Perceiving old age: Non-existent complaints: 20,000-volt Tesla coil lightning-blasting Nerf gun: Dog-sheep: and a rubbish motor.

Usual lack of warm, just as much solar stuff, quite a lot of atmospheric movement and gallons of evaporated skywater at the Castle this morn, just returned from the stale bread, gruel and his Maj’s food run dahn Tesco, the place was awash with interweb robots and one actually managed to crash into me while I was stood still trying to choose which flavour Dreamies to purchase for himself. 

And I have finally finished the antibiotics for my toofache...

 

According to an “official survey”

We think that we become old farts at 59 years, two months and two weeks; government researchers interviewed 2,162 Blightyites to determine this crucial “fact”.

And allegedly the age of no longer being young starts at 40 years, eight months and two weeks.

On average, women think old age starts at 60 years, four months and two weeks. Men think it starts at 58 - potentially because they tend to live shorter lives.

Those under 50 say old age begins staggeringly early - at just 46. But for those over 50, they say it begins at 62-and-a-half.

Those living in council housing say old age begins five years earlier than those who own their homes.

 

And the unemployed say middle age begins a huge nine years earlier than those in full time work.

Men believe they stop feeling young early than women do, at 38-and-a-half rather than 42 years and nine months.

Among 16 to 24-year-olds, this marker of middle age begins at 32. The over-80s believed that for them it began at 52 - just two years after the youngest group believed old age begins.

A spokesman for the Department for Witless Pillocks said “the disparity in perceptions” of ageing showed “the potential for age stereotypes to be applied in very inconsistent ways".

 

Who pays for this bollocks in this age of austerity-oh yes; we do....

 

All over our brown and muddy land

Film classification chiefs have seen "a spike" in the number of people complaining about a controversial film portraying Jesus and his disciples as gay men - even though it does not exist.

The British Board of Film Classification's (BBFC) senior examiner Craig Lapper said there was a "constant issue" with rumours that a movie version had been made of a controversial play called Corpus Christi.

The play, by Terrence McNally, is set in modern-day America and deals with issues including gay marriage but has never been made into a film.

Mr Lapper said: "I think it was a bit of an internet hoax several years ago suggesting a film was being made of the play in which Jesus and his disciples were portrayed as homosexuals, and I can remember replying to people concerned about this blasphemous film back in the late 1990s.

"And this year again, for whatever reason, there was another spike in people writing to us to insist that we ban this terrible blasphemous film. We just had to write back and say, 'This film doesn't exist'."

The BBFC received six complaints about it in 2011 and another two queries this year, with complainants often asking them to ban the film on the grounds it is blasphemous and offensive.

 

Eight whole complaints in two years, staggering...

 

Left to the home of cheap Leccy and the land of bright sparks

 

US basement hacker Rob Flickenger has “invented” a 20,000-volt Tesla coil lightning-blasting Nerf gun.

After brushing up on his physics using online MIT courses, Flickenger, through trial and error, setup the interior circuits.

"I'd switch it on, and nothing would happen, so I'd switch it off. Then I'd switch it on again and set something on fire," he told Popsci.com. In the end he used the transformer from an old television -- the current from an 18-volt lithium-ion battery flows through a circuit series over and over again, doubling the power each time. It then flows into a Cornell Dubilier capacitor bank, which stores it until it reaches 20,000 volts -- at this point, the current can jump between two tungsten wires, creating a spark (this part is housed in porcelain and a computer fan is fixed nearby to make sure it doesn't get too hot). The current jumps from one wire to the next, then feeds through to one coil (insulated high-voltage wire), then the next (plumbing pipe wrapped in copper wire). This process induces a magnetic field, which in turn creates an electrical field at the gun's nose and finally, the bursts of electric blue lightening.

It took him nine months to build and was made using cheap everyday objects like old cans, an old TV and a lithium-ion battery from a drill. The total cost came to around $800 (£500) and, after nine long months tinkering away at it, Flickenger debuted the lightning bolt gun at his wedding reception.

 

 Bet that went with a bang.....

 

Back in up Norf-ish Blighty

Timmy the sheep thinks he’s a dog. He even sleeps in a kennel and goes for walkies.

Timmy was rescued by farmers Samantha and Eric Perry after being orphaned when he was just few days old.

He bonded instantly with the couple’s dogs while being bottle-fed at their home in Aston-on-Trent, Derbyshire.

Samantha, 42, said: “Timmy definitely thinks he’s a dog – he always has.

“His favourite food is dog biscuits. When we take the dogs for a walk, he thinks nothing of coming along with us.”

Timmy, who is 18 months old, was brought up with Yorkshire terrier Poppy, Shih tzu Daisy-May, terrier Tyson, Jack Russell Sapphire, and Jack Russell cross Barney.

Now weighing 200lb, he has a new pal, Pandora, a tiny Chihuahua.

Samantha said: “He is great with her and all the other dogs. The fact that he thinks he’s a dog just adds a little eccentricity.”

 

I’d rather add a little mint sauce....

 

And finally:

 

Back to the left quite a way

According to the owner,  this pile of bits is worth a million Dollars, Antti Rahko's scrap metal stretch limo, the Finnjet, was insured for a million for its trip to star in the recent Essen Motor Show in Germany - and will likely have a similar asking price when it goes up for sale shortly.

