The Moron Or The Sleepy Guy

It happens to everyone at some point, you reach that age, your brain cells give up and wave a little white flag and before you know it you are eating Werthers Originals, talking about putting wind turbines on the Moon or running for a second term as America's President and believing that you have a fair shot at it despite it being obvious to everyone else that is time to break out the rubber cutlery.
Now Donald Trump was never the highest watt bulb, not so much a sandwich short of a picnic as the whole basket is missing but as he has spent his life surrounded by people who were afraid to say to him some home truths such as maybe suggesting drinking bleach to cure Covid isn't actually good medical
advice or women don't seem to like you grabbing their genitals, he has carried on being as much as a cretinous idiot as he wants, which is a lot.
As unhinged as Trump and his supporters were first time around in 2016, this time he seems much more extreme and unhinged, some said that posting Barack Obama’s home address on Social Media was an invitation for some nut to try to shoot him, which they did when someone showed up with a machete, two guns, and 400 rounds of ammunition.
As well as continuing to spread the deluded lie that he was somehow cheated out of the last Election despite everyone in a position to know said he did, he has also said that the Cocaine found in the White House was being used by Joe Biden and his son which would explain a lot as Joe always look as though he is half asleep, but Joe doing Charlie?
Obviously Trumpety Trump is going to up the rhetoric as the election gets closer, if he gains the Republican nomination that is which seems likely, and what he comes out with on the stage as he drags his sorry backside around America but if i was a Republican i would be worried that he either wins and
go on a revenge tour of those he perceives in his rapidly dwindling brain has wronged him which will literally lead to blood on the streets of America or the voters realise what a deranged maniac he is and the Democrats steamroll to victory and take everything and therefore have a free shot at whatever
their heart desires.
Personally, if America votes for the blubbering idiot knowing what they know about him then its hard to have any sympathy for them but it does throw up the question that in a country of 350 million, why is Trump, a sex offending law breaker who has been impeached twice and faces criminal charges and
Biden, an octogenarian who is clearly struggling with cognitive functions, are the choices?

Office Talk For The Terminally Twonky

As i am a Generation X'er i joined the workplace alongside the Baby Boomers and now we are wheeling through the Millennials and now the Generation Z'ers who are filtering through to take their place at the desks and water fountains and although their office etiquette may not be of the highest order, something i do agree with is the office jargon which some people pollute conversations and meetings with.
I shudder when i hear the phrases 'blue sky thinking', 'move the needle' or 'touch base' and a recent report has said that i am not the only one as 69% of Gen Z and Millennials are fed up with it also, 54% have had to ask a colleague what they are saying in plain English and 46% of them don't even know what they mean and amusingly have used it themselves despite not fully understanding what it means which must have been quite amusing.
I fully support ending such useless phrases such as 'baked in' or 'Close of Play' mostly because it makes the speaker sound like a complete twonk and secondly because people who say things like that are usually complete twonk's so i refuse to join their twonk fiefdom and would never utter anything about a deep dive or picking the low hanging fruit or circling back.
The top most misunderstood workplace phrases of the Twonkerrati is Close Of Play (end of a time period such as day, week, month), Move the needle (a noticeable change), Baked in (something which has to be included as it is inseparable), Blue Sky thinking (no idea is beyond reason), Run up the flagpole (See if an idea receives a favorable reaction), Low-hanging fruit (the most easily achievable), Deep dive (Look at more closely) and Circle back (to come back to).
The Gen Z'ers and Millennials should take it as a early warning system that if anyone you come into contact with at work who says any of the above then they are to be avoided whenever possible and should be engaged in the absolute minimum amount of conversation with and under no circumstances should any invitation to do anything outside of work be accepted.

