Hello? Is this thing on?

It's been a while. I blame doing a masters degree. Turns out it's quite a lot of work really.

But it's done now, and I find myself temporarily unemployed. So perhaps time to crank up the ol' blog. Watch this space for some more thrilling insights from the odder corners of my brain. Or not.

Still advancing gingerly, in absentia

I realise I've been a bit quiet lately. I have various excuses for your consideration:

• I've started a Masters degree
• I've moved
• I've been spending my net time promoting my online shop selling knitted hats
  
• I am currently reliant on a netbook and mobile broadband, neither of which are conducive to intense blogging
• My brain has been replaced by a jellyfish
• Goblins kidnapped me and forced me to dye my hair blonde, thus rendering me ineligible to be an author on this blog until it had all washed out.
  

Some, none or all of the above are true. You are welcome to speculate as to which is which.

Thank you for your patience.

Cash for castellations

I think the thing that has tickled me most in the MPs' expenses scandal has been learning the vast array of things one can go through life spending money on. Oh, how my horizons have been broadened. I guess if I'd given the matter some thought, it would have occurred to me that if one has a moat, one needs to pay someone to clean it. But the existence of duck houses shaped like mansions was a bit of a surprise. My absolute favourite, though, has to be the monogrammed well grate. Who knew?

In other news, did anyone else get the apology/vote for us letter from Gordon Brown? Any idea why he got one of his kids to sign it on his behalf using a Berol Fine pen?

Generation ADD

I do sometimes think that the problem with the younger generation is not that they have no ability to concentrate - it's that they're treated as such.

Example? Just watched an hour long programme celebrating the 25th anniversary of Torvill and Dean's Bolero routine which earned them a perfect score and a gold medal at the 1984 Olympics.

Various people were interviewed about the routine. Oh, how they were touched by the emotion of it. Transfixed. Couldn't believe that the pair of them weren't really in love. We heard how ground breaking and rule stretching it was. The struggle to find the music, and then make it an appropriate length. The story behind the opening sequence. All the way through we were teased with how wonderful a routine it was.

Finally, the last section of the show. The moment the viewers have been waiting for. The dated 80s footage appears and that music starts. We watch with rapt attention. And then.... 35 seconds in, a talking head appears telling us how much the routine meant to him. Another 30 seconds of footage, and then thoughts from their coach. In total there were probably only around 2 minutes of footage shown, interspersed with various atmosphere-shattering comments.

Four minutes. All they had to do was show a four minute routine, uninterrupted. But some numpty thinks the audience couldn't possibly cope with that. I guess we should be lucky that they didn't cut to the adverts after the first 20 seconds.

Ah well. For those of you blessed with enough concentration or interest to get this far, Advancing Gingerly presents Bolero in its entirety. I won't interrupt. Promise.

All Things Ginger #2: World Carrot Museum

Don't ask me how I found this out, but I recently discovered that there exists on our planet a World Carrot Museum. Seriously. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's an enterprise located in the British Isles, but overseas readers will be delighted to learn that it is, in fact, a virtual museum, and thus they will be able to get just as much out of a visit as I possibly could.

I'm not quite sure how it all began. One can glean that the author is left handed, the names of his cats, and countries he's visited, but no particular statement as to why one would create an online carrot museum. But then, who cares, when you have the opportunity to learn about Carrots in Literature, discover where to attend a Carrot Festival, how to make antifreeze from carrots (useful at the moment), or peruse a list of people interested in collecting carrotabilia. I have to commend the attention to detail and sheer amount of research that has gone into this endeavour. I can assert with some confidence that it is unlikely that I will ever come up with a carrot-related enquiry for which they are unable to provide an answer.

There are also a bewildering collection of links including other unusual museums at the bottom of this page. No mention, though, of the rope museum I've been to, or the pencil museum a friend has visited.

I know it's customary to use hyperbole to make what you do sound more enticing, but I must admit to being somewhat befuddle by the tagline: 'Discover the Power of Carrots'. Perhaps they are the future of alternative energy. Orange gold...

Something for the new year...

Too busy to blog at the mo, but here's something new I'll try for 2009:

Good news

It's nice to know that sometimes, just sometimes, there exist stories in the news to which the only possible response is to smile.

