I have just seen this:

US actor David Hasselhoff has been treated in hospital after being hurt in a chandelier accident.

Ok, not funny when somebody gets hurt, but really - a chandelier accident?!

Hasselhoff, 53, hit his head on a chandelier in the men’s room after using the gym at the Sanderson Hotel in London’s West End on Thursday.

You know you’re in an exclusive club when there are chandeliers in the toilet¹. Hopefully resident B4L Hasselhoff expert Kerron will supply the full details in due course…

1. I’m sure men’s room can mean other things, but I’m going to stick with my initial impression. [↩]

News item of the day:

Insurers have withdrawn the cover on their virginity taken out by three sisters in the event of the second coming of Christ.

The grammar seems to suggest that the women were worried about Jesus turning up and bonking the staff of the insurance company (twice, perhaps). I don’t think this is the point. The women were concerned that, should they immaculately conceive the messiah, they would not have enough money to cover the cost of raising him. This is obviously a legitimate worry. I mean, there’d be press conferences, entertainments licenses, temple refittings, donkey-hire…That kid would be expensive. On the other hand, you’d think they’d cover some of it with reduced food bills.

The siblings had paid £100 annually since 2000. If they had secured a payout, they stood to receive £1m.

He added: “The Catholic Church is up in arms about what we’ve been doing. We have withdrawn the cover because it was causing a furore.

Things I don’t understand:

1. The Catholic Church declined to comment. Wow. Aside from that, what is their problem with this? Is having a child forced upon you not something that should be recompensed?
2. You’re telling me that an insurance company turned down money on a cover on which there was not the remotest chance they’d ever have to pay out? What kind of broken insurance company is this?

The UN nuclear committee today said that Iran has failed to halt uranium enrichment programmes. This is a country run by a psychotic who wants to wipe Israel of the face of the Earth, while preparing for the coming of the 12th imam. Also, 3 million people in Darfur are on the brink of starvation, yet today the UN halved food rations because of a lack of funds. The rations before were pretty much the minimum level needed for survival. The UK and the EU have provided very little, with the major donations coming from the US. It’s hard to see it as anything but a massive failure by the international community.

You’d think these would be pressing issues, but the main story on the news is the shocking revelation that some prisoners re-offend after release. A massive five people, from 1000 who should have been deported, reoffended. Five! The end of civilisation as we know it, clearly. The BBC correspondent is currently saying that the government has “failed to protect the public”. Could we possibly get some perspective? Sure prisoner release was a mistake, but it wasn’t malicious, and is it actually all that important? I appreciate that those who suffered violence at the hands of those released may feel otherwise, but on a national/international scale, aren’t there far worse things requiring public attention? It’s not that I’m blindly defending Labour, I just really don’t understand the fuss over this issue.

The BBC breaking news alert thingy just popped up. Either something is going on that is beyond comprehension, or there’s a BBC employee banging his/her head into the desk right now

There’re a lot of exciting announcements happening today:

• Chris Martin has written a song for the Conservative Party (thanks to Tom in the comments). Don’t miss the song itself (really)
• Don’t be medieval - Google Romance
• Both Scoble and Jeremy Zawodny have left their tech companies to work for Google
• Windows Vista will use a Linux kernel
• Duke Nukem Forever reviewed at Ars Technica - “Duke Nukem Forever has been rewritten as an Ajax application written using the Ruby on Rails framework”
• Slashdot redesign - OMG!!! Ponies!!!
• I want one of those - USB Brain Stick
• APOD - Green Cheese
• Showing it like it is - new Opera adverts
• The Economist reports on genetically engineered dragons

There’s an incredibly comprehensive list over at wikipedia.

I took my sister to hospital recently, and the parking charge for just over an hour was £2.10. I was surprised, and I can certainly see why so many people are angry. However, I have some sympathy with the argument that city centre hospitals have to charge more than local car parks to prevent shoppers taking advantage. I’ve no doubt that plenty of people would do this, probably trying to justify it by complaining about parking prices elsewhere. I can also see that the NHS would prefer to spend money on medicine rather than car parks, and it seems reasonable to have some kind of charge. It’s difficult to think of an easy system of ensuring that only hospital visitors take advantage of parking, too. I’m not arguing for either side, but I don’t think the issue is as clear-cut as the media seem to suggest.

Article: Live sporting events could be screened in 3D in US cinemas by 2007 in a bid boost flagging mid-week ticket sales.
I like the journalism here. 3D how? With polarising glasses? As far as I know, I’m one of about six people on the planet who think that’s fun. I like how the rest of the article skips the 3D aspect, preferring to concentrate on sport in cinemas. It’s a bit like producing an article saying “soldiers on the battlefield will be given invisibility cloaks in a boost to stop them getting shot.” and then discussing how many soldiers get shot. I used to have an invisibility cloak, but I lost it¹.

Headline: X Factor losers top album chart
Enough said.

Headline: Sea rise could be ‘catastrophic’.
Not catastrophic. No. ‘catastrophic’. Similarly, sea rise could be ‘belgian’.

Headline: Hundreds turn out for the World Pooh-sticks Championship.
Laughing in happiness, this time. This is just great. I also like that ‘Japan are defending their title’.

Must go to bed. These won’t seem half as funny when I’m awake, I’m sure. Apologies.

