Israeli Genocide Continues With Another Gaza Massacre

112 Palestinians killed and 760 injured while surrounding an aide lorry in Gaza City this morning and immediately the Hamas and Israeli propaganda machines swung into effect, Hamas saying that they had been shot by the Israeli Defence Force while the Israeli's claimed the drivers of aid trucks were to blame as a truck ploughed into them as they surrounded the aid trucks and looted them.
Then the Gaza Health Ministry reported receiving bodies and severely wounded people with multiple gun shot wounds at their medical facilities, a claim backed up by the head of the hospital's ambulance service who said that they had used carts when they had no ambulances to spare to transport the tens of people to hospitals.
Eye witnesses spoke of the IDF opening fire on the crowd with machine guns from a checkpoint 70m away and it was then that the lorries began to move which led the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority to say that there had been 'an ugly massacre conducted by the Israeli occupation army' and the UN aid chief, Martin Griffiths, saying he was appalled'.
Joe Biden said reports of Israeli firing on unarmed Palestinians would complicate any ceasefire deal which he had hoped could be in place by Monday meanwhile during a congressional hearing, US defence secretary Lloyd Austin was asked how many Palestinian women and children had been killed by Israel since 7 October to which he replied: 'Over 25,000' and to the next question of how many precision guided munitions had been provided to Israel since the start of its war in Gaza, said 'Approximately 21,000'.
The White House has described the reports of 112 people killed in Gaza while waiting to receive humanitarian aid as a 'serious incident' and that they mourn the loss of innocent life and recognise the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, where innocent Palestinians are just trying to feed their families which flies in the face of providing them with 21,000 munitions because what did they think they was going to do with them?
The International Court of Justice have already said what Israel is doing in Palestine fulfills the criteria for a genocide, i would argue that what they have been doing to them for the past 60 years fulfills it also but my question would be what are you going to do about it because from where i am sitting Israel is just carrying on their murderous genocide anyway.
The ICJ must now refer Israel to the United Nations Security Council and pass a resolution to take action including economic and trade sanctions, arms embargoes, travel bans and Benjamin Netanyahu and his abhorrent Government can have no place to hide and avoid arrest for war crimes.

How's That Brexit Working Our For Ya?

Not a day goes by without the UK Government mentioning illegal immigration coming across the English Channel on small boats, but that's because they want you to look over there and not over here where the number of legal immigration has skyrocketed by 250% since 2022.
The Office of National Statistics today revealed that 616,000 work visas were issued in 2023
to fill holes in British care homes with Health and Social Care the largest recipients with 146,477
and with preferential status removed from people coming from the European Union courtesy of Brexit, East Asians and West and Southern Africans are the primary source of healthcare workers.
More than 18,000 came from India, with 7,000 from Bangladesh and Pakistan, 18,000 from Nigeria, 15,000 from Zimbabwe and 10,000 from Ghana.
It was barely hidden that the main driver behind many people's vote for Brexit was to stop immigration and 'kick out the foreigners' which was a huge own goal 'as the Europeans quite rightly told us to stuff our jobs and went elsewhere leaving our Hospital's and Care homes woefully understaffed.
Brexit will be the gift which keeps on giving until one of our political parties have the will to offer us a route back into Europe and not just for the foreign workers we so dearly need but the access to the World's largest single market which hit our GDP by 4% when we carelessly removed ourselves.

Today Is...Leap Day

It is also the day i complete my Post Everyday For A Year Challenge so that's me making room in my cupboard for a years supplies of Beanies Coffee but it was just my luck that the year had an extra day.
Due to the World inconveniently taking 365.242 days or or 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes and 56 seconds to go around the Sun it makes our calendars go on the fritz so we have to add an extra day to the year every 4 years and to most people today is the extra day but it isn't as simple as just tacking a 29th Day onto February.
If we didn’t account for this extra time, the seasons would begin to drift. This would be annoying if not devastating, because over a period of about 700 years our summers, which we’ve come to expect in June in the northern hemisphere, would begin to occur in December and who wants to eat turkey in their swimming trunks.
So by adding an extra day every four years, our calendar years stay correctly adjusted but hang on, by adding a leap day every four years, we actually make the calendar longer by over 44 minutes. Over time, these extra 44 minutes would also cause the seasons to drift in our calendar and its back to wearing our Bikini's at Christmas so for this reason, not every four years is a leap year. 
Complicatedly the rule is that if the year is divisible by 100 and not divisible by 400, leap year is skipped but all you need to know is that thanks to today, our seasons will always occur when we expect them to occur, oh and today isn't that extra day, that was on the 24th.
Yep, to make things even more convoluted, the day that is added to a leap year is 24th February. The extra 24th February means that the original 24th February becomes the 25th February and all the other days get pushed down a date until 29th February.

Journalists In Gaza

Since October 7th, only one Journalist has been allowed into Gaza and the journalist from CNN was only allowed to stay for two hours, was not allowed out of her vehicle and was only allowed to travel directly to, and back, from the UAE field Hospital, couldn’t talk to any Palestinians and was accompanied by Israeli representatives at all times.
The only journalists working in Gaza are the ones who were there when the attacks began and although it's difficult to get absolutely accurate statistics, it is estimated over 90 journalists have been killed in Gaza in the past 124 days since the Israeli offensive began with many more injured.
In the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attacks, all foreign journalists had access via the Israeli army to many of the worst-hit Israeli border communities, obviously to show the World the horrors inflicted on them by Hamas but with the exception of the single CNN reporter, not one foreign journalist has been allowed into Gaza, not even embedded into the Israeli army as seems to have become the norm in recent times.
I have heard from Israeli supporters that the details which do come out of Gaza, courtesy of the brave journalists trapped inside, are not independent or 'real' Journalists but are just reporting Hamas propaganda but every media outlet has been trying to gain access to Gaza but have been denied by Israel, citing the Journalists safety concerns.
Media organisations have sent letters to the Israeli's and even took them to the Israeli High Court, arguing they would take responsibility for their own safety but they refuse to allow access and the BBC's Jeremy Bowen, reporting from Jerusalem has said: 'There's no foreign correspondent worth their salt who doesn't want that access - to evaluate the situation first-hand. Why aren't we getting it? I can only surmise that Israel is not allowing reporters to work freely inside Gaza, because their soldiers are doing things they do not want us to see.'
The Israel military like to describe themselves as the most moral army in the world but until journalists are allowed to see for themselves, and with the news that is getting out seeming to make a mockery of that statement, we can only speculate that the Israeli's concern is that journalists will uncover evidence that backs up those allegations of war crimes and genocide.
What are we to deduce otherwise?

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Today Is...Rare Disease Day

According to the NHS website, rare diseases are the ones that impact very few people out of the general population and most don't even have proper treatment and they give a brief the top 10 rarest known. 
The most rarest is RPI Deficiency which is considered to be the rarest disease in the world. Ribose-5-Phosphate Isomerase (RPI), is a crucial enzyme in a metabolic process in the human body which causes muscle stiffness, seizures and a reduction of white matter in the brain. There has only ever been one case and that was in 1984 and since then there have been no cases.
Field’s disease has only ever affected two people and they were twin sisters who suffered a degeneration of their muscles and weakening of the body. Medical experts are still researching the condition.
Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome (HGPS) affects 1 in 20 million people and causes premature ageing and makes even 2-year-olds look aged and weak. There is no current cure for HGPS at the moment.
Methemoglobemin is a form of haemoglobin that makes our blood, skin, lips and nails turn blue in color. It can be inherited but MetHb usually happens when people use certain medications or recreational drugs or exposure to certain chemicals.
Aquagenic Urticaria is a Water Allergy where a person’s skin turns red and itchy after overexposure to water. People suffering from this condition can also be allergic to snow, sweat, and rain.
Foreign Accent Syndrome causes a person to speak in a different accent from their natural one and the main cause of Foreign Accent Syndrome is a brain injury.
Lesch–Nyhan Syndrome is a male only neurological disability which causes people to behave aggressively and harm themselves through head hitting and hand biting due to too much Uric Acid in the body and affects 1 in 3 million men.
Kuru Disease is named as it only affects the Kuru tribe in Papua New Guinea who consume the tissues of their loved ones after their death including the Brain which causes the transmission of prion- an infectious protein.
Harlequin is a disease which makes skin looks like fish scales and makes the body incapable of maintain proper temperature. There is no known cure.
Stone Man’s Disease transforms a person’s muscle tissues into bones.