I'm out the office...

...so please drive carefully.

Times are lean...

... or so it would seem. ebay have stopped sending me emails trying to get me to notice that they sell designer frocks (definitely not a recommendation based on my customer profile), and have dispatched instead a message pointing out that they sell towels, batteries and light bulbs.

Recession, anyone?

Excuses excuses

Apologies to regular readers for my recent inactivity. I offer up the following explanations:
1. I now spend all day using computers and don't get as enthused about sitting down in front of one when I get home.
2. My internet connection has been a bit dodgy.
3. I've spent way too much time trying to teach medical students to write (more on this later)
4. There's a new series of Strictly Come Dancing on.
5. Boris Johnson ate my mouse.

Normal service will resume shortly.

Future UnCERNtainty

So, apparently the world might end tomorrow. Out of all the screw-ups I ever made in the lab, it's safe to say nothing I did was ever likely to have that kind of effect.

I'm actually having a few days off with no fixed plans. It occurred to me that something I could do is find someone else at a similarly loose end and meet at the Underground. If we both board the Circle line, but headed in different directions, what would happen at the point at which our paths cross, if we managed to make eye contact? Would the Underground grind to a halt? Would Bob Crow be silenced forever? Would Boris's hair get even wilder?

But do I really want to fork out £5.90 on a travelcard if the world's going to end? Does PAYG work in a black hole?

News round up

Nowt major, just a couple of things that caught my eye in today's news:
1. The grammar pedants have won, but still might not be happy. Tesco has caved in to pressure from the Lynne Truss brigade to change their express checkout signs from '10 items or less'. But rather than the more grammatically correct, '10 items or fewer' they're going for 'Up to 10 items'.

A spokesman for the Plain English Campaign said:

"Saying up to 10 items is easy to understand and avoids any debate."

Unfortunately, I would beg to differ. '10 items or less', though jarring, is totally comprehensible and unambiguous in everyday speech . 'Up to 10 items' makes me think that perhaps it could mean 9 items or fewer. Did they never learn the difference between the '<' and the '≤' signs in maths? Surely for totally clarity it would have to be 'Up to and including 10 items'. That would make for a very large sign. I think they were better off before.

2. "Farm Pregnancy 'cuts asthma risk.'" I wish that science news editors would be a little more discerning regarding what is 'good, interesting science' and what is 'good, interesting science that is of relevance to the general public'. The discovery that pre-natal exposure to a farm environment may reduce risk of developing asthma in later life is scientifically interesting. It might give clues to immunologists who are trying to develop a better understanding of the basic biology of asthma. I don't, however, think that it is information of great use to anyone else - it's the kind of story that makes you go, 'So what?' What are we supposed to do with that information? Tell pregnant friends to get themselves along to the nearest pigsty? Congratulate rural friends on the likelihood that their future children will have good respiratory health? What exactly?

Ginger's Beauty Tips

Ok, I'll admit it, for all my optimism about future academic/career directions, it's hard not to feel like a little bit of a loser having dropped out of my PhD, particularly when you look around at peers doing Proper Grown Up Things^TM like getting married, buying places to live, having decent career progression etc. And yes, chinks in my armour are starting to appear, resulting that for the first time ever I recently came away from a look in the mirror thinking - hmm, wrinkles.

Nonetheless, I shall endeavour to resist a wholesale submission to the beauty industry that would like to plant insecurities in my head to encourage me to part with my cash. To help you do the same, I hereby offer you two of my top secret beauty tips:

1. Enlarged pores? Don't stand so close to the mirror.
2. Puffy, tired looking eyes? Stop reading about eye creams online and go to bed.

My work here is done.

Procrastination

Just seen this on The Culture Show. If you need to procrastinate, watch this video by Johnny Kelly:

I love the idea of colour-coding your shelves.

Quotation of the week

Nicked from a t shirt:

Engineering forsight: An escalator can never break. It can
only become stairs.

Humorous Interlude

Couple of amusing things I've come across today.