Rahko, a former chauffer from Finland now living in the US state of Florida, spent 10 years building the Finnjet from scrap parts grafted onto a platform from two Mercedes-Benz 300TD station wagons.

It stretches over eight metres long and weighing in at 2.78 tonnes - and just in case that size isn't enough to catch your eye - the bizarre behemoth sports 86 lights, 36 mirrors and two natty jet engine housings containing the exhausts.

 

It ain’t what you ask for it-it’s what you get for it that counts...

 

That’s it: I’m orf to find a Giant Panda (just in case the toofache comes back)

 

And today’s thought:

New SAS squad formed....

 

 

Angus

OH DEAR

There’s trouble in the west-country Cornwall Gets Nasty Over Devon's Pasty Prize a pie maker in Devon has been given the prize for…..Britain’s best Cornish pasty.

The decision prompted anger among bakers in Cornwall, who said that firms from the neighbouring county should be barred from entering the competition.

An appeal to disqualify the winners, Chunk of Devon, failed. Some Cornish bakers are now threatening to boycott next year's ceremony.

Chunk was given the top prize at the inaugural British Pie Awards ceremony last week.

Matthew O'Callaghan, the chairman of the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie Association, who organised the competition, admitted that to have been eligible, pasties should have been made in Cornwall.

"There was supposed to be a disclaimer on the application form which stated all entrants to the Cornish Pasty competition must come from Cornwall," he said.
"It wasn't done and I have to admit it was an administrative cock-up."

However, Les Merton, the author of the Official Encyclopaedia of the Cornish Pasty, argued that cave drawings show that pasties, wrapped in leaves rather than pastry, were eaten in Cornwall as early as 8,000BC.

Yes, I’ve had one that tasted that old.



From a bit farther afield China orders officials to smoke Officials in a county in central China have been told to smoke nearly a quarter million packs of locally made cigarettes annually or risk being fined, state media reported.

The Gong'an county government in Hubei province has ordered its staff to puff their way through 230,000 packs of Hubei-produced cigarette brands a year, the Global Times said.

Departments that fail to meet their targets will be fined, according to the report.
"The regulation will boost the local economy via the cigarette tax," said Chen Nianzu, a member of the Gong'an cigarette market supervision team, according to the paper.

More than half of all male doctors in China smoke, but the government is now trying harder to get them to kick the habit in order to set an example for others, state media reported recently.

Make your bloody mind up!



A Swedish man and a Singaporean woman have been fined for strolling naked through a busy upscale bar and restaurant area for a stunt after a few drinks.

Jan Philip, 21, an exchange student with a local university, and Eng Kai Er, a 24-year-old Singaporean studying in Sweden, were each fined 2,000 Singapore dollars (1,300 US) for committing an obscene act, the Straits Times said.

In January, the two attracted much attention when they strolled naked through Holland Village, a place popular among expatriates for its bars and al fresco restaurants, apparently after drinking beer.

Singapore has strict laws on nudity and even magazines such as Playboy are banned in the city-state.

The two were fully clothed and wore sunglasses when they appeared in court on Thursday.

Maybe they should be banned from drinking.




Angola's flag carrier TAAG, already banned from flying to Europe, said Friday it had suspended a pilot and his co-pilot for landing at the wrong airport in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia.

The pilot landed the Boeing 737 at Lusaka City Airport when he should have landed at Lusaka International Airport during a regular stopover from Harare to Luanda on April 17, TAAG said in a statement.

"Because this is a serious incident, Angola's Aviation Authority and TAAG have opened an investigation into the matter," it said.

"TAAG regrets the grief this has caused to passengers and reiterates its promise to deliver a service with the highest security standards."

The state carrier was banned from EU airspace in 2007, the same year one of its planes crashed, killing six people on board. The government fired TAAG's board last year and created a commission to investigate and improve safety.

Angola expects the airline to be allowed to fly to Europe later this year.

Watch out Ryanair.


And finally:

Would you want one of these?

In a development that Darwin himself could not have foreseen, a beagle has become the world's first transgenic dog - and it glows in the dark,
The dog called Ruppy - short for Ruby Puppy - has been created by scientists in South Korea.

The puppy was bred to produce a fluorescent protein that glows red under ultraviolet light, but its red skin colour can also be clearly seen in daylight.

Byeong-Chun Lee, of the Seoul National University, headed the team that created Ruppy and her four beagle siblings, each possessing the bizarre fluorescent bodies.
Lee was also part of the team responsible for the very first cloned dog, Snuppy, born in 2005.

Team member CheMyong Ko of the University of Kentucky in Lexington, said of the breakthrough: "The next step for us is to generate a true disease model."

The hope is that, following the Ruppy breakthrough, transgenic dogs will become more effective stand-ins for the study of human disease.

Greg Barsh, a geneticist at Stanford University, said the creation of a transgenic dog was "an important accomplishment".

But he did not know of "specific situations where the ability to produce transgenic dogs represents an immediate experimental opportunity".

Nathan Sutter, of Cornell University in New York, said working with laboratory-reared dogs was "not on my horizon as a dog geneticist at all", claiming "transgenesis is laborious, expensive and slow."

Remember a glowing dog is not just for Christmas,


“If you don't know the trees you may be lost in the forest, but if you don't know the stories you may be lost in life.” Anon


Angus

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