Chris Thompson   Chris Thompson on the internet

There were no clouds in the sky at all today, and it was beautiful and sunny. And most of it, for me, was spent in the park, reading American Gods. It’s very mythic so far, and definitely right up my alley: currently the old Norse (and other) gods are find themselves facing off against new gods of technology and science, and it’s enthralling stuff.

Now, sunshine is rare in England. Our weather mostly consists of rolling grey clouds that stretch on into infinity. So to be able to sit outside and relax for a while, and forget about worries and troubles, drinking lemonade in the sun was lovely. An enjoyable day, if not a productive one.

One thing I did do, though, was discover this article. Reading it made me smile. Not the idea of talking mice; it was more that the wording in a particular phrase was quite funny: “With this study, we get the first glimpse that mice can be used to study not only disease, but also our own history.”

The first thought that came to my mind was the image of scientists and historians, using mice to study our history; investigating Hitler’s art, perhaps, or talking about Julius Caesar. It’s just interesting how many different ways you can read such a simple sentence.

Wonderful stuff.

There is a BBC article here that elaborates on what I wrote about yesterday: the cleverness of rooks. Rather helpfully, it comes complete with a number of videos, so that now we can see their stone-picking, hook-making intelligence for ourselves. Even second time round reading it, the story still amazes me.

And as far as amazing animals go, there is dog that has saved its owners life in Michigan. Now, ordinarily, this isn’t the most unusual story: I have heard a great many stories over the years, telling of dogs and cats (and other animals too) that have saved their owners from all sorts of dangers. But this one is special, and made more powerful, because the dog in question is terminally ill. It was supposed to be put down, but the owner decided against it.

Putting myself in his shoes – even so much as thinking about the decision he made, is difficult. I have two dogs of my own, and I wouldn’t want them to be in pain at all. And whilst it’s true that if I knew they were in pain, I would want to help them out (and do whatever it took to help them out) even so much as thinking about putting them down scares me – a lot.

But whilst I’m not sure what I’d do if I were in his situation, I’m certainly glad that he made the decision he did.

And I wish both him and his dog well.

… and so the expenses mess continues. It’s so frequently on the tv and in the papers now that it’s becoming boring. Now we learn that they have been using taxpayers money to pay for flowers in the garden. Lovely.

There is an article on Neil Gaiman here, and it’s wonderful. It begins in a beautiful and artistic sort of way, and perfectly captures the craziness and contrast of images and ideas that must reside inside an authors mind. Certainly an author like Gaiman, who has dabbled in so many different mediums and genres that it boggles the mind. As you read the article, it is a story in itself; a journey, and there is a very real sense that anything can happen at any time. Such is the beauty of the mind of a master storyteller.

And there is also some interesting news here. A study in birds’ intelligence has been undertaken, and these rooks in particular have shone. Indeed, without having seen the setup before, they quickly and efficiently devised instruments out of wire to fish out worms from the bottom of a tube.

Equally impressive are the images that go with the article. Wonderful stuff.

I have just read this article, and first and foremost, I was surprised and compelled by the headline.

Mostly, I think this is because, if ever a discussion was held on the various ways to die, death by noise would be quite high up there on the list of Most Horrible. Every time I picture it, the scene contains a lot of blood, and a lot of squirming, like something out of a budget horror movie. So reading reports that 400 goats have been killed by noise was intriguing to say the least.

It sounds messy, and it sounds horrific. 400 is a lot of goat-heads exploding all over the countryside. But in fact it is sleep deprivation that they are suspected of dying of, which is apparently caused by the noise of the big machines. After all: “If noise at night can keep people awake, then it could also keep the goats awake.” Insightful stuff.

Compensation will be available for the farmer in question, should the wind turbines be proved to be at fault. So somewhere out there are people whose job it is to investigate whether or not wind turbine noise can prevent goats from sleeping, and kill them through sleep deprivation.

Just an interesting thought.

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Presently, my partner has just got back from a weekend away. She has been spending time with her girl friends, and over just a few days, she seems to have fallen in love with bathrooms and whirlpool baths.
Harmless, you might think. Not so. These whirlpool baths, which I suppose is just another name for a Jacuzzi, have been a source of a very relaxing weekend, yes; but now, the pestering has begun. And the pestering has developed, skilfully and relentlessly.

First of all, she played on the comfort angle. Now it’s become a question of how healthy they are. Indeed, it seems they are even used as treatments. It’s a battle of willpower. And up until now, I have been offering polite and non-committal grunts and murmurings.

Today has been a very news-filled Sunday.

The MP expenses row is bubbling, and bubbling, and bubbling away. Now, if you’re outside the UK this might not seem very exciting. But now, members of the public have been invited to stand for election, based on research that suggests there could be the biggest cleanout in parliament since 1945. It is predicted that 345 of the 646 MP’s could quit, or be fired, or be voted out.

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In addition to this, Newcastle United, who, for 16 years, have been quite a big football team here, have been relegated from the premiership. And I can’t help but smile at the news.

A shake-up like this, has, I think, been needed for quite a while. And I’m not sure what they will do now: presumably they have lots of their players wrapped up in long, expensive contracts, and it might be a bit of a struggle in the depths of the next division.

A team like Newcastle, which is filled with talented footballers, hasn’t been relegated for as long as I can remember. Yes, it has been a very interesting day.

