Gruts

Today, BBC News published an interview with Henry Heimlich of lifesaving manoeuvre fame.

The interview got me thinking. It must be really cool to have an actual manoeuvre named after you. So I've gone ahead and invented a manoeuvre of my own, henceforth to be known as The Carter Manoeuvre.

The Carter Manoeuvre is used to recover from those embarrassing situations where you are walking along, quite happily minding your own business, and are suddenly startled by something that really shouldn't startle you quite so much. I am particularly adept at this manoeuvre following loud barks from dogs which are safely secured by ropes or confined behind fences. The manoeuvre is initiated in mid-air following your instinctive, adrenaline-induced leap away from the source of alarm. As your parabolic trajectory brings you back towards the ground, slam your leading foot down as hard as you can, then quickly slow your pace and resume walking nonchalantly in your original direction of travel, remarking, "Got it!"

Jen has this crackpot theory that it always snows in this neck of the woods on her friend's birthday. The theory might well be ludicrous, but it is at least capable of being falsified (i.e. it is possible to devise a test that could disprove the theory). According to the philosopher Karl Popper (1902-1994), this means that Jen's snow theory counts as a scientific theory. Indeed, it could be argued that it is more scientific than a typical Meteorological Office prediction of a 20% chance of snow (how could you ever test that one?). So Jen's weather forecast is in some ways far more scientific than that of the UK's official weather forecasting organisation, with all its Cray super-computers and satellite images - even though it is clearly complete and utter bollocks.

Today is Jen's friend's birthday.

It's snowing.

Conversation at work:

According to a passing visitor, gruts is Kiwi slang for underpants. Cool.

Conversation with Carolyn while removing a splinter from her finger with a tiny pair of tweezers:

BBC: Duck cull ruffles feathers
The [UK] government is planning a nationwide cull of ruddy ducks to protect another species from extinction.

Forget the ruddy ducks, when are we going to cull some ruddy cats?

BBC: 'Secret of Life' Discovery Turns 50
Fifty years ago, on 28 February 1953, Francis Crick walked into the Eagle pub in Cambridge, UK, and announced something for which he would later share a Nobel Prize. "We have found the secret of life," his collaborator and subsequent fellow Nobel laureate James Watson later quoted him as saying.

When I was at university, one of my archaeology tutors confessed to being completely in awe of 'you scientists'. He explained how he had been at Cambridge in 1953, and often used to hear Crick and Watson talking in the pub about something called DNA. He said he hadn't been able to understand a word they were saying.

In celebration of this very significant anniversary, I should like to take this opportunity to publish a poem I composed in a different public house several years ago. (Fitz reckons he wrote it, but, as usual, he's wrong.)

Deoxyribonucleic acid
Cannot be passed on if your penis is flaccid.

I thank you.