Saturday 28 January 2012

The car now passing platform two: Atheist temple: C.U. panda: Bacon tampon: and Irish bricks.


Cold, damp, drear and really ‘orrid at the Castle this morn, the mock orange shrub is still in place despite plans a, b and c, the shed is full of bags vandalised bits for the “recycling centre” and after my first full week of ‘retirement’ I am bored.

But even more crocus/s have pushed their heads up to meet the “arctic” weather we have been promised.






An 85-year-old drove down a high-speed railway line for 80 yards after taking a wrong turn at a level crossing.
The woman had a 20-year-old man in her car as she drove towards Brockenhurst station in Hampshire's New Forest.
She turned on to the main line between Bournemouth and London Waterloo and drove for 80 yards on the tracks before her car came to a halt.
A British Transport Police spokesman said: "BTP and Hampshire Police officers attended the line near to Brockenhurst rail station after a report that a car had been driven on to the line from the level crossing.
Rail services in the area were disrupted as a result of the incident, with buses brought in to replace trains.
 

But they couldn’t get past the car on the tracks...




There is a bit of bovver over an atheist temple, Alain de Botton, the philosopher and writer, has proposed constructing a 150ft tower in the heart of the capital’s financial district to celebrate atheism as a positive force.
However, the idea has been condemned by Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist and author, as a waste of money and a contradiction of terms.
De Botton’s proposed temple is designed to celebrate more than 300m years of life on earth. Each centimetre of the tower's interior has been designed to represent a million years and a narrow band of gold will illustrate the relatively tiny amount of time humans have walked the planet. The exterior would be inscribed with a binary code denoting the human genome sequence.
Construction could start by the end of 2013 if permission is granted by the Corporation of London.
Almost half the funds for the project have already been raised from an anonymous group of property developers, de Botton said. He hopes to find the rest of the money with a public appeal.


He can appeal all he likes I don’t believe in atheism....




Edinburgh Zoo on Tuesday unveiled a new panda tartan, commissioned to commemorate the pandas Tian Tian and Yang Guang. It is black and white.
The tartan, approved by the Scottish Register of Tartans, was created by the Edinburgh Company Kinloch Anderson.
Senior director Deirdre Kinloch Anderson explained other elements of the design: "The green line is for the pandas' favourite food of bamboo. There are three fine red lines to represent China. Number 3 is China's lucky number, and also the red lines are in the heart of the design to indicate that the pandas are in the hearts and minds of the Scottish and Chinese people."
The two 8-year-old pandas arrived at the zoo last month from China: the female Tian Tian (aka Sweetie) and the male Yang Guang (aka Sunshine).
Other animals honoured by a registered tartan include springboks, Australian donkeys and the racehorse Red Rum.

Nice, but I would like to know how they are going to get the Pandas to wear it...


 


A new medical study recommends a method called "nasal packing with strips of cured pork" as an effective way to treat uncontrollable nosebleeds.
According to Ian Humphreys, Sonal Saraiya, Walter Belenky and James Dworkin who “work” at Detroit Medical Centre in Michigan they treated a girl who had a rare hereditary disorder that brings prolonged bleeding. 
Apparently “Cured salted pork crafted as a nasal tampon and packed within the nasal vaults successfully stopped nasal haemorrhage promptly, effectively, and without sequelae … To our knowledge, this represents the first description of nasal packing with strips of cured pork for treatment of life-threatening haemorrhage in a patient with Glanzmann thrombasthenia."
 

Fascinating, but will it work Dahn Unda?


And finally:




Unemployed Irish artist, Frank Buckley, has built an entire apartment from the shredded remains of 1.4 billion Euros he borrowed from the national mint. He says the Billion Euro Home is a monument to the madness the single currency brought to Ireland.
In 2002, when Ireland adopted the euro, a wave of cheap credit flooded the country, fuelling a huge property bubble that eventually led to the country’s economic downfall. People were spending billions of Euros on buildings, but when the bubble burst in 2007, the country plunged into the deepest recession of the industrialized world, and those buildings quickly lost their value. Frank Buckley was one of the many Irish who was given a 100% mortgage by the bank, to buy a home with an estimated cost of €365,000, despite the fact he had no steady income. Now his house on the far reaches of Dublin’s commuter belt has lost a third of its value, and the artist is stuck with the credit.
The artist borrowed shredded euro bills from the national mint, made them into bricks and built himself an apartment in the lobby of a vacant Dublin office building. ”I wanted to create something from nothing,” Buckley says, “a reflection of the whole madness that gripped us.” He has separated from his wife, and has been living in his worthless Billion Euro Home, since December.
 

Hope he is paying rent.....




And today’s thought:



Angus


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

How fucked are the roads in Hampshire now if people think they're still on one having driven 80 yards over railway sleepers?

CherryPie said...

What sort of strange mind would think of putting strips of cured pork up a nose...

Angus Dei said...

They don't call it Pot hole Hampshire for nothing angryexile:0

Not one of the Jewish faith CherryPie:)