Will you look at that! A newly discovered diaphanous ring of dust around Saturn.Full story at NASA
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Monday, October 05, 2009
54 going on 22
In the run up to my birthday next Friday (bleugh) a few disjointed remarks.
We had visitors from Scotland last week - an old friend and her new boyfriend. We got to talking about age.. and he said in a wonderful Edinburgh brogue which I won't even attempt to spell phonetically, "I saw a t-shirt the other week. On it were the words I'm 18 with 36 years' life experience".
That's exactly how it feels, isn't it - there's in-your-head age and on-the-outside age.
I've just had a lesson with two ladies who are enjoying their retirement and this subject came up. We sit around a table for the lesson and I always end up facing a small mirror on the wall opposite. Invariably I look over at it at least 50 times during the hour and each time I think "who's that old bugger?" before realising it's me! (In-your-head age and on-the-outside age.)
The subject of age came up again at the gig I played on Saturday - I don't quite know how the conversation turned to wrinkles and cremes to fight wrinkles and injections to iron out wrinkles and so on...
I said, "as far as I am concerned the best way to get rid of your wrinkles is to take your glasses off when you look in the mirror".
Maybe I could get that on a t-shirt...?
We had visitors from Scotland last week - an old friend and her new boyfriend. We got to talking about age.. and he said in a wonderful Edinburgh brogue which I won't even attempt to spell phonetically, "I saw a t-shirt the other week. On it were the words I'm 18 with 36 years' life experience".
That's exactly how it feels, isn't it - there's in-your-head age and on-the-outside age.
I've just had a lesson with two ladies who are enjoying their retirement and this subject came up. We sit around a table for the lesson and I always end up facing a small mirror on the wall opposite. Invariably I look over at it at least 50 times during the hour and each time I think "who's that old bugger?" before realising it's me! (In-your-head age and on-the-outside age.)
The subject of age came up again at the gig I played on Saturday - I don't quite know how the conversation turned to wrinkles and cremes to fight wrinkles and injections to iron out wrinkles and so on...
I said, "as far as I am concerned the best way to get rid of your wrinkles is to take your glasses off when you look in the mirror".
Maybe I could get that on a t-shirt...?
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Liza23 and Big Bruvver
My elder daughter plays bass in a band... and they have just won the Bavarian Music Lion Newcomer 2009 award!!
Here they are:
Liza23
A Neutron as proud as a very proud thing.
So we went to Berlin to take part in the awards. Great evening... red carpets, TV cameras everywhere, good food, good drink (FREE!!!) and good music.
Then next day we did some sightseeing in Berlin.
It's a marvellous city Berlin but they still have this left over from the DDR days...it gave me the creeps the first time I was in Berlin in 1978 and it seems it still gives me the creeps now. There's something insecty, soviety about it - I had the feeling that there was someone behind every facet watching you with binoculars...
BUT...
then you can get some of this...
and the world is new!
Here they are:
Liza23
A Neutron as proud as a very proud thing.
So we went to Berlin to take part in the awards. Great evening... red carpets, TV cameras everywhere, good food, good drink (FREE!!!) and good music.
Then next day we did some sightseeing in Berlin.
It's a marvellous city Berlin but they still have this left over from the DDR days...it gave me the creeps the first time I was in Berlin in 1978 and it seems it still gives me the creeps now. There's something insecty, soviety about it - I had the feeling that there was someone behind every facet watching you with binoculars...
BUT...
then you can get some of this...
and the world is new!
Saturday, September 05, 2009
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Unbeerable
For those of you waiting with that good old bated breath to find out what that frozen beer tasted like...
I'm sorry to confess that it took quite a while to get round to trying it. I didn't want to try it without being sure of having a few other beers in just in case but then when I had a few beers in, I simply ignored the unfrozen half-opened experimental bottle.
Anyway I tried it on Tuesday and it was f****** HORRIBLE!
HORR-EEE-BULL!!
So if you have forgotten your beer in the freezer and you think, "hmm, maybe blah blah..."
DON'T BOTHER.
I'm sorry to confess that it took quite a while to get round to trying it. I didn't want to try it without being sure of having a few other beers in just in case but then when I had a few beers in, I simply ignored the unfrozen half-opened experimental bottle.
Anyway I tried it on Tuesday and it was f****** HORRIBLE!
HORR-EEE-BULL!!
So if you have forgotten your beer in the freezer and you think, "hmm, maybe blah blah..."
DON'T BOTHER.
Friday, July 17, 2009
40 Years Ago...
..I was watching every news programme, science update, etc, I could about the Apollo 11 mission which was well under way at this point.
Take-off was yesterday 40 years ago...and the landing would be this Monday, 20th...although we were sat watching it at 3.00a.m. on the 21st in Liverpool.
NASA has released pictures today from the LRO of 5 of the 6 landing sites here. It won't convince any of the misguided Apollo hoax doughnuts - but what would?
(By the way, Apollo hoaxers, you do realise there were 6 landings don't you? Did NASA fake them all? Did they fake the other 3 lunar circumnavigations, Apollo 8, Apollo 10 and Apollo 13? What about the other Apollo missions...7 and 9? Faked? And the fire..etc etc? Ho hum.)