Firstly, via Blogs of Note, I present for your amusement Photoshop Disasters. More laugh-out-loud moments per page than your average blog. (Warning: some nudity. Well, sort of. Or not. You'll see what I mean).

Secondly, cos I haven't quite moved on, Facts about Boris. Personal favourites:

When you wait half an hour for a bus that's supposed to come every five
minutes, and three come along at once, THAT'S BORIS JOHNSON.
Boris Johnson steals odd socks from your washing machine.
Boris Johnson framed Angus Deayton.
Boris Johnson uses the London Underground to blow-dry his hair.
Boris Johnson makes you think you left the gas on.

All very true, I'm sure.

Dull epiphany

I realised recently that I spend more time holding a pipette than I do a pen.

That's all.

*sigh*

Do you *honestly* expect me to believe...

... that the BBC has a correspondent called Jonah Fisher? Who has been sent to cover Greenpeace's protests at Japanese whaling in the Antarctic?

Two questions:
(i) What were Mr and Mrs Fisher thinking?
(ii) How long must the guy have been waiting for this break?

(Mind you, it does sound like he feels he's the butt of someone's joke - scroll to bottom of this).

Who'd be a penguin?!

I just watched 'March of the Penguins', a documentary film about...Emperor Penguins. More precisely, the extraordinary lengths they have to go to in order to maintain their existence. The cinamatography was fantastic; the narration was cheesy. At the time of its release, there was quite a stir, as various interpretations were imposed on it. Some Christian groups heralded it as a prime example of the benefits of the family unit, or as a clear reflection of intelligent design. Some gay groups were keen to point out the existence of homosexual penguin liaisons. Personally, I think that the film was about...penguins.

Specifically, I think if there is any one single message to take home from the film it is this: Emperor Penguins have a pretty raw deal of it. Out of all the life cycles that God/Evolution could have dealt them, theirs is a pretty sucky one. In summary:

• At the age of five, you emerge from the water in which you've been happily swimming, and waddle in a fashion which is pretty inefficient for 70 miles.
• You find a mate, get on with it, and wait for an egg to arrive. Once it does, the female passes it to the male (hopefully without calamity) and then waddles the 70 miles back the the sea to try to regain the third of her biomass lost in egg production.
• The male waits with the egg, until the female returns with dinner for the chick some days/weeks later. He then sets off for the seas, to replace the 50% biomass lost and... to bring back dinner.
• And so the cycle of long distance takeaways continues, through the longest nights, and harshest weather, until eventually things warm up a bit and the sea comes to the penguins. At which point, back off for a swim, and trying to avoid being eaten by seals.

At all of the above stages there seems to be a risk of death by various methods (cracking, freezing, exhaustion, predation, abandonment) which makes you wonder how on earth the population manages to increase by a net amount of more than three birds per year.

So, who'd be a penguin? Not me, for sure. It did remind me, though of Eddie Izzard's sketch about assignation of the various methods of procreation at the dawn of the universe.

Maybe the penguins don't have it so bad after all...

Now add a dash of socialism...

I'm quite a keen baker, and I've had various positive comments in return for cakes, the highest of which being anything that suggests I'm nearly as good as my mother. But I heard the strangest ever baking-related comment today.

Recently I spent a weekend visiting a friend who'd moved away. On the Saturday she'd invited people round for dinner, so while she prepared that I volunteered to make a chocolate espresso cake for dessert. (Note: Cadbury's Dream is not a good substitute for white chocolate and does not melt well in a microwave. The burning smell did clear fairly quickly though...)

Anyway, to the point - there was plenty left over so on the Monday my friend took the remains in to her workplace to offer to her colleagues. Which prompted the following conversation:

Colleague: Is this one of those do-gooder cakes?
Friend: Eh?
Colleague: One of those do-gooder, fair trade, ethical thingies.
Friend: Well, the coffee is fair trade...

What on earth is a 'do-gooder' cake? How can you tell from the taste whether the ingredients are fair trade or not? And who in their right mind gets snooty about ingredients when someone is waving free chocolate cake under their nose?

I dunno - perhaps I stirred in a sprinkling of my leftie politics when I made it. Or maybe wrapping it in a copy of Populorum Progressio was a bit of a giveaway...