Term beginneth

I cannot deny it, this year feels markedly different from other years.

There was quite a difference last year with the introduction of top up fees of £3,000 a year. So it is not so obvious as to why this year should feel unlike then. The big change has already happened it would seem. It is old news by now.

However there is one thing that has changed and it does remind me of my own student years. Back then (in the dying days of the last conservative government - Tony Blair was elected just before my finals) we were emerging from an economic downturn. Though things were picking up at the time graduate unemployment was at 10%. That coupled with the conversion of the polytechnics just a few years before made people worry about the value of their degree and by extension their employability.

Those days are gone and although questions of employability are very much to the fore when you pay £20,000 of your own money for you own education, there has been a lot of confidence about graduate employment in the last 10 years.

That is already, radically changing.

Yesterday was an interesting day to start term, with all the news focusing on economic news. This, I believe, is what is giving all of this a negative feel. I have heard a student say that all this bad news is only bad news for home owners and share owners, but the truth this probably affects everyone.

If I were a betting man, I would put money on the freshers of 2008 being the hardest working, most politically apathetic and socially disengaged students yet.

And how, you may ask, am going to deal with that?

By blowing the biggest, loudest raspberry my lips can muster.

This ladies and gentleman of the internet reading public is exactly the time for frivolous, pointless fun. If Armageddon really is on the way, then we need to crack open the beers.

Let's party hard till the lights go off.

Globally it's not going to make things any better, but it's not going to make them any worse, is it?

From the Buy to let guide on the B & B website

"I’ve watched the property programmes. I’ve seen the money they can make. And let’s face it, my pension isn’t going to make me rich. I need a plan B, so where do I start?"

Where do you start when the Bank needs a plan B????

Electronic Marple

I moved house once. Well several times in fact but lets just focus on one of them for the purposes of scene setting.

I moved because I was getting a job after being a student for, what seemed like, several decades.

Because I had a job, finally, I decided to buy some stuff. Stuff is good. Sometime you need stuff. In my case the stuff I needed was mostly electrical. I'd been living in college for several years on a grant, now I needed some things of my own.

So I bought a fridge and a washing machine and a television and a video and, well, lots of things really.

That was 2001, and now 7 years later it has all started to go wrong and die at once. The first thing to go was the computer, but then it was Windows ME. Then however the cooker went (also bought at the start of the new millennium) The other day the television developed a fault that meant if you switched it off it blew the fuse. So now I go through about 5 fuses a day.

Then the washing machine worked its way up into a spin cycle, there was a very loud bang and a huge flash, and now it is no more. When I got the power back on I discovered the surge had fried the VCR.

Somehow I feel like there is something quite malevolent about this. It's almost like I'm in a fucked up Agatha Christie novel. The lights keep going off and when then come back on again another electrical item is dead.

"Gosh, Miss Marple, I thought it was the PC behind all of this."
"No, no my dear, Linux is far too stable and reliable to throw up any nasty surprises, certainly there was a lot of bitterness about it's lack of market share, but really it is far too community based to go on a twisted killing spree. The more I thought about it, the more it was obvious to me, it was the toaster that was really angry."

I fear I am going to have to go out and restart consumer confidence all by myself.

I'm really worried about the toaster.

Five

I return to work....

only to find 5, yes count them 5, pages of unread e-mails. Several pages of unread messages on facebook and four unread text messages.

That's what I'll spend my first week doing.

Then it will be time for new adventures. First e-mails. Then adventures.

Is your life like that?

My Keys

This is where my keys live in the holiday. Not my house keys, obviously, I do actually go out occasionally, no I'm talking about my chaplaincy keys.

There they are just there on my dressing table. They have been there since July.

Soon though....

....it will be time to pick them up again.

Gordon and Maddie

Read on the 'Have you say' section of the BBC website.

Should Gordon Brown stay as Labour Party leader?

"This man cannot even find Madeleine McCann, what hope does he have for leading the country during these tough economic times?"