Today Is...National Pokémon Day

Pokémon is a Japanese media franchise consisting of video games, animated series and films, a trading card game and has a target audience of children aged 5 to 12.
That is, just to make sure it is understood, it is aimed at children aged 5 to 12 which could make all those adults running around my local park holding out their mobile phones and excitedly shouting 'I got a Jigglypuff' a bit strange but then they may consider me a bit strange for sitting their quietly reading my book so fairs fair.
I have to admit i don't know much about Pokémon having never seen the cartoon or film and could probably name about 15 off the top of my head but i do remember an incident where one episode of the cartoon sparked off epileptic seizures in thousands of viewers and the series was suspended until someone decided, oh well, and started showing it again.
The fad for collecting pocket monsters to fight against each other did die down until 2016 when Pokémon Go was introduced which used augmented reality so you could run around cities and capture certain Pokémon and interrupt ladies peacefully reading their books chasing Squirtles and Bulbasaurs or any of the other 1017 officially registered on the National Pokedex (who knew there was such a thing?).
According to Wikipedia the best type of Pokémon to capture are the steel types but you should avoid bothering to go after the bug types who by all accounts are a bit rubbish but what about the Jigglypuff?
Apparently it's special power is the ability to send people to sleep whenever it starts singing making it the Coldplay of the Pokémon World.

Today Is...Galileo Banned From Teaching Earth Orbit's The Sun

Galileo was the first man to use a telescope to look into space and discover the mountains and the craters on the moon and all the stars in the Milky Way and other cool stuff.
Of course the Church was not fans of Astronomy because they saw it as threat to the rubbish that they had been pushing and the people found it enormously disorientating because one moment they thought they were sitting still on a ball of rock with everything going around them but it turned out they were hurtling through space with them going around everything else.
With his telescope he discovered that Jupiter had several moons which really upset the Pope as there were only supposed to be seven heavenly bodies, the Sun, the moon and five planets so the church forced him to recant or be executed.
On this day in 1616, the Catholic Church began the inquisition and Galileo was on trial for holding the belief that the Earth revolved around the Sun, which was deemed heretical by the Church.
Galileo refused to accept Church orthodoxy that the Sun moved around the Earth and was an absolute fact of scripture that could not be disputed, arguing instead that the Earth was not the centre of the universe so rather than weigh up the evidence, the Church banned him from teaching or defending the view.
Obviously he told them where to get off because in 1633 the Church found him guilty of heresy and condemned him to house arrest for the rest of his life.
In 1992, after a 13 year investigation, the Roman Catholic Church admitted it had been wrong to condemn Galileo for promoting the Copernican astronomical theory.
It took 359 years for the Church to catch up with science which makes you wonder just where we would be if the Church was not replaced by science as the source of our knowledge and kept believing that the universe revolved around them, literally.

Israel Ban At The Eurovision Song Contest

I am not for banning nations from events which have nothing to do with politics, i would prefer they keep politics out of things such as sporting events but the Olympics and Paralympics, FIFA, Formula One, World Athletics and The International Tennis Federation decided to ban Russian and Belarus from their sports after the invasion of Ukraine and then the Eurovision's executive supervisor, Martin Österdahl, decided to ban Russia and then tied himself up in knots to explain why.
The Eurovision Song Contest has always prided itself on being apolitical, it's raison d'être was to unite Europe after World War 2 and  which led to some very convoluted verbal somersaults to explain the Russian ban, Österdahl saying that the decision was not political but was reflecting the sentiment of Europe and standing up for democracy because the Eurovision shows the values of solidarity, reaching out and uniting through music.   
Maybe something was lost in translation from Swedish to English but regardless, the genie is now out the bottle and there are calls for Israel, currently pursuing genocide against it's neighbour, to be booted out and join Russia on the sidelines.
Israel's president, Isaac Herzog, is putting pressure on the Eurovision organisers not to tell his country that their services are not required this year what with the mass slaughter of 30,000 civilians and everything, but the organisers may have found a get out by not banning Israel itself but the Israeli song, October Rain, as being 'too political'.   
Israel’s culture and sports minister, Miki Zohar, called the prospect 'scandalous' and called on the European Broadcasting Union to: 'act professionally and neutrally, and not to let politics affect art' which makes a change from just reaching for the usual antisemitism foghorn but Israel could avoid the embarrassment of being dumped alongside Russia by withdrawing themselves from the contest anyway.
I am no fan of Israel and what it has been doing over the past 60 years but i am all in favour of allowing Israel to compete because as the UK found out when we went around dropping bombs on people in the Middle East, Europeans have no fear of blowing a big fat raspberry and handing out nul points to nations going around massacring people so let them sing and don't deny us Europeans the opportunity to reflect the sentiment of Europe.

Come To Labour You Unracist Tories

It really can't be easy being a right winger in Britain, i don't mean the centre right or people who considered themselves centre right because the Conservative Party have moved so far to the right that parties that were considered fringe or extreme, are finding themselves very much at home in the Party of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak.
In the past week alone we have had Senior MP Lee Anderson have the Conservative whip removed for racist comments about London's Muslim Mayor, former Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, said that Islamists, extremists and antisemites are in charge now and the deluded Liz Truss has been peddling nonsense about being removed from Office by the 'Deep State' and just smiled when the host hailed the far-right racist figure Tommy Robinson as 'a hero'.
The thinking is that the Conservatives have had to move further to the right to try and recapture the 10% of former party voters who are now behind the likes of the far right UKIP and Reform Parties which puts them in bed with the sort of people David Cameron called 'fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists' but as the polls show Labour between 12%-20% ahead and an election soon, they must figure that what they gain by tying themselves to the loonies and racists will make up for the losses from those they leave behind in the centre.
As i said above, it really can't be easy being a right winger in Britain at the moment, unless you are a frothing at the mouth knuckle dragging racist then you are spoilt for choice but otherwise, where would you go?
Obviously we would have to first wash you down in disinfectant and get you to hand in your Maggie Thatcher mug if you wanted to join the Labour Party but that is a small price to pay to not be associated with who was once called the Nasty Party but are now the Nastily Racist Party.

Today Is...Nikita Khrushchev Denounces Stalin

When they take over the seat of power all World Leader blames the previous one for anything that isn't right and that is exactly what Nikita Khrushchev did today in 1956 when he denounced Joseph Stalin and his 'cult of personality'.
As the former Soviet leader was responsible for tens of millions of deaths it would have been hard to defend him so the First Secretary of the Communist Party not only bad mouthed his predecessor for the way he had run the country, but also essentially dethroned Stalin for fostering a leadership cult around himself and knocked him from the hero's pedestal on which he had been placed by Soviet propaganda for nearly three decades.
The speech painted a grim picture of Stalin as a ruthless dictator who ruled by fear, drove countless loyal communists to their deaths and condemned his abuse of power and systemic violence under his regime policies which had deviated from the traditional socialist ideals of the Lenin era and as a result monuments to Stalin were removed, his name was removed from places, buildings and the state anthem, and his body was removed from the Lenin Mausoleum.
Initially the internal repercussions of this denunciation led to resentment from many party members who held Stalin in high regard but globally, the West welcomed the disavowal of Stalin and Khrushchev’s de-Stalinisation resulted in some thawing in Cold War relations and a move towards peaceful coexistence with the West, a shift from Stalin’s aggressive foreign policies and many of the satellite countries of Eastern Europe started pushing for more autonomy and there were several uprisings in direct response to the lessening of Soviet control.
While this was swiftly crushed by Soviet troops, it set a precedent for future resistance against Soviet control and although Khrushchev enjoyed strong support during the 1950s, by the early 1960s however, his popularity was eroded and the poor handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis saw him lose power and was pensioned off with an apartment in Moscow and a dacha in the countryside.

Were The Beatles The Greatest Ever?

