text pages and 40,000 images of both publications and handwritten manuscripts... More than 150 ancillary texts are also included, ranging from secondary reference works to contemporary reviews, obituaries, published descriptions of Darwin's Beagle specimens and important related works for understanding Darwin's context."

 

A great campaign at the UK Tea Council says you should have 4 cups of tea a day (but sadly this is as well as all that fruit): "The latest research has shown that drinking your cuppa can help you maintain your health as part of a healthy lifestyle. The antioxidants, hydrating properties, caffeine and fluoride found in tea mean that you need never feel guilty about reaching for the teapot."

- Science types say so and everything!

• Approximately 40% of the nation's fluid intake today will be tea
• Tea without milk has no calories. Using semi-skimmed milk adds around 13 calories per cup, but you also benefit from valuable minerals and calcium
• Tea with milk provides 16% of daily calcium requirement in 4 cups
• Tea contains some zinc and folic acid
• Tea with milk contains Vitamin B6, Riboflavin B2 and Thiamin B1
• Tea is a source of the minerals manganese, essential for bone growth and body development, and potassium, vital for maintaining body fluid levels
• The average cup of tea contains less than half the level of caffeine than coffee. One cup contains only 50mg per 190ml cup
• Tea is a natural source of fluoride and drinking four cups makes a significant contribution to your daily intake
• Only 11% of UK water supply has fluoride added
• Green and black teas are from the same plant, Camelia sinensis, and contain similar amounts of antioxidants and caffeine

 

Read about my cousin's trip to India where he is writing about conversions to Buddhism, Ambedkar 2006:

"For the first time, the movement of conversion to Buddhism among the poorest and most oppressed people in India is moving out from its heartland in Maharashtra to include people across the country. In many ceremonies across India, tens, and in some cases hundreds of thousands of people will become Buddhists over the next few weeks. This started in Nagpur on Monday in ceremonies that included 1-2 million people (most already Buddhists and some new converts). The movement is now expanding dramatically to include other communities in Maharashtra, notably the Matungs – a second group of ex-‘untouchables’ – and the ‘criminal and nomadic tribes’."

 

I'm back from a few days in Sicily where I went to go and measure mercury at Mount Etna. Sadly there were quite a few things that went wrong like traffic jams-->missed flight, my machine not measuring any mercury, cash machine eating my card. I did get to go up Etna though which was pretty hard work. We drove most of the way and probably only climbed for about half an hour but as its ~3km high (~1.9 miles) everything is pretty hard work as the air is a bit on the thin side. I did make it up to the top, very kindly Marco and Sergeo carried my Hg instrument for me which is about 15 kg I think, its heavy anyway. I got up a couple of times and took some pictures.
Click here for more photos
The first day we climbed it was pretty windy and there was lots of the plume where we sat. The wind died down the second day and we got a pretty good view of the South East crater erupting.

Here you can see and hear strombolian activity at the crater, with bits of rock being flung high in the air.


Apparently this shows a vent opening.
all this was pretty cool, but I also caught a bit of the Italian Deal or no deal!! I was almost late for dinner while trying to tell the lady on the telly to take the 25000 euros. She didn't listen to me. There was a lot more singing than with Noel and the bit I didn't like so much, the host goes over to the box and has a sneaky peek at the number before we get to see what's inside. Wrong!

 

Well shockingly I don't know enough about the US of A to become a citizen...

I Failed the US Citizenship Test

Oops, I only got 2 out of 10 right!