Thank you so much sir! For a second there I thought Gordon Brown was doing a good job but now you have mentioned Maddie I am completely on your side. Ludicrously, instead of getting on a plane with a map of the Algarve and a sturdy stick, for some reason Gordon left it to local law enforcement agencies to deal with. Where in International law does it say you have to do that?

Personally I think it was clear that Brown was not cut out to be PM when he completely failed to prevent the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. What was he playing at taking the night off from directing the traffic through the Pont D'Alma?

One of the great things about sites like the BBC's 'Have your say' is that it reveals just how well informed, intelligent and articulate the British Public really is.

Once again, the internet, making the world a better place.

Cern

All this bother this week about how the world could end because of CERN.

Apparently in trying to work out what happened with the Big Bang they might make a black whole and suck off the faces of every man, woman and child on earth.

Well it wouldn't be the worst way to go, would it?

What if they didn't make a black hole what if, in trying to replicate the start of the universe, they made...da, da, DAAAAAAA, a Universe. The more I think about it, the more I think this is what happened. Some particle accelerator somewhere was directly responsible for the creation. Some scientist running into the control room shouting,

"Proffessor God, Proffessor God! We have an unexpected result."

To which she probably replied "What is it, Dr Gabrielle?"

"We seem to have made a small universe!"
"Bugger! I was not expecting that! Well you go into the tube and get it. Out it in ...um....er....let me see....this jar and then put on my desk, I'll look after it."
"This is going to be a lot of work."
"Yeah, good job Dr Lucifer got kicked off the research group, he was a lazy sod."
"Yeah, but he's pissed now though."

Obviously that universe was created in another LHC and then that one was created in another LHC and so on. If you watch the first test of the LHC at CERN the guy in charge clearly has a white beard.

Damn it's easy to imagine stuff when you know jack shit about a subject.


Where did all the antimatter go, anyway?


In fact actually what is Antimatter, anyway?

Google Chrome

With Google's new search engine "Chrome" launched I can't help thinking about web tools.

Google is including lots of stuff in their search engine and of course they are the kings and queens of internet searches. Google were the first people to try to bring relevance into your searches. Before them in order to be at the top of a list that someone was searching for you had to mention the word they were looking for the most amount of time on your page.

The trouble with the rest of the internet though is that most of the information about it is often mediated.

Take tools like technorati. Brilliant idea, you can use it to find a blog on the any subject you want. But actually I think most of the time they rely on the authors of blogs to tell them what their blogs are all about.

What I want is a tool that actually goes back to the old 'word count' method of measuring things and then records somewhere what the site is actually about.

For instance there was once a debate in the house of commons of the subject of corporal punishment apparently there was one Tory MP who added a "hear hear" every time the word "spank", "paddle" or "bottom" was mentioned, which clearly tells you something about him.

Now I have a horrid feeling this blog uses the word 'porn' more often than the word 'God' yet I'm sure I have claimed this blog as religious on technorati. Which is the problem with people telling you what they are about.

It needs to be tested. I think a www.whatwebsitesarereallyabout.com site could be quite popular. I'd certainly pop by and check out a few conservative religious ones.

Maybe I should suggest it to someone.






God, God, God, God





God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, fisting, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God, God



God, God, God


Church

God.

So long Don Lafontaine

So sadly we have to say goodbye to Don Lafontaine, famous for voicing over 5,000 movie trailers.


I find myself today going round with his voice commenting on my actions.

"In a world gone mad, blogging has become the answer"

I know, nuts.

"When one little boy is late for school only one man has the key.... to the car."

I don't think anyone realises what we have lost in Don Lafontaine no movie trailer would be quite the same without him. I think He could have added some thing to any situation.

Like Anglicanism.

"In a world unlike any other, where questions about gay Bishops are important, a world split apart, one man has the power to hold things together....or DOES HE? If this goes wrong one million people.... might... have... to find somewhere else to go to church, while the rest of the world just carries on.

This Autumn the stakes couldn't be lower, Fellow of the British Academy Rowan Williams is the Archbishop of Canterbury. And if he can't fix it no one can. It's time for the healing to begin."

Well made the Anglican schism slightly more interesting.

Only slightly.