British filmmaker Sam Mendes, is to make four films about The Beatles with each star getting a biopic to share their side of the story which the film company have said will intersect to tell: 'the astonishing story of the greatest band in history'.
Woah there, greatest band in history are they? Surely that's subjective because The Beatles wouldn't be in my own personal Top 10 of the greatest bands in history and it whiffs of something other people just say so it must be true, but how could you measure who is actually the greatest?
According to Chartmasters, the band who sold the most albums ever is Pink Floyd with 169m, The Beatles sold the most physical singles with 116m and Maroon 5 top the Digital sales with 149m so any of them could make a shout for being 'the Greatest' based on sales.
If we look at the most Number 1's then Beatles top that chart with 18 and the most weeks at number 1 with 70 but Wet Wet Wet spent the most weeks at number 1 (15) and U2 have had the most top 10 singles with 33.
U2 also hold the record for the 22 Grammy Awards won by a group if it is being measured by awards and when pollsters just went out and asked people who was their favourite band ever, Queen were given the crown
Being the greatest at anything is a huge shout because it is personal to each individual, i imagine if you asked grandparents you would get a very different answer to if you asked the grandchildren and that is how it should be, i wouldn't expect my children to like the music i had going into my ears at their age
because it is of its time and certain songs have experiences and moments attached, i can't hear Live It Up by Mental As Anything without being transported back to the hot summer of 1986.
So who is the greatest band ever depends on your own tastes and experiences and we should accept that, unless you are a Country and Western music fan, you should be banned from ever owning a music collection ever again.

Today Is...Fidel Castro Retires As President of Cuba

The Americans tried everything to topple Fidel Castro and the man who is loved and hated in equal measure, surviving everything the USA threw at him including the brilliant loopy plan to make Castro believe God was going to get him by projecting images of Jesus Christ onto low-lying clouds while a military plane, using powerful loudspeakers would 'speak' but disappointingly the US military decided against following up the plan and decided to carry on with the exploding cigars ploy instead but don't you wish they had given it a go.
Instead he survived a reported 600 plus attempts on his life and outlasted 10 different American Presidents only to die of old age in his own bed but it was no mean feat that in the face of the USA's crippling embargo, to achieve an enviable national health system, one of the highest rates of literacy in the Western World and one of the lowest infant mortality rates is definitely a superb legacy.
On the opposite side of the coin, the long dictatorship bought a bankrupt country, an impoverished population, a terrible oppression system, a lack of civil rights and one political party led by one man which is not such a hot legacy.
That is for Historians to argue over but the bottom line is at the end of his time did he improve things for his countrymen and in some ways he very much did but in some other ways he toppled a nasty, repressive regime only to replace it with another nasty, repressive regime.
To many on the left he is a hero purely because he continually foiled and thumbed his nose at the overbearing Americans but that is to overlook his many failings but to many of the right he was an evil villain but that overlooks the many successes and improvements he bought to his countrymen.

Liz Truss's Amnesia

Why anybody would turn up to hear what the shortest serving British Prime Minister had to say is a mystery but there Liz Truss was in Maryland telling members of the Conservative Political Action Conference that it was the left who sabotaged her time in office after infiltrating British institutions.
To be fair to her it has been over a year since her 44 days in Office in 2022 so maybe her memory is hazy that it was her own Party who forced her out of office after presenting a budget of £45bn in unfunded tax cuts, which unleashed economic chaos, sent interest rates soaring and caused people to pay far more for their mortgages.
Unless her own Conservative members have been infiltrated by lefties, she seems to be suffering a bit of amnesia on what happened or maybe she is hoping that news of her debacle of a tenure didn't make it as far as Maryland and nobody will know about the Daily Star's lettuce which outlasted her so let's not tell them.
Polling by the market research company Savanta shows that Truss remains one of the least popular politicians in Britain, her favourability numbers are at -54% while Boris Johnson who lied and partied his way through the Covid pandemic is at -25% and the current Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, is at at -27% which seems to blow a huge hole in any plans she may harbor of regaining the Conservative Party leadership when, sorry if, nope..i was right first time...when they lose the next election.

Today Is...Siege Of The Alamo

I have never really understood why Texans go on about the Alamo, all 200 plus Texans got slaughtered in that scrap by ticked off Mexicans so hardly a highlight in Texan history but the Alamo is being mentioned again by supporters of Texans wanting out of the USA.
There has been mention of Texan independence for decades, all remembering the Alamo probably and the movement has also got an international ally in the shape of that hotbed of Democracy, Belarus, who have accused the US Government of a humans right violation for not waving goodbye to Texas.
It's unlikely that Texas will leave the Union, they only had 200 people turn up at the last rally and we get a bigger turn out in the UK to watch people roll cheese down a hill, and besides, constantly asking people to remember a fight which they comprehensively lost isn't encouraging.
Davy Crockett is usually someone who gets a shout out whenever the Alamo is mentioned and the ballad of Davy Crokett which is apparently a true story although he wasn't actually born on a mountain top, it was a valley actually so the complete opposite to a mountain and he may have killed many bears, he just wasn't three years old at the time, but he did single handedly fight the injun war though, just him and a few hundred close friends but the rest of the tales about frontier manliness, strength and machismo are all true and he should know because he wrote it.
His glorious death came at the Alamo, that heroic last stand when a bunch of white settlers in Mexico-owned Texas wanted a taste of sweet, sweet democracy so they rebelled against Mexico.
Famous heroic figures like Crockett and his pal Jim Bowie led an army of rebels who were forced to make their last stand inside a crumbling old building called the Alamo, finally going down in a hail of gunfire and freedom tears atop a pile of dead Mexicans.
The General did tell Crockett it wasn't worth fighting over and ordered him to retreat but he refused and the General went 'Sure, whatever' and left them to it and his dying words were 'Remember the Alamo' which everybody did which is crap because they got their asses whupped that day but he's also known for making coonskin hats fashionable and those bad boys never go out of fashion.

Britains Nuclear Damp Squib

Nuclear weapons are great for threatening other nations with, a case of don't tangle with us because we could make your country into a smoking hole within seconds.
Britain's nuclear deterrent comes in the shape of £133 billion worth of submarines which are secretly deposited around the world just ready for the word to launch Trident missiles onto whatever poor nation decided to get a bit uppity with us, or that's the plan anyway.
In a test of the system 8 years ago, a missile that had been fired had to be destroyed after going off course and instead of heading towards Africa it ended up veering towards the US so this time every precaution had been taken and mariners had been pre-warned of the direction the missile would take as it
travelled the 6,000km into the middle of the Atlantic between Africa and Brazil so with al the dignitaries in place, the button was pushed and the missile rocket sequence was instigated.
The tubes throbbed, there was a mighty woosh and the missile was launched and plopped pathetically out of the launch tube less than 2 meteres away in what the Ministry of Defence called: 'an event specific anomaly' or a complete embarrassing cock-up in any other language.
The Russian media had a field day, saying: 'Nobody was hurt, apart from the Royal Navy's reputation' and the Chinese media just said: 'Embarrassing' and while i am happy that the test to make sure we could obliterate a whole country and it's population in seconds failed, i do think that of you are paying £133 billion for something, you should be sure the damn thing works.
I would like to hope that what this means is that the Government will reaslise that the Nuclear thing is a massive white elephant and scarp them and spend the money on more important things but unfortunately, what i expect will happen now is the Government will use the failure as a reason to spend hundreds of billions more on either an upgrade or whole new nuclear system. 

Virgin Births

Religion of all flavours does like a virgin birth, none of that messy exchange of bodily fluids and it avoids the troublesome question of paternity so we have the virgin's Rhea Silvia giving birth to Romulus and Remus, Net delivering Ra, the patter of Horus's tiny feet after being born of Isis, Nana delivered
Attis and Dionysos was the son of the virgin Semele and Persephone was also the virgin mother of Jason and when Christianity came along, they just had to have Jesus popping out of Mary with no sweaty man involved in the process.
Hinduism, Buddhism and ancient China all have their share of them so Religious history has therefore been laying claim to virgin births since time began so we can expect to see zealot's turn up to an aquarium in North Caroline as another virgin birth this one is even more fishy than the other immaculate conception stories because as a stingray called Charlotte is pregnant despite not sharing her tank with a male for at least eight years.
Apparently there were some sharks in the tank with Charlotte but experts said that it would be biologically impossible for a shark to be the father so they have put it down to parthenogenesis which is a very rare form of asexual reproduction observed in some animals, including fish, birds, insects, and amphibians.
Maybe then we have also solved the issue of all those other virgin births in history but more likely is that in Christianity, Mary was very fortunate to be shacked up with a man who when she told him God had splashed his Holy seed at her and what-do-ya-know, impregnated her with man's Saviour, he went: 'I'm okay with that' and then went about hiring a donkey.

