The Andy Gray story has developed widespread publicity now and I've given some opinions of my own in the relevant thread of the forum. I felt that the comments on Sian Massey crossed the line between "jokes" and "personal sexist remarks", and that the reprimand and suspension was a fair punishment. However, I then felt that the sacking as reaction to the stuff that was leaked afterwards was OTT.
The overall verdict on these things is that the punishments should fit the crimes, and that th
We're getting close, not only to the end of the season, but also to the review of the rules concerning team orders. Here are some thoughts of mine on the issue.
I think that the main problem- certainly the one that gets up many fans' backsides- isn't so much team orders, but rather team favouritism, in particular requiring one driver to defer to another while the "number two driver" still has a significant mathematical chance of winning the Drivers' Championship. In seasons where one team r
Well, after plenty of heated discussions on the TV forecasts, notably recent trends at the Beeb, it's become clear to me what the main problem is: forecasters being encouraged to make people "feel good" by "emphasising positives", and to do that, naturally, they have to second-guess what the majority of the population consider to be good and bad weather.
The easiest (though certainly not the best) source of such guesses is the general media, so my feelings that the BBC might be trying to "e
I think even sleet is unlikely to occur in Norwich next week, because of the long airmass track over the North Sea- Norwich often seems to struggle to get much snow from northerlies early in the season (22-23 November 2008 was a notable exception, but that one really caught East Anglia full in the face, and it was still very marginal).
But could it possibly snow in Cleadon in Tyne and Wear? That really would be a "first" because the north-east coast is particularly prone to being warmed by t
Some people, after seeing my contribution to threads relating to copyright, might be under the impression that I think people should be allowed to perpetuate illegal activities.
In reality, I don't ever take that stance on legal issues, on the contrary I think "lawlessness" tends to be unregulated and potentially dangerous. What I do take issue with, though, is over-restrictive rules, and hence I tend to take the stance that they should ideally be relaxed, and that in the meantime I don't
I had a decent birthday yesterday, got lots of good wishes on Facebook, and got a few pressies, plus had cakes at 4pm.
The temperature reached 27C during the afternoon at Norwich Airport- fitting since 27 is my favourite number. I like to have showers/storms with sunshine on my birthday most of all, but a warm/hot sunny dry day is my second preference so I'm not complaining about what I got.
Perhaps not a strictly accurate title. However, as a couple of recent experiences have starkly reminded me, while I sometimes misbehave and sometimes get punished for it, I usually get punished less for my own misbehaviour, than by association with other people's misbehaviour.
The process is that others misbehave, I behave in a way that is innocent, but which gets tarred with the same brush as their behaviour (often via some unwritten code of etiquette, sometimes by a rule) and so I get ster
There is often a large debate over whether we should keep updating the 30-year reference period every 10 years (the World Meteorological Organisation does it every 30 years, the Met Office traditionally does it every 10 years but has partially held onto 1961-90 in the recent update).
My view is that it depends on what analysis we're doing and that there is often plenty of room for argument. When we're comparing current weather (or the past month or year's weather) with the "average", i.e. wh
I have resisted "My Documents" and "Program Files" for many years, and the main reason is user choice: if we all "give in" to having no user choice, there'll be no incentive for Microsoft to keep it in future versions of Windows.
[b]My Documents[/b]
Proponents of the "My Documents" system say that it's good because it gives each user a standardised home directory and makes it easy for multiple users to have multiple accounts on one system with their own "My Documents" directories.
If this
I've seen quite a few debates on so-called "man flu" which is basically a swipe at men saying that they exaggerate how ill they are whereas women just "get on with it". I don't know how much truth there is behind this stereotype.
Basically we have two extreme positions in circulation- one being "I'll have a day off work if I'm even slightly ill, e.g. a few sniffles" and another being "It doesn't matter how ill you are, you should just get on with it and come into work through thick and thin"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/8553629.stm
As someone posted in the Comments section, the main arguments against any kind of technology seem to be:
[quote]1) it slows the game down
2) controversy is part of the beauty of the game[/quote]
I'll give my twopenny's worth:
1. too much "black and white" thinking and slippery slope fallacies I reckon. It's important that we don't implement technology to such an extreme that it will seriously disrupt the flow of the game, but ther
My latest word on intellectual property is: we need the masses to start seeing past the premise that "copying is theft". Theft is a relatively black and white issue- barring exceptional circumstances it is wrong to take physical property away from people, and in a large majority of cases, a theft from a retail outlet equals a lost sale. The popular argument, therefore, is that since "copying is theft", "every copy made is a lost sale", and therefore that copying should be kept to the absolute
So, how late does spring normally arrive in this country? And what do we mean by "spring"? Personally I am happy to accept and follow the meteorological definition (1st March to 31st May) and think in terms of spring as meaning increasing daylight and sunshine hours and plant growth. I can certainly see a case for arguing that wintry weather persisting largely without a break well into March (as per 1996, 2001 and 2006) might be realistically considered as a "late spring".
