Au revoir

That's it for today - I'm enjoying England's abject collapse against South Africa, but I'm hungry and there's ironing to do. See you all tomorrow.

Irish eyes aren't smiling

So Ireland go out to New Zealand, comprehensively beaten - but then very few of Ireland's team are professional cricketers (or Irish, come to think of it). It was fun mixing it with the big boys though, and getting further than Australia in a sport a long way down the national pecking order (football, hurling, rugby, soccer, horse-racing, golf - yuck) is very funny.

I'm still not convinced by Twenty20 - it's the equivalent of table football. Give me the slow, thoughtful strategy of a Test match, occasionally enlivened by a wicked spell of fast bowling or the deviousness of a good spinner.

'ello 'ello 'ello part 324 - Only in Texas

Pharyngula notes that 'hello' has now been officially replaced in a Texan county by 'heaven-o' because of the first satanic syllable of the traditional greeting. Think it'll catch on? Any alternative suggestions? What other words will we have to dump to stay on God's good side?

The doctor is out - of his mind

Here's a bit of fun. The American Medical Association is desperate to stop Obama founding national health insurance because it's 'socialist' - the argument they've deployed since 1900. The plan isn't even nearly a proper National Health Service such as ours, tired though it is. We only got it because the Labour government gave in to the doctors and 'stuffed their mouths with gold' - but anything which smacks of sensible collective provision is pretty much communist in US political debates.

So here's Ronald Reagan, then a famous actor and aspiring politician, warning that government health insurance will lead to the gulags

Kiwi jam

The New Zealanders are giving Ireland a pasting - 38/0 from only 3.1 overs. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

Warped dilithium crystals

This is available on a t-shirt from xkcd.com - the mouseover on the website says 'bonus points if you can identify the science'. Neal took one look, muttered something about blackbody radiation and is now explaining the maths and telling the tragic tale of Boltzmann's Constant, which helps explain why this curve isn't a straight line (his critique of classical physics was vindicated a couple of months after his death - the little k is his constant in this equation). It plots the energy carried by a photon of light by its frequency (though light's a particle too). A blackbody radiator radiates all the heat/light it absorbs.

I shall buy Neal the t-shirt in honour of his superior nerding.

Poor Emma

That petulant idiot savant Ronaldo has gone to Real Madrid for £80m. Meanwhile, my eyes are on Ireland v. New Zealand this afternoon. It should be good. New Zealand play great strategic cricket (Vettori's my favourite bowler) but they may not be cut out for the agricultural style demanded by Twenty20.

Live coverage here.

War, on drugs

Paul Flynn castigates the idiocy of the Afghan policy - the result of eight years of war is that 95% of heroin in Britain comes from a country flooded with Western troops, the same proportion as when the Taliban ran the country. The only difference is that heroin is now massively cheaper than it was then. A victory for capitalism, at least.

They think it's all over…

I didn't watch the football match last night because I was talking to interesting people and didn't want to watch a charmless bunch of thugs treat an amateur team like idiots.

Radio 4's sports commentator this morning posed the question 'what's the secret of England's success'? Could it possibly be that scoring 6 against a team with no professional players from a country comprising 'rugged mountains dissected by narrow valleys', only 2.13% of which is flat enough to grow crops, and a population of 83,000 - about that of Stratford-on-Avon or slightly more than the capacity of Old Trafford, isn't that great really?

Outplayed and outgunned

Last night was a tale of bravery, tactics, guile and determination. In every area, we were completely outclassed. We must bow down to the master and accept that we will always be amateurs.

To what do I refer? To Ireland's loss in the Twenty20 (we've still qualified for the last eight though)? To England's victory over mighty Andorra?

Of course not. Last night we welcomed the external examiners to our august institution. Every subject has an academic from another institution to check that we're teaching well, marking properly, offering good courses - usually they're amazed by the amount of work we do and the quality (they teach 2-3 modules a year: I taught 11 this year, two of them double). Last night in the Hogshead was like a Staff Ball - the only people there without PhDs were the bar staff.

So what was this comprehensive defeat? It was the annual competition to persuade one of my colleagues (no names, to save his blushes) to buy us a drink. I have to admit that we failed utterly. At every stage we were outfoxed. He disappeared just as we entered the bar, and reappeared only when we were safely ensconced around a table, foamy pints overflowing. As we approached the critical stage of the next round, he disappeared for a second and reappeared with his own pint, despite our enthusiastic joshing about whose round it was (I eventually admitted defeat and made the trek to the bar).

By the crucial point of the third pint, we had pretty much accepted failure. Our tactics were reduced to leaving our now empty glasses on the table and staring at them silently. Once again, our foe managed to evade our clutches, spotting someone across the hostelry to whom he absolutely had to talk. He then left, victory assured for the seventh year running. Curses!

Needless to say, I'm not feeling entirely compos mentis this morning. Exhaustion and slight over-consumption of Ceres' bounty conspired against going swimming this morning. Despite this, I bonded with our externals over the twin joys of teaching and Stoke City.