Today Is...Dolly The Sheep Cloned

When Dolly the sheep was successfully cloned today in 1997, it was assumed that we were on the very cusp of a brave new world where sci-fi melted into real-life where humans and extinct animals could be copied with ease but it does seem to have fallen out of the public consciousness since.
Not that no science hasn't continued with it, in early 2000, a tree landed on the last living Pyrenean ibex, turning that creature into just one more statistic on an ever-growing list of extinct species but then, in 2009, a goat gave birth to a cloned Pyrenean ibex which marked the first time any species had been brought back from extinction and also the first species to become extinct twice when it died seven minutes later.
The precedent was set though and now we know that we could bring animals back to life but human cloning is still a bridge too far ethically to even seriously consider and some places have already made their decision on it, banning human cloning entirely, just in case somebody happens to figure it out, somewhere where ethics are not so near the top of the agenda.
From sheep to ibex is the start, but as soon as primates, which share almost all of our DNA, are cloned then it is only a small step to humans and the Chinese successfully created two cloned monkeys from a non-embryonic cell in 2018 making it technically possible to clone human beings.

Today Is...Communist Manifesto Published

Karl Marx is most famous for writing the books Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto which led to Communism becoming confusingly known as Marxism in his honour but i do wonder if those who adopted his reasoning, actually read the books.
How anyone can take: 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs' as meaning build a 40ft high wall with razor wire and armed guards in towers is beyond me but somehow they did and Marx and his little book got the blame for it.
It is hard to consider a book that had wider implications than the Communist Manifesto. The 20th Century saw Communism and it's smaller brother Socialism sweep around half the World and then retract back again. It led to the Cold War and competition between two competing ideologies which saw two massive leaps for mankind, one great (Space Travel) and one not so much (Nuclear Weapons).
Due to the economic situation and the battering Capitalism is taking being kept on life support by the people who crashed it, there has been a substantial rise in the numbers of books advocating alternative systems but i would advise that if you are one of the recently disillusioned and have heard about this
Socialism thing and want to find out a bit more about it, i wouldn't reach for the Marx/Engels book straight away.
It can not be called, in any terms, a page turner and can be confusing for anyone dipping a toe into Socialist theory.
The Socialist audience is getting younger because the younger people weren't around when Marxism was associated with Stalin and the nasty flavour of Communism in the Soviet Union or East Germany, now it is associated with men like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela whose Socialist philosophy dragged his country out of poverty and bettered the lot of the poorest in his country.
The younger generation look at the rich men making up the Worlds Government's, and feel alienated, rightly asking how can they possible understand their plight and not do anything about the pitiful, sinister and corrupt economic shambles going on around them. Many of the new left movements are organised by the younger generation who saw at first hand the violent efforts the Governments will go to when the present system is threatened.
As tempting as it may be for the establishment to ignore or just shake their heads at this new wave of interest in Marx, large swathes of the new generation coming through, the future politicians and policy makers, are questioning the present system and are not being fooled by the Capitalist mantra that what we have is all there is because they know there is an alternative where the majority also get a bite at the cherry.
As the author of one of the most influential books ever written, Marx is buried in Highgate Cemetery in Marx Corner with other famous Communists and Socialists but as the father of Communism, the main attraction is an impressive large 10 foot headstone and the words 'Workers of All Lands Unite' in gold lettering on the plinth.
Imagine his disappointment if he ever found out that someone decided to charge £8 to go see the grave of the World's foremost anti-Capitalist.
Seriously, did nobody at all read his bloody book?

Berating Israel Is Not Anti-Semitism

In 2016, the British Government decided to crack down on antisemitism by rewriting it's definition because the Prime Minister at the time, Theresa May, said culprits were getting away with antisemitic behaviour or language 'because the term is ill defined' so now the official definition is that antisemitism is 'language or behaviour that displays hatred towards Jews because they are Jews' which seems amazingly close to what i thought the definition was anyway.
The problem is when anyone criticises Israel, the Jews automatically scream 'antisemitism' to try and shut it down, i once had a long discussion here with someone who tried to choke off any criticism of Israel by calling me an antisemite during one of the many times when Israel was pounding Gaza and his argument was that by me having a go at Israel, i was also having a go at Jews because they are the only Jewish state.
My argument was if that is the criteria then any criticism of England he makes is anti-Church of England because we are the only Church of England nation which he said was absurd which it is, but it never seemed to dawn on him that it was exactly what he was doing.
Nobody went after Christians when George W Bush and Tony Blair were at their warmongering worst and it would have been ridiculous if they had.  
When it comes to Israel, the left doesn't have much love towards it due to their awful genocidal behaviour towards the Palestinians for decades and quite right to, we also went after Russia for what it was doing in Ukraine, Britain and America for what it did in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan and hit out at Saudi Arabia for attacking Yemen and if any other nation decides to bomb another back to the stone age, they will feel the wrath of the left also, and so they should.
Israel may be a country of Jews, but we continue to berate and lambast the country and it's leaders for what it is doing, not because they are Jewish but because they are committing genocide so don't let the constant cries of 'you are being antisemitic' stop you from haranguing, boycotting or demonstrating against Israel, antisemitism is 'language or behaviour that displays hatred towards Jews because they are Jews' which isn't what we are doing, it is language or behaviour that displays a hatred for the way one nation is murdering and slaughtering another, as anyone with an ounce of compassion and empathy should be doing also.

Today Is...Kurt Cobain Day

It would have been Kurt Cobain's Birthday today and the home town of the Grunge star honours their most famous son with an annual Kurt Cobain day.
The residents of Aberdeen, Washington celebrate the life of the 90's singer with concerts and a huge statue of the troubled star who ended his life aged just 27.
'Aberdeen residents may justifiably take pride in the role our community played in the life of Kurt Cobain' reads a proclamation from the cities Mayor who thanked the Grunge superstar for putting the city on the map.
So indebted are they to him that they have tagged 'Come As You Are' from one the bands biggest hits to their Welcome sign.
I'm not sure what Kurt Cobain would make of the place he once called 'Twin Peaks without the excitement' claiming him for their own, i expect he wouldn't have been very happy about it. Oh well, nevermind.
In memory i'm going to throw 'Smell's Like Teen Spirit' in the CD Player and fondly remember the man who spoke for a generation with the immortal lyrics: 'A mulatto, An albino, A mosquito, My libido,Yeah'. Indeed Kurt, indeed.

Today Is...Nicolaus Copernicus Born

If there is one thing we know about space it is that the Earth orbits the Sun and you have to thank Nicolas Copernicus for that.
It was his book 'De Revolutionibus Orbium Celestium' (or On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) which proved not only that he was terrible at book titles but also that the Earth orbited the Sun but he was canny about it all because he knew that if i had just come out and said: 'Hey what if the Earth is not the center of the Universe and actually goes around the Sun', the Church would have replied: 'Hey, what if we set you on fire and piss on you to put it out' so he delayed the publication until he was literally on his death bed, the book was printed on the day that he died.
Although he gets all the glory, the idea was first put forward by Aristarchus in about 300BC when he said the middle contained a great fire which the planets circled around but he was up against Aristotle and Ptolemy who said we were the middle and was ignored but he did get a moon crater named after him as well as an element, Copernicium.
Such was his concern that the Religious folk would batter him that he tried to get around it by dedicating his masterpiece to Pope Paul III but it didn't stop them criticizing him, to be honest i don't think they quite got the jist of it.
The main criticism was the theory wasn't compatible with the Bible because in Genesis 1:14, 'God places lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night' and the central location of the Sun was not compatible with it being described as one of the lights placed in the firmament.
Kinda missed the whole point really but then the Bible thumpers really did think that the whole Universe revolved around them.

