Thursday, July 17, 2008

Just watching an Elvis at Las Vegas thing on TCM channel. He sang John Browns Body, and oh boy, he was good, even though I sort of knew he was wasted on drugs and booze (a shot of him between songs he was gulping down a big glass of whisky) he could still perform, and he knew it.
And the audience knew it. Oh, the commentary is in Japanese, lots of Japanese staying here in Szelvarfeer, not the right spelling, but bollocks, what is ?

Went for a drive earlier, places on the map are different to places signposted, and they aren't all the same, which would confuse me but I had this in the wilds of Greece. Don't help that Hungarian is a totally alien languge with no base in any Indo-European langage, instead it is a Uralic language, having more in common with Finnish. Its avery religious country, in the same way as Greece, but doubly so, not only did they throw off the Islamic invaders, but they also rid themselves of the Russians, first in an abortive attempt in 1956 when the Red Army took back control, killing 30,000 and another 1000 killed over the next 2 years in purges. The Russins hd no love for Hungary as they were an ally of Germany and the Hungarian Army made big inroads into The Ukraine and were at the siege of Stalingrad.

Global Warming will make more Americans suffer kidney stones and make snapper turtles more (or less) snappier:
An unanticipated result of global warming is the likely decrease of snappability in snapping turtles in a northward expansion of the present-day southeastern U.S. snapping turtle "belt." The fraction of the U.S. population of snapping turtles living in high-risk zones for snapper losses will grow from 40% in 2000 to 56% by 2050, and to 70% by 2095. Predictions based on a climate model of intermediate severity warming (SRESa1b) indicate a climate-related increase of 1.6-2.2 million lifetime cases of snapper defect by 2050, representing up to a 30% increase in some climate divisions. Nationwide, the cost increase associated with this rise in desnappability would be $0.9-1.3 billion annually (year-2000 dollars), representing a 25% increase over current expenditures. The impact of these changes will be geographically concentrated, depending on the precise relationship between temperature and snapping risk. Snapping-loss risk may abruptly increase at a threshold temperature (nonlinear model) or increase steadily with temperature change (linear model) or some combination thereof. The linear model predicts increases by 2050 that are concentrated in California, Texas, Florida, and the Eastern Seaboard; the nonlinear model predicts concentration in a geographic band stretching from Kansas to Kentucky and Bangladesh, immediately south of the threshold isotherm.
This from Jim Peden, who will probably burn in hell for his skepticism.

The boy is waiting to hear from his Year in Industry placements, except for the explosives place near Salisbury, glad he didn't get that, its too far away.

Monday, July 14, 2008

Hungary.
The first thing I noticed was the hire car has wind-up windows. How cute ! There is a little handle on the door, turn it around and window opens or closes ! What a clever idea. The doors all have a little knob, to lock the door the knob must be pushed down. No worries about pushing a switch on the key ring, just push down a knob on the passenger door and the two back doors, lock the driver door and lock the boot.
The next thing Ii noticed was torrential rain and a thunderstorm. I also noticed Tescos, many in Budapest, one in this town, and when I went for a drive around this evening, one in little towns up the road. Supermarkets ! And they seem to open late ! How cool is that, Holland and Switzerland could take a leaf out of hungary's book; have more supermarkets that open late, not close at 6 on the dot. Idiots.

Spent much of my own bloody time over the weekend trying to make these damn documents work.
Bollocks.