Gruts

New Scientist: Robotic Segways play soccer with humans

Why can't they play it with a ball like everyone else?

Here is the phone number for Audi Customer Services UK: 0800 699888.

I spent 20 minutes on the Audi UK website yesterday, trying to find it. They would only reveal it to me after I registered my personal details with them. So I did so, got the number, then immediately un-registered.

It really shouldn't be that difficult to obtain a so-called Customer Services phone number, so I publish it here in the hope that someone searching for it might come across this item via Google, etc.

BBC: Top UK dish 'hooked French first' (08-Jan-04)
It is thought to be the quintessential British meal, but new research claims the original idea for fish and chips came from Jewish and French dishes… Professor Panikos Panayi of Leicester's De Montfort University has begun a £6,000 research project to investigate the global influence on British food. He said fish and chips mixed "French frites with Jewish fish dishes".

De Montfort University, eh? Sounds suspiciously French to me!

Tell you what, François, you keep quiet about the fish & chips, and we won't let on that it was us Brits who invented sparkling wine. That's champagne to vous lot.

BBC: BBC halts Kilroy for race 'rant' (09-Jan-04)
The Kilroy programme will be taken off air immediately following comments made by Robert Kilroy-Silk in a newspaper article, the BBC has announced. The presenter branded Arabs "suicide bombers, limb amputators, women repressors" and asked what they had given to the world other than oil.

Of course, what Kilroy should have done was to slur Scousers instead: they're used to it. For example, I just heard Simon Hoggart on BBC Radio 4's News Quiz make an gratuitous joke—much to the London audience's amusement—about how a Scouser's idea of formal wedding attire is loose, comfy clothes and shorts. This unnecessary (and, let's face it, unfunny) anti-Scouse jibe was made during a topical question (about Britney Spears's recent short-lived marriage) that had absolutely nothing to do with Liverpool or Scousers. Will the BBC be taking Hoggart off the air, do you reckon—or do they see Scousers as fair game?

BBC: Rusedski fails drugs test
British tennis star Greg Rusedski has tested positive for the banned substance nandrolone.

British? Nope, I think you'll find he was born in Canada. Not one of our lads. No siree, Bob.

Come on, Tim!

BBC: Another jail term for naked walker
A naked rambler has again been found guilty of breach of the peace and sentenced to a spell in a Scots jail.

Ignore him—he's only trying to draw attention to himself. The magistrates should turn the other cheek.

What on earth is going on? The BBC News website maintains what it calls a Air Disaster Timeline: a list of air disasters going back to February, 1998.

Well, if that isn't going to scare the shit out of anyone already scared of what is, after all, the safest mode of transport per mile travelled, I don't know what is. It's like Rain Man all over again.

But the worst thing about this morbid ambulance-chasing journalism is that, by describing its list as a timeline, the BBC could be seen to be implying that all these air crashes are somehow related. Now there's a conspiracy theory if ever I heard one.

BBC (Have Your Say): Should Germans attend D-day events?
Germany's Gerhard Schroeder has accepted a French invitation to events marking the 60th annivesary of the D-Day landings … Is France right to invite Germans to the ceremonies? Sixty years on, is it time to move on and allow them to attend?

Isn't it time to forgive and forget? Aren't we all supposed to be part of Europe now? It's the 21st Century, for Pete's sake! Aren't we mature enough to forget our past differences? Of course the Germans should be invited—provided they promise not to hog all the deck chairs.