Express Mail
Dear Mr Man-I-Saw-On-The-Stratford-Road,
Thank you very much for flashing your lights at me this morning. When I rounded the corner and saw the police officers, I realised that you were warning me of the possibility of being fined for speeding. However, it may have escaped your attention that I was not, in fact, speeding. Furthermore, I actually had no intention of doing so.
Perhaps you noticed that the road we were travelling along has many houses, side-streets and obscured driveways? I suggest that I would deserve to get fined were I to speed along it. The fact that the road is straight does not actually cause me accelerate to whatever arbitrary speed I have decided is safe.
That's aside from the small matter of the law, which is not, contrary to your apparent opinion, formed just to annoy drivers. Speed limits, it may surprise you to know, are there for safety reasons, and given that you have the privilege of driving a vehicle capable of killing somebody in a split-second it is not unreasonable to expect you to follow them, and the police to enforce them.
If, next time, you could perhaps not assume I'm an ignorant, law-breaking, dangerous, arrogant fool like yourself, I would appreciate it very much.
Many thanks,
Andrew
Necessary Purchase
Sure, I've thrown away various items of clothing recently, and haven't replaced them. I also need to do something about the rather dodgy boiler. Some things, though, are just too important:
Cavemen prefer blondes
There's a fascinating Independent article today (best be quick before it becomes pay-only content) on the evolutionary causes of blonde hair. I always thought that the lighter hair colours would be something to do with uptake of sunlight, much like skin colour, but it seems that's not the case. Researchers think that sexual selection in times of food scarcity resulted in blonde-hair genes spreading due to their increased appeal to men. I'm not sure whether this appeal is attributed to the colour itself, or just being different from others.
Hair's interesting. The classic image of stereotypical male fantasy has long blonde hair. Why long? Steven Pinker, in How the Mind Works, says:
Luxuriant hair is always pleasing, possibly because it shows not only current health but a record of health in the years before. Malnutrition and disease weaken the hair as it grows from the scalp, leaving a fragile spot in the shaft. Long hair implies a long history of good health.
Explains why we all care so much about which shampoo we use 
Happily, times change. I've generally always been more attracted to brunettes, and I wonder whether that's because most of my relatives have darker hair colours. It would make sense that genes that control hair colour would generally co-exist with genes that cause attraction to said colour, right? Do people from predominantly blonde families prefer blondes?
The Independent article also contains this paragraph:
Experts said that as relations between men and women have evolved, men may have become more attracted by brains, represented in their psyche by brunettes, than the more physical charms of blond hair.
Look, I didn't say it. I put that in mainly to annoy Lynsey
It’s too long till teatime
Shrove: A past tense of shrive.
Shrive: To hear the confession of and give absolution to (a penitent). Or: To obtain absolution for (oneself) by confessing and doing penance.
And this has what to do with pancakes? Not that I'm complaining, you understand.
(not the) Ultimate Blogger #2
I was planning to enter Ultimate Blogger 2, but spent too long trying to think of clever answers to the application questions then lost the use of my computer for three days and missed the deadline. Muppet-boy. I should have just filled it in with whatever came into my head. However, I wouldn't have stood a chance against Lauren anyway. Everybody go support her!
*makes note to apply for UB3 in very good time*
TV I have been watching
Gideon's Daughter
Let's face it - I watched this (and 'Friends and Crocodiles' earlier in the year) because the adverts said it was written by somebody called 'Stephen Poliakoff', who is apparently some kind of giant in the television drama who I really should have heard of but hadn't. Somebody with a name like that must be good, right? As it turned out I enjoyed both dramas. I found them to be interesting little stories, well told. Whether they had any deeper meaning I have no idea - too many years of English Lit. have made me nervous about reading too much into things - but I have a feeling that you take out as much as you want to.
Davina
Davina McCall's chat show recently started on BBC1, and it's quite odd. I find her very appealing as a presenter, and have been known to keep watching an otherwise uninteresting programme because she, unlike countless other automatons, seems to have quite a bit about her. She's comfortable on-camera, constantly ad-libbing and always copes very well with the unexpected. A chat show seems a strange choice, though, and last Wednesday's show was a little disappointing. Firstly, because she is so likeable I found myself more interested in her than the guest. For her to retreat and give them take centre stage is almost a waste. Still, this could work quite well if she uses her charm to ask interesting and probing questions. Sadly, she never gets the chance - on Wednesday's show there were so many guests on the hour-long programme that they were allotted ten minutes each, which was barely enough to plug their latest single/film/book. Maybe a different format, with longer interviews, would work better. I flipped over to Kirstie and Phil before the show even ended. Shame.