$6 Billion Dollar Man For $350k

In the Six Billion Dollar Man, Steve Austin, an Air Force pilot, gets injured in a plane crash and loses his two legs, right arm, and left eye.
Under the tag-line 'We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better, stronger, faster', the government gives him bionic limbs and a left eye but Steve has to pay the $6,000,000,000 bill for his new limbs, so he agrees to work for a secret agency and would spend the next 60 minutes catching criminals with his superhuman strength, speed and vision.
As the TV series was from the 70's, i assume the £6 billion price tag was about right 40 years ago but i wonder if we have the technology available today to give the recipient the superhuman strength, speed and vision and how much would it cost?
First is the bionic eye and for $30,000 you can buy an artificial eye which has 460 million photo-receptors in the retina which is 46 times more than the 10 million in our 'normal' eyes which would not only result in a much higher resolution image but also includes a x2 zoom feature which with the increased resolution would keep the image clear.
An artificial arm costs $80,000 and while they are they are stronger and can lift much more than human arms, they are 'attached' to the body are so are constrained to the amount of weight it can lift unless some serious reinforcement all over the body to spread the stress.
As Austin had 2 bionic legs, the bill would be $120,000 each so $240,000 but as for super-speed to chase down the bad guys, no artificial legs have been able to outperform the human legs for speed, the Olympic record for 'normal' legs is 9.58 seconds while for the T43 double leg amputations classification at the Paralympics, the record is 10.9 seconds.
As for a bionic man in the style of Steve Austin, superhuman eye's definitely, superhuman arm strength yes but other body modifications would be needed but unfortunately no superhuman speed from bionic legs but today the bill would be significantly reduced and the programme would have to be renamed the $350,000 man.

Salt In Tea? WTF????

Great Britain and America have had a few disagreements over the years but generally they end amicably, obviously there was that time in the late 18th Century when our former colony went to war with us to try and ensure that we would stay ruling them but we told them sort it out themselves and nobbed off to other parts of the World to teach them cricket, rugby and how to drive on the left hand side of the road but America got on the best it could without the British guiding hand but one thing it never seemed to master is how to make a cup of tea.
Many discussions with American's leads me to believe that tea over there is either iced, microwaved or created with the hot tap but bless 'em, everyone likes a trier and a professor of chemistry at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania has announced that the way to make a perfect cup of tea is to add a pinch of salt to it.
As you may expect, tea spoons all over our Green and pleasant land where dropped as we digested the news of an American...trying to tell us how to make a perfect cup of tea...by adding salt. SALT!!
It was always going to go one of two ways, either the British public would laugh, sigh and say 'those crazy yanks' or the telephone system at the Foreign Office would be gummed up with angry Brits demanding we go over there and slap them around a bit until they jolly well stop talking such nonsense.   
As luck would have it the American Embassy in the UK foresaw the growing anger and was quickly on Social Media, writing that the claim itself needs to be taken with a large pinch of salt and conceded that the idea of adding salt to tea had 'landed our special bond with the United Kingdom in hot water.'
'We cannot stand idly by as such an outrageous proposal threatens the very foundation of our Special Relationship' it continued before reassuringly stating that: 'The unthinkable notion of adding salt to Britain’s national drink is not official United States policy and never will be. The US embassy will continue to make tea in the proper way – by microwaving it.'
Crisis averted, so we can all now just sigh, say 'those crazy yanks' and enjoy our 4pm tea-time safe in the knowledge that those Embassy people may not get tea drinking, proper chocolate or the letter U but they do seem to be catching on to the British sense of humour.

How Are We Meant To Know This Stuff?

 
Every year the 31st January is the Self Assessment deadline date and luckily since 2020 i have not had to fill out a Tax Return but millions of self employed do including a friend who called me in a panic a week before as she knew i was once Self Employed and wanted my advice on filling out her Self Employment page and being the helpful, considerate person i am i told her to throw a handful of £20 notes at someone else to do it because i hadn't got a feckin clue.
In the UK, along with acne and hormonal instability, your 16th birthday brings your National Insurance Number card which stays with you for the rest of your life right up unto your receive your old age pension but you don't get any instructions with it despite it being easily the most important set of numbers you will receive in your entire life.
I am aware that i had had plenty of opportunities to educate myself on all things economic such as income taxes, National Insurance, pensions (state and private), interest and savings rates, tax codes, mortgages, maternity and sickness pay but at the mere mention of anything of these things my brain switches into another mode and drowns it out by screaming 'This is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO BOOOOOOOOOOOORRRING' until the conversation has moved onto less tedious things.
The solution would be to teach it in schools but i'm not sure that works, they did that with Pi, Calculus and long division and those things stayed in my brain long enough to just make it outside the classroom door 10 minutes after the guy with the leather elbow patches had spent an hour teaching it to us so i doubt
if the difference between Class 2 and Class 4 National Insurance would fair any better.  
As i left school at 16 and have since been employed so the employer dealt with my finances or self employed so i paid someone else to do it, i haven't really had to worry about economic things but i can't help but think that if you are never taught this stuff, how on earth are you meant to know what you’re doing which leads to a lot of fingernails being bitten as the HMRC website buffers on the evening of 31st January every year.

Today Is...Pluto Discovered

If an object was travelling at 32,400 mph in a vacuum how far would it travel in 9 and a half years may sound like one of those hypothetical maths questions that maths teachers enjoy torturing their students with but this is not a poser from a man with leather elbow patches on his jumper because the New Horizons probe did just that and the answer is to Pluto, or 3.78 billion miles.
When it blasted off in 2006 it was set on a course for the ninth Planet named after the Roman god of death but by the time it arrived Pluto had been kicked out of the Planets club and is now a Kuiper Belt Object or Dwarf Planet which must have caused much confused for horoscope writers around the World.     
As it was the first time we have had a close up look at Pluto, the first piece of information received by NASA was that it is ever so slightly bigger than we thought, having a diameter of 2,370km or just a touch over two third the size of the moon.
The first pictures show the expected pock marks of craters and as the probe got closer before flying past onto the Kuiper Belt and out of the Solar System but finally Pluto got it's moment in the Sun, or not as it is 40 times further away than the earth from our star but anyway, the lonely little ball of ice and rock, last in the queue in the far flung reaches of our Solar System abandoned by the bigger boys and relegated to a dwarf planet is taking it's turn in the spotlight.

Today Is...Random Acts of Kindness Day

Celebrities can get a bad rep for being arrogant and rich morons and mostly it seems this is well deserved but sometimes they do something surprising which warms the heart and here are my favourite acts of kindness from the big names.

In 2013, while a cinema full of people where watching Christian Bale in The Dark Knight Rises, a gunman shot 12 people dead. Christian turned up at the Colorado hospital to visit the victims.   

Diagnosed with spindel cell sarcoma, Daniel Fleetwood found out from his doctors in July 2015 that he only had about two months to live. Daniel’s dying wish was to see 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' which was scheduled to come out in December of that same year. Director J.J. Abrams invitd him to a special showing of an unfinished, unedited version of the film.

Zach Galifianakis took a 87 year old homeless woman from a launderette who would fold clothes for tips to the 'The Hangover Part III' premiere and then found her a flat and paid the rent.

Paul Walker overheard a couple in a jewellery shop debating if they could afford a $10,000 engagement ring. Walker bought the ring, handed it to the dumbstruck couple and walked out the shop.  
 
Taylor Swift Paid $50,000 of an 11 year olds fans Cancer-Stricken Fan’s Medical Bills and another $5,000 to cover the funeral costs of a fan who died in a car crash. She also donated $1m to help Flood relief efforts.

Keanu Reeves handed over 70% of his £75 million salary from the first The Matrix film in order to fund leukemia research.

Christian Bale flew a 4-year-old leukemia patient and his family to California to have a lunch date together at Disneyland.

Oxford University student Fiona Asiedu set up a crowdfunding campaign to raise £12,000 to go to Harvard, Grime artist Stormzy saw it and donated £9,000.

George Michael handed over royalties from a number of his songs to Ethiopian famine relief efforts and left a hard up student nurse working as a barmaid a £5,000 tip and anonymously gave £15,000 to a couple for IVF treatment.

Colin Farrell took a homeless man on a £2,100 shopping spree, buying him clothes and money to help rent a room.