We’re looking at a surveillance monster, seeing how much the notion of Big Brother Britain has grown in recent weeks. Communications firms are now being asked to record internet contacts in a move to modernise and improve police surveillance tactics. In other words, its doesn’t just affect email, but Facebook and Twitter too, and any other form of social networking you might partake in.

They say that they are striving for a “careful balance” between investigative powers and people’s privacy, but I can’t help but wonder if such a thing is possible. Supposing that it is, where do you even draw the line? And how do you draw the line? When you compare this to something like call recording, it feels a far more intrusive beast. Like it’s more personal, somehow – as if someone has the power to read your letters before they reach their destination.

Probably even more worrying is that, if you know how, presumably it’s just as possible for anyone to do this sort of thing. Whereas before, it was something you might see from a hacker in a movie. It was the stuff of fantasy and science fiction. But it suddenly becomes very real when it’s being reported by the BBC.

If people record me on the phone with call logging devices, I don’t really mind. It just feels normal now. Every company seems to do it these days, whether you ring them about banking or internet. But this new monitoring is something different.

It will, of course, help the police in a number of ways. Just knowing that it’s possible, though – well, I find it quite a terrifying prospect.

If you own and work in a grocery store, it is not beneficial to stop washing. And if you stop washing for long periods of time, then you will probably find your business failing. Which is exactly what happened to Kailish Singh.

Because for 35 years, Kailish Singh has not had a bath.

Apparently it all started when a seer told him, once, that if he never had a bath again, he would be blessed with a male child. But now it’s been 35 years. And I can’t help but feel that after 35 years, I would begin to question the divine word of a prophet. If nothing else, I can admire his dedication and strength of will.

Now it’s so long since he washed that he forgets why, exactly, he’s given it up. He says that it’s in the national interest not to wash. It is beneficial to the nation for him not to wash. Right.

It’s no wonder that people stopped buying groceries from him, claiming he had an “unhealthy personality.”

The Times Online report that people in the property field – “from developers to estate agents” – are brainstorming in order to combat what is being called a post-apocalyptic market.

Apparently, the market in the UK must “adapt or die.”

If this is true, then I think that it applies to every facet of the field, including those who are looking to buy and sell houses. So I’ve done a bit of brainstorming myself; just thinking, really, about what I might consider doing if I needed to sell my house in today’s harsh marketplace. And I can’t help but think that the sell and rent back scheme is a brilliant idea.
It certainly qualifies as an adaption, I think. Certainly it’s an option I had never heard of before. But it is also subtle, and I think it is in that that the beauty lies. You can sell your house, and carry on living there without anyone knowing about it being sold at all. It seems convenient, and really rather easy.

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In an unrelated, yet distantly similar note, there is news of a battery that can run on air. The potential of the product is huge, really. If every iPod user, for example, can use a battery that runs on air, instead of using huge amounts of electricity to recharge them, then that’s a pretty awesome development.

And if you believe in global warming, then the aforementioned Darwinian ultimatum extends to more than just the house market. Things like this battery, in isolation, are small steps; but when these technological developments are combined together, they make for quite exciting news, I think.

I’ve just returned, happily, from a barbecue. My friend was hosting one to celebrate the end of his degree. Mostly the day was spent lounging around relaxing, drinking and playing computer games, but part of the time – in fact, now that I think about it, quite a lot of the time – was taken up by him showing off his latest gadget.

I say “gadget”, because it really did feel like something out of James Bond. Very proudly, he told me that he uses it for Polycom audio conferencing, which seems a fancy way of saying video and voice conversations. I got a chance to test it out. Certainly, it felt official and professional, and it was good fun talking NFL with a friend up north. It was almost like something out of Jerry Maguire.

The topic of the day, as it were, was Michael Vick: he has been released from prison, allowed to serve the rest of his sentence at home. It’s a topic that has the entire NFL world abuzz.

We talked about why some teams will pass on him, should he complete the comeback, and why some teams will probably pick him up. And all the while it was quite surreal.

I’m personally of the opinion that he has done his time, from what I’ve seen and read, he has left prison as a man changed, and as Marshall Faulk has said, he should be given a second chance. And he’ll get a second chance, I think. Perhaps it will be through injury to another quarterback, or perhaps through posting up highlights in a different league, like the old Vick did so often, and if he does, he’ll generate interest. He’ll get his chance.

And when he does, I just hope he genuinely has learned from his mistakes.

The row over our wonderful MP’s huge-and-inappropriate-money-spending-spree (and, indeed, our government in general) is reaching boiling point.

It hasn’t been handled very well at all, and the man overseeing it, Michael Martin, has been pressured into resigning in scenes that the Guardian are calling “unprecedented in the modern era.” It has even been suggested that if Martin digs in and doesn’t resign, he will face death “by a thousand cuts”. The votes of no confidence are piling up.

It’s quite ridiculous, really, and it’s an issue that should never have been allowed to happen in the first place. But it has happened, and now that it has, and now that we all know about it, it will be interesting to follow these “unprecedented scenes” and see how our magnificent and trustworthy government go about remedying the situation.

This BBC article notes that David Cameron has called for an immediate general election. But, presumably – and as Clegg is quoted as saying in the article – there is no point in changing a few faces around, but maintaining the same rules.

And so the saga continues…