Casualty / Holby City
I was going to use the words 'guilty pleasures' in this paragraph, but I don't think I will. I actually find myself looking forward to these two, which is a major turnaround from a few years back when I avoided them completely. I think it's because they've gone back to concentrating on staff members over 21 years old, with the result that they're not entirely based around love triangles any more. The acting's good, the characters likeable and the scripts are usually nicely written (albeit with the odd dodgy episode - I keep meaning to check whether they're all by the same writer.) I find them decent, easy entertainment, and I'm not ashamed to say so
Deal or No Deal
I heard from various people how good Channel 4's new afternoon show was, so caught an episode last week1. I figured it was some kind of quiz show, which I can normally enjoy as I like trying to answer the questions. Turns out, not so much. If you don't know the format of Deal or No Deal, here's how it works: A contestant randomly chooses one of twenty-two boxes, each of which contain a different sum of money varying from 1p up to £200,000. The contestant then opens the remaining boxes, one by one, revealing how much money he hasn't won. Every few boxes a 'banker' will call and offer the contestant £x if he'll walk away immediately. If he doesn't 'deal' in this way, the contestant is eventually left with two boxes, his own and one remaining, and has to decide which one to open.
It's mental. To be fair, I may have seen a slightly dodgy episode. The one I watched had the contestant demanding that everybody 'send him their positivity.' Every time a box was opened to reveal an amount less than £1000 the audience exploded into applause. The presenter, Noel Edmonds, kept wittering on about how much he believed in this system, and wasn't something really amazing happening. For ages I figured I must be missing something - it seemed to be all random chance. And, yes, it was. The only skill involved, as far as I can tell, is to add up the amounts remaining in the boxes, divide by the number of boxes left, and see whether your answer is lower than whatever the banker is offering you - if it is, 'deal'!2 This particular show resulted in the man turning down £40,000 and ending up with £10,000. My initial comments were slightly more scathing - I think "complete bag of toss" was the phrase that I used when describing it to Mum - but I think that's just because I like to see people tested for rewards instead of it being blind chance. That's just me, though - plenty seem to disagree and your mileage may vary.
Eastenders
I don't know how I've ended up watching Eastenders. I'm sure I wasn't a regular viewer last summer, so it must have happened some time over the autumn. I know my sister started watching, which drew in Mum, and then we'd sometimes watch it while eating. I guess I must have been sucked into some storyline, and by then it was too late - it's impossible to stop without missing the end of one story, by which time another has started...I have no willpower. However it happened, I am currently wondering when it was that the scriptwriters realised that during January and February:
- they would have very few interesting characters remaining
- they would have no storylines that didn't border on the farcicial
- that the entire show would be carried by a seventeen-year old (playing a fifteen-year-old) out-acting everybody else on the screen.
I'm guessing the latter was a revelation, since she's been inserted into every storyline since the beginning of the year.
- it was a calm-before-the-storm day while I waited for replacement hardware to arrive, so I wasn't entirely skiving off [↩]
- It seems like a variation of The Monty Hall Problem, but Wikipedia says it isn't at all [↩]
An Impediment
A man goes to the doctor's and says "Doctor, doctor, I can't pronounce the letters 'F' and 'TH'." The doctor looks at him and says "Well, you can't say fairer than that".
[giggles] Hadn't heard that one before. From here.
Stupid Spammers
Without the closing '%', this just doesn't work at all. It did bypass the spam filter, mind.
Computer problems sorted (hopefully)
I'm back! Did you miss me?
After much hardware shunting, Windows is finally up and running and my backup is being restored as I type. Phew. Ben figured out the below solution during the course of a marathon phone call - thanks, Ben!
For googlers: If your A8R-MVP will not boot from SATA hard drives, resulting in messages that ask you to insert boot media (or it just sits there with a flashing cursor), as well as seemingly interfering with CD-drives, it can be fixed by enabling the SATA boot rom in the bios. Why? Not a clue.
Hello!
Hey, thanks for coming! I'm Andrew, and this is where my headthinks come to breed. They often meander around humanism and photography, but they're flighty and you can't trust them, so anything is possible.
Do feel free to email me - I get lonely:
Your hair looks swish, by the way - have you done something new?
Recent Comments
- vicky: going up this weekend having done all the welsh peaks except 4 snowdon, cant wait
on Climbing Snowdon. - vicky: what, how can u live in the 21 c and say that, probably a sexist thing
on Climbing Snowdon. - vicky: da iawn laura, cant believe what im hearing, all this fuss, anyway love the site, and i agree, normal people who swear and curse clomb mountains cos we live in the...
on Climbing Snowdon. - Andrew: Did a few quick test shots to check the light levels, then balanced the camera on the arm of a bench, set it for a 20s exposure and hoped for the best
on ISS. - lynsey: Wow, how did you take that photograph?
on ISS.