Johnny Depp regularly hires homeless people to be extras in his films

Sia ran through the checkouts of Walmart and a TJ Maxx, tapping her card to pay for many people's shopping

JK Rowling posted a 15 year old Harry Potter fan who had survived a shooting that killed her parents and had quoted Dumbledore's speech that 'Happiness can be found even in the darkest times if one only remembers to turn on the light' at their funeral, a letter comforting her with a 'Dumbledore' letter.

When the people of Flint found themselves with no clean water due to lead poisoning, Cher donated 181,000 bottles of clean water.

Justin Timberlake saw a fundraiser to buy a wheelchair-accessible van for a 17-year-old with cerebral palsy, he bought her the van and left a note saying 'Have a great holiday'.

James McAvoy donated £275,000 to buy masks for front line NHS staff during the Covid pandemic

When Marilyn Manson heard that one of his fans dying wishes was to meet the singer, he not only went to the boys house armed with merchandise but stayed and played video games with him, played guitar and read Beano comics with him.

The wife of the guy who ran an anti-Michael Moore website wife was taken ill with a neurological disorder but with no medical insurance, he was struggling to pay for her health care. In desperation, he posted a note on his site pleading for help and stating that he would 'be in your debt for all of time' for any assistance in these troubled times. Mr Kenefick received a cheque from an anonymous individual for a lump sum of $12,000, equivalent to a year's medical fees for his wife.
After some digging to find out the identity of the altruistic donor it was revealed as the man he had dedicated years to bad mouthing. Confirmation came from Moore himself, who left a message on Mr Kenefick's answer machine confirming that he was the donor, adding: 'I wish you my best'.

Britain Technically In Recession

 
Great Britain is now in recession, or 'technically in recession' as GDP fell by 0.3% in the three months to December which followed a 0.1% drop in the third quarter which means two consecutive drops in GDP and rings the bell for a recession although nobody seems to know what technically being in a recession means, techincally what Australians speak is English but i'm proper English and what they say isn't anything like we speak.
The Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, did try to put a brave face on what was clearly unwelcome news for a government by saying that the economy was 'turning a corner' but it must be a bloody big corner because they have been in charge for 14 years and they have only decided now to turn but it cant just be the Governments economic incompetence, well not completely anyway.
Depending on who you ask, the finger of blame is being pointed at Brexit, the war in Ukraine, Liz Truss, the Bank of England for not lowering interest rates and even the stormy weather in November and December which kept shoppers away from the town centres during which should have been the shops busiest time.
I don't know and have very little interest in finding out which of the above is at fault but the office of National Statistics had an interesting line stating that we are all individually 0.7% worse off than we were at this point last year which might not sound a lot but its the biggest fall in living standards since records began in 1955.
As it is an election year, the golden question to ask yourself as you ruminate over who to vote for is as i'm better off this year than i was last year and that is obviously no, unless you are reading this in 1954 somehow but the follow up question is who is best placed to make me better off next year?
If your answer is the same lot who have done so badly over the last 14 years that our living standards are now the same as when a young slip of a lad called Chuck Berry was signing his first record deal, then i would say you haven't been paying attention.

Today Is...Félix Faure Becomes 7th President of France

Generally a 19th Century French President wouldn't register too highly on my radar but the story of Félix Faure's time in office is a good one.
He began as the Minister of marine in the administration of French President Casimir-Perier and somehow got himself elected as the Republican nominee because the two other Republicans were really hated by other Republicans and the party wanted someone who was plain, boring and offended nobody so they put little old innocuous Félix on the ballot and sacre bleu he unexpectedly, and against all odds, won the blooming thing.
People making the big decisions have many different ways of coping with the pressure of running their country, some took the chance to grow closer to their citizens. Some take the opportunity to put right some inequalities and make life easier for the poorest in society but he gazed out across the landscape of the Champs-Élysées that first day, wiped away a tear, and calmly promised that he would get drunk and screw to a degree hitherto unseen in French society and that takes some doing because infidelity in the workplace in France is what teapot's are to England.
His Presidential seal spent the 4 years of his presidency alongside the crumpled underwear of many mademoiselles but his final booty call was to Marguerite Steinheil who i'm not saying was a bike, but she had more riders than the Tour de France cycling race.
During a 'game' of pirates, he was all set to splice her main-brace when just as he got to the ho-ho-ho bit, something inside his head went twang and he shuffled off his mortal coil as well as his trousers.   
I know that if they could do such a thing, most men would already have made arrangements to meet their makers in the exact same way but not only did he die happy, but in the most way French way possible.

Today Is...Meteor Explodes Over Russia

While everyone was looking out of their windows towards the heavens to catch a glimpse of the approaching asteroid 2012 DA14 today in 2013, the people of Russian town of Cherbakul were looking at a huge glaziers bill because hours before the asteroid, they had a visit from another interstellar visitor but this one exploded above them and sent out a shockwave which injured 1,500 people and blew out all their windows.
It did seem strange that just when we are waiting for a 45 metre celestial cannonball to skim the Earths atmosphere, a much smaller one took everyone by surprise and sneaked in there to grab all the headlines.
Due to everyone and his dog owning a phone with a camera, the falling ball of rock was caught on film by countless Russian video camera owners as it impressively exploded in the sky.
The obvious question was to ask was this in anyway connected to the arrival of the asteroid later and the European Space agency poured water on that particular camp fire immediately by saying there was no link but others, such as the Australian Astronomical Observatory, thought it could possibly be a bit of asteroid debris preceding the much bigger object.
As it was only a few hours between the explosion and the arrival of the Asteroid, that was not enough time for a doomsday Conspiracy theory to circulate which would lead to the streets full of people giving away their possessions, telling their managers exactly what they thought of them and blocking up the church
confessional boxes.
One good thing to come out of it was an explanation of what an asteroid is (small rock orbiting a star), a meteoroid (small pieces of space debris in space), a meteor (a meteoroid that has entered the earth’s atmosphere) and a meteorite (space debris that strikes the surface of the earth) if only because the
presenters were getting angry tweets by pedantic amateur astrologers when they kept interchanging between referring to it as all four things in the coverage.
So the two events were probably not related and we were not all doomed and the asteroid harmlessly brushed past by us although the glaziers in one small Russian town are all now driving Ferrari's and their wives wearing mink coats.

Just A Thought

 
Since 2015, the UK has licensed at least £474 million worth of military exports to Israel, including components for combat aircrafts, missiles, tanks, technology, small arms and ammunition. The UK provides approximately 15% of the components in the F-35 stealth bomber aircraft currently being used in Gaza.
In December the U.S. sold nearly 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition worth more than $106 million to Israel which comes in addition to the annual $3.8 billion aid it sends Israels way every year.
Pointing to the 28,000 dead and Joe Biden’s comment last week that Israel’s military action in Gaza was 'over the top', the EU Foreign Affairs Representative Josep Fontelles came out with the line aimed at the American President: 'Well, if you believe that too many people are being killed, maybe you
should provide less arms in order to prevent so many people having been killed.'
The UK Foreign Secretary, David Cameron, has said this week that Israel is in breach of international law which comes hot on the heels of the highest Court on the planet, The International Court of Justice, agreeing that Israel does have a case to answer for what they are inflicting on the Palestinians does come under the banner of Genocide.
Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu (or that asshole as Biden has apparently referred to him on several occasions) has said that Israel are doing all they can to prevent civilian deaths although bombing and obliterating block of flats, schools, refugee centres and places where people are sheltering doesn't strike me as making that much of an effort.
The Israeli government also point out that is Hamas who are to blame for the civilian casualties because they put civilians in places that are targets but as these targets seem to be any built-up area in Gaza, and Palestinians do insist on living in the built-up areas, the Israeli logic is that the Palestinian's
should only live in the areas where no one lived to avoid being in the target areas.
The effort to avoid casualties has been so huge they’ve managed to keep the number of women and children they have murdered down to 17,000 so maybe as has been suggested, if Israel ARE trying to not kill civilians, America, the UK and all those other ignorant nations still giving Israel the green
light to carry on it's genocide and providing the weapons for them to do it, maybe they should keep their weapons to themselves until the results on not slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent people show a considerable improvement.