1. not my joke. Stolen from digg. [↩]

I’m not at home right now, and don’t know whether I’m blowing this out of all proportion, but a story just appeared on BBC News saying that the UK science education is going to contain creationist teachings. Specifically, the OCR syllabus says:

Teachers are asked to “explain that the fossil record has been interpreted differently over time (e.g. creationist interpretation)”.

Um, why?

A spokesperson for the exam board said candidates needed to understand the social and historical context to scientific ideas both pre and post Darwin’s theory of evolution.

“Candidates are asked to discuss why the opponents of Darwinism thought the way they did and how scientific controversies can arise from different ways of interpreting empirical evidence,” he said.

“Creationism and ‘intelligent design’ are not regarded by OCR as scientific theories. They are beliefs that do not lie within scientific understanding.”

The National Curriculum, meanwhile, says the following:

Classes should also cover “ways in which scientific work may be affected by the context in which it takes place (for example, social, historical, moral, spiritual), and how these contexts may affect whether or not ideas are accepted.”

I can see their point, but the language seems a little lax. If this is just a matter of mentioning that before Darwin the favoured explanation was from design, but that the theory of evolution has rendered this null and void, then fair enough. But “the fossil record has been interpreted differently over time” leaves the door open for post-Darwin arguments, which have no evidence and should most definitely have no place in the science classroom.

“[H]ow scientific controversies can arise from different ways of interpreting empirical evidence” is more sinister. If this is a direct reference to creationism “vs” evolution, then I don’t like it at all. That particular debate is not a scientific controversy if you define this as meaning a disagreement within the scientific community. Science says evolution - full stop. It’s other people saying that creationism has any basis, and they do this entirely outside of the scientific method. Graduated evolution vs. punctuated equilibrium would be what I think of as a scientific controversy. Saying that fundamentalist religious claims contribute to ’scientific controversy’ is dangerously close to the “teach the controversy” argument used in the US to try to force intelligent design into the classroom. By that argument I could claim that gravity is caused by invisible monkeys holding us on the ground, argue with a scientist about it, then demand it be discussed in the classroom.

I don’t think I like this very much. I haven’t read OCR’s syllabus properly yet, but the BBC article suggests the language is weak. If so, it’s a foot in the door for anti-science campaigners.

John Profumo died today. The first time I learnt of the 1960’s scandal was during my photography A-Level. Our teacher told us of this photograph of Christine Keeler, the showgirl Profumo had an affair with:

The teacher explained how he had to be very careful when talking about this particular photo. The year before a british photography teacher had shown it to his class, explaining how it was a iconic, evocative image, and set them homework to try to create something similarly interesting. Somebody complained that he was telling them to create pornographic images, and he was sacked. I don’t know the details, but this seemed pretty stupid at the time, and still does.

From the BBC article:

Within days of his political departure, Mr Profumo turned up at the refuge centre Toynbee Hall and asked to help with the washing up.

He stayed for nearly 40 years, using his political skills to raise huge funds, and expanding the charity’s activities to include social programmes and youth training.

The prevailing opinion seems to be that he atoned for his mistake, which is nice to hear. And he had cool hair:

From the Independent:

Last week, Toby Dawson, a Korean-American with Elvis-sized sideburns and daredevil skills to match, won the bronze medal in the men’s freestyle moguls. His heroics made headlines in the US. In distant Busan, South Korea, they created a sensation.

After watching the event, friends and relatives of Kim Jae-su called him to say that Dawson looked exactly like the son Kim had lost in 1981, when the two-year-old boy became separated from his mother in the town’s market. His father never set eyes on him again. Until, perhaps, now.

Pretty amazing, thus far.

[T]he toddler who became Toby Dawson was found near the same marketplace. The person who found him left him outside a police station. After his parents could not be found, he was placed in an orphanage, where he was adopted by Americans Mike and Deborah Dawson, ski instructors at the US winter sports mecca of Vail, Colorado.

Kim and his wife, meanwhile, had searched everywhere for their tiny son. “I didn’t think reporting it to the police would be of any help, so I went around looking for him myself,” Kim said.

Hmmm? What, now?

The couple never filed a missing persons report.

There must be more to this story, surely.

I wonder what Arsene thinks.

Ahem.

Quote from BBC News this morning:

Meet the most romantic couple in the midlands. They met 77 years ago, age 13…and still make each other go weak at the knees

Cuts back to reporter.

Of course, it could just be arthritis

Made me laugh

Yesterday I kept hearing about the London Planetarium, and how it was going to ‘replace its stars with pictures of celebrities’. This conjured up all sorts of images - were they going to put faces in the dome itself, and produce some kind of celebrity-based effects show instead? Turns out it’s being closed, and the area will be used for a Madame Tussauds show about celebrities. Why they didn’t just say ‘the London Planetarium is to be closed’ I have no clue.

The Dubai-owned entertainment giant said it would make the change in the summer because of a dwindling interest in space and the rocketing interest in celebrity culture.

Sad I went to the Planetarium years ago, and remember it being a wonderful show.

There’s a whale swimming up the Thames. AN RNLI lifeboat is apparently staying with it to make sure it comes to no harm. Cool! I bet he’s named soon.

Is it wrong that I can’t stop laughing at this?

An Indian man has been banished by his family who are convinced he is a ghost.

*tries to stop giggling*

Raju Raghuvanshi, believed by friends and family to have died in prison, came home this month after a short jail sentence to be greeted by shouts of “Help! Ghost!”

I’m a bad person.