No time: No fascinators: Cigar ice cream: Bacon Ice cream: and hanging out in Mexico.

Sunnyish, coldish and calmish at the Castle this Monday morn, I had a trip to the coast yesterday where it was Sunnyish, coldish and calmish too, but it was nice to get a few lungfuls of ozone.

Very late today, had oodles of things to do including the stale bread, gruel and his Maj’s food run dahn Tesco where prices are rising faster than the Greek debt, the elbow is betterish, and the garden is still in need of a complete fettle but it is too wet to attack despite the hose pipe ban.

According to “experts”

Time is going to run out, observations of supernovae, or exploding stars, found the movement of light indicated they were moving faster than those nearer to the centre of the universe.

But the scientists claimed the accepted theory of an opposite force to gravity, known as dark energy, was wrong, and said the reality was that the growth of the universe was slowing.

Professor Jose Senovilla, Marc Mars and Raul Vera from the University of the Basque Country and the University of Salamanca said the deceleration of time was so gradual, it was imperceptible to humans.

Their proposal, published in the journal Physical Review D, claimed dark energy does not exist and that time was winding down to the point when it would finally grind to a halt long after the planet ceased to exist.

The slowing down of time will eventually mean everything will appear to take place faster and faster until it eventually disappears.

Not this week then-shame I have so much to do...

And up a bit from dahn ‘ere in ‘Ampshire

Strict new dress codes have been introduced at the Royal Ascot races with fascinators high on the hit-list.

Favoured by Royals and celebrities alike, these little hair pieces have incurred the wrath of officials reacting to claims the standard of dress has declined at their meet.

A particular stipulation is that fascinators are no longer welcome in the royal enclosure where her Maj and other hanger ons watch the races.

"Hats should be worn; a headpiece which has a base of four inches (10 centimetres) or more in diameter is acceptable as an alternative to a hat,'' the rules state.

Women are expected to wear skirts or dresses of "modest length'' falling just above the knee or longer. Men must wear black or grey morning dress with a waistcoat and tie, a black or grey top hat and black shoes.

The rules away from the royal enclosure are less stringent but women must still wear a hat or fascinator, and strapless or sheer-strap tops are barred. Suits and ties are compulsory for men.

A team of specially trained dress code assistants will reportedly be at the entry to help improve the standard of dress with waistcoats, ties, pashminas and other items available for those not quite sartorial enough.

Fuck orf........not a bit "fascinating"...

All over non sunny Blighty

There is a new trend in cold stuff that comes in a cone-beetroot or crab sorbet, sea-salted caramel ice cream, grilled sweet corn ice cream and cigar-smoked caramel, grass, strawberry and hay, parsnip and wasabi or smoked olive oil and black pepper, or if  you have really lost it-breast milk and absinthe.

Think I’ll stick to vanilla....

Left a lot and staying on the less than warm stuff

Burger King that well known US haute cuisine provider is set to launch a summertime menu, featuring a heavy BBQ bias with treats such as Memphis pulled-pork sandwich, Carolina barbecue sandwiches, Texas barbecue sandwiches, frozen lemonade and sweet potato fries.

And to top it orf-vanilla BK soft serve ice cream, chocolate fudge and caramel, garnished with a piece of thick-cut hardwood-smoked bacon for dipping.

Not a vegetarian pud then.....

And finally:

Dahn a whimsy

Dozens of people stripped and cycled naked through the Mexican city of Puebla Saturday to protest risks they face on the road.

"With "now you see me?" painted on their bodies, participants also hoped to promote the benefits of exercise and biking as an environmentally-friendly mode of transportation.

"We want to change things," said Arturo Rivera, one of the riders.

The crowd gathered on one of the busiest streets of Puebla, located 120 kilometres (75 miles) from the capital Mexico City, to start their attention-grabbing stunt.

While some of the women wore bathing suits, most of the men decided to bare it all as they pedalled through town in the rain.

Seems to go in cycles this nude bicycle riding thing

That’s it: I’m orf to test some black bears

And today’s thought:

Where's the pummice stone Olympics

Angus

Synchronised cock up: Scrapped for cash: 'diamagnetic levitation': DIY art: Time cloak: and Snow monsters.

Gale is once again howling at the Castle this morn, the study is overweight with wonky what knots and his Maj has discovered the joy of changing the channel on the TV.

The Olympic Knobheads have done it again

Thousands of people who bought tickets to see synchronised swimming at London 2012 have been asked to return them, after the organisers discovered that they had sold 10,000 too many.

The problem arose after the first round of ticket sales last spring.

Synchronised swimming was an event which was not initially oversubscribed.

When sessions for the sport were put back up for sale, a human data error meant thousands of extra tickets, which did not exist, were made available.

About 3,000 customers who bought the 10,000 tickets in the second round of sales have been contacted by Games organisers Locog.

They have been offered the chance to exchange their tickets for other events for which they also applied, and were originally unsuccessful.

