Blog!ARU

Ohhhhhhhhhh, I see, it only applies to babies.

The Unite union currently making headlines in the UK over the strike at the Grangemouth refinery should probably change it's name to “Divide” since it seems better at driving a wedge between workers and their jobs, whether through incompetence or bad luck.

Here in Frome one of the local big employers, Butler and Tanner Printers, has gone into receivership after the parent company financing it pulled the plug in the face of unworkable terms demanded by the same union and a pending strike during financially difficult times.

Just checked my credit card statement online and was initially surprised to see an unknown charge against my card:

22 Mar 2008 PTI EUROPE REGION GBP 0800 279 6620 £5.49

Googling around there are a couple of forum posts on suspected credit card fraud for similar small amounts linked to Google Adwords and “PTI Europe Region”.

I was suitably suspicious to the point that I started composing an email to my credit card company, but decided at the last minute to search on the phone number in the statement item to check for alternative clues — turns out it's Amazon UKs main phone number. Whilst this could easily be faked in the item description it started some cogs turning and set me looking through my previous statements, sure enough it's the monthly charge that Amazon.co.uk levy for their DVDs by mail service — same transaction date as always, same fee as always but just with a badly labelled item description. So, if it had me concerned it's going to have a lot of other folks concerned too, hence this blog post.

Dire weekend here — very wet (the river Frome is testing out the newly patched flood defences in the town centre) and rather cold — at least for those of us with less on top (c.f. those of us with less up top). Pop into Boots to buy soap and razor blades (that must be made of pure gold because 8 blades = £10.49) spot a compact first aid kit (I need one for the car) that turns out to be a mistake (if there's an emergency on the motorway I can now provide all the life-threatening insect bite and sting aftercare you need, still it might come in handy in Scotland if one gets caught short in midge country). At the checkout an attractive young lady is waiting for customers, I smile, she scans the things in my basket, I pay with my card, she then gives me the receipt and goes on to explain that there's also a free £2 voucher for professional haircare. Life is cruel.

According to this graphic released by ESA, the current occupants of the ISS are in for a surprise when the newly launched Jules Verne ATV docks with the station and they open the hatch:

[ Via SpaceflightNow]

This year I've got to find myself a girlfriend. I know there are women out there somewhere, indeed about 3 billion of them at the last count. Of course I'm more likely to meet one of the 30 million that are crowded onto the land mass of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Of those lets say there are only 10% eligible ones, that still leaves 3 million.

Then I'd be looking for someone with a good education, which I'll assume means they have an honours degree or above. Now, I'm not sure how many that leaves, but maybe it's every 1 in a 50 in the UK thinking about who from my secondary school made it through 6th form college and then onto University and stayed there long enough to graduate. This seems a rather low figure as the Government wanted 50% of school leavers to go to University and a quick search shows that 25% of those in the USA have a Bachelors degree, though in New Zealand that seems to be ~8% for 2001. So, lets say the 10% of the UK population have honours degrees else we'll be here all day and it makes the math easier — that leaves 300,000 eligible females.

Now personality types, lets say that 25% of those I'm just not going to get on with — maybe they're very extrovert, very domineering so there are 225,000 remaining.

Then there are all those that enjoy “I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here” or anything else on ITV — they can go so that leaves about 100,000.

Subtract from this all those that think pink is a good colour to paint the bedroom (10,000), that can't touch their toes (10,000), that smoke (10,000), that hate Italian food (10,000), that think that going to a nightclub is a good night out (20,000), that believe in the supernatural (10,000), that want a cat for a pet (10,000), that have bad personal hygiene (5,000), that are vegan (5,000), that think Ikea is a great place from which to furnish the house (10,000) and I realise that's why I'm still single!

The idea that we only use 10% of our brain capacity is a well known tall tale (I was going to say housewife's tale, but have only just realised how insulting that sounds). However, Israeli MP Shlomo Benizri has recently offered his own evidence that the percentage in some people is a lot less than that: Israeli MP blames quakes on gays.

Of course, never one to take it lying down (if ever there were an inappropriate idiom), Britain's own Bishop of Carlisle shows that Blighty can be just as mentally stunted as our overseas friends: Floods are judgment on society.

When historians of the distant future look back on this century and last, you've got to hope that they'll look at us with the same patrician pity we bestow on those of centuries past for believing in witchcraft, curses and animal sacrifices, if not we're screwed.

You may already know about USA 193, the bus-sized spy satellite that bricked itself a few hours after launch at the end of 2006. You'll probably only know about it because the US navy are going to attempt to shoot it down in the next day or so.

Exactly when it gets shot down is not set as the current plan of 03:30GMT tomorrow looks set to be interrupted by bad weather. So, if it stays up a bit longer and also depending on where you live, you may be able to catch a glimpse of it in the same way you can view the ISS.

Times are available on the Heaven's Above website, for example here are times for viewing USA 193 from London, UK.