There is also a great website where you can follow the mission in "real" time - sort of forty-years-ago-real-time:
We Choose the Moon
I would have loved that when I was a kid!
Take-off was yesterday 40 years ago...and the landing would be this Monday, 20th...although we were sat watching it at 3.00a.m. on the 21st in Liverpool.
NASA has released pictures today from the LRO of 5 of the 6 landing sites here. It won't convince any of the misguided Apollo hoax doughnuts - but what would?
(By the way, Apollo hoaxers, you do realise there were 6 landings don't you? Did NASA fake them all? Did they fake the other 3 lunar circumnavigations, Apollo 8, Apollo 10 and Apollo 13? What about the other Apollo missions...7 and 9? Faked? And the fire..etc etc? Ho hum.)
There is also a great website where you can follow the mission in "real" time - sort of forty-years-ago-real-time:
We Choose the Moon
I would have loved that when I was a kid!
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Tight-Fisted Auld Git..
...is what you might call me, but I don't care!
I was looking in the fridge for something to have for lunch...opened the freezer and found...this!!
Yes, a bottle of Augustiner...frozen solid. Amazingly it hadn't cracked - but this is still a potential disaster. At the moment it is thawing in the kitchen and later I will simply have to try and drink it.
This happened to me once before, many many years ago, and the bottle had actually cracked but the beer was still frozen. It took me many hours of creative thinking before I finally was forced to admit that I would have to sling it because the danger of swallowing glass splinters was too great even if I poured the thawed out beer through a fine sieve...
It still rankles that I had to throw it away.
I was looking in the fridge for something to have for lunch...opened the freezer and found...this!!
Yes, a bottle of Augustiner...frozen solid. Amazingly it hadn't cracked - but this is still a potential disaster. At the moment it is thawing in the kitchen and later I will simply have to try and drink it.
This happened to me once before, many many years ago, and the bottle had actually cracked but the beer was still frozen. It took me many hours of creative thinking before I finally was forced to admit that I would have to sling it because the danger of swallowing glass splinters was too great even if I poured the thawed out beer through a fine sieve...
It still rankles that I had to throw it away.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Body Clock Alarm
It's 9.55 and according to a programme I saw the other day about the body clock, I have about 2 more hours to go before I am out of the heart attack danger zone.
It seems that in the morning hours from waking till midday, first of all your blood vessels are less flexible than at other times, secondly you have more likelihood of fatty deposits building up inside them and, thirdly, as if that were not enough, your blood is actually thicker than later on in the day...presumably after it has been watered down by intakes of alcohol following a lunchtime pint...
As if waking up isn't bad enough!
On the tele they underlined my newly postulated vulnerability by showing endoscopic views of blood vessels sort of contracting and heart valve-looking things sort of labouring away at pumping thick viscous blood on its ponderous journey.
I HATE those kind of pictures! Just looking at them makes my heart start straining and complaining as if it's suddenly realised what a hard job it has to do and I get into that mentality of "listening" to it, listening to it beating away...almost taking conscious control of it - like I used to with my breathing as a kid...an awful situation where you end up desperately trying to stop thinking about doing it ...breathe in, now breathe out, in again....out - hey, heart! ...keep beating! Breathe...in er.. out ...BEAT!!
90 more minutes ...
It seems that in the morning hours from waking till midday, first of all your blood vessels are less flexible than at other times, secondly you have more likelihood of fatty deposits building up inside them and, thirdly, as if that were not enough, your blood is actually thicker than later on in the day...presumably after it has been watered down by intakes of alcohol following a lunchtime pint...
As if waking up isn't bad enough!
On the tele they underlined my newly postulated vulnerability by showing endoscopic views of blood vessels sort of contracting and heart valve-looking things sort of labouring away at pumping thick viscous blood on its ponderous journey.
I HATE those kind of pictures! Just looking at them makes my heart start straining and complaining as if it's suddenly realised what a hard job it has to do and I get into that mentality of "listening" to it, listening to it beating away...almost taking conscious control of it - like I used to with my breathing as a kid...an awful situation where you end up desperately trying to stop thinking about doing it ...breathe in, now breathe out, in again....out - hey, heart! ...keep beating! Breathe...in er.. out ...BEAT!!
90 more minutes ...
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Odysseus Becalmed
It has been rumoured, not without just cause, that, like Odysseus on his way home from Troy, I have been becalmed. And indeed, 'tis true!
I have been drifting aimlessly in the bloggy doldrums, the sea gurgling idly around my soggy timbers and slapping gently against my bows, here in the midst of the Sea of Apathy.
But now I sense the faint stirring of a breeze somewhere off over the horizon, the slightest ripple of the sails...could it be that my journey recommences at last...?
I have been drifting aimlessly in the bloggy doldrums, the sea gurgling idly around my soggy timbers and slapping gently against my bows, here in the midst of the Sea of Apathy.
But now I sense the faint stirring of a breeze somewhere off over the horizon, the slightest ripple of the sails...could it be that my journey recommences at last...?
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