Is it really that difficult to do it properly?

 

Dahn at the second hand metal yard

Britain's £5bn-a-year scrap industry is facing tougher regulation as part of a government crackdown on metal theft.

People selling scrap could be required to register and face identity checks.

And cash payments could be banned, to make metal transactions easier to trace, Home Office minister, Lord Henley told the BBC.

Tougher regulation would be welcome according to an industry spokesman, but a cash ban could be counter-productive, he warned - encouraging illegal trades.

Hospitals, the rail network, utility companies, churches and war memorials have all been targeted in recent years by thieves attracted by the rising prices of non-ferrous metals such as copper.

Copper load of that?

Up North a bit

Scientists at the University of Nottingham have used Harry Potter-style powers to suspend fruit flies in mid air.

The technique they used, known as 'diamagnetic levitation', uses a strong magnetic field to allow the insects to become weightless and appear to walk on air.

Author of the research, Dr Richard Hill, and his colleagues, wrote: 'This study shows that the walking speed of fruit flies and their "activity" is altered significantly by counteracting gravitational force.'

He explained that the experiment shows that diamagnetic levitation can be used to investigate the influence of changing gravity of multi-cellular organisms.

Magnetic fields have been previously been used in a range of experiments to levitate organic materials, as well as small living organisms, including a frog, grasshoppers and fish.

Peter Main, a professor at the Institute of Physics who worked on earlier studies in the field, told Discovery News that it would be possible to levitate a human if there was a magnet big enough.

 Yet another load of old bollocks from the University of the bleedin useless.

Right a few imperial units

Art student Andrzej Sobiepan didn't want to wait decades for his work to appear in museums. So he took matters in his own hands, covertly hanging one of his paintings in a major Polish gallery.

On Dec. 10, Sobiepan put it up in a room with contemporary Polish art when a guard at the museum was looking the other way. Museum officials didn't notice the new painting for three days.

By Wednesday, the young artist was getting plenty of attention after a nationwide TV channel reported on his stunt at the National Museum in the south-western city of Wroclaw. He told reporters he hoped galleries would give more exhibition space to young artists as a result.

"I decided that I will not wait 30 or 40 years for my works to appear at a place like this," Sobiepan told TVN24. "I want to benefit from them in the here and now."

I don’t know young people today-want, want, want....

And over the salty thing on the left to another “breakthrough”

Scientists have made an entire event impossible to see. They have invented a time masker.

Their time cloak lasted an incredibly tiny fraction of a fraction of a second. They hid an event for 40 trillionths of a second, according to a study appearing in Thursday's edition of the journal Nature.

They tinkered with the speed of beams of light in a way that would make it appear to surveillance cameras or laser security beams that an event, such as an art heist, isn't happening.

I can do it several times a minute-it’s called blinking…

And finally:

East to the land of raw fish

Some snow monsters.

That’s it: I’m orf to flog an old laptop.

And today’s thought:

Angus

Pipped at the post: You pays your money: Washington water feature: Cut to build: Mobile rabbit: Bad advice: Adventurous Aussies’: and Time to tell.

More than cold at the Castle this morn, white crusty stuff all over the Honda as well as on the inside, the study is rapidly filling up with extinct enumerators and the butler is out gathering fat teenagers for the furnace.

I watched the final Grand Prix of the season on BBC1 yesterday, because of the cuts next year Auntie will only be showing ten of the twenty races live-the other ten will be “highlights”, but they have managed to “save” enough dosh to continue to pay ‘celebs’ to dance around at our expense.

For certain readers-Pippa Middleton has signed a six-figure publishing deal worth £400,000 to write a guide to party planning, which will be released in time for Christmas next year.

The book will be a guide to being the perfect party hostess. It will include recipes, anecdotes and details of how to throw a range of different types of event.

 Can’t wait....

Dying to get into hospital?

Click on the link above to find out if you will be dying to get out again....

Over in the Eastern states

Apparently “our” man in Washington “Sir” Nigel Sheinwald has splashed out £2,644 on a fire place and water feature to spruce up his office.

As a man who was brought in to preside over a new period of austerity, Sir Nigel raised eyebrows within the diplomatic world with his sumptuous office. “It looks like a James Bond villain’s lair,” whispers one. “It had to be refurbished in the final days of his predecessor, Sir David Manning, causing him great inconvenience.”

It remains to be seen whether Sir Nigel’s successor will retain the chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce, with its white leather seats and built-in passenger television sets, as his official car.

All together now....”we are all in this together”...

Back in bollixed up Blighty

Son of a B....aronet (and alien reptile in disguise) George (I can count the number of cock ups on all three hands) Osborne is expected to announce another £5bn in spending cuts to pay for new building projects.

Badfart Snufflebum as he known among the rest of the extraterrestrial sideboard is to set out plans for a £30bn national infrastructure programme as he tries to breathe new life into the stalled economy.

