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BBC: Cyclone Hudhud causes widespread damage in eastern India
India's east coast has been pounded by a powerful cyclone, Hudhud, with winds of up to 205km/h (127mph).
I take it Hudhud is the Hindi equivalent of Norbert. Either way, it's still a damn stupid name.
Stop it!
(Oh, apparently, hudhud is a local name for a hoopoe. I rest my case.)
I was just wondering, entirely hypothetically, which would be the best route to take from Lissavruggy in County Galway to the Valvelspitze mountain in the Italian section of the Ötztal Alps.
As ever, Google Maps provided some useful advice, presenting me with two options: the first route (marked in blue) via Reims, Nancy and Zurich (1,932km); the second (marked in grey) via Brussels, Stuttgart and Ulm (2,053km).
But Google's response presented me with something of a dilemma. While the first route is 121km shorter than the second, Google predicts that, in current traffic, it is likely to be 55 minutes slower.
Such dilemmas must be rife in the armed forces. Should one take the guaranteed shorter route, or the potentially faster but longer route? When it comes to military manoeuvres, as opposed to entirely hypothetical exercises, lives might well be a stake. Does one take the more roundabout route via Belgium, Germany and Austria (as Hitler, no doubt, would have), or does one violate Swiss neutrality by taking the more direct route via France and Switzerland?
I'm glad I don't have to make such decisions.
How about you?
If you were a military leader, and lives were at stake, would you violate Swiss neutrality
for the chance to save 55 minutesby taking the more direct route?
Please feel free to attempt to justify your answer in the comments.
(While you're at it, you might also wish to consider the pros and cons of taking the M6 Toll Road.)
Nice to see one of the local rags entering into the spirit of National Poetry Day last week:
The glamour has gone out of supermarkets.
—Prof. Jeremy Baker
ESCP Business School, Oct 2014
Prof. Baker pretty much hits the nail on the head, here: what modern supermarkets most certainly lack is glamour.
When I pulled up at Sainsbury's last week, would it really have been too much to ask for the foreign gentlemen in the car park who offered to wash my car to have worn something a bit more glamorous than damp-looking, brown overalls? Sequins, perhaps, or maybe even a top-hat. Furthermore, within the store itself, I can't help thinking they missed a golden opportunity recently when they installed new spotlights in the bananas section. Would a chandelier or two really have been all that out of place? And as for Deidre on the checkout: a very nice lady, I'm sure, but I reckon someone more of the calibre of Scarlett Johansson, say, or Cate Blanchett, might add a certain je ne sais quoi.
Of course, where the supermarkets really missed a trick was at George Clooney's wedding last week. A civil ceremony in Venice is all well and good, but I'm sure, for the right financial incentive, the star of Ocean's Eleven would have been just as happy to lead his blushing bride down the Home Baking aisle at the Dewsbury branch of Lidl.
Tesco and Sainsbury's are in a bit of a mess at the moment. Put me in charge, and I'll soon add a touch of Hollywood sparkle.
Jen and I went for an excellent Chinese meal when we were in Anglesey. Although I should have known better, not wishing to let the gwailo side down, I insisted on persevering with the chopsticks provided. As a consequence, a significant proportion of my meal ended up in places other than my mouth. China—the country, that is—is pretty inept when it comes to tableware. As inept as I am with chopsticks. For a people clever enough to have invented gunpowder, printing, and crispy duck pancakes, you'd have thought the concepts of forks, sensibly shaped soup spoons, and tea cups with actual handles would be an absolute breeze to the Chinese, but apparently not. But who are we Brits to criticise?
The following evening, we dined at a tasteful harbour-front bistro. I ordered their fancy burger with chips. When the nice, Welsh waitress returned with my order, I was somewhat mortified to see that it was being served to me on what can only be described as a scabby old bread board.
Let me make this perfectly clear: if I'd wanted to eat food off a plank of wood, I'd have been born in the Middle Ages. The same Middle Ages that believed diseases to be caused by the Devil, rather than by inadequate table hygiene. The same Middle Ages that officially ended, as far as I'm concerned, with the arrival of cheap, mass-produced china plates.
To add insult to injury, whoever had planked-up my meal had, in an ill-judged attempt at artistic flourish, impaled my burger on to the bread board with a knife. I'm not kidding: there was a sodding great steak knife sticking vertically out the top of my burger. I looked at the knife, then looked at the waitress: “If I can pull that out, do I become King of Britain?” I asked. The waitress laughed politely and left. Somewhat surprisingly, given the fact that she had just served me my meal on a plank of wood, I don't think she had understood my early medieval reference.
They must have used a hammer. It took me two big tugs to remove the steak knife from my burger, its tip having been driven with considerable force into the underlying plank. I could sense the other diners watching me. “Have you seen how that fat man's trying to cut his burger?” I could almost hear them whispering. “Why's he holding the knife in both hands?”