Today Is...The First Wimbledon Championship

As Croquet was falling out of fashion, in 1877 the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club in Wimbledon, London decided to concentrate on the Lawn Tennis bit of their name to raise the money to fix it's roller which was needed to maintain the lawns.
A set of rules was drawn up for the tournament and one of the croquet pitches was turned into a tennis court and the inaugural tournament drew 22 players who each paid one guinea to participate and after a three day delay for rain (obviously) 200 people watched Spencer Gore became the first Wimbledon champion and pocket a £10 winners prize.
A women's championship was started in 1884 and was won by Maud Watson and the first 34 men's championships and the initial 30 women's were all won by Brits although these days when it comes to the Wimbledon Final Weekend, there is not usually a Brit in sight and the only success we did have, Andy Murray, learnt how to play in Spain and owes his success to the Sánchez-Casal Academy more than anything he learnt here.
Canadian Greg Rusedki was never really accepted as a Brit, especially as we had 'Tiger' Tim Henman who was rubbish but was as English as afternoon tea and the Queen Mother while Greg sounded like he had just taken off his Mountie uniform and was stroking a Caribou.
A ticket for Wimbledon isn't cheap but the prices are justified by the explanation that each year the All England Club who run Wimbledon help the LTA to develop British tennis and for an idea of how successful that is, i refer you back to the previous sentence.
Wimbledon fortnight is a roaring success, as a sporting event and financially with last years tournament income making £149.2 million with the winners of the men's and ladies' singles titles each pocketing £1.76 million and the players they beat will each collect £880,000 as runners-up.
The entire prize fund for all players is £25 million which is the smallest of the prize funds of the four Grand Slams in Australia, Paris, Wimbledon and New York.
Doesn't explain why Brits suck as tennis so bad though, maybe the All England Club should dig a little deeper into it's very deep pockets and spend a bit less on the Pimm's and Strawberries.

Today Is...Islamic New Year

It's 2023 as i am writing this but not everyone is in the same year as some nations calendars will be showing some very different dates but as we in the West follow the Gregorian calendar, it may be 2023 for us but as they follow the Solar Hirji calendar, the Persians will waking up in 1445 today so as we are in the future it would be impolite to not pass on what to expect.
Some guy called John Hunyadi will be turning up in your neck of the woods and try to convert you all to Christianity in that loving and peaceful way of the Church by killing as many of you as possible. Spoiler Alert: It doesn't work.
Oh, and if you get an invite from Vlad II Dracul who has just taken over in Wallachia, fake a headache.
That war that been rolling on between England and France still has some way to go, we call it the Hundred Years' War now and we are only just over halfway through.
The Mongols are going to be around your area for a few years yet and that black stuff that keeps seeping out of the ground is going to be important in a few hundreds years so don't waste it.
As we are 727 years in the future it is only fair that we share upcoming events with you unlike those Buddhists who are in 2566 and haven't told us anything and even worse are the Hebrews who are in 5783 and haven't even told us how to make those flying skateboards from the Back to the Future films.
Of course it will be another 600 odd years before you get cinema but you will like it but you might want to give '300' a miss when it comes out, the Persians don't come out of that very well.

Today Is...World Chocolate Day

Man has made many inventions but one of the most tastiest has to be Chocolate for which we can thank the ancient Mesoamerican civilization who first consumed cocoa beans as a drink during religious ceremonies but the Spanish conquistadors are not known for many good things but they did nick the idea of using cocoa beans from the Aztecs, adding sugar and milk to the mix and spread it around the World.
Unless you are a regular subscriber to the New England Journal of Medicine, you could be excused for missing the latest scientific breakthrough and would be just stuffing your face with chocolate not knowing that rather than just stuffing your face with chocolate, you were actually improving your intelligence.  
The studies author, Franz Messerli of Colombia University, was apparently wondering one afternoon about the power of chocolate after reading that cocoa was good for you and reached the conclusion that the higher a country's chocolate consumption, the more Nobel laureates it spawns per capita.
Apparently regular cocoa intake leads to improved mental function and there is data in rats showing that they live longer and have better cognitive function when they eat chocolate, and even in snails you can show that the snail memory is actually improved.
So Messerli took the number of Nobel Prize winners in a country as an indicator of general national intelligence and compared that with the nation's chocolate consumption. The results were, he said 'striking'.
'When you correlate the two' he said with a mouthful of Snickers, 'the chocolate consumption with the number of Nobel Prize laureates per capita there is an incredibly close relationship' the prof explained before turning into geek mode and continuing: 'This correlation has a 'P value' of 0.0001. This means there is a less than one-in-10,000 probability that this correlation is simply down to chance.'
No idea what that means, i haven't eaten enough Mars Bars today obviously, but what it boils down to is eat chocolate and your chances of winning a Nobel Prize go up.
This is backed up by the brilliant minds at Syracuse University, New York, who agree that eating dark chocolate benefits reasoning, memory and focus and found that eating chocolate prepares you more for your work day and we should incorporate dark chocolate into our breakfast.
Before i had even finished grating a large bar of Aero into my bowl another scientific study landed in my inbox from Tel Aviv University suggesting that eating dessert for breakfast supports weight loss.
Conclusive, cast iron proof then that combining chocolate with dessert for breakfast is beneficial so if anyone asks why you are stuffing your face with chocolate cake and trifle at 7am, it's part of a scientifically backed diet and memory improving program to win a Nobel Prize.