But no, let's tr
In recent years Philip Eden has repeatedly voiced a concern that as a society, our reactions towards normal wintry weather have become more and more intolerant, and it could get very ugly if we were to get a severe wintry spell. The latest wintry episode has shown that it isn't the general public who are intolerant, it is the media, which makes an enemy of the weather and wants us all to do the same.
News broadcasts around 4-8 January were full of stories of the misery and inconvenience that
In some ways this spell is starting to remind me of the sense I had during July 2006. Until that month, I'd thought that I had a limited tolerance of prolonged heat and sunshine- but I soon found that if it's generally on the low side of 30C, and interspersed with the odd showery/thundery outbreak for variety, I can easily "tolerate" it for upwards of an entire month (more like "find it very enjoyable").
The same is happening here with the cold snowy spell. Having had a fair dumping up in T
We are increasingly looking like being locked into a prolonged cold spell, which may be snowy in the east and south- similar to January 1985. February looks at this stage like being somewhat milder, but whether it will be mild throughout, or a mix of mild and cold spells, remains to be seen.
I reached 12cm snow on New Year's Day and had 2 large snowmen built in the front garden- 12cm is the deepest snow at Cleadon, alongside February 2004, since February 1991. There is more chance of snow o
At the moment I think there is a 70% chance for eastern coastal parts of the North East (yes that means my area!) and 80-90% for inland parts of the region. The current snow cover doesn't look like thawing significantly until Christmas Eve, and unless that channel low gets far north enough on Christmas Eve to draw in a modified easterly, it probably won't thaw significantly on Christmas Eve either!
In the coming days I expect many media forecasts to be expressing a desire for a warm-up by Ch
I may well be very fortunate with cold/snow over the coming week. The snowfalls from the easterly look like kicking in just after I get back to the North East, so hopefully no disruption to the train journey. And then the upcoming northerly looks like the sort of spell where it would definitely be better to be in Tyneside than in Norwich, as the warmer air will be further south. Could get a hefty spell of snow cover from this.
It is uncertain how long this cold air will hang around for. U
For those of you who think that the trend towards increased subjectivity in forecasts, like the increased frequency at which the phrase "at least it will be mild" is used, is more due to the BBC than the Met Office, here is an article from 2005 that strongly supports that view.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4310702.stm
Now I'm not sure what to say about the first part of the Met Office's advice, moving away from using scientific language, as of course you get the problem of confusion vs. p
I had my swine flu jab on Tuesday (probably much to the angst of PersianPaladin). It gave me a mild headache for a few hours yesterday and my right arm has become fairly sore. Other than that there have been no problems- and in the meantime I feel at far less risk of ending up on a ventilator (somewhat fittingly, the remnants of last week's cold has set my normally-mild asthma going at times over the last few days).
Am hopefully about to get an academic paper published, which should be good
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1219753/GRAHAM-POLL-Sorry-Fabio-referee-spot-Robert-Greens-red-card-Ukraine.html
Some comments here highlight a key problem:
[quote name='Graham Poll']...stated at half-time that he felt that both a dismissal and penalty are too harsh in such instances.
But given that only 75 per cent of penalties are converted in the Barclays Premier League, you can see that if the penalty was the only sanction then more players would be tempted to bring do
In the past I have had a habit of purchasing one of those football games for PC every few years (there's little point IMHO of buying one every year or two as they are usually just incremental upgrades).
The first one, FIFA 2000, was accidental as I was given two PC games for Christmas but accidentally got someone else's in the post. FIFA 2000 was the game that got me interested in football. Since then I took some notice of PC ZONE's ravings over Pro Evolution Soccer, tried it and immediatel
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/science/news/article.cfm?c_id=82&objectid=10565358
I see that according to this link, there's a project to make the world's weather records freely available on the internet. I can see a lot of advantages behind this, including the points made on the site. It may make it easier to get access to all climate data for use in climate change analysis (such as for the IPCC reports) and studying of local climates to help identify hazards and recurrence of extreme event
PhD still going okay, and still enjoying the work for the most part. The fine spell of weather looks like being downgraded, here's hoping that the NE'ly brings my favourite convective "sunshine and showers" stuff and not the usual low cloud.
I continue to strongly dislike the way the UK is going regarding personal liberty:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8249020.stm
As an individual measure it might not seem too bad, but the logical end result of incremental steps like these is a society whe
Have just had a two-week holiday to Cleadon, and expect to be going back to Norwich on Monday. It's been a pretty fruitful holiday, and I went on three walks "out in the sticks", the second two of which were very interesting. It's also nice to spend some time in a nice big house after a while spent in either rented or student accommodation.
I also recently went on a computer game shopping spree as a result of some of my gaming friends picking up Steam accounts. For various reasons I am str