Today Is...Valentine's Day

Today is Valentines Day and while some us may be sipping champagne out of our partners shoes and eating oysters by candle light, others have yet to find their true love.
Every year my husband asks me if i want some flowers for Valentines Day and i reply something along the lines of not wanting anything, it all being a commercial venture to rip off people and we don't need a special day to show how much we love one another.
Of course if i don't get a card and flowers he will be sleeping on the coach until Boxing Day and scouring the internet for a doctor that could re-attach his testicles but what if you haven't yet found your one?
The choices are either join a dating agency or hope that your soul mate swipes the same way on Tinder or you could just cheat and use a magic spell and the good people of the UK Wiccan Society have provided me with their top Love Spell so give it a go and iron your best little black dress (or suit), get a bottle of champagne and a shoe and prepare for love this Valentines Day.
To sweeten someone’s feelings for you write his or her name on a piece of paper using a red pen. Place white sugar on the piece of paper and drip the wax from a red candle onto it and as the wax drops on the sugar think about the person you want.
Obviously when dealing with emotions, there can be no guarantee that love spells will be successful and i cannot be held responsible for any results of using this spells or any resulting soggy shoes but if you don't have a red pen about your person then you could be in luck if you live close to a Catholic Church because a spokeswoman for the Catholic Enquiry Office, the official body providing information on all things Catholic, said 'There is a lot of evidence to suggest that people who have tapped into prayer groups have found partners. Those who have exhausted traditional routes like online dating should try spiritual networks. Why not come along to a prayer group, it could be your lucky night.'
Yep, obviously been sniffing the incense again but there you have it, if you want a night of passion and a cup of tea with a game of bingo afterwards try heading down to the local Catholic Church.

Water On the Moon

Next time the Moon is waxing (The Capital D Shape) and you can see the right hand side of it take a look towards the outer edge between 1 and 2 o'clock and just up and to the right of the Mare Crisium you will see a crater called Vestine and after staring at it in wonder send me a cheque because i own that and i charge to view it.
The reason for the post about Moon Craters is that the depressions in the Moons surface is where scientists are now looking for a resource which could change everything about Space Travel, water.
NASA said that it would cost about £1m a litre of water to the surface of the moon from Earth due to the cost of the fuel needed to launch a rocket and break free of the Earth's gravity so if they can find it there then it would significantly reduce costs and they are looking at the Moon's South Pole where they expect to find water molecules in it's shadowy craters which are as cold as -230C.
After deliberately smashing a rocket into one of the craters and confirming that the plume of material thrown off the surface contained the key indicators for water, NASA are launching a rocket this week, IM-1, to the Malapert-A crater which is the furthest South humans have landed a rocket and explore the crater to see if there is water, frozen or otherwise there which as well as being essential to any eventual human inhabitants, the water molecules could be split into oxygen and hydrogen that could be used as rocket fuel.
Other plans include NASA plans to land astronauts at the south pole in 2026 as part of its Artemis missions as well as launching a space station to orbit around the Moon but it could be the start of a busy time for the Lunar south pole as India and Japan have a joint mission planned for 2026 and
China is hoping to land at the pole the same year and build a research station on the surface by 2030.
If water is found on the Moon then it could open an exciting new chapter of space exploration and if they find any water in the Vestine Crater then it's mine so keep your hands off.

Today Is...Shrove Tuesday

The word 'Shrove' comes from the old English word 'Shrive' which means to confess so today is to confess your sins or pre-empt them anyway because Shrove Tuesday is the Day before Ash Wednesday and 40 days of Lent when you are supposed to give up something.   
This tradition comes from a time when items such as eggs and flour were considered luxuries and thus not to be eaten during a time of religious observance because the baby Jesus would not be happy at all about that and over time we learnt to lump these things together to make Pancakes which is why Shrove Tuesday is also called Pancake Day in some countries, reflecting the tradition of using up the food which would be stinking out the cupboard in 40 days time.
Another fact about Shrove Tuesday is that the date changes every year because it is determined by Easter, which is a movable feast based on the lunar calendar so the date can range between February 3 and March 9 each year.
However, Shrove Tuesday isn’t simply about seeing how many pancakes you can stuff in your fat face, it has deeper spiritual significance to those of a fall to your knee's bent who see it as representing the chance to be shriven, to admit their wrongdoings, seek forgiveness, and purify themselves for the season of Lent.
As i am never wrong, have done nothing to forgive and am already as pure as the Virgin Mary herself, i am free to just keep shovelling in pancakes as quick as i can tip them out of the frying pan. Enjoy!

Today Is...Sex Pistols First Official Gig

Although this wasn't their 'first' gig, it was their first official one and the line up was vocalist Johnny Rotten, guitarist Steve Jones, drummer Paul Cook and bassist Glen Matlock.
The Sex Pistols evolved from the Steve Jones and Paul Cook band the Strand (aka the Swankers) and they would hang out in Malcalm McClaren and Vivienne Westwood's clothing shop and Jones asked McLaren who had been managing the New York Dolls to take over the band's management. Glen Matlock, an art student who occasionally worked at McLaren and Westwood shop, joined as bassist.
McLaren agreed and asked New York Dolls' Sylvain Sylvain to front the group but he turned him down, as did Midge Ure and Richard Hell of Television which was fortunate for a kid with green hair walking past the shop wearing a Pink Floyd T-shirt with the words I Hate handwritten above the band's name and holes scratched through the Floyd members' eyes.
With his surname name changed from Lydon to Rotten and the band renamed to the Sex Pistols, they had a few gigs supporting Eddie and the Hot Rods and Joe Strummers band the 101ers, the bands notoriety spread and after sacking Matlock for liking the Beatles and replacing him with the Siouxsie and the Banshees sometimes drummer, John Richie or how he become better known, Sid Vicious.   
One of the most influential bands ever then launched on a short career but within twelve 12 months they managed to spit, shock and swear their way to an impressive legacy.
I was given the chance to see them live during their 90s 'Filty Lucre' Tour but the euphoria of seeing a band that were of such historical importance lasted as long as it took for me to clap eyes on guitarist Steve Jones carrying a pot belly crammed into tight, tiger-striped trousers.
Musically, the Pistols were as expected but I was forever left with an ugly aftertaste and the vision of the angry young men of the late 70's singing politically charged songs and spearheading probably the greatest genre music has ever known, replaced by middle aged men going through the motions and looking every inch a band out of their allotted slot in history.

Warm This Winter

A well heard phrase this winter is being able to either heat or eat because times are tough, money is tight and Brexit and Liz Truss has effed our economy right up so before you contemplate whether you would rather starve to death or die of hypothermia, allow me to pass on some tips for staying warm from our ancestors who wouldn't know a radiator if you hit them over the head with one.
First up is one from my grandparents era who would say how they would encourage the family dogs to sleep in their bed and the body heat from the animals would keep them warm like some sort of living hot water bottle, only one that shed hairs which means you would go to sleep on a sheet but wake up on a dog hair carpet.  
If you happen to have a gerbil or cat for a pet rather than a dog, you could always build yourself a saunas which is what the Scandinavians have been doing for the last 2,000 years to survive their harsh winters which were basically a cave with hot stones with water poured over them so warm steam is released and warms you up. Would probably work in a shed also if you have one.
The Ancient Egyptians would hang animal hides over doorways and windows and essentially acted as heavy curtains and in Medieval times, people would hang tapestries as curtains and then glass windows were invented but animal hides, tapestries or a tasteful pair of curtains will stop any draughts coming through the windows or doors.
Before the white man went to North America, the Native Americans would use stone bowls to cook their meals over open fires and once the bowl was cooled down enough to touch, they would put the bowl in their bed and the residual heat would warm them throughout the night which would be great as long as dinner that evening wasn't curry and you woke up in the morning smelling of Vindaloo.
There is some evidence that in prehistoric times, the Neanderthal's just avoided winter by Hibernating to survive the winter just like some animals still do today but as the Winter in the Northern Hemisphere is December, January, February, you would miss out on Christmas, New Years and Valentines Day and i'm not sure if your boss would accept you sleeping for 3 months as an excuse not to pin your P45 to your head as you slept.
One final way to stay warm in winter during these economically difficult times involves your pets again but if you have read the previous ones and either don't want to invite your dog into your bed or skin him alive to hang their pelt as curtains, then this last one is for you and it has two advantages.
Animal dung has been used for years as fertilizer but it can also be used as a fuel source. Ancient Persians found that when the dung is dried, it burns far longer than wood so if you clear out your fireplace and teach your pets to poop in there, you have a never ending source of something to burn
and you don't have to go outside in the cold to do its business, a win-win even if you can handle the smell which by all accounts, isn't exactly Fresh Pine & Eucalyptus.