Yet again, the Daily Mail treats you with contempt

Thanks to Mailwatch, which points out that this frightfully important story is illustrated by the worst bit of Photoshopping the world has ever seen. Quality journalism!

the final word on Twitter

If you use it, you're a Twunt.

If you go down to the woods today

…or more accurately, on Saturday, you'll meet me. Several thousand other people too, of course, because I'm going to see Doves (the band, not the birds) in Delamere Forest, Cheshire. It's going to be well cosmopolic.

I'm going with Cynical Ben, his patient wife, John and his better half, and we're all camping out. It may be drier and warmer than Ben's house at the moment, following his catastrophic boiler failure.

Off with their heads

I've always been a big fan of Tom Paine, the Norfolk thinker who made major contributions to the French and American revolutions with ideas he wanted to implement in Britain - where he's largely forgotten. He wouldn't have stood for any of the current nonsense, as this Guardian piece points out.

First they came for the teachers…

Lynne Horn, a Scots teacher, has been banned from running a blog about her work - she specialises in using educational technology to reach pupils, particularly boys. All other teachers in her area have received similar bans.

Her offence? A Tweet which ran thus:

"Have three Asperger's boys in S1 class: never a dull moment! Always offer an interesting take on things"

As far as I can see, this remark is neutral at worst, positive at best. Yet the outraged yokels are saying things like 'She should be teaching, not sitting at her computer' - though it's unlikely she left the classroom to twitter to her mates. Do these people think teaching isn't difficult or challenging? Apparently, teachers are allowed teaching-related blogs but nothing personal: there's an interesting legal point. Is the local authority really claiming the right to limit a teacher's right to run a blog about Scalextric, trainspotting or violin-making?

Free Lynne Horn (and let's hope my employers don't read Plashing Vole).

My library of love

Hurrah! 14 book in the post today, the ones I bought from Bananas.co.uk for £19 including postage. I was summoned to the secretary's office to collect this enormous box. In it were:

The Penguin Celebrations set: How I Live Now by Meg Rossoff (already got), Coe's What a Carve Up! (already got), Nick Hornby's How To Be Good (might be OK, not my usual taste), Marian Keyes' The Other Side of the Story (never heard of it), Ali Smith's The Accidental, Any Human Heart by William Boyd, Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated, Matthew Kneale's English Passengers, Lewycka's A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, White Teeth by Zadie Smith, Heller's Notes on a Scandal, Hari Kunzru's The Impressionist, Barker's Regeneration and Sue Townsend's Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction.

So they're all very middlebrow and I've read a few of them, but they're all worth a go - and they look great in their uniform, retro designs.

What else came? Nicola Barker's odd Darkmans, Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty (mostly for the politics), Marjorie Blackman's Noughts and Crosses (good agitprop) and finally Eugenides' Middlesex.

Mmmmmarmite

Morning blogfans! I'm in meetings again today, but at least there are sandwiches provided. I'll do anything, frankly, for a free buffet. Quality isn't even important.

My shopping trip was less than successful. Determined to dress as a thrusting young blade, I ended up buying black DMs in a softer leather, and the plainest (though most expensive) black trousers I could find. The problem was that everything else I looked at made me look like an idiot out on a permanent stag weekend. Part of the problem, of course, is that despite doing a lot of swimming, I still have the corporeal equivalent of suburbs. I believe my navel has a separate postcode.

So I ended up with DMs and some rather nice Ted Baker trousers - I know nothing about labels, and unpicked any identifying marks.

The greatest bit of the evening was going to Malaysian Delight down by Chinatown. I eschewed the Coca-Cola wings, but opted for the Marmite Chicken main course. It was amazing. If the BNP take over, we'll never be able to eat this kind of fusion cooking. It was massive chunks of crispy chicken marinaded in sesame seeds and Marmite, served with wonderful rice and veg. I sat there for hours, reading Giles Foden's Turbulence and savouring the meaty, tangy goodness. I must ask them how they do it.

Education educashon educashun

Kate reminds me that there's now no government department with the word 'education' in its title. So much for 'education education education'. Instead, Mandelson's Business department is now responsible for research as The Guardian notes, so if you aren't designing weapons or commercial stuff, you may as well give up. How very Thatcherite.

Bore the BNP to death

Here's what to do about the BNP. Everybody knows they're smelly racist bastards, including people who voted for them.

So let's try a different approach. They're not just racist, they're morons and they're lazy. Whenever they win council seats, they fail to turn up, don't do the work (being a councillor is both boring and difficult) and get angry. My suggestion is that we tax the new MEPs with details. Ask Griffin where he thinks the PSBR should be set, how he feels about set-aside, whether gilt auctions are currently under-subscribed, or PFI penalty clauses: all the really boring, massively important things that you need to know about to be a decent political party. He can't blame Jews/Kosovans/homosexuals for any of those things! It'll show them up utterly because they've no ability to conceptualise the world in any way other than identity politics.

More twitter fun

Twitter for Paedophiles: Glitter.

Twitter for plumbers: Shitter.

For exercise fanatics (or engineers): Fitter

For tired university teachers: Bitter

For batsmen: Hitter

For coffee drinkers: Jitter

For the messy: Litter