The latest bit of churnalism in the Guardian is about Heinz coming almost last in a blind taste test of tomato ketchups. Interesting because it undermines two brands simultaneously: Heinz and Malcolm Gladwell.
Entries from May 26th, 2011
Blind, deaf and stupid
May 26th, 2011 · Comments Off on Blind, deaf and stupid · Life
I already knew my eyesight was getting worse as I get older but obviously my hearing and thinking are plummetting too. Just tonight I cameout of the supermarket and went to get in the car. My first thought was “bloody hell Jayne, when were you going to tell me you put a huge dent in […]
Tags: Doh!
More mobile dilemmas
May 25th, 2011 · Comments Off on More mobile dilemmas · Life, Technology
The contract on Jayne’s Vodafone finally came to an end, so I dumped them and got her a BlackBerry from Virgin because it was a bout the cheapest deal when factoring in the discount for being a Virgin Media customer.  It could have been even cheaper but I went for the new 3G version instead […]
Tags: Gadgets
Lost in translation
May 23rd, 2011 · 4 Comments · Life
How strange. For some reason I have read very few English translations of foreign books. Of the thousands of books I have read only a handful have been translations. I have not read Tolstoy or Proust and would not be surprised if I had read less than a dozen ‘foreign’ books: a couple of Voltaires, […]
Tags: Books
The Map of Time
May 23rd, 2011 · 1 Comment · Life
Just finished a book called The Map of Time by Felix Palma.  It is due to be published on June 9th though it is not entirely new: it was first published in 2008 in Spanish, but this is the English translation of it. A bit strange that it has taken so long to come out […]
Crawley’s president in exile
May 20th, 2011 · 2 Comments · Life, Politics
I went to the Crawley Campaign Against Racism‘s AGM tonight and the guest speaker was Allen Vincatassin who is the President of the provisional government of Diego Garcia and the Chagos Islands, and I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t know that until tonight. I knew he was the de facto leader of the Chagossian […]
Tags: CCAR
Mindboggling aviation statistics
May 12th, 2011 · Comments Off on Mindboggling aviation statistics · Technology
For some reason I was looking at the Wikipedia page for the B-24 Liberator WWII heavy bomber, saw the numbers that were built and it got me thinking. It sounded like a lot (18,482 built in 6 years) so I started looking around at the numbers built of other aircraft for comparison and came up […]
Tags: Aviation·Statistics
Thin ends of the wedge
May 12th, 2011 · 7 Comments · Politics
Just how many thin ends can a wedge have?  In one day we have two examples of how the Tories are starting their attack on what few certainties there are in life as they try to reverse all the positive things achieved by the Labour party and indeed the Labour movement that Thatcher never quite […]
Tags: Tories
City Island
May 11th, 2011 · Comments Off on City Island · Life
I recently watched the film City Island on DVD, another goodie from Amazon’s Vine programme.  One of the real pleasures of the scheme is that it leads me to films, books or music I might otherwise have never heard of but which end up giving me much more pleasure than ones I have been eagerly […]
More audiobooks
May 4th, 2011 · Comments Off on More audiobooks · Life
I have been listening to more audiobooks, both via Amazon’s Vine programme, both with a TV connection. One was a Torchwood story, the other a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories. Interestingly the Holmes stories were read by Benedict Cumberbatch who plays the modern day Holmes on TV. My first experience with audiobooks (Bill Bryson: At […]
