Gruts

BBC: Police consider lie detector tests
Police in the North West could soon use lie detection tests to interrogate suspects… The Silent Talker device has been developed in the region and is touted as having a 90% success rate.

As opposed to tossing a coin, which has a 50% success rate.

Come to think of it, how do you measure the accuracy of a lie detector? If the subject knows it's just an experiment, they'll probably behave differently to people who are genuinely being interrogated. And, if the subject doesn't know it's just an experiment, there must be some independent means of measuring whether they're lying, which presumably must be 100% accurate… So why not use that method to interrogate suspects in the first place?

Lie detectors in Blighty, I ask you. IS THIS WHAT GRANDAD FOUGHT THE NAZIS FOR?

BBC: Scents 'influence women's behaviour'
Strong smells can trigger a change in mood in women

So that's the cause. I've often wondered.

Is it just me, or does the nose in the photo accompanying the BBC article look suspiciously male? It's the stubble on the top lip that's the dead giveaway.

When I'm not rescuing little birds from drainpipes, I like to save the planet in other ways. This morning, I decided to help reduce demands on the world's limited petrochemical resources by freewheeling my car into town. I live near the top of a hill, and the town is a mile away in the bottom of the valley. I actually managed to coast my car all the way from my front drive right into town and park - with the car in neutral all the way. What's more, I had to give way to other traffic twice en route (pardon my French).

Now, if only I could figure out a way of breaking not just the traffic laws, but the laws of thermodynamics, I might be able to freewheel that car of mine all the way back up that hill.

I did a very fine and noble thing this afternoon. I suppose it would be a whole lot nobler if I didn't tell anyone about it, but that's just not my style.

I was just about to start mowing the lawn, when I heard a right old racket coming from a nearby drainpipe. Rats, I thought (both literally and figuratively). But then I noticed a blue tit on a nearby tree with a very concerned look on its face (don't ask, I just did). Putting two and two together, I deduced that its mate must have been gathering cobwebs from the gutter to use as nesting material, and had fallen down the drainpipe.

I looked in the bottom of the drainpipe and removed the dead leaves that were blocking it, but there was still no sign of the expected bird. So guess what Muggins did next… That's right, I only went and got his screwdriver and removed the drainpipe from the wall. And out flew a blue tit, right as rain (which, considering where it had been, isn't a bad simile). Sherlock Holmes, eat your heart out.

Of course, you realise this means I'll probably go to heaven after all.

BBC: Rare Woolf manuscripts bought
A series of previously unpublished manuscripts hand-written by Virginia Woolf are among a collection that has been bought by The British Library. The manuscripts form part of two mock newspapers composed by Woolf's nephews, Julian and Quentin Bell, as children.

Mock newspaper articles: hardly likely to be of the calibre of The Aftermath, are they?

Nobody I sent post cards to from Barcelona over a fortnight ago has received them yet. Friends, I sent them, honest I did - although I'm beginning to suspect that the yellow postbox I wasn't too sure about might have been a Metro air-conditioning vent after all.

Postscript: The post cards finally arrived.

My dad's favourite gardening fork broke recently, so he asked me if I could try to get him a new handle from the local hardware shop. Yes, that's right, this morning I finally got to walk into a hardware shop and ask for "fork handles".

The woman behind the counter smiled knowingly. "Would that be four candles, or handles for forks?"

I don't know which of us was the most amused.