Why Does It Always Rain On Me (At The Weekend)

I have the whole weekend off this week so i was looking at my weather app and saw that it said Rain for Saturday and Sunday which made me think, is that old myth that it rains more at weekends due to the weekday pollution hold water, so i cornered a Meteorologist who poohed-poohed it out of hand.
He explained, very patiently considering he was faced with a woman waving the BBC Weather App on her mobile phone at him, that the effect of the week's pollution is negligible as there was no discernible pattern of particularly rainy days in any given week and whether we get rain depends on other variables such as the Jet Stream and where the clouds form.
'It's psychological' he said, 'because we are out and about more at the weekend rather than in an office, when we are told it's going to rain when we are off, than it feels worse than if we are told its going to rain on Wednesday when we are shackled to our desks'.
Annoyingly that all makes sense but he did admit that although no day is preferable for raining, it does tend to rain more in the afternoons due to the morning Sun heating the surface of the Earth making the warm air rise and form clouds which then piddle down on us on our way home from work.
I guess as he is  an expert i should believe him but i still swear it rains more at the weekend and even more bloody annoying, this weekend!

Hot Enough For 'Yer?

The US National Centers for Environmental Prediction have reported that at 62.62°F or 17.01°C, July 3 was the Earth’s hottest day on record but the ink must have still been wet in the Guinness Book of records because whoever at the NCEP is in charge of these things was pushed out again to announce that the record lasted 1 day because the very next Day, July 4th, was even hotter.    
It does take a bit or reading but it states with an average Global temperature of 62.9°F or 17.10°C, it was the hottest day on our planet for the last 125,000 years during the Middle Paleolithic age and they put this months spike down to a mixture of global warming, summer heating up in parts north of the equator and El Niño and warned: 'Looking to the future, we can expect global warming to continue and hence temperature records to be broken increasingly frequently'.
Then it goes into zettajoules of excess heat and explains that 1 zettajoule is 1021 joules (1 ZJ = 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 J) which is far too many zero's for my brain but due to our reckless actions over the last few centuries, we are basically entering new territory where the warmest this or the hottest that headlines will be quite common going forward.

Today Is...International Day Of Cooperatives

As far back as the 19th century, cooperatives have been playing an essential role in shaping society's economic landscape. Originating from Rochdale, England, the first cooperatives emerged as a response to the devastating impact of the Industrial Revolution. In 1844, a group of 28 workers came together to create a consumer-owned business that would enable them to buy basic goods at a fair price.
The basic concept of a cooperative is where the ownership is held by the employees and consumers and sounds like a form of socialism and it may ways it was.
Over time, the cooperative movement evolved and spread to different parts of the world, becoming a significant force for positive change. From farming cooperatives in rural areas to consumer cooperatives in urban communities, the cooperative model proved to be an effective way to tackle economic inequality, empower marginalised groups and build sustainable businesses.
Today, cooperatives have grown to become a significant contributor to the global economy. The International Cooperative Alliance estimates that cooperatives have over 1.2 billion members worldwide, creating over 280 million jobs and generating more than £2.2 trillion in economic activity. In agriculture alone, cooperatives play a crucial role in providing small-scale farmers access to markets and essential services, empowering them to improve their livelihoods and contribute to global food security.
Moreover, cooperatives have been instrumental in promoting social justice and addressing some of the most pressing global challenges. From renewable energy cooperatives to fair trade cooperatives, cooperatives have been at the forefront of driving sustainable development, reducing carbon emissions, and promoting social inclusion.
The future of cooperatives looks bright, with the rise of digital technologies providing new opportunities for growth and innovation. With online platforms and tools, cooperatives can reach new markets, streamline operations, and offer more personalized services to their members. By leveraging the power of the internet, cooperatives can expand their reach, improve their efficiency, and create more significant impact.
Cooperatives have come a long way since their humble beginnings in Rochdale, and is a stellar example of Socialism in action for the good of the many.