Not An Easy Choice For American Voters

 I have never heard the political slogan: 'Perhaps it would be best to not vote for the candidate who is facing jail-time for fraud, is a serial liar, led an insurrection and is more than a bit rapey' but the Democrats can have that one on me if they want to use, no charge, but it appears that the Democrats have hitched their wagon to Biden and they're stuck with him now although it seems obvious that Biden is struggling with his cognitive functions.
Already the oldest president ever, Biden is 81 and Trump, the probable Republican presidential nominee this year, will be 78 at the time of the election and his own mental processes have been questioned, we all remember the 'Person Woman Man Camera TV' moment and it was only a few weeks ago that Trump confused Hungary's Viktor Orbán with the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and after his Republican rival for the Presidency, Nikki Haley, cast doubts that Trump was necessarily up to the job as Trump is easily confused, he launched an attack on Nancy Pelosi, confusing her with Nikki so point well made i think Nikki.
The Democrats are highlighting Trumps own age related failings but when your line of attack is 'you think our pick is bad but look at the other guy' it isn't a ringing endorsement especially when in his speech to explain that your memory is fine, Biden confused Egypt with Mexico 8,000 miles away, mistake Emmanuel Macron with Francois Mitterand who died in 1996 and mix up Angela Merkel with Helmut Kohl who not only died in 2017 but is a different gender.
According to colleagues in America, polling shows that Biden's cognitive glitches are his biggest vulnerability with voters and i am sure that his handlers will now be watching any Biden address willing him to get over the line without making any slip-ups and as the election and a grueling campaign nears, there are sure to be many more mistakes and blunders to add to the list.
The kindest thing would be for a friend or family member to tap Joe on the shoulder before August when the Democrats pick their candidate and suggest he sit this one out but by all accounts the obvious choice, Vice President Kamal Harris, is highly unpopular in the country and it has been suggested that
Pete Buttigieg is the best placed Democrat to step in but Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer and Mark Kelly are names being mentioned although i plead ignorance of any of them and rely on people on the ground over there who say Buttigieg would be the best choice to beat Trump.
It is not an enviable task Americans face in their vote for the next President where it is out of one man who did such an awful job last time and spent an hour making a rambling speech in which he explained that he was going to be a dictator or another one who said that he did not remember when he served as Vice President.
Obviously, if the criminal trials go against Trump and the Democrats do guide Biden towards the comfy chair and his slippers than the Trump v Biden rerun won't happen but if Trump does somehow manage to get himself elected again after the electorate knowing what he did last time, then America wouldn't have sleep walked into a nightmare but would have walked wide-eyed into it.

Right Wing Broadcasters Lose Out In OfCom Battle

When GBNews launched in 2021 and TalkTV in 2022 launched their services, both aimed their direction of travel towards the right wing of the nation in what they considered to be a British version of Fox News but what they both seemed to overlook was that while Fox News can pretty much make up whatever they want without consequence in the States, in Britain Broadcast News is regulated by OfCom who take a dim view of biased broadcasting and came down heavily on both.
GBNews was such a regular recipient of OfCom fines for being unfair and unbalanced, that they told the staff that they would need to start paying their own fines as the station could not afford it as they had problems enough attracting advertisers and they were losing enough money hand over fist as it was.   
Both services lost staff and toned down the right-wing rhetoric but with GBNews posting losses of £30m and TalkTv £34m and without advertisers willing to pay to be associated with either TV Company that have so few viewers and pushing such publicly toxic views, something had to give and that seems to be both are discussing a merger.
TalkTV is owned by Rupert Murdoch and despite having the weight of global media empire News UK behind it, there are some shows which literally have nobody watching while GBNews have a smilialrly poor footprint but some bigger name presenters so it would seem a sensible solution, especially now that Piers Morgan has thrown his toys out of the pram yet again and left, taking his talk show to YouTube.  
Rumours are if the merger doesn't happen Murdoch will pull the plug on TalkTV and he does have a history of yanking loss making ventures while GBNews owners are 'concerned' that they have failed to attract an audience and the constant visits from OfCom who will be the biggest loser if they go under, their finances must have improved immensely since both station began broadcasting.
Personally, i have never been a supporter of the phrase: 'I may not like what you say but i will defend to the death your right to say it', to my mind i would prefer you didn't say it in the first place and kept your ignorant face shut but this is Britain, not America which has a higher threshold of ignorant, racist
nonsense spouted by TV Presenters and you either ensure you give a balanced view or else OfCom staff have an amazing Christmas Party.

Today Is...International Day of Women and Girls in Science

A panel of experts were asked to vote for the ten women in British history who have had the most influence on science and here are there conclusions.
Caroline Herschel was William Herschel's sister and assistant and discovered eight comets, fourteen nebulae and compiled a catalogue for star clusters and nebulae patches.
Mary Somerville carried out experiments on magnetism and wrote a best selling popularised rendition of Laplace's Mecanique Céleste and Newton's Principia.
Mary Anning was an early British fossil collector and paleontologist and made severaal important finds including the skeleton of the first Ichthyosaur and the first two Plesiosaur skeletons ever found.  
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was the first Englishwoman to qualify as a doctor when females were unable to gain such a post and in 1866 established a dispensary for women and in 1876 an act was passed permitting women to enter the medical professions.
Kathleen Lonsdale was an early pioneer of X-ray crystallography and the first woman to hold the post of president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. She spent a month in jail for refusing to register for war duties and then refusing to pay a fine of two pounds.
Dorothy Hodgkin won the Nobel Prize for Science in 1964 for her work on penicillin and vitamin B12.
Rosalind Elsie Franklin contributed to the understanding of DNA, RNA, viruses, coal and graphite and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962 Anne McLaren made fundamental advances in genetics which paved the way for the development of in vitro fertilisation which led to the birth of the first test-tube baby.

Today Is...Lunar New Year

As it's the second new moon after the winter solstice, Xinnián hao or if your Mandarin is a bit rusty, Happy New Year and welcome to the Year of the Dragon according to the Chinese zodiac.
As the animals rotate every 12 years, you are also a Dragon if you were born in 1916, 1928, 1940, 1952, 1964, 1976, 1988, 2000 or 2012 and your lucky numbers are 1, 6, 7 and any numbers containing them both (16, 61 etc) and your lucky days are the 1st and 16th of the month and lucky colours are gold, silver or greyish white.
People born in a year of the Dragon can be regarded as aggressive, angry and not open to criticism and are most compatible with Rats (born 1948, 1960, 1972, 1984, 1996, 2008) Monkeys (born in 1944, 1956, 1968, 1980, 1992, 2004) and Roosters (born 1945, 1957, 1969, 1981, 1993, 2005) but avoid Dogs (born 1946, 1958, 1970, 1982, 1994, 2006).
According to Chinese astrology, the year of one's birth sign is the most unlucky year in the 12-year cycle but it can be offset by wearing outer clothing, bags, shoes, underwear, and even socks in red or purple which brings luck.
Dragons are thought to be best suited to be leaders of the world with their character traits of courage, intelligence and ambition and fellow Dragons include Charles Darwin, Bruce Lee, John Lennon, Vladimir Putin, Martin Luther King Jr., Che Guevera, Andy Warhol and Rihanna.
Some things that you should not do today on Chinese New Years Day is eat porridge (brings poverty), no sewing or knitting (depletes wealth) don't wash clothes (washed away good luck), no crying (brings bad luck), don't use scissors or knives (cuts wealth), don't borrow or lend money (leads to debt), don't wear plain black or white clothes (unlucky), eat pears (leaving soon) or give anybody four of anything (brings death) and don't visit a hospital (brings illness).
So, Xinnián Kuàilè or Happy New Year and spare a thought for knife salesmen as well as launderette staff.