I don't like steak knives at the best of times. They're my fourth least favourite tableware after chopsticks, fish knives, and nasty planks of wood. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I've yet to encounter a steak that wouldn't have been a whole lot easier to cut with a perfectly ordinary knife, than with a pointlessly serrated steak knife with a stupid, unhygienic wooden handle. I wouldn't have minded—well, actually I would—but I hadn't even ordered a steak, I'd ordered a burger—and you definitely don't need a steak knife to cut a sodding beef burger in a bun!
I blame the telly. The people who prepare pub meals have got it into their heads that it's all about presentation. Presentation is definitely important when it comes to food, but there's presentation and there's presentation.
Serving meals impaled on planks of wood is most definitely the wrong kind of presentation.
Jen and I are just back from a fabulous week's holiday in Anglesey, during which, I was extremely daring, bordering on reckless:
OK, so maybe going for a paddle isn't all that daring. But, let's face it: I'm 49 years old; I have a bit of gyp from my left leg after adventurously trying to jump over an extremely narrow stream a few weeks back; my beard is more salt than pepper these days; and I've finally had to concede that my hair might indeed be thinning ever so slightly on top. So just how daring and adventurous can one expect to be at this stage in one's life?
39 years ago, I made friends with a boy named Paul who lived at the other end of our road. We were at different primary schools at the time, but were about to start at the same secondary school. We became very good mates, but ended up going to different universities and pretty much lost touch until we recently re-established contact via Facebook (yes, I am, somewhat reluctantly, on Facebook).
Last week, at around the time I was paddling on a beach in Anglesey, Paul, who was always a tad more athletic than me, set off on a jog from Marble Arch in London. He jogged down to Dover, then swam across the English Channel, then biked it to l'Arc de Triomphe in Paris. In so doing, Paul became the 20th, sixth-fastest, and oldest person to complete the frankly ridiculous Arch to Arc Challenge. In all, it took him 84 hours and 44 minutes.
Paul carried out all this nonsense in aid of the spinal cord injury charity for which he works. He's still accepting donations, if you're interested in sponsoring him retrospectively.
Before you get too impressed, however, I feel it my duty to point out that Paul is 26 days younger than me.
Postscript (03-Oct-2014): Paul's account of his successful Arch to Arc Challenge
(Hat tip to my online mate John Wilkins over at Evolving Thoughts.)
Guardian: Hurricane Norbert batters Baja California and heads north-west
Do you think they're starting to scrape the barrel when it comes to hurricane names? Norbert: what sort of name is that for any tropical cyclone worth its salt? I mean, it's not even a real name. Have you ever met anyone named Norbert? Me neither.
Apparently, Norbert means ‘famous in the North’. Not in this bloody North he's not. Up here, I guarantee, you won't hear tales of the legendary Norbert, who famously did something famous for which he is now remembered throughout the region. In fact, I can honestly say, I have never even heard of anyone named Norbert, let alone actually met someone with that unfortunate monicker. It's a made-up name. It's a joke name. In fact, I've just consulted the Famous People Named Norbert web page and it only lists five men, all but one of whom are dead, and absolutely none of whom you will have heard of. Not even Norbert Leo Butz, the ‘#1 person named Norbert’, who famously graduated from Webster University and the University of Alabama before beginning his career as a Broadway performer, and who then went on to appear on such television shows as The Deep End, Law & Order: SVU, The Good Wife, and Smash.
Do you think that Norbert Leo Butz, in an attempt perhaps to turn the inevitable topic of conversation away from his surname, tries to impress strangers with the fact that, according to the Famous People Named Norbert website, he's the #1 person named Norbert in the whole world? I suppose it's a claim to fame of sorts. But, as with the hurricane names, it smacks of barrel-scraping.
I mean, just imagine if your house got flattened, and you had to explain that you had been made homeless by Hurricane Norbert. Where's the dignity in that? People would just piss themselves laughing, or think you'd made it up.
No, enough is enough! You can't have a hurricane named Norbert. Whatever next? Hurricane Robin? Hurricane Keith (no offence)? Actually, no, it turns out these things are planned in advance. The next Eastern North Pacific hurricanes of the 2014 season, if there are any, will be named (I'm not making this up): Odile, then Polo, then Rachel, then Simon, then Trudy, then Vance, then Winnie, then Xavier, then Yolanda, then Zeke.
Actually, perhaps Norbert isn't such a damn stupid name for a hurricane after all.
BBC: Survivor singer Jimi Jamison dies aged 63
Jimi Jamison, the lead singer for US rock band Survivor, who sang the theme tune for hit TV series Baywatch, has died aged 63.