Mr Mist’s Blog

This year’s Comic Relief has raised over 37 million pounds in it’s broadcast day [news.bbc.co.uk]. I think generally that the figure tends to almost double, if I recall correctly, over the next few days and stuff as other donations come in. So that is good.

The Celebrity Fame Academy was won by Radio 1 DJ Edith Bowman [news.bbc.co.uk], which is also good as she seemed to have the right spirit and a reasonable voice. Adrian was my choice for sheer entertainment value.

Via Slashdot [slashdot.org] comes news that AOL has rights over anything you put across its AIM chat network [slashdot.org]. Under their TOS you agree that they have the right to "reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium". The moral being - don’t distribute your latest masterpiece over AIM.

Some people will go to extraordinary lengths for love [www.reuters.co.uk], I mean, this bloke was prepared to lose his fingers and toes trekking into Canada to see his net girlfriend. To be fair to the guy I don’t imagine that he planned to lose them all, but somehow I get the idea that planning wasn’t his strongest point…

In the UK, a sixty-one year old man has become the first to be completely cured of type 1 diabetes [news.bbc.co.uk] by virtue of a cell transplant. Others have had this procedure before but this one is the first to have resulted in the man not needing any more injections at all That’s pretty good going.

Nuclear Fusion please [news.bbc.co.uk]. At least Fusion power is coming along slowly. More power, please. Yes.

A supposedly cursed stone in Carlisle has been saved from destruction [www.reuters.co.uk]. Town Councillors rejected a motion to have the stone destroyed. Some people blame the stone - a piece of art from 2001 - for various misfortunes that have plagued the town. The big stone has an ancient curse carved into it. Groups defending the stone mentioned that it has a blessing in it, too. Quite odd, though.

After spending last weekend going back and forth to IKEA for various bits of furniture, news appears that the Prime Minister of Norway has accused IKEA of being sexist [www.reuters.co.uk], because they only include male figures building their flat-pack furniture. I’ve not really noticed this, but, looking at some of our instructions it does appear to be true. Ho-hum.

It is said that Welsh Building firm Redrow is to be the first in the UK to meet the Government challenge to make available new homes for less than £60K [news.bbc.co.uk]. Of course, this headline grabber misses the fact that it’s 60K for a one bedroomed flat. Oh well. At least for twice that amount you can get a two bedroomed house :/ Is this really helping the first time buyers?

Small cars have not done that well in recent US crash tests [www.reuters.co.uk], with only a couple making an acceptable rating, and most being rated poorly. Not very reassuring, then.

And finally, Hamster music [www.reuters.co.uk].

Ant colonies are clever [news.bbc.co.uk]. This is good.

Today we went to Ikea, got some bookcases and a nice chair for the computer but the chair has rips on the seat. This is annoying as it means that we now have to go back to Ikea tomorrow. Ptish.

Cow’s can hold a grudge for years [www.theregister.co.uk], so says research from folk at Bristol University. Apparently cows are capable of strong emotions and can worry about the future. Presumably such issues as where the wind is going to be coming from and how much grass there will be to consume play heavily on their minds.

See, cows are great!

In other news, forty kids have been suspended from a Tyneside school for throwing snowballs [news.bbc.co.uk]. It’s slightly more involved with that as it seems like they were throwing the snowballs at cars whilst battling each other from a playground across both sides of a road. Quite how a playground spans a road I’m not sure. Still. How odd.