Today Is...The Roswell Incident

The truth is out there so said Mulder and Scully with the 'there' in this case being the most debated extra-terrestrial event which happened today in 1947 when either a UFO or a weather balloon crash-landed on a farm near Roswell Air Base.
A rather large group of people believe that the 'weather balloon' was actually an Unidentified Flying Object from outer space. In fact, they believe the military actually recovered three or four alien bodies, and recovered the UFO and point to the press release put out by the Military Authorities at the time which stated that they had indeed recovered a UFO. Only for it to then be retracted 24 hours later.
With excellent timing, Lieutenant Walter Haut, who was the PR man at the base in 1947, and who issued both the press releases after the crash, died and left a sworn affidavit to be opened only after his death.
The text was released and asserts that the weather balloon claim was a cover story, and that the real object had been recovered by the military and stored in a hangar. He described seeing not just the craft, but alien bodies. Local undertaker Glenn Dennis had long claimed that he was contacted by authorities at Roswell shortly after the crash and asked to provide a number of child-sized coffins.
For many that is where the story ends but there is a conspiracy theory that takes it up a notch and that one of the aliens was still alive and he was cared back to health until his fellow aliens could come to pick it up.
Documents released by the FBI make the story even more intriguing with one dated 22 March 1950 written by the head of the FBI's Washington field office who wrote with information on three flying saucers that had been recovered, along with the bodies of the alien crews.
The memo goes on to add: 'Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only three feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture.
Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed flyers and test pilots.'
More Marvin the Martian than Ming the Merciless i agree but there seems to be something out there visiting us.
I just hope they left the probes at home.

Today Is...America's Birthday

How you going to spend your Fourth of July this year Yankees? Will you scare the pets with explosions and eat cheeseburgers until you feel sick because it's America's Birthday?
The British don't talk about their defeats in war. We especially don't mention the American War of Independence although the part where we burnt down the White House tends to get a mention but the previous President (yes, THAT one) was happy to tell people in his Independence Day address that the Revolutionary Army soldiers 'took over airports' in 1775.
They just don't teach this sort of thing in American school's but there should be pride in America that due to the American soldiers and their bravery, there was not a single British aircraft in the skies above America during until the 20th Century.
History books show that by the end of the war, not a single airport on the continent of North America was under British control which was strategically important during the Revolution.
You have to ask just why have historians have been ignoring all this for centuries but they do seem to teach them that they escaped the tyranny of King George III but he was happy to let his colony go, he actually sent them a telegram congratulating them on their independence but it does give the man
who did lose the colony a free pass, Prime Minister Lord Frederick North.
It was he who introduced the Coercive Act and took the decision to cut America lose and concentrate British forces on defending the West Indies as their sugar wealth made them more valuable to Great Britain than the thirteen colonies.
So what has America done in the 247 years since they hauled down the Union Flag and replaced it with the Stars and Stripes?
It carved some big heads into the side of a mountain and invented Country and Western music and admittedly, Mount Rushmore does look cool but the Country music thing should be enough for many UN Resolutions and severe sanctions although the argument could be made that the Moon Landing, Hollywood movies, Guns 'n' Roses and Buffy the Vampire Slayer balance things out, just.
As a consequence of events that cold, December morning in Massachusetts, the Americans never really got the hang of the tea drinking thing and either drink it cold or fire radiation at in the microwave so our Birthday presents from Great Britain to you is an electric kettle and the return of something we gave you previously, the letter 'u'.
I'm not sure why you all decided five vowels was one vowel too many and decided to spell words wrongly but it really messes with our spellcheckers over here when our students plagiarise content off the internet so there you go, have that elusive 26th member of the alphabet.
Happy Birthday now go and shoot some bullets up into the air rather than at each other and have a nice day y'all.