A deal struck with pension funds will see £20bn invested in the decade-long programme, with the remaining cash coming from further spending cuts.

The first £5bn will come from spending cuts during the current spending period - up until the financial year 2014-2015.

A further £5bn will then come from spending cuts in the following spending period.

Schools, roads, power stations and high speed broadband will be some of the areas to receive a boost.

 There go even more of our pension funds....

Back over to the mild West

Lakeysha Beard, talked for more than half a day while on an Amtrak train going from Oakland, California, to Salem, Oregon. The loud mobile conversation lasted sixteen hours last Monday, after which police stopped the train for twenty minutes to arrest the woman.

In the train's car, a few passengers asked the woman to put the phone away or to stop a few times during the conversation prior to notifying the train staff. Staff members were unable to convince the woman to end the conversation and stopped the train to arrest the woman and halt the disruption.

 I just want to know which mobile has sixteen hours talk time....

And the newest member of the Royal Family

Is allegedly taking beauty tips from her stepmother-in-law, Duckess Kate has been receiving treatments from Deborah Mitchell after Duckess Camilla, the old nag wife of Prince Charles, recommended the beautician's bee sting facial.

Apparently Deborah has been treating Camilla for six years now. Like any customer who finds something good, Camilla has told her friends and in-laws, including Kate. Now she visits the Royal Family wherever they are in residence.

Which explains quite a lot....

Dahn Unda

Traditional beer sales are dropping as Australians are tempted not only by wine but by an increasingly varied range of other alcoholic drinks like trendy ciders and locally brewed ales.

Beer consumption per head has now slumped to a 60 year low according to recent figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

It was the Foster's TV ads of the 1980's featuring actor Paul Hogan as the stereotypical Aussie bloke, which helped plant the image of Australian men being huge fans of the "amber nectar".

However even that iconic Australian brewer has hit on tough times and Foster's now looks set to be sold to a London based company, SABMiller.

Do I give a XXXX...

And finally: 

As time moves on

Did you know?

As far as we know, time began with the formation of the universe in the instant of the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago.

 Our Sun is about five billion years old. The Earth is estimated to be 4,540,000,000 years old.

Earth was created on the evening of Saturday, October 22, 4004BC, according to James Usher the 17th Century Archbishop of Armagh who came to this conclusion by adding up the family histories mentioned in the Bible - such as Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel.

The oldest rocks yet discovered on Earth are crystals of zircon from Western Australia, which are more than 4.4 billion years old.

Between 1929 and 1940 the Soviet Union changed the length of the week t h re e times. In 1930 Stalin abolished weekends to fulfil work quotas. In 1931 it went to a six-day week and back to a seven-day week in 1940.

In the International Fixed Calendar, invented by Englishman Moses Bruine Cotworth in 1859, there are 13 months - with the extra month called Sol.

In 1836 John Belville began to sell time. He set his pocket watch at the Greenwich Observatory where he worked every morning and would sell the precise time to clients in the City. The family business went on until 1940.

Mice normally live to a maximum of three years of age, chickens to 10, cats to 21, horses to 40, goldfish to 49, elephants to 70, giant tortoises to 150 and whales to 200.

 A nanosecond is one billionth of a second... a long time compared to the femtosecond, the attosecond and the shortest possible unit of time - known as Planck time.

 The Julian calendar assumed a year is exactly 365.25 days - about 10 and three quarter minutes too long. By 1582, it was 10 days out of sync, so Pope Gregory XIII decreed that 10 days should be lost to put things right.

 Rock beneath Niagara Falls is worn away at a rate of about a metre a year by the flow of water from Lake Erie 165ft above.

 When the railways first reached Bristol trains seemed to leave 11 minutes early. The problem was the drivers had come from London, 200 miles west, where sunrise is 11 minutes earlier. The only sensible solution, applied in 1940, was for all UK trains to use London time or "railway time".

Beans, peas and tomatoes are said to grow best if planted in the second week after the new moon.

Count the seconds between seeing a flash and hearing thunder. Three seconds' delay means the lightning strike is 0.6 miles away.

Hummingbirds beat their wings 90 times a second when they are hovering. Flies can beat theirs more than 1,000 times a second.

Legend says the first Roman calendar came from Romulus, who was raised by wolves with twin brother Remus and founded Rome in 735BC. He was keen on the number 10, so his years had only 10 months.

At Julius Caesar's command in 46BC two new months were introduced - July named after him and August after his successor Augustus. This Julian calendar also had leap years.

Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.

If Earths history were compressed into 24 hours then the first humans would appear just 40 seconds before midnight.

Bristlecone pines are the oldest single organisms on Earth. Some have lived more than 5,000 years.

Info from The Book of Time, published by Mitchell Beazley, £20, www.octopusbooks.co.uk

That’s it: I’m orf to the Robot Olympiad.

And today